PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Parasaurolophus

Dot`s changes in patch 8.1.2 make rotation even more difficult, which is completely inconsistent with the goal of "accessibility". Now, on live, the rotation is like changing spam periods and dot/buff updates. Yes, the best dps is achieved by dynamic rotation. But now the rotation will become even more difficult as the gap in time for skillo is too big. Or do you suggest low/mid skill players to use longer "sticky" dots for ease of rotation? But then they will lose a lot of dps. This will actually just throw all the "sticky" dots in the trash. It's completely pointless.
Honestly, that's enough. I was fine with the U35 changes until I tested them on the PTS. I still think that working with light and heavy attacks is going in the right direction. But these ideas with changes need to be completely reconsidered. Go back to the idea of ​​different cost dot`s. There is still no balance between damage and sustain in the game.

maeee

I really don't get how you people have managed to get your PR so consistently wrong these past few weeks. Literally all you have to do is revert the patch and reevaluate actual sources of this perceived skill gap. Data continues to show that these changes do nothing to shrink the gap and rather makes it even worse.

I am glad that I cancelled my subscription and I have no intent of touching this game again until these changes are reverted and it feels like the dev team actually cares about its player base.

Long term: get Rich the hell off this project considering his contempt for the community as shown on Twitter. The dude has no idea what he's doing and has added fuel to the fire.

eovogtb16_ESO

You guys have completely missed the entire point of your changes. Combat is going to be harder than ever now for players with 10 and 20 and 30 and 50 second dots and hots make timers line up if you want easiar combat. If you want to make the game easiar for people make buffs easiar and not to short and hard to apply. Have you ever played a necro tank and tried to keep buffs like empower up and PA? Or debuffs like brittle up? Because it doesn't seem like you guys think about any of these things when it comes to making adjustments and just think combat timers will help everybody when in reality you're just making rotations even more difficult for players.

renne

Please, just delete templars completely and free me from this hell hole.

master_vanargand

Do not remove Veiled Strike's stun.
Remove 100% critical.
This patch is hopeless.
I'm despair...game over.

exiledtyrant

Ran another static parse Test to compare Flurry vs Whirlwind vs Crystal Weapon spammables and Bound Armaments vs Twilight Pet loadouts. Video showing all 6 parses and their data can be found here:

https://youtu.be/pFjjDKpnxik

The first 3 skill loadouts were:

Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Bound
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Bound
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Bound

The second loadout was:
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Pet
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Pet
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Pet


Back bar for both was:

Bound / Pet - Degeneration - Consuming Trap - Poison Injection
(Yes I know volley allows for optimal weapon enchant uptime. I will get into that later.)

Result were as follows:

Loadout 1
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Bound 52.6k
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Bound 54.8k
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Bound 57.9k

Loadout 2
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Pet 55.6k
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Pet 58.5k
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Pet 61.4k

My initial conclusion are as follows:

• Bound Armaments is dealing more damage now, but it also ties with crystal weapon( combine the 2 instance of crystal weapon damage in the parse for a clearer picture) which is not proving itself to be worth putting into rotation.
  
• The twilight pet setup has proven to be not only far easier to play, but overall a better performer.
  
• The Whirling Blade parses shows crystal weapon doesn't do enough damage to hold up a single target rotation that crystal weaves an execute over a traditional single target spammable like Flurry.
  
• Flurry is absolutely crushing class based competition and seems to prove it is better to just spam a strong skill rather than waste time managing 2 crystal weapon procs.

Overall Feedback:

I don't like that 20 second AOEs have gone to 15 seconds max. 10 seconds rotations don't feel good to me but they match up with 20 second sticky dot setups. 15 seconds is awkward and forces you to clip your 20 second DOT back bar, especially if you back bar bow because you need volley for weapon enchant uptime. I felt 20 seconds was good but would settle for a 15 second standard across the board.

Sustain was surprisingly high over all setups I parsed with today. Don't know if that was from the cost reductions or something else. Will have to see how different it feels with using the daedric skills.

