Update 33 Combat Preview

ZOS_Gilliam

Greetings everyone,

Today, the combat team would like to you officially welcome you to 2022 by giving you some insight on what’s coming to combat in the first update of the year! We’ve been keeping a close eye on all the adjustments we made over 2021 and we’re relatively happy with how the game has been evolving combat wise with character expression and freedom of build choices, and we are dedicated to continuing this work through and through where it matters most.

In Update 33, the changes are focused on making almost every player ability in the game scale dynamically with your highest offensive stats when applicable. Similar to what we’ve worked on with passives and item sets, we want to ensure you feel empowered to pick an ability or weapon based on the gameplay mechanics and expression they offer you first and foremost, with fewer restrictions. This means any ability that used to scale exclusively with Spell Damage and Max Magicka will now dynamically scale with Weapon Damage and Max Stamina, and vice versa. With this, we want to retain the identity of many playstyles by reinforcing ability cost as a limiting factor in how frequently you can engage with abilities, but with less concern as to how powerful that ability is based on what stat path you’ve chosen.

We’ll also be dual sourcing buffs on abilities and item sets like Major Prophecy with Major Savagery, with the same thing applying to Brutality and Sorcery. In the long term, we plan on simply merging these bonuses so there are fewer names and effects you need to worry about, but there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that will result from that; as such, it may take quite some time before we’re able to do that.

In addition to the continuation of hybridization, we’ve also gone through many abilities and cleaned up some of their functionalities, making sure the ones that aren’t used as often received some sprucing up to make them feel more up to par with abilities of their like. This is in addition to the usual bug fixing and back-end improvements and targeting of outlier abilities or sets for balance adjustments. Some of these are larger in adjustment, such as Power Bash’s new functionality of being treated as a Bash attack, or Piercing Javelin’s new functionality of living up to its name and piercing through block. Most of the adjustments are not as flashy or different but instead gain added quality of life improvements like increased durations for easier management or scaling adjustments. For example, the morphs of Lotus Flower giving you the choice of gaining more healing overall or a significantly longer uptime for less micromanagement.

That wraps up this update’s combat adjustments! While the number of changes is by no means small, with the hybrid work we’ve been doing in the past, we hope this pass is far less turbulent than things have been recently. The goal here is to open the door to more build freedom and diversity. For some players, we know such changes will instill a sense of needing to spend time and effort changing your loadouts, but we believe the long-term benefits will be worth it. Thanks for reading and we hope to see you all in Tamriel!

CyberOnEso

Sounds great!

Would love to see heavy attacks restore your dominant (or both) resources, just for quality of life so you don't need to switch to your off bar if you need to heavy attack.

This does mean if you plan on merging the minor versions of sorcerery/ prophecy now or in the future, that you would then only require a Sorcerer or Nightblade for minor prophecy/ savagery and a Templar or Dragonknight for minor sorcerey/ brutality. Which is great for freedom but may slightly reduce class diversity. I would love to see other unique class bonuses like DKs flames/ stagger to keep all classes important.

Generally really happy with the hybridisation of combat, allows for much more build freedom which is great!

VaranisArano

"For some players, we know such changes will instill a sense of needing to spend time and effort changing your loadouts, but we believe the long-term benefits will be worth it."

I hope so, but since this is more or less the same excuse we've gotten every single update, I'm afraid it feels like yet more "horizontal progression" where we have to grind to get back to where we used to be.

VarisVaris

This is the worst thing that could have ever happened to Eso's combat system.

I can't think of anything that would create more balance issues than this change of making all skills scale with your highest resources.

This will blow survivability through the roof with everyone being able to run Vigor.
Additionally classes that were currently kept in check by certain skill limitations are now going to wreak havoc on PvP balance.

Don't do this, this will cause so many issues on so many levels that it'll take ages to fix it, while also destroying class and spec identities completely without any chance of ever returning.

Don't push this through

sonwon.1_ESO

Since weaving is allowed with light attacks shouldn't weaving also work with heavy attacks?

luen79rwb17_ESO

Yesterday was like: "only minor tweaks to combat"

Today I'm like: "wuuut?!!"

This is reading amazing, sounds simple but ground breaking.

