PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

acastanza_ESO

Please note we are still discussing potential adjustments for combat balance and you can expect to see some of those changes beginning next week

In light of this comment in the 8.1.1 patch notes it needs to be reiterated that "potential adjustments" is wholly inadequate. @ZOS_GinaBruno the community has been resounding in its rejection of this game direction. The entire concept needs to be scrapped. No removal of light attack scaling, no 2 second ticks, no gutting classes without seriously looking at where their actual power levels are across mag and stam morphs (#JusticeForMagSorc). Just no.

In multiple polls of the community as much as 80% of the responding community (the people that are actually aware of and engaged with the proposed changes) we're strongly against the fundamental concept. No "adjustments" are going to cut it.
It even got to the point where people were engaged a "no confidence" vote in the development team with similar results before the mods locked the thread.

Please don't let your egos prevent you from recognizing just how much damage pressing forward despite our objections (like you usually do) is actually going to do this time. Something has to give and its either going to be the development team opening their eyes, or the players leaving. The later is already happening. Don't make it worse.

codestripper

Light and Heavy Attacks & Damage over time

Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing?
Yeah, I felt a little weaker overall with burst damage, but you don't notice too much while in combat and focusing on other things.
If you did, was it better or worse in your experience?
I'd say on the dummy at least, I did less damage, by quite a bit with my light attacks especially, but that was to be expected. Nothing out of the ordinary.
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 personally like to do all content with the same build. I'm one of those players who puts together a build and adjusts one skill or so between content to make it so I at least don't die lol. That being said, I went ahead and tried my build on both Live and PTS in one of my favorite arenas to see how it is. Here are the results:
Build: https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/codestripper/0470221a-896e-4bd0-a6a2-92870f629b34/thunderbolts-and-lightning-magicka-sorcerer-dps-build-for-pve

Live vMA Logs - https://www.esologs.com/reports/Vhz74Nwd8jcBgF9Q
PTS vMA Logs - https://www.esologs.com/reports/H2Y1jmqcrdWRGBgy

Live Result - 2 Deaths (because i'm bad), 38min, Score 574,431
PTS Result - 0 Deaths, 39min, Score 572,651

So, as you can see from this, even though I didn't die at all I still took extra time to finish the arena. I did accidentally take a sigil during the PTS run as well. I can say that the burst damage is what felt the most inconsistent, when it came to killing bosses, it was almost identical. That's probably where the extra time came from imo.

Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning.
I feel like they are needed still to proc things and parse a dummy, but skill weaving is probably less important on adds for burst damage now.

Overall, I'm not terribly concerned about the changes made so far for solo content at least, but I'll have to give some dungeons a test to see how things go there.

Mr_Stach

I feel like at the end of the Day or in our Case, PTS Cycle, we'll just have to talk with our Wallets. That'll be a language that Zos speaks loud and clear.

I like to be more hopeful than that, but between last Patch and This, I have 0 hopes that Warden will ever be in a good place. I mean the other classes too but, for me Warden is what REALLY got me invested into ESO. Morrowind was my first ES game period and all the Morrowind themed stuff resonated with me to start, but now it's a shell of it's former self and it was a shell to begin with.

We've had some pretty bad patches, and even with the bad patches, there were at least some good changes. I don't feel that with this. The Bad completely overshadow the Good and we still have people defending it, it's pretty baffling. We'll see how long Cyrodiil likes Nocturnal before that better stability turns sour.

It sucks being so pessimistic about this, I just don't see Zos making the changes needed to Stay and if it goes live I might go on my longest Hiatus yet.

Hope I get proven wrong.

Trundik

code65536 wrote: »

This damage loss was most acutely felt on the first boss, which is arguably the boss that is most sensitive to DPS levels
in Kyne's Aegis. That fight was exceptionally long and messy, in large part because there was more mechanics overlap due to things not dying as quickly. I expect that for groups that are more casual than ours that are just on the line for clearing the first boss will have a much harder time after the patch.

So they want to make things easier for casuals to make things harder for casuals... Not bad, not bad.

Now i remember my way to collect perfect yandir (which actually broken with HA trigger), and there was like 70% fail raids because lack of dps at Yandir or Vrol and those dramatic trash wipes. I can only imagine how bad VKA will be with dps nerf for pug groups...

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

Thats not completely true because some items still can be accessed trough ingame crown purchase from another players. I bought only base game, but i have summerset, greymoor and now even blackwood (but not clockwork aww) so i got kilt... I still don't have deadlands myphics but i was just to lazy to farm leads in free week. Moreover if you see what they did to oakensoul, that was pretty cheezy maneuvre with pay to win intentions for those who bought high isle considering this ring will remain in power.

bluehomeos

Range nerf is enough for savage werewolf imo... Melee light attack is too hard to landing cuz its short range. it should be light attack and heavy attack in melee range.

