PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

SEINTDARKNES

Well here is my 2 cents to the warden pts changes:

Advanced Species:
Warden don't have any special modifiers to really increase the skill damage like minor sorcery or minor brutality infact we have minor berserk with falcon's swiftness but at that point we better slot camuflaje hunter, maybe change the passive to gain weapon/spell damage %? That way pver and pvper gets something useful in both ends, i don't think this will hurt anyone because we don't slot the 5 skills in pvp nor pve.

Dive:
The cutting dive bleed was making problems and the solution is drop the extra damage dot and now gives you sustain? Why? No body is having problem sustaining a spameable skill so please give us a real buff, the real problem with this skill is that the skill is very weak(worse than dizzyng swing and everyone knows dizzyng sucks xD) slow and very clunky because the special effect only can be triggered when the enemy is off balance.

The skill don't hit that hard either, It's one of the worst spameables and meanwhile Nb gets his spameable buffed? And it's one of the best spameables if not the best and still gets a really nice buff, come on you can make better for wardens.

The change to screaming cliff racer is good but in pvp you can't even proc the new effect unless you use another skill to proc the effect an wardens don't have to much space bar to spare but once again drop the off balance condition and buff the damage the skill does.

Scorch:
The scorch damage nerf (8% less damage) don't make any sense because it doesn't hit that hard* we need to wait 3 seconds to make some damage, waiting 4 seconds to deal damage it's boring and not even mention that is the most predictable burst skill in the game.

In reality the scorch skill is weak (and feels weaker with the changes in pts) compared to another burst damage and not even metion that in pvp you need the burst damage to try to bring down your enemies if that's not hard already with all the cross healings.

In the past i always really hate to wait 3 seconds to deal a bunch of damage, rn i dont have that much problem but waiting for 1 second more that just sucks and don't even mention we cant do really nothing because we don't have a good spameable skill, no mentioning the fact they are some wardens like me that we play since morrowind and we are really use to use the skill every 3 seconds.

Feral guardian:
The bear changes are just meh, in pve doesn't change nothing we will pick the bear that makes more damage so nothing new there and the bear is not even viable in pvp.

Nature's Grasp:
Nice joke, like if the skill wasn't bad enough xD

Artic wind:
The polar wind change it's really nice i really like the change and feels really good.

The artic blast was a semi good buff because now scale with weapon/spell damage but with 6k weapon/spell damage the heal is really bad only scale to 5k approx in pvp will be cut by 55% because of battle spirit also don't forget it cost a lot and with the nerf to reduce the cost of the skill will be worst.

The problem with the low healing numbers is because warden doesn't have access to minor brutality or sorcery so trying to get high spell or weapon damage it's really difficult so making the heal strong is really hard, finally i think we
deserve to get a stun on demand like every class in the game should have one.

Impaling Shards:
I think zos need to reevaluate the damage numbers of this skill, it went from been an amazing skill to been a sucky one.

Finally i want to express my concern about warden dps:
The change to light/heavy nerf will reduce a big amount of damage in pve but if that's not enough we got nerfed because of scorch, cutting dive, impaling shards and advanced Species(we don't need more penetration)

The change to light and heavy atk will impact pvp too at least for warden because it will make the burst deal less damage and with other nerfs like scorch will be harder to bring ppl down.

It seems will be a very hard time to play warden if this goes live.

JustAGoodPlayer

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

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

I do not like current wings so even more time on it is not some thing i like )))

jmgrant44ub17_ESO

This is a bunch of smoke and mirrors that have nothing to do with making the game easier for new players. This as always, is about making ZOS's life easier for themselves. At the core of everything they do lately is to reduce calculations. Hybridization was not about more flexibility it was about less calculations. Extending buffs reduces calculations, not having to calculate buffs to light attacks frees up a lot of CPU and memory resources. This is all about making room for their next chapter. I believe they said “no big changes this year. So what happen?

ZOS if you want to know what make new players happy is consistency. We all where new players at one point. It feels like there is no plan and no vision. New player talk to players in the game, go on line for information on builds, watch streamer and learn what they do, and study ways to improve their build and game play. I can't count the time that I finally figure something out or get all the mats to put together a build and long come ZOS with the wrecking ball to the whole thing. When that happens your name is cursed.

azjuwelz

It’s pretty serious when trials guilds are asking their members to come here and post to save the game and the endgame community. I think that speaks volumes about how bad these changes really are. It’s not just a few complainers who complain every patch.

I am a “beginner” endgame player—I did all the vet Craglorn HM, and I’ve completed 4 DLC vet trials both on my dps and tank. With the stupid hybridization changes this year, I stopped doing vet trials because using dual wielding and 2H on my mag toons feels ridiculous.

I’ve played this game for over 6 years, but now I’m playing less and less with each new awful change, and it’s not just me— I run a guild in a 3 guild family and all of us are struggling to keep active players and failing.

It really does feel like Zos wants to kill the game. My friends and I have all spent hundreds, even thousands on crowns. Guess what we’re all doing now? Playing other games. And these combat changes only further drive us away from ESO.

Not to mention how crazy the nerf to LA/HA really is, with so many sets dependent on weaving.

And I main a nightblade. Are you buffing the rest of my skills for the loss of this class’s main source of damage?

I really am about done with the never ending nerfs.

Cyber10

This entire patch is an absolute train-wreck. Why completely change combat and nerf certain skills and classes so badly? I had friends start playing around 6 months ago who never played and had zero problems as new players.

The big question is why is ZOS worried about new players for an 8 year old game? It seems like a crap excuse to worry about new players now. This will make the game lose players more than gain players. Several guild members of mine have already said that they are done if this patch ruins the game.

Players will need to completely rebuild, which is silly to make players do at this point.

Very bad move ZOS...

ZOS_Lunar

Hi there!

We've removed some posts from this thread as they violated our rules on baiting and bashing. We understand that everyone has their own opinions they want to express, but we also want the forums to be a constructive platform for ESO and its community.

One thing we would like to point out is comments including bashing. It’s okay to disagree and debate on the official ESO forums, but we do ask that you keep all disagreements civil, constructive, and on-topic. If a discussion gets heated and turns into a debate, remember that you should stick to debating the post and/or thread topic. It is never appropriate to resort to personal comments or jabs about those participating in the thread discussion, including ZeniMax employees, groups, or other companies on our forums.

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

Sandman929

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

... or jabs about those participating in the thread discussion, including ZeniMax employees, groups...

No one would use jabs at this point.

Skjaldbjorn

I want to take folks back in time. All the way back to Summerset. I'm sure there's folks in this thread who didn't play then. You see, I started in Morrowind, and we had a Heavy Attack meta. Every class used them. Everyone. It was the standard. During the Summerset patch, Zos decided they wanted to change that. They created a firm light attack meta, with heavy attacking not really being an option anymore because the damage would be dramatically lower and take longer to be inferior.

Now, in truth, I thought the change was good long-term. It was going to give us cleaner, snappier combat for weaving and resource return and generally just speed the game up a bit. Players were tired of the sluggish, clunky heavy attack animation and cancels, and most people were excited about the change overall. However, Zos forgot something really, really, REALLY important.

