Update 32 Combat Preview

Fhritz

Decimus wrote: »

At this point they must be trying to drive away the remaining PvP player base. [snip]

Giving burst procs a 1s CD is probably the dumbest thing imaginable and kills the viability of many classes/builds in PvP.

What are you going to do on a stamblade for instance when some dodge roll/cloak spammer doesn't drop into execute from your burst anymore? This just makes the game infinitely worse to play for classes/builds without good undodgeable damage.

Meanwhile on classes with delayed (undodgeable) burst you can just build for max stats (as you benefit from them more than say, stamblade) and time instakill burst to deal with people spamming dodge roll/cloak/streaking away.

Literally no one complained about burst procs (especially the ones with counterplay) before this, apart from the Hrothgar/Dark Convergence that were added previous patch.

Stacking multiple burst procs was already balanced by the weapon/spell damage scaling.


Making most sets hybrid is also a terrible idea.

When everyone is a "hybrid" due to good sets granting both stats, no one is a stamina or a magicka build - just put your attributes into health and there you go, "hybrid".

No meaningful choice whatsoever when making builds and everything starts playing the same way.


[snip]

As a stamblade I can guarantee you that I will LOVE this change, because it doesn't affect me but in fact buff my build !

[edited to remove quote]

Noise_S

I'm thorn, while always excited by changes there's been a lot of it in recent times. On that note you adress feelings of fatigue from the community but blatantly disregard it. Why not separate changes to integral parts of the game and most of the balancing I don't comprehend, changing so many variables all at ones never brings good results.
For PVE, baffles me how you don't understand how crit has come to be the best stat in PVE endgame and why it should remain that way because it makes the most sense. We are constantly incentivized in a group to bring buff sets and skills that give either stats or % based modifers that are multiplicative with crit, why would we not go to crit when in a group environment we are given major minor Courage, we are given Aggressive horn, we are given Powerful assault, why would we not turn to crit when the most over powered mythic was introduced which would give thousands of spell and weapon damage, or when vampire toggle would reach even higher. Buffs and debuffs with multiplicative effects only effecting crits Catalyst and Brittle, and other affecting all damage like Martial knowledge, Z'en's, major minor Slayer and Berserk and more. You speak of freedom but limit our choices in build diversity with a cap, the consequences of how high or low this cap will be won't serve to mitigate the issue you speak of. If it's too high nothing will change if it's too low, we can forget about Khajiit viability, or Kilt or Shadow or Axes and any Acuity build, Templars and especially Nightblades will take a big hit, and there is no middle ground unfortunately.
Why is not lowering the starting point of crit damage not an option 33% but without cap, crit makes the most sense to me as an endgame stat to seek out but less desirable in solo or small group content.
With these change, and hopeful fix to the powercreep I hope certain encounters will be balanced accordingly to not stave off more people from the already small endgame community cause some content becomes too hard to complete.
As for the rest, great bring back some proc sets, they are fun. The freedom from hybridization seems good but we'll lose role/skill identity, the options will raise the ceeling again which I'm all for, but it will play into the powercreep you are trying to move away from. Anyway can't wait to see the changes on monday, people like me will adapt but I've seen way too many being thrown off by it and step away from the game in recent times. The quality of life seen on stream has gotten better and better so looking forward to that too. Hope this pts will reveal a lot about the affects of the changes and they will be act upon before release where needed.

Thank you for the work you do and this game

Saenic

double post, see below

Saenic

"we’ve decided to move forward with a hard cap to Critical Damage and Healing."

A better solution would be a Diminishing Return on crit rating! The more you have, the less crit % you get per crit rating. Lets say soft cap at 30-40% with a hard cap at 50-60%.

With a cap on crit DAMAGE buffs like major/minor force will at some point be stupid or debuffs like brittle or catalyst will be pointless. With a diminishing return on crit CHANCE they will still give you an increase but not as big as they used to.

Tommy_The_Gun

Tbh. I do not understand why they are changing stuff this much every update. Like for example yet another proc sets re-balance. Before DC & Hrothgar, proc sets were more or less balanced. They added scaling and it worked. They just need to do is to re-do those 2 sets and it would be fine. It is less work with a better result. Also, I do not understand why they are adding the ability to proc sets to crit again. Back in the day when those sets could crit, it was impossible to balance.

Simple example: should we allow auto-crit like cloak or Mechanical Acuity combined with sets like Sheer Venom or Vicecanon of Venom to one-shot people, or we should nerf auto-crit to the ground ? Because this is what is going to happen if ZOS brings back proc sets crits.

^ Thus, I do not understand why they are re-enabling this again. It is like opening a can of worms. You dont want that. If their argument is that new players are confused and they dont know why proc sets do not crit, then maybe just idk. oh:

Add it to set description ?

