PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Pet

I think the double duration/tick half as frequently change is a poor choice. It's not something that even makes sense, and just hurts gameplay, especially when it comes to healing (both in pve and pvp). Look at mechanics such as blood fountains in vet Kyne's Aegis, Lokkestiiz's static on HM, or Tideborn Taleria's maelstrom attack that both tick every .33 seconds, heals ticking every 2s (max one ticking per second since you can stagger hots to be once every 1s gcd) is significantly less healing on attacks that are already designed to be healchecks.
This design choice also makes rotations for damage dealers bland and the same across all classes. eg. place your 5-6 dots, cast spammables for 14-15 seconds in a row, repeat. There's no longer any diversity across classes. We all run a mixture of mag and stam skills, we're all running the same sets. There's no longer any sort of "play how you want" since the way of playing best is just to hybridise in every situation regardless.
The wording of the reasoning for all of these changes (things like "allowing players to play *how they want*" or "we're lowering the skill gap between casual players and hardcore raiders) is just totally the opposite of what these changes actually do. You're nerfing damage across the board, that is only going to hurt lower players as well as the higher end. Implementing a tutorial for weaving, applying buffs/debuffs, the important of DoT skills, etc is the much better way imo of introducing people to weaving, doing more for the group overall, etc.
Please look at some of these changes before pushing them to live. Things like nerfing LA damage are totally fine, and I don't honestly think many people are against that. Lowering damage overall with just flat nerfs is okay, but nerfing the damage of every single DoT, and LAs, and the best skills of each class, it's just total overkill imo and is very ruining to the experience of all players who do even the most simple content like world bosses, not just trifecta-level raiders.

Krym

Tannus15 wrote: »

make it the undaunted intro quest. they are the dungeon people, that's when damage and builds start to matter.
have a tanking tutorial, a healing tutorial and a dps tutorial.

the game is 8 years old, the fundamentals didn't change, there's information all over the internet still valid, doesn't matter.
the intro tutorial has been reworked almost every new chapter, didn't matter.
the game outright tells you when to block and interrupt and how, doesn't matter.
there's plenty of opportunity to learn how the game works already.

Faulgor wrote: »

Anything else but "cycle through your DOTs and then spam, and don't forget your weaves".

that's already the case for most classes. the only thing that changed in that regard were certain skill timings/functionality and a longer spam window. the rest was damage numbers.

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

🥺 please notice this

Restoration Staff now restores 2970 Magicka, down from 3219.

This isn't balance because destro staff has built in sustain passive based in kills along with cp passive to resto magicja based on kills

DPS have a lot more methods to sustain then healers.

it's a slottable competing with better options, and in prolonged fights hardly used because there isn't enough stuff to kill to trigger it and make it worth it.

ESO_Nightingale

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Screaming Cliff Racer (morph): This morph now increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 100 for 10 seconds after hitting an enemy and increases by an additional 200 when hitting an Off Balance enemy, rather than increasing its damage by up to 15% based on your distance from the enemy. The bonus Weapon and Spell Damage is tracked separately so you do not need to worry about losing the bonus when hitting an enemy that is no longer Off Balance.


Please make sure this is balanced with sorc passive that increases spell and weapon damage. It seems to me sorc passive needs a buff

I don't understand what your problem with warden is, but i don't think you understand that offbalance has a pretty long cooldown. This spammable is still roughly designed and while it's a bit better, it's still not as good as something like molten whip. You don't seem to have paid attention to advanced species being entirely crippled for pve because it's now penetration instead of damage. Which is a much better comparison for the sorc weapon and spell damage passive.

They tend to historically get buffs without looking at other classes.

How do you know what they look at? Pve dps and pvp dps especially tend to not ever get what they need or even what the playerbase of warden wants until years after the fact. They've historically filled our class with raw named buffs instead of actually making solid changes that listen to feedback, in fact their historical changes have shown that they don't have any vision for the class. They didn't listen to any feedback about the feel of dive, which is still awful and has been since summerset, getting worse in Dragonhold. they didn't listen to feedback about natures grasp and it's morphs being awful and have nerfed it several times after that, they adamantly refuse to give us an on-demand stun, and for the longest time literally ignored us saying we need a solid burst heal that scales off wep/spell damage, we only got that this patch, but only after listening to people who think it's a good idea that the class have SIX max stat scaling healing skills. They haven't listened that a huge portion of us want more frost damage skills/morphs on the class.

