PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Darkstorne

As a StamSorc main, I completely understand the need to nerf Crystal Weapon. I was prepared for that the moment I got to try out the buff it received last patch. But the nerfs to LA/HA builds when everything is combined is just too much.

My main concern is over the fixed damage from LA/HAs. That's just... poor game design. When I can deal exactly the same damage with a LA or HA in white gear with 1k weapon damage and 10k stamina, as I can when wearing gold gear with 6k weapon damage and 40k stamina... lads, please put the skooma aside.

Surely this will also place even more emphasis on crit chance and crit damage being the most important stats by a country mile, if they're now the only stats capable of affecting LA/HA damage..?

QueuesAsTanks

offbymyself wrote: »

QueuesAsTanks wrote: »

I don't know if accurate feedback on damage between Live / PTS will be possible now that the trial dummy's buffs don't match Live. That said, I've lost 20k MagCro DPS minimum across eight parses (and almost certainly more than that with the PTS dummy buffs taken into account).

Actually, the trial dummy technically got a buff on pts. Increased alkosh. Minor courage and major slayer have been added. So, the decrease in damage is actually bigger than you're seeing.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean - 115 on Live looks like 95 on PTS, but this 95 is artificially inflated.

Vaoh

Feedback for Update 35.
I’ll provide feedback on a handful of key points in a constructive way.

Puncturing Strikes
The animation for this ability is a staple of the game, similar to Crystal Shards. I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep. Please, apply the 3-hit sweeps and its new animation but ONLY for the Biting Jabs morph. This would be an amazingly cool morph concept.

Flurry
I think the new Flurry animation is better than the old one. However, it should not fully replace the old one. Allow only the Rapid Strikes morph to use the new animation (maybe even rename it to Wild Strikes!)

Damage Over Time ability changes
The idea of long duration DoTs are totally fine as morphs, but I think forcing it onto players has a plethora of consequences, particularly for already established content which was balanced around shorter duration burst windows (vAS, vCR, Dread Cellar last boss portal stone, etc). I would suggest uses the concept of long duration DoTs as a consistent morph concept. For example,
1. Impaling Shards and it’s morphs now all scale Damage with your highest offensive stats.
- Gripping Shards morph immobilizes enemies and has increased status effect proc chance.
- Winter’s Revenge morph casts from range and increases duration to 20 seconds.
2. Volley no change.
- Arrow Barrage increases damage and radius.
- Endless Hail morph increases duration to 20 seconds.
2. Volley no change.
- Arrow Barrage increases damage and radius.
- Endless Hail morph increases duration to 20 seconds.

Overall I’m really, extremely unhappy with the current iteration of Update 35. Please do not let this go Live.

fizl101

Vaoh wrote: »

Feedback for Update 35.
I’ll provide feedback on a handful of key points in a constructive way.

Puncturing Strikes
The animation for this ability is a staple of the game, similar to Crystal Shards. I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep. Please, apply the 3-hit sweeps and its new animation but ONLY for the Biting Jabs morph. This would be an amazingly cool morph concept.

Please dont - I don't like the animation on biting jabs. Poking at the enemy with a staff on its side sprayed with gold spray paint is not my idea of the 'holy spear' concept. I was more than happy with the original animation

DuckFayth

I would also like to see the PTS dummy changes reverted so that PTS and Live tests are more representative of each other. Adding ~13% to the number a dummy provides right now comes off questionable with the timing.

tyran404_ESO

To preface my feedback let me say this. Having been an MMORPG player for 20+ years I never thought I would see a patch in another game along the lines of Star wars galaxies infamous NGE (The new game experience). A patch so grossly unpopular and disheartening with the community that it never really recovered from it. Their devs then refused to admit they miscalculated until years later where they sang about their mistakes on an apology tour, for those younger in the MMO scene i recommend looking it up. The SWG devs were just as dismissive to fan feedback and just as hostile towards suggestions.

Which is looking exactly what is happening now by the looks of that tweet and the ZoS dev team. Now I have been playing this game since 2014, sunk a lot of money into the game i loved, i stayed through the terrible days of launch and the rebuilding of this game into one Tamriel and beyond. I've seen some real ..shaky choices made by ZoS over the years but I have never seen one quite like this.

I used to like doing a little bit of everything in this game, i was starting to look into getting into hard mode content on my necromancer and it was a slow, painful, climb i was enjoying. After testing on pts? Its not worth it any more, alot of my friends are going to leave. Necro ghost is butchered for some reason. Damage across the board is in the gutter, necromancer is a very dependent class on Dots and now i ask why bother casting them, and then my stamsorc my other pve character is in even worse shape than my necromancer. So As a mid-tier player it is now likely impossible for me to finish that climb of content. Combat is less engaging, the numbers are lower, and none of your content got adjusted for the new numbers so all the old HM's are going to be an untouchable summit for most of us. I cannot play the way i want to play now. People have posted pages of solid feedback that they should just take a step back and read over and consider some alternatives.

I can post parses and numbers but so many others are doing it that I'll save myself some time and suggest the devs look at them over and reconsider their choices.

