PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

QueuesAsTanks

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). 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.

Yes, as is these changes would drastically narrow the margin of error for healing, and would be felt harder by new healers than by anyone who already knows to layer HoTs and knows the mechanics of a fight well enough to anticipate damage.

The only case to be made for living with 1/2 frequency HoTs would be if enemy encounters behaved according to the same GCD rules. If the reason behind spacing out HoTs has to do with server load, would changing the rate of enemy DoT effects to 1/2 seconds while doubling enemy effect duration (similar to the player nerfs) be a reasonable workaround? I think that endgame healers would become very bored, but it would produce less server strain, and new healers wouldn't get kicked for constantly failing these .33s checks.

MudcrabAttack

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] Damage over Time

• Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
  • If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
  • 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.
• After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.
• While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?

Where the DOT changes will cause the biggest effect is with AOE fighting. Earlier I reported single target damage dropping around 20-25% but the AOE fighting is taking around 50-60% longer to complete when actively spamming an AOE (a 7 second AOE parse on live now takes 11 seconds on PTS as shown below, which is a 57% longer time).

AOE Parse on PTS



Same AOE Parse on Live



So now as my average group struggles to take down a boss with 20-25% less damage, we'll be spending 50-60% more time with its adds hammering at us (assuming that they're kind enough to stand in our little AOE circles the whole time) which will cause us to shift our strategies and focus down the adds, and spend even more time away from the boss.

While we're on the topic of focusing down a single thing, why on Nirn do single target DOTs hit with the same weakened damage as AOE DOTs, whereas single target spammables deal more damage than AOE spammables. I always thought that was a weird way to balance things. I'm not saying I like having weak AOE DOTs since they're going to make fights miserable, but if you had to choose a thing to drop it just seems illogical to slam everything all at once.

Jazraena

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.

Hi Kevin,

For a more indepth list of issues, I refer to this excellent post:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611505/why-the-changes-in-update-35-miss-the-mark-and-fail-to-fix-the-issues-that-it-seeks-to-address

I would however like to add a few things only partly covered in that post, especially in regards to your plan of addressing concerns in PTS Week 3 and a little personal matter. To that end, I'll start off with something I raised in that linked thread as well - Draugrkin's Grip. Niche set, I know. Bear with me.

In brief, you only recently (April, IIRC) addressed this set in a balance pass and reduced it's effectivity by roughly half against single targets, for it to add 330 damage to all damage done to a target (instead of 610, iirc). This set directly scales with the number of damage sources you have per second. In the current PTS iteration, you are cutting several damage source frequencies in half. Not to mince words, this set is now not even niche, it's non-viable trash.

The same goes for other, similar sets and skills whose effectivity scales directly with sources or chances per second. Storm-Cursed's Revenge, only recently introduced, is another set never to see use with these changes. Staple tools like a sorcerer's Critical Surge become unreliable.

Furthermore, there are niche sets like Elf Bane or Deadly Aim whose effectiveness have been effectively neutered, if indirect - as an example with Elf Bane, extending a 24 Second DoT (yes, 24, not 20, because of DK's class passives) to 29 is a bonus of <20% to DoT damage per cast, whose DPS has been neutered ontop anyway, vs an extension from 14 to 19 seconds, or over 34% as it was before , ontop of those DoTs being stronger to begin with. Deadly Aim buffing neutered DoTs and above all, Jabs, is equally relegated to irrelevancy. Nobody will give up a proper DPS set for those anymore.

Another issue is that due to the new 2 second tick rate we can no longer maintain full uptime on popular backbar enchants like Crusher or Berserker. These enchants have a cooldown of 9 seconds; 4,5 with the Infused trait. That means the 2 second tick rate will reliably refresh at second 6, and not at 5 before. They have a duration of 5 seconds, so we're missing out on 1s everytime.

Another item, DoT Durations. You wanted to harmonize DoT durations. I approve and have suggested to do so in the past. I even like the 20 second duration; but then, I have been working off 19s with my Elf Bane Mag DK for a while among other things; it's doable in theory. However, we don't actually get 20 seconds - we get 20 seconds plus bonuses from passives. A MagDK with Searing Strike, Engulfing Flames, Flames of Oblivion and Elemental Blockade is working off 14/14/15/14s duration in that order on Live. On PTS, due to the extra seconds from class passives and the unchanged Flames of Oblivion, it's 24/24/15/30. Alternatively, one could replace Blockade with Unstable Wall and get 24/24/15/20. As you can see, both are less consistent than they used to be, and thus complicate and not improve DoT tracking. It's one such example among many.

I could extend this list for a while, and the items on it grow as they're discovered daily. As minor as individual items sound, they speak to me of a crystal clear issue in their entire mass:

Your changes are incomplete and inconsistent and are contradicting your mission statement.

You are altering fundamental parts of the combat system without addressing the side effects these changes cause in the same patch, even very obvious and glaring ones like backbar enchant uptimes or class duration passives; what follow-on issues we haven't yet spotted I dare not to think of. You are also undoing balance passes and new additions as recent as 3 months ago. In other words, you are undoing months and years of design and balance passes and are relegating adjustments to make up for it to a later date. It's impossible to correct this over the timespan you have left to the Live patch, to speak nothing from PTS week 3 until Live. This is work for many months. The only alternative is leaving us with a broken mess of a game that we can't even properly build around because it invariably has to change significantly again at some point.

So I ask you just this: If this general approach is what you want to go with, forget Update 35, go back to the drawing board, and come back when it's done. This is not a finished product. This is a first draft that hasn't been proofread and math-checked, and forcing it or what minor changes you may make in a few weeks through will only tear through character builds not once, but at least twice.

To give you an impression - I am not someone who does trials. I do dungeons. Usually random or occasionally in non-optimized premades, normal, vet and HM. I make theme builds that I try to optimize within that theme for that content.
My best character is a DW/2H Stamblade. Despite overpenetrating, having too much sustain and running NMA/Tzogvin/Arena weapons, I do somewhere around 60 to 70k on the Live trial dummy. I still outperform 99% of any random DPS I meet in an actual dungeon and rarely get left behind to any significance. I'll likely loose ~25% DPS on the dummy, probably the same in actual content thanks to the Surprise Attack buff giving me more reliable burst.
My weakest character is a Magcro. Maormer/lightning-themed niche build with Draugrkin's Grip, Storm-Cursed's Revenge and Stormfist and many DoTs. Lightning Staff Front and Backbar. About 40k on the trial dummy; not great not terrible in actual content aside add-heavy bossfights were SCR goes a bit Nova. This character still eclipses two thirds of max level DPS I meet in the group finder. Your planned changes will turn this character non-viable. Not just weaker. I'm loosing half my DPS, easily.

