PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

aetherial_heavenn

exiledtyrant wrote: »

Light and Heavy Attacks

Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?

Not particularly. Light attack impact is always something that's been hidden behind a parse so its hard to get a general feel unless looking at hard numbers. Its certainly lower. If anything heavy attacks didn't feel as punchy but number wise that may be fine.


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 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).

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

Yes. Without weaving you lose a noticeable percentage of overall DPS. Weaving helps dictate pacing /rhythm for a rotation, maintains ultimate generation, increases status effect application, and applies useful buffs via glyphs.

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?

My experience was excellent. I feel rotations are far easier to manage and a lot of skill choices have opened up to me as result.

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.

I've only ran parses so far but the difference is noticeable. Again my live vs pts thread shows the data:

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

I can also supply the actual rotation if needed.

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

Yes. I actually changed my build up skill wise after playing with the changes. The new rotation not only improved DPS but has encouraged me to once again try different set combinations. I especially like the bleed changes that were implemented.

While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?

Outside of combat being more fluid and damage going down vs Live no.

I hope those people threatening to quit at least provide this level of feedback as to their reasons. This is not intended as an attack on their valid concerns. It is just that negative feedback is much more likely to be read and believed if it is evidence in the form requested.

Just reading and critiquing Patch notes/Skill tool-tips of individual skills with so many interconnected changes are not the best ways to assess changes. As a result, any negative reactions from players can be dismissed as fear of change if they aren't actually tested and evidence provided. This plays straight into the 'forums always over react' narrative.That said, changing the stats on the standard benchmark Trials dummy from live is not conducive to accurate comparisons.

My thoughts based on some general observations. (edit: mostly concerned with 'accessibility')

As I have said, this patch seems to be about standardising server calcs and possibly reducing the number of those calcs per second?

I expect DoTs will be buffed up in patch 3 because the dps loss of average players will cause sufficient valid backlash and the cycle is usually take a lot away, then give a bit back. edit: (Haven't tested HoTs. But both are/should be adjusted back up, together.)

Reducing high end dps maybe a secondary goal but most people in the high parse range (85k plus on a trials dummy) are back to parsing nearly as high numbers again. Plus one can medium weave! (LOL) The DoT changes seem to be easy to keep up and require less attention once our internal timers reset. This may be a good thing for me, but YMMV.

The latency changes ie adjusting times from 330 ms (the average Oceanic and Southern American ping) to 880ms on a range of calculations seems a genuine attempt at making the game internationally playable. I am glad they are realising that instant reactions to insta kill mechanics, or perfect timing skills firing when calculated at a third of a second is not always possible with 300ms or above latency. There are a number of ways these changes will cut players with slow reactions, internet, etc. some slack while trying to do rotations.


My main accessibility concern is them rendering Oakensoul useless. This was a great tool to bridge the gap for those of us stuck just under good enough dps to do vet DLC content. Plus overland soloers could actually play the more challenging content they wanted to without requiring groups. There was a genuine change to those able to access harder content from this item alone. The nerf bat hit this far too hard in my opinion.

I also PvP so I understand how this was too much of a game changer in PvP. From experience we also know that all new chapter related shinies are likely get nerfed pretty soon after the new release, but it seems unwise to stir up even more resentment about 'working' for a piece of gear and then having it rendered useless so soon when other things are also making life hard for mid level players. It''s such a pity they don't turn all PvE mythics off in PVP and create new PvP only mythics that can be achieved by doing PvP content. New shinies for PvP would be welcome.

DairyCat

francesinhalover wrote: »

Instead of hurting everyone, why not add a set that removes light attack damage by like 90% and adds 40-50% extra skill dmg?

Because they're trying to lower damage not increase it.

Hotdog_23

Console player so no feedback given about the changes since we cannot provide any “hard data” or test anything that would be of worth to you as a developer.

