Update 35 Combat Preview

ZOS_Gilliam

Greetings!

It’s almost time for the next update, and that means it’s time to share some of the reasoning behind the upcoming big shake-ups. This update brings a massive slew of balance adjustments all at once to hopefully reduce the need of large sweeping changes in subsequent updates, since some seemingly minor changes affect a huge part of the game’s combat. The main focuses in Update 35 are twofold: improving accessibility to the game’s combat by increasing the duration of outgoing ability effects (such as damage over time, buffs, and debuffs) and a continuation of the attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end. Let’s start by breaking apart some of the fundamental realities of ESO today.


Weaving

Currently, to be truly effective in ESO’s combat, you need to learn to manipulate something that is known as “weaving,” which refers to the act of squeezing multiple actions into the global cooldown window. Doing so drastically increases your agency and output, and it is a staple of the game that we’ve come to embrace, as it helps our combat feel different and exciting to participate in once you learn the ins and outs. However, the impact of weaving leads to a massive gap in performance where players who cannot interact with it as effectively are left miles behind those who can. While this is partially unavoidable and an important part of what makes the mastery of ESO or any activity utilizing a similar system particularly satisfying, we want to do what we can to shorten that delta. The closer the gap between the low and high end, the easier it is to create content that can accommodate a wider audience, while making more natural progression points for those looking to improve. To this end, we’ve started to look at the impact that one of the most common and important forms of weaving has in ESO: Light and Heavy Attack weaving.

Coming in Update 35, we’re reducing Light and Heavy Attacks’ impact in damage production by adjusting their damage to deal a flat amount, regardless of stats. We have spent a considerable amount of time investigating the baseline experience that a new player would have with these attacks, using that as our starting point for how much damage they do moving forward. The aim is to not harm the low-end experience, and target only the higher end. In doing so, we hope to reduce the difference of damage potential in a way that retains the satisfaction of learning to weave, where the impact is still felt, but to a much less degree than before.

For reference, in many of ESO’s high-end experiences and activities, the average build sees roughly 15–20% of their overall damage coming from Light Attacks alone, which is a huge contribution to the delta of power we see. While testing these adjustments internally, we’ve seen a reduction of 6–11% to overall damage, which allows for a much smaller and healthier gap while still retaining the sense of mastery and expression of that mastery with weaving.

With this adjustment, we’ll also be making a significant number of changes to item sets, passives, and buffs to ensure classes remain balanced in damage production, while also trying to do a better job allowing builds to amplify these actions (we’ve heard your cries, Heavy Attack build lovers, and we want better for you) without introducing unhealthy gameplay between PvE and PvP.


Combat Effects

The other area we have spent a considerable amount of time on for this update is the uptime of effects in ESO, as these are another huge way to improve your combat capabilities. Outside of weaving, the main limiter of your effectiveness in combat is your ability to output events, such as damage, healing, shielding, etc., which is bound by activating abilities, which in turn are bound within the global cooldown system. Activating an ability from your action bar locks out your other abilities for one second, so, a way to circumvent this system is to utilize actions that add power or extra events without your need to continuously activate them. These are often seen as buff and debuff abilities, or damage and healing over time abilities. Keeping as many of these abilities up as long possible dramatically improves your combat potential, creating another area of mastery and potential of power deltas.

Currently, many of these abilities fall within a 10-second window, meaning to maximize your efficiency, you must activate them once every 10 seconds. With 10 total active ability slots at your disposal, this often creates a situation where you want to load up almost every slot with one of these abilities, adding to your combat output for each duration-based effect you utilize. Between this and the engagement of weaving, this creates a reality where high actions per minute (APM) is required to be effective, as well as a robust rotation to keep as many of these effects up as possible. This in turn reinforces a need to glue your eyes to your action bars, taking you out of the action happening on screen. While this can create exhilarating combat experiences where you need to constantly monitor different activities on screen, it can also be overwhelming and particularly challenging for you to do so at the rate required to be effective.

