PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Glantir

L_Nici wrote: »

And on top of that you even nerfed Hurricane for literally no reason at all.

I am sure the reason is that no one is playing the boundless storm morph anymore....

prof_doom

OnyxProphet wrote: »

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

- Light Attack Weaving Nerf

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

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

Disable this function for pvp.

- Oakensoul

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

- DoT and Damage Nerfs

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

Quoting and removing the bits that'll probably get this post removed by ZOS, because it's really good feedback.

francesinhalover

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

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

I couldn't agree, more, did you see the insane buffs nightblade surprise attack is receiving? Or the horrible jabs and flurry reworks. Plus the overkill orkensul nerfs.

I see so many bad decisions on this patch, I really wish most of this patch wouldn't enter the game, but we all known it will.

offbymyself

prof_doom wrote: »

offbymyself wrote: »

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

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

Massive combat overhauls like this every 6 months doesn't really appeal to any new or existing player, especially in an MMO. They've been pushing people to quit more and more over the last year, but these changes might actually kill most end game groups.

francesinhalover

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

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

They litteraly removed 38% of bound armaments damage, At least with crystal weapons people could use other spammables.

Personaly All i wanted was for them to just give stam sorc a normal spammable, even if it was the same has veiled strike but with a conjured purple dagger.

L_Nici

@Glantir Then they should buff boundless storm and don't nerf Hurricane.

Didgerion

francesinhalover wrote: »

Veesk wrote: »

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

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

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

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

Looks like it was exploited in PVE too. There are videos out there featuring players skipping arena mechanics due to this Oakensoul mythic.

Gederic

Tested it out on my stamblade, ya know the one that got buffed otherwise. Still seeing a 15-20k dps loss, my parses have been posted in the current parse thread running here on the pts section of the forum. Obviously this was a direct gear/skills/cp comparison which is no longer going to be ideal. Thats uh pretty demoralizing seeing that a class that otherwise got buffed is showing a massive dps loss and the current parses for the other classes are looking even worse with people showing 30k losses and more. I'm a 100k + dps on the live server and approaching the higher end. Dropping into the 80s and 90s for me isn't the end of the world, its frankly more annoying then anything. But how does this help folks on the fringe exactly? People looking to get into end game are almost certainly going to be gatekeeped even harder from veteran trials specially dlc. I really don't see how this brings up the floor? Its more like it crashes the roof in and slams the people on the floor through the basement and into an early grave. This whole patch just makes me truly not want to play ultimately. This isn't a feels good patch for really anyone from low to end game.

And to be honest with you the changes have just made the combat dry as hell which in my opinion is arguably more egregious then taking dps out at the knees.

So there it is Rich, I've seen it now, these are my initial reactions from parsing on here thus far. And I gotta say my trust is a little bit more shattered then it even was with the combat preview. Hopefully these opinions arent too "knee jerky" for ya. Heres to hoping the reactions coming in are clear enough to ensure a lot of this doesn't go to live because man, everything from the nerf batting to simply how the combat/rotation actually feels now is just not a great vibe.

Ascarl

SiAScORCH wrote: »

It's like you guys are incapable of balancing PvE and PvP separate. It's ridiculous.

Oakensoul was perfectly fine for PvE, and all you had to do to adjust it for PvP, was make it so when battle spirit was active all major buffs are minor buffs, it's not hard.

True, balancing PvE because ov PvP never worked well for the game.

Wuuffyy

Please reconsider the werewolf healing per tick nerf for the claws of life morph. I found the healing in PvP, and small scale content to me underwhelming pre-negative change. While it is true that the tick is considered to be more healing that standard. Werewolf has much less healing overall and simply requires the healing power regardless.

Azyle1

Stam Warden on PTS is at like 90K dps whereas on live (Xbox) with slightly worse gear and CP ( not all things are filled in like the war mage thing on Xbox ) I am at like 120 - 125K DPS.

Great.. great. Granted, there are probably ways to increase it as I was doing my same old stuff for the most part but still.