But alas, feedback is often overlooked. The NGE folks did the same thing, we'll see if this does the same thing but looking at my rapidly shrinking friend list I'm wagering it might.

KMarble

Medicate wrote: »

LAs don't scale because LA weaving adds astonishing 15% dps?

Sorry for mutilating your post, but I have a question about this part. The question below isn't aimed at you in particular, I just took the opportunity since you brought it up.

Light and Heavy Attacks now deal a flat amount of damage rather than scaling with your highest Offensive stats.

Since attacks don't scale anymore, to increase base damage players will resort to skills and gear. All things being equal (comparing players of the same class, with the same access to class skills, CP and same player skill (weaving, positioning etc)) the thing that will make a difference on how much damage they do is the gear the character is wearing.

Am I thinking about this the right way?

Hailan

@ZOS_GinaBruno I really hope you listen to the vast majority of this feed back. We are not pleased with what you are trying to implement with these combat changes. Please for once listen to your dedicated player base who buy the dlc dungeons and chapters. Those of us who have spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing your game we’ve come to love. This is a huge mistake and will kill the community. Many people are already talking about quitting the game if these go to the live server and I would hate to see a game I enjoy so much die because of these TERRIBLE changes. Please listen to us and don’t make these combat changes.

HackTheMinotaur

Regarding Heavy Attack builds, because the patch notes mentioned Heavy Attack builds as a playstyle were going to be preserved.

I ran a quick comparison using a very popular build for less experienced players: Heavy Attack Mag Sorc.

Solo vs the Sable Knight WB in High Isle had the following results:

Update 34: Time to kill: 3m 10s
Update 35: Time to kill: 4m 24s

That's roughly 35-40% less overall damage on what is literally the EASIEST build to play in ESO. Video comparison is below.

What happened to preserving Heavy Attack builds? What happened to raising the floor? 1000's of players currently enjoying simple builds like this will be gutted when this update drops. These changes are TERRIBLE for the average ESO player.

https://youtu.be/piMyKwCi1og

offbymyself

exiledtyrant wrote: »

Parsing has definitely shown a decrease in damage, but not enough to exclude me from content I already play. I made a more detailed thread on my live vs pts performance here:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611318/stamina-sorcerer-feedback-for-update-35-pts-1#latest

All in all I lost about 9% average DPS after changing m skills up. Leaving me well with the DPS band I need for normal and vet dungeons. This is al alongside a build that was open to improvement from several factors that I have yet to address (upgrading gear, set reallocation, and another skill swap or two).

You're saying a 9% (2k dps) decrease, but an apples-to-apples comparison on live vs pts was 18% (4k dps). The video you linked for your parse doesn't work; only the one that shows your cmx and stuff works. You're double bar dual wield and you hit crystal weapon more than you hit your LAs, so you wouldn't see the damage difference that others who can LA weave flawlessly would see. You are who this patch was supposedly meant for so it makes sense that you would like it. But, as your skill increases, you would see less and less progress, meaning there's less reward for you to actually get better as a player. What's the incentive?
‐

---

On a side note for comparison, this guy parses 120k this patch and barely made 100k on pts with the trial dummy now adding increased alkosh, minor courage, and major slayer. So, really, without those trial dummy changes, he would be closer to a 90k parse. So, a 4k dps loss to a non-meta player is a 30k dps loss to the higher end of eso players. This patch has really high damage and nerfs can be expected, but not like this.
[snip]

[edited to remove video]

nerdcav

I'm your target - I'm a player who's only been playing for around one year and max out single target dps at around 25k. I can't complete vet dlc content. I can't complete vet DSA. I haven't been able to complete Vateshran Hollow. We simply don't have the DPS to survive the mechanics - and that's with a healer, tank, and two dps - one stam and one mag. We get stopped by the first trash pull in vet Black Drake Villa. So when are the content changes coming to balance the difficulty of the dungeons that are based on all the combat power you're gutting? My wife plays a stamsorc. She's horrified - it's like you went down the list of every skill she uses and broke it. It's the only class she actually felt she could contribute with - and now it's gone. I had hoped to get Vateshran Hollows done with the Oakensoul ring - I don't PvP - I only used it for solo content in PvE. Not now. I don't even want to think about how many hundreds of dollars I've spent on crowns for the fun stuff - what a waste. We've barely even gotten used to the new skills changes and sets and you're making them obsolete. Not everyone runs all the content and gets all the gear the day the content drops. What a mess.

Cominfordatoothbrush

minor point, may i kindly ask that seething fury's duration is extended to at least match FoO so that the only way to keep 3 stacks isnt to overcast it? as it it feels very counter-intuitive if not possibly a dps loss to even bother with it

francesinhalover

Vaoh wrote: »

Feedback for Update 35.
I’ll provide feedback on a handful of key points in a constructive way.

Puncturing Strikes
The animation for this ability is a staple of the game, similar to Crystal Shards. I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep. Please, apply the 3-hit sweeps and its new animation but ONLY for the Biting Jabs morph. This would be an amazingly cool morph concept.

Flurry
I think the new Flurry animation is better than the old one. However, it should not fully replace the old one. Allow only the Rapid Strikes morph to use the new animation (maybe even rename it to Wild Strikes!)