As such, coming in Update 35, we are increasing the duration of many of these effects in game, primarily damage over time, buffs, and debuffs. By extending the duration, we hope to reduce the stress of many combat rotations, allowing for you to focus more on the action in front of you rather than the action of juggling buffs and debuffs on your ability bar and making the game far more accessible.

Since many of these effects currently add a tremendous amount of power per cast over their duration, simply increasing their duration would merely inject a significant amount of power into the game, where this is already in excess. To combat this, we’re adjusting many of these values to account for their increased duration; there will be overall increase of effectiveness per cast, while reducing their effectiveness per second while active. This should reduce the ceiling potential of many builds, while improving their baseline experiences where many players will have an easier time keeping these effects active. In simpler terms, we’re reducing the damage potential for these abilities per second, while increasing their total output overall.

For example, previously, a damage over time effect would deal 1.5× the damage of a “spammable” attack (such as Surprise Attack) over its duration of 10 seconds, or 0.15 relative damage per second. Now, damage over time effects will deal 2× the damage of a spammable attack over its duration of 20 seconds, increasing its damage per cast while reducing its relative damage per second to 0.1. In accordance with this, many healing over time effects will have their values adjusted to ensure they do not overperform when compared to damage over time, while still being impactful in PvE environments.

Both areas required an extensive pass of existing class ability and passive power to ensure they remain balanced with one another afterward. As such, the PTS patch notes will have a sizable amount of number tweaking. We recognize this will create a lot of changes in how you optimize your builds and how you play them, but it is our hope that by the end of the transition to these standards, the game will be more enjoyable and accessible to everyone.

After these adjustments are live, we are going to focus on any resulting balance issues for the next few updates, hopefully reducing the chaotic nature of change for a brief period after the initial turbulence. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the discussions that come out of this, as well as the initial feedback over the upcoming PTS cycle. Since the scale of these changes is large in nature, please understand it may take more time for adjustments to come since changing one standard affects many specific abilities.


We hope this helps provide some clarity of our goals with the upcoming changes you’ll see and aids in bracing yourself for the number of changes coming as well. We know this is never an easy process, and we appreciate your patience and tolerance as we try to improve the game that you (and we!) love. May your roads lead you to pleasant journeys, and we look forward to seeing you in Tamriel!

ESO_Nightingale

May we finally see arctic blast become a good damage skill i wonder?

CyberOnEso

This will obviously be very controvertial. But it is probably what is best for the game as a whole.

This is a very poor change, making DoTs last 20 seconds makes rotations extremely un engaging and decrecing heal tick frequency makes healing through some trial mechanics impossible

This change is not good for the game and hurts everyone.

HydroPotato

Of course, this will be annoying to me because weaving is a really fun aspect to the game.
However, on the plus side, I look forward to tanks' parses increasing! It would be really cool to see tank weave resulting in some real nifty damage contribution in group gameplay. A tankcro (Necromancer Tank) giving the group Empowering Grasp and then using it to parse hard... mm, chef's kiss

DjMuscleboy02

say sike right now

Hvíthákarl

They finally get to address one of the staples of the game, which was in need of tuning. Hopefully this will be followed by a lot of other necessary changes to the game systems!

TheGreatBlackBear

You know from 1T to now we've seen change after change to combat and the gap between the floor and the ceiling never really shrinks. it actually increases Like at some point some you guys are gonna have to accept that players who are doing low damage are largely doing so because they don't see any reason to improve or they're not doing content that warrants it.
Yes some people have disabilities and no odds are the LA bow spammer Argonian in heavy armour in your random vet isn't disabled You can make whatever change you want, hybridise how much ever you want, nerf/buff how much ever you want players at the low end will NEVER stop being low end unless they want to.

React

Well, this to me sounds like the nail in the coffin for ESO combat as we enjoy it currentley. It is truly a shame that zenimax had felt the need to tear down the skill ceiling time and time again - and now seems to be targeting the core mechanics that veteran players have appreciated for 8 years. Accessibility is great, but not when it completely nullifies the effort and practice of the veteran players that have supported your game for it's entire life cycle.