If we need more damage their solution is to find a raw damage buff we don't yet have, and to give it to us. This happened with minor vuln and breach, this also happened with off balance to some degree as well. Another solution they come up with is to just increase our passive raw damage effects, look at piercing cold and when they tried to buff advanced species to 3%.

The class was never designed well from a damage dealer's perspective. The one damage skill that we have that is interesting is scorch. There is an entire design that could have been focused around that concept of frontal aoe. Instead they just filled the rest of the class with a ranged spammable, a ranged single target Dot and a generic ground aoe DoT. There is so much potential to give this class a truely unique design centered around scorch and arctic blast/northern storm. But zenimax doesn't care. They just don't.

TmzOS

Giving ideas based on the unsatisfaction of the community:

• Increase the new LA damage by ~30%.

I'm not a fan of animation cancel (in any game I played), it usually creates a non organic flow of combat, but since the devs took too much time to remove, is hard to just delete it now. The idea to reduce it to flat damage isn't bad, but the numbers are too low IMO and apparently the idea to reduce the relevance of weaving has failed.

• Adjust trials and dlc vet content for the new pattern. Game devs usually make games on actual trend situations of their game, so you need to keep things in the same average to not break the game itself for the players.

I guess it's an obvious point.

• Cut down damage and health numbers by half (can possibly help in performance issues, will be the same but with smaller numbers);

Less numbers, more performance, not so easy to implement tbh. I feel that some changes are aligned to performance improvements

• You want to nerf weaving, fine, but remember there are builds that rely on LA, so you can't just kill the damage of related skills, you are literaly killing classes with it (that people worked hard to build up). Those contexts works separated, weaving is weaving, LA+skills are LA+skills.

It's about game dynamics. When you change one it usually affect others, an example is the Crystal Weapon nerf, if LA already lost it's scaling CW is already nerfed, so you need to be careful adding another nerf over it.

Sorry for any misunderstandings. Waiting next patches.

bluehomeos

LA,HA nerf really ruin my fantasy experience. i played pts after first comment, questing and do solo dungeon, this la, ha nerf feels really bad. 6000 wpd orc 2h warrior do 4000 heavy attack ( even his huge arm ) seems really bad...

Shagreth

I support big changes when it comes to combat, the combat in ESO is one of its biggest weaknesses, weaving is part of the reason. The game also needs (desperately) new/updated animations, abilities and even models. The changes proposed are good on paper but there needs to be tons of adjustments, lastly -- separate COMPLETELY PvP with PvE, it will take more work on your part but ESO has a lot of players that care for PvP, so they kinda deserve it. You will also have a LOT less PvE people crying over nerfs. Also, rework vampirism completely please (including the feeding system so we get to actually feel like one) last but not least, fix the European Server and Cyrodiil lag. Godspeed.

Facehead_McGee

Light and Heavy Attacks
-Very noticeable.
-Worse.
-Parsing and nBRP. I’ve been in nBRP and vBRP a lot and am familiar with them. Stamden 98k dps live vs 21 m Atro Dummy. PTS 77k dps with the same setup.
-Light attacks had no meaningful impact in nBRP. Only a sliver of an add’s health bar would shave off.

Damage over Time
-Yes very noticeable on PTS.
-Worse.
-The extreme duration of all abilities was noticeable everywhere.
-No changes, the combat was not interesting so I didn’t feel like spending time with it.
-In nBRP sub assault felt unusable; the second proc was too slow to go off and I wasted time trying to keep it lined up. Up front damage seemed very low. Only adds that stayed put in my AOE damage seemed to go down in a similar time as the same adds on live. Because the abilities lasted so long it felt like I was throwing some stuff on the ground and then just sat there watching the adds, waiting for them to perish not really doing anything. It wasn’t as exciting as it is on live. Winters revenge felt like it had too little impact and so did warden overall. Warden felt gutted.

