PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

A_hab

I'll be brief. I've tried out the changes on PTS, I've read the patch notes, and I just cannot overstate my disappointment.

If I had to boil it down to one overarching problem, it's that these changes represent a lack of respect for player investment. Players have spent countless hours building out sets and mastering combat, focusing their development within defined parameters. But these repeated and completely unnecessary overhauls to both set function and combat mechanics just obliterate player motivation. Why invest so heavily in farming sets when chances are they're just going to be made obsolete next patch? Why spend hundreds of hours mastering rotations just to have them made irrelevant?

I understand that change and evolution is inevitable and often healthy, but this is so far beyond that. It is whiplash in the extreme. Changes need to be small and gradual, not earth-shattering.

What's worse, the stated goal for these changes--to close the delta between highly skilled players and more average players--is a bad goal. One of the best things about ESO is that it rewards investment and effort while still leaving the vast majority of the game accessible to casual players. To make matters even worse, this patch doesn't even accomplish that goal. It accomplishes the opposite. It increases the delta while making combat more boring, less engaging, and less skill intensive.

We are overwhelmingly yelling no to these changes. Please listen to the community.

master_of_olsborgh

well, since I didn't find a feedback thread for the old sets other than for the new ones, I'll leave my couple of cents here

The changes you are about to implement for the Ironblood set, at least the dev comment below these changes, can only be described as hypocritical.



there are over 500 sets in this game, and if the developers believe that most of them are used outside of "incredibly niche scenarios", that vision is strange. I don't see any adequate reason why this set should be reworked in the next patch in the way described and thus turned into one of the many sets that ... no one uses

if you find a penalty not enough in exchange for the mitigation the set provides, play with the values. increase the snare percentage to 75 for example and leave the mitigation at the current level (the game provides many tools that will allow you to increase the speed of the character with major/minor expedition so that you can go to 0 on a penalty).

in this case, the set will still be usable, and not just in niche scenarios, as the dev dude who wrote that comment suggested.

if the changes described in the patch go live, then this set, along with dozens of others, will go to the trash as unnecessary. there are tools in the game that provide either permanent access to minor and major protections without a penalty to speed, or are simply much more convenient to use and synergize.

I would recommend not to turn a unique set into a mediocre one, but instead to think better about its immediate balancing, as well as to re-evaluate the entire U35, which can hardly be called successful in its current state ...

Billium813

Hailan wrote: »

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

They are targeting these changes to make the game more welcoming to new players. They don't care if you don't like them because you're not the target audience. They also assume you will just live with it when it goes live.

YandereGirlfriend

Wait a minute... so if Heavy/Light Attacks no longer scale... doesn't that remove the cover story for why elemental sets like Ysgrammor's Birthright, Silks of the Sun, Automaton, Netch's Touch, etc. cannot be bumped up to their proper +600 Damage values?

The whole cover story was that, since they buffed LA/HA damage that they would be OP at +600 Damage. Now that is no longer the case.

siddique

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.

This. Please someone tell ZOS combat designers to read this post. Then read it again.

starkerealm

Billium813 wrote: »

They are targeting these changes to make the game more welcoming to new players. They don't care if you don't like them because you're not the target audience. They also assume you will just live with it when it goes live.

The problem is, this doesn't do that. The lower light and heavy attack slows down newer players as soon as they get out into the world, and the reduced DoT damage makes that almost imperceptible to a new player.

This actually degrades the new player's experience more than the players it's specifically supposed to target.

ssewallb14_ESO

Alright,

Here's how to fix this and achieve better accessibility in a way that is far less invasive and should keep most people happy:

Make all dots and buffs either 10 seconds or 20 seconds at max rank with all passives.
8-14 second dots are now 10 seconds (most already are 10 second). 15+ second dots are 20 seconds (again many are already 20 seconds). Account for skills like trap beast that have a setup time.

This makes everything a static rotation. Every 10 seconds, recast your 10 second dots/buffs. Every other rotation recast 20 second buffs/dots after recasting the 10 second ones.

This won't improve high end dps at all, but will make rotations easier for people who haven't memorized multiple cooldowns, as you really only have to memorize one (10 second). This significantly lowers the learning curve. It also reduces the need to constantly look at the skill bar for less experienced players.

This way we don't have to completely upend the gameplay and can still achieve accessibility. Damage can be buffed or nerfed accordingly if it still isn't where the team wants it.