Just a request. When the changes go live please give console players a free 2-week spec period so we can test things out for ourselves to see what works and doesn’t work for us on our individual builds.

Thanks, and Stay safe


Edit spelling

Tannus15

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Console player so no feedback given about the changes since we cannot provide any “hard data” or test anything that would be of worth to you as a developer.

Just a request. When the changes go live please give console players a free 2-week spec period so we can test things out for ourselves to see what works and doesn’t work for us on our individual builds.

Thanks, and Stay safe


Edit spelling

load a "blank" setup into your armory

Ghaleb

So I went in the PTS yesterday and checked the Necro, as that is my main since I play regularly as I like the swiss-army-knife-thingy.

On live I parse around 100-105k DPS on the trial dummy and with the right group setting I put up to ~120k DPS during vet trial runs.

On the PTS I didn’t get over 88.5k DPS. Be it via magicka or stamina. Admittedly, adding the ricochet skull as spammable didn’t help my parse as that thing is wonky as hell and no regular rhythm was able to ramp up as timing felt like required regular changes.

What I want to address is the following:
I think I might be able to salvage my 12-17k DOS loss with changes to sets and skill setup and a bit of training with adding a decent spammable (which I still need to find though). The issue I have is, that this kills the vet runs we currently do with my main guild.

In that group we have exactly 3 DDs who put out good numbers and carry a good amount of the weight of the group.
We have 2 DDs who pull at least decent numbers for vet content. And as decent I consider 40k DPS with which I wouldn’t even need to try to apply for a random vet trial group in Craglorn on PC EU.
And then we have 3 DDs who are constantly below 40k DPS and partly even below 20k DPS. Now some might argue why we take them with us but they want to learn and progress. So of course we take them with us and understand in the same instance that they might never bring 100k parses to the dummy, which was and is ok for us.

We have been wiping with that group at Oaxiltso so so often, as we are struggling to apply sufficient DPS to not be required to play mechanics for ages, especially as a good number of the group parks itself in venom AoE of Oaxiltso as all things can sometimes be overwhelming maybe.

Lately we managed to progress more reliably which is a good thing and shows that the team slowly starts to adhere to mechanics and not die in the stampede or the venom or to frogs.

But with these changes we are back to square one as most DPS in our group will drop below 40k DPS which will increase the wipes again substantially, as the longer you need, the more can go south.

3 of us can find other groups as we pull good numbers. Yay, good for us? Issue is, I like playing with that team, I like seeing how we progress and enjoy beating formerly tricky steps in the process. And this change will now take this chance away as we either happily wipe away and enjoy that since wiping is now even more achievable as seemingly ZOS considers that to be more inclusive or we stop trying with the team.

This change for my group achieves the opposite of what ZOS aims for, according to their statement, which I anyway don’t believe as argument and action do not fit together. That was called out from minute 1 in the forum post and I and others see that on the PTS and it will make a lot of more demanding content locked out of reach for a lot of players.

So my issues remain with that change:
1. ZOS is not nerfing mechanics or sets or individual skills but wants to nerve the abilities of players who put time and effort in getting better in producing DPS by getting better at weaving.
2. ZOS promoted the last chapter which needed to be bought even though they knew of the upcoming changes and kept quiet about them to not hamper with sales as they knew they would be unpopular.
3. The changes will not make content more achievable as this is the logical conclusion of the damage nerfs ZOS is applying. If I train for a triathlon and reduce my caloric intake to 2k calories per day, I should not be surprised if I wont even be able to finish the race, as I literally strangle my ability to create energy and tap into reserves in times of need.

So I remain to not be happy with that change (I would find other words but don’t want to have the ZOS editing hammer descent upon this post…) and still consider leaving the game as adding 5-6 spammables to my initial rotation is not what I consider thrilling and dynamic game play.

fizl101

Tannus15 wrote: »

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Console player so no feedback given about the changes since we cannot provide any “hard data” or test anything that would be of worth to you as a developer.