Tannus15

Krym wrote: »

keto3000 wrote: »

I completely support the current business model of our game. I'm interested in increased accessibility to game items that affect power, damage output and performance.

but this is also the case for any DLC dungeon. if you only got the base game (and now morrowind), what you're asking for is also making the better dungeon gear that "affect power, damage output and performance" accessible to everyone with only the base game.

if you mean they have access to it via eso+ - this is the same for mythic items, every chapter becomes part of eso+ besides the current. so all people buying the chapter get is earlier access.
and even if you don't have eso+, there are at least two eso+ trials per year (one was just last week) where you can grab what you need if you wanted to (which includes stuff like ring of the pale order. and once found you can refabricate it, an update btw which was completely free for everyone). if ZOS hasn't nerfed it this also includes learning jewelcrafting. all without ever paying for more than the base game (which you can get for 6 bucks).

it's also a moot point since mythics are not required for most content or "winning" in general. they are an option. just as dlc dungeon gear.

adamsmith42 wrote: »

It's not just top end teams either... *both* of the raid leads for my two prog groups left the game... the kind of people you claim this is to help (been doing vet trials for maybe 2 months; the groups were around vMoL HM)

just for clarity, you mean both those groups where doing vMOL HM? content from 2016 which was done with way less damage than groups do now to the point they can just nuke the twins in the middle of the room in less than 90 seconds without bothering with mechanics at all? even if ZOS keeps the current nerfed numbers (they won't), that's still far above what is needed or the raid was ever designed with.

as for all the dooming about raid guilds, not only is it summer, there's also a bit more going on right now than usual. how do the 3 groups I personally know putting their raids on hold or changed schedules long before U35 details were ever announced fit into the current narrative?

Pevey wrote: »

The best thing ZOS could do as a crisis response is to (ASAP) make a statement to the playerbase along the lines of:

While we still believe in the vision of our stated goals, we have been listening to feedback, and we now can see clearly that the changes we proposed do not accomplish those goals. We are going to take the unprecedented step of reverting these combat changes to give us time to go back to the drawing board. We still believe in the goal of making content more accessible to a greater portion of the playerbase, but we understand now that these changes do the opposite and are a flawed approach. There are much better and much less disruptive ways that we can accomplish these goals.

If they did something like that, and they did it quickly, it could actually generate a lot of support from the community and maybe even turn this whole experience from a debacle to a somewhat positive thing. They could say, look, we do listen. And we did have a plan, these changes were not random. But they also WAY missed the mark, and we see that, and we see that minor adjustments are not the answer. We need to change the approach, and that will take some time.

except that's always the case, nerf the damage and you'll ALWAYS get "overwhelming feedback from pretty much every corner of the playerbase". the same playerbase btw which complains about weaving, content being too hard, the game not teaching everything properly (besides 8 year of guides on the internet about it) and myriad other issues.

it's easy to say "don't do it, say you're sorry, and then do it in a way I (and everybody else) likes". winning the lottery the probably has a higher chance than that ever happening, because you can never reduce a players damage. so good luck ever trying to "fix" what people complain about.

so, let's brainstorm: how would YOU (as a general "you" before mods perceive that as some kind of attack....) accomplish it without making the game less fun, have the players like them AND accomplish the stated goals. it's a feedback thread after all.

ok, let's brainstorm:

i'd put global cool downs on the major buffs and debuffs.
max uptime for major vulnerability at 50%
max uptime for major slayer at 50%
I'd remove major berserk from kinra and make it minor berserk for everyone
I'd nerf rele proc by 10% and increase it's cooldown from 5s to 7s
I'd still do the light attack nerf, but i'd buff lightning staff heavy attack. (i'd buff shock damage overall, but that's a separate issue)
I'd change the pen bonus from light armour and replace it with % damage.
I'd increase the duration of dots from 10s to 14s and the long durations to all be 20s (so all dots are 14 or 20) but i'd keep their dps the same.
weapon based dots that we use for enchant procs i'd keep at 1s ticks for enchant procs. everything else i'd move to 2 seconds ticks.
nerf stampede to be slightly better than destro.
buff volley to be on par with destro

none of these nerfs affect an unsupported person's dps. it's all focused on bringing down the "tippy toppy" group dps
i actually do think increase the timer for the backbar is a solid idea, i just think 20s is too long and nerfing dot dps is a really bad idea.

renne

code65536 wrote: »

I took my weekend group into Kyne's Aegis and ran the trial on Hard Mode this weekend.

For context, this is a group that has been running together for years. We had some fills for this PTS run, but it's not a "PUG". This group had recently gotten our second Dawnbringer earlier this year, so we are pretty experienced with this trial, though we are not a competitive group and we don't push for score. For example, the world record for Kyne's Aegis is around twice as fast as ours, so we are by no means at the top.


First, damage is down:

We had a clean deathless kill of the second boss. When we got Dawnbringer, the kill time was around 2 minutes (1m 59s). On the PTS, it was around 3 minutes, or about 50% longer (2m 51s). Total group single-target damage on the boss dropped from 713K to 522K, a loss of 27% total group boss single-target damage.
Logs:

February: https://www.esologs.com/reports/1QB2jMcA7fy6WKX3#fight=12&type=damage-done&target=72
U35 PTS1: https://www.esologs.com/reports/Ac79WDYBFkTbf6xn#fight=15&type=damage-done&target=83

This damage loss was most acutely felt on the first boss, which is arguably the boss that is most sensitive to DPS levels
in Kyne's Aegis. That fight was exceptionally long and messy, in large part because there was more mechanics overlap due to things not dying as quickly. I expect that for groups that are more casual than ours that are just on the line for clearing the first boss will have a much harder time after the patch.