Billium813

virtus753 wrote: »

Due to the ramping nature of the skill, however, and the increase to the increments each tick, the skill suffers a 44.6% dps loss over its current live duration of 12 seconds. Even now we don't see the full benefit of this skill on live when we have to recast it before it expires on phased or mobile fights like Olms and Z'Maja. These bosses will most definitely not sit happily in a Ritual for 20 seconds for most of the time. That's already curbing the efficacy of this skill on live, and on PTS it will be significantly worse.

I hope this doesn't get buried as I'm trying to be constructive here on the changes to Ritual of Retribution specifically...

@ZOS, I think this point needs to be stressed. The huge up-front damage loss expects a ramp up to a full 20 seconds. This is the absolute ideal situation, but real combat is far from ideal. The enemies will move, this will be recast/reset frequently before the full 20 seconds lapses, making the true damage loss much worse. You want to cater to new players, but new players move around, kite the boss, don't time their cooldowns correctly and mash buttons.

I understand that the big issue with RoR is the constant ramp up in damage and increasing the time naturally makes the damage too much in total. The duration is doubling, sustain will be better, so it can't do the 2x the damage. There should be a cost to the new sustain benefit. I get it. But in my opinion, I think a change to a model something like Thunderous Volley would be much better.

Make the ramp up in damage cap at 5 ticks and reduce the 52% reduction in damage to a 25% reduction, but increase the ramp up damage to 18%


PLUS


for when it hits the cap of 5 ticks

Now, the damage ramps up faster as enemies stand in it, but the damage is capped at 5 ticks. This damage is still overall LESS than 2 casts of the current RoR, but your sustain may be better if you cast this less often. If you have to recast it cause combat moves, you get back to the max quicker and it's less punishing.

Open to adjusting these numbers, but the theory is to not make the new RoR soooo backheavy and punish dynamic, moving fights.

WrathOfInnos

I don't want to write a novel here, but please consider my DoT duration feedback:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611567/dot-duration-feedback/p1?new=1

Mr_Stach

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I don't want to write a novel here, but please consider my DoT duration feedback:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611567/dot-duration-feedback/p1?new=1

It's ok man, we're all writing Novels today.

Artim_X

• 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 beat Vet Vateshran Hollows on the PTS with my new setup. Took some getting used to. It's been a hot minute, since I set foot in that arena. Other than dying to stupid, it wasn't painful to clear. I was going for no death, no sigils, and speed. I didn't use the lover mundus like I did on live (Rage of the Ursauk already gives penetration), which is what helped me get the speed aspect of things on my original clear. I probably could do better with more practice with the rotation. Most notable difference, is not having too worry too much about recasting my AoEs while I could focus on staying on my primary bar doing damage and surviving mechanics. If ZOS decides to make any changes in the coming weeks, it is my hope that they ease up on all the damage nerfs so that everything is bit more palatable.

MostlyJustCats

Light and Heavy Attacks:

Q: Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
A: It was impossible not to notice.

Q: If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
A: Much, much, much worse.

Q: What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any
A: I parsed, ran dungeons, ran overworld. The LA change was keenly felt in each area in a very negative way.

Q: Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning.
A: I will still have to use Light and Heavy Attacks to trigger certain skills and abilities, but that is all they are good for now. I will have to retire the Werewolf and dismantle the couple of LA/HA focused builds altogether.

Damage over Time:

Q: Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
A: It was impossible not to notice.

Q: If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
A: Much, much, much worse.

Q: What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any
A: I parsed, ran dungeons, ran overworld. The DoT change was keenly felt in each area in a very negative way.

Q: After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.
A: On live, for more trivial combat or in situations with a lot of mechanics, I could prioritize my backbar DoTs and only cast important, quick acting skills and still maintain appreciable damage output. It feels custom and unique to each character and build. On PTS, I have to load up and manage all five spots on the backbar for just about every encounter, for every build, and the damage output still feels less than on live where I can focus on maintaining one or two.

Q: While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?
A: Yes, it became very boring. 1,2,3,4,5 swap, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, swap, 1,2,3,4,5. On every class, any build, with very little variation. It also occurred to me that I might be wasting my time even bothering with the backbar (mathematically, I understand that to be incorrect, but all DoTs feel much less impactful).