The game at the time was designed, top to bottom, around heavy attack rotations. Nobody could really sustain a light attack rotation, even with all the changes implemented at the time. Well, one class could - Nightblade. They could easily sustain the max DPS rotation. And so we endured a year-long Nightblade meta before Zos woke up from their drug-fueled coma or wtfever happened and finally helped other classes be able to sustain the new dynamic.

That's what's going to happen here. Raid teams will dissolve. Literally on patch day. People are going to quit. Things like Planesbreaker need intensive refinement if these changes are going to go through. The time constraints and DPS requirements are already very high, and with a massive reduction in DPS across the board, I'd love to see someone calculate if Planesbreaker is even mathematically possible purely on the numbers with these proposed changes.

But what will actually happen is, 3-6 months from now, maybe longer, Zos will implement what I would just call "the rest of the patch". This is a common, exhausting, worrying theme of half-finished products and half-baked ideas that don't see resolution or completion until it's far too late down the road.

Patches like this, with sweeping, game-defining alteration need to come as one lump, or not at all. It was true in Summerset, it's true now, and the fact that we're watching this repeat itself is utterly mind-boggling.

karekiz

Dead game AF. I know the reason this didn't release with a chapter. You can't get that cash money if people don't buy it.

MindOfTheSwarm

Panachudo wrote: »

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

Lol. Go play a Frost Focused Warden. No cheating either... That means no running Shalks. You will soon notice that DoT's are the staple of your build. Crystallized Slab? PVP only mate and the other morphs is still better for high uptime on Ults.

Gripping Shards has not been increased by 11%. It's ticks have been increased by 11%, but it ticks every 2 seconds instead of every second. So actually it has been nerfed by 39%, while Winter's Revenge has been nerfed by a colossal 83%.

Arctic Blast was an 'ok' choice. It's effective DPS has still fallen however. On live my Arctic Blast has a tooltip of 1800 per second. But on PTS from what I have seen, it will tick for about 750 every 2 seconds on a DPS spec.

People are also misreading Arctic Blast, it's healing has been converted to damage... but its healing is based on your max health. I think people missed that point. Read carefully.

Swarm should be the same? It literally states it got nerfed.

I main Warden and I can tell you right now. I feel alienated.

Mr_Stach

@Panachudo Patch notes make Cutting Dive sound weird, tool tip clears it up a lot, you don't have a better chance to proc Off-Balance. You have a better chance to apply Hemorrhage against Off-Balanced Targets.

code65536

I want to start off by saying that I have no qualms with the "mission statement" of these PTS changes. Specifically:

The closer the gap between the low and high end, the easier it is to create content that can accommodate a wider audience.

[...]

we hope to reduce the stress of many combat rotations, allowing for you to focus more on the action in front of you rather than the action of juggling buffs and debuffs on your ability bar and making the game far more accessible.

I agree that there is a very large power gap, that this power gap is one that has grown over the years, and that such a large power gap isn’t particularly healthy. But I don’t think that the changes in Update 35 is correct way to address these problems.

My post will be in three parts, where I talk about the light attacks and weaving, about effect durations, and about the power gap problem in general.

---

PART 1: Light Attacks, Heavy Attacks, and Weaving

This is probably the least controversial change. Reducing light attack damage would reduce the power gap between those who can and can’t weave. But there are three issues with this change:

1. It also impacts some of the people who are ostensibly part of the “target audience” for this change. The proverbial floor--people who just spam light attacks--will be even less effective after this change.
2. The nerf to heavy attacks seems completely counterproductive, especially since heavy attack builds have been a popular accessibility option for years.
3. This change reduces everyone’s damage. Yes, it will reduce the damage of someone to weaves perfectly a bit more than someone who misses light attacks, but it’s still a nerf for the latter. And, as mentioned, those people who just use light and heavy attacks.

For the people who are your “target audience”, how do you justify to them that their combat effectiveness is going down? It’s one thing to say to someone parsing 130K on live that a reduction to their damage was for the health of the game, but it’s quite another to say to someone who’s using an accessible heavy attack build that their playstyle is getting hit for their own good. (Example)

This was one of the key issues that I raised two years ago during that special PTS testing LA/HA changes. Back then, I suggested that a better solution was to discriminate between consecutive (and thus non-weaved) light attack and non-consecutive (and thus weaved) ones. I know that you already have the means to do this, as there are sets that require consecutive light attacks.

So, halve the damage of non-consecutive light attacks, preserve the damage of consecutive light attacks, and there’s no need to touch heavy attacks at all. That kind of change would be a far more focused change than what you have here on this PTS, in that it would more precisely target weaving without as much collateral damage to bystanders.

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PART 2: Durations

I remember the days when Wall of Elements lasted for just 6 seconds; in 2019, this was increased to 10 seconds. I—and most people—believe that the duration increase in 2019 was the right move. It made the skill easier to manage and on the whole things felt better as a result of this duration change.

So, here we are, three years later, looking at another duration increase. This time, I’m not on board with these changes. Why not?

For short durations, the main problem is that they require a lot of micromanagement. You need to pay attention to that Wall and recast it every 6s, and people will often forget and lose potential damage.

For long durations, the problem is that you are more severely penalized for an early recast. Recasting a 20s Wall at or before the 10s mark is a loss: you would’ve been better to use a spammable instead. You don’t get the full benefit of Wall being 2x the power of a spammable unless you let that single cast of Wall go for the full 20s.

Which brings us to a key problem: I feel like that this duration change makes no sense outside of the sterile environment of target dummy testing.

• Dungeons and trials: @ZOS_Finn said in an interview that they are actively looking at making sure that fights incorporate movement. The first boss of Graven Deep, for example, is constantly dashing around the room. And there are fights where there are specific burst windows in which to hit the boss: Olms and Archcustodian, for example. For dungeons and trials, around 12 seconds was a sweet spot; you could usually get most of a 12s ground DoT in a mobile fight, and 12s lines up well with burst-window fights like Olms and Archcustodian. 20-second DoTs that do less than a spammable until after the 10s mark are just not worth using in many fights.
• Overland: Do overland fights last long enough for 20s DoTs to make sense? The existing 10s DoTs are already too long for the vast majority of open world encounters, with World Bosses being the most notable among the few exceptions.
• PvP: Ground DoTs are already mostly useless in PvP because people will just sidestep them. The lower damage per second will make ground DoTs even less effective at applying pressure and make them even less effective at denying areas. And when fighting classes with accessible class purges (Templars and Wardens), 20s “sticky” DoTs make absolutely zero sense to use, since it’s very likely that they will be removed before they could do more damage than just a spammable skill.

So, in short, buffing durations from 6s to 10s did help with the goal of making effects easier to manage. But there is a limit to how much further increases can help, and in a large number of “real world” scenarios, 20s durations just make no sense. This change is simply incompatible with what combat is like in reality, outside of an artificial target dummy testing environment.

(Aside: I think for self-buffs--e.g., Crit Surge--long durations are fine, but most of those self-buffs already have long durations.)