Gilliam, what you're proposing here seems like it is being done with little to no regard whatsoever for the PVP side of the game - like many of the changes made in recent years. These changes would create a drastically different pvp environment, where the already small skill gap becomes nearly non-existant.

You mentioned that you'd be paying attention to the PTS feedback closely, but the wording in your post seems so definite that I have no delusions that these changes will be going live regardless of what the community thinks.

Tyrion87

Why every combat change you make is always something players don't look forward to, limiting or even killing their hype and joy of the upcoming update...

miawmiaw1337

Please dont nerf the damage per second of skills where the damage stays on the ground (liquid lightning) because it's gonna be a huge nerf on most fights where the boss moves a lot.

EnerG

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

You know from 1T to now we've seen change after change to combat and the gap between the floor and the ceiling never really shrinks. it actually increases Like at some point some you guys are gonna have to accept that players who are doing low damage are largely doing so because they don't see any reason to improve or they're not doing content that warrants it.
Yes some people have disabilities and no odds are the LA bow spammer Argonian in heavy armour in your random vet isn't disabled You can make whatever change you want, hybridise how much ever you want, nerf/buff how much ever you want players at the low end will NEVER stop being low end unless they want to.

I agree with the gap not changing much, but i also dont think alot of casual players realise how low they really are on the ladder, i myself am disabled and for the longest time i thought my dps was fine, turn out i was parsing 15k (LOL) now im up to 70k thats personally perfect by me, but the average player may not even understand the numbers. And the games tutorial really just gives the basics. Let players discover it if they want too.

We also do a terrible job of fostering curiosity in new players, for the longest time i was scared to do any content cause zone was belittling everything that wasnt meta (weve gotten better this was years ago) but depending on when and where a new player starts the community can be VERY offputting.

jaws343

[snip]

But, players who perform perfectly every patch aren't getting better themselves, their gear is adding more power while they do the same thing. Power creep has gotten out of hand the last few years. A few weeks ago we six manned Asylum like it was a group dungeon, because when the content originally came out group dps was like half what it is now.

A cap on light and heavy attack damage is an interesting route to go for sure, and the adjustments to buffs is odd. But none of that will change the fact that top end players/groups will still out dps the floor by a wide margin.

On a side note, I wonder if this adjustment will apply to major/minor buffs, could be an oakensoul nerf. But also, with the duration adjustments, oakensoul may be even more meta on certain build setups.

[edited to remove quote]

wills43b14_ESO

I haven't played in the last chapter... but a couple things to consider (assuming several years of high-end experience are still relevant):

1. While this will inevitably help to lower the gap, I will predict it will not lower the gap by the predicted amount. At the end of the day, it is still going to come down to utilizing that 1 second GCD window. Good players will utilize it to the max potential and never miss it. Newer players or players on the lower end (not meant in a derogatory way) will not be using actions every 1 second or will not be able to simultaneously cast actions and respond to stimulus (i.e., mechanics).

Tl;dr: "good" players will cast a skill every second and weave, "lower end" players will not and this is far more impactful than reducing LA damage

2. While increasing timers sounds great, I do not believe this is where the difficulty in the player experience rests. There will be a reduction in downtime proportionally, because dots are longer and that's how ratios work (assuming player response time does not degrade further); however, the difficulty I see for newer players is knowing their dots have fallen off or trying to prioritize and juggle 5-6 dots simultaneously (that also tend to end around the same time). These changes *might* improve the newer player experience of not staring at their skill bars (by a few seconds), but it ultimately comes down to how they plan and manage for dots falling off.

Tl;dr: It is my observation that newer plays have difficulty managing multiple dots simultaneously, not the timers of each. They also tend to fall off at staggered times (i.e., it's a "dynamic" rotation).

3. Another problem with longer dots and spreading the damage out is handling burst phases. Good players will know when their dots are maximized and when not to recast them as they will not provide enough benefit. Lower end players tend to not think adaptively/dynamically to these types of situations. Spreading out dot timers exacerbates this issue as good players will be more successful at knowing when to NOT recast dots, but newer players will follow a set rotation. This will inevitably increase the skill gap. Ironically, shorter dots would arguably be better in this scenario (if not a pain).

