Update 35 Combat Preview

ShadowProc

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

silver1surfer69

Being a long time eso player (+12k h, 7+ y) unlike many/most other veterans whining and screaming uhh there is a change... i find these changes not too bad. Pls do not forget that there are many sets you/zos created that work with LA (relequen and so on), pls keep that in mind.

Funny i find this part:

"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."

where after 8+ years you/zos suddenly/finally realizes how the eso gameplay is. Im sorry, i cant help, but this is funny how most of the ppl developping this game have no clue about how the game works in reality and in this light it is so extremely beneficial that they pulled someone into the boat who has extreme knowledge about the game (Gilliam) and actually seems to play it frequently!

Sync01

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

Of course. By all means. But not everyone is choosing to express their views to ZOS. They instead attack others who see things differently, even those who just say "I like this change." Not to mention the abundance of "get gud" elitist attitudes.

You don't need to justify your dissatisfaction to me or anyone else.

To be fair I've seen a lot of people attack those who don't like the changes as well. Apparently we're all elitist for saying that skill isn't something you get for free.

Well, yeah. It is that attitude. Cause players are not generally saying that skill shouldn't matter. It's just that LA or animation canceling shouldn't matter as much as it does. I've even see a few saying that ESO needs to revert to where mechanics mean more than out-dpsing the mechanic. Skill can mean different things to different players.

ShadowProc wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

They're not just lowering damage for light attacks, they're changing dots because according to ZOS it's too difficult to keep track of your rotation without staring at the action bar.

chattygeekHD

Sounds great!

If you want to make an omelette!...

I'm all for brining balance to the less able players. I'm sure there'll will be a bit of grief coming from some of the top tier as they lose some of their advantage.

But at the end of the day, if you're good, you're good and you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Sync01

chattygeekHD wrote: »

Sounds great!

If you want to make an omelette!...

I'm all for brining balance to the less able players. I'm sure there'll will be a bit of grief coming from some of the top tier as they lose some of their advantage.

But at the end of the day, if you're good, you're good and you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

People aren't really upset about losing any advantage, or dealing less damage, but the sentiment expressed by ZOS. I'm all for lowering the threshold of trials for inexperienced players, but that doesn't happen by slashing at the end game community.

remosito

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

Of course. By all means. But not everyone is choosing to express their views to ZOS. They instead attack others who see things differently, even those who just say "I like this change." Not to mention the abundance of "get gud" elitist attitudes.

You don't need to justify your dissatisfaction to me or anyone else.

To be fair I've seen a lot of people attack those who don't like the changes as well. Apparently we're all elitist for saying that skill isn't something you get for free.

Well, yeah. It is that attitude. Cause players are not generally saying that skill shouldn't matter. It's just that LA or animation canceling shouldn't matter as much as it does. I've even see a few saying that ESO needs to revert to where mechanics mean more than out-dpsing the mechanic. Skill can mean different things to different players.

ShadowProc wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

They're not just lowering damage for light attacks, they're changing dots because according to ZOS it's too difficult to keep track of your rotation without staring at the action bar.

you'll still have to fill the freed up cooldowns with sth. still requires skill. pretty much the same one: dont waste your cooldowns and have perfect timing. but it will be more forgiving.

they didnt lower the skill required for perfection at all. just by how much non perfection gets penalized...

Sync01

remosito wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

Of course. By all means. But not everyone is choosing to express their views to ZOS. They instead attack others who see things differently, even those who just say "I like this change." Not to mention the abundance of "get gud" elitist attitudes.

You don't need to justify your dissatisfaction to me or anyone else.

To be fair I've seen a lot of people attack those who don't like the changes as well. Apparently we're all elitist for saying that skill isn't something you get for free.

Well, yeah. It is that attitude. Cause players are not generally saying that skill shouldn't matter. It's just that LA or animation canceling shouldn't matter as much as it does. I've even see a few saying that ESO needs to revert to where mechanics mean more than out-dpsing the mechanic. Skill can mean different things to different players.

ShadowProc wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

They're not just lowering damage for light attacks, they're changing dots because according to ZOS it's too difficult to keep track of your rotation without staring at the action bar.

you'll still have to fill the freed up cooldowns with sth. still requires skill. pretty much the same one: dont waste your cooldowns and have perfect timing. but it will be more forgiving.

they didnt lower the skill required for perfection at all. just by how much non perfection gets penalized...

