PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Malthorne

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.

The change to molten whip feels like one of those compromises where neither party walks away happy.

Tsunahmie

Magsorc was relying on Stamsorc skills to do dmge....now we have nothing left and our Dark convergence is going to drain our valuable stamina pool even more.
Matriarch is killable in 2 hits by one player and is dreadful. No health buff to pets or making them untargetable (and therefore on par with other classes burst heals due to 2 bars....) Is just apalling.

I will be quitting magsorc and the game if no real changes are made to bring the class back up to a usable level.
The empower nerf is disgusting for magsorcs as well as our BURST right now relies on empowered overload light attacking... with a tooltip of + around 1k instead of +40% where are we going to get our damage from?
Crystal weapons won't be viable on Magsorc anymore due to nerfed damge and the dark conversion stamina cost increase.
We still need to dodge, block and sprint you know!

No shield changes....reduce shield nerfs from battlespirit to 30% down from 50% or allow them to scale off of spelldgme.

There's much more to go into...for example staffs:
Who is gonna use staffs in PvE now when lightattacks deal 10% less dmge than melee? (I,E ALL stamina weapons bar Bows.)
It's a slap in the face for staff enthusiasts and magicka users in general due to how stacking in trials and general bossfights works.

I am not happy with the changes at all, especially as it has ruined a lot of hard work and farming gear (looking at Ironblood on my magsorc) and gold materials and gold.

Tldr:
Absolutely disgusted with the proposed changes and probably quitting if these go live.

IronWooshu

TyrickEU wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Give the Mage's Wrath the same execute scaling that Killer's Blade got. Come on, you've completely killed Sorcerer as a class, give us SOMETHING.

Troodon80 wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Patch notes shouldn't be met with dread, this is awful.

TyrickEU wrote: »

Yes, everything is great.
I'd do everything to get rid of the exploit that many people call "weaving".
Hopefully one day my friends can also come back to the game. Most of them left because of the combat.

Well, this certainly isn't a polarised response.

Tyrick is clearly trolling. Calling weaving an "exploit" is a classic troll move.

I'm not trolling. I really hate weaving.
And I really hope that they will change maybe the CD's of LA or something so it won't even be possible to do it.
OR... if they leave everything like this at least make the animations fit the 'weaving'.
Currently because of the animation cancelling it looks like a bugged combat mechanic.

weaving is still gonna be important to get top damage, the only thing different is everyone is gonna require empower buff now to maximize damage

WreckfulAbandon

You guys are literally killing the Sorcerer class with your complete gutting of Crystal Weapon. There are a lot of things I dont like about these patch notes (the new set that allows removal of buffs is atrocious) but nothing quite triggered me like the Crystal Weapon change. We never asked for 2 casts along with a cost increase, and I had a feeling that this was going to be the price. Terrible change, please revert to 2 patch cycles ago where there was only one proc for approximately the cost of a spammable.

Didgerion

I don't know what to say.

Too many changes at once, it will take a year to make it balanced again.
Then what? another major scramble?

As far as I can tell hots and dots got hit pretty hard. Which will leave classes that don't have access to burst heals and damage in a really bad spot (from PvP perspective).

acastanza_ESO

Tsunahmie wrote: »

Magsorc was relying on Stamsorc skills to do dmge....now we have nothing left and our Dark convergence is going to drain our valuable stamina pool even more.
Matriarch is killable in 2 hits by one player and is dreadful. No health buff to pets or making them untargetable (and therefore on par with other classes burst heals due to 2 bars....) Is just apalling.

I will be quitting magsorc and the game if no real changes are made to bring the class back up to a usable level.
The empower nerf is disgusting for magsorcs as well as our BURST right now relies on empowered overload light attacking... with a tooltip of + around 1k instead of +40% where are we going to get our damage from?
Crystal weapons won't be viable on Magsorc anymore due to nerfed damge and the dark conversion stamina cost increase.
We still need to dodge, block and sprint you know!

No shield changes....reduce shield nerfs from battlespirit to 30% down from 50% or allow them to scale off of spelldgme.

There's much more to go into...for example staffs:
Who is gonna use staffs in PvE now when lightattacks deal 10% less dmge than melee? (I,E ALL stamina weapons bar Bows.)
It's a slap in the face for staff enthusiasts and magicka users in general due to how stacking in trials and general bossfights works.

I am not happy with the changes at all, especially as it has ruined a lot of hard work and farming gear (looking at Ironblood on my magsorc) and gold materials and gold.

Tldr:
Absolutely disgusted with the proposed changes and probably quitting if these go live.