Aside: Change fatigue

Yes, I expect that we could claw some of that damage back with adjustments and people getting more used to things, but why is this even necessary?

I know a group that disbanded recently (prior to the announcement of the PTS), and one of the contributing factors was that every patch, people had to adjust, which meant some people swapped classes, reworked their builds, etc., and then it took time to become comfortable and familiar with those changes, and by the time the dust has settled, it was almost time for the next patch and round of adjustments.

At this point, many players don't even care if a change is perceived as good or bad. They just want stability. And when the changes that cause that instability are also generally perceived as being bad, that just makes things so much worse. Stop treating the combat in this game as some sort of lab experiment.


Second, the healing changes are harmful:

I picked Kyne's Hard Mode specifically because the execute phase of Falgravn is a well-known heal check.

We did two pulls of Falgravn and did not clear, but it was enough to see and feel the changes. Here are the raw healing logs for execute phase:

February: https://www.esologs.com/reports/1QB2jMcA7fy6WKX3#fight=17&type=healing&start=1996321&end=2204555&options=8
U35 PTS1: https://www.esologs.com/reports/Ac79WDYBFkTbf6xn#fight=22&type=healing&start=4987325&end=5203543&options=8

On first glance, the healing numbers appear similar. But the devil lie in the details. First, with the reduction in the power of HoTs, both healers had to resort to using more Combat Prayer spam to compensate. This is very resource-intensive, however, and both healers reported sustain issues. The figures below show the healers' magicka levels during execute:

February:
U35 PTS1:

When we wiped, both healers had basically run out of resources.

Second, there were a few random deaths among people who were standing in heals. This sort of thing basically never happened during our Dawnbringer prog: if there's a death in execute, it's because the player did something wrong. But on the PTS, we had deaths where, upon reviewing the death recap and the circumstances surrounding the death, we could not find any error. They just died. Because with HoTs ticking every 2s and the ambient, unavoidable Unstable Energy damage ticking every second for over half the health bar of anyone who is not a tank, all it takes are some unfortunately-timed heal ticks to kill someone.

In our case, we had the added misfortune that one of those random deaths was a healer, which in Falgravn HM is an express ticket to a group wipe.

I'm certain that if we had tried more pulls, we could've cleared it, but it would not have been the kind of clean execute that we're all used to.

All this makes no-deathing vKA HM much harder and even just clearing Falgravn HM much more difficult. It is clear--and alarming--that there was zero consideration for difficult PvE content when these changes were made. And, let's be frank here: this is not the first time something like this had happened. The harsh nerfs in Morrowind meant many groups that had been reliably clearing vMoL HM prior to the patch lost the ability to, and it took a number of patches to repair the damage that had been done. If anyone at ZOS is wondering why players are reluctant to extend "trust", here is the reason.


Other changes:

1. The DoT changes mean that there is a lot more reliance on spammables. And with Molten Whip now costing both stam and mag, our mag DK reported stam sustain issues with whip spam, which got him killed a number of times on the first boss (a fairly stam intensive fight due to the number of mechanics that need to be blocked).
2. The Spirit Guardian changes make it all but useless for tanks in endgame PvE who are dealing with massive amounts of incoming damage. This is a significant nerf for the necro tank's mitigation toolkit. Why not give the Spirit Guardian the same invulnerable treatment as other player pets in group PvE instances?
3. @skinnycheeks tested the Oakensoul Ring during this run, and he reported that it was still reasonably effective. This is not surprising, as many of the Major buffs that were removed are available from the group. E.g., Major Berserk from sorc atros, Major Courage from the healers, etc. So the impact of the Oakensoul nerf is less severe for organized groups than it is for a solo player seeking an accessibility option. In other words, the intended target audience--solo players seeking accessibility--are more severely impacted by the Oakensoul nerf.

And this is what it's like for a genuinely good team on PC. Imagine what it's like for the less top tier groups who don't have two Dawnbringers. Imagine what it's going to be like on console (without addons and) without the responsiveness of PC.

tactx

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

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.

Yep. For sure. Numbers may change. In either direction… so things may even get worse than week one.

Yes, this is the amount of trust I have in the combat team. (And we all know where this reference is from).

This. Usually when it makes it to PTS, it's going to make it live, and it's going to be bad.

peacenote

JustAGoodPlayer wrote: »

If they wright before they want do some thing what and how they want to do, we would not get PTS like this.

Because if some thing is really bad you can say it the same time you see text of it. Not all changes you really need to test, to understand that it is bad.

Some changes from it text are just unnesesary and stupid.

As example if you see thingth like : Grass is blue and sky is green ... better stop to drink this thing !

CheeseTuber wrote: »

Did anyone understand what the guy above wrote or is it just me that is having trouble? I've been trying to parse that info for the last 10 minutes and I still don't get it ....