I don't know a single high end player who considers themselves to be perfect. You've not suddenly reached some mythic place where all your rotations are perfect just because you did a few trifectas. The drive to always improve is how we get high end players.

Saying that something is more forgiving is the same thing as saying that it requires less skill. Of course there's still going to be a skill gap between players, but making things easier is not rewarding for players who already know the content.

remosito

Sync01 wrote: »

remosito wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

Of course. By all means. But not everyone is choosing to express their views to ZOS. They instead attack others who see things differently, even those who just say "I like this change." Not to mention the abundance of "get gud" elitist attitudes.

You don't need to justify your dissatisfaction to me or anyone else.

To be fair I've seen a lot of people attack those who don't like the changes as well. Apparently we're all elitist for saying that skill isn't something you get for free.

Well, yeah. It is that attitude. Cause players are not generally saying that skill shouldn't matter. It's just that LA or animation canceling shouldn't matter as much as it does. I've even see a few saying that ESO needs to revert to where mechanics mean more than out-dpsing the mechanic. Skill can mean different things to different players.

ShadowProc wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

They're not just lowering damage for light attacks, they're changing dots because according to ZOS it's too difficult to keep track of your rotation without staring at the action bar.

you'll still have to fill the freed up cooldowns with sth. still requires skill. pretty much the same one: dont waste your cooldowns and have perfect timing. but it will be more forgiving.

they didnt lower the skill required for perfection at all. just by how much non perfection gets penalized...

Saying that something is more forgiving is the same thing as saying that it requires less skill.

I disagree. You can have a downhill trail that actually requires less skill (mastery of you and your equipment) to get down. But if you do *** it up. You're badly injured to dead.

Compared to one that requires more skill. but if you muck it you'll most likely be fine...

NeeScrolls

keto3000 wrote: »

, so I applaud @ Gilliamtherogue & the combat dev team for addressing this.

uhh @keto3000 , i think you @'d the wrong person lol

Next time, you gotta add the @ZOS_ prefix for Zenimax Devs .... even though 15 pages in (so far) it doesn't seem like @ZOS_Gilliam will be answering any of our collective questions/concerns.

Perhaps on PTS forums they will though, eventually.

Tommy_The_Gun

So, the problem is a "gap" between top players and um... players that are not as good at the game or have some phisical (RL) condition that handicaps them in some way.

I have been thinking and imho it does not matter what you will do ZOS - the "gap" will be always there. You may try to reduce it a bit, but as others have already pointed out - you will never make it lower enough.

If the problem for you is that you want content to be accessible for more & more player, then maybe you are looking at the problem from totally different angle and you should imho change your approach.

I think there is a very simple way to lower the gap without re-doing the combat (which is a lot of work, and you may or may not achieve your goal). In my opinion, all you have to do ZOS is to... um....

...just add a Group Finder for all types of group content. Yes, it seems weird, but think about it for a second.

Why do people don't get better at the game ? If they play, then over time they should get better, just by doing content over & over, right ? Well, yes, but I think that part of the problem is that a lot of players are only doing the easier content. The content that they feel comfortable with, or the content that is accessible for them. At 1st it is overland, then it is base game dungeons and then it is maybe normal DLC dungeons. Because for easier content - big surprise - you can get away with low DPS and you will be able to complete the content. So there is no reason to improve, right ? I am doing X DPS, boss in normal dungeon dies fast. Easy.

Every one has to start somewhere, but Very small amount of players decides to eventually start doing Trials. And why is that, you may ask ? Well, this is the part where "accessibility" of the content comes into play. Trials, are 12 man dungeons, that are the end-game PvE content. But, the problem here is that for this type of content - one can not simply press a button and *poof* - mm will find you a game & you can be in the action in no time ! No, no, no... you either have to manually find a team (and be lucky not to be kicked in the process, because humans are humans), or - find a guild that may or may not take you to a Trial.

This is very um... discouraging for players who just want to try out what those 12-man Trials are. All of the sudden the rules are changing and they simply can not use a group finder to do group content to progress further and do harder content.

Idk about you, but if players had an option to just use a convenient tool to find a group automatically, then they will be able to do content more reliably. If they will be able to do that, then over time, players will get better at the game, just because they will be able to do more content faster. Their knowledge about the mechanics will increase. They will be able to focus more on their skill & button presses more, since they wont be dying to mechanics.

TLDR:
I will say this: Add group finder support for all types of group content. Then, check again after 1 year & compare your statistics data. I can 101% guaranteed that gap in PvE player performance will be lower. Not because top player will get worse, but because low-end players will naturally get better by playing the more demanding content, as they will be motivated to improve.

keto3000

Hey thanks buddy for the heads up!