Healing over Time
-Very noticeable HoT changes on PTS.
-Worse in the extreme.
-I took my healer into nBRP solo as a test. The delay between heal ticks was very noticeable against normal trash mobs, incoming damage was too much. The action felt sluggish because of the massive delay waiting for heal effect. The content seems designed for the current, typically 1 second tick healing system. The proposed 2 second changes and nerfs don’t align at all with incoming content damage.
-Energy Orb seems mandatory. Healing springs might be needed for sustain. Sustain is bad. Abilities seem so sluggish to give benefit I’m tempted to only cast orb and spam combat prayer. Radiating Regeneration felt super weak, did not feel it was worth the time to cast. Radiating Regerationn’s nerf is concerning as this skill is needed when fights become mobile.
-It all felt wrong I did not like any of it on PTS.
-I’ve healed for years both PvP and PvE. I started on Xbox and later moved to PC. I’ve healed Trial Trifectas. I’ve healed my way to Emperor! I enjoy healing greatly and consider myself a healer main. The U35 PTS healing isn’t fun and I feel it won’t work in the content where players need healing.

“Neither of the adjustments should make healing in PvE environments terribly difficult either, as there is an overabundance of over-healing in those encounters,…”

-Developer Comment, PTS Patch Notes v8.1.0, Bruno, G. July 2022

In my opinion the above statement about over-healing misses the mark. I believe: “Over-healing” is Proactive Damage Management. That is, Healers layer multiple heals in anticipation of damage they cannot react in time to. An example would be a newer tank missing a block, suddenly & unexpectedly, needing a heal immediately. Proactive Damage Management (over-healing) for groups is necessary. It serves as their safety net. It functions with how content was designed especially hard modes. It also functions to keep up sets like Spell Power Cure. New and experienced PvE players are negatively impacted by healing nerfs and additional complexity such as Update 35 will create.

I feel the Update 35 combat changes need to be scrapped. The experience was that bad. I have been enjoying the hybridization changes; however, the frequency and scale of sweeping, game-redefining changes seems to be increasing too much.

Arwin

My main concern about the proposed changes would be the increased emphasis on spammables. My opinions on the direction itself would be muddled by subjectivity and status quo bias so I'll leave that to other people and the dev team.

However, I do believe the supposed change to have conditional (yet potential) perma-critical on surprise attack would be ridiculously overtuned in this new setting. I play all classes so I'm quite flexible and willing to adjust for FOTM, but that seems a little excessive in both PvE and PvP environments.

Another less glaring (not necessarily less important) issue would be the lack of all three melee, aoe & ranged spammables for each class to give them more freedom in weapon selection.

renne

Kusto wrote: »

Nerfs are fine as long as classes are balanced. I don't wanna play different class only because mine got destroyed. Currently necro and templar are way ahead others. Either nerf them more or buff others.

They literally gutted burning light and jabs - you know, our iconic class spammable which is now useless in face of the DW spammable being better for the class - but by all means nErF tEmPaLrS mOrE.

renne

Mr_Stach wrote: »

I don't think it's fair to rail on Kevin because he drew the short straw in responding to Feedback, however vaguely it was.

It's his job, it's actually his job.

He gets paid real life money to do this as "forum manager" and if anything he and the senior community manager should be posting way more especially in light of the pretty intense response this PTS has receieved. Instead we get some vague "not the same PTS1 as PTS5" and wishy washy "we're hearing your feedback" without actually adressing that this whole PTS is clearly causing genuine distress in the community.

It's been 5 days and this is the only response. It's not good enough.

PrincessOfThieves

renne wrote: »

It's been 5 days and this is the only response. It's not good enough.

Especially when it sounds like they're keeping these changes, no matter what.
It's really disappointing.

francesinhalover

No, don't make adjustments, 99% of the update is Not worth it.
the dot changes are bad
the heal changes are bad
the light attack changes are bad
oakensul was overnerfed
all classes especialy sorc were Extremely nerfed

, just nerf slighly or rework oakensul, and nerf or revert crystal weapon, that's all.
No need to do anything else, unless it's actual buffs to classes struggling.

ZOS_Icy

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Troodon80

Troodon80 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if they "stealth nerfed" ALL dot and hot gear sets (such as winters respite and pillar of nirn that arent even mentioned in the patch notes), yeah this is absolutely going to horrendously kill healing and dot gameplay

Before we jump to conclusions, Winter's Respite already only ticks for 2 second intervals even on Live and I don't believe Pillar of Nirn has been touched (at least not according to its PTS tooltip). Which doesn't ease the healing aspect which I mentioned previously.