Actually, yes I think I get what he/she is trying to say. It's that sometimes, things are so obviously a bad idea, that it isn't necessary to try it out and prove with screenshots and videos to show it's a bad idea. They are also saying that meaningful testing gets lost in the shuffle when there's so much to test. That if ZOS had posted the Combat Changes post earlier (maybe including some more details, like what was in some of the first patch notes), they could have course corrected quicker so PTS would be more reasonable, less drastic, and we'd be testing things that realistically could get tweaked based on our testing in a single PTS cycle.

And to a certain extent, I agree with this sentiment. It's like... if you're a doctor, and you've been a practicing doctor for many years, you don't NEED to test in practice a theory that surfaces which argues that human beings would be more healthy if they only drank water every seven days. And it's frustrating, in today's "everyone has a say on social media, and you can have no credentials whatsoever but if you aren't taken seriously it means everyone else is being toxic" culture, that expert opinions are often not given the weight they deserve. It leads to wasted time on behalf of everyone as we politely and carefully consider all angles, even ridiculous ones.

The problem is, there are also people who whine and cry and are anti-everything. Any change is bad, and they only consider their own viewpoint. As the "more reasonable" people point out why the experts might have a point, conversations spin into community debates until the actual issue at hand is lost. This happens a lot with ESO discussions, now. That means that sometimes, I am sympathetic to ZOS, in that it's hard to weed through the whining to know when feedback is from a smart subject matter expert vs. someone who just likes to argue with a narrow perspective.

But the other problem is, one would expect the ZOS devs to be like the doctors - experts in their own game with the ability to foresee, without testing or developing, why some ideas won't work in practice or how some aspects of the game might be negatively impacted by a proposed change - and have logical answers and responses to such questions. But lately it feels like the devs don't know what's going on. Like the combat and content teams aren't communicating with each other. Which means even the more reasonable, calm people are reacting to ZOS announcements not like they are doctors, but like they are snake oil salesmen. Is that fair?

Well, all I can say is, I used to have a ton of faith in the devs. Then AwA came along. And we wanted to know things like... was ZOS aware that many people were sentimentally attached to achievement dates, like when their characters hit level 50? Was ZOS aware that many people found it fun to repeat achievements per character, especially ones like dungeon and trial achievements? Was ZOS aware that AwA broke the ability to repeat certain stories, or in some cases that NPCs in the world were reacting to characters in correctly? Was ZOS aware that the Zone Guide looked at achievements and was causing issues with map progress per character? 1- Did they know any of this and plan to address it? 2-Did they know this but want to take the game in a different direction? 3- Did they know this but not care, because money from customers who they thought wanted to earn achievements in a card game seem more profitable than the other customers who were losing functionality? 4- Did they not know this before deciding to go ahead but didn't want to admit that they didn't realize the impact? 5- Did they know this but had no choice to the performance of the game, but wanted to pretend the changes were for another reason because they know we are tired of hearing about performance?

The community gave feedback, through official channels where ZOS solicited feedback, and we never received answers. So the community is left to assume which version of the devs we have. Because we don't know, each time a major change is announced, you'll get people assuming one of the scenarios (1 - 5) and putting that underlying perspective on the proposed changes, and reacting accordingly.

Which is why I'm in camp #5. The explanations for what ZOS wants to accomplish vs. what the proposed changes will actually accomplish are so far apart from each other - which I could tell just from reading without any testing - that I can only conclude that, like AwA, this is really being done to reduce combat calculations, but the company is trying to convince us that we'll like it (in other words, it's what we've asked for!) so they don't have to admit it. This is what I have learned from the pattern of changes I've seen, AwA being not the only one of these but the most recent, blatantly obvious one. Telling me to trust the devs in Twitter, saying that I need to test on PTS to PROVE that these changes are problematic when it should be so obvious to anyone experienced in the game... I get that they need data but these statements, after the silence about AwA where so many logical people made decent suggestions and asked reasonable questions, make me more skeptical, not less. If the community isn't heard this time around, my faith will be beyond restoration.

(By the way, that doesn't mean I'll rage quit. I'm here to play with my friends, more than anything, so I'm here until they aren't. But I'll be done trying to get more people to play the game and join me here, that's for sure. And when my friends are done, I'll be done as well.)

Eiregirl

We as long term players keep hearing the words “balancing” over and over. The Devs do this and that to try and “balance” the game around hundreds of gear sets and tons of skills which equate to thousands of possible builds. They try to balance all of this for both PVE and PVP. It is the same in many games and none of them that DO NOT separate PVE and PVP will EVER get it right for both and will continue to irritate and frustrate many of the hardcore players in both PVE and PVP. Trying to balance both PVE and PVP is an impossible task when all the skills and much of the same gear is used for both. It is far past time to separate the two.

The minimal testing I have done thus far has been on a magicka sorcerer using a heavy attack weave with no light attacks using gear that buffs heavy attacks.

The DPS was about 12k lower than on live against the iron atronach. Most of the reduction was due to the changes in heavy attacks and daedric tomb on this particular build although the reduction in overall damage of sorcerer skills also contribute. The daedric tomb runes exploding only one every two seconds is a significant damage reduction and I believe it should be reverted to its previous form.

In this particular type of build, the change to heavy attacks has a significant impact on damage output since it is one of the main sources of damage and cannot compete with a light attack weaving build even on the live server.