Just a request. When the changes go live please give console players a free 2-week spec period so we can test things out for ourselves to see what works and doesn’t work for us on our individual builds.

Thanks, and Stay safe


Edit spelling

load a "blank" setup into your armory

However if you have already used your free slots you will need to pay for another slot. I don't think the suggestion is a bad one personally to get some free respec time (on all servers not just console)

virtus753

Ghaleb wrote: »

On live I parse around 100-105k DPS on the trial dummy and with the right group setting I put up to ~120k DPS during vet trial runs.

On the PTS I didn’t get over 88.5k DPS. Be it via magicka or stamina. Admittedly, adding the ricochet skull as spammable didn’t help my parse as that thing is wonky as hell and no regular rhythm was able to ramp up as timing felt like required regular changes.

What I want to address is the following:
I think I might be able to salvage my 12-17k DOS loss with changes to sets and skill setup and a bit of training with adding a decent spammable (which I still need to find though). The issue I have is, that this kills the vet runs we currently do with my main guild.

You did not lose 12-17k, I'm sorry to say. Your 88.5k parse on PTS is inflated by 9.5-16% over what it would be on live right now due to the increased buffs on the trial dummy with this update.

In the best case scenario, your parse is closer to 80k equivalent to live, a loss of 20-25k dps (and similar percent, given your live parse of 100-105k).

LukosCreyden

Now that I have had time to look at things more;
From the perspective of Magicka Necromancer:
Light attack and dot timers feel ok. Definitely a damage nerf which does hurt most players and not just the top percent.
As for Necro passive changes, the nerf to the dot passive seems unnecessary with the other dot changes and makes that passive feel very unimpactful.

Skulls as a spammable is still very mediocre and feels clunky to weave.

The main issue I have however, is the Spirit Guardian fix/nerf. Mender was in need of adjustment, but Guardian currently feels like a wasted morph, now that it is killable and has very weak healing. I feel that this could be balanced better by either buffing its healing output, or by giving it more HP so it can survive for a sensible amount of time.

Hotdog_23

Tannus15 wrote: »

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Console player so no feedback given about the changes since we cannot provide any “hard data” or test anything that would be of worth to you as a developer.

Just a request. When the changes go live please give console players a free 2-week spec period so we can test things out for ourselves to see what works and doesn’t work for us on our individual builds.

Thanks, and Stay safe


Edit spelling

load a "blank" setup into your armory

I have but sometimes you just want to change one or 2 skills and don't want to redo your whole character just to test something out.

Stay safe

Ghaleb

virtus753 wrote: »

You did not lose 12-17k, I'm sorry to say. Your 88.5k parse on PTS is inflated by 9.5-16% over what it would be on live right now due to the increased buffs on the trial dummy with this update.

In the best case scenario, your parse is closer to 80k equivalent to live, a loss of 20-25k dps (and similar percent, given your live parse of 100-105k).

Saw that mentioned more often but failed to find that statement in the patch notes (currently on mobile, I’ll offer that as excuse…). Therefore I skipped that. But you are of course correct in that case, making my point even more relevant, as our 40k DPS guys and girls would drop to around 30k DPS…

Hotdog_23

fizl101 wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Console player so no feedback given about the changes since we cannot provide any “hard data” or test anything that would be of worth to you as a developer.

Just a request. When the changes go live please give console players a free 2-week spec period so we can test things out for ourselves to see what works and doesn’t work for us on our individual builds.

Thanks, and Stay safe


Edit spelling

load a "blank" setup into your armory

However if you have already used your free slots you will need to pay for another slot. I don't think the suggestion is a bad one personally to get some free respec time (on all servers not just console)

Very true, should have said free spec for everyone because I am sure not all PC players take part in PTS. My bad.

Stay safe

Lazerus

It feels like the Devs had two ideas to tackle the "how do we close the Gap problem" and merged them together by accident.