Edited to add:

Pillar of Nirn also ticks for 2s intervals on Live. According to my Combat Metrics, Pillar of Nirn will lose approximately 2.2% DPS from Live to PTS.

Just to clarify with a little extra testing here. @Necrotech_Master

Pillar of Nirn vs. Kinras on PTS:



Pillar of Nirn is getting approximately the same results from Live to PTS, but due to the overall decrease on AoE/DoT DPS, Pillar and other DoT sets seem to be performing on par or better than those other buff sets, at least from the results I'm seeing. I should also mention that the results are skewed slightly in favour of Kinras, too, since I didn't start with ultimate on the Pillar of Nirn test, and Pillar of Nirn still got overall better results (it could have been around 102k~103k or maybe higher if I had ultimate at the start).

Edited to clarify: Pillar of Nirn front bar also means you have some additional leeway in how long you can be on your back bar for with less overall punishment for not flipping back and forth.

ShadowProc

Kusto wrote: »

Nerfs are fine as long as classes are balanced. I don't wanna play different class only because mine got destroyed. Currently necro and templar are way ahead others. Either nerf them more or buff others.

I would suggest taking a little more into consideration when making rl decisions like that. Overall this has been an amazing game. I make mental notes of who was involved in the decision making for changes or lack of changes.

Those are the games I will avoid in the future. Remember, often developers often move around or to other companies.

Elsonso

Pet wrote: »

I think the double duration/tick half as frequently change is a poor choice. It's not something that even makes sense, and just hurts gameplay, especially when it comes to healing (both in pve and pvp).

Honestly, the engineering blood running through my veins suggests that there is more to the story. I maintain that these changes are an absolute boon if the dev team is looking to improve server performance . By increasing the time between ticks from 1 second to 2 seconds, they can effectively double the DoT load the server can handle, without changing any thing else. This has to be a powerful aphrodisiac for a studio searching for performance improvements.

I feel like the same could apply to the Light Attacks, but with less bang for the buck.. Thanks to weaving, Light Attacks happen a lot, so the pending change should reduce the server-side calculations. The results probably are not as spectacular, though.

Performance may not be the primary reason, but I can't imagine that this topic never came up. Performance is a Big Thing, their Achilles Heel, and if I were them, I would certainly consider at anything that could help.

Changes like this would have been thought of a long long time ago. To arrive here they need to be sure that this is what they want to do. This upsets the apple cart in a big way and is not a decision to take lightly.

My expectation for Week 2 is no significant changes, mainly bug fixes identified by QA. Week 3, I expect them to dig in on the 2 second ticks, double duration, and LA/HA changes, but adjust the numbers to help counter how long, boring, and weak the combat is. If I were them, I would have a couple different configurations for consideration and would load up a Plan B that best addresses player complaints from this week.

They could reverse all or part of this, but I don't expect them to do this. It is a lot of work to reverse stuff, with secondary impacts all over the place. I doubt we would be here if they were not absolutely sure that this is the direction they want to take.

shadyjane62

RevJJ wrote: »

I understand that changes cannot be done overnight. But with this amount of uproar it would be better if there was more communication than “just give it a couple of weeks”. Players have already quit because they expect that PTS feedback will be ignored (because most of the time it is). There are many more that are in waiting mode to see if it goes live like this, and if it does they will quit as well.

It’s doing irreparable damage to trust that was already thin to begin with, not just to ESO but possibly the whole company.

In a few years when the Star Wars MMO that ZOS is working on will be released, I’ll probably think “oh nice, a new Star Wars MMO! Let me try… oh wait it’s by ZOS. Never mind”. And I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

This is what my husband says. After wasting my money a sub here and listening to me for last 5 days, he says no way will we ever trust them again.

iaminc

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, we want to follow up on the conversations around the U35 combat changes. First, thanks to everyone who have tested the changes and provided detailed and constructive hands-on feedback. We have been reading your feedback and reviewing the testing data since PTS launched earlier this week, and we are continuing that process. We are exploring some adjustments based on testing findings for PTS week 3 and beyond. We’ll share details about those next week.