As to the damage over time abilities, I did notice the adjustments but mainly due to the lower damage output of the abilities. While the added amount of time the AOEs now have allowed for more heavy attacks and use of spammable abilities it does not make up for the lost damage output on this particular setup.

I will try to evaluate all of my other builds and give some feedback on them if I have the time in the coming week to do so.

pklemming

Ditronus wrote: »

I like increasing dot duration to mitigate stacking dot abilities. But the gameplay is largely the same right? You still buff, dot, spam, repeat...but now you just spam a whole lot more before you dot/buff again. The game needs new abilities that are cooldown-based, proc-based, or specific class-based resources and mechanics, like necromancer corpses.

Everything in ESO plays the same, just different numbers, names, and animations. The dots and buffs are easier to manage now, but that just exacerbates the issue of how horrible spammables work towards interesting combat; why would I feel spamming the same ability even more now, with its dated animation, is engaging or exciting?

Again, this patch has great direction, but these changes just make the game easier while also making it more repetitive and mundane by creating a more spammy playstyle. There's a lack of variety of ability types (cooldowns, procs, etc.) to create builds with.

ESO, every class and build: Buff, dot, spam (now even longer), repeat.

They really don't make the game easier for anyone. 2 second dots are kind of pointless on mobile fights. 2 second heals are not good for a lot of content with high incoming damage.

They managed to both make the game more dull and more difficult for everyone at the same time. Which is impressive in itself.

On fights where stuff is staying the combat is very dull, with us still weaving but doing significantly less damage.

Multiple class nerfs for extremely dodgy explanations(sorc mine and warden passives as examples).

To sum it up: Damage less, healing less, dots pretty useless, Needless class nerfs and boring rotations.

Patch of the century!

Mizael

Mizael wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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?
    • 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.
  • Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning.
• 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?
• Healing 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 Healing over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning.
  • While using Healing over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience?
  • 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?

1- Light attacks changes:
The difference in damage per second of L.A. compared to live is very noticiable, It dropped about 50-60% to me. Sure it felt worse but if the goal is making missing a light attack less impactful, I am KINDA ok but the issue remain that there are many best in slot sets that require light attacks and buffs them, so it won't solve the problem, and anyway lowering it so much will hurt mid-exp players the most, since missing only a few L.A. and getting the damage butchered so much, will lower their total damage of a lot, making them doing content much more difficult. I used CMX to see the difference.

2- Damage over Time:
This is one of the most worst changes in my opinion. Not only DoTs do less damage then live, but also make them much more diffucult to manage in a trial/dungeon scenario where you have a dynamic fight. This to a point that some DoTs won't even be worth slotting. Right now on live if you play many Dots and manage them consistantly, you get rewarder with much more dps, while on PTS you would gain a max of 10k considered a 100k parse. It feel very very unrewarding this way.

3- Healing over Time:
The most dumb change. Mobs will continue to hit over 1s or sell cosidered some dots, while our HoTs on 2s cd. It's gonna make doing content much much much harder, raising the level of gameplay required much higher, which was not what you wanted to do (I guess).

I very much ask to revert DoTs and HoTs changes, while adjusting L.A. and H.A. a little. This gameplay right now feels horrible.

This is my PTS parse, you can def see how butchered twisting path got, not to talk about 2h not even worth slotting. Dots do much more less damage and make them weaker in a real situation where you need to move constantly.


This is instead a friend of mine Live parse.

We are not top end parsers but you can feel the difference quite a lot.

H3rBie

code65536 wrote: »

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

---

PART 1: Light Attacks, Heavy Attacks, and Weaving

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

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

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

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

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

---

PART 2: Durations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

PART 3: Power Creep and Content Creep in PvE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just quoting that one since it shouldn't be overseen

renne

How are we supposed to "trust" (thanks Rich) the dev team know what they're doing when they said this in the combat preview for update 34:



And now... update 35 sledgehammer nerfs across the board, every single class ransacked, most skills rustled.

Mr_Stach

renne wrote: »

How are we supposed to "trust" (thanks Rich) the dev team know what they're doing when they said this in the combat preview for update 34:



And now... update 35 sledgehammer nerfs across the board, every single class ransacked, most skills rustled.

code65536

renne wrote: »

How are we supposed to "trust" (thanks Rich) the dev team know what they're doing when they said this in the combat preview for update 34:



And now... update 35 sledgehammer nerfs across the board, every single class ransacked, most skills rustled.

To be fair, the clause right before that was "since this is the big Chapter of the year". They promised only small changes for the chapter (ostensibly to allow people to digest the content of the chapter, though more cynically-minded people may see a linkage with chapter sales); no promises were made for subsequent content.

But as I've said before, surprising everyone with these changes in U35 was a monumental mistake. They needed to engage the community much earlier, like what they did two years ago with that special PTS. Instead, we have this current debacle...

Elsonso

code65536 wrote: »

renne wrote: »

How are we supposed to "trust" (thanks Rich) the dev team know what they're doing when they said this in the combat preview for update 34:



And now... update 35 sledgehammer nerfs across the board, every single class ransacked, most skills rustled.