Damage Over Time ability changes
The idea of long duration DoTs are totally fine as morphs, but I think forcing it onto players has a plethora of consequences, particularly for already established content which was balanced around shorter duration burst windows (vAS, vCR, Dread Cellar last boss portal stone, etc). I would suggest uses the concept of long duration DoTs as a consistent morph concept. For example,
1. Impaling Shards and it’s morphs now all scale Damage with your highest offensive stats.
- Gripping Shards morph immobilizes enemies and has increased status effect proc chance.
- Winter’s Revenge morph casts from range and increases duration to 20 seconds.
2. Volley no change.
- Arrow Barrage increases damage and radius.
- Endless Hail morph increases duration to 20 seconds.
2. Volley no change.
- Arrow Barrage increases damage and radius.
- Endless Hail morph increases duration to 20 seconds.

Overall I’m really, extremely unhappy with the current iteration of Update 35. Please do not let this go Live.

isn't the new flurry animation, just light attacks being done faster?

Vaoh

francesinhalover wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

Feedback for Update 35.
I’ll provide feedback on a handful of key points in a constructive way.

Puncturing Strikes
The animation for this ability is a staple of the game, similar to Crystal Shards. I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep. Please, apply the 3-hit sweeps and its new animation but ONLY for the Biting Jabs morph. This would be an amazingly cool morph concept.

Flurry
I think the new Flurry animation is better than the old one. However, it should not fully replace the old one. Allow only the Rapid Strikes morph to use the new animation (maybe even rename it to Wild Strikes!)

Damage Over Time ability changes
The idea of long duration DoTs are totally fine as morphs, but I think forcing it onto players has a plethora of consequences, particularly for already established content which was balanced around shorter duration burst windows (vAS, vCR, Dread Cellar last boss portal stone, etc). I would suggest uses the concept of long duration DoTs as a consistent morph concept. For example,
1. Impaling Shards and it’s morphs now all scale Damage with your highest offensive stats.
- Gripping Shards morph immobilizes enemies and has increased status effect proc chance.
- Winter’s Revenge morph casts from range and increases duration to 20 seconds.
2. Volley no change.
- Arrow Barrage increases damage and radius.
- Endless Hail morph increases duration to 20 seconds.
2. Volley no change.
- Arrow Barrage increases damage and radius.
- Endless Hail morph increases duration to 20 seconds.

Overall I’m really, extremely unhappy with the current iteration of Update 35. Please do not let this go Live.

isn't the new flurry animation, just light attacks being done faster?

Pretty much, but the old Flurry animation is straight up awful. At least there’d be a choice of which to use/which matches your character better.

starkerealm

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

...let us know what you think of the current balance and changes.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Light and Heavy Attacks

Doesn't feel good.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?

Immediately.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?

Take as a whole, combat, immediately, felt significantly less pleasant. It wasn't instantly apparent that light attack changes were to blame, but tracking damage dealt made that apparent.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point.

Overland, and parsing. I did not preserve my parse logs because, frankly, it was too depressing. I parsed on the trial dummy for ~1m. On my Stamblade, damage was down, but I didn't bother reparsing on live to verify.

Parsing with one of my StamKnights pulled 16k on the PTS (on a 21m). Yeah, not my favorite class, nor one I'm exceptionally skilled with, but she normally parses around 30-35 on a 6m. Parsing on live put her at 32k (again on the same 21m dummy, except without the extra buffs the PTS version currently has), which is low, but, honestly, by this point I was already a bit demoralized. It was a smooth parse, but I was going through the motions.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning.

Nope. This more based on external knowledge of how little they now contribute to meaningful DPS based on their new baselines.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Damage over Time

With, the Nightblade, I didn't notice anything, but also DoTs aren't a focus there. On the DK it felt terrible.

So, to be clear, it feels fine while parsing, the longer time means it's less stressful to keep up, but this also means I'm sitting there spamming with Reverse Slice, because there's nothing to refresh. It reminds me of the worst parts of The Secret World's rotations.

In actual combat, the reduced damage means that it prolongs combat encounters without any meaningful improvements. The content isn't more interesting or engaging, it just lasts longer. And, ironically, becomes less engaging because the long DoT cycles result in less to do.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?

Yes.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.

I did not. Frankly, after testing, and after the experience with overland on the PTS, I simply could not find the will to care. This is a real risk for player disconnect.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Healing over Time

I did not experience any healing over time changes.

Long buff cycles might be a key factor in raising the floor, and this is even, potentially, an issue with DoTs. If those DoT abilities (like claws, halitosis, carve, poison injection, and acid spray) picked up new, on-apply, effects that made them worth using before their DoTs expired, it could help enormously.

However, as of right now... with these changes, I don't want to play on the PTS, it is not a pleasant experience.

Wild_child434

Light and Heavy attacks: The change to the LA nerf is not that bad overall, testing done on a parse dummy. LAs obviously are going to be what separates end game and new players and the nerf will not change that, we will still weave every single skill to squeeze out as much damage as we can and they will still spam LAs with some skills sprinkled in when they remember which is fine for most normal content.
It is hard to tell if the LA change is as noticeable since you guys also changed the dummy values so we have no good way of comparing from live to PTS which IMO is dirty and I think you did on purpose thinking we would not notice.