A simple line:
"This set can not deal critical damage".
^ New players are not dumb. They can read. But if there is nothing to read then yeah - every one will be confused...

Bl4ckR3alm93

VaranisArano wrote: »

A handful of meme reactions. Please, take it all in good humor.


Now, maybe the delay on burst proc sets will balance the crits out, but I have to confess this one had me scratching my head. Like, we already stopped letting proc sets crit for good reason, yeah?


Not gonna lie, this promise of Dragonknight love leaves me pretty apprehensive for my MagDK main.

Guess we'll see what the patch notes bring.

Ok now this is funny lol

ESO_Nightingale

helloelli wrote: »

yknow im usually the optimistic one in my circle when it comes to big updates like this, cp 2.0, companions, scrying, etc., i was always the one to say "maybe it wont be that bad, lets just wait until further updates/pts comes out until we form full thoughts!"

this time i feel completely different, the hybridization, cap, its just...why? as stated previously a page or two ago, we hardly have class identity as it is now - much less if, or when, this goes through. hybrids can be a thing if you really want it to, just make actually decent sets - while easier said than done, that cater to them. dont punish those of us who spend hundreds of hours perfecting a pure mag/stam toon just so hybrids are "viable". give them their time to shine, separately, just like weve had ours.

i just fail to see the reasoning behind this..? trifectas are already hard enough as it is, as they should be, because its a huge deal, why make it harder for the groups that push and dedicate their free time into getting them? reworking trials because of a hard crit cap would be entirely counterintuitive - and frankly, be wasting a lot of time that they could be using to fix other ACTUAL problems in the game.

i love eso to death, have well over 10k hours across my toons and have played since beta on and off, so ive seen some of the worst (and best) moments. i love eso because its simple enough that casual players can get into it, but if you decide to be sweaty, you can do so. dont turn eso into another victim to the mainline series of watering/dumbing down the systems that make the games unique. i just hope a lot of us are wrong and its not as bad as it seems.

sub assault 100% beats deep fissure in pve next patch now. it was already much better for sustain and via giving more GCDs, but now the increased damage of sub assault on a magden will make it a clear winner.

class identity is in shambles for warden.

ESO_Nightingale

Saenic wrote: »

"we’ve decided to move forward with a hard cap to Critical Damage and Healing."

A better solution would be a Diminishing Return on crit rating! The more you have, the less crit % you get per crit rating. Lets say soft cap at 30-40% with a hard cap at 50-60%.

With a cap on crit DAMAGE buffs like major/minor force will at some point be stupid or debuffs like brittle or catalyst will be pointless. With a diminishing return on crit CHANCE they will still give you an increase but not as big as they used to.

i'm really worried they just killed frost dps with this change we were so close to being really powerful and wanted, and now we're calling into question if we're even a thing anymore AGAIN.

Darcwolf

Very cool to see someone who I used to follow guides on (miss your builds) actually working on the combat team

QuinnTheWolf

Welp there go the days i ground out medusa 😭😭😭😭😭😭
I hate the crit nerf already, havnt even seen it yet, already know it will be horrible, this move is basicaly smashing minor force, major force, khajiit, hermorage, spears, glacial pressence, deathknell, minor brittle, shadow stone and more into their early graves.... our only hope might be malacaths band of brutality, reduce the crit damage, raise it back up using buffs

Biro123

Interested in the hybridisation part, but no mention of enchants? A large portion of weapon or spell damage often comes from jewellery enchants. That makes me struggle to see how a top performing hybrid could work so would still need more work?

Also what about stuff that relies heavily on max stats? Are sorcs excluded from going hybrid? At least from a shield pov.

Will all mag builds now start running vigour in pvp? I think my magblade will since it will guarantee the heal lands on me rather than some random passing 35k health warden with 1% missing. Could mean not being forced to run resto, which could be a good thing.

What are the future plans? Is this just another step towards more hybridisation? Or is this it? Will max stam/mag and recovery and enchants get the same treatment in future? I'd like to know now please to decide whether to hold off on spending cash on build experiments.

Mr_Arce88

As always I see nothing about horrible state of the game performance. Instead I see hard cap on crit damage and limiting 'burst' procs that will benefit yet again ball groups, so good job on your efforts to carb them...

Ball Group perspective: no more threat from Dark Convergence + Hrothgar combo, no more one-shot build threat, no more high crit treat. And for them, they will simply re-arrange their sets (that is for those who acually use 2 burst proc sets in first place...)

1vX perspective: no more threat from one-shot build or crit gangers. They wear defensive + offensive set so that change will not affect them at all, only buff (as defense will be easier)

Casual player perspective: limited flexibility for a build, no more 1-sided build, limited possibility to counter ball groups or even just coordinated groups. Sounds like ton of fun for them.