NeeScrolls wrote: »

keto3000 wrote: »

, so I applaud @ Gilliamtherogue & the combat dev team for addressing this.

uhh @keto3000 , i think you @'d the wrong person lol

Next time, you gotta add the @ZOS_ prefix for Zenimax Devs .... even though 15 pages in (so far) it doesn't seem like @ZOS_Gilliam will be answering any of our collective questions/concerns.

Perhaps on PTS forums they will though, eventually.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

At least we know what the next mythic items will be: You cannot use any skills but your light attacks deal 15000 dmg.

Elsonso

NeeScrolls wrote: »

keto3000 wrote: »

, so I applaud @ Gilliamtherogue & the combat dev team for addressing this.

uhh @keto3000 , i think you @'d the wrong person lol

Next time, you gotta add the @ZOS_ prefix for Zenimax Devs .... even though 15 pages in (so far) it doesn't seem like @ZOS_Gilliam will be answering any of our collective questions/concerns.

Perhaps on PTS forums they will though, eventually.

@Gilliamtherogue is @ZOS_Gilliam but the old account is probably not checked...

I also don't expect any semblance of dialog on any issues. One-direction communications (akin to a press release) from the dev team will continue in the PTS Patch Notes.

maglstr

I think the issue of a DPS and general performance gap between casual and competitive players is certainly something valid to be discussed, but this solution misses the mark.

The reason these changes are so unpopular among even semi-casual players is that it feels like the time and effort people put into learning the combat is wasted when developers go out of their way to punish those players. Of course, catering solely to endgame players is not a viable way of maintaining a game with a majority casual player base. However, I think there are much better ways of fixing this issue without going after experienced players.

The root of the issue is that some players have a strong understanding of the combat and others don't. Of course, weaving contributes to the gap between new and experienced players but if an experienced player were to parse without weaving they would still have more damage than a new player by something like 300-500%, which is massive. This means that the problem runs deeper than just weaving and therefore would not be fixed through changes to weaving.

I think instead of trying to close the gap, teaching players the combat would be much better. While I enjoy ESO combat, I don't think the game does a good job of teaching it to new players. This is not only due to a lack of tutorials, but also because entry level content such as overland questing and normal dungeons are easy to the point where an experienced player could play through it with their eyes closed. The content being so easy makes transitioning to anything more difficult incredibly jarring because the gap between normal and veteran is so large. I think addressing these issues by adding something like a mini-tutorial which players have to complete before queueing for vet content and adjusting difficulty to make transitioning from normal content to vet content would be much more productive.

Another problem with shortening the gap is that traversing the gap is one of the most satisfying things about learning a game, especially one with as much depth as ESO has. Going from knowing nothing to having a strong handle on the combat and being able to apply that understanding to complete challenging content and being able to do things that were out of reach before is amazing. By taking away or making irrelevant mechanics which separate casuals and newbies from experienced players, the journey of learning the game is shorter and less satisfying.

I don't think that the negative feedback in this thread is because players disagree that the skill gap isn't an issue, but rather that these changes are a poor way of addressing it and might create more problems than they solve.

etchedpixels

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

...just add a Group Finder for all types of group content.

It's called a Guild.

The random based group finders are not going to solve the problem because for hard content there is already an established process in places like Craglorn, and for most runs the guild groups don't look for outsiders except when they suddenly find themselves short and all their mates are busy.

If you need help with lighter content like delves and overland and it's not about experience then probably your needs will be sufficiently unique that you need to find the right matching people and a guild is probably the best place for that. Certainly my experiences playing with users with significant disabilities is that you learn very specific things for that person - like avoiding content with particularly bad colour contrast (like the deadlands), or having to tell someone with some classes of vision problems to move out of the pink circles because they can't easily focus on all the screen at once (we need a ping ping noise accessibility option for standing in damage circles but that's another story), or having to call out to that person before doing anything that causes a while flash.

prof_doom

Here's someone who did a 91k parse with zero weaving

At the end of the day, someone who knows their class, and puts together a good build, will outparse the person who doesn't.

FrankonPC

ShadowProc wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

It's not lowering skill. it's reverting a change they made 4 years ago, just like increasing the duration on hots(vigor) will be a reversion of something they did 4 years ago.