To be fair, the clause right before that was "since this is the big Chapter of the year". They promised only small changes for the chapter (ostensibly to allow people to digest the content of the chapter, though more cynically-minded people may see a linkage with chapter sales); no promises were made for subsequent content.

But as I've said before, surprising everyone with these changes in U35 was a monumental mistake. They needed to engage the community much earlier, like what they did two years ago with that special PTS. Instead, we have this current debacle...

They had that, but rumor has it that it was disbanded, or at least left unused for this change.

Tornaad

After having studied the patch notes, experienced what the changes actually mean for me, and put some serious thought into the stated goals and what this patch actually does, I finally have something to say.

First, I do think that making a change to how combat works is needed and a good thing, but I do not think that this was the right move ... at least in its entirety. I think that making it easier for newer players to master the game is a great thing, but I do not think that we need to pull the top players down to do that.
For example, if the current top tier takes more than a month of dedicated work to complete a trifecta on the new trial, and your solution to make it easier for the new players is something that both knocks down the new players and the veteran players (by nerfing damage nearly universally), then you are in effect making it doubly harder for the new players to ever get to the top tier.

I am very much a casual player. I am slowly starting to get into the more difficult content. For example, I am slowly trying to complete Veteran Maelstrom Arena, but if these changes, as they are effective week 2 patch notes, go live then I will likely give up on that forever. If one of my best builds I have ever made goes from being able to easily get to stage 7 on vMA to not even able to clear the first stage, because of these changes, then I don't stand a chance to ever complete it.

Yes, I am one of those people who would love to see harder overland content. Part of the reason for that is simply because there is a massive skill gap in how the content is structured in ESO. With where I am at, most everything is either too easy or impossibly hard, and with the proposed changes, I think that the only thing that will really happen is that the content I am currently hoping to break into, will go from being impossibly hard to just forget it hard and if that happens, then I would likely just go back to Skyrim because there I at least have a possibility of doing everything.

I love this game. I really do think there needs to be a change, and the idea of making it easier for people like myself to bridge the gap that exists between me and anyone with enough skill to complete things like vMA is needed and wonderful, but I do not think that the proposed changes are the right move.

What I think needs to happen is that you need to leave the top tier DPS where it is at, make changes that makes it easier for the bottom tier to move up the ranks, and then focus on building middle of the road content that gives people like me something to us to practice improving our skills.

Which then leaves me with the question, if ESO is having a problem holding onto new players, maybe it is not because of the combat difficulty, but because of the lack of medium combat difficulty content? For example, we have Normal dungeons and then we skip from there to Veteran difficulty, and then you can go from there to Veteran Hard Mode. What about a medium difficulty? From what I have seen and what many in the community have said, the Normal difficulty does not do anything to help you prepare for Veteran difficulty. Maybe that is what needs to be fixed first, before we even worry about combat changes?

I hope this helps. I hope it gets somewhere. I suspect that because I mentioned the despair I have about the possibility of ever completing vMA this post will likely just get attacked by the moderators, and if that happens, I will just forever give up on ever voicing my thoughts here again. I really do love this game. I have hope for where it is going in the long run, and believe that this is just a bump in the road on the journey to a better ESO.

P.S. This is just a rough draft, that has not been edited for quality.

Imnotsurewho

Firstmep wrote: »

Yeah i mean the team were only able to cram a measly 6 nightblade buffs into this patch, surely NB mains are malding.
"how dare zos make suprise attack always crit" nb mains are thinking right about now XD

Actually I am a NB PvP main who uses Surprise Attack and this is exactly what I'm thinking. Surprise Attack in PvP is 100% fine as it is on live. Its strong, but not overtuned. If they make it always crit from flank then its absurd. I don't want to use this and I don't want everyone else using this against me. Especially not while there are some absolutely horrible spammables out there that need so much love more urgently than Surprise Attack.

Also, magDK's were semi-recently buffed super high and are now getting brought back down super low. I don't want this for the NB class please. Just keep it even instead of this yo-yoing of the classes.

MacRibs

I also have no qualms with the "mission statement" and understand the intention.

I'm only addressing the DoT change as I feel it really is the worst idea of the update and should not be implemented at least as is.

The 2 seconds dots with 20 seconds duration goes against the idea of having a more dynamic gameplay.
It promotes sluggish combat/gameplay and it doesn't feel rewarding at all, specially to newer, less experienced, casual players who tend to favor immediate action and reaction, I've introduced 15+ people to the game, some stayed, some left however most favored instant cast skills instead of DoT's, specially single target DoT's because they felt boring and didn't felt rewarding to cast.

In fact skills such as Swarm, Entropy, Soul Trap, Impaling Shards, Lightning Splash and probably some others i'm forgetting, should all have instant damage on cast specially when they are skills that are easy to avoid and cleanse.

Not to mention the amount o work it must be to now have to rework every DoT ability in the game in order to fit the new system, this while hybridization is still not finished.

If the dev team wants to improve group content to newer players or bring more excitement to dungeon and trials they should start with The Undaunted skill-line which appear to be forsaken for some time now which is ironic since its literally the guild of group content.