For that char, I need to replace both 5 piece sets and completely reconstruct the entire build. I'm not too fond of the comical blastbones and graveyard, so I'll likely just shelve the Necro completely... which brings us neatly into my entire char lineup. I have 15 characters. I am, right now, in the comfortable situation where I'm actually done gearing all my chars, for the first time in a long while. Sure, I can optimize a wee bit here and there, change a Jewelry trait or two, gild out every last item and so on, but overall, I'm done.

The current PTS Notes will mean I have to adjust at least 13 of them if I'm generous; though I'd give the remaining 2 a pass to be certain in practice as well. My 3Templars - Stam, Mag and Tank - will require a complete rebuild in gear and skills - start from scratch. Same with my two Wardens; Bow DPS and Healer. Same with my Magcro and my no-magic-weapons-only Redguard 'Stamsorc'; the latter two I'll probably just shelf since I see no way to make them remotely viable for vet content again without breaking out of their theme. My 3 DK DPS - Mag, Stam and Hybrid - will require severe alterations due to the changes to the Whip and Elf Bane. My Magsorc will likely loose damage which will make me think twice about bringing her into vet content, and will have to replace Storm-Cursed - but hilariously, I at least have a boring meta set in storage to replace that 1:1 right away, but so much for build diversity. Similar with my Vamp Magblade. The rest... is mentioned Stamblade and a Nightblade and a Sorc Tank that'll be mostly fine I guess, aside doing even less damage.

And all that work this patch is causing me?

Once you have finished reigning everything back in, presuming it happens at once and not over 5 patches over 2 years, I will have to do it again.

A friend and I, a few years back, once discussed that unlike other MMOs like WoW, SWTOR or similar, ESO respects our time since our builds aren't relegated to irrelevancy with every new addon, and thus we can chill and enjoy our characters once we finish them.

This impression has grown increasingly shaky with your various changes, but at least we usually remained within a certain band of viability. With these changes, you are destroying viability.

You are no longer respecting our time invested.


We actually know how the game works and what we are doing, despite us not playing at the endgame. I'll leave it to your imagination how much more disastrous this is for people who do not.

Caribou77

In general, your stated goal of making the game accessible for “casual” players seems to have missed, based on a significant body of feedback from “casual” players.

The main effect of extending dots/decreasing dps, as well as significantly decreasing LA damage, has been a much slower, less dynamic play that produces ~25% dps loss for all, yes, all players.

The guiding “vision” driving these substantial changes seems to be to simplify gameplay (hit fewer buttons, and less often) while also slowing everything down.

I don’t think anyone looking for a good mmorpg wants this, i.e. your “casual”/new customer market.

Mr_Stach

Caribou77 wrote: »

In general, your stated goal of making the game accessible for “casual” players seems to have missed, based on a significant body of feedback from “casual” players.

The main effect of extending dots/decreasing dps, as well as significantly decreasing LA damage, has been a much slower, less dynamic play that produces ~25% dps loss for all, yes, all players.

The guiding “vision” driving these substantial changes seems to be to simplify gameplay (hit fewer buttons, and less often) while also slowing everything down.

I don’t think anyone looking for a good mmorpg wants this, i.e. your “casual”/new customer market.

I mean the big word that was pushed around was "Accessible." What exactly about these changes increase accessibility? You have made rotations more "Accessible"? Is that the goal to make it easier to do rotations? You did make it easier to do rotations I guess.

Accessibility to me means Ease of Access, places to go, that means content. If we look at it that way, it's a big failure. You made it easier to stand in a room pressing buttons on a dummy, but with that you lowered everyone's damage by 25% making Content less Accessible for people who were already struggling to get there, because Content is more than standing in a room pressing buttons, there's Mechanics and Movement and these changes deliberately slow that down.

You've lowered the floor but you still need to be x" high to enter. You've hurt the Casual and Mid-tier more than the top.

starkerealm

TmzOS wrote: »

• 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

For this to be true, you would have to drastically drop the numbers, halving them wouldn't be enough.

By this I mean, compact the numbers down to the point where you could store them as integers. Even at that point, the actual processing efficiency gain would be pretty marginal.

neferpitou73

Again, anyone who believes that these changes will have an impact on performance are kidding themselves. I've been here for years now. They've tried everything to fix performance except investing in the servers.

And when they finally tested new hardware for the servers, guess what happened? Performance in Cyrodiil saw a massive improvement for the first time in 3 years (of course they managed to screw that up in a single maintenance patch, but hey, it's a start).

K9002

I'd like to bring up much less ambitious but more common DPS checks than trial encounters. Those that happen in the easier veteran content and are attempted by far more people because the barrier to entry is much lower thanks to the group finder and smaller size of the group.

Banished Cells 2 - the dungeon that broke the spirit of countless tanks. Everyone does it, everyone wants their Maw of Infernal helmet, it's a popular crutch for people whose damage is rather low. Rilis has to be killed in a reasonable time or at some point there will be more daedroth than the tank could possibly keep taunted. Many groups can successfully finish that dungeon but just barely so. Now they will join the ranks of people who get stuck in that dungeon for hours and repeatedly get barbecued and chomped by the daedroth. As an Undaunted pledge, that is a dungeon which will be completely unfeasible to PUG. Why bother, just go normal and grab one key.

City of Ash 2 - Skoria doesn't wait. He will destroy that last platform and end the fight. Both hard mode and regular vet will be harder now. People who do their 2 key pledge might have to downgrade to 1 key, and those who are there just for the helmet might not be getting that helmet at all. This is a rather long dungeon, so a failure that comes at the very end stings much worse.

Fungal Grotto 2 - Gamyne Bandu, aka the PUG killer. I died while being pinned and helpless more times than I can count. I also got through this fight while sitting on the edge of my chair because my PUG broke the shadow ring at the last second. This will absolutely wreck the weaker groups. If they do pass that gateway, Vila Theran will be harder to manage without stepping in the bubble for a 2 key pledge. Heals are ticking only half as frequently in this patch. I can already feel the desperation of rookie healers.

Darkshade Caverns 2 - the Engine Guardian. While not really a DPS check, this is a fight that really exposes the failure of stretched DoT and HoT abilities. The spider keeps moving and while on live a well placed ground DoT will deliver most of its damage, on PTS it will be an utter waste of resources. The poison phase will be more difficult to manage with nerfed Radiating Regen. The self-healing of damage dealers will be lower as well, which will force them to adapt and slot a heal (sacrificing some damage) or ragequit while blaming the healer. Or more people will pull the lever and ruin a 2 key pledge. Oh, and there are some adds spawning throughout the fight. It will take longer to kill them too and people tend to underestimate the damage their attacks cause when there's several spheres in the room. Or when a healer patches them up only half as frequently as before.