I believe the Gap is caused by two major things:
- Learning LA Weaving
- Maintaining DoT Effects and Buffs

Now...if they nerf LA Weaving it would reduce the Gap between those who can weave and those who mastered it, but it would also hurt those who play a lot with LA and HA.

If they nerf LA but buff the Duration of DoT without touching Ticks and Damage, it would reduce the need to switch Bars and learn Rotations easier, while also take away some of the LA impact. That would flatten the learning curve, which would be good.

If they Nerf DoT and HoT, they decrease the impact from Bar switching and maintaining them, since most of the Damage would then be on the Main Bar.

But by bringing BOTH at the same time, they mess up the System, which leads to an overall reduction for everyone.

So...ONE of these changes is OK for now, but not BOTH.

Darrell9090

These are awful changes from all perspectives of the spectrum and should not be applied. As a tank main I will feel these changes the most. For it will be us rare breed of tanks who will now have to wait even longer for a dungeon tk be complete with little we can do to improve the dps besides our buffs. It is us tanks who will have to deal with higher numbers of mobs that will make it harder for the dps to focus the boss. It will be us tanks who will have even worse sustain issues than we are having as a result of higher mobs because heavy attack is still bugged from update 33. It will be us tanks who end up in a dungeon with dps now doing like 8k dps in a vet dlc like vdom and the dungeon take hours instead of a hour or 2. I tank on psn and help low dps all the time with getting through hard content. I don’t mind them hitting 30k dps or so as long as I can help them adjust and teach them some basics it all ends well. Now with these changes I can see no hope in helping these dps as they will be fixed in that lower spectrum until they do gain higher amounts of champion points. I have had 12 hour dungeon runs 8 hour dungeon runs with the dps j mention above because I have tk also teach them mechanics or their dps is not killing mobs fast enough I stop and re-strategize a plan so I can get them through that fight. If even 30k dps is going to drop down to 9.9k due to a 33 percent drop of damage these are not even going to be doable for them at all anymore. This game needs the higher numbers and higher ticks of the dots and hots. They are what keep the dps alive also what control the mobs when they are getting out of hand. I don’t come to the forums to complain often about changes these changes I will complain on. I don’t want to see these struggling players quit the game because the thing I have showed them to raise their dps gets taken from them moment they felt like they were getting somewhere. I may not be the world class expert of dps in this game I know enough on how to help people hit what I see as the fine bare minimum of 30k I don’t see it with these changes. Theee changes also make current sets in the game feel even more useless than they were already becoming. What’s the point of raising spell and weapon damage if the ticks are slow it’s not going to feel like they were raised at all. What’s the point of having tons of major force time when that is now being cut down due to slower ticking dots and lower light attacks and heavy attacks. What is the point punishing all your players in this way where the game is going to feel awfully slow.

Skjaldbjorn

Panachudo wrote: »

What baffles me is the overbearing need to push higher and higher numbers. Prior to this patch, and the previous, oh, and the one before that, everyone was on the negative bandwagon about DPS dropping. But look, we have 125k+ numbers currently on the live server. All the freaking out was for nothing.

This may come as a shock to you, but a great deal of end-game players don't care about numbers. At all. We care about function. If my DoTs now tick every 2s for disgustingly less, this makes Bahsei an absolute slog. I will now need to recast my DoTs even more often for grossly reduced effect, in a trial that already has extremely high DPS thresholds.

The LA change doesn't bother me. The DoT changes are ignorant and nonsensical. Gutting the Warden class entirely is disgusting. The LA changes hurt people like me a hell of a lot less than newer/less skilled players who use a lot of LA spam. This won't make me stop weaving, but it will grossly reduce their DPS.

See it as a challenge. See it as a step toward consistency. You all know the server side was overloaded with calculations in how it was working before. These changes look like they tie into the streamlining of the backend efficiency. This will have profound effects on playability. That will actually benefit PvP and PvE. What a huge benefit that will be for everyone.