Every year there's a new standardization of something. a few years ago it was proc sets which made them strong...then they buffed procs by 25% with malacath, causing malacath and most procs to be gutted in the process(back to where they were before). then they redid them, made some crit and scale off max stats...buffing them again. then they introduced a mythic that gives major force, making a set like caluurions on nb crit for 10k+ in pvp.

these are just a few examples of the last few years but the main issue(imo), is that they're treading water. over-buffing, over-nerfing, re-standardizing how combat/sets work instead of giving the community more new things or improving upon what we already have. it's busy work that is taking people away from things they could actually standardize that the community would enjoy(oakensoul in pvp, some proc sets in pvp, skills not working correctly, etc).

they still haven't balanced the hybridization changes they made two patches ago...and they JUST RECENTLY adjusted all light and heavy attack sets be buffed w wd/sd. Now they have to revert those and have this rework on top of those standardizations to monitor...meaning that more and more skills will be buggy and non-functional/ignored in the meantime.

FrankonPC

prof_doom wrote: »

Here's someone who did a 91k parse with zero weaving

At the end of the day, someone who knows their class, and puts together a good build, will outparse the person who doesn't.

yep, someone posted a 103k parse with no light or heavies earlier. it's just an excuse for most content.

spacefracking

As a magblade, that has to use quite literally all 12 of their ability slots, this will be quite a relief.

For other classes that somehow get the same performance with only 7 ability slots is somewhat mindblowing. So I'm glad to see light attacks nerfed. Needing a metronome and millisecond coordination between my click finger and my button finger is sort of crazy as it is.

That's not to mention that a lot of these "high end" players get their light attack weaves so spot on because they use macros, this will hopefully level the playing field.

I do hope that magblade gets a buff though. If we're trying to make effort correlate with performance, then magblade is SERIOUSLY lacking in that department. Or, at the very least, some pve balancing that doesn't make them overpowered in pvp. It's quite difficult to gank a dragon with 10's of millions of health... The core of magblade and stamblade will still revolve around light attacks, but it really irks me to hear people playing braindead classes talk down to magblades, and outperform what is thematically the single target themed assassin class, in single target damage. It doesn't make much sense to require the class to run all AOE abilities on their backbar.

NeeScrolls

keto3000 wrote: »

Hey thanks buddy for the heads up!

No prob , although it would seem in this particular case ....

Elsonso wrote: »

@ Gilliamtherogue is @ ZOS_Gilliam but the old account is probably not checked... .

.... i might've been partially wrong ^

Jaraal

remosito wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

Of course. By all means. But not everyone is choosing to express their views to ZOS. They instead attack others who see things differently, even those who just say "I like this change." Not to mention the abundance of "get gud" elitist attitudes.

You don't need to justify your dissatisfaction to me or anyone else.

To be fair I've seen a lot of people attack those who don't like the changes as well. Apparently we're all elitist for saying that skill isn't something you get for free.

Well, yeah. It is that attitude. Cause players are not generally saying that skill shouldn't matter. It's just that LA or animation canceling shouldn't matter as much as it does. I've even see a few saying that ESO needs to revert to where mechanics mean more than out-dpsing the mechanic. Skill can mean different things to different players.

ShadowProc wrote: »

Sync01 wrote: »

Criticising the changes and the direction ZOS has decided to go, does not equal criticising players who like the changes.

We are allowed to express our views and talk about the negative consequences we see coming. This is more than just lowering damages, this is lowering the skill required while talking about how the "low end" will benefit from targeting the "high end".

And that’s my point. How is this lowering skill? It’s NOT.

It’s lowering damage. LA weaving will still separate players.

They're not just lowering damage for light attacks, they're changing dots because according to ZOS it's too difficult to keep track of your rotation without staring at the action bar.

you'll still have to fill the freed up cooldowns with sth. still requires skill. pretty much the same one: dont waste your cooldowns and have perfect timing. but it will be more forgiving.

they didnt lower the skill required for perfection at all. just by how much non perfection gets penalized...

Except that non-perfection will be penalized even more with the new changes.

Let's say that an average low APM button masher is spamming LA while sporadically pressing skill buttons every 5 seconds. With U35, they will still be light attacking and pressing their DOT button every 5 seconds, except the DOT will now not only do less damage, but it will cost more resources, due to lasting twice as long. So now our guy, instead of unnecessarily refreshing his DOT twice during it's duration, will be unnecessarily refreshing it 4 times during it's duration, but at a higher resource cost. So they will be out of resources faster, but still be spamming a reduced damage LA.