Sorcerer skills seem to be getting pushed out by generic weapon skills again. Not really sure what crystal weapon change is trying to accomplish at this point. I assume its to lower overall burst damage? The damage shift has done nothing to make it more desirable to use even though it adds more complication to the rotation, and little utility. I find that a real shame because buffing my weapons with dark crystals is not only thematically pleasing, but also makes the rotation stand out vs other more generic skill lineups.

Also can bound armaments just be always on? The 40 second buff can really throw the rhythm of the rotation off and leave dead spots where I have to sacrifice a dps ability to rebuff. The nature of light weaving can also make it even more unwieldy as you are often left with few stray swords just as the buff falls. This means you have to do a entirely new light weave pattern just to get back into your original skill cadence.

Lastly will the Arrow Barrage morph Acid Spray be getting looked at? Its 4 second poison dot for bow that just kind of sits there among all these other changes. Will do another setup tomorrow that uses more dots and no pet / bound armaments using the same gear setup.

Mr_Stach

exiledtyrant wrote: »

Ran another static parse Test to compare Flurry vs Whirlwind vs Crystal Weapon spammables and Bound Armaments vs Twilight Pet loadouts. Video showing all 6 parses and their data can be found here:

https://youtu.be/pFjjDKpnxik

The first 3 skill loadouts were:

Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Bound
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Bound
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Bound

The second loadout was:
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Pet
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Pet
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Pet


Back bar for both was:

Bound / Pet - Entropy - Soul Consumption - Poison Injection
(Yes I know volley allows for optimal weapon enchant uptime. I will get into that later.)

Result were as follows:

Loadout 1
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Bound 52.6k
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Bound 54.8k
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Bound 57.9k

Loadout 2
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon - Pet 55.6k
Whirling Blades - Crystal weapon -Flurry - Pet 58.5k
Whirling Blades - Flurry - Pet 61.4k

My initial conclusion are as follows:

• Bound Armaments is dealing more damage now, but it also ties with crystal weapon( combine the 2 instance of crystal weapon damage in the parse for a clearer picture) which is not proving itself to be worth putting into rotation.
  
• The twilight pet setup has proven to be not only far easier to play, but overall a better performer.
  
• The Whirling Blade parses shows crystal weapon doesn't do enough damage to hold up a single target rotation that crystal weaves an execute over a traditional single target spammable like Flurry.
  
• Flurry is absolutely crushing class based competition and seems to prove it is better to just spam a strong skill rather than waste time managing 2 crystal weapon procs.

Overall Feedback:

I don't like that 20 second AOEs have gone to 15 seconds max. 10 seconds rotations don't feel good to me but they match up with 20 second sticky dot setups. 15 seconds is awkward and forces you to clip your 20 second DOT back bar, especially if you back bar bow because you need volley for weapon enchant uptime. I felt 20 seconds was good but would settle for a 15 second standard across the board.

Sustain was surprisingly high over all setups I parsed with today. Don't know if that was from the cost reductions or something else. Will have to see how different it feels with using the daedric skills.

Sorcerer skills seem to be getting pushed out by generic weapon skills again. Not really sure what crystal weapon change is trying to accomplish at this point. I assume its to lower overall burst damage? The damage shift has done nothing to make it more desirable to use even though it adds more complication to the rotation, and little utility. I find that a real shame because buffing my weapons with dark crystals is not only thematically pleasing, but also makes the rotation stand out vs other more generic skill lineups.

Will do another setup tomorrow that uses more dots and no pet / bound armaments using the same gear setup.

To echo myself last PTS Cycle. Universal Skills should be inferior to class options. You choose a class to use their skills, not to fill your bar with half Universal Skills.

At the time I was referring to every class having a viable toolkit of Stuns and self healing, but I think it still fits here. Stam Sorc has come so far to not rely on so many weapon skills, I'd hate to regress again.