Imperial City Prison - Lord Warden Dusk. The longer the fight goes on, the more draining orbs pop up all over the room. At some point it becomes impossible to stay out of their reach, and even the best healers are not able to outheal multiple orbs. The orbs also snare and make it much more difficult or outright impossible to reach the portals before the deadly explosion. The whole dungeon is overly long and tiresome too, people's frustration level by the time they reach the final boss is a bit higher than in other dungeons. This is remarkable because ICP is the first and easiest of veteran DLC dungeons, an important stepping stone in progression through veteran content.

MoniNightshadow83

Wow, the only commend I can leave is: [snip] You destroy the combat system with these decisions

[edited for bashing]

Necrotech_Master

Troodon80 wrote: »

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.

interesting, im thinking because all of our stuff is getting nerfed so hard, proc DoTs might almost be necessary to keep decent dmg

ive personally never used kinras, find it to be a little too gimmicky to try to keep up, but i do use pillar of nirn on my stamplar right now

i will keep an eye on the pts notes to see how things are adjusted, but it sounds like the majority of the gear will still be fine (or "better than before" if everything else is getting nerfed)

Morvan

Longer dots made the combat extremely boring, the only thing that makes the combat in ESO fluid and fun is the fast dynamics and weaving, spamming the same skills over and over while our dots last so long just killed all the fun for me, especially since I'm a main nightblade and I like rotating fast.

renne

K9002 wrote: »

I'd like to bring up much less ambitious but more common DPS checks than trial encounters. Those that happen in the easier veteran content and are attempted by far more people because the barrier to entry is much lower thanks to the group finder and smaller size of the group.

Banished Cells 2 - the dungeon that broke the spirit of countless tanks. Everyone does it, everyone wants their Maw of Infernal helmet, it's a popular crutch for people whose damage is rather low. Rilis has to be killed in a reasonable time or at some point there will be more daedroth than the tank could possibly keep taunted. Many groups can successfully finish that dungeon but just barely so. Now they will join the ranks of people who get stuck in that dungeon for hours and repeatedly get barbecued and chomped by the daedroth. As an Undaunted pledge, that is a dungeon which will be completely unfeasible to PUG. Why bother, just go normal and grab one key.

City of Ash 2 - Skoria doesn't wait. He will destroy that last platform and end the fight. Both hard mode and regular vet will be harder now. People who do their 2 key pledge might have to downgrade to 1 key, and those who are there just for the helmet might not be getting that helmet at all. This is a rather long dungeon, so a failure that comes at the very end stings much worse.

Fungal Grotto 2 - Gamyne Bandu, aka the PUG killer. I died while being pinned and helpless more times than I can count. I also got through this fight while sitting on the edge of my chair because my PUG broke the shadow ring at the last second. This will absolutely wreck the weaker groups. If they do pass that gateway, Vila Theran will be harder to manage without stepping in the bubble for a 2 key pledge. Heals are ticking only half as frequently in this patch. I can already feel the desperation of rookie healers.

Darkshade Caverns 2 - the Engine Guardian. While not really a DPS check, this is a fight that really exposes the failure of stretched DoT and HoT abilities. The spider keeps moving and while on live a well placed ground DoT will deliver most of its damage, on PTS it will be an utter waste of resources. The poison phase will be more difficult to manage with nerfed Radiating Regen. The self-healing of damage dealers will be lower as well, which will force them to adapt and slot a heal (sacrificing some damage) or ragequit while blaming the healer. Or more people will pull the lever and ruin a 2 key pledge. Oh, and there are some adds spawning throughout the fight. It will take longer to kill them too and people tend to underestimate the damage their attacks cause when there's several spheres in the room. Or when a healer patches them up only half as frequently as before.

Imperial City Prison - Lord Warden Dusk. The longer the fight goes on, the more draining orbs pop up all over the room. At some point it becomes impossible to stay out of their reach, and even the best healers are not able to outheal multiple orbs. The orbs also snare and make it much more difficult or outright impossible to reach the portals before the deadly explosion. The whole dungeon is overly long and tiresome too, people's frustration level by the time they reach the final boss is a bit higher than in other dungeons. This is remarkable because ICP is the first and easiest of veteran DLC dungeons, an important stepping stone in progression through veteran content.

This is a very, very good comment and something I didnt think about in terms of the DPS checks in the more less advanced level content that is also going to be deeply affected by these nerfs.

siddique

K9002 wrote: »

I'd like to bring up much less ambitious but more common DPS checks than trial encounters. Those that happen in the easier veteran content and are attempted by far more people because the barrier to entry is much lower thanks to the group finder and smaller size of the group.

Banished Cells 2 - the dungeon that broke the spirit of countless tanks. Everyone does it, everyone wants their Maw of Infernal helmet, it's a popular crutch for people whose damage is rather low. Rilis has to be killed in a reasonable time or at some point there will be more daedroth than the tank could possibly keep taunted. Many groups can successfully finish that dungeon but just barely so. Now they will join the ranks of people who get stuck in that dungeon for hours and repeatedly get barbecued and chomped by the daedroth. As an Undaunted pledge, that is a dungeon which will be completely unfeasible to PUG. Why bother, just go normal and grab one key.

City of Ash 2 - Skoria doesn't wait. He will destroy that last platform and end the fight. Both hard mode and regular vet will be harder now. People who do their 2 key pledge might have to downgrade to 1 key, and those who are there just for the helmet might not be getting that helmet at all. This is a rather long dungeon, so a failure that comes at the very end stings much worse.

Fungal Grotto 2 - Gamyne Bandu, aka the PUG killer. I died while being pinned and helpless more times than I can count. I also got through this fight while sitting on the edge of my chair because my PUG broke the shadow ring at the last second. This will absolutely wreck the weaker groups. If they do pass that gateway, Vila Theran will be harder to manage without stepping in the bubble for a 2 key pledge. Heals are ticking only half as frequently in this patch. I can already feel the desperation of rookie healers.

Darkshade Caverns 2 - the Engine Guardian. While not really a DPS check, this is a fight that really exposes the failure of stretched DoT and HoT abilities. The spider keeps moving and while on live a well placed ground DoT will deliver most of its damage, on PTS it will be an utter waste of resources. The poison phase will be more difficult to manage with nerfed Radiating Regen. The self-healing of damage dealers will be lower as well, which will force them to adapt and slot a heal (sacrificing some damage) or ragequit while blaming the healer. Or more people will pull the lever and ruin a 2 key pledge. Oh, and there are some adds spawning throughout the fight. It will take longer to kill them too and people tend to underestimate the damage their attacks cause when there's several spheres in the room. Or when a healer patches them up only half as frequently as before.