PTS values:


Live values:



DoTs: This change was very very much felt as no ones current rotation is valid anymore, no ones. With these changes we now have to load our bars up with all DoTs and then put in 10-20 spams Ive seen on some classes like DK.
This has also caused most that I have talked with to have to look at their skill bars even more which is the opposite of what you assumed we would have to do cause now we have to load up with DoTs and do a spam or we are missing damage that we need.
Previously mainly Necro and Wardens were big DoT builds due to how you designed them, other classes used a few DoTs but they had other strong single targets and that is what gave us Class separation and different play styles. You ruined class diversity with this one.



Healing: Sea unicorn already put it best regarding healing in this thread that I suggest devs take a look at as it is spot on what is going to happen with the half thought nerfs coming without changing all enemy values in vets/HMs.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611333/pve-healers-accessibility-and-hard-mode-trials#latest


My best from testing on Cro last night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjwScfwyFDE

Panachudo

From a main Warden perspective these changes are welcome. The perception that the majority of combat changes are nerfing builds doesn’t align with how I am digesting it. Though I haven’t tested it on the PTS yet I’m sure it’s suitably balanced.

The Arctic Blast and it’s morphs read excellently. Polar Wind now adding a HoT and Arctic Blast now scaling with offensive stats is a welcome change. This will be interesting with a frost focussed build.

Dive is an interesting change. Greater chance to apply Off Balance and then a zero skill cost return for hitting enemies that are off balance. That should sync with Stuhn’s quite nicely. Tie that in with the penetration passive instead of the 2% passive and it sets the stage for a good stamina spammable. Wondering, for the Racer morph, if it doesn’t Proc Off Balance how difficult will it be to obtain the 200 damage bonus? Perhaps changing this to a flat 150 damage bonus for 10 seconds and 5 second cooldown would make it more accessible?

The Scorch change is interesting. More time between damage. Will have to play with that for a bit to see the difference.

Swarm looks good. Damage should be the same. Like it.

Crystallized Slab. Reads great. Like where this is going.

Love that shards now lasts 20 seconds and the increase of 11% for the Gripping morph. The Impaling morph should tick roughly the same damage too. Nice change.

The Warden changes look pretty good.

Oakensoul is a bit of a disappointment. Really enjoy running one bar builds with all the major buffs. Made for some great off meta builds.

Pan

Chef42

Just logged into the PTS to see what the changes were like. I am cp1200 and my DPS is not great. On my Magplar I went from 55k to 45k on the PTS. I am not entirely sure that nerfing the damage of a player like myself helps anything? If that is supposed to make the game better, I would love an explination how.

TPishek

Chef42 wrote: »

Just logged into the PTS to see what the changes were like. I am cp1200 and my DPS is not great. On my Magplar I went from 55k to 45k on the PTS. I am not entirely sure that nerfing the damage of a player like myself helps anything? If that is supposed to make the game better, I would love an explination how.

now you can get godslayer with ease.

exiledtyrant

offbymyself wrote: »

exiledtyrant wrote: »

Parsing has definitely shown a decrease in damage, but not enough to exclude me from content I already play. I made a more detailed thread on my live vs pts performance here:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611318/stamina-sorcerer-feedback-for-update-35-pts-1#latest

All in all I lost about 9% average DPS after changing m skills up. Leaving me well with the DPS band I need for normal and vet dungeons. This is al alongside a build that was open to improvement from several factors that I have yet to address (upgrading gear, set reallocation, and another skill swap or two).

You're saying a 9% (2k dps) decrease, but an apples-to-apples comparison on live vs pts was 18% (4k dps). The video you linked for your parse doesn't work; only the one that shows your cmx and stuff works. You're double bar dual wield and you hit crystal weapon more than you hit your LAs, so you wouldn't see the damage difference that others who can LA weave flawlessly would see. You are who this patch was supposedly meant for so it makes sense that you would like it. But, as your skill increases, you would see less and less progress, meaning there's less reward for you to actually get better as a player. What's the incentive?
‐

---

On a side note for comparison, this guy parses 120k this patch and barely made 100k on pts with the trial dummy now adding increased alkosh, minor courage, and major slayer. So, really, without those trial dummy changes, he would be closer to a 90k parse. So, a 4k dps loss to a non-meta player is a 30k dps loss to the higher end of eso players. This patch has really high damage and nerfs can be expected, but not like this.
https://youtu.be/zeeHY0asFdw

The PTS vs Live test does indeed show an initial decrease of 18% but was mainly put there to show that after adapting the build against the new changes the decrease was cut by half down to 9%. The changes are large and sweeping and apples to apples is going to be hard to manage for any build I'd wager. Why the video embeds don't work i can't tell you as I posted the youtube URL just like any other vid but the links found under them do work. I cut the actual combat as me hitting the same 6 abilities on a dummy seemed pretty boring considering the important part was the actual data.