Tl;dr: Longer dots may actually increase the skill gap in some cases, like bursty fights/phases.

Trandaner

Whenever I think they can't come up with an idea to make this game even more casual I just to go to the forums and read through the latest combat preview.

Baracuta90

Lowering the skill floor by proxy of nerfing the skill ceiling doesn't make *** more accessible, it just makes actually putting time into perfecting your weaving/managing your rotation LESS rewarding. It'd be like making a fighting game easier for new players to get into by removing all of the complex combos: sure, game is easier for new players. But it removes depth and the reward from high-level players getting good.

Arunei

[snip]

It's not a necessary patch. If you want to perform better at the game then you should put in the time to learn not be baby sit by developers making this game easier and easier for casuals. It's already the easiest mmo out there.[/quote]
Except this ignores the people who literally CAN'T "git gud". People with disabilities or other health restrictions, people with bad ping/latency, people who simply cannot work out how to properly weave, people who get easily overwhelmed and thus have a hard time keeping up half a dozen DoTs/HoTs/buffs/debuffs, and any other number of limitations. Why do people always get up in arms when ZOS makes efforts to make the game more accessible to all players? You should be glad they're making these changes. Things like this ensure people can be more engaged with the game rather than being frustrated by it, which means more people play for longer. More people playing for longer means the servers stay online longer.

I don't get why people resort to calling accessibility changes "babysitting" or "hand-holding". It's literally just making it so more people have better access to more content. It doesn't mean a newb is going to be clearing vet HM dungeons on their second day playing. People will still have to put in the time to learn. These changes just mean that time spent is actually, you know, worthwhile. Because just learning doesn't mean being capable.

[edited to remove quote]

Kredo

"After these adjustments are live, we are going to focus on any resulting balance issues for the next few updates, hopefully reducing the chaotic nature of change for a brief period after the initial turbulence."

A line you repeat every update yet never act on

hodgodeb17_ESO

Just remove weaving from game and then there's will be no problems with it. Just add one more stat, like attack speed. For those, who need faster attacks.
Like, base attack speed: 100%, some sets can increase it, but gives less spell/weapon power then sets which not gives attack speed.
That's all, but weaving MUST be removed from game. That's bug. Ugly bug which destroys how animations looks like.

wills43b14_ESO

jaws343 wrote: »

SilverPaws wrote: »

EnerG wrote: »

SilverPaws wrote: »

What a joke this company is lmao

They're doing something good, it's not a joke, this will be a hated patch, but a necessary one.

It's not a necessary patch. If you want to perform better at the game then you should put in the time to learn not be baby sit by developers making this game easier and easier for casuals. It's already the easiest mmo out there.

But, players who perform perfectly every patch aren't getting better themselves, their gear is adding more power while they do the same thing. Power creep has gotten out of hand the last few years. A few weeks ago we six manned Asylum like it was a group dungeon, because when the content originally came out group dps was like half what it is now.

A cap on light and heavy attack damage is an interesting route to go for sure, and the adjustments to buffs is odd. But none of that will change the fact that top end players/groups will still out dps the floor by a wide margin.

On a side note, I wonder if this adjustment will apply to major/minor buffs, could be an oakensoul nerf. But also, with the duration adjustments, oakensoul may be even more meta on certain build setups.

Players ARE getting better. Now is the increase in skill linear? Absolutely not. If anything, individual skill is an exponentially decaying or logarithmic function. Group skill is probably closer to linear (although eventually follows the same route). Each unit of time results in less skill acquired, but every little bit widens the gap more. The "high end" mentality if you will is to always find small little things to improve... and that adds to the experience and knowledge for that player to draw upon (or group).