Rework the skills, add new dungeons and trials exclusive passives like you already have in the Alliance War skill-lines for Cyrodill, a passive that increases the strength of your synergies and/or healing taken while on dungeons and trials for example, skills with unique mechanics. This would even have the benefit of not affecting overland.

WrathOfInnos

MacRibs wrote: »

I also have no qualms with the "mission statement" and understand the intention.

I'm only addressing the DoT change as I feel it really is the worst idea of the update and should not be implemented at least as is.

The 2 seconds dots with 20 seconds duration goes against the idea of having a more dynamic gameplay.
It promotes sluggish combat/gameplay and it doesn't feel rewarding at all, specially to newer, less experienced, casual players who tend to favor immediate action and reaction, I've introduced 15+ people to the game, some stayed, some left however most favored instant cast skills instead of DoT's, specially single target DoT's because they felt boring and didn't felt rewarding to cast.

In fact skills such as Swarm, Entropy, Soul Trap, Impaling Shards, Lightning Splash and probably some others i'm forgetting, should all have instant damage on cast specially when they are skills that are easy to avoid and cleanse.

You make an interesting point. I'll take it a little further to say that DoTs with high initial damage and low ticks are far more forgiving when recast too early or too late. One example of this is Scalding Rune, which deals half its damage instantly (approx one spammable) then the other half over 14s. As a result this skill can be recast as frequently as 2s or go 16+ seconds between casts and overall DPS ends up similar. Blazing Spear has a similar mechanic, with the largest tick at the start.

Contrast this with something like Haunting Curse, which is highly unforgiving and results in half the damage if cast 1s early. Unstable Wall is loaded at the end of the duration with a larger tick, but this one is actually user-friendly because recasting early results in the explosion occurring early.

Maybe this philosophy should be applied to more skills. Not necessarily a large instant tick on everything, but DoTs in general could be front-loaded, then gradually decrease over their duration. Like an opposite Hurricane. Then everyone gets the impactful early ticks, but if the enemy moves it is only later weak ticks that are lost. Players would be free to let DoTs tick and focus spammables, or recast them early and get the higher DoT ticks once again, and overall damage output could be similar. I wouldn't do this on every skill, but it could be a nice option on some (maybe those available to everyone: Mystic Orb, Entropy etc.).

Parasaurolophus

I don't see anything wrong with a two second tick of dot`s, but only if the dot damage is left the same. I can't remember any super dynamic fights in eso where the boss would change his position every two seconds. In addition, this can really have a good effect on server performance. Also, keeping dots damage high can give them a bit of burst potential for pvp, as it will be rare but more damaging ticks.

MacRibs

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I don't see anything wrong with a two second tick of dot`s, but only if the dot damage is left the same. I can't remember any super dynamic fights in eso where the boss would change his position every two seconds. In addition, this can really have a good effect on server performance. Also, keeping dots damage high can give them a bit of burst potential for pvp, as it will be rare but more damaging ticks.

In pvp with 2 sec you have more time to cleanse single target or to side step aoe dots, with the latter getting the raw end of the deal. We could argue that increasing the radius of most aoe dots making them harder to avoid could help mitigate the issue but I don't see that as a solution.

prof_doom

MacRibs wrote: »

In pvp with 2 sec you have more time to cleanse single target or to side step aoe dots, with the latter getting the raw end of the deal. We could argue that increasing the radius of most aoe dots making them harder to avoid could help mitigate the issue but I don't see that as a solution.

Widening the area of an AOE might help some in PVP, but unless you're going to make them big enough to cover half the average boss fight zone in a trial/dungeon, it's not going to do much for PVE.

And of course, I can't really imagine the PVP players would enjoy AOE's that cover enough area to make them useful in a PVE fight.

Jordan.nick11b14_ESO

The combat changes are boring and make combat more 'spammy' which isn't fun. If I wanted to mash 1-button endlessly I'd play a FF14 healer. Please reconsider; there's no reason to do this to the community.

MacRibs

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

You make an interesting point. I'll take it a little further to say that DoTs with high initial damage and low ticks are far more forgiving when recast too early or too late. One example of this is Scalding Rune, which deals half its damage instantly (approx one spammable) then the other half over 14s. As a result this skill can be recast as frequently as 2s or go 16+ seconds between casts and overall DPS ends up similar. Blazing Spear has a similar mechanic, with the largest tick at the start.

Contrast this with something like Haunting Curse, which is highly unforgiving and results in half the damage if cast 1s early. Unstable Wall is loaded at the end of the duration with a larger tick, but this one is actually user-friendly because recasting early results in the explosion occurring early.

Maybe this philosophy should be applied to more skills. Not necessarily a large instant tick on everything, but DoTs in general could be front-loaded, then gradually decrease over their duration. Like an opposite Hurricane. Then everyone gets the impactful early ticks, but if the enemy moves it is only later weak ticks that are lost. Players would be free to let DoTs tick and focus spammables, or recast them early and get the higher DoT ticks once again, and overall damage output could be similar. I wouldn't do this on every skill, but it could be a nice option on some (maybe those available to everyone: Mystic Orb, Entropy etc.).