As for hitting crystal weapon more than my light attacks I'm not sure how that correlates to my weaving efficiency in any significant manner. If you look at the first parse on live (time stamped at 1:57) you'll I have 126 light attack hits - 27 overload light attacks hits - 139 crystal weapon hits. That's 153 lights to 139 crystal weapon hits. If anything I hit more lights overall than crystal weapon. This is mainly because initial build doesn't back bar crystal weapon making it hard for me to remember to prep it before I bar swap for my back weave. Lets say we cut out the overload weaves I did and focus on the just light attack vs crystal weapon procs. If light attacks / crystal weapon hits = weaving efficiency then I am at 90% efficiency. Not flawless, but no where near a gap big enough that my parse would be drastically impacted.

With regards to rewards for progress / mastery incentive, I have to say ESO being fairly horizontal in design and progression is finite. The only real incentive is simply to find content you enjoy and complete it. You Have far more potential CP available to you than you can spend on a build, sets cap out at gold and stay relevant for years to come, and light weaving mastery eventually caps out at 10% extra overall damage now.

Lastly 120k to 100k is a drastic change as 20% is well outside of the bound Zenimax said they were looking to reduce overall DPS by (it was stated to be closer to 6-11% total). I've stated as much in my own thread and if I kept generating 18% or more parses instead of falling into the 6-11% band at 9% I would take issue. Now if high performing players are still facing decreases well outside the band of 6-11% after adapting their builds to the changes, I think it should be addressed.

As for the Live vs PTS atronach test I can't say if people are really losing more damage than what they've lost on PTS. The skills are to different at this point. Its seems far more constructive to gather data sets on PTS performance and have that shape content than try and go back with what could have been on Live. A well put together argument with proper data could have trials and hard modes people are worried about, re-balanced in a way that makes them far more palatable.

DeathStalker

While not unexpected in the slightest, I find the lack of dialogue and feedback with ESO devs in this thread sad and disappointing. I'm beginning to wonder if the feedback on the combat changes they asked for will be completely ignored since it's not what they want to hear. For communication to work it must be a two-way conversation. Sad and disappointing that ESO still has no desire to talk with its players.

Firstmep

DeathStalker wrote: »

While not unexpected in the slightest, I find the lack of dialogue and feedback with ESO devs in this thread sad and disappointing. I'm beginning to wonder if the feedback on the combat changes they asked for will be completely ignored since it's not what they want to hear. For communication to work it must be a two-way conversation. Sad and disappointing that ESO still has no desire to talk with its players.

Problem is let's say they come to this thread and start answering questions, that's the only thing they'll do for the next 2 months.
They will probably make some small adjustments based on feedback but will keep the direction of the patch the same.

siddique

DeathStalker wrote: »

While not unexpected in the slightest, I find the lack of dialogue and feedback with ESO devs in this thread sad and disappointing. I'm beginning to wonder if the feedback on the combat changes they asked for will be completely ignored since it's not what they want to hear. For communication to work it must be a two-way conversation. Sad and disappointing that ESO still has no desire to talk with its players.

Not going to happen. They do what they feel like doing.

Mr_Stach

They finally listened to Wardens on Arctic Blast to increase Duration to 10s to match everything else, then increased everything else to 20s.

Even when they listen. They don't.

Eigh1_Puppies

To all coming from my socials I want to re-emphasize, please promote respectful and constructive dialogue. Avoid saying dumb things like "Devs don't play the game," or "Devs don't know what they're doing." These devs care deeply about the game and this community, and even if you don't believe that, they are a business. A business has to listen to its consumer base in order to maintain a profit. Keep these things in mind, present rational arguments, and good solutions.

Hi There. Long time ESO Player and Heavy Endgame Raider here. I play on both PC NA and Xbox NA. I have been raiding for the better part of the past 3 years, and I've completed almost every trifecta on both of these platforms. Most of my time however has been spent building teams for the sake of teaching, starting with Crag HMS and working all the way through the most difficult Trifectas, done 100s teaching runs over the course of my time raiding, and have spent the last year avidly content creating in an effort to teach Console players specifically, in an effort to close the massive Knowledge Gap that exists between both servers.

I say all of this to note that I am a very experienced endgame player who's focus is growing the endgame community. The changes suggested, after just some initial testing, very avidly prove that they act counterintuitively towards the goal of lessening the skill gap between players.

I'll start by saying that I think the light attack changes do accomplish the goal. 90% of the player base underestimates how important weaving is to overall damage output, not just to hit light attacks in between skills, but to weave as quickly as possible. Nerfing light attacks by roughly 5% (as shown by testing) is not a significant change, keeping weaving very relevant to learn and practice, while still making it slightly less important. Light attack weaving is free damage output, and the amount of damage light attacks were doing, I think is fair to say, was a little over the top. The skill gap was properly addressed with this change.

The change that I advocated as much more important to address, even before patch notes dropped, was the changes to Dots and AOE abilities. There are so many issues with these changes, and I hate to say it, they should all be scrapped in their entirety.