Light and Heavy Attacks AND Damage over Time

A quick note about what happens with both of these changes in effect at the same time. If the intent was to reduce how sweaty a player has to be in any individual encounter, these changes together have been a disastrous failure. To produce damage that feels impactful on ANY target, it requires full use of both bars and every skill slot, with very close attention to the global cooldown. I am FAR MORE glued to my skillbar than I am on live, where I parse fairly high (90k to 100k range). The changes produce a very sterile and exacting combat experience that relies much less on developing a combat rhythm and abandons any sense of fast-paced, real-time decision-making.

Regardless of what damage numbers pop out, it destroys what makes ESO unique in the space of MMO rpg action. I don't care that much that my damage went way down. I do, however, care that combat now feels both boring and laborious at the same time.

Healing over Time

Did not play. I do not anticipate these changes to feel any better, however, as I cannot see any way that making healing LESS consistent would make it a more positive experience.

Pevey

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.

code made a really excellent post, as always.

I think this last part is worth some deep consideration. You see a wide gap between normal difficulty and veteran difficulty, and you are trying to narrow that gap. This is fair. I think part of this is probably numbers-driven. You have the stats on what percent of players are completing new trials and new dlc dungeons on veteran difficulty. And those stats can't be good. That is something that has been brought up in the forums before. Two of the four updates each year are dungeons that some people love and do on vet but most people dread and hate when they get them as a random normal. So much that they don't want to subscribe to ESO plus. The community of players capable of and actively doing vet trials, while larger than it had been in years prior to about 72 hours ago, is not the majority of players by far. So, how to bridge that gap?

First I would consider how it is that we got here. Consider that while some of the employees at ZOS do actually play the game, it's doubtful you could put together 12 employees who can clear one of the recent vet trials. Is that healthy? And why is that the case? It's not because a small percentage of players are doing "obscene" damage. It was a design choice to make the difficulty of vet trials that high. There is a slider, and it was a design choice to move the slider where it is today and create this gap. You could easily have set the slider somewhere else. Sure, that would mean a small number of players, maybe 300 total on both servers, would be able to smash those non-HM vet trials like they are vFG1. But who cares? Why this cat and mouse game with those few players, despite the hugely negative effect on the rest of the community? A lot of games have "speedrun" communities who do things mere mortals cannot, and there is not this contentious relationship with them.

Because of this obsession with a small percentage of players, "normal" players who have a builds and playstyles they like and stick with find their power diminished patch after patch after patch. Nerf after nerf after nerf. For a theoretical stamden wearing, say, Hundings and Briarheart, two decent stam sets, for the past 5 years, there has been no power creep. There has been the opposite of power creep. Average players feel this. Some players don't, because they adjust their build each patch to keep on the treadmill. But that is what many casual players don't like and refuse to do, and I think that is reasonable. Without any of the changes to any DOT or HOT or class skill, zos could have nerfed top end dps by about as much just by reining in stampede and a few sets. Rele, bahsei, kinras, kilt, etc. And it would have promoted build diversity. But that is a whole different story. Average players have felt their power go down. The trial dummy and the periodic buffs to it help mask this and give players some copium by letting them see big numbers. Those numbers are never comparable to prior numbers. This feels like it's by design.

So, in short, if you want to lessen the gap, just lessen the gap. Just move the slider. Vet difficulty has some room to come down. Even with live dps levels. And HM difficulty can come down. Let ppl compete for best times. And just accept that some ppl are going to manage to complete HM and maybe even do it enough times with enough hours of practice that they actually get (gasp) good at it. This is okay. Why have you decided to make the content so exclusive and now seem surprised that it is so exclusive?

Tannus15

Pevey wrote: »

For a theoretical stamden wearing, say, Hundings and Briarheart, two decent stam sets, for the past 5 years, there has been no power creep. There has been the opposite of power creep.

This. This right here. Everything is balanced around a few over performing sets right now and using the "basic" sets from 4 years ago will reveal how heavy the nerfs have been in an attempt to bring the new sets into line with the old power level.

I challenge anyone to do a basic julianos / sorrow or hundings / briarheart setup and do a parse on either the 3m or 6m dummy and compare it to 4 years ago.

reptilian_overlord

I hope ZOS is actually reading these comments. I am one of the people they are talking about when they say "people who have a difficult time interacting with the light attack weaving."