So, what can we do instead? If the goal is to make timer-watching easier, then consistent timers are more important than long timers. For example, on Live, Stampede leaves behind a 15s AoE while Twisting Path leaves behind a 10s AoE. Disparate timers means that I need to watch both timers separately, whereas if they both had the same timer, I could say to myself, “every time I refresh my Path, I should refresh my Stampede too”.

A timer consistency pass to synchronize durations would’ve helped tremendously with the timer-watching problem, without the myriad of problems with the current long-duration approach.

But instead of timer consistency, we just got long timers. As Nefas demonstrated in his PTS DK parse video, the rotation is still complicated, because the timers are all over the place. Some abilities are shorter than 20s, some are longer, and so he still needs to watch a bank of timers. This isn’t really much easier, and in real combat situations, you need to also constantly ask yourself, “should I be refreshing my Eruption now, or will the boss be moving away soon?”.

Furthermore, not everything was buffed. I mostly play as a tank, and Clench applies a 15s taunt, a 5s Major Maim, and a 4s Minor Brittle. That’s three different timers for one ability, and neither the 5s maim or the 4s brittle were buffed at all by the long duration changes. An even more forgettable 30s blockade means nothing to me when I still need to refresh Clench every few seconds to keep Maim and Brittle up.

Next, a lot of buffs come from sets. One good example is Powerful Assault, which lasts for 10s. The skill most often used by a tank or healer to proc Powerful Assault is Echoing Vigor, which also happens to last for 10s. On Live, all I need to do is to keep Echoing Vigor up, and I know that I’m also refreshing Powerful Assault when it’s needed. But on PTS, with the longer duration, now the timers don’t match, and I’d often forget to refresh the Powerful Assault buff. So, instead of making things easier, this change actually made things harder and worse. Frankly, it looks like very little thought was put into all of this.

Finally, there has been much said already by others about the tick-every-2s change. From worries about how heals will line up with incoming damage in difficult content that often tick for more than once per second (Example of how many damage ticks a tank could take in 1.4s) to concerns about how this will affect set and enchantment procs.

---

PART 3: Power Creep and Content Creep in PvE

The two problems that I see right now in ESO's PvE endgame are:

• There is a large power gap.
• New vet HM content is balanced around what is possible at the top end.

First, I want to give people some idea of what I mean when I say “large power gap”. For example, my weekend group got another Dawnbringer (Kyne’s Aegis trifecta) a few months ago. Our group has Godslayer, and this was our second Dawnbringer, so you can probably say that we’re part of that “elitist 0.1%”. Anyway, for that Dawnbringer run, we killed the second boss in 1m 59s. Recently, a group on EU set a new world record for Kyne’s Aegis. And their second boss kill time was 58s: it was over twice as fast. So there is a pretty wide power delta even between the 0.1% like us and the competitive 0.01% like them, and this is not even considering the power gap between us and groups that are just able to clear vKA HM, the power gap between those kinds of groups and people who don’t even participate in vet HM content, and finally the power gap between those those who just do vet non-HM and people who don’t even participate in vet content.

And this power gap is growing. I’ve been participating in vet trials since 2016, I’ve never seen the power gap as high as it is today.

So, there’s a large (and growing) power gap. But by itself, a large power gap isn’t a huge problem, except that in ESO, the trials team seems to be targeting those 0.01% people at the very top when they balance the new hard modes. Looking at Rockgrove’s HM, for example, the group DPS required to clear Oax HM cleanly and the DPS required to beat the DPS check on Xalvakka HM is higher than the DPS required for Godslayer.

The end result of this large (and growing) power gap is that the two most recent trial hard modes are less accessible than the four most recent trial hard modes that preceded them; I actually don't have a Rockgrove HM clear because my group got frustrated with how it was so overtuned and voted to leave the trial. This is why there are so many players who will cry bloody murder at even the faintest whispers of a power nerf for them. For the vast majority of players, the stuff at the top end is already out of reach, and you are now telling them that, for their own good, they’ll lose power. It should be no surprise to anyone that this will elicit hostility from many players.

Also, power creep isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it means that people who can’t tackle the latest hard modes might have a chance to do so in the future. This is especially true since new content balance takes this power creep into account. People have come to expect power creep each patch to help bring inaccessible content closer within reach, and telling everyone that you intend to roll back power creep is, um, controversial, to put it lightly.

Conversely, balancing for the top end is okay, when there isn’t a huge power gap. If the difference between what we can do and what a world record group could do is only 10-20%, then it’s fine for trials to be balanced around “if there's a group that could pull it off, then it’s fine”. But when that gap is as large as it is today, that just means that far too many players are excluded.

It’s the combination of a large power gap and balancing for the top that is causing problems.

And as someone else has pointed out in their PTS feedback, not everyone sees this power creep. Seemingly every patch, new things are added that are not universally accessible. New buffs to keep up (e.g., Minor Brittle), new sets to juggle around and maintain uptimes for, new "kiss-curse" mechanisms offering power to players skilled enough to deal with the "curse", etc. All of these things provide opportunities for players and groups with the wherewithal to efficiently take advantage of new sources of power, while most players will not see their benefits. This is why when I recently joined a number of vet trials PUGed out of Craglorn, I still saw 8-minute Yolnahkriin non-HM kills that don't seem any faster than what I saw in PUG runs a couple of years ago, while at the top end, Yolnahkriin kill times have gone down with each new world record that gets set.

The power creep that we see is predominately power creep at the top, because it's power that requires skill and group coordination to extract, and this is why we have an ever-increasing power gap.

But NONE of the changes being proposed in Update 35 targets any of this. Hard-to-maintain effects are unchanged (e.g., Minor Brittle is still 4s, buffs and effects from sets like Powerful Assault are unchanged, etc.), so that gap between groups that are able to efficiently maintain that effect and most other groups is untouched. It doesn't change that there is an ever growing number of supportive item sets that well-coordinated groups are able to work into their composition, while more casual groups will not have them.

Take, for example, the Bahsei's Mania item set. It grants the player power if their magicka is low. Skilled players will start a fight by dumping their magicka, and will have calibrated their sustain so that their magicka level remains low without running out. They're able to extract a lot more power out of this item set than the average player, thus contributing to the growing power gap. And then the power gap that was expanded upon by this--and many other new sets or new combat mechanics such as Brittle--are compensated with by disruptive changes in long-standing combat mechanics, resulting in nerfs for players who had never taken advantage of this new power in the first place. This is why these changes are frustrating for so many players.

But at the end of the day, I’m perfectly okay with there being a large power gap and power creep, as long as content isn’t balanced for what the top end is capable of doing. Let them have their portal-skip Cloudrest; that trial is still hard for the vast majority of groups even today, but that’s fine, because Cloudrest and the achievements in Cloudrest were never tuned for those kinds of “tippity-top” groups (to borrow phrasing from Rich). It’s when you have things like DPS checks in Rockgrove HM and insane speedrun time requirements in Dreadsail HM that are clearly aimed at those “tippity-top” groups that the power gap becomes a major problem in PvE. Let score competition be the (open-ended) outlet for those groups at the apex of the game, and buff up leaderboard rewards for them, but stop balancing achievements and even just hard mode clears around that level of play, and you'll have a much healthier raiding scene where more things are accessible to a greater range of player power. And perhaps then, people will not be as likely to react with such strident hostility to the prospect any power being ripped away from them.