I will remind you that casual is a player who keep every single MMO afloat. So if you will constantly do changes that impact them, they will quit. You had a lot of time and then additional month to rethink your game and get rid of lag and bad performance. You didn't. Instead you do whatever this 'preview' is. So I guess on 28th September it will be start of slow 'game over' for you, ZOS, as your playerbase will just float away to better games that for reason unknown to you can do proper performance (and skills do work there - I know, increadible notion yeah?).

Jaraal

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Proc sets that scale with your Weapon or Spell Damage, Magicka, or Stamina will now once again be able to Critically strike in Update 32.

So why would sets that deal damage based on maximum health (Bahraha's, Leeching, etc) or max resists (Embershield, Explosive Rebuke, etc) not be able to crit? What is the reasoning behind some damage sets critting and others not?

DarcyMardin

ZOS: OK, peeps, we’re making a few adjustments that completely change the game.
ZOS (3 months later) OK, that didn’t work quite the way we expected, so we’re make some minor adjustments that kinda, sorta completely change the game.
ZOS (another 3 months). Giving you a heads-up this time — we’ve decided that the game will be much better if we completely change it!
ZOS (Yep, 3 months…) We know you’re tired of all the changes so we’ll just drop a few new sets that, really, only a little bit, completely change the game.
ZOS (Has it already been 3 months?) We hardly changed anything last time, so now, guess what, back to normal, we’re totally redesigning everything!

Bl4ckR3alm93

QuinnTheWolf wrote: »

Welp there go the days i ground out medusa 😭😭😭😭😭😭
I hate the crit nerf already, havnt even seen it yet, already know it will be horrible, this move is basicaly smashing minor force, major force, khajiit, hermorage, spears, glacial pressence, deathknell, minor brittle, shadow stone and more into their early graves.... our only hope might be malacaths band of brutality, reduce the crit damage, raise it back up using buffs

Honestly the cap probably wont even be that bad. Only Nightblades will really notice a difference depending on the cap. PVE will be fine, we already do alot of damage TBH. I've been playing ESO since day 1 when City of Ash 2 was endgame. Now you can 2 man the dungeon with companions with some people able to solo the whole dungeon. Proc sets can crit now so you can make fun builds with sets like Widowmaker and make a strong DOT build on a StamCro or StamDK

Seraphayel

Without making Light and Heavy Attacks hybrid, this is going half the way and stopping there. What really stops hybrid builds is that weapons are tied to either Magicka or Stamina. When that limitation is removed, this game can experience a MASSIVE amount of diverse and new builds. Balance doesn't exist right now, so why worry about it then?

Make weapons hybrid as well and everything will be way more fun. And diverse. And unbalanced. But the latter doesn't matter at all.

Dalsinthus

I have to say these changes kill any and all excitement I might have felt for the update. Gilliam acknowledges that many of us are tired of the constant changes but then says it must march on because reasons I guess.

Capping crit is just going to mean that many of us have to overhaul our builds simply to tread water. We’ve done this so many times now. What is the point of making such changes? Seriously if ZOS can’t give a clear answer for this - how the relentless pace of change moves us toward some clear goal - then they really need to take a step back and rethink things. I am exhausted from redoing builds to try to basically recreate the same outcome I had before the patch.

I’ve been here long enough to know that they won’t listen to people like me.

Hybridization changes: again why? I guess some want this but it just muddles the logic of skills, abilities and sets. I don’t see the point. Class and build identity fade further away I the interest of homogenization.

Allowing proc sets to crit / putting a cool down on procs: seems like this contradicts the stated design goal of reducing calculations. Also seems to contradict the very recent effort of reigning in proc damage. The global cool down is going to be confusing, which set procs when and what are the rules for this?

I’ve been playing less and less lately. This aimless direction and change for the sake of change is only going to make that trend continue.

etchedpixels

HollowDreams wrote: »

Can something please be done about overland content...please...Make enemies hit harder, make the big enemies threatening, make traps inside dungeons an actual threat with a possible 1 hit kill mechanic... Don't just focus on PVP do something about overland content i beg you

Oh you mean so you can also walk into a delve and die of lag. No thank you. When the lag is fixed then some of the mechanics have a place but right now 'oh look I died of lag' is already too common.

etchedpixels

Mr_Arce88 wrote: »

I will remind you that casual is a player who keep every single MMO afloat. So if you will constantly do changes that impact them, they will quit.

The rubedite set hasn't been nerfed in some years 8)

FrancisCrawford

Nothing matters for high CP characters in casual overland PvE. My main melts PvE mobs with a purple Jailbreaker Ice Staff, when he's forgotten to eat food.