HEIIMS

Tbh sorc was fine (PvE wise). A strong single target class that offers very little aoe with added utility of 1k pen from Crystal Weapon. Taking away majority of its single target damage kinda makes them useless. Crystal Weapon should be a strong spammable, even though it is overperforming on live, absolutely gutting the skill doesn't make sense, maybe nerf the damage by 10%, see how it is, then if it's still overperforming heavily, nerf it by another 5% etc. For whatever reason ZoS never (or very rarely does this), they just turbo nerf it to make sure it's not overperforming and thus always gutting the skill/set. The problem of Crystal Weapon is that it adds unique pen debuff, if the spammable is not worth slotting on a dd, the skill will either be ignored or moved to a support class (in this case probably sorc tank) just look at supposed DK stamina spammable Stone Fist. However, Crystal Weapon would be very clunky to use on a tank, it would also require the tank player to constantly spam it with good weaving, and it just feels wrong to have a dedicated class spammable only viable on tanks when it was designed with dds in mind.

BretonMage

Edit:
I'm revising my comment as I had made a silly mistake on PTS which cost me a lot of DPS, leading me to post a rant earlier on.

This version of the PTS feels largely similar to week 1. DPS is more or less the same as week 1, which is a 10-15% decrease compared with live. The awkwardness of the rotation has not improved due to skills being mismatched again in duration (this time the mismatched skills were Wall of Elements and Volatile Familiar).

I feel strongly that the broad nerfs to skills, LA/HA and DoTs should not take place. If there is power creep, ZOS should look closely at the real causes of power creep and deal with those instead. (And I think we all know it is not LA weaving, since players have been LA weaving for years.)

Also, please know that if you nerf skills and LA/HA, then the progress of low/mid tier players will be hindered disproportionately, since these are the main components of damage for us. If certain skills have become overpowered due to buffs, OP sets or hybridisation, perhaps find a way to tweak or reduce the damage amplification of these features, rather than reducing the damage of the skill itself.

BlackKnight556

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

Nerf oaken to be PvE friendly, slayer instead of berserk, get rid of heroism, give minor force, and done. Or even better make it only usable in PvE.

Better idea. Just allow items like this to be affected by Battle Spirit so that you only get Minor buffs in PvP but get both Major and Minor buffs in PvE.

BlackKnight556

I honestly feel sorry for the PR team right now. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

ApostateHobo

[snip] I was debating coming back to the game because a friend started playing it, but after seeing that my favorite classes and playstyles have been gutted once again I really can't say I'm interested anymore. I've already warned off several people I know from starting just by explaining these nonsensical changes. You know an update is terrible when even people that haven't played the game wonder what on earth is going through the dev's heads when they hear about it.

[edited for bashing]

elinien

Went through Vet Crypt of Hearts 1 solo on both Live and PTS with my magblade, as it's a dungeon I've solo'd many time in the past. My setup was identical, except on Live I have two mag recovery glyphs and on PTS it was all spell damage. In all I had more spell damage on PTS.

Overall, on live my average dps across the dungeon was ~17k and on PTS it was around 15k. This was mirrored on each of the bosses where I saw an average loss of about 2k dps (some more than others). One of the hardest hit skills was, of course, Twisting Path which averaged 2.5k dps on live and closer to 1.5k dps on PTS.

Sigh... as can be noted by some of the numbers, I am not a high end dps. I'm generally pretty good at weaving and keep my buffs up. I've practiced for years, but I hit a skill wall a long time ago. Seems like every single patch ever since the CP changes has just eaten away at my damage in the name of 'closing the gap' and 'lowering high end dps'. I used to parse against the 6mil dummy at around 33k. These days I'm lucky to get 26k no matter what I adjust.

I love the combat in this game, and I love playing a damage dealer, but I'm not great at it and watching my damage go down constantly just saps my will to try. I can't say I've really had fun with it for the past year. It's not fun to start struggling with content you used to be able to do just fine, and it's immensely demoralizing to keep going backwards.

ESO_Nightingale

There really should be a lot more significant changes to warden in the next few incrementals. we're in desperate need for a timing change to fissure(and a damage type change to frost) as well as at least a slight damage nerf reversion on winter's revenge and a complete reversion on advanced species. dive also really needs more work.