Skjaldbjorn

code65536 wrote: »

At the end of the day, I’m perfectly okay with there being a large power gap and power creep, as long as content isn’t balanced for what the top end is capable of doing. Let them have their portal-skip Cloudrest; that trial is still hard for the vast majority of groups even today, but that’s fine, because Cloudrest and the achievements in Cloudrest were never tuned for those kinds of “tippity-top” groups (to borrow phrasing from Rich). It’s when you have things like DPS checks in Rockgrove HM and insane speedrun time requirements in Dreadsail HM that are clearly aimed at those “tippity-top” groups that the power gap becomes a major problem in PvE. Let score competition be the (open-ended) outlet for those groups at the apex of the game, and buff up leaderboard rewards for them, but stop balancing achievements and even just hard mode clears around that level of play, and you'll have a much healthier raiding scene where more things are accessible to a greater range of player power. And perhaps then, people will not be as likely to react with such strident hostility to the prospect any power being ripped away from them.

@code65536 Bruh. I am clapping so hard right now. Tears in my eyes. This is it. 100%. A few years back, WoW did some polling and checked data, and found that around 7% of their playerbase had a single, as in, one mythic boss kill. Seven. Percent. Know what their reaction to that was? They stopped tuning non-Mythic content around those folks, and just let them play in Mythic land. It worked fine. Maybe we need a new top tier of difficulty, or maybe we need a new bottom-tier, like a "Story Mode" for players to be able to experience the trial, perhaps alongside 1-3 friends and chapter NPCs, so they don't feel completely ostracized, but without harming the rest of the community.

I dunno, man. I think there's a lot of viable solutions, but this ain't it.

starkerealm

code65536 wrote: »

At the end of the day, I’m perfectly okay with there being a large power gap and power creep, as long as content isn’t balanced for what the top end is capable of doing. Let them have their portal-skip Cloudrest; that trial is still hard for the vast majority of groups even today, but that’s fine, because Cloudrest and the achievements in Cloudrest were never tuned for those kinds of “tippity-top” groups (to borrow phrasing from Rich). It’s when you have things like DPS checks in Rockgrove HM and insane speedrun time requirements in Dreadsail HM that are clearly aimed at those “tippity-top” groups that the power gap becomes a major problem in PvE. Let score competition be the (open-ended) outlet for those groups at the apex of the game, and buff up leaderboard rewards for them, but stop balancing achievements and even just hard mode clears around that level of play, and you'll have a much healthier raiding scene where more things are accessible to a greater range of player power. And perhaps then, people will not be as likely to react with such strident hostility to the prospect any power being ripped away from them.

I know we don't always get along, but what I'm seeing here, and on Reddit (in a lot of posts) are people complaining about content being straight up taken out of their hands, which is even worse. Like, it's not about the power, it's players who put in the time to get to where they could do vet content or were getting into trials, and are now being told to kick rocks.

And, yes, I am in a group that will basically dissolve if this goes live because we'll be down to... I think 2 DPS who will still have enough damage to do vet trials.

starkerealm

Ghaleb wrote: »

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…

It's in the 13th post of the patch notes. It's there, but kinda burried, mixed in with the combat and ability changes. (Because, changes to a furnishing should be placed between changes to heals over time, and the empowered buff. That makes sense.)

There's actually a mix of changes to the dummies, Alkosh is now at at 6k instead of the original value, Torugs is no longer factored into the crusher enchant on it, Engulfing Flames has been updated to 6%, while on live they're at 10%.

The end result is that the 21m dummies are not going to provide a coherent comparison to live parses, as a lot of things have been moved up or down.

That they didn't make this a much more visible change, given the circumstances is... "questionable."

nookji

Dear ZOS

Honestly, I dont really care about the LA nerf, if you think you have to do this, go for it.
Im not talking from an elite endgame player perspective, these guys know the whole game and mechanices etc good enough to just adopt and still get the best out of it. Though, they get nerfed aswell but I think they will not struggle too much.

But I would say, from a perspective of a player that is more experienced than average that is loving the challange of the HMs but did not clear all HMs yet. That these kind of groups/players are the guys that you punish the most. They will really suffer on all content where DPS / HPS race is part of the mechanic. Nevertheless here are my thoughts:

Really frustrating for me are the following points.

Since this whole "accessability" story came up we have lost so much diversity in this game. The whole hybridisation thing made the game maybe more divers on paper, but sadly only on paper. Now we can use nearly every set and skill/morph, no matter what class we chose and if mag or stam. To get the most DPS out, logically you go for the best sets/META. Since the implementation of hybridisation, everything scales from the highest stat, the only thing that you have achieved is, that now every DD is wearing the same sets and most likely, if sustainable even the same skills. This is the logical conclusion.
The HM content especially from the newer trails is quite hard for progress groups (and thats good as it is) and they are forced to use the META to achieve the maximum DPS on target. Now this "diversification" came to a point where nearly every player, no matter if MAG/STAM is running around with daggers and 2hander using Bahsei/Coral/Relequen/Kinra and thats it.

But at least we had still 6 classes that we where able to chose, with different skills and play types. It was so satisfying to learn the play style of the different classes and getting into it. Learn new rotations, new playstyles and see the progression in DPS while doing so. Thats all what's left in the game now regarding "diversity"

With the new combat changes and im pointing towards the DOTS/AOE/HOTS etc with the new "standardized" 20s you completely destroy the last bit of diversity. With the argument that it helps newer players. Where is the challenge when a newer players likes the game and will decide to play it long term... He decides to create a new character with a different class and realizes after a while that it is the completely same play style? I really dont get the point why this should be changed in such a drastic way and go completely against the wishes of the community... I mean the game is not in beta status anymore and your loyal and faithful long term community is playing for years and also willing to pay for this game.

The best thing that you can do IMO is to make proper tutorials where you explain how the combat mechanics works. Where weaving is explained and also the importance of keeping up the DOTS where have different durations of action. That shows the new players that a rotation is crucial to master the game.

I mean thats the main part of what is making this game so interesting and so fun to play. To have a challange, to invest time and getting used to it, seeing progression and master it for yourself as a player of this community.

For me, I would really look forward to get back to the roots, where we have effective mag classes and stam classes, with diverse skills. I know that this is unrealistic as you already changed so much, I can live with it even if IMO this was a big mistake and did absolutely not help in diversification.

But please don't implement the whole DOT/AOE/HOTS etc section into the game, that would hurt this game so much and would result in a huge loss of diversity regarding playstyles of the different classes. And IMO also in damage especially for the "not elite" end game groups... And also remember, most of the content does not have stationary encounters, so what should we do with 20s uptimes with a huge DPS loss, damage per cast putted by side

So long, I wish you all a great day

SirLeeMinion

Testing Scenarios:
I ran some 3M parses, some half-hearted 21M parses, and part of vet Vateshran
build was a simple DK heavy attack build as I'd run it soloing a vet dungeon
my experience: I'm not a strong parser - 75K or so on live, I do solo a fair bit of group normal and vet content

Light and Heavy attacks
Yes, the changes were obvious. Building specifically for heavy attacks (noble silks + undaunted infiltrator), Light and heavy attacks were still the highest on the parse, but only 12K or so on a 30K, 3M dummy parse.