We also ask that players please keep in mind that PTS is a test server. Numbers presented in PTS1 are often different than what appears in PTS5. Keeping this in mind, we’ll continue to review feedback and make adjustments as needed.

Thanks for your continued patience as we continue our testing on the PTS - please keep the hands-on feedback coming.

On behalf of the “tiresome and disappointing” player base we thank you for some communication however vague.

Gederic

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, we want to follow up on the conversations around the U35 combat changes. First, thanks to everyone who have tested the changes and provided detailed and constructive hands-on feedback. We have been reading your feedback and reviewing the testing data since PTS launched earlier this week, and we are continuing that process. We are exploring some adjustments based on testing findings for PTS week 3 and beyond. We’ll share details about those next week.

We also ask that players please keep in mind that PTS is a test server. Numbers presented in PTS1 are often different than what appears in PTS5. Keeping this in mind, we’ll continue to review feedback and make adjustments as needed.

Thanks for your continued patience as we continue our testing on the PTS - please keep the hands-on feedback coming.

As always Kevin, you are supremely appreciated, but the devs themselves, busy as they may be, need to start communicating too. This update received far and away more backlash then any previous set of patches or changes and I've been here since before beta. Half of my raiding guild seems to have already given up and filling even an open run has become far more difficult, Craglorn has been comparatively dead, and many cores are already looking at having to replace many people or disband. I mean I'm watching friends who returned at high isle scramble to get a high parse before these changes or straight up quit again. These changes were that disheartening and while I will refrain from further judgment on changes until Week 3, this community needs something more. As others have rightfully pointed out, tweaks aren't going to really cut it here as there seems to be a fundamental difference in which way the devs want this to go and how many of the players want this to go and changing a few numbers here and there doesn't change the fact that at the core of this the combat was altered in two massive ways that change the rhythm of the game entirely much to the chagrin of many in the community.

To be honest I think you should just release the dungeons with perhaps some minor balance changes. 20 second dots/hots and LA damage that is the same from a 10k weapon damage dps to a 60k pure tank simply doesn't add up, doesn't raise the floor, and primarily harms mid tier players. Hopefully with constructive feedback and a continued conversation we can make something meaningful to raising the floor, at minimum a tutorial (and no not just some loading screen text flashing by) would go a tremendous way in at least bringing awareness to many on how to start hitting those numbers. If you think the high end still needs to be adjusted lets talk about that, it can be insanely high numbers, but changes that strip what make this game unique to begin with aren't in my opinion an effective way of reigning in DPS.

Anyway, here's to hoping for the best. I know it may not seem it but you and the devs are generally appreciated (they gave us this game to begin with after all) but please for the love of god don't kill people's desire to do endgame.

deleted230224-002325

Just made some tests. My dps got cut in half, new jab is awful...

OMG I thought Zenimax couldn't demolish its game more than that, but it seems they just did it.

If this is the current version we'll play on, I bet many, many players will leave.

blktauna

Krym wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

make it the undaunted intro quest. they are the dungeon people, that's when damage and builds start to matter.
have a tanking tutorial, a healing tutorial and a dps tutorial.

the game is 8 years old, the fundamentals didn't change, there's information all over the internet still valid, doesn't matter.
the intro tutorial has been reworked almost every new chapter, didn't matter.
the game outright tells you when to block and interrupt and how, doesn't matter.
there's plenty of opportunity to learn how the game works already.
.

Not everyone looks for information 'all over the internet'. This is their system, they need to teach it. When I started in Morrowind almost nothing was explained. While I loved firemoth island it was not terribly informative. People want to start right away and don't always remember wall of info. Nowhere was rotation spoken about, nowhere was it made clear about dots and timing, CC break and immunnity (a total lie in my experience but thats something else entirely), how to calculate damage, how to block or why etc. In a game of people usually soloing I guess this isn't an immediate need, but I'd reached lvl 50 with no idea about how to build a build. No idea what the enchantments meant, or the traits, I mean invigorating just why? I also used sword and shield at first because as a re enactor, I'm familiar with them but puncture draws aggro and the tank in the dungeon rage quit. I had no idea why as it was my second day in. Yes you could play the way you wanted and for most of us it was obviously poorly because there was no instruction or prep for anything group related. When I got stuck in a dungeon with 2 dps who rage quit, I met a lovely guild leader who took me into his guild and started teaching me. This was all basic stuff that should in no way be a mystery.