You conveyed my point better then I did x)
100% agree, let them deal the biggest percentage of the damage on cast and the rest as dot, of course not all abilities need this like boneyard that already has a strong synergy or caltrops that also has a strong snare + debuff, but most should.

It would be more forgiving, easier to manage in both pve and pvp, and the dmg would remain untouched.
You would only be dealing a bigger percentage in the beginning, for example instead of 100% over 20 seconds it would be 70% instant and 20% over time.

starkerealm

Jordan.nick11b14_ESO wrote: »

The combat changes are boring and make combat more 'spammy' which isn't fun. If I wanted to mash 1-button endlessly I'd play a FF14 healer. Please reconsider; there's no reason to do this to the community.

It occurs to me, that maybe, just maybe, I was too critical of The Secret World's combat, if this is what we're bound for.

Jappanda

MacRibs wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I don't see anything wrong with a two second tick of dot`s, but only if the dot damage is left the same. I can't remember any super dynamic fights in eso where the boss would change his position every two seconds. In addition, this can really have a good effect on server performance. Also, keeping dots damage high can give them a bit of burst potential for pvp, as it will be rare but more damaging ticks.

In pvp with 2 sec you have more time to cleanse single target or to side step aoe dots, with the latter getting the raw end of the deal. We could argue that increasing the radius of most aoe dots making them harder to avoid could help mitigate the issue but I don't see that as a solution.

Good thing many of the big guilds run PB and you will just nuke yourself.

Cominfordatoothbrush

I don't mind the light attack nerf, that may actually be a decent change, but the more I play this and read around the more I realize the 20 second dots have to go. It doesn't make the game easier - it makes it harder. There are many situations where they aren't even worth casting vs just using spammables because there's no damage payoff if the boss isnt standing exactly still for the full duration. They're completely useless on mobs now. All in all it just seems like it's gonna make combat much, much more boring. When you are parsing on a static target, it's not like it takes much attention away from your bars, because you're still glancing down every few seconds to see where you durations are at. Additionally the 2 second ticks are horrendous, especially for heals... this is going to make so much content harder not even because of reduced damage, but how much harder it is to heal through, and promotes spamming expensive burst heals the whole fight because of how much can happen in between heal ticks.

If for no other reason, please just reconsider this on the principle that so many people aren't liking it alone. The damage nerfs are (mostly, some are overnerfed) ok. Just please get rid of the 20 second dots and 2 second ticks.

Oshea_OK

Doing some more testing on the servers today. I realized the game reset my Champion points, and wanted to retest for better results.
This is still my DPS Mag Templar Build. I have never done a trail. I am parseing it as I would use it for my own solo game play, and not purely dps, which is not how I would use it. Example, I am using a Harding glyph for the staff and usually one or two jewelry glyphs are for recovery, instead of all 3 for damage. On my two bar set up I using a maelstrome back bar with a damage gyph. I also using one heavy attack in rotation, because I usually run out of resources in normal game play. I also use lightning staff, because it is easier to use.


PST
2Bar = 44K
Oakensoul = 40k

Current Game
2Bar = 46
Oakesoul = 50

Interestingly, I am now able to do more damage with a 2 bare set up in the PTS than with Oaksenoul. The reason for this is the easier rotation; the longer buffs are easier to use, and it help me perfect my rotation and light weaving more. The second thing is that the Major Force and Heroism are adding alot of dps to help an average player like me. Without major buffs, it might help better players, but not someone like me. But it was meant for average players and below.

On the current game to PTS I am still losing on average 10-12k dps on oakensoul, and this is true when I was only parsing on average 30k dps or now 45k dps.

This should give a good base line (10-12k dps) for how much those major buffs of Force and Heroism adds to average and below players in dps, because these as far as I can tell are the major contributors to the dps lose on the PTS with oakensoul.

For players only doing 25k (world bosses are hard at this level) to then be able to do 37k dps, is game changing! This really helps. This really helps!

Suggestions: (1) if Oakensoul is meant for average players and below, then and extra 10k dps needs to be added back to it, so that it helps the audience it was meant for.
(2). The longer rotations are helpful, especially after testing for a while. But the same suggestions are still in play. More dps needs to be added for AOE dots, since newer players use these. And dots need to tik every second or .5 seconds, particularly for heals. And 15 seconds dots my be a better comprise.
(4). As an average player, I still use a few jewelry glyphs for recovery because I still run out of resources. And so I end up using some heavy attacks' with my lighting staff. The content creators I watch suggest such things for newer or average players, and I find this advice helpful. The point is that this demographic uses heavy attacks more often than end gamers. Thus, to help this group out, heavy attacks need more dps.
(3) I agree with Skinny Cheeks video. Buffs and de-buffs seem to be what are separating me from the higher dsp of end game players. Thus, if the goal is to raise the floor for the newer and average players, then such buffs need to be given them. They need to be more accessible. If Oakensoul is meant for this group, then those buffs need to stay (the ring as it is with M. Force is doing exactly what it was meant for), OR, there needs to be an accessible passive skill that gives this buff and major de-buffs (etc).
In my testing, (and mind you I am new at this and just an average player) these buff are the biggest contributor to dps, and not longer dots, although I will admit the longer dots do make it easier on rotation and light weaving.

I hope the developers find this helpful.