Damage over time:
Unlike many, I do like the longer duration. The longer buffs, especially, were nice. In addition, while doing the vMA shuffle to stay out of red and not die, combat felt much more manageable. That said, DoTs were too weak. Mobs move out of them, so they are largely irrelevant. Even on the dummy, they felt weak. When running vet Vateshran, I wound up removing them from my bar unless there was some buff or debuff attached. E.g. I kept razor caltrops Because mobs move and bosses have built in invulnerability periods, I feel like longer duration without nerfing the damage per second would actually help lower end players without ballooning high end DPS in actual content. Fighting the Minotaur in vateshran is a good example of this.

Heals over time
This felt worse. I died when I shouldn't have. My health ping ponged all over, so I spammed burst heals to stay alive when ordinarily I wouldn't have. I would not have thought the changes made would be as impactful as they were, but as a solo player, this was a kick in the stomach.

Overall impression
This is one more patch that moves me, personally, a step away from end-game content and a step towards playing like an open-world single-player game. I like the longer duration buffs, but otherwise it's another punishing patch. Like many, I've become jaded with the massive buff / nerf swings; I no longer buy anything at full price, and continue to have no interest in buying DLC dungeons that will now be even more painful to run in a PUG. This patch may narrow the DPS gap, but once again, I feel the floor dropping as well. So sad.

Vaoh

code65536 wrote: »

I want to start off by saying that I have no qualms with the "mission statement" of these PTS changes. Specifically:

The closer the gap between the low and high end, the easier it is to create content that can accommodate a wider audience.

[...]

we hope to reduce the stress of many combat rotations, allowing for you to focus more on the action in front of you rather than the action of juggling buffs and debuffs on your ability bar and making the game far more accessible.

I agree that there is a very large power gap, that this power gap is one that has grown over the years, and that such a large power gap isn’t particularly healthy. But I don’t think that the changes in Update 35 is correct way to address these problems.

My post will be in three parts, where I talk about the light attacks and weaving, about effect durations, and about the power gap problem in general.

---

PART 1: Light Attacks, Heavy Attacks, and Weaving

This is probably the least controversial change. Reducing light attack damage would reduce the power gap between those who can and can’t weave. But there are three issues with this change:

1. It also impacts some of the people who are ostensibly part of the “target audience” for this change. The proverbial floor--people who just spam light attacks--will be even less effective after this change.
2. The nerf to heavy attacks seems completely counterproductive, especially since heavy attack builds have been a popular accessibility option for years.
3. This change reduces everyone’s damage. Yes, it will reduce the damage of someone to weaves perfectly a bit more than someone who misses light attacks, but it’s still a nerf for the latter. And, as mentioned, those people who just use light and heavy attacks.

For the people who are your “target audience”, how do you justify to them that their combat effectiveness is going down? It’s one thing to say to someone parsing 130K on live that a reduction to their damage was for the health of the game, but it’s quite another to say to someone who’s using an accessible heavy attack build that their playstyle is getting hit for their own good. (Example)

This was one of the key issues that I raised two years ago during that special PTS testing LA/HA changes. Back then, I suggested that a better solution was to discriminate between consecutive (and thus non-weaved) light attack and non-consecutive (and thus weaved) ones. I know that you already have the means to do this, as there are sets that require consecutive light attacks.

So, halve the damage of non-consecutive light attacks, preserve the damage of consecutive light attacks, and there’s no need to touch heavy attacks at all. That kind of change would be a far more focused change than what you have here on this PTS, in that it would more precisely target weaving without as much collateral damage to bystanders.

---

PART 2: Durations

I remember the days when Wall of Elements lasted for just 6 seconds; in 2019, this was increased to 10 seconds. I—and most people—believe that the duration increase in 2019 was the right move. It made the skill easier to manage and on the whole things felt better as a result of this duration change.

So, here we are, three years later, looking at another duration increase. This time, I’m not on board with these changes. Why not?

For short durations, the main problem is that they require a lot of micromanagement. You need to pay attention to that Wall and recast it every 6s, and people will often forget and lose damage potential damage.

For long durations, the problem is that you are more severely penalized for an early recast. Recasting a 20s Wall at or before the 10s mark is a loss: you would’ve been better to use a spammable instead. You don’t get the full benefit of Wall being 2x the power of a spammable unless you let that single cast of Wall go for the full 20s.

Which brings us to the next problem: I feel like that this duration change makes no sense outside of the sterile environment of target dummy testing.

• Dungeons and trials: @ZOS_Finn said in an interview that they are actively looking at making sure that fights incorporate movement. The first boss of Graven Deep, for example, is constantly dashing around the room. And there are fights where there are specific burst windows in which to hit the boss: Olms and Archcustodian, for example. For dungeons and trials, around 12 seconds was a sweet spot; you could usually get most of a 12s ground DoT in a mobile fight, and 12s lines up well with burst-window fights like Olms and Archcustodian. 20-second DoTs that do less than a spammable until after the 10s mark are just not worth using in many fights.
• Overland: Do overland fights last long enough for 20s DoTs to make sense? The existing 10s DoTs are already too long for the vast majority of open world encounters, with World Bosses being the most notable among the few exceptions.
• PvP: Ground DoTs are already mostly useless in PvP because people will just sidestep them. Longer ground DoT durations will make them even less attractive. And when fighting classes with accessible class purges (Templars and Wardens), 20s “sticky” DoTs make absolutely zero sense to use, since it’s very likely that they will be removed before they could do more damage than just a spammable skill.

So, in short, buffing durations from 6s to 10s did help with the goal of making effects easier to manage. But there is a limit to how much further increases can help, and in a large number of “real world” scenarios, 20s durations just make no sense. This change simply is simply incompatible with what combat is like in reality, outside of an artificial target dummy testing environment.

(Aside: I think for self-buffs--e.g., Crit Surge--long durations are fine, but most of those self-buffs already have long durations.)

So, what can we do instead? If the goal is to make timer-watching easier, then consistent timers are more important than long timers. For example, on Live, Stampede leaves behind a 15s AoE while Twisting Path leaves behind a 10s AoE. Disparate timers means that I need to watch both timers separately, whereas if they both had the same timer, I could say to myself, “every time I refresh my Path, I should refresh my Stampede too”.

A timer consistency pass to synchronize durations would’ve helped tremendously with the timer-watching problem, without the myriad of problems with the current long-duration approach.

But instead of timer consistency, we just got long timers. As Nefas demonstrated in his PTS DK parse video, the rotation is still complicated, because the timers are all over the place. Some abilities are shorter than 20s, some are longer, and so he still needs to watch a bank of timers. This isn’t really much easier, and in real combat situations, you need to also constantly ask yourself, “should I be refreshing my Eruption now, or will the boss be moving away soon?”.