Sorcerer literally brings nothing to the table now. Especially MagSorc.
It has no effective burst. Pressure is gutted with this. Shields are trash survivability. And the worst self-heals in the game. Negate in PVP is all sorc is good for.
Backline negate-bot. Can't wait until they nerf that next.
Why should I still playing Sorc zos? What is the justification for this classes existence? Give me one single reason to stay in this game.

francesinhalover

Bound Armaments (morph):

- Reduced the damage per hit of this ability by approximately 38%.
This ability no longer passively increases your Light Attack damage.

- Hurricane (morph): This morph now increases in damage by 12% per tick, up from 8%. Along with the frequency adjustment, this will reduce the total maximum to 120%, down from 160%.

Thank you, guess i'll have to play another class.
You butchered my dmg, and now i can't even join trials anymore Because i can't even reach 80k.
All because you want people to use crystal weapon, probably the second most boring spammable in all of the game outside of crushing weapon from psijic.
Thank you.

Has a rapid strikes user, i couldn't be more happy to lose my damage. (edit. I will probably not touch this skill again if the rapid strikes visual rework/nerf goes through.)

stam sorc was a bit strong, But i'm not sure the role/class deserved a Chair to the face, i think 1 karate chop was enough.

Ratzkifal

Making an ability split its cost between stamina and magicka is a terrible idea. You've refused to hybridize sustain but now you want hybrid DKs to be using both resources for their spammable. Do you really want to be playing a build where if your main resource is full and your off-resource is drained, you are unable to use your spammable?
Why can't you just make Pooprock into a proper single target melee stamina spammable with a short wind-up like Surprise Attack? Why is this so hard? You could literally recycle the animation for Killer's Blade and make it look more rocky, it's not that hard. You wouldn't even have to change anything else about the effect for now, just make it less clunky to use. And stop doing these weird things to whip.

lPeacekeeperl

From the general topic - wierd changes in warden passyves. Turn nice and usefule +% to all dmg into "meh penetration overcap again" and not fixing sustain heal problems (we need scaling from stats on our passives)

light attack feels hilariously weak in overland pve. its not hard to kill those mobs, but now it feels less fun.

Fetcher infection - seems like manawardens forced to doublecast it when reaply. increased duration for this both good and bad.

Longer "shalks" uncomfortably effects rotation, have to adapt. And uneven pace of shalks feels...just bad. if you decide to make wardens happy - geve us 3, but weaker strike of shulks. - one immediatly and 2 others in 3s or 5s downtime. dmg can be reduced for every one strike.



Overall target dots become useles in short fights. Grounddots - even worse in mobile fights.

And one more thing -
"Thank you" For ruining Oakensoul.
Minorforce makes psijic "race" or fighter "trap" or "medusa" set useless
Minor berserk makes wardens wings much less usefule(at least FINALE root removal)
Minor courage makes "magma incarnate" useless

So it converts good solo mythic to not realy good for solo, but stronger in big team. Wont improve cire situation, maybe slightly improves BG's. Wierd for pve.

I hope at lest PVPers finaly happy.

At least add some bonus to hp|mp|sp to compensate this losses. skaling from eammates count on this will be right decision.

Veesk

Logging into PTS with my main Templar I could definitely feel the nerfs and Jabs/Sweeps feels awful, to look at and use now. Also not a fan of the new spear that is replacing the shard? The original animation matching other skills from the Aedric Spear skill line was more cohesive. I wish all of the changes to Puncturing Strikes would just be reverted.

I'm not really seeing where there is much benefit for new players, limited mobility players and low end DPS to middle range DPS players either. Feels like they will see the biggest DPS loss with all of the combat changes. Especially after they were given the Oakensoul to grind for a decent one bar set up and that got nerfed pretty hard. High end DPS players will probably be the least effected by all of these changes.

Adding** If the changes to Oakensoul were because of PVP issues, couldn't it be possible to leave it as is on live for PvE/Overland and make an adjustment that would just effect PVP areas?

francesinhalover

Flurry:

"This ability and its morphs now hit 4 times over a channel time of 800ms, rather than 5 times over 600ms. Their total damage remains relatively the same over their channel time."

Was there a need to nerf this skill that almost no one in the game uses and is useless on pvp?

And you only increase rapid strikes dmg by 2.5%?

You more or less deleted this skill from the game because the new one shouldn't even be called flurry.

---

"Endless Hail (morph): This morph now increases the duration of the effect by 10 seconds, up from 4."

Now that all skills last 20 sec, endless hail lasting 30 seconds means it is the Hardest skill in the game to use on a rotation.