For semi-casual PvE, any decent build works. That purple Jailbreaker Ice Staff no-food no-pot build really struggled with sustain in nDSA's first arena when I popped in there to take a look. (I never went in before the recent event.) I'd have failed outright in later rounds had I not switched to a decent build. And even then I died in Round 8 on my first try. (And never went in solo again, partnering with @DarcyMardin instead.)

The problem for semi-casual players is whether we'll be able to actually progress, or will be just tread water (and get bored with available content accordingly). That's how PvE nerfs/buffs/balance affect us. Well, that and all the re-farming. The changes to make farming easier will be VERY welcome.

WrathOfInnos

The hard cap on critical damage sounds concerning. Will Khajiit's crit damage bonus end up doing nothing in a group with Major Force, Minor Brittle and Elemental Catalyst? Or are Khajiit's passives changing to fit the new system?

hodgodeb17_ESO

Just remove weaving bug from game and there's will be a balance. No need to make this hybrid - this will destroy game totally.

Elsonso

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

The hard cap on critical damage sounds concerning. Will Khajiit's crit damage bonus end up doing nothing in a group with Major Force, Minor Brittle and Elemental Catalyst? Or are Khajiit's passives changing to fit the new system?

Apparently, this cap is fairly high. We will see on PTS on Monday or Tuesday.

Hymzir

Good grief. Not again. -sigh-

This is not progress, this is re-inventing the wheel. Again.

You know what, not gonna do it. Nope. Not gonna pay any attention to the PTS, and not gonna bother with this at all..

When this hits the live servers, I'll just take a month off, and then read some guide on what is BIS and go with that. And if it proves too hard to farm, then I'll just wait few months more, until the next total rework of the game takes place, and see how much of a PITA the meta will be at that point..

The game is full of grindy nonsense as is, and I simply do not have the energy or interest to keep relearning the game every three months. There are plenty of other games out there, games that do not require such asinine time investment, and do not try to sell me overpriced cosmetics at every damn possible opportunity, and where I can expect my characters abilities and capability to to remain stable and not constantly change.

Yeah... So good luck with all this nonsense..

Eshkerigal

I'm worry about crit cap.
What about necro's Death Knell?

Will it increase crit chance above that "hard cap"? And how high this "hard cap" will be? 50%? 70%?

themaddaedra

Hybridize all, until everything is perfecly round and bound in one structured sameness.

colossalvoids

Eshkerigal wrote: »

I'm worry about crit cap.
What about necro's Death Knell?

Will it increase crit chance above that "hard cap"? And how high this "hard cap" will be? 50%? 70%?

Critical damage, not chance. At least that's what we've been told.

Cayr

Seraphayel wrote: »

Without making Light and Heavy Attacks hybrid, this is going half the way and stopping there. What really stops hybrid builds is that weapons are tied to either Magicka or Stamina. When that limitation is removed, this game can experience a MASSIVE amount of diverse and new builds. Balance doesn't exist right now, so why worry about it then?

Make weapons hybrid as well and everything will be way more fun. And diverse. And unbalanced. But the latter doesn't matter at all.

No. Hybridizing sets is already quite enough. And imo should not be done, or at least not to ALL sets. It's all well and good to think "the game can have a massive amount of diverse and new builds", but I guarantee you that all that'll happen is that endgame theorycrafters will figure out the meta damage and then if you want to do endgame raid content, everyone is effectively funneled into the exact same build. It's already bad enough for mag DDs, because the setups are very much alike, but making everything hybrid will in fact just result of making everything the same.

I also don't think it'd be a good idea from a lore/RP perspective - why the hell would staves require stamina to use or melee weapons magicka to use? Alternative would be to completely lose both separate resource pools and funnel them into one pool of "whatever" that both types of weapons would draw from. Not only would that require a complete rework of attributes and race and class passives, it also sounds just completely flat and boring.

MudcrabAttack

I don't know all the changes, but this sounds like it's going to throw the PVE balance way off. With a cap on crit damage, I bet Stamblade takes a big dive in PVE. They're already nowhere near the top of the pile, so why do it?

Too many of the Stamblade class buffs wouldn't even get used. They're already overpenetrating in stamina groups. Now the only other interesting class buff would take them over the limit of crit damage, they probably wouldn't gain much from the kilt, which is the single strongest piece of gear for a lot of things. They'll just drop like a rock relative to all the other builds.

Medium armor builds gain 14% more crit damage from medium armor while also slotting backstabber (a very strong CP buff) and fighting finesse. If they can't slot those CP stars, what are they supposed to slot? Wrathful Strikes? Endless Endurance? Those are so weak by comparison

Magic builds will be staying meta for a long time to come, especially with some relequen jewelry with spell damage glyphs and a relequen weapon.

SoulwayFilth

Wow.

Well I will be interested to see the rework for mechanical acuity as with proc sets able to crit would make it broken as.