The biggest issue with these changes for me, is the constant push towards a lack of diversity that the Meta has come to offer. Over the course of the year, we've seen gear standardized, completely rendering half the sets in the game that Mag Toons had previoulsy sought for as useless. The Meta shifted to just about all of the most powerful Stam gear options, and that was it. Then we had the changes to skills, where everything was made the same. There was choice, no pros or cons, to choosing mag or stam based skills. This effectively killed half the class options that we had to choose from. The Meta shifts to simply "Run the strongest sets and the strongest skills, spec your resources for whichever you need to sustain." There is no longer a Mag DK or Stam DK it is just the DK. We went from 12 classes to 6. Not only that, but these changes affected the complexity endgame players have grown to love in making decisions based on raid composition. Room for testing and creativity in terms of maximizing damage was higher than I've ever seen it in my time playing this game before the first update of the year. It was fun while it lasted...

With the changes presented in update 35, we have yet again cut the class pool in half. By increasing dots to a standardized timer, to change all of them to 20 seconds flat, you have universalized rotations. Recalling the nature of a Global Cooldown, it's easy to build static rotations for every class without even testing, because, assuming perfect weaving, you'll be able to fit 19 total skills in before needing to recast a 20 second dot. And even if your weaving isn't clean, it is now better for skills to completely expire rather than recast them, as, if you recast a dot 1 second before it expires, you'll lose a full tick of damage. Not only does this add another layer of complexity for players unfamiliar in rotational practice to have to be aware of to maximize their damage, it now makes rotations and combat for experienced players dull and boring. DKs and Plars will drop 8 or 9 Dots/AOEs in a row, then do 11-12 spammables, replacing a spammable when they need to drop an ult. Cros and Dens are slightly more complicated in needing to weave blastbones or shalks between every couple of skill casts, so they'll drop 8 or 9 dots and do only 6-7 spammables. Blades and Sorcs would theoretically have a near identical rotation, both utilizing an execute and merciless resolve/bound armaments if not for the change to the new favorite Sorc skill, but now that we aren't even using Bound Armaments due to the nerf, the sorc falls closer in line to the DK/Plar Rotation.

If this massive lack of diversity had amounted in solutions that actually addressed the skill gap, the changes would be more bearable. But these Dot changes have quite literally done the opposite. First of all, making a rotation easier does not address the skill gap. It's an idea that looks good on paper, but does not hold in reality. Damage does not improve in content unless you have the reps to be comfortable enough to handle mechanics while focusing on your rotation. Regardless of how easy a rotation is, Time on Target is the most important element of doing damage in content. When players that are new to trials are presented with mechancis that they've never seen before, damage quite literally stops in most cases. Players stop, look at the mechanic, handle the mechanic, then attempt to pick their rotation back up, even completely restarting it half the time. No amount of dulling down rotations will change this simple fact of progression. Even as an experienced player who has maxed dummy parses and hit top logs, I myself have seen my damage increase in the new trial as I get more comfortable, reps and reps and reps later. When this team progressing the new Trifecta started on PTS, we barely had the damage to skip two bridges on the final boss. Now that we are more repped, we skip all bridges on non hard mode with plenty of time to spare. It's the nature of progression.

And even at that, there are classes that currently exist with very simple static rotations that do almost as much damage as dynamic alternatives. The DK is the best example. This class is very very strong in content, and I posted a video showcasing a 115K Dynamic rotation and a 114.2K Static rotation. A purely static rotation that will always require a little bit of practice.

And that's a good transition into the next point, it doesn't matter how simple a rotation is, you MUST practice if you want to get into heavy endgame content. Period. You can't walk into a vet hard mode and just expect to clear. You have to pull a little weight. This requires an understanding and practice of a rotation, as well as understanding basic concepts in doing good damage, such as weaving and time on target. Making a rotation easier does not incentivize players to practice. Most players new to end game that parse on a dummy for the first time will hit 30K, see a youtube video of someone hitting 115K, and then give up. They'll decide it's not worth it, and go back to what they were already doing in ESO. And there is NOTHING wrong with that at all. Other player's who make it to endgame though practice to improve. There's no way around that.

So not only do the dot changes completely fail to adequately address the skill gap, the current damage loss that we have currently seen from the PTS is quite possibly the absolute worst thing you can do for newer players. Keep in mind, as a long time endgamer, I've advocated for damage nerfs for a while. Content feels too easy, and the only incentive endgamers have to complete content as it stands, is a pat on the back for working for a trifecta for 3 months. Completing challenging content is what we've accepted as a reward, and a damage nerf like this makes content challenging again. But if your goal is to lower the skill gap, these changes have done the exact opposite. Nerfing damage by 5K? Sure not a huge deal. But 30-35K is as counterproductive as it gets.