I have rheumatoid arthritis and it has significantly affected my hands, and, as a result, hand dexterity. I am one of countless others who are in a similar situation. In order to play the game anyway, I've had to experiment and fine tune my own setups and rotations until I found a playstyle that works for me. The rotation I use is basically back bar buff ups, switch to front bar and lay down several dot's. Once the dot's are down, I heavy attack for a few seconds until things start wearing off. Rinse and repeat. This has allowed me to hit at least 35k dps, upwards of 40k on a good day. I can, therefore, enjoy the extra challenge of running stuff solo. Maybe not everything, but enough that I'm happy with it. The oakensoul ring allowed me to skip the buff ups and added a little extra oomph, but, mostly, it allowed me to play the game with greater comfort.

The oakensoul nerf? Not a big deal, maybe it even needed to be done. I was able to play without it before and could again. I say could, as in maybe, depending on what changes actually end up on the live server.

However, the other changes have utterly killed my playstyle. Where I was getting around 35k dps, now I barely get 13k. Let me spell that out, t h i r t e e n. This would lock me out of playing the game anymore. Since you also destroyed the healing per second of hot's, I am unable to keep up in that area also. So now, I can't play as a dps or a healer. To be fair, I could probably still continue to play my tank character, but who only wants to play a tank forever??? And where's the freedom of gameplay there???

I was never going to be a top tier player and didn't care to be. I just wanted to enjoy the game with the level of freedom of gameplay there actually is right now. So I implore you to seriously reconsider what you are planning to do.

TLDR: You are going to destroy the game's accessibility for those of us with actual disabilities in the name of accessibility.


I am attaching screenshots of the actual test I ran on some practice dummies as proof of what I say.

James-Wayne

I did a very quick and simple AOE DPS check using the exact setup between Live and PTS with the exact same group of mobs, ran each one 5 times to get a good picture and used only jabs with nothing else no light attack just jabs. its as I expected AOE is up because that got buffed, single target, Burning Light and Plaguebreak all down with overall DPS down by 20k.

12.1% difference in AOE fight

AOE-LIVE


AOE-PTS

James-Wayne

Did the same test but for Single target damage on the precursor so its short fight and I don't need to worry about about sustain and as expected a much larger reduction in single target damage. And I used just Jabs because its the only spammable Templar has its in class kit.

EDIT: What's interesting about the single target fight is that it took me 5 seconds longer on PTS mainly due to now only having 3 jabs (vs 4 on LIVE) which to me screams your not just lowering the ceiling but your bringing the floor down as well. That's not healthy.

48.72% difference in single target fight

SINGLE-LIVE


SINGLE-PTS

Wildbloom

"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 did open-world content as a 2-handed dragonknight using Oakensoul. On 3 mil dummy on live, I do about 32k dps. On the PTS, I do about 19k with roughly the same setup (my gear is worse on the PTS).

I've seen a lot of talk about how overland content will be much harder now, so I wanted to test that. I first went into a delve and was two-shotting everything with Wrecking Blow, with Carve taking an extra swing or two to kill groups. This is at level 50 in gold-leveled 160 gear, again with the newly nerfed Oakensoul. It shouldn't be surprising that it's about as easy here as it was on live, given that the upfront damage of spammables wasn't changed, only DoTs, which are hardly used in overworld content.

I then went to a public dungeon and my experience was much the same. Charge in, carve a few times, and Wrecking Blow anything that was out of range. Again, very easy, hardly any different than live, if it was any different at all.

I then did a world boss, an ice elemental in the Rift, and I did very well. It took about 2 minutes to kill, which is slower than on live, but not a chore in the slightest. It felt pretty decent to have an actual boss that I didn't just mow down.



For good measure, I went back and did the same content on live back-to-back to see how they compared.

The delve felt as easy on live as it did on the PTS. Again, since overland enemies die so fast anyway, the longer, weaker dot nerf doesn't apply here. I was still cleaving through monsters with the same ease and lack of risk as I was on live.

The public dungeon was no different. Stampede, carve once or twice, dead, just like the PTS. Bosses felt like they died much faster though. I barely noticed them.

The world boss was the most noticeable, as to be expected. Instead of the two-minute fight on the PTS, this boss died in about a minute twenty or so. While this is a significant difference, I actually enjoyed the fight on the PTS more. There wasn't much joy in cleaving down a group boss in a minute.

Overall, as far as overland content on a level 50 goes, it felt more or less the same. World bosses taking 45 seconds longer to kill isn't worth setting the world on fire.

wolfie1.0.

aetherial_heavenn wrote: »

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.