Foxtrot39

NB tanks after seeing Consuming darkness + morphs, the worst ult of the game for 4 years still beign untouched

unholy_nox

Not gonna lie , i saw bad patches in my time and i thought nothing can suprise me , but this...
That's worst patch notes for ESO i ever read.
It almost feels like they make changes for the sake of change , not because it was actually necessary.
Bad players will continue to be bad players not matter of changes.

francesinhalover

prof_doom wrote: »

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

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

Did you test stam sorce, because i think from what i see, i lost around 40-50% of my dmg.

Tommy_The_Gun

I absolutely changes to Nightblade. The class may finally recover after Elsweyr patch (which kinda gutted the class). Every peace of the puzzle seems to be in a right place & class "feels" almost complete. I it. Good Job. Keep it up !

The only thing that is kinda disappointing is lack of changes to Consuming Darkness ultimate. Many players agree (even non-NB mains) that this is probably the worst ultimate in the entire game. It feels weak - to a point that it almost feels like a regular Skill (and not an ulitmate) or maybe a 5 piece proc set bonus. It needs some love.

Glantir

This patch changed a good PvE DPS skill into one of the worst,

Crystal Weapon is actually really strong in PvE even most people are not using the double proc very effective.

But that is also part of the problem with this nerf, in order to make CW worth the price you need to use another skill in between. And what are we supposed to cast between? with longer lasting dots there is not much skills left.

As a Magsorc i have no Stamina Skill to gain advantage of Crystal Fragments possibility to proc by every skill because you barely use them (Hurrican every 20s, Bound Armaments every 4th LA)

And as a Stamsorc i have no real option to make use of the double proc of Crystal Weapons...

I call this the Sorc dilemma

peacenote

@ZOS_GinaBruno: Hi, I don't know if I'll be able to squeeze PTS back on my computer. I'll try, but I had to uninstall it for the billionth time to fit High Isle. In the meantime, any chance we could get a statement about the anticipated effects the light attack damage reductions are intended to have on trial healers?

I am not a theorycrafter but it seems like all the changes are going to leave trial healers (and hard mode dungeon healers, who already are extremely underappreciated and in many cases actively undesired at this point) as collateral damage at the expense of lowering DPS. And yes, I know the headline here is "DPS folks are upset" but... unless all of the content is re-balanced, this sure seems like these changes could be the tipping point where raid leaders are forced to bring another DPS instead of two healers to make up for all of these losses across the board. Also could be the nail in the coffin for dungeon groups still bringing healers that heal and do damage. A statement from the devs about the intent of these changes for the end game healing role would go a long way.

The way these patch notes read to me, as an end game healer, is that my primary ways of squeezing out damage are all being nerfed. My dots do less damage, my light attacks and heavy attacks do less damage. The majority of my abilities are heals, so they won't do any more damage. And since I'm bringing 20/30/40K, not 100K, it seems as if what I'm able to bring to the table will be significantly less useful. Then, to add insult to injury:

• Restoration Staff now restores 2970 Magicka, down from 3219
• In order to preserve the more reactive gameplay our healer and support roles fulfill, we opted to not make Healing over Time effects easier to keep up in most cases (with a few exceptions with class skills).
• “Sticky” Healing over Time effects that apply to a character will now be weaker than before, while area-based Healing over Time will be ever so slightly stronger. The logic there is that area-based healing currently feels far riskier to engage with as it roots you to an area, making you more susceptible to burst and high damaging Area of Effect attacks, while single target healing effects can stack much easier and allow for free range of movement.

Good healers are NOT JUST HEALING. And the solution to keep our roles fun is not to make pure healing harder, but to ensure we can still meaningfully provide damage and help with mechanics in between heals. This is saying it will be safer to stay in one place (so boring), managing buffs will be just as hard which means we get no wiggle room to sneak in more damage actions, so we'll have little to no way to make up for all of these nerfs.