I've tested both the DK and Cro on the PTS server thus far. On live, I hit about 115K on the DK and 125K on the Cro. The best parse that I've managed so far on the DK is around 105K and on the cro, about 106K. Starting with the DK, I obviously had to adjust some skills to account for some changes, we got to add Talons which would've added about 5K DPS to the live test if we were able to sustain talons on live. The biggest thing to keep in mind though, are the new buffs added to the dummy this cycle. First off we have about 2K more pen, which I'll disregard for the sake of argument, because we were about at pen cap anyway on live. But we got a 10% damage done boost from Major Slayer and 215 Spell/Weapon Damage from Minor Courage. 10% of 120K (Accounting for talons) is 12K dps, add maybe another 5K for Minor Courage, and all of a sudden the comparison jumps to 137K on live to 105K on PTS. I think the DK could jump to around 110K with more tweaking on PTS, better crits, more practice, so I'll give a low end estimate of 25K DPS lost and a high end estimate of 35K DPS lost. The cro is much worse off with the nerfs the class took, much like the sorc, seeing close to a 40K DPS loss...

This is all in the name of closing the skill gap. Not only does the logic behind the change to standardizing dot and aoe timers not hold due to the elements of raiding and progression that we've discussed earlier, but this type of a damage nerf kills so many early stage progression teams. You have to execute rotations and weaving to near perfection in all content to have a shot at clearing with this type of damage nerf. The endgamer in me is excited by this type of nerf admittedly, but the part of me who wants to see endgame grow can clearly see how this is a massive negative. The amount of practice, and reps required to even clear some regular vet content is now much greater.


So the question becomes, how do we address this skill gap?

The changes to dots and aoes in their entirety need to be scrapped and reworked. A much more reasonable solution that would at least somewhat address this issue if you really wanted to move forward with reworking dot and aoe timers, would be to simply add 10 seconds to the currently existing timers of all dots and aoes, without changing the damage per second output of the abilities. Though I would argue that even a change like this would kill diversity in endgame. Even the notion of these changes have already caused quite a few teams to disband, and have put the large portion of the endgame community into the mindset of quitting.

And players leaving endgame is a trend that we've seen happen over and over again throughout the last year. If these changes were really affecting players in terms of the skill gap, we would see old players leaving due to a distaste for the new game that we've come to find ourselves playing in 2022, replaced by new players constantly getting into these trials for the first time. Instead, we're seeing old players leave and nobody new joining. This could be anecdotal admittedly, but I'd love to see you post statistics related to this claim, in terms of players either clearing content for the first time, or just the server stress in general in trials over the last year or two.

And furthermore, you have a perfect testing ground for accessibility. It is no secret that simple vet and vet hard mode clears are far more common on PC than console. This quite literally represents the accessibility issue that you claim to want to fix. The biggest difference between the two platforms is as simple as it seems. Certain add ons provide information and tools to practice elements of damage efficiently on PC that Console players don't have access to. CMX and Logs is the BIGGEST tool that you could integrate into base game to help accessibility. Adding a combat metronome, making better ability bar timers, integrating srrendar, even being able to see your damage compared to your team mates live through Hodor makes players more likely to do better damage. Tutorials explaining GCDs and weaving, and Time on Target, and Rotations, would all be immensely helpful too. It's a complicated game, and PC players have 70% of the tools that they need to be able to learn and play the game thanks to add ons, while Console players have to rely on one Console Content creator for reliable information as to the facts and fictions regarding damage and raid comps, having 5% of the information needed to do good damage available as apart of base game. Start here, add these things into base game, see console clears and console endgame begin to rise, and then come back to these changes if you feel it's still necessary.

And please in the mean time, work to give us class diversity back. Thank you for your time, I hope this opens a constructive dialogue.

FantasticFreddie

This is the official feedback thread for the combat changes in Update 35. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance and changes. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Light and Heavy Attacks
  • Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
    • Yes
    • If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
    • so much worse
    • What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point.
  • Parsing, ran around overland a bit
  • Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning.
• They felt notably weak. I did not enjoy
• Damage over Time
  • Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
    • Yes
    • If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
    • worse
    • What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point.
    Was just parsing and running around overland
  • After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.
  • I played around with some spammables.
  • While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?
• My rotation felt slow. It did not make it easier to manage, just felt like my timers lined up wrong.
  
• How do you feel about (PvP/Dungeons/Solo/Trials)? Has your sentiment changed based on these PTS adjustments?
• For a mid tier player, these changes suck.
  
  

naga.

Dear ZOS,

Thank you for yet another eye-opening experience.

Long ago, I used to think that the two-pet Sorc was the class that facilitated intellectual reflexivity within gaming as a primarily entertainment-driven practice. Then you gave us what once felt like the pinnacle of high-octane gaming - Elf Bane DKs. One spammable at a time, I felt the progressive decay of my body and mental faculties on the long journey to a wooden box/incinerator. The passage of time became clear and, for the longest time, I believed I came close to understanding what Edmund Husserl referred to as the essences of what we experience. Once again, I was wrong. It is only now, with even more time afforded for introspection between dots, that I realise that my transcendentalist intellectual pursuits have only just begun.

I salute you,

Your most avid fan.

voreo

If you're going forward with changes like this, make sure enemies are rebalanced to compensate.

HauteclereM

Overall from some testing, I see these changes as negative and more importantly contradictory to the idea of accessibility. I see them as actively making the game unappealing to both newcomers and end game players alike. Here is my reasoning.