Furthermore, not everything was buffed. I mostly play as a tank, and Clench applies a 15s taunt, a 5s Major Maim, and a 4s Minor Brittle. That’s three different timers for one ability, and neither the 5s maim or the 4s brittle were buffed at all by the long duration changes. An even more forgettable 30s blockade means nothing to me when I still need to refresh Clench every few seconds to keep Maim and Brittle up.

Next, a lot of buffs come from sets. One good example is Powerful Assault, which lasts for 10s. The skill most often used by a tank or healer to proc Powerful Assault is Echoing Vigor, which also happens to last for 10s. On Live, all I need to do is to keep Echoing Vigor up, and I know that I’m also refreshing Powerful Assault when it’s needed. But on PTS, with the longer duration, now the timers don’t match, and I’d often forget to refresh the Powerful Assault buff. So, instead of making things easier, this change actually made things harder and worse. Frankly, it looks like very little thought was put into all of this.

Finally, there has been much said already by others about the tick-every-2s change. From worries about how heals will line up with incoming damage in difficult content that often tick for more than once per second (Example of how many damage ticks a tank could take in 1.4s) to concerns about how this will affects set and enchantment procs.

---

PART 3: Power Creep and Content Creep in PvE

The two problems that I see right now in ESO's PvE endgame are:

• There is a large power gap.
• New vet HM content is balanced around what is possible at the top end.

First, I want to give people some idea of what I mean when I say “large power gap”. For example, my weekend group got another Dawnbringer (Kyne’s Aegis trifecta) a few months ago. Our group has Godslayer, and this was our second Dawnbringer, so you can probably say that we’re part of that “elitist 0.1%”. Anyway, for that Dawnbringer run, we killed the second boss in 1m 46s. Recently, a group on EU set a new world record for Kyne’s Aegis. And their second boss kill time was 58s: it was almost twice as fast. So there is a pretty wide spread of power even between the 0.1% like us and the competitive 0.01% like them, and this is not even considering the power gap between us and groups that are just able to clear vKA HM, the power gap between those kinds of groups and people who don’t even participate in vet HM content, and finally the power gap between those those who just do vet non-HM and people who don’t even participate in vet content.

And this power gap is growing. I’ve been participating in vet trials since 2016, I’ve never seen the power gap as high as it is today.

So, there’s a large (and growing) power gap. But by itself, a large power gap isn’t a huge problem, except that in ESO, the trials team seems to be targeting those 0.01% people at the very top when they balance the new hard modes. Looking at Rockgrove’s HM, for example, the group DPS required to clear Oax HM cleanly and the DPS required to beat the DPS check on Xalvakka HM is higher than the DPS required for Godslayer.

The end result of this large (and growing) power gap is that the two most recent trial hard modes are less accessible than the four most recent trial hard modes that preceded them; I actually don't have a Rockgrove HM clear because my group got frustrated with how it was so overtuned and voted to leave the trial. This is why there are so many players who will cry bloody murder at even the faintest whispers of a power nerf for them. For the vast majority of players, the stuff at the top end is already out of reach, and you are now telling them that, for their own good, they’ll lose power. It should be no surprise to anyone that this will elicit hostility from many players.

Also, power creep isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it means that people who can’t tackle the latest hard modes might have a chance to do so in the future. This is especially true since new content balance takes this power creep into account. People have come to expect power creep each patch to help bring inaccessible content closer within reach, and telling everyone that you intend to roll back power creep is, um, controversial, to put it lightly.

Conversely, balancing for the top end is okay, when there isn’t a huge power gap. If the difference between what we can do and what a world record group could do is only 10-20%, then it’s fine for trials to be balanced around “if there's a group that could pull it off, then it’s fine”. But when that gap is as large is it is today, that just means that far too many players are excluded.

It’s the combination of a large power gap and balancing for the top that is causing problems.

And as someone else has pointed out in their PTS feedback, not everyone sees this power creep. Seemingly every patch, new things are added that are not universally accessible. New buffs to keep up (e.g., Minor Brittle), new sets to juggle around and maintain uptimes for, new "kiss-curse" mechanisms offering power to players skilled enough to deal with the "curse", etc. All of these things provide opportunities for players and groups with the wherewithal to efficiently take advantage of new sources of power, while most players will not see their benefits. This is why when I recently joined a number of vet trials PUGed out of Craglorn, I still saw 8-minute Yolnahkriin non-HM kills that don't seem any faster than what I saw in PUG runs a couple of years ago, while at the top end, Yolnahkriin kill times have gone down with each new world record that gets set.

The power creep that we see is predominately power creep at the top, because it's power that requires skill and group coordination to extract, and this is why we have an ever-increasing power gap.

But NONE of the changes being proposed in Update 35 targets any of this. Hard-to-maintain effects are unchanged (e.g., Minor Brittle is still 4s, buffs and effects from sets like Powerful Assault are unchanged, etc.), so that gap between groups that are able to efficiently maintain that effect that most other groups is untouched. It doesn't change that there is an ever growing number of supportive sets that well-coordinated groups are able to work into their composition, while more casual groups will not have them.

At the end of the day, I’m perfectly okay with there being a large power gap and power creep, as long as content isn’t balanced for what the top end is capable of doing. Let them have their portal-skip Cloudrest; that trial is still hard for the vast majority of groups even today, but that’s fine, because Cloudrest and the achievements in Cloudrest were never tuned for those kinds of “tippity-top” groups (to borrow phrasing from Rich). It’s when you have things like DPS checks in Rockgrove HM and insane speedrun time requirements in Dreadsail HM that are clearly aimed at those “tippity-top” groups that the power gap becomes a major problem in PvE. Let score competition be the (open-ended) outlet for those groups at the apex of the game, and buff up leaderboard rewards for them, but stop balancing achievements and even just hard mode clears around that level of play, and you'll have a much healthier raiding scene where more things are accessible to a greater range of player power. And perhaps then, people will not be as likely to react with such strident hostility to the prospect any power being ripped away from them.

Fantastic write up, I really hope someone at ZOS considers what you said here.

katorga

Umm 100% crit on Surprise Attack is broken for PVE.

starkerealm

katorga wrote: »

Umm 100% crit on Surprise Attack is broken for PVE.

It's broken for PvP as well, so, at least in all things there is symmetry.

MindOfTheSwarm

@ZOS_GinaBruno

DoT's are the main issue with this patch. I know many people complain about Light Attacks, but to be honest they could stay as general DPS at high levels did need to come down.

Dot's however were handled wrong, making them last 20 seconds AND nerfing damage is just not workable in most content for the following reasons:

1. PVP... why bother with them at all. They present no hazard whatsoever. Why bother cleansing a DoT that deals 300 damage every 2 seconds? (and that's before armor and buffs are considered.)

2. PVE. Trash fights are over before they function well, most bosses move around. So only have use in fights with static high health boss fight that are few and far between. So the value of DoT's is questionable here too.

3. PVE. In the rare instance they get full value, their duration means that people are spamming one skill for 20 seconds.... That is just down right dull gameplay.


I know you guys "Don't want suggestions", but maybe, just maybe the people that have been playing this game for years might just have something to offer. Not all ideas are great, but some just might change things up in an interesting way.