Imperial City Prison - Lord Warden Dusk. The longer the fight goes on, the more draining orbs pop up all over the room. At some point it becomes impossible to stay out of their reach, and even the best healers are not able to outheal multiple orbs. The orbs also snare and make it much more difficult or outright impossible to reach the portals before the deadly explosion. The whole dungeon is overly long and tiresome too, people's frustration level by the time they reach the final boss is a bit higher than in other dungeons. This is remarkable because ICP is the first and easiest of veteran DLC dungeons, an important stepping stone in progression through veteran content.

You missed the orignal pug killer of ESO. Grobul.
I can already imagine the pain. 🤣

starkerealm

siddique wrote: »

K9002 wrote: »

I'd like to bring up much less ambitious but more common DPS checks than trial encounters. Those that happen in the easier veteran content and are attempted by far more people because the barrier to entry is much lower thanks to the group finder and smaller size of the group.

Banished Cells 2 - the dungeon that broke the spirit of countless tanks. Everyone does it, everyone wants their Maw of Infernal helmet, it's a popular crutch for people whose damage is rather low. Rilis has to be killed in a reasonable time or at some point there will be more daedroth than the tank could possibly keep taunted. Many groups can successfully finish that dungeon but just barely so. Now they will join the ranks of people who get stuck in that dungeon for hours and repeatedly get barbecued and chomped by the daedroth. As an Undaunted pledge, that is a dungeon which will be completely unfeasible to PUG. Why bother, just go normal and grab one key.

City of Ash 2 - Skoria doesn't wait. He will destroy that last platform and end the fight. Both hard mode and regular vet will be harder now. People who do their 2 key pledge might have to downgrade to 1 key, and those who are there just for the helmet might not be getting that helmet at all. This is a rather long dungeon, so a failure that comes at the very end stings much worse.

Fungal Grotto 2 - Gamyne Bandu, aka the PUG killer. I died while being pinned and helpless more times than I can count. I also got through this fight while sitting on the edge of my chair because my PUG broke the shadow ring at the last second. This will absolutely wreck the weaker groups. If they do pass that gateway, Vila Theran will be harder to manage without stepping in the bubble for a 2 key pledge. Heals are ticking only half as frequently in this patch. I can already feel the desperation of rookie healers.

Darkshade Caverns 2 - the Engine Guardian. While not really a DPS check, this is a fight that really exposes the failure of stretched DoT and HoT abilities. The spider keeps moving and while on live a well placed ground DoT will deliver most of its damage, on PTS it will be an utter waste of resources. The poison phase will be more difficult to manage with nerfed Radiating Regen. The self-healing of damage dealers will be lower as well, which will force them to adapt and slot a heal (sacrificing some damage) or ragequit while blaming the healer. Or more people will pull the lever and ruin a 2 key pledge. Oh, and there are some adds spawning throughout the fight. It will take longer to kill them too and people tend to underestimate the damage their attacks cause when there's several spheres in the room. Or when a healer patches them up only half as frequently as before.

Imperial City Prison - Lord Warden Dusk. The longer the fight goes on, the more draining orbs pop up all over the room. At some point it becomes impossible to stay out of their reach, and even the best healers are not able to outheal multiple orbs. The orbs also snare and make it much more difficult or outright impossible to reach the portals before the deadly explosion. The whole dungeon is overly long and tiresome too, people's frustration level by the time they reach the final boss is a bit higher than in other dungeons. This is remarkable because ICP is the first and easiest of veteran DLC dungeons, an important stepping stone in progression through veteran content.

You missed the orignal pug killer of ESO. Grobul.
I can already imagine the pain. 🤣

We all wanted to.

It's worth noting that this will push some players under Bloodspawn's wipe mechanic. And, yes, Bloodspawn actually has a DPS check with a hard wipe on fail. It's stupidly low, but, if you want to see it on the PTS, this might be your first chance (outside of soloing the dungeon) in almost six years.

Rimskjegg

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

please keep the hands-on feedback coming.

It took me some time to get my feedback typed up, so my apologies for posting it a bit late. This is based on week 1 of PTS and I realize you are already in the process of making changes to the changes. However, I will take your word for it that you still want the feedback, and I trust you to be able to figure out for yourself if any of this might be rendered irrelevant by adjustments in week 3. Given how large and sweeping these changes are, however, I must admit I don't thinkall of it will be irrelevant unless week 3 were to simply scrap all of the fundamental changes to heavy attacks, DoTs and perhaps also pet performance.

Light and Heavy Attacks
I sure noticed Heavy attacks seemed to be doing very little damage, rendering what used to be a strong AoE damage effect rather impotent. This led to a much worse player experience as described below.

What activities did you primarily feel the differences in:
I played vet Maelstrom Arena, and then parsed on a 3 million HP target dummy, with Alcast's good old 1-bar Magicka petsorc build that has long been a staple beginner/accessible build specifically designed to let beginners clear this arena. Gear: Plague Doctor, Necropotence and Iceheart with Lightning Staff. Skills: Hardened Ward, Wall of Elements, Volatile Familiar, Critical Surge, Twilight Matriarch and Thunderous Rage. I realize this is an old build - but Maelstrom Arena is also old content, and what better way to test the "low-end experience" that the combat preview promised not to hurt, by using a beginner build? Also, with Plague Doctor the build never doesn't buff my offensive stats THAT much. The build isn't tailored for high damage, just enough enough to clear the arena. Instead, the focus is on a lot of defensive power for players who are not on top of every mechanic yet. For this reason I assumed flat light attack/heavy attack values wouldn't hurt the build too much. I got my first clear two years ago with this build on live and still use a somewhat altered version of it.

I won't place too much emphasis on my partial run of the arena itself because I realized too late that I had forgotten to spend more than 420 of my Champion points. Also, as Mundus, I originally used the Mage in the arena, as that is what Alcast recommended, but switched to the Thief later on when I realized that's what my live server character had on. I corrected these discrepancies between my live toon and my PTS toon before dummy parsing, however. And the difference in parsing between very similar setups is so great, I don't think the Champion Points and Mundus can account for all the different experience I had in the actual content.

Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?
I'll tackle these together as it was hard while doing the arena to really tell exactly what effects are caused by which changes. But it was abundantly clear that the combined impact of changing DoTs, heavy attacks and pet damage seemed to have a severe effect right from the very first stage of the arena. Everything felt like a slog, right from Maxus the Many, who took ages to kill and had three reflections up several times. Still, the first three stages of the arena did get cleared although they felt sluggish.
On the Control Guardian, however, I ran into serious problems. Before, it's been enough to activate my Familiar and lay down Wall, and while the Guardian walks, then heavy attack to get splash damage on adds and regen Magicka so I can keep up my defensive skills. I then try to use my Ulti when the boss stands still so it doesn't walk out of it. Maybe someone else can get better results, but for me, this no longer seemed enough to kill the boss before so many adds spawned that I got overwhelmed. I think I wiped four or five times before I got frustrated with this and gave up on my 1-bar build, instead slotted Eledrain and Crushing Shock on my back bar (a setup I use on the arena after this on the live server). Rather than trying to letting Wall run its course as long as the spider was in it, I used it as a semi-spammable - although I alternated with Crushing Shock. This way I had to manage my Magicka much more closely, and was unable to shield, heal and re-summon dead pets as much. I think I died twice more before finally killing the boss.
At this point I decided to go back to the live server again and try the Arena there. The experience was as different as night and day. On live, everything in the first three arenas seemed to melt in comparison. And the Control Guardian died from my 1-bar-setup with no problems at all. I suspected DPS was the issue and went on to parse, first on live and then on the PTS. This was where I found and corrected my mistakes with Champion Points but by now the Control Guardian was dead and I really didn't feel like slogging through the first three arenas again. So I instead i equalized the setups - if anything, the gear here would favour the PTS because my Live server gear only had gold on the weapons and doesn't have Divines on every trait either. I parsed useing heavy attack weaving when I needed to refresh my Wall and my Familiar, or when Thunderous Rage was available. I also applied the Eledrain from the back bar to speed up my parse slightly. Otherwise I simply used heavy attacks as I have done in the arena before. Result on live: 13,9 k DPS. Result on PTS: 10,2k DPS. A net loss of 3,6k, or roughly 26% of my DPS - even when the PTS gear was all gold.
PTS results:


Live results:


A huge part of this loss is the heavy attack DPS, which dropped from 4,5k to 2,5k - roughly 45%. Considering Plague Doctor doesn't buff my offensive stats, I find this a remarkably high number. Wall dropped from 2,5k to 1,5 k, or roughly 40%, which is another major loss. And the Familiar also seems to have been nerfed by roughly 50% (!), from ( 1,5k +0,7k= ) 2,2 k to 1k. in short, it is no surprise I was struggling to defeat the Control Guardian when my damage was so much lower that there was time for a lot more adds to spawn (and presumably killing them in my AoE was equally harder to do.)
I did one more dummy test where I treated the other abilities the same but heavy attack weaved Wall every time I had the chance to do so without losing heavy attack+another ability. After all, longer duration means fewer ticks of the extra damage that happens when Wall ends. This time, I tested the DPS I would get if I used a lot more Wall re-casts than on live instead of a lot less - effectively simulating the DPS that would happen if I still did mainly heavy attacks but didn't need to recast my shields, heals, or re-summon dead pets as much. Also, the spider of course does move out of the Wall area before the 20 second duration is out, so I would refresh it more in the actual arena, though probably not as much as what I tested on the dummy. The result this time was still way below the live server result, at a mere 11,9k DPS.


However, it did reduce the damage difference somewhat at least. I assume something resembling this playstyle helped me get sufficiently close to my live server damage to be able to clear the boss in the end. But at this point, I think it's nonetheless fair to conclude that nerfs to heavy attacks, DoTs and pets on the PTS have gone way too far and as a result, the "low end" experience for a Pet/MagSorc beginner at Maelstrom Arena has been severely hurt.

After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized?
Yes (see above). But let me stress that I was able to adapt because I know what was changed - that's why I swapped to more burst damage. Also, unlike many players at the so-called "low end", I generally don't have any bar swap issues most of the time so I could use my back bar for more. Now, imagine other players who have been able to clear vet Maelstrom for years with this build and playstyle like me, but who doesn't pay much attention to combat balance changes because their builds have worked for the content they do and we are told we can play how we like. Players like this would simply be left wondering "why am I suddenly getting stuck on stage 4 of this arena"? I dare say their motivation to play this game would take a hit, and I doubt it would get any better if they were to investigate and learn that while ostensibly aiming to reduce the "obscene" damage of players "at the high end", the developers have also nerfed this tried-and-true beginner build and playstyle to the point where content that has been accessible to these players for years has now become significantly harder. Or, imagine a new player who only has 420 Champion Points. I'm pretty sure such a player would have no issues on the Control Guardian on the current live server. If the PTS were implemented without changes, however...

Changes to Healing over Time
I assumed with 40k health, Crit Surge ticking every 2 seconds instead of every 1 second shouldn't make much of a difference - but it can't have helped either. I can't say if it may have contributed to some of the wipes.I made no changes to the healing in my successful attempt on the Control Guardian.

katorga

sbr32 wrote: »

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.

Real world, not matter how successful an MMO is, most fail. Including followups from previously successful games. Everquest was hugely successful. Everquest 2, not so much.

New World, which almost every streamer flocked to, lost 66% of its player base. It is dead. No telling how much $$ was spent developing it.

exiledtyrant

Ran one last set of parses before PTS week 2 comes around.

Video of 4 parse test

https://youtu.be/HQXkhV4Vdpg

Initial feedback thread can be found here:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611318/stamina-sorcerer-feedback-for-update-35-pts-1/p1?new=1


I used my off meta build for 2 parses using a flurry and crystal weapon + flurry setup. The next 2 parses used the same skills but Kinras + relequen. With both utilizing off meta backbar master bow. After more testing throughout the week I still feel mostly the same. Outside of some potential scaling up of crystal weapon / hurricane / bound armaments so that they don't get totally outclassed by weapon skills,I feel the update is on the right track. I still enjoy the longer durations and like using my spammable much more often. I look forward to seeing where the overall goal post are for the next testing session and the potential changes PTS 3 brings.

merpins

80% of your playerbase is not okay with this PTS, ZoS.

Please, at the very least let us know more about what you're going to do week 3. Everyone knows once week 3 comes, there's little to no hope of getting any changes. Is it just adjustments to the numbers and nerfs? Or is it an adjustment of the whole game plan? If not right now, at least let us know in more detail with the monday Patch Notes.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611607/look-at-this-graph/p1
^ make sure to scroll down to also see Skinny Cheeks' graph, since it has many more votes than mine. As a note, with this batch of votes, statistically, it only has an error threshold of ~3%-5%. So these statistics are fairly accurate.

saf227_ESO

On live I main my magplar. I've been running it since One Tamriel, and it's my fave.
I can do just a shade under 70K on live. That's pretty much it. I've practiced a lot, tried different sets, etc. That's what I do.
I'm currently using an oakensoul 1 bar setup (still doing about 70K), because it's easier - and I can enjoy the game more without watching my timers. I'm wearing Order's Wrath & PFG, with a slimecraw helm.