This would be fine if arrow barrage visually didn't hurt the eyes.

Change endless hail so it does more damage and has increased cost duration, and arrow barrage has larger aoe and does less damage but with decreased cost duration

---

Fire Rune

"Scalding Rune (morph):
Increased the duration of this morph's damage over time to 22 seconds, up from 12 seconds.
Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 12%"

Do people even use this skill? i don't see a reason to nerf it's damage.
And this skill will also be harder to use on rotations now that all other skills last 20 seconds (unless you don't increase duration by 2% with mages guild passive).

Endless hail has no skill that works with it's 30 sec duration.

Skjaldbjorn

Throw the whole ass patch in the trash. This is abysmal.

umagon

Stncold wrote: »

Remathilis wrote: »

Warden's are mad. Sorcs are mad. Templars are mad. Necros are mad. DKs are furious. And NBs would be mad if there were any.

I'd say good job. When nobody's happy, everyone wins.

What the hell are NBs mad about? Surprise attack being an auto crit when flanking or killer's blade finally rivaling weapon executes? Two things they've wanted forever?

I wouldn’t say I am mad but some of their changes don’t make sense. If Mass Hysteria doesn’t have a target cap why change Manifestation of Terror? Terror would only effect 12 targets if both traps go off while Hysteria would hit unlimited targets. Also, now without the two traps door ways can’t be fully covered in Cyrodiil, and in pve it impacts some tankblade builds and strategies for content.

Now my tankblade can not cc a target pack from range while leaving a trap on the ground for my group to use if adds get on them and for whatever reason I can’t pick them up right away. So basically, zos is cutting utility from the skill for no reason. Also, they made zero changes to bolstering darkness. Consuming darkness, and it’s morphs have been underperforming for years.

TPishek

It's too bad they fired the class reps and now we don't have anyone to ensure we are actually heard. I guess they can/will ignore us.

UnbrokenCurse

Ok so with these changes I fail to see how it helps anyone. The majority of casuals preferred to just use spammables and a lot of the good spammables took hits, also others prefer to use mostly light and heavy attacks which got nerfed into the ground. To get even remotely near the same damage you need many more dots which honestly aren’t going to be as effective in lots of fights, notably Asylum Sanctorium is going to be miserable. Please reconsider these changes as it’s blatantly nerfing everyone, rather than helping casuals catch up. No matter what changes the players with more skill will hit harder. Now I know just complaints is not as helpful, what I would suggest is add to the existing tutorial and have a fight that teaches players how to weave light attack->skill. Other suggestions would include adding global cooldown trackers to the base game, I run a social guild and for a while played on console and that would be significantly more helpful, also a metronome potentially to keep your weaving on pace in the combat menu, similar to the introduction of cooldown timers. These additions along with not universally lowering damage would help make things more accessible, I’ve noticed as time goes on more of my guildies are able to participate due to positive changes, but this is a big step back.

Dayth

Oakensoul was perfect when it came to pve - which is exactly what it was targeted for.
Now it is ruined because of pvp. Can you not just downgrade it for when it's being used for pvp?

Sorcerer is completely butchered, if skills are being nerfed even close to 40% never mind going over that you need to seriously consider what you're doing.

The changes to light and heavy attacks are completely unnecessary. If you have a problem with the people weaving doing too much damage then do a change that will target them specifically instead of everyone.
Weaving was a bug you decided to make a feature. Remove it or balance it in a way that doesn't affect players that don't want to do it.

Didgerion

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

You guys are literally killing the Sorcerer class with your complete gutting of Crystal Weapon. There are a lot of things I dont like about these patch notes (the new set that allows removal of buffs is atrocious) but nothing quite triggered me like the Crystal Weapon change. We never asked for 2 casts along with a cost increase, and I had a feeling that this was going to be the price. Terrible change, please revert to 2 patch cycles ago where there was only one proc for approximately the cost of a spammable.

Yep,
Stam sorc just lost their only spammable. It was fun while it lasted.

Btw light attack, dot and hot nerfs would have gutted stamsorc hard enough, I really think Crystal Weapon and Bound Armament nerfs are way over the board.

Stamsorc's got no healing nor damage now... I dare ZOS to show us in one of their twitch live shows how stamsorcs are supposed to pvp now... 'cause I fail to see the way.

prof_doom

First round of parses on the PTS seem to indicate that DPS is down roughly 30K.
While they might pick up some more damage by re-working builds to compensate for the nerfs, I doubt it'll go much higher.

Hope you intend to rework the more recent trials to compensate for that much loss of damage.