EnerG

I wonder what the LA star will get changed too then? I cant imagine it will stay with this great change. Maybe replace with the old penetration star?

chongguang

Is this a kind way of buffing direct damage classes? Cuz changes of the dot and hot meaning more chances of making mistakes in battles which meaning more wipes of team if bring many dps of dots main

Bobby's_UserID

You guys could also start to teach weaving as a core combat mechanic in tutorial or somewhere in the game, then the gap between new players and veterans would also shrink. Might also be nice for the new guy in my vSG pug that only spams Bow LAs, if he would know that he can use LA and acid spray during the same global cooldown.

miawmiaw1337

chongguang wrote: »

Is this a kind way of buffing direct damage classes? Cuz changes of the dot and hot meaning more chances of making mistakes in battles which meaning more wipes of team if bring many dps of dots main

yeah all classes that use a lot of ground dots will be indirectly nerfed because when boss moves out of your aoe dot your dps goes to 0.

code65536

On the face of it, these sound like good changes for the long-term balance.

My main concern is content; specifically how historically, content has never been adjusted to accommodate nerfs in combat.

As you know, every new DLC, the new vet HM content for that DLC is balanced around what is possible at the top end. Consider the speedrun time for Dreadsail, for example.

And for many people for whom certain content objectives are out of reach, the gradual power creep in each patch is what allows them to tackle things a year or so down the line. So it's rather concerning that we get a power nerf right after the introduction of a new trial.

Second, the dungeons and trials team seems pretty hell-bent on increasing the strength of DoT damage on tanks in newer content, especially in Rockgrove and Dreadsail, even though we haven't had a healing power creep like we've had a DPS power creep. If you nerf the HoTs that are essential to countering those DoTs, then I should hope that there will be adjustments from the content side to match.

VixxVexx

Oh no no no

Elyz

I think this will be unpopular, but it will be a nice change for those with hand or wrist problems.

TheGreatBlackBear

Additionally, "obscene damage production at the high end" comes from the new shiny sets that you all are introducing patch after patch. Turning tide is free major vuln, Kinras is permeant major berserk and permanent minor berserk, coral riptide is a free permeant 740 weapon/spell damage. Pillar of Nirn's proc is disgusting. Rele is rele. You can't give players these tools and not expect them to crazy things with them if they actually know how to play the game.

AJTC5000

I've always been bad at weaving - I've been lucky as a Templar to get by without it for the most part, with a longer-than-usual channeled spammable and a channeled execute ability. So I may be biased when I say I can get behind a nerf to light weaving.

I'm also interested in combat effects being extended, as I agree, most of my time is spent with my eyes glued to my hotbar, refreshing DoTs as they expire and not really paying attention to the action around me, outside of imminent red AoE. So I think done right, this could also be a good change.

However, my one pressing concern for these changes is . . . is the current content also going to be adjusted to compensate for these changes? We're looking at a rough 10% reduction in damage, and healing is also being affected . . . how are the Hard Mode trials going to play out now? Bearing in mind, Unchained Animals, the top team in the world currently, got their vDSR trifecta with 1.5 minutes to spare . . . what sort of message does that send to the rest of the player-base, if it looks to be nigh-unachievable for them?

I would very much hope that the combat team is having regular conversations and updates with the encounters team, as from recent updates, it almost seems like they're working on two different games . . .

Trundik

Change Yandir's Might please, its heavy attack trigger is terrible. Almost as bad as this new "improvement" idea
Oh and add new in gredients to alchemy, that will fit hybryde builds. Thanks

ZOS_Lunar

Hi there!

We've removed some posts from this thread as they violated our rules on baiting and bashing. It’s okay to disagree and debate on the official ESO forums, but we do ask that you keep all disagreements civil, constructive, and on-topic. If a discussion gets heated and turns into a debate, remember that you should stick to debating the post and/or thread topic. It is never appropriate to resort to personal comments or jabs about those participating in the thread discussion.

Also, we don't permit the bashing of individuals (including ZeniMax employees), groups, or other companies on our forums. We believe that doing so is neither constructive nor in spirit of our game and community.

Thank you for your understanding, and please keep the Community Rules in mind when posting on the forums.

Gederic

Looks like its time to finally sweep out the last remnants of the end game community.