Have to agree. With a normal set of patch notes for combat I can adjust a bit and move on.

With this set. I honestly feel like ZOS might as well wipe the game clean and we all start and level 1 again. It's a bit hyperbolic I know. But that is how I feel. I don't know how to adjust to get back where I was and that was a good place. I was confident in what I could do.

I don't feel that anymore. I feel lost and it's driving me to giving up on the game.

The AWA change hit me hard. Took away one of the things I enjoyed most about the game. I was very vocal about it and was suspended from posting because of it.

I decided to focus on PVE end game content and work towards that. I felt I was doing pretty well. Took me a month to hit 60k parse. Now I can't hit more than 50k on pts. I lost a month of game time probably more now that it will be harder.

We will see what zos does. But as for me... 2022 is shaping up to be the worst year in ESO ever.

warich

After reading these changes I can't help but feel that stamina warden (and warden in general) was hit dis-proportionally hard with 'nerfs' compared to other classes. As a warden dps main these changes are further cementing the idea that they're not meant to dps, and that the intended role for the class is support only. These changes will have gutted the class's overall positive features, and amplified the negatives that cause it to be only looked favorably upon as a support rather than a dps.

While I understand the problem with difficulties regarding the new take on DoT effects, the solution created doesn't cover the loss or even make cutting dive equal to the new alternate morph. What has been presented is weaker and doesn't cover the fact that while warden sustain is poor, the return only happens while the target is off balance. The off-balance status effect has such a low uptime in PvE that the morph may as well just not exist. The bleed builds that are mentioned in the dev comments are very niche and difficult to maintain in actual PvE content. They're practically just for show, and the phrase bleed over the top is hard to believe. The top build has been stam sorc due to buffs to crystal weapon.

And why the change to advanced species? Armor/Spell penetration can be accounted for by the player, and taking away wardens main source of increasing damage puts them far behind all other classes. Why not just change it to a flat value of weapon and spell damage per skill instead of having an overall damage % increase? This drastic change makes little sense.

Lastly, the main reason I choose ESO over all other games is the combat system. It feels so immersive and exciting. The aspect that by working and practicing can have a directly positive affect on my in-game performance brings so much fulfillment and gratification to me personally. With the upcoming changes to how DoTs are being treated, it's hard to say that the fluid, fast-paced combat system I live for will be anything other than just hitting a single button spammable.

Please reconsider the changes. A game where all classes can do all roles is what has been suggested by the tool tips with build suggestions, and with all of these updates that simply is just not true, and with slow one-button combat to look forward to, it's hard to say whether the game will really be much fun to play at all.

MindOfTheSwarm

katorga wrote: »

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.

This hurts ground DoT's more than sticky ones. AT least a sticky DoT will move with the target, unless of course it gets an invulnerable stage.

Tommy_The_Gun

katorga wrote: »

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

They buffed Concealed Weapon, so they need to add something decent to Surprise Attack too. Otherwise everyone will run Concealed Weapon morph next patch (as you still can have guaranteed crit with it when using cloak).

Even if they would just change sneak speed to minor expedition and not add weapon / spell damage when leaving stealth - then it is still superior than current live version of Surprise Attack.

Imho it would be way better if they did not touched Veiled Strike & morphs at all and instead buffed Consuming Darkness & morphs as this ability needs buffs more than a decent spammable that NB has.

MindOfTheSwarm

In Path of Exile, new players typically play DoT builds and spec into DoT damage as it allows them to deal good DPS while focusing on surviving mechanics. Same is true for Diablo.

If you want to make it easier for lower end players, then you buff DoT's, you do not nerf them. No-one wants DoT meta like before, but that was due to sticky ones stacking up. It makes no sense having all DoT's lasting the same duration and dealing the same damage.

Ground DoT's should hit hard, at the very least there should be some kind of CP star that allows DoT's to thrive at a cost of Direct Damage.

I know these are different games but I believe the principle remains the same.

You make the game easier for inexperienced players by giving them a means to buff ground DoT's to a point that their damage can make up for a lack of weaving, make it optional if need be. DoT's needed buffing for a long time, especially the ground DoT's.

Also, this hurt's Warden's more than any other class especially, Chill procs are an important part of a Magden's DPS. But with Winter's Revenge and Wall now dealing damage every 2 seconds this is another nerf. Effectively cutting Chill proc chance in half for these abilities. That is a 50% nerf on Chill procs and that is not including the nonsense nerf to Charged trait.