Let's play a game.

Case A: DoTs do 1.8x damage of a spammable, ticking every 2 seconds for x
Case B: DoTs do 2.8x damage of a spammable, ticking every 2 seconds for x

Where's the difference? If this was just about "reducing calculations", they could have done that without sending the "floor" crashing into the basement. This has everything to do with dumpstering top-end DPS, which would be fine is they had...I don't know...a plan? For how groups can do things like Planesbreaker given the stringent time requirements?

But, oh. It's fine. I'm sure we'll see resolution in 3-6 months if any of those cores currently progging PB are still here. Sounds fabulous.

[snip]

[edited for baiting]

TheLastZendai

@ZOS_GinaBruno

So, I don't play on the PTS, but I've read the notes, and I can't say I'm happy, at all.

For two years, I've been playing a two-handed Nightblade build. I love it. I've finally found my most favourite build here.

Stamina at 44k to increase my light/heavy attacks, my Stamina abilities, and to give me the sustain in both health and stamina I need.

I currently do 7.5k with light attacks alone, my main mode of attack in PvE, and I use it along with ability rotations in dungeons, with abilities to support using light attacks to restore health and stamina.

Now, you are nerfing my light attacks by 66%. 7.5 k down to 2.5 k is going to be VERY noticeable.

Along with nerfing my DoTs ticks by 50%, you are completely gutting my build.

I have played here 6 years, and literally spent THOUSANDS of dollars buying Crowns. I have NEVER been dedicated to an MMO as I am to this one. Before, I couldn't spend more than a year in any other MMO. But ESO grabbed me and kept me.

But now you are planning on killing this game to please who? As it seems no one wants these combat changes, or the ones they do want, are very few, while the changes are many.

This reminds me of when World of Warcraft did the same thing for the Cataclysm expansion with major combat changes and class nerfs. They lost over 30% of their player base overnight. I predict the same thing may happen here, and I might be among them. If my favourite class suddenly becomes more than twice as hard to play than it was before, why should I stay and pay to have the game ruined for me?

I await the next patch with dread, along with most of your player base.

P.S. This is the first time I've ever been concerned about upcoming changes, and the first time I've posted in protest about it. After 6 years of playing here, I hope that tells you something about how people are feeling about the upcoming changes.

I only hope that, if you are going to nerf everything that you nerf PvE enemies by half as well. Otherwise, you are only making PvE combat twice as hard, and way more of a slog than it used to be. One of ESO's endearing qualities to most of its fans is the ease-of-play its been for 8 years. It would not be wise to change that, as you would be changing the core of your game's success.

Also, I should point out, I am a roleplayer, and casual PvE player. Your changes will affect other players like me the most. No longer will we be able to build characters however we wish and still enjoy the Normal level PvE content. We'll have to build in specific ways like the end-gamers and the PvPers in order to remain viable for even the Normal-level group PvE content.

This is very bad for us.

Ardriel

The goal of the patch - to make it easier for average players to access more difficult content - is certainly not achieved. On the contrary, the DPS loss is noticeable in every player level. It is also obvious that for an endgame progress player it is annoying to drop from 120k to 100k or even 95k. For a casual player, however, dropping from 80k to 60 or only 55k is devastating.
The Templar, for example, is the most popular beginner class. Solid damage, super self-healing and uncomplicated rotation allowed even inexperienced players to quickly gain access to vet content. With the current changes to this class, this will no longer be possible. Beginners and less experienced or skilled players will have an even harder time.
Please reconsider the changes specifically to the Templar.
I understand the need to reduce the overall damage in the game. But there must be better ways to do it. The cap for critical damage was a good approach. It is only noticeable in the high end level, average players hardly notice anything. Why not continue in this direction?
Please dear developers, remember that it is the progress and sense of achievement that keeps players in the game. If it becomes too difficult or impossible to achieve even average goals and frustration and feelings of failure prevail, people will turn away from ESO. No one wants to play a game where they constantly feel like they're not good enough. For your own sake, you shouldn't take away players' sense of accomplishment. Because then the basic motivation and enjoyment of the game is missing. Motivated players who feel they can progress and keep up with more difficult content will be happy to continue subscribing to ESO+ and buying new content.