A few things to look forward tho. Do all stats count in an additive way? So if I have 1k Stam and 1kMag it's the same power gain as if I only had 2k Stam or 2K Mag alone?

Does shield, heal have this rule too?

Can't wait to know more about this!

VaranisArano

VarisVaris wrote: »

This is the worst thing that could have ever happened to Eso's combat system.

I can't think of anything that would create more balance issues than this change of making all skills scale with your highest resources.

This will blow survivability through the roof with everyone being able to run Vigor.

Vigor is still going to cost stamina.

Speaking of when I regularly ran as a MagDK healer with my Raid, stamina management was a big limiting factor. I could use Vigor in a pinch or even sometimes as part of a rotation, but it was always balanced against the need to keep enough stamina to block, dodge, sprint, and roll out of those Negates ASAP.

I think that cost will still be a factor here, like they said: "With this, we want to retain the identity of many playstyles by reinforcing ability cost as a limiting factor in how frequently you can engage with abilities,"

It might be a problem that my occasional Vigor can heal my teammates for more now, but this change won't let me cast more Vigors without running myself out of Stamina.

dinokstrunz

These changes sound pretty dramatic. I would imagine a lot of skills would be some serious tuning, dealing damage and survivability would be going through the roof.

Carbohydrate

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

This means any ability that used to scale exclusively with Spell Damage and Max Magicka will now dynamically scale with Weapon Damage and Max Stamina, and vice versa. With this, we want to retain the identity of many playstyles by reinforcing ability cost as a limiting factor in how frequently you can engage with abilities, but with less concern as to how powerful that ability is based on what stat path you’ve chosen.

Won't all this do the opposite of retaining playstyle identity? Seems like it'll just make more obvious skill morph choices for class abilities across mag and stam players, and we'll see more of the same abilities outside of class ones on everyone's bars (caltrops, orb, rune, etc)

hodgodeb17_ESO

Why?! Maybe you just finally remove weaving bug(yes, cancelling animations is a BUG) from game and add attack speed to some sets then, so players can decide what they want more - speed of combat or more damage? It's will be more logical step to improve combats.

VarisVaris

These changes are bigger and way more unhealthy than Morrowind's sustain changes, CP 2.0 and Cast times added to ults combined.
I'm at a loss for words how anyone could think of this change and didn't see the gigantic issues tied to it.

Captain_OP

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

This means any ability that used to scale exclusively with Spell Damage and Max Magicka will now dynamically scale with Weapon Damage and Max Stamina, and vice versa.

That's what i have been waiting for!! Great!

Casul

Hmm, I am going to be watching closely on this.

HappyDan

hodgodeb17_ESO wrote: »

Why?! Maybe you just finally remove weaving bug(yes, cancelling animations is a BUG) from game and add attack speed to some sets then, so players can decide what they want more - speed of combat or more damage? It's will be more logical step to improve combats.

I agree we should make eso combat turn based like the new card game, and allow us to unlock skills from crown crates

francesinhalover

omg omg omg my dream came true, thank you zenimax you are amazing... thank you srsly...
damn i think ill cry a bit... wow

please also... make heavy attacks restore both stam and mag what ever the weapon.. please

etchedpixels

Play as you like .. .providing it's 64 stam or 64 mag.

Doesn't address the real issues in the system
- Linear scaling leading to stupid min/max build choices (other games use curves so it's harder and harder to stack any given thing the more you have and balance matters)
- No consideration for hybrids (should be based off sums of weapon/spell damage if you merge them), so you can't stack defensive health and damage but you can actually build hybrids instead of "hybridisation" meaning "all stam or all magicka"

Will be interesting to see how it pans out on the PTS, along with the new sets one of which is clearly totally over the top and needs fixing ASAP.

NerfSeige

CyberOnEso wrote: »

Sounds great!

Would love to see heavy attacks restore your dominant (or both) resources, just for quality of life so you don't need to switch to your off bar if you need to heavy attack.

Both resources maybe but not dominant, it will be punishing for melee mag toons on pvp.

EF321

YES. I like that.
Stamsorc proc'ing frags with streak and dark deal. And fury usable!

azjuwelz

I'll be watching to see how this impacts tanks.