Grandchamp1989

prof_doom wrote: »

First round of parses on the PTS seem to indicate that DPS is down roughly 30K.
While they might pick up some more damage by re-working builds to compensate for the nerfs, I doubt it'll go much higher.

Hope you intend to rework the more recent trials to compensate for that much loss of damage.

Maybe also some recent dungeon hardmodes? Coral and Shipwright hardmodes are rough same for Stone Garden hardmode.

AerunSun

Can anyone remember if any game changes have ever been withdrawn after so many complaints? Or are these "improvements", regardless of what is posted here, implemented anyway.

Kite_Cross

Oakensoul nerf is way too much its almost useless now.

Heroism --> to Minor

Force --> to Minor

That is all you needed to do.

acastanza_ESO

Didgerion wrote: »

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

You guys are literally killing the Sorcerer class with your complete gutting of Crystal Weapon. There are a lot of things I dont like about these patch notes (the new set that allows removal of buffs is atrocious) but nothing quite triggered me like the Crystal Weapon change. We never asked for 2 casts along with a cost increase, and I had a feeling that this was going to be the price. Terrible change, please revert to 2 patch cycles ago where there was only one proc for approximately the cost of a spammable.

Yep,
Stam sorc just lost their only spammable. It was fun while it lasted.

Btw light attack, dot and hot nerfs would have gutted stamsorc hard enough, I really think Crystal Weapon and Bound Armament nerfs are way over the board.

Stamsorc's got no healing nor damage now... I dare ZOS to show us in one of their twitch live shows how stamsorcs are supposed to pvp now... 'cause I fail to see the way.

Literally any sorc. There is literally nothing left on Sorc worth anything at all except negate in group PVP which has been steadily, if indirectly, nerfed by pushing people into stam skills more and more which aren't affected.

Dragonlord573

AerunSun wrote: »

Can anyone remember if any game changes have ever been withdrawn after so many complaints? Or are these "improvements", regardless of what is posted here, implemented anyway.

Cast times to damage shields.

francesinhalover

Veesk wrote: »

Logging into PTS with my main Templar I could definitely feel the nerfs and Jabs/Sweeps feels awful, to look at and use now. Also not a fan of the new spear that is replacing the shard? The original animation matching other skills from the Aedric Spear skill line was more cohesive. I wish all of the changes to Puncturing Strikes would just be reverted.

I'm not really seeing where there is much benefit for new players, limited mobility players and low end DPS to middle range DPS players either. Feels like they will see the biggest DPS loss with all of the combat changes. Especially after they were given the Oakensoul to grind for a decent one bar set up and that got nerfed pretty hard. High end DPS players will probably be the least effected by all of these changes.

Adding** If the changes to Oakensoul were because of PVP issues, couldn't it be possible to leave it as is on live for PvE/Overland and make an adjustment that would just effect PVP areas?

All they need to do is add - you Do 10% less damage to players when using this mythic.
Done, pvp is fixed.

Dalsinthus

AerunSun wrote: »

Can anyone remember if any game changes have ever been withdrawn after so many complaints? Or are these "improvements", regardless of what is posted here, implemented anyway.

There have been a few cases where they walked back a change or two. When cast times were added to shields the community outrage caused them to change direction. They still nerfed shields and made them capped by max health but they removed the cast time.

They've never canceled a major set of sweeping changes like this. Maybe in a patch or two they would revert some things that failed to deliver (like the dot buff and then nerf). They're pretty resistant to community feedback on stuff like this. For example, the changes to bosmer passives and account wide achievements generated tremendous pushback, yet the changes went live and were maintained.

It seems very likely that this will go live largely as we see it today, with only minor adjustments.

offbymyself

I don't see how these changes are viable. Hps will be cut nearly in half and will cause some content to actually be less achievable for some groups. Falgravn HM is already a struggle for healers who can't keep their hots down. Imagine their heals ticking every 2 seconds instead of 1 when the pulsing on final floor takes about 50% of the dps's health every pulse on a per second basis. How about baneful checks in Cloudrest HM or the damage taken by maelstrom in Taleria? Large amounts of damage can't be taken on a per second basis with healing being received on a bi second basis and ZOS actually expecting us to sustain as healers while keeping people alive. Unless our heals are ticking on 12 players per tick instead of 6 or the heals per tick are going to be doubled, you just ruined healing in pve end game. You've made our healing spammable cost more per cast last patch and now resto HAs are going to give less mag back, so are you forcing us to use the Asylum and Maelstrom restos now too?

What about tanks? Warden tanks don't have shields and mitigation like a DK so they'll now struggle with healing. Necro tanks have ghost and self-healing, which are both being nerfed.