ZOS is assuming that since a skill will now last twice as long, that the player will now press the button half as many times as before.... but that's not how it's going to work. The guy who always plays in panic mode will still be pressing the same buttons the same number of times, only with reduced effectiveness.

So, instead of teaching the player how to time their skills, ZOS is just making it harder for them to win. Disappointment will ensue, and people will lose interest due to "how much harder the game has become than when I played it last week."

MorganaBlue

spacefracking wrote: »

That's not to mention that a lot of these "high end" players get their light attack weaves so spot on because they use macros, this will hopefully level the playing field.

You can't be serious. Macros? Nobody needs macros to learn how to light attack weave, and with dedication and practice, anyone can become a high end player. People actually put in time and effort to learn the game, believe it or not. How offensive.

I've been slowly weaning myself of this game because the last few updates have made it so meh, blah.... shallow and unexciting compared to what it used to be. These proposed changes turn me off completely, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

DrSlaughtr

keto3000 wrote: »

Light Attack Weaving (LAW) should not define player skill, IMHO, so I applaud @ZOS_Gilliam & the combat dev team for addressing this.

Good players aren't 'gud" because they put hours into light attack weaving. They are good because they have put the time & effort into understanding their builds, class, and have the kind of situational awareness and fast action/reaction times that comes with experience and comitment.

Agility with a keyboard/mouse/controller shouldn't' be the measure of beginner vs advanced player.

Cheers

Why shouldn't it?

Let's flipped this around. Let's say weaving was squashed in beta. Game we've been playing is just a generic mmo set up with two bars rather than one. And believe me there are players who wish the ESO skill bar was just a carbon copy of every other PC mmo.

Then all of a sudden 8 years in, they decided that the game was just too easy to hang on to the high end players who according to a spread sheet will spend more money if they could just trick then into staying around.

So they bring back weaving. Plenty of people in this thread would be very upset about this, because the game they grew to love and have spent months, if not YEARS of in game time is fundamentally changing to cater to a small segment of the player base.

I run into new players every day. Most of them are dying to learn how to play. I teach people how to run pvp NB. 90% are willing to learn. 10% just want to spam snipe from a wall and wear crap gear because they liked the description on the tooltip. The former doesn't need LA damage nerfed. That actually will hurt them too. The later aren't going to benefit either because they still will not be successful "playing their own way."

DrSlaughtr

I want to point out this again. @ZOS_Gilliam

If you're going to increase the time of dots, then cloak needs to cleanse. If I get hit with a haunting curse right now it takes 15k mag to survive with cloak. That's 4 to 5 hits of cloak to take the damage and not get revealed and murdered.

If you extend the duration of dots like this, I will have to use every bit of my Magicka to survive. That's messed up.

This isn't a great solution, by the way. If I'm carrying plague break, I'm going to blow up for hitting cloak. That's messed up, too. So it should have a condition that it doesn't count as a cleanse in regards to PB.

Necrotech_Master

ninjagank wrote: »

I want to point out this again. @ZOS_Gilliam

If you're going to increase the time of dots, then cloak needs to cleanse. If I get hit with a haunting curse right now it takes 15k mag to survive with cloak. That's 4 to 5 hits of cloak to take the damage and not get revealed and murdered.

If you extend the duration of dots like this, I will have to use every bit of my Magicka to survive. That's messed up.

This isn't a great solution, by the way. If I'm carrying plague break, I'm going to blow up for hitting cloak. That's messed up, too. So it should have a condition that it doesn't count as a cleanse in regards to PB.

haunting curse is not a dot, and its unlikely to get a duration increase unless they added more than 2 explosions

cloak should not cleanse dots either, and if they made it to that it certainly wouldnt have an exception to plague, that is the point of plague is anti-cleanse

brylars

I am waiting for them to add to the merch a big red button with the ourobous on it so we can replace our keyboads with it.

Also I suggest to the combat team to actually look at the history of all these changes since Scalebreaker. It is clear after years this team does not have a vision or direction. They add things one update then they pull it back another. It is almost like they are throwing things against a wall and hoping something sticks. The players are seeing it and are very frustrated.

ESO has several combat environments that require a different approach. We cant harmonize all of these different environments under one combat system. It is like ESO has several games within it and that is how it should be treated.

Volsers

Personally I just find weaving tedious so I am glad that it seems to be moving from being required if you want to perform well in the game to optional if you want to increase your dps just a little bit further. The damage of a light attack right now is just way too high, if you want to deal high damage with light attacks that should be a different play style supported with gear and skills for that purpose, but it should not be required.