So merrily I rolled along doing dungeons and getting more proficient and aware of how to use skills better until I got Spindleclutch 2. The gap between 1 and 2 is big, like big. IT was shocking but not as shocking as first vet dungeon where the gap was HUGE. No preparation anywhere for that leap. I still avoid them and I can (until this nonsense goes live) solo several of them.

To the issue of tutorials. Yes the newest one is the most informative and best laid out yet but it still doesn't cover everything. Nor should it. It does beginner stuff adequately. I think the idea of the undaunted tutorial is great. Explain roles, tools and give an idea of a basic rotation for the roles. Rather like the cyrodil intro quest.

People benefit from education

Slidell_70458

I took my Oakensoul Magplar through my favorite places in Coldharbor and was sorely disappointed. All combat took so much longer, it wasn't any fun.

The Oakensoul ring took a major debuff in it's PTS when the effects were changes to named effects thus not allowing them to stack. To give it another major debuff at this point is just wrong. If it is overpowered in Cyrodil then nerf it in Cyrodil only.

To have AoE tick every two seconds allows opponents to run through them with no damage, or in the case of heal your allies die before another tick takes place. Please put it back to one second.

Destai

renne wrote: »

Mr_Stach wrote: »

I don't think it's fair to rail on Kevin because he drew the short straw in responding to Feedback, however vaguely it was.

It's his job, it's actually his job.

He gets paid real life money to do this as "forum manager" and if anything he and the senior community manager should be posting way more especially in light of the pretty intense response this PTS has receieved. Instead we get some vague "not the same PTS1 as PTS5" and wishy washy "we're hearing your feedback" without actually adressing that this whole PTS is clearly causing genuine distress in the community.

It's been 5 days and this is the only response. It's not good enough.

I wish whoever was setting the priorities above him understood this sentiment. I can't blame him, I'm sure he's doing all he can, put fundamentally fault lay with whoever is telling the devs to not come here.

@ZOS_Kevin Is there a way you can get developer commentary at least? There's so many good comments here and there's incredible value in having official discussion around it.

Slidell_70458

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?

Who said NBs were mad?

Greeed2025

This opinion comes from someone who did all 4man content trifectas on multiple classes and on every role. So I can say i have a vague picture of how tanks dd and healers perform and should perform in 4 man content and how high or low dps and hps numbers are in different dungeon content.