Dps arguments are plentiful but the fact remains that you keep creating content with dps checks, like Xalvakka HM, that many groups already can barely meet the requirements to complete. These changes to LAs and dots are not going to improve the quality of play for this type of content.

We get that the end game communuty isn't where your money comes from, but why make end game content even more unattainable? Your logic is that you're trying to be more inclusive but you're actually just going to alienate anyone who wants to improve and work towards trial clears/titles/trifectas. Are we supposed to just wait a few years and you'll nerf these trials like you did Halls of Fabrication to make it more attainable for newer players? You're taking the satisfaction of 'getting good' out of the game and soon role players will be all that's left.

prof_doom

offbymyself wrote: »

We get that the end game community isn't where your money comes from, but why make end game content even more unattainable? Your logic is that you're trying to be more inclusive but you're actually just going to alienate anyone who wants to improve and work towards trial clears/titles/trifectas. Are we supposed to just wait a few years and you'll nerf these trials like you did Halls of Fabrication to make it more attainable for newer players? You're taking the satisfaction of 'getting good' out of the game and soon role players will be all that's left.

The thing is that they're not going to keep players once they start to realize they don't have a chance of actually doing a third of the content in the game.

lpfan678

First Impression: I ran my Magicka Templar through Fungal I, normal, solo on PTS (no oakensoul). I can feel the DPS drop, especially in trash fights. It takes longer to clear groups. I died a lot more easily in boss fights as the changes to Sweeps have hurt its survivability. This patch is way too much all at once.

We've been saying to ZOS for literal years that this approach to change doesn't work and here we are again. I've been playing for EIGHT years and I feel so exhausted. I'm so tired of relearning this game. I understand that change is necessary, but for the last f*****g time ZOS, this isn't how to do it.

L_Nici

I am sorry, but this patch is propably the worst in all of ESOs worst Patch history. The LA Nerf alone makes it a bad patch already, especially as you tried it before and got terrible backlash for it. But then I scroll along and see the massive nerfs to Stamsorcs...

Yes Stamsorcs were great this patch after 8 years of being worthless and that only due to a very specific niche playstyle using a bugged set. But now you obliterate the entire class.
41.5% Crystal Weapon Nerf fine, I can live with it, as I never used it because its clunky on EU and often doesn't even work, but indeed dealt a ton of damage if it worked, but nerfing Bound Armaments by 38% AND taking away its passive buff to no replacement makes it just a 10 times worse skill than Bound Aegis, which gained Minor Protection. Then the nerf to Dark Deal, the only "Burst"-heal in the entire game that can be interrupted due to its insanely long casttime, by increasing its cost by 300 while reducing the duration by 10 seconds, thats just insane. And on top of that you even nerfed Hurricane for literally no reason at all.

I am sorry, but if this patch goes live, I fear the last fragments of the PvP players, which are already pretty much non existent, as you don't even get Grey Host locked during primetime anymore, will just leave.

I am especially sorry for Stamsorc mains who played it in 8 years always trying to make it work, because it never got any love until Crystal Weapon, always being the underdog compared to far more viable classes like DK or Templar, that now get such disrespecting patch.

OnyxProphet

I’ve played since before One Tamriel, I just don’t post much. I’ve worked in software for over 17 years, and I feel the need to comment.

- Light Attack Weaving Nerf

There were several ways to fix the situation, and whoever created this option should seriously reconsider. This does not bolster casual/handicapped players…this just punishes the people who love your game enough to practice an absurd graphical glitch ZOS decided to keep in place.

Instead, remove this lazy nerf, and spend some time adding an “auto weave” option to the gameplay settings. If this option is on, the player cannot animation cancel light attacks, and each ability does an additional X damage. This also counts as a light attack for abilities/sets that require light attacks. The X damage boost should allow someone wearing best in slot, golded gear to parse at about 70k dps if they manage to cycle through their abilities.

Disable this function for pvp.

- Oakensoul

It’s overtuned in PvP, but great in PvE. This actually accomplished what you wanted in PvE. Remove this broad nerf and instead keep it as is for PvE, and change all the buffs to Minor in PvP.

- DoT and Damage Nerfs

You’re punishing casual players. You need to stop doing that. I agree with the lengthening of DoTs, as a uniform duration will make rotations easier. However, you’re also lengthening Time to Kill, without adjusting obnoxiously huge “bag of hit point” monsters. People improve their dps because beating on a bag of hit points for 12 minutes straight is not fun. You are creating artificial difficulty, and that is not ideal.

(Edited to be more polite)