The idea that Charged was better than Infused is nothing short of laughable. Infused will always be best, followed by Precise on builds that do not have enough critical chance. Charged was for specific builds and was not the 'go to choice' which was implied. Stop looking at spreadsheets and pay attention to actual gameplays.

Tannus15

@MindOfTheSwarm what are you talking about? infused hasn't been used on front bar for builds for years. Precise is the go to, except for warden and DK who have been using charged since the charged buff.
DW setups have been using nirnhoned and charged.

LordDragonMara

A_hab wrote: »

I'll be brief. I've tried out the changes on PTS, I've read the patch notes, and I just cannot overstate my disappointment.

If I had to boil it down to one overarching problem, it's that these changes represent a lack of respect for player investment. Players have spent countless hours building out sets and mastering combat, focusing their development within defined parameters. But these repeated and completely unnecessary overhauls to both set function and combat mechanics just obliterate player motivation. Why invest so heavily in farming sets when chances are they're just going to be made obsolete next patch? Why spend hundreds of hours mastering rotations just to have them made irrelevant?

I understand that change and evolution is inevitable and often healthy, but this is so far beyond that. It is whiplash in the extreme. Changes need to be small and gradual, not earth-shattering.

What's worse, the stated goal for these changes--to close the delta between highly skilled players and more average players--is a bad goal. One of the best things about ESO is that it rewards investment and effort while still leaving the vast majority of the game accessible to casual players. To make matters even worse, this patch doesn't even accomplish that goal. It accomplishes the opposite. It increases the delta while making combat more boring, less engaging, and less skill intensive.

We are overwhelmingly yelling no to these changes. Please listen to the community.

100% this. And i want to add that there is nothing wrong with changes, but you should not touch core game mechanics that people are used to and spend countless of hours training/practicing to get better and improving them as a players and their characters as well.
You can play and test the combat, when the game is in beta/alpha, not 8 years after release.
Also you should never ever try to lower the skill ceiling and removing the skill gap. It's there for a reason, and it's should be clear between low>mid>high>pro players, just like in any other genre like racing, FPS, BR, MOBBA, Strategies and so on.

As far as the combat i think this is very telling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oOVQLZQyE

This is boring !

tmbrinks

Wildbloom wrote: »

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

I did open-world content as a 2-handed dragonknight using Oakensoul. On 3 mil dummy on live, I do about 32k dps. On the PTS, I do about 19k with roughly the same setup (my gear is worse on the PTS).

I've seen a lot of talk about how overland content will be much harder now, so I wanted to test that. I first went into a delve and was two-shotting everything with Wrecking Blow, with Carve taking an extra swing or two to kill groups. This is at level 50 in gold-leveled 160 gear, again with the newly nerfed Oakensoul. It shouldn't be surprising that it's about as easy here as it was on live, given that the upfront damage of spammables wasn't changed, only DoTs, which are hardly used in overworld content.

I then went to a public dungeon and my experience was much the same. Charge in, carve a few times, and Wrecking Blow anything that was out of range. Again, very easy, hardly any different than live, if it was any different at all.

I then did a world boss, an ice elemental in the Rift, and I did very well. It took about 2 minutes to kill, which is slower than on live, but not a chore in the slightest. It felt pretty decent to have an actual boss that I didn't just mow down.



For good measure, I went back and did the same content on live back-to-back to see how they compared.

The delve felt as easy on live as it did on the PTS. Again, since overland enemies die so fast anyway, the longer, weaker dot nerf doesn't apply here. I was still cleaving through monsters with the same ease and lack of risk as I was on live.

The public dungeon was no different. Stampede, carve once or twice, dead, just like the PTS. Bosses felt like they died much faster though. I barely noticed them.

The world boss was the most noticeable, as to be expected. Instead of the two-minute fight on the PTS, this boss died in about a minute twenty or so. While this is a significant difference, I actually enjoyed the fight on the PTS more. There wasn't much joy in cleaving down a group boss in a minute.

Overall, as far as overland content on a level 50 goes, it felt more or less the same. World bosses taking 45 seconds longer to kill isn't worth setting the world on fire.