KalevaLaine

Nope. Just Nope.

nihoumab14_ESO

Wow, well RIP pvp then

cro25519

After reading this Gilliam. I just want to say, I love you man.

I'm so hyped to test it. Thanks a lot!

ZiggyTStardust

This might make some people really tanky in pvp, since you can now use powerful heals like vigor and intensive mender (and rapid regeneration) on one character

Drdeath20

This is really good to hear, thank you!

Sarannah

Thanks for the update.

I do agree with some players above me.When you make abilities only have either a stamina or magicka morph, there will only be one obvious choice. Maybe allow players to choose which resource any ability uses(mainly for class skills), regardless of which morph we choose.

Adding both spell and weapon damage to armor sets seems kind of useless as well, as most sets are either magicka or stamina based. Both as the 1/2/3/4 set bonusses, as well as the type of armor(light/heavy/medium). This change will only work if all setbonusses became both mag/sta as well, and if we as players can choose the type of armor it is. And will these changes also mean you will be merging the weapon/spell damage mundus stones into one mundus boon?

Other than that, this sounds great. The buffs/debuffs becoming available from multiple sources, and new features added to existing abilities. Keep up the good work!

Personally I would also love it if light attack weaving and barswapping had less of a damage increasing effect, somehow. Maybe through a small damage bonus if we have not used a light attack, or have not used barswap recently. (10-15% per feature)

PS: Could we please fix the 1 second unsheathing delay when casting a skill. This delay makes the combat feel like it is lagging all the time, and negates the use of ranged skills. As we will be next to the target before our ranged ability even fires.

HeroOfNone

A few open ended questions this brings up:

With the hybridization going off the higher stat, are we going to eventually see a combination of stats to make weapon/spell damage into a simple "power" stat, to simplify things for users?

If the above is true, will we see additional stat consolidation for things like penetration and critical? Armor sets already seem to combine both, so I don't see a reason not to combine those too.

Given how stamina is used for blocking (except when equipped with an ice staff) and dodging, doesn't this put many stamina abilities at a disadvantage? Magicka abilities already have a huge bias for healers and with being a liability at melee range for major boss fights. I worry this skews the bias more unless there are more ways to swap block/dodge to use magicka and more stamina ranged abilities

With several of these changes, think we will see a revision of a lot of armor sets over the next year to be more unique? many have been marginalized even before this consolidation, and hold less value with no reason to use them.

And given all of the above, how many others think this is making way to add in new stats to better help with balance? ZOS won't discuss it till it gets there, but I won't be surprised to see a new healing, debuff duration, or DOT strength stat once this is all over. Just gotta clean up and remove some of the existing stuff we have.

Rex-Umbra

After yesterdays. This is exciting and can't wait to hopefully finally be able to play how I want and use the abilities I want to use.

ZiggyTStardust

Sarannah wrote: »

Adding both spell and weapon damage to armor sets seems kind of useless as well, as most sets are either magicka or stamina based. Both as the 1/2/3/4 set bonusses, as well as the type of armor(light/heavy/medium). This change will only work if all setbonusses became both mag/sta as well, and if we as players can choose the type of armor it is.

Well they already hybridized the (non max resoruce) bonuses on armor and it seems to have worked mostly. Running one set on jewlery + weapon mostly removes the downside of the armor type, and since armor passives are also mostly hybridized the downside to being a stam player in light armor aren'T as steep as they once were

FrancisCrawford

ZiggyTStardust wrote: »

This might make some people really tanky in pvp, since you can now use powerful heals like vigor and intensive mender (and rapid regeneration) on one character

In general I'm concerned about this forcing everybody into builds that cherry-pick the best skills.

In particular, while this is probably a global buff to sustain (because one's "off stat" will be more beneficial), please be VERY careful about making offsetting nerfs. Otherwise you'll just be harming a large fraction of the PvE builds already in place.

Ditto self-healing or anything else.

emilyhyoyeon

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

We’ll also be dual sourcing buffs on abilities and item sets like Major Prophecy with Major Savagery, with the same thing applying to Brutality and Sorcery. In the long term, we plan on simply merging these bonuses so there are fewer names and effects you need to worry about,

?

Seraphayel

Does this mean we can effectively use Staves as Stamina players and Bows as Magicka players and still be competitive and deal the same damage?