Also that light attacks deal more dmg than some skills but feel less impactful (visually) bother's me a bit as well. When you balance dps one might think you should take away some of the dmg from light attacks and give it to something that looks like it would do more dmg.

nookji

You guys thinking that LA are not important anymore, just read the changelog again. The don't remove the weaving mechanic they just nerf the light attacs for no (imo valid) reason, the gap stay's anyway between good players and players that just dont want to put in the small effort to train weaving. Like in every other game where players are not looking forward to get better, they will be worse than the players that do so. Nevertheless only ZOS is thinking that it will be a good move to punish the whole playerbase that is putting in much effort in getting better why the rest does anyway not care.
And dont think that this will help you if you dont like the weaving mechanic, even you will be nerfed in a dps perspective.

f047ys3v3n

On the power creep...

There has been a lot of power creep recently ultimately because of the Magica / Stamina unification. The reason for this was that pre-merger. Stam and Mag were pretty close in DPS capability. However, Stam got there with better item sets and higher damage abilities whereas mag got there with better armor passives.

Now that you can combine both light armor passives with one medium armor set of your choice and some OP stam weapon abilities, you get more overall DPS. The obvious choice for fixing this is to nerf medium sets and stam weapon abilities or light armor passives. Either way it's basically bad because you nerf either the pure stam or pure mag builds in order to get at the new bizarre mutant hybrid builds you have created. These builds are great when you have a great group supporting you but are not actually so in less than optimal situations as you are always drawing heavily from a resource pool that is not being supported by armor and set bonuses and so have major sustain issues. I should also note that most of these hybrids are being used by your top 1% of players as they require a good deal of tweaking to get working whereas I expect most low to mid tier players use pure builds.

I really don't think there is an easy solution to your power creep issue without inadvertently nerfing builds that you would rather not nerf. It's a bit of a blind alley you went down as to get to a parity between stam, mag, and hybrid builds, you really have to re-balance armor passives, set bonuses, and ability damage. Good luck with all that.

I might add that back in 1.5 I suggested if you wanted to make hybrid builds a think you needed to make stam blocking, sprinting, and bashing only while renaming magica "Power" and having all ability casting based on it. You really could have done this the easy way.

On the combat changes....

I have my doubts on the light / heavy attack thing. From what I have seen, your floor people pretty much just spam an ability until they run out of juice and then spam light attacks. I don't see how your helping those lying on the floor by nerfing half of what they do. I'm not sure you can help those that far down much anyway. If you can't figure out how to alternate an ability with a light attack, probably nothing will really help you. Well, maybe companions will. They sure help my kids a lot and are, quite frankly, better than the average random normal pug.

I also have my doubts about the ability duration changes. Might make some weaksauce buffs such as siphoning strikes more interesting I guess. Will certainly make ground cast DOT's, already often sub optimal due to enemy movement, mostly a waste. I expect it will actually require more bar watching though as longer duration buffs are actually generally harder to keep track of then short ones. The easiest are shorter durations of matching length. You can just count out your casts on those builds and never look at a timer.

For what it is worth, regarding decreasing the spread between the elites and the average it seems like you have done well recently. The periodic bans of players running cheats for instance has been huge. Prior to this none of my raid groups ever made the weekly leaderboards. Ever since the first mass ban any reasonably clean run makes the weekly. A huge change. The decrease in DOT vs. spammable multiplier was also huge in decreasing spread and also allowing players some flexibility in build. Slotting a shield no longer drops 5k from your dps.

My Suggestion for lowering the ceiling without nerfing the floor

For what it is worth, if you further want to decrease elite to average spread and also lower ceiling without hurting weaker players and groups, your target should not be ability duration or light attacks but rather group buff power. The big difference between the average trials group and an elite one, aside from player ability, is basically optimized group buffs from composition, set selection, and ability selection. If you lower how powerful the major / minor buffs, and group buff sets are you will effect better players much more than weaker ones. On the last server #1 run I did I think I had 78k dps on rakhaat (yep, I was the lowest dps). Same patch, same fight, less optimized group a different day I was 60k (and not the lowest lol). The difference between these runs way group buffs plain and simple. I ran, and did, the same stuff.

karekiz

Proceeds to say how they need more casuals getting into endgame activites:

ZOS: HEY GUYS SWR HM FIRST BOSS SEEMS FUN FOR CASUALS RIGHT?