Light and Heavy Attacks
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? Yes
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? I'm not sure about the number for Heavy Attacks since i m not utilizing those for dps. The nerf for the LA isn't a bad idea on its own in my opinion. It surely lowers the gap between end game players and beginners who have difficulties implementing LA weaving BUT only in regards to light attack damage which is only 1 part of the overall dps. But i m not 100% against lowering/adjusting LA damage
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. The only thing that was noticable in parsing and dungeon for me was the overall drastic lower dps. Only in the cmx you can see the drastically lower dps numbers from light attack which now is not the 2nd or 3rd highest source for dps but instead 5th. Which is not a bad thing really in my opinion
Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning. YES, LA weaving is still 100% necessary for trials/dungeon content and still makes a difference, since its still not only about the LA damage its also about achieving high APM numbers, getting ressources and proccing sets/skills/enchantments. There is still a big difference between a player who utilizes perfect light attack weaving and someone who doesn't which is a good thing since it should be rewarded to able to weave really efficient. Even tho the rewarding for this is a bit smaller it is still there, so i don't mind this change to much and rather think its not to horrible
Damage over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? YES
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? It is really really really bad
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. It was sadly really noticible in dungeon content and parsing. While I don't think that the LA damage nerf is not a bad idea the changes to Damage over time is just horrific. Dots ticking every 2 seconds instead of 1 is the worst thing you could implement for mobile and dynamic fights which is one of most enjoyable combats in this game like in veteran Hard mode Coral Aerie, Dread Cellar or Bosses as Bahsei in Trials like Rockgrove HM. Dots are hitting so much less damage ticks as before which results in much lower dps numbers as before in addition to the change that dots overall deal less damage it is really noticable. Dots never felt to powerful to begin with but now they just feel so so weak in comparison to now. Something you apply after really long 20second duration should feel effective and powerful.
After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning. No Dots are still needed to provide various buffs and debuffs and still deal more damage in most cases to a simple spammable over its full time of duration. But sadly only on parses. Dots are pretty much completly useless in dynamic and mobile boss fights. I wasn't casting a single spammable in vSR HM on 2nd and 3rd except for Wall of elements since its still needed for the proc. And even then i just straight up didn't cast them because they feel soooo weak and useless.
While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience? Yes like mentioned above. I have 3 points to make to these changes. First the extended durations while making them easier to keep up it was makes rotations just boring and not enjoyable at all. Even on the parse dummy where you have ideal conditions for your Dots to make the most damage since its static. 20 second durations are to long. But I m open for durations around 12-14 seconds which still makes keeping up dots for beginner fairly easy without the need to spam a simple spammable 20+. times in a row. Especially for Necromancers which sometimes 8 to 9 dots on their skill bars. If lowering the skill cap in regards to Damage over time abilities is the main objektive i think other areas should be adjusted. Dots should have similar duration numbers, buffs and debuffs like minor and major breach from shalks or grave and minor brittle or status effects should have longer duration numbers. I m a huge fan of the change to empowering grasp and its longer duration on empower. But the light attack nerf negated one of the only good change ironically.
Healing over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? YES
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? WORSE
What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point. Dungeons mostly
After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Healing over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning. No even tho the effectiveness of Hots are dropped unimaginable low they are very limited and still necessary to proc sets like Master Restoration Staff and providing healing. So you don't really have a choice there
While using Healing over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience? I couldn't come up with a single good reasoning or intention behind this change. Seaunicorn explained it already in her post in the pts forums and i couldnt have said it better. The change to healing over time is even worse then the change to dots. It makes content like dungeon trifectas so much more inaccessible then it was ever before. Damage tiking every 1 second or even lower like in veteran Stone Garden HM made burst healing even more important for survivability but with this change I cant imagine healing through the tank for the old fashioned achievement
How do you feel about the healing experience and its overall impact in your primary activities (PvP/Dungeons/Solo/Trials)? Has your sentiment changed based on these PTS adjustments? Like mentioned above. Not a single positive thing. I cant even suggest a change or different idea because i couldnt come up with a single good reasoning behind these changes to healing over time and just want to know why.

sbr32

RevJJ wrote: »

I understand that changes cannot be done overnight. But with this amount of uproar it would be better if there was more communication than “just give it a couple of weeks”. Players have already quit because they expect that PTS feedback will be ignored (because most of the time it is). There are many more that are in waiting mode to see if it goes live like this, and if it does they will quit as well.

It’s doing irreparable damage to trust that was already thin to begin with, not just to ESO but possibly the whole company.

In a few years when the Star Wars MMO that ZOS is working on will be released, I’ll probably think “oh nice, a new Star Wars MMO! Let me try… oh wait it’s by ZOS. Never mind”. And I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

Yep. Who does ZoS think is going to follow to their next project, whatever it is? The casual ES fans looking to play Skyrim online, or the endgame PvP/PvE communities? After this week the answer is neither.

BretonMage

Elsonso wrote: »

Pet wrote: »

I think the double duration/tick half as frequently change is a poor choice. It's not something that even makes sense, and just hurts gameplay, especially when it comes to healing (both in pve and pvp).

Honestly, the engineering blood running through my veins suggests that there is more to the story. I maintain that these changes are an absolute boon if the dev team is looking to improve server performance . By increasing the time between ticks from 1 second to 2 seconds, they can effectively double the DoT load the server can handle, without changing any thing else. This has to be a powerful aphrodisiac for a studio searching for performance improvements.

Having half their customers quit would also reduce server loads. They must really want it that badly.

But really, I hope they will either reverse the DoT change or come up with a better Plan B, because what we have on PTS is really not enjoyable to play.

Mr_Stach

Elsonso wrote: »

Honestly, the engineering blood running through my veins suggests that there is more to the story. I maintain that these changes are an absolute boon if the dev team is looking to improve server performance . By increasing the time between ticks from 1 second to 2 seconds, they can effectively double the DoT load the server can handle, without changing any thing else. This has to be a powerful aphrodisiac for a studio searching for performance improvements.