PurpleScroll

Right, I have the time to make a longer post this time.

I'm pretty casual, but my damage is rather midrange. On live I manage about 30-35k DPS on a non-raid dummy with my main, a Khajiit stamina dragonknight. I only do overland content, but I really enjoy fighting dragons in Southern Elsweyr. My damage makes this nice and easy for me, which is what I want, because I have severe mental health problems and also chronic pain caused by arthritis, so I also play on a control pad - an 8bitdo SN30 Pro+ 2. I do light weave with the odd heavy here to keep my sustain up but I am not perfect at it, by any means. This arrangement makes ESO perfect for me as it currently stands.

However, from what I have seen on PTS, I am going to lose anywhere between 20-40% of my damage. This is not fair, because it will make the content I play more difficult to play through, and when I read ZoS' notes, I am one of the players they are trying to improve things on - in reality, this is not happening, you are actually making things much worse for me. I actually have no problem keeping my DoTs up on stamDK because they last a good 15 seconds anyway, so the change to 2s ticks is going to make them rather pointless for the low health enemies I tend to fight. This will mean just spamming my spammable attack, which is not what I enjoy.

ZoS, perhaps you should have sent a survey out to everyone asking what they enjoy and what they find difficult with combat, and then made changes based on the responses. I've played ESO for 6 years and I have never, ever, seen you actually ask us this.

Please don't make ESO more difficult for me, I quit Guild Wars 2 because I was so tired of the constant group content that was forced onto players.

LordDragonMara

There should always be a big gap between players that refuse to learn, and people that put significant amount of time to perfect their character.
If you want to be good at anything in your life, you should put the work, understand, learn, improve and get better.
No one should reward people that are just lazy and don't want to learn basic things.
This is MMORPG, not some braindead mobile game. Obviously there is going to be depth in mechanics, and if you want to be good at it, you should learn it. Otherwise it's going to be terrible.

People that refuse to learn and get better, the problem is on them, why in the blue hell you are punishing hard working and skilled players?

aetherial_heavenn

Ardriel wrote: »

The goal of the patch - to make it easier for average players to access more difficult content - is certainly not achieved. On the contrary, the DPS loss is noticeable in every player level. It is also obvious that for an endgame progress player it is annoying to drop from 120k to 100k or even 95k. For a casual player, however, dropping from 80k to 60 or only 55k is devastating.
The Templar, for example, is the most popular beginner class. Solid damage, super self-healing and uncomplicated rotation allowed even inexperienced players to quickly gain access to vet content. With the current changes to this class, this will no longer be possible. Beginners and less experienced or skilled players will have an even harder time.
Please reconsider the changes specifically to the Templar.
I understand the need to reduce the overall damage in the game. But there must be better ways to do it. The cap for critical damage was a good approach. It is only noticeable in the high end level, average players hardly notice anything. Why not continue in this direction?
Please dear developers, remember that it is the progress and sense of achievement that keeps players in the game. If it becomes too difficult or impossible to achieve even average goals and frustration and feelings of failure prevail, people will turn away from ESO. No one wants to play a game where they constantly feel like they're not good enough. For your own sake, you shouldn't take away players' sense of accomplishment. Because then the basic motivation and enjoyment of the game is missing. Motivated players who feel they can progress and keep up with more difficult content will be happy to continue subscribing to ESO+ and buying new content.

Great post. Changing DoTs and the LA changes are too much at once. Add the consequent adjustments to sets and the somewhat odd changes to class skills and it's very hard, particularly for ad hoc players and mid level players aspiring to end game, to adjust.