Only a 50% increase in time to kill. So the best team in the world can do the speed run in vDSR in 28 minutes. That's now 42 minutes with the changes. Only gotta shave 12m off to get the speed run in the next patch.

katorga

LordDragonMara wrote: »

A_hab wrote: »

I'll be brief. I've tried out the changes on PTS, I've read the patch notes, and I just cannot overstate my disappointment.

If I had to boil it down to one overarching problem, it's that these changes represent a lack of respect for player investment. Players have spent countless hours building out sets and mastering combat, focusing their development within defined parameters. But these repeated and completely unnecessary overhauls to both set function and combat mechanics just obliterate player motivation. Why invest so heavily in farming sets when chances are they're just going to be made obsolete next patch? Why spend hundreds of hours mastering rotations just to have them made irrelevant?

I understand that change and evolution is inevitable and often healthy, but this is so far beyond that. It is whiplash in the extreme. Changes need to be small and gradual, not earth-shattering.

What's worse, the stated goal for these changes--to close the delta between highly skilled players and more average players--is a bad goal. One of the best things about ESO is that it rewards investment and effort while still leaving the vast majority of the game accessible to casual players. To make matters even worse, this patch doesn't even accomplish that goal. It accomplishes the opposite. It increases the delta while making combat more boring, less engaging, and less skill intensive.

We are overwhelmingly yelling no to these changes. Please listen to the community.

100% this. And i want to add that there is nothing wrong with changes, but you should not touch core game mechanics that people are used to and spend countless of hours training/practicing to get better and improving them as a players and their characters as well.
You can play and test the combat, when the game is in beta/alpha, not 8 years after release.
Also you should never ever try to lower the skill ceiling and removing the skill gap. It's there for a reason, and it's should be clear between low>mid>high>pro players, just like in any other genre like racing, FPS, BR, MOBBA, Strategies and so on.

As far as the combat i think this is very telling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oOVQLZQyE

This is boring !

Pass the Dutchie always makes me feel less tiresome and disappointing.

Anyammis

I'm going to stick to my personal areas of things and not touch on things like sorc that I have limited knowledge/experience with/don't play as often and break this into sections.

Target Dummy Changes and Data Integrity
It is very hard to get a 1:1 comparison with this change. Even if you want to nerf/buff the target dummies for live, adjusting the trial dummy now means we have another factor to math out. If both dummies were the same, we could have an easier time giving you data and side by side comparisons. I still disagree with the nerf parts of it in general, but if you wanted to change it for live with U35, it would be much easier if you stated it in the notes but gave us the older, identical to live dummy as a controlled variable. This also will negatively impact some classes more than others for testing purposes (ie those who rely more on engulfing vs those who don't). Please change this from week 2 onward.

Positives
I think extending dot/hot duration is a good thing for people who have high or erratic ping. I noticed uptimes felt cleaner on pts vs live. My internet is sometimes erratic and it often could mess up parses or damage. I play with several others who have bad internet or are EU players who prefer the community of NA and I think this is a good change to keep of all of them. This does help people with suboptimal systems/connections in a way that ESO has failed to do in the past.

Negatives
Dots and Hots ticking every two seconds is a problem. There are several very steep dps and heal checks in game that may no longer be viable if these changes go through. Xalvakka hardmode is already a pretty steep dps check, and dots are not a great source of damage for the fight as it is due to her splitting and moving so much. The light attack nerfs compounded with dots ticking less frequently is a perfect storm to make this fight a lot harder if not impossible for people who used to be able to do it with ease.Dreadsail Reef has a lot of mobile and mechanics heavy fights also, which many people love and have praised, but less people may see the trial and it's harder level content if these changes go through as is. Please consider this in your attempts to balance this. I don't think every change needs to be thrown out some of them definitely do. If I had to live with all the changes but one of the sweeping changes, I would toss out the dots ticking every two seconds in a heartbeat. If dots go back to ticking every second, some may need to be adjusted but I think that's better than potentially losing accessibility to the most difficult levels of content.