So here is an idea:

Why not have some DoT's be longer dealing less damage per tick/ticking less frequently, and others be shorter dealing more damage per tick/ticking more frequently. And make sure every class has access to one of each. This way you open the opportunity for more interesting and dynamic rotations while at the same time possibly reducing the maximum DPS possible, achieving your stated goal.



Example: I main a Warden but also play quite a bit of Nightblade so I'll use these.

Warden Example:

Arctic Blast: Deals Damage over 20 seconds. (This change was moving in the right direction, but make it last longer.)

Winter's Revenge: Make it last say between 5-8 seconds, but have its damage tick every 0.5 seconds but for a lower total. Say 16k. This would lead to between 1000-1600 per tick or 2000-3200 DPS. (optimal numbers) It is a DPS skill, so let it deal DPS. It was supposed to be the grandaddy of AOE DoT's (Your words not mine). LET IT KEEP THAT TITLE.

Fletcher Flies: Keep these at 10 seconds as they were. Let them be the mid range damage DoT.


Side Note: Shalks is too front loaded on its damage and needs looking at in my opinion. Basically if I choose to not run Shalks I am literally screwing myself. Also, Shalks have always been a bit of an issue in PVP. I actually think that increasing the duration of Shalks and having them tick more frequently is a good move, but the damage needs toning down. It is a 'required' skill, and no skill should be required to make a class effective. One idea might be to shift some of the damage of shalks into something else, spreading it out a bit. Shalks right now is too much of a 'shalks or go home' ability.


Nightblade Example:

Cripple: Make this last 5-8 seconds like the above Winter's Revenge idea, ticking every 0.5 seconds for more damage but with shorter duration.

Twisting Path: Should keep this at its original 10 seconds. There was nothing wrong with it being as it was.



Conclusion:

I understand that these are simply ideas and without testing it would be hard to judge how they would fly with the players base. So no, I am not trying to claim "this is the solution".

I am simply pointing out the fact that certain classes rely on DoT's more than others. Warden and DK being the the top of the list.

By having different durations on DoT's, and different tick rates and damage per tick, you create a more dynamic rotation in PVE. Mobs that move about a lot would demand more use of faster ticking but low duration DoT's. It would also lower total DPS a bit due to a downtime of the shorter DoT's while buffs and the like are being applied backbar. At the same time though, it would help these DoT's deal decent damage per second while they are up.

Also, in PVP it would mean that at least one DoT in a class' kit would actually be threatening and have some actually utility.

There is nothing wrong with having a hard hitting DoT, you just need to tone down the duration to compensate. No one is asking for a 12 second DoT that deals 4k per tick on its tooltip. We are just asking for a least 1 DoT per damage type across all classes or skill lines to actually deal high DPS. It's not a lot to ask. Nerf Light attacks if you have to, HELL nerf main DPS skills by 1k if you need to compensate. But front loading more than 50% DPS into the main DPS skills is dull and then asking us to use that one skill for 20 seconds per rotation in PVE and then spam it all the time in PVP is dull.... it is just dull.



I could go and on and talk about why these changes make Thaumaturge a bad investment and why Deadly Strike is now a trash set... but I think I'll leave it here. The community have spoken, it's up to you guys to listen now. You got 3 weeks left. What are you gonna do?

MindOfTheSwarm

prof_doom wrote: »

The change to molten whip just makes it useless for both Stamina and Magicka builds.
Should just have the cost be in whatever resource the player has the most of.

Excellent idea.

BalticBlues

20s AoE-Durations - FOR WHAT KIND OF CONTENT???

1. USELESS IN OVERLAND
Overland everything dies within seconds, except WorldBosses.

2. USELESS IN PVP
No opponent keeps standing in AoE, especially not for 20secs.

3. USELESS IN Normal Dungeons
In Normal Dungeons, everything dies within seconds, except Bosses.

4. USELESS in Latest DLC Dungeons
Many bosses move so much that you are lucky to AoE them for 10secs.

5. BORING in All Other Content
So If you are "lucky" to have a big boss standing firm for 20secs -
What do you do all the time? Spam Spam Spam? Boring.

katorga

BalticBlues wrote: »

20s AoE-Durations - FOR WHAT KIND OF CONTENT???

1. USELESS IN OVERLAND
Overland everything dies within seconds, except WorldBosses.

2. USELESS IN PVP
No opponent keeps standing in AoE, especially not for 20secs.

3. USELESS IN Normal Dungeons
In Normal Dungeons, everything dies within seconds, except Bosses.

4. USELESS in Latest DLC Dungeons
Many bosses move so much that you are lucky to AoE them for 10secs.

5. BORING in All Other Content
So If you are "lucky" to have a big boss standing firm for 20secs -
What do you do all the time? Spam Spam Spam? Boring.

BINGO. This completely nails the futility of the change.

What percentage of the player base even does endgame content? Endgame bosses are the only ones that you could use a 20s dot on.

For all other content, it is a huge resource cost for a single, tiny tick of damage.

superryan94

Being a climber I often go to a climbing hall to practice my sport. At some point I found a route I could not do because it was very hard. I tried forcing my way through the route every time I got there, but I could not do it.
At some point someone offered me some help explaining technique which would make it much easier for me to get through harder routes. Those techniques felt weird at first, but after some point it became natural to move in specific ways and this makes it a whole lot easier for me to get through hard routes.

Now, I can of course complain the the route is to hard and that they need to change it. This however doesn't change the fact that I'm still at the level I'm at and that someone who's way better just does the route like it's nothing.

Same applies to playing a violin. Complaining that a musical piece is to hard won't magically make the piece easier, practicing does.
If I want to run a marathon I can complain that it's to long, but a marathon is designed to be a challenge you need to train to get stamina needed to complete it.

Now, translate these things to the game.
Something gets designed to be hard. The ones who are really good enjoy it. But like the majority of people looking at a wall, a violin or marathon, this seems totally impossible.
However, with training and dedication you can get most things done.
I know a 1 armed man who's climbing a higher level than me, there are blind people playing the violin beautifully and people who lost a leg that run the marathon.
But all those things didn't come overnight, they came with years of practice.
Someone pulling 150K dps didn't do that because they just do it, they do it because they trained for it for a long time with dedication for what they do.

Changing the rules will not make things easier for novice players and harder for good players.
Changing the rules will mean novice players needs to relearn things and the very good players adapt and go on.
What will help the novice players is actual tutorials in the game on how to do things like weaving for dd, add control for tanks and such.


Being a tank I don't care if you put a hardcap on dps or take away weaving entirely, I'm just standing there doing my thing.
But it will be a problem that if the players that get 60% of their damage from light attacks now have lower dps because they do not weave.

Artim_X

I'm probably one of the most casual players in the game. However, I strive to get the best stuff to ensure that my experience remains stress-free. That being said, I'm going to try my best to be as unbiased as possible when explaining my feedback in relation to my personal experience with the changes.