On PTS in that same setup, I lost 20K dps. That sucked. (Yes, I made sure to set my CP)
I switched to order's wrath & deadly, no oakensoul, and my usual 2 bar rotation (using wall, trap, solar barrage, and orbs on my back bar; shards, jabs, jesus beam, and purifying on my front). I lost about 2k dps. I may be a little out of practice. But that's close to what I do on live.
BUT - if you're idea was that I could enjoy the game more & not watch the timers .... nope. Most of my attention was on my bars. Wall, orbs, and trap are 20 seconds. But solar barrage is 22 & focus is 25. So things start not lining up - and I just have to adjust. What fun.

MindOfTheSwarm

If you want to balance DoT’s, you do the following:

Single Target Sticky DoT’s, (Entropy, Fletcher Flies etc):

Average duration 12-16 seconds. Average tick damage and lower frequency (1 per 2 seconds) but each tick increases in damage over duration.

Ground DoT’s: (Impaling Shards, Twisting Path etc):

Shorter duration 7-10 seconds. Higher tick damage that remains constant and higher frequency (1 per 0.5 seconds).

Aura DoT’s (Arctic Blast, Hurricane, Mystic Orb etc):

Longer duration 20-25 seconds. Average tick frequency (1 every 1 second). Lower damage per tick that remains constant.

You do not standardise these timers for each category but you COULD standardise the overall damage.

This way shorter timers end up with more DPS at the cost of duration and sustain.

I could make a post and do each DoT individually but it’s a lot of work for little reward.

TmzOS

starkerealm wrote: »

TmzOS wrote: »

• 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

For this to be true, you would have to drastically drop the numbers, halving them wouldn't be enough.

By this I mean, compact the numbers down to the point where you could store them as integers. Even at that point, the actual processing efficiency gain would be pretty marginal.

I agree it can be really small (especially because CPU are becoming even more powerful), but considering all the calculations and data transfer summed it can be positive with almost no impact to the gameplay itself.

And we got a QOL aspect, since is more easy to track smaller numbers in games, more easy to deal with UIs, etc

This idea comes after thinking how to reduce server and client stress without breaking more the game... oh and yes I saw a image of early stages of this game and the values were lower in comparison with today (example).

PingTheAwesome

This is all around bad news bears.

You say this is being done to be more accessible. If you truly wanted accessibility, you would talk to those in your community who have disabilities; trust me, we've got loads of ideas (sound visualization anyone)? You say or allude to the idea that this is being done for those who deal with chronic latency difficulties. Those players will still deal with lag; this fix does not change that. There are already players who complain that endgame is too exclusive, but these changes would take things into an even more exclusive nature. It should tell you something when the most coordinated, best-situated players are flooding the forum, desperately trying to express why this is a terrible idea.

This is being framed to make endgame players look "salty", "elitist", "snobby", etc. But when you take content and achievements out of the realm of even being doable, you do that for all players. Not just the endgame ones. The floor is being lowered, but the ceiling is staying where it is. To make matters worse, the new content is not being reportedly adjusted to reflect these changes, making some fights potentially completely undoable (even if mechanics were followed to a T).
If this was really about ensuring that older content doesn't become terribly obsolete, you could take a dungeon or two (or even a trial or two) offline for a set period of time to address the coding. You don't need to directly slap down your entire playerbase for changes that most of the playerbase hasn't asked for.

Players are leaving in droves. Subscriptions are being cancelled.
You are hurting us, but you are also hurting yourselves. Please, listen.

tmbrinks

I know I said I'd likely not give feedback, due to all previous feedback being basically ignored... but I can't just not... for a game I love(d) so much to play for so many years to at least not say how it makes me feel. And that feeling is defeat

This is the official feedback thread for the combat changes in Update 35. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance and changes. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
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?
Significantly Worse - Sustain was significantly worse due to the reduced return from resto staff. LA doesn't really matter as a healer, only to keep up procs/enchants/ultimate, so I'll LA weave regardless.
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.
vKA HM
Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning.
I HAD to heavy attack significantly more to sustain.
Damage over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
N/A
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
N/A
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.
N/A
After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.
N/A
While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?
N/A
Healing over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
Absolutely, it was and extreme difference
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
Far 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.
ran Hard Mode Veteran Kynes Aegis. Group has multiple Dawnbringers on multiple classes
After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Healing over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.
No changes, still needed to have all of the heals on my bar, even though they were significantly weaker
While using Healing over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?
With a little more time, we may have been able to actually clear the final boss. But in order to sustain I had to HA more than usual. Our heals could not drop off for a second (so I was spending much more time looking at the durations and when to recast)
Tanks/DPS sometimes just died because they were unlucky to "not get a tick" in the 2s window, especially when the execute on Falgraven will sometimes hit you for 60-70% at once on the final floor. Add the torturers and it could easily kill somebody where there was literally nothing I could do as a healer.
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?
I felt helpless in some of the encounters, because I know that even if I was perfect on my heals, players could die due to randomness of just not getting a heal tick for 2s.
These changes for vKA will make it so pretty much only teams who've only gotten Dawnbringer would be able to reliably clear the content.
A group that has been progging the HM clear of vKA will be set back months in their prog.
Again, I felt helpless, these changes and the end-game PvE content do not fit together, when even perfection out of your group can still result in group deaths (and then wipes)

I can't even fathom how these changes were even seen initially as being "viable" for the game. Continuing to keep them in, in my opinion, will be the death kneel in the raiding community (and probably even the DLC dungeons), as those "close" will not want to prog for months. Those that already "can" have no incentive to run when things are going to be far worse than they were before. And many who would seen to try will not even start when they see how much they lose with this patch.

Hardcore1973

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 am ok with the LA/HA change. Light attacks were contributing too much to overall dps

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.PVE content. Other than less damage, it's the same. Like I said above, light attacks were contributing too much

Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning. I am ok with the damage reduction of both. I do think the heavy attack sets need to be looked at again and increased, as the output is far too low for PVE content. This is also a playstyle that many players have liked in the past


Damage over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? Absolutely

If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? Honestly, I don't like it. 20sec is far too long. I'd prefer 15sec as I think it fits into bar swapping weaving rotations better.

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. PVE content

After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning. Not really. You don't have the versatility to drop dots that are currently being used in builds and still be effective.

While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience? Burst damage on trash mobs will have to be approached differently. Dots don't make sense with 20sec timers. It is simply too long.