I feel like the same could apply to the Light Attacks, but with less bang for the buck.. Thanks to weaving, Light Attacks happen a lot, so the pending change should reduce the server-side calculations. The results probably are not as spectacular, though.

Performance may not be the primary reason, but I can't imagine that this topic never came up. Performance is a Big Thing, their Achilles Heel, and if I were them, I would certainly consider at anything that could help.

I think ultimately that's what this whole this is, a stability thing hiding behind a really poor mask of "accessibility"

I would much prefer a transparent candid approach, "we want to run a test to see if extending DoT Duration lower the impact on Server Stability, with this test we will also be reducing the power of DoTs across the board to lower the overall power of DoTs, if this does have substantial improvements then we will watch the damage to adjust to a better spot as we watch where the community settles"

MindOfTheSwarm

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Screaming Cliff Racer (morph): This morph now increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 100 for 10 seconds after hitting an enemy and increases by an additional 200 when hitting an Off Balance enemy, rather than increasing its damage by up to 15% based on your distance from the enemy. The bonus Weapon and Spell Damage is tracked separately so you do not need to worry about losing the bonus when hitting an enemy that is no longer Off Balance.


Please make sure this is balanced with sorc passive that increases spell and weapon damage. It seems to me sorc passive needs a buff

I don't understand what your problem with warden is, but i don't think you understand that offbalance has a pretty long cooldown. This spammable is still roughly designed and while it's a bit better, it's still not as good as something like molten whip. You don't seem to have paid attention to advanced species being entirely crippled for pve because it's now penetration instead of damage. Which is a much better comparison for the sorc weapon and spell damage passive.

They tend to historically get buffs without looking at other classes.

How do you know what they look at? Pve dps and pvp dps especially tend to not ever get what they need or even what the playerbase of warden wants until years after the fact. They've historically filled our class with raw named buffs instead of actually making solid changes that listen to feedback, in fact their historical changes have shown that they don't have any vision for the class. They didn't listen to any feedback about the feel of dive, which is still awful and has been since summerset, getting worse in Dragonhold. they didn't listen to feedback about natures grasp and it's morphs being awful and have nerfed it several times after that, they adamantly refuse to give us an on-demand stun, and for the longest time literally ignored us saying we need a solid burst heal that scales off wep/spell damage, we only got that this patch, but only after listening to people who think it's a good idea that the class have SIX max stat scaling healing skills. They haven't listened that a huge portion of us want more frost damage skills/morphs on the class.

If we need more damage their solution is to find a raw damage buff we don't yet have, and to give it to us. This happened with minor vuln and breach, this also happened with off balance to some degree as well. Another solution they come up with is to just increase our passive raw damage effects, look at piercing cold and when they tried to buff advanced species to 3%.

The class was never designed well from a damage dealer's perspective. The one damage skill that we have that is interesting is scorch. There is an entire design that could have been focused around that concept of frontal aoe. Instead they just filled the rest of the class with a ranged spammable, a ranged single target Dot and a generic ground aoe DoT. There is so much potential to give this class a truely unique design centered around scorch and arctic blast/northern storm. But zenimax doesn't care. They just don't.

I hate Scorch and have done since Warden was released. I don't use it on either Stamen or Magden. Clunky ability that makes up for most of Warden damage. I do not like the fact that I HAVE to run it to do decent DPS. If I don't want to run it and still do good DPS, I shouldn't have to. All of this wouldn't be an issue if we simply had more skills to choose from. Whether that be, spell crafting, third morphs or splitting Destro staff in three separate skill lines.

All this is irrelevant however, as we never really get what we ask for. We say we want "A" and don't want "B", so they give us "B". It's been the same old story for years. There is a reason I have never gone ESO plus. I choose what interests me and reject the rest.

FeedbackOnly

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

🥺 please notice this

Restoration Staff now restores 2970 Magicka, down from 3219.

This isn't balance because destro staff has built in sustain passive based in kills along with cp passive to resto magicja based on kills

DPS have a lot more methods to sustain then healers.

Also this is a problem for those healers who choice to double bar resto staves. They just won't have the sustain like DPS does