1. LA/HA nerf disproportionately affects the lower percentile of performing players.
• Players with no or limited knowledge of a skill rotation also use more LA and HA to cover gaps in their CPM. Have you seen bow LA spammers in random dungeons?
• This also affects a subset of players who use HA oriented builds, which were an excellent option for: 1) beginners just getting the hang of weaving, 2) players not interested in weaving while still wanting to produce a decent dps output, 3) players with accessibility issues.
• Solo / unoptimized groups have worse sustain, which means more HA... Which is nerfed.

2. Overall damage nerf also disproportionately affects lower percentile.
• Solo or casual players running with unoptimized teams results in lower buff uptimes and lower sustain. The 21m trial dummy reflects an environment where all those buffs are up a 100% of the time. That is an incredibly difficult environment to reproduce.
Top end sees a nerf of 30%+. Now slash the dummy buffs in half, or put into a raid environment where bosses have actual mechanics and aren't sitting still to get all 20s of your dot duration. Now we're talking 50% to 90%. Is this a ridiculous estimate? No, considering vAS+2 where an average open run group or beginner group has parsers in the 35k ~ 50k range, which is less than 50% of what you get on a dummy and where every window of doing dps is limited to way less than 20s aka the new full duration of a dot.

3. Game content is not updated to accommodate the lower damage both overall and in burst nor in reduced tic rate.
• DPS checks that are hard get even harder. Oax HM and Xalvakka HM, which are hard to recover with deaths (which will be plenty in anything but PB pushing groups). Swashbuckler Supreme which was currently achieved with about a minute before the time limit with an extremely optimized and top perormant group. New content that was designed with damage creep in mind.
• HPS checks. Consider last floor Falgravn, Bahsei HM tank dots, everything in Dreadsail toward the tanks, Halls of Fabrication first boss. All heals are limited to 6 targets at a time with a few exceptions of even less. Incoming damage has no tic rate limitation. Some dots are incoming every 300ms some are every 1000ms. Basically I don't like the role RNG plays in this thats compounded by an overall healing nerf. Will future game design take this into consideration?
• Lower performing players will, as with the previous point, be disproportionately affected by this. Those struggling in Xalvakka HM as is will have no chance of clearing with the new update. If Vet HMs of new trials are meant by the developers to become more exclusive in that sense, fine, but it is contrary to the posted statements regarding this update, so that's why I voice this concern.
• All my comments are about group pve in raid, where buffs are present. Solo play will have compounded issues, especially with lack of armor penetration.

4. The biggest producer of skill gap and performance in this game is game knowledge.
• As a newbie, I was actively turned away first by how awful the combat system felt. Sluggish animations, weak LA/HA which I thought was what you were supposed to use all the time instead of skills, skills that cost too much resources and did not enough do damage to be worth it.
As an intermediate player, I hated weaving because I didn't understand it. It took me a long time and several YouTube tutorials to understand that it was LA into a skill. To this day the vast majority of people I see complain about weaving have no idea what it actually is, and the explanations they give of it leave me going... 'Of course you hate weaving, if you think its that.'
• There is currently no in-game explanation for any of the following: major/minor buff system, buffs in general since the tracker is turned off by default, LA weaving (1 line from a level 40+ tooltip DOES NOT cover this. It needs to be part of the first fight you ever have.), importance of food and mundus stone, hybridization scaling (damage and crit scale separately to the highest value), crit damage cap, hot swapping builds with the armory system or using shrines to reset, guild stores, crafted sets, what a core combat skill is or what's counted as a direct attack or single target or dot for CP, (...).
• My solution: make a newbie 'guild hall' solo instance that's like an actual guild hall. Have some basic mundus stones (ones that increase your resources? Or recovery since newbies struggle with that?), crafting tables for a basic set, and more importantly a dummy with an advanced combat tutorial that teaches things like weaving, buffs/debuff, off balance + heavy attacks, etc. I am modeling this off numerous other MMOs like FF14.
• As an example of this gap, it is very common to have people gain an incredible amount of dps after they join a guild that teaches then the basics of the combat system. Even with a beginners level of gear, weaving, and cpm, players start to comfortably parse 70k+ on the 21m after a night or a few of tutoring.

5. ESO combat is unique and there actually is a market for it.
• Other MMOs can get away with longer dots because they have more buttons in general, or their combat encounters and ux are designed very differently.
• Maximizing burst damage, having combos & rotations for specific situations (like vAS or pvp) is part of what makes it fun.
• Many long term players who quit have done it due to server or game performance issues, (especially crashes), longstanding bugs, or burnt out from the constant combat changes

... I emphasize that it is incredibly burn out inducing having a combat overhaul every single major patch. This not only affects individual willingness to interact with the game but compounds into a community 'starving out' with roster progs, cancelled cores, and a lack of willing players / new blood. I also do not see how these changes can attract a new audience, on account of new rotations being kind of straight up boring and effectless and not addressing the root problem of poorly explained game knowledge, so this update as is will produce a net loss in the community.

phileunderx2

I tested my magplar.
I hit in the low 60's on live. Pts im down 10k.
Wtf did you do to jabs?? It is awful. Slow and clunky. Hate it.
So have to say I'm not a fan of the combat changes.