Finally, mentioning that over-healing is high as a way of saying "healing is OK" really is off the mark, as the reason over-healing is such a thing to begin with is because SPC was made the best in class set. Overhealing does not mean we (healers) will be ok from a value perspective if overall the ability to do many actions is impacted... this is how we were able to be hybrids and contribute in multiple ways. I know I will not enjoy being a healing if the ultimate goal of the role is to make it harder to spread hots. YAWN!

sabresandiego_ESO

This patch looks really good. All of the changes seem good. The masses hate it, which is a good sign that it’s one of the best patches ever made. It will likely greatly improve the game in many ways. The difficult part of introducing a patch that improved so much of the game is that the masses can’t handle change, especially nerfs, to how they’re used to playing. So they throw a fit and threaten to quit. Thats how you know the patch is great, <snip>

<snipped for baiting>

francesinhalover

Didgerion wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

Veesk wrote: »

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

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

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

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

Looks like it was exploited in PVE too. There are videos out there featuring players skipping arena mechanics due to this mythic.

Being completly honest, i am fine with that. Arenas take forever to complete. + all the times they have to be repeated.

francesinhalover

Ascarl wrote: »

SiAScORCH wrote: »

It's like you guys are incapable of balancing PvE and PvP separate. It's ridiculous.

Oakensoul was perfectly fine for PvE, and all you had to do to adjust it for PvP, was make it so when battle spirit was active all major buffs are minor buffs, it's not hard.

True, balancing PvE because ov PvP never worked well for the game.

It really doesn't work for any game.

Azyle1

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

This patch looks really good. All of the changes seem good. The masses hate it, which is a good sign that it’s one of the best patches ever made. It will likely greatly improve the game in many ways. The difficult part of introducing a patch that improved so much of the game is that the masses can’t handle change, especially nerfs, to how they’re used to playing. So they throw a fit and threaten to quit. Thats how you know the patch is great, <snip>

Tell me you don't know what you are talking about without telling me you don't know what you are talking about.

BlackKnight556

The entire list of changes feels like one long list of insults from ZOS to their player base. In the entire list, I only found 1 single thing that I liked and that was the longer timers for DOT abilities. Everything else is unmitigated trash. I had been taking a break from ESO to play other games, with this patch I don't think I'll be coming back.

Nirntrotter

Around three quarters (ish) of all casts are gonna be spammables? Yikes. Going from dynamic combat to ... I don't even know what to call this. Slower hots are going to hurt a lot if content isn't adjusted. This whole combat redesign doesn't go together with the harder content at all. I'm confused? Who benefits from this?

All you're doing is hurting your "middle class" community that's actively interacting and progressing in this game, because they need to relearn and re-progress absolutely everything. People who already aren't diving into what makes ESO combat special (in content that actually needs that sort of knowledge/experience) will probably not care either way?

PrinceShroob

1. Warden's Winter's Revenge had its duration changed to standardize at 20 seconds, but even though Ash Cloud, Path of Darkness, and Summon Shade had their durations adjusted, Dragonknight's Eternal Mountain and Nightblade's Dark Veil passives were not changed. This results in Ash Cloud, Path of Darkness, and Summon Shade lasting for 22 seconds rather than 20 seconds.

This seems antithetical to the idea of simplifying rotations, as these skills remain dynamic (in particular, Summon Shade is now dynamic when it was not before). It also seems to conflict with the change to their durations, as the intention seems to have been for these skills to last 20 seconds each.

2. Scorch had its duration changed but Blastbones did not. While I understand that Blastbones must expire quickly to leave a corpse behind, it seems antithetical to alter Deep Fissure in the interest of simplifying rotations, as the skill as now dynamic rather than being in "waltz time"--particularly given that the in-game ability bar timer is misleading, showing the duration until the shalks reappear rather than the total duration of the skill. I would strongly advise against altering the "beat" of a class, as it removes some of Warden's class identity.

3. The penetration bonus of Advanced Species is not useful to magicka characters, as light armor naturally provides more penetration, making the bonus less useful. Additionally, organized groups will usually maximize armor debuffs, making the bonus unwanted.

I am also concerned about the power budget--Nightblade's Master Assassin provides 2974 penetration while flanking and Necromancer's Dismember provides 1500 penetration while a Grave Lord ability is active, but Advanced Species provides a whopping 5940 penetration with six Animal Companion skills slotted--only slightly less than Major Breach.