Nightblade Talk
I've been a nb main since beta so may as well talk about the part I know best along with this. Gonna break it into small bullets from me and the other nb mains I know:

• KB-It kinda feels like this is a weird change that kinda hampers class identity. Feels like a copy/paste of reverse slice. Most of us don't like it. If you're going to give us a change, perhaps something new/different? It's a minor complain but still worth putting here since over the years a lot of NB's unique class mechanics have either gotten taken away or given to other classes also.
• Surprise Attacks-already had as high crit rate and not every boss can be flanked (sunspire?)! This feels like we're getting a very situational buff that isn't helping.
• Between ticking every two seconds and getting it's heal nerfed Refreshing Path does half the hps it does on live. This is pretty terrible since nb healers before last patch were already pretty rare and some tanks use refereshing morph in some content.
• Cloak-similar to KB, class identity concerns came up in our nb round table of changes. I didn't get to test this as much and it's nice that the heal is getting stronger again but I would need to do some live vs pts testing on this to see how valuable it is, especially with the heal tick nerfs. Concerns come in since for magblade specifically, with swallow soul being changed to not proc on untargetables, Cloak was needed to heal in things like vcr portal when you had nothing to dps anymore and if it is more potent but the hot ticks slower, nb might no longer be able to do portal which is not okay. Unfortunately not enough of my trial guild wants to test raids on the pts so I can only speculate on raid performances from personal experiences prior to this.

Not tested enough to comment to my liking:

• light attack changes (need more testing/number crunching for my liking to speak on currently)
• tests of classes other than nb (been mostly playing nb for the past year, while I used to play other classes a lot, I am not currently up to date with their performance benchmarks in the same way I am for nb)
• general heal testing

This isn't really conclusive but it's most of my thoughts so far. I have not really been reading the general feedback of others prior to this barring friends and guildies and those who I share a discord with so I don't know if others agree or disagree with me. I'm mostly just expressing my personal concerns and things I found that are working well. I do have a lot of concerns for the hardest dps/healchecks in game with the changes but I cannot personally test them. I do urge ZOS to consider those dps and healchecks with the changes and adjust in the pts accordingly. I urge ZOS to give us the old dummy for testing on week two at least. I will try to give feedback as things change.

Nebs

I had to download the PTS for the first time to see these changes for myself. I know things can look scary on paper.

I'm not a weaving enthusiast, but I enjoy building around light attacks specifically because they let me chill and not worry about doing a million button presses a second to be effective.

I immediately noticed a difference in the damage I was doing. For reference, I was using Bloodmoon on a sorcerer with a 2H weapon, its one of my favorite sets because it reminds me of the old weapon-speed enhancing trait that used to exist in early ESO. I like going all-in on it so I use it alongside Relequen's, Belharza's Band, and the Maelstrom Arena Destruction staff. My Bloodmoon-fueled hits were doing half the damage on PTS than they did on Live. My crits typically deal around 20k damage with a light attack and on PTS they were 10k.

The sorcerers losing the light attack boosting effect of bound armaments also really hurt. I was just playing around in the Overworld when I noticed a reduction in my effectiveness. I felt like I was in a dungeon, which isn't a compliment.

It was really disappointing, I never really felt like my build pushed anything too far - I certainly never outpaced my guild mates who had more conventional setups. I feel like 2H weapons are hit especially hard by this update, as one of their passives is based around doing splash damage from light attacks. The passive's effectiveness was reduced significantly and nothing was adjusted to compensate. 2H's Carve, Stampede, and the Maelstrom 2H all getting hit along with reduced effectiveness of splash damage from light attacks is enough to drive me away from the weapon entirely.

I also think the idea of everyone doing the same amount of damage on light attacks is a boring and flat concept. In practice, without even knowing what damage other players are doing, it felt bad. I don't like the idea of having to activate abilities to get something killed, I enjoyed going through quests and Overworld content without having to press numerous buttons to proceed. The idea of trying to get to the next objective of a quest which requires running along a long corridor filled with enemies is a nightmare. I don't want to have to wait 6 seconds for my abilities to trigger 3 times to finish off a small cluster of enemies because I can't finish them off with my light attacks.

I applaud the effort to try making difficult content more accessible, but I don't like this update.

Jale

As a mediocre end-game PVE player I feel the drastic DoT and L/A reduction isn't the way. Yes damage used to be less at one point and there is a power creep, but it is the content that pushes that. Naturally with new content, people should be challenged, it keeps it interesting and goal orientated, otherwise the game becomes boring.. Increasing my skill to do harder content is what kept me playing, I am not the best of the best players and now it feels like I'm getting kicked down.

I've tried parsing on the PTS, the longer dots were... not horrible but also too long even for me. If the dots were just increased a smidgen (like 1-3 seconds), I would find that fine but it was kinda a drag with practically doubled timers.