Personal Constructive remarks:
1)Reduce dot duration from 20sec to 15sec to improve bar swapping weaving rotations.
2)Revisit heavy attack sets output damage
3)Revisit end game content to ensure it is still within reach of the majority of players
4)With duration changes, revisit wonky skill durations to ensure they still fit within the newer "meta" rotations the design team has in mind. (ie scorch and blastbones)

Thanks

Faulgor

The longer DOT durations, after reading through a lot of feedback, seem to have achieved their goal of making rotations less stringent, while causing the unintended side effects of making combat downright boring for a lot of people on the other end, as well as rendering DOTs useless in shorter fights.

I thought about how to reconcile these issues, and was reminded by someone's suggestion in another thread that a possible solution already exists in the game, in the skill of Eruption.

Summon a scorching cloud of ash at the target location, dealing 1799 Flame Damage immediately, reducing enemy Movement Speed by 70%, and dealing 449 Flame Damage in the area every 1 second for 15 seconds. The eruptive damage can occur once every 10 seconds.

The neat thing about this skill's design in regards to our current problem is that, to quench maximum DPS from it, you can cast it every 10 seconds for the immediate burst damage, or don't concern yourself with that and let it run the whole duration of 15 seconds. The options for a more engaging as well as a more foregiving rotation are already built in.

What I'd like to suggest for consideration is to give every DOT, or at least ground DOT, a similar treatment of a burst damage component with a cooldown in addition to a longer (currently 20 second) duration.

This way, people could chose the level of engagement they want to have with their rotation without dropping off a cliff if their rotation isn't perfect. There would be a more natural, gradual progression from using a DOT every 20 seconds to "improving" your rotation and casting the same skill simply more frequently.
Additionally, it would also improve the viability of these skills in shorter fights again.

The two issues I can see with this approach would be a), this takes a bit of the uniqueness from Eruption, and b), for this to work, the burst damage component would have to exceed the spammable skill standard, if only slightly (as otherwise, using a global cooldown for a spammable and let the duration run its course would actually be the better option for DPS). I'm not sure how to work this into a skills "power budget", or how this would affect PVP where burst is everything, but it's food for thought.

aestrivex

Light and Heavy Attacks
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?

What I noticed is that I was overall somewhat noticeably weaker, and I did some parses that were certainly lower DPS than before, even following changes to the raid dummy. I played entirely on my main class, stamsorc, which is what I was focused on because this class got changed, and I have concerns about the changes which I will detail momentarily based mainly on parsing for several hours and tweaking certain aspects of my build to try to compensate for the changes.

Whether or not I felt weaker in combat due to changes to light attacks, or due to specific balance changes to the sorcerer, is not so clear to me, probably some combination of both.

[b}
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
[/b]

It was worse, and there are two reasons why:
a) In testing, I determined that the stamsorc build I was using performed better with the new rapid strikes skill in the dual wield line instead of using the crystal weapon skill as a main spammable damage skill. In fact, it performed quite a bit better. This made the entire experience feel wrong; crystal weapon is a signature class skill for the stamina sorcerer and having it be significantly worse than a skill from the dual wield line makes the build feel non-unique, non-helpful in the sense of not being able to provide minor prophecy to a raid group, and also makes the time I have spent learning to weave crystal weapon in between other abilities feel a bit of a waste.
b) There was a higher degree of variance in my parses than normal. I am not quite sure exactly why this is, and I am aware that parses can vary by 1-2k DPS based on whether or not you get good luck with critical hits, mainly. I parsed quite a few times and I was seeing differences of up to 5k DPS on parses that really felt pretty much the same to me, there was a high degree of variation in whether or not I was getting critical strikes, especially on my main spammables. I was doing these parses with slight adjustments to the build, but the damage output didn't make a lot of sense to me and when I looked at it more closely it seemed like I was having some relatively high variations for reasons primarily due to differences in critical strike rates. I am not sure why this is, or if it is somehow related to the light attack changes.


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 spent the enormous majority of my time, several hours, parsing and making adjustments to my build, and then I spent maybe 15 minutes running around public dungeon and world bosses just to see how things felt against slightly stronger enemies.


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


I don't really know, it is automatic for me to weave light attacks and I was not trying to light attack more poorly and see how that went. I can tell that you that I definitely felt like my overall power level was significantly less.


Damage over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?

A little bit, yes, there is only one skill in my rotations on stamina sorcerer that I tested extensively whose duration was significantly changed: stampede. I had to swap in order to use stampede much less.


If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?

I am neutral about this change overall. I like the idea of increasing the duration of many dots in principle. I would have do more content to see if I really find the simplified rotation it to help me focus on mechanics or not, I didn't run any trials on PTS (yet, anyway). On stamina sorcerer, I'm probably not going to be using the most simple rotation anyway, it might have more impact on other classes.


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

No, I tried it and tested it out. After doing various tests which included, dropping bound armaments and adding carve, dropping bound armaments and adding lightning splash, dropping daedric prey and adding carve, etc., I ended up with the same number of damage over time abilities in my end build. Dropping bound armaments for carve was viable and produced approximately similar damage output (subject the aforementioned variance in parses which didnt seem to be due to the DPS changes of the abilities I was specifically testing), but was much worse for sustain and therefore I didn't like the change, even if I might be potentially gaining 1k in DPS but that difference wasn't consistent in my testing.

I actually thought that bound armaments was going to be dropped from my build after reading patch notes, but after testing, bound armaments wasn't performing that poorly. To my surprise, crystal weapon was the ability that was performing poorly, and there was no way to justify keeping it in the build, this was the main change to the build, and personally I would like to see crystal weapon's damage adjusted to be a bit higher, at least perhaps in line with the damage from rapid strikes, if not slightly higher.

I also tried some changes involving removing hurricane for another damage over time ability, including lightning splash or the mag morph of hurricane, boundless storm, but hurricane was the better choice.


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



Healing over Time
Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?

I didn't, but I didn't do any group content.

chessalavakia_ESO

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?

Somewhat worse. Light and Heavy Attacks weren't a big part of the rotation on a fair number of my characters but, for the ones that use them a lot it wasn't exactly subtle and it significantly dented the build.

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 first fought a variety of npcs with damage numbers turned off in Overland to see if I could tell a difference then I turned them on to see how big the difference I felt actually was. One of my builds is a DK Healer that has next to nothing in regeneration that used Queen's Elegance + Sergent's Mail + Molten Armaments. Needless to say the changes to the Heavy Attacks in both regeneration and damage have effectively torpedo'd that character.

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

Yes. I'm not big on consuming potions so sometimes I will use Heavy Attacks to restore resources. Light Attacks are useful for ultimate gain and procing some sets and when I really need damage for something I can still get extra damage from weaving but I really do not enjoy doing it.


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?

Somewhat worse. I spend most of my time in Overland areas where DOTS are already not that useful and the extended duration doesn't really help. Several of my characters run Oakensoul so the extra time isn't really needed for me and I didn't really have a good feel for the 20s cooldowns so I was watching the bar countdown more than normal. I'm unsure if that would be a long term issue or not.