If we assume a Warden has only three Animal Companions abilities slotted--Dive, Fetcher Infection, and Scorch--then they have 2970 additional penetration: identical to a Nightblade's additional penetration, but from any angle.

This is a worrisome change, because it's too polarized (pardon the pun): a bonus that is disproportionately strong in PvP, where Warden's essentially receive a bonus for doing nothing and completely useless in PvE, where penetration is capped.

I would recommend reverting this change or altering the Advanced Species passive to provide a different bonus.

sabresandiego_ESO

BlackKnight556 wrote: »

The entire list of changes feels like one long list of insults from ZOS to their player base. In the entire list, I only found 1 single thing that I liked and that was the longer timers for DOT abilities. Everything else is unmitigated trash. I had been taking a break from ESO to play other games, with this patch I don't think I'll be coming back.

Your post perfectly exemplifies what I stated a few posts above

Amdar_Godkiller

Remathilis wrote: »

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

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

How much is that light attack damage nerf going to kill Werewolves? A

Urvoth

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I don't know if this is the right place to post, but I would like to say something about Plaguebreak set:

The main issue with this set is not the DOT damage, bu rather the fact that this set effect is triggered (proced) when target dies. From the description of this item, it sound like it should only proc when the effect was removed early (purged). Dying, does not remove negative effects. If I have a sorc's Haunting Curse on me, and I die - then the effect is not removed. It still explodes.

The way Plaguebreak is coded, makes it act more like "a better version" of Vicious Death. It punishes dying. It is not punishing purge-spamming.

It also counts pets as "enemies" as part of the modifier damage increase in the explosion, including non-targetable pets. This makes the explosion damage much higher than it should be against small groups.

Foxtrot39

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

This patch looks really good. All of the changes seem good. The masses hate it, which is a good sign that it’s one of the best patches ever made. It will likely greatly improve the game in many ways. The difficult part of introducing a patch that improved so much of the game is that the masses can’t handle change, especially nerfs, to how they’re used to playing. So they throw a fit and threaten to quit. Thats how you know the patch is great, when muppets get upset

I doubt it until I can read a poll from at least 70% of the playerbase based on their class & roles and a few week into the PTS for feedback

The problem with such sweeping changes that a lot is getting overlooked

Like some say this doesn't raise the floor in any way, handicaped people still can't weave, people unaware of weaving will still be left in the dark until they either accidently stumble on it or get it explained to them whiel weaing still get you a significant DPS boost

Handicaped people need an auto weave option (disabled in PVP), period.

Rember when HA set got nerfed? Most of the people that complained where handicaped people with HA build, as it was the only way to retain good damage due them being unable to weave.

Healers seems to be screaming how harder it will be for end game content with a 50% nerf on their AOE due to the 2s tick, a lot of content require you to have high HPS on a lot of group member due to wipe mechanics, and those heavy damage/wipe mechanics are NOT getting changed to take into account the massive loss of HPS needed to complete them

Low end player may just see now that they won't be able to get into trials anymore, as archieving high DPS will be harder for them as this patch will nearly cut their already bad damage by 1/3 wich cause them to be gatekeeped a lot more often than its already the case

helios777

If these changes go live without being reverted this will be, by far, the worst set of changes since ESO’s launch in 2014 from a PVP perspective.

ESO_Nightingale

i like that arctic is finally doing more respectable damage in comparison to other dots, however, sustaining it is awful especially when our already bad sustain was just nerfed.

winter's revenge took a severe nerf seemingly to compensate for that. before it was roughly 2.5k on the tooltip, and now it's 1.8 every 2 seconds. that's a huge reduction.

Scorch should not have it's 3 second timer changed whatsoever. us wardens like the 3 second timer. i think it's fine that you are increasing the duration of the skill, but it should only ever be in increments of 3. sub assault feels lackluster too because of that change.

cutting dive got absolutely gutted, and while it needed to be changed, i think going all in on sustain was the wrong call. i think screaming cliff racer is a step in the right direction, but it still feels bad to use with it's slow projectile speed and awkward off balance condition.

bear seems to be a step in the right direction, but the buff to eternal guardian really doesn't seem to be enough.