CP5

So there's a lot to go over for this weeks pts, but I just have to ask, how are end game nightblade tanks liking the changed, and now nerfed cloak heal?

Ch3mical_92

And yeet goes my subscription. It has been running for over 4 years / 12k ingame-hours.

I really dont know how any of those changes help the players on the lower end. Also many highend-groups will get stranded after Godslayer because other content is not completeable anymore, thus lowering the accessibility drasticly. Raidguilds are already now disbanding left and right.

Also, if you rework Templar-Skills then remodel the others too. Now we are fighting with two different spear-models at once, which is, like the rest of the patchnotes, absolutely not thought through. I really had hopes for week 3, but ZOS crushing dreams once again. A bottle of good mead is a better investment from now on than ESO+ I guess

Jaimeh

I had a 10k drop in damage from week 2 to week 3 on the PTS on stam NB. I tried a lot of set-ups this time as well, and bow/2h/daggers were still much weaker used on the back-bar than inferno staff, which is very disappointing. But the biggest issue is that now things don't line up well, and players will have to do fully dynamic rotations, because trying to adjust a static one will hurt your damage even more. How is this helpful for low and mid-game players? Where is the logic outlined in the combat article? How are you exactly helping these players if you are nerfing them to the ground, and make it so much sweatier to pump up damage? The DOT timers have to be fully reverted, and sticky DOTs have to be adjusted--I tried deadly cloak and rending slashes and they were so much weaker, with an awkward timer, having to be recast every 2 rotations, which can easily be thrown off balance in live content. I didn't like how combat felt on my spec one bit. I sincerely hope you will rethink this update, and start over on the next cycle with smaller changes over time. Please go back to the drawing board and please let us enjoy the new patch, none of the changes accomplish what you are trying to accomplish at least as they are now, they are taking enjoyment out of the game, they will hurt the players who need the most support, and they will make certain content unreachable even for stronger players. @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Edit to add regarding staff VS bow/2h/daggers: 'Play as you like' ideally should mean that all specs are viable to certain degrees, and then specialization gives you the edge. But here we have the exact opposite effect where specializing on a stamina weapon on a full stamina build gives you worse results than a magicka weapon. It doesn't make sense--in this case the staff should be the viable option, and then the other weapons should be the meta option.

Jaimeh

Another thing to consider is that a lot of low/mid-game players lose damage because they don't keep up with their rotations on live content while having to do mechanics, and it's usual to see their damage taking a big drop in such phases in a fight. I think having more complex rotations and weaker dots will exacerbate this problem even more. It's not just dummy parses on a vacuum, on live content this damage nerf will translate even stronger.

Anhedonie

I mean I get it guys, I know what you're doing. Fine, whatever.
But just for the laughs, try to queue up a random dungeon and take notice how many damage dealers you get that only spam light attack and do literally nothing else.
You are absolutely butchering the floor. Ceiling will be fine, we can adapt to even your worst updates.

GreatGildersleeve

Everyone, this patch isn’t about floors and ceilings or accessibility.

It’s about lowering ‘obscene dps’.

Period.

Our feedback doesn’t matter unless it’s a way to lower overall dps numbers. Even then I have my doubts since some, myself included, have said go after the sets which is what’s causing the creep, and it’s been crickets.

pklemming

maeee wrote: »

I really don't get how you people have managed to get your PR so consistently wrong these past few weeks. Literally all you have to do is revert the patch and reevaluate actual sources of this perceived skill gap. Data continues to show that these changes do nothing to revert the gap and continue to make it worse.

I am glad that I cancelled my subscription and I have no intent of touching this game again until these changes are reverted and it feels like the dev team actually cares about its player base.

Long term: get Rich the hell off this project considering his contempt for the community as shown on Twitter. The dude has no idea what he's doing and has added fuel to the fire.

This! All of This!

francesinhalover

"Flurry can sometimes incorrectly inherit bonuses to Damage over Time."

took you years but you finaly murdered a skill that no one ever used, now it's not even worth using by role players, at least add pretty special effects to it.