There's too much information overload and anxiety induced by multiple adjustments in one roll out.

This scale of change required a different test process on PTS over 3 separate cycles, in my opinion, but that's not how finance and marketing departments let game developers work.

Whiskey_JG

Tannus15 wrote: »

Stamdk 96k



this is actually higher than i'm getting on live. the change to molten whip is really good, it hits really hard and you're casting it lots.

Hey Tannus didnt know you're a DK enjoyer too

You can increase your dps with some minor adjustments in the PTS:

1) change your backbar to vMA inferno staff
2) Switch to 64 pts in Mag and mag armor glyphs
3) on the backbar slot Blockade, and switch hunter with inner light
4) go Max Mag food + tri stat potions
5) change noxious to engulfing

During Standard, try Fobx3, whip > Fobx3, whip

The above should get you above 100k dps. In my parse I was using Pillar of Nirn instead of AY, achieved a max of 107k dps.

Lalothen

Regarding Sergeant's Mail:
I think it would be beneficial if this set's 2- and 3-piece bonuses were DPS oriented rather than hp & hp recovery - perhaps 2-piece penetration or wp/sp, and 3-piece crit?

Tannus15

Whiskey_JG wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Stamdk 96k



this is actually higher than i'm getting on live. the change to molten whip is really good, it hits really hard and you're casting it lots.

Hey Tannus didnt know you're a DK enjoyer too

You can increase your dps with some minor adjustments in the PTS:

1) change your backbar to vMA inferno staff
2) Switch to 64 pts in Mag and mag armor glyphs
3) on the backbar slot Blockade, and switch hunter with inner light
4) go Max Mag food + tri stat potions
5) change noxious to engulfing

During Standard, try Fobx3, whip > Fobx3, whip

The above should get you above 100k dps. In my parse I was using Pillar of Nirn instead of AY, achieved a max of 107k dps.

thanks for the tips, i'll try it on a proper dk build.

this is my dps setup on my tank, so he's a nord which is why he's all stam enchants.

I think everyone needs to start doing 3m and 6m parses on pts instead of the 21m comparing them to live you really get a much better picture of exactly how much dps is being lost this update.

TechMaybeHic

I think the only thing I like is the longer root/snare immunity on RAT, Wings, etc. Everything else, I mostly don't like at all. Maybe the Oakensoul nerf is a good thing but a little on the heavy side of the nerf

Sandman929

If the goal is lowering damage, it seems like that's been accomplished. I'm really just not looking forward to 10-15 seconds of having nothing to do but light attack and spammable.
These DoT changes are going to make combat beyond boring.

siddique

Sandman929 wrote: »

If the goal is lowering damage, it seems like that's been accomplished. I'm really just not looking forward to 10-15 seconds of having nothing to do but light attack and spammable.
These DoT changes are going to make combat beyond boring.

Well, you wont "miss the action happening on the screen." 🤣

Imagine, someone actually gave that as the reason to make this absurd change.

Sandman929

siddique wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

If the goal is lowering damage, it seems like that's been accomplished. I'm really just not looking forward to 10-15 seconds of having nothing to do but light attack and spammable.
These DoT changes are going to make combat beyond boring.

Well, you wont "miss the action happening on the screen." 🤣

Imagine, someone actually gave that as the reason to make this absurd change.

I guess I'll throw on Nocturnals Ploy and strip off buffs during that time...I'll have nothing else to do

ajkb78

Further thoughts:

Every class will end up with essentially the same rotation (lay down as many dots as possible, in order, then fill the remaining time hammering away at a spammable (if you're lucky, throwing in a semi-spammable to relieve the mind-numbing tedium).

If I wanted to play in a playstyle that was essentially hammering away at a spammable for as long as possible, I'd play templar and just spam jabs. The option is already there for people who can't manage anything more complicated. We don't need every class to become the same.