My live rotation: Buff up with Boundless Storm and Crit Surge with Twilight Tormentor activated, weapon swap immediately after casting the previous skill, drop Thunderous Rage Ultimate if it's active, then Destructive Reach, Unstable Wall of Storms, quickly weapon swap, Lightning Flood, two heavy attacks, activate either Surge or Boundless, cancel the animation of the buff used with a weapon swap, and repeat. During the execute phase (around 20% health) replace the second heavy attack with about 4 Mages' Wrath, but if boss is melting quickly just keep spamming Wrath (hold heavy attack while spamming Wrath).

Consistent 30k + on 3million Dummy with Elemental Susceptibility active (top right corner)


My PTS rotation after messing around a bit:

Buff up with Boundless and Crit Surge with Twilight active, weapon swap immediately after casting the previous skill, drop Rage Ultimate if it's active, then Reach, Unstable, quickly weapon swap, Lightning Flood, three heavy attacks, Surge, then Twilight Tormentor (replace with light attack after enemy health is under 50%), light attack, then three heavy attacks, cancel the animation of Boundless with a weapon swap, and repeat. During the execute phase (around 20% health) After one heavy attack, spam Mages' Wrath 4 times, then heavy attack, active Surge, then 4 more Wraths, then heavy attack, cancel animation of boundless, and repeat execute version of rotation.

While Elemental Susceptibility is active, Kinras is only able to help me get a consistent 25k+ if I swap out my crit sets (one-piece Slimcraw and Mora's Whispers) for the new Archdruid Devyric monster set, my damage becomes a consistent 26k+ if I change out Kinras for the new set that grants empower after dealing damage with a heavy attack (Rage of the Ursauk) while still wearing the new monster set, and finally I put back on my crit sets while still wearing Ursauk which still got me past the 26k mark. Overall, what felt best was the 3rd setup, since my crit with a spell crit pot active was still around 60% which is where I feel most comfortable at.


After testing for 3 days this will be my PvE feedback for the damage changes.

Light and Heavy Attacks

• Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? My heavy attacks, which is my primary form of damage in PvE seems to have less oomph, which is to be expected.
• If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? In relation to wanting to hit at the very least 25k+ on the 3 million dummy without forsaking my ideal level of crit, I'd say it's a worse experience. My reasoning is that I already use two sets that buff my heavy attack damage (Infallible Aether and a Perfect Maelstrom Staff), and I'm not particularly fond of needing to farm another heavy attack set just to reach my goal. Of course, I am grateful that Rage of the Ursauk exists, since I don't want to play around with either of the two undaunted heavy attack sets or Sergeant's mail).
• 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. As mentioned above, I parsed a bit to see what I could manage. I played around with the idea of incorporating even more light attacks and less heavy attacks in my rotation, but it just didn't feel right, since it was harder for me to personally to maintain. The rotation I mentioned above feels more in line with how I typically play.
• Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning. Since my playstyle is very particular, heavy attacks will always be important. As long as I maintain my rotation, I could technically still provide a meaningful amount of damage.

Damage over Time

• Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? Very hard not to notice when this particular change is what completely overhauled my rotation.
• If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? I feel like it's worse, since my live rotation is simpler while my PTS rotation feels needlessly long.
• 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. My parse was definitely affected due to the rotation change. My character had the last two stages of Maelstrom Arena left on Vet so I decided to complete it for fun. I didn't die and I didn't need any of the sigils to clear, but it did take longer to kill things and I needed to make more effective use of my stun to ensure that the enemies stayed long enough in my AoEs to actually be hurt by them.
• After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning. In PvE I made no changes to the amount I used, since they are crucial to my playstyle.
• While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience? AoEs that last a long time means that I can stay longer on my primary bar and I have more time to do things like actually use the buff from Twilight Tormentor, but I still don't agree with the logic of the damage ticking every 2 seconds especially when enemies can easily move out of your AoE. Other than that, I definitely need to test out PvP at some point. I'm curious to see if the healing nerf will balance out the DoT nerf so that a DoT build is still viable.

OnyxProphet

I ran two side by side parses with my Oakensoul Stamblade, on Live vs PTS. This is on the trial Atronach.

Summary: I lost 12k dps, saw massive sustain issues, but the rotation was boring/simple.

Live Parse



PTS Parse



I’m 40, have arthritis in my hands from years of judo/computer jobs, and I’m very casual. Previously, oakensoul was a great boon as I could put out a respectable 75k and do veteran content. 70k is usually the minimum dps requirement. Now, I’m not at that minimum requirement, and I cannot qualify for that content.

Considering the trial dummy was buffed, this is a huge hit for average, casual players like me.

Please rethink.

olsborg

Ok so, you nerfed Summon Storm Atronach, it only lasts 15 seconds now, down from up to 28 seconds on live, if you choose Greater Storm Atronach morph. It was an alright ulti unless your opponent just ran out of range from it.
However, 15s is very short if you take into consideration that many ppl know that you can CC it, so the actual active duration on it would be considerably shorter, please make it cc immune from "birth" so it cant be "cheesed" at the very least, thanks.

Vonsaberhagen

Unfortunately, the new changes are REALLY Hurting low to mid range players.

I count myself among those players. I will never be top tier; I can't weave. Arthritis and slower responses due to an aneurysm means I never will.
However, I was enjoying content and able to handle most things solo with previous updates and the addition of Oakensoul. This includes the Veteran versions of base dungeons that don't have a 2 player required mechanic.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt and tried my current Mag Sorc build on the PTS.
These changes hurt a lot. I will give you an exact breakdown on my findings.

(Advanced users prepare to laugh at my DPS, but please don't comment on it.)

Current Setup: Mag Sorc, 1600 CP running The Steed Mundus with Bewitched Sugar Skulls food.
Skills: Mystic Orb, Unstable Wall of Elements, Volatile Familiar, Elemental Susceptibility and Greater Storm Atronach.
Gear: Alessian Order (set of 5 Mag Enchants varying Traits), Maw of The Infernal (set of 2 Mag Enchants varying Traits), Maelstrom Lightning Staff (in Precise with Shock Enchant), Oakensoul Ring (Infused with Spell Damage Enchant) and two pieces of Armor of the Trainee for extra health as I usually run solo.

With the above setup, without weaving, I am able to average 33k DPS (Readout of 38k DPS due to current bug) on the Iron Atronach Trial Dummy. As I said, this is good enough for most dungeons, even most Vet dungeons if in a group.

However, I logged into the PTS and ran the same setup to only get 27k DPS.
On the PTS I even have all gold gear, in Divines, with Bloodthirsty and Infused jewelry so I should have out-performed my non-optimized trait setup.

This is not bringing the elites closer to everyone else; it is pushing the gap further and really hurting your low to mid range players.

I really hope you can see this, read the feedback and abandon these changes before you end up with A LOT of players leaving due to forced underperformance.

Thank you for the time.

starkerealm

Vonsaberhagen wrote: »

(Advanced users prepare to laugh at my DPS, but please don't comment on it.)

Given your circumstances, the live number's pretty respectable. Don't feel bad about doing your best. Probably not a life lesson you need to hear, but, there it is.

If you want to directly compare live to PTS, you probably want to do those tests with a 6m dummy, they tweaked the trial dummies (some things increase damage, other things decrease), and it means you really can't get a clean comparison between them.

I hope that helps, though I fully understand if you don't want to parse it again.