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 wouldn't say the change is ever subtle as the damage change alters how you use your skills.

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

I'm still evaluating. I'm considering moving away from dots for pvp and for overland but, I've kind of grown attached to some of the abilities from using them for years so I might keep them even though it is sub-optimal. For dungeons I'm really not sure. Stacking a bunch of dots does bring more damage in ideal circumstances but many of the situations aren't ideal. I've also got to consider if I have enough to do for it to really be worth redoing my builds at this time.


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

Longer fights hit less resource issues.
Healing over Time

Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?


My primary heal on my healers took a 40% hit that isn't subtle.

If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?

Somewhat 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.

It's not really relevant in regular overland content. Against bosses, the healing is noticeably less which can require more evasion/more burst heals/swapping heals.

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

No. I'll be changing the HOTs I use but, I'll still be using roughly the same number.

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

More conservative play in areas where the npcs can actually hurt me/more burst heals

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?

Healing is overpowered. The PTS changes make it less convenient but, the power isn't really toned down that much.

Additional Notes:

Requesting data slanted feedback is questionable as it can change the experience and doesn't reflect normal play for many people. The experience matters far more than the numbers. Plus, I'd hope you are doing enough data collection on the pts that our snapshots wouldn't really be needed.

keto3000

Jodale wrote: »

Start Date: July 2018

Experience: CP1150
Pre-High Isle: 40k dps average
Post High Isle: 60k dps average
Activities Pre High Isle: Normal Dungeons, Questing, Overland
Activities Post High Isle: Vet DLC Dungeons, Normal Trials, Solo Arena progression

Back in December 2021, I left the game. I was so dissatisfied and discouraged that I would never complete the content I wanted to do. I could not make it through a Vet DLC Dungeon without being carried hard by a great tank and 2 other DPS with heals. I could not weave effectively to save my life but worse than that, I could not manage a rotation and would constantly run out of Stam or Mag depending on character.

Fast forward to 2022. I see a trailer on Youtube for the new Chapter release of High Isle. I start researching what changes are coming in this new year. I see a few of the content creators talking about the new gear sets and a mythic named Oakensoul. After more content became available regarding Oakensoul, I became intrigued to give the game another shot as maybe 1 bar worth of skills would be easier to manage while not being a total drain for a 4 person group or 12 person trial group.

Sure enough, I farmed the leads and did all the things and waited for lock box respawns till the cows came home, multiple times. Finally got the ring and crafted the new Orders Wrath set to pair with my already gold Deadly Strike set. WOW! I could actually kill stuff now....and not die 10 times in the process. I still could not complete Vet Maelstrom Arena as stage 7 is still kicking my butt. However, I did complete normal Maelstrom for the first time. I completed White Gold Tower on Vet Hard Mode along with Imperial City Prison and Ruins of Mazz for my first Vet DLC Dungeon clears. Granted, I was still the lowest DPS on the team but I was contributing, I wasn't a liability anymore.

So when patch notes were released for the next update and I saw Oakensoul was nerfed pretty harshly, I had to check it out. I downloaded the PTS and created my character and began my testing. Ouch!! Even an unskilled player like me could tell the difference and my weaving sucks so I know it was not the Light Attack nerf I was feeling. I am not much of a parse person so I went to Deshaan where I like to run the Public Dungeons for XP. The mobs took almost twice as long to kill and the boss' were actually a challenge, not saying that is a bad thing but for a CP1150 with all Gold Gear, should they really be that tough in Deshaan? A WB that I can solo on Live server was not solo-able for me on PTS.

On the PTS, I was pretty much right back to where I was in December of last year, only difference was...I am now on 1 bar vs 2 bars. But what is the point if there is no difference? My skill gap to experienced players only went backwards despite the other changes.

My thoughts and proposals...As it stands on the Live Server, Oakensoul in PVE content, is still 30k-40k less than a traditional 2 bar set up when a skilled player is doing the parse and testing. Oakensoul is not OP in PVE. As I understand it, the issue is with how strong it is in PVP, which I very rarely ever play. So why punish PVE players? Why not just remove Oakensoul from PVP altogether or reduce its buffs to what you want when a person enters PVP content. I think I read somewhere that Battle Spirit is something that exists in one but not the other so why not tie the buffs to that? If PVP, use this set of buffs...but if PVE then use the original set buffs.

As it stands right now, the first week of PTS, you have only widened the skill gap you said you wanted to make closer. Another part of this is the longer DoT length. Sure it seems great in theory, less actions per minutes and all but what it really does is encourage more spammable attacks which drain your resources even faster than a slow rotation with 2 bars. So that again, widens the skill gap.

This was well-written and explains alot of the frustration that mid-tier, (not-great-at-light-weaving) players have had for along time and another reason affecting their ability to break into end-game progression groups.

Tanis-Stormbinder

My thoughts, leave Oakensoul as is or at least give it Major or Minor Slayer this way it doesn't effect PVP. Leave the Dots alone, game play is way to boring with the extend dots. Isn't that why you introduced Oakensoul so people in need wouldn't have to switch bars?

keto3000

LACK of IN-GAME ACCESS to MYTHIC items for Base-Game-Only players

This makes the game PAY-TO-WIN for many Base-Game-Only players, which include fixed income players, students, those with heavy family expenses, lower incomes, etc....

Since we are discussing Accessibilty issues including OAKENSOUL, 1 Bar setups, & the push to "close the skill gap" between newer and veteran players in both PvE & PvP, let's also discuss the P2W lack of in-game access to MYTHICS, in general.

CONSIDER:

Clockwork City's exclusive access to Transmutation Station:

Access ALLOWED for Base-Game-Only players since they could use that station in other players' home & still be able to use earned their Transmute Crystals.


Summerset's exclusive access to the Jewelry Station:

Access ALLOWED for Base-Game-Only players since they could get jewelry crafted by another player who does have access.


HOWEVER:

Greymoor's exclusive access to Antiquities System & Mythics:

Access DENIED to MYTHIC ITEMS for Base-Game-Only players since LEADs cannot be acted upon, and, for players that have Greymoor and the Antiquities system, may still be DENIED since they cant access leads in un-owned DLCs, etc.[/b]


ZOS Please FIND A WAY to allow in-game access to all MYTHIC ITEMS for Base-Game-Only players:


--A weekend vendor exclusive for MYTHIC items?

--Event tickets to earn fragments for specific Antiquity Leads (as an alternate path to digging) that are found, then later combined to form that MYTHIC?

--Earned vouchers redeemable at Rolis?


Thank you. in advance, for consideration.

Cheers, keto