These changes will make the game super boring to play. You already tried a DoT meta (the patch after Nerfmire if I remember right). It was terrible, and you mostly reverted it the very next patch. This will be exactly the same.

If the changes stay as at the moment I'll likely skip the patch, at least combat-wise. I might grind the tales of tribute achievements, if I can muster the enthusiasm. And then in Q4 either you'll have seen the vast error of your ways and things will be back to something more recognisable, or I guess I'll be spending more money and time on my other hobbies (and yes, it's a zero sum situation).

If you actually want to address power creep properly, you need to take more than a patch to do it. You're taking a year to address server performance, we're fine with that. Why not spend a year dealing with power creep (properly). By which I mostly don't mean addressing combat. Combat is mostly fine. We're at the stage of an occasional skill here or there needing a tweak for balance, or possibly a rework if it's just a dead morph that nobody uses. Mostly I mean ensuring that all sets adhere to the same standards, so that old base game sets can be equally viable to new ones and mythics, while nice, aren't the must-have to be competitive that they are now, and more importantly rebalancing content. You have performance standards for item sets, why not standards for content? The gulf between original content and latest content is way out of balance even allowing for a learning curve through type 1 to type 2 dungeons etc. You really need to either accept that current power levels are roughly where you want the game to be, and buff the original content (but that's really tough on new players who need to play the newer content to get the newer gear to be competitive) or nerf both the current gear and the current content (to compensate for the gear nerf and avoid it becoming simply impossible because of DPS races). Nerfing skills, but not gear (and not also nerfing content to compensate for the nerfs to output) is completely the wrong way to go about fixing the power imbalance. Take a year to do a grand rebalancing, introduce us to it outside of live updates using the dead periods of PTS where it's not really being used for testing (i.e. just after a patch has launched) and actually learn from the feedback you get, and there's a chance you could get this right. But springing a festering mess of a patch like this on the playerbase is not the way to keep us engaged or on side.

ajkb78

godspeedfxb14_ESO wrote: »

I parsed 100k on my MagDK with 2h backbar on live, and I just parsed 100k on PTS on my MagDK with staff backbar and more dots, AND I was able to use orb, and also talons almost on cooldown.

Works for me.

You know they changed the dummy buffs, right? Go and do a comparison on the buffless 6m dummy, it's currently the only real way to do a like for like comparison between live and PTS.

ajkb78

[snip]

Well you heard the man. You (and I, and all the other really committed players trying to help ZoS make the biggest mistake in all the years I've been playing the game) are tiresome and disappointing.

I mean, a lot of the feedback here cites actual testing results from PTS in terms of dummy scores, or thoughtful analysis. [snip]

Perhaps if these changes had been floated using some kind of a combat road map (you know, the kind widely used throughout the software industry and beyond) before essentially being dumped in a "6 weeks to go live, highly unlikely to change much, highly unlikely we'll take any notice of any feedback, take it or leave" manner we wouldn't have to provide our feedback in such a reactive way.

[edited to remove quote/baiting]

davelbier

im kicking myself for buying high isle after seeing this. i mostly pvp, and oakensoul was so strong that even my solid, comfortable, gold builds had no chance against it. so i bought the stupid thing and got the stupid ring to start building around.

now i see this.

my sorc is even worse, and it wasnt that competitive lately anyway. why the hate? and why all the attention on magdk? smh.

i figure -- for some reason you HAD to build oakensoul, and adjust the entire game to it. even with the nerfs, its still going to be OP. its definitely better to create a 'does it all mythic' and pre-adjust all the LA/HA sets, and post adjust EVERY CLASS AND SKILL, instead of just balance the mythic to start with.

the reasons i dont keep eso+ up, tell people about the game, and typically only buy content when its on sale is because you guys jerk the mechanics around constantly.

you could have given oakensoul half as many buffs with a cooldown period, it would still be OP, but maybe you wouldnt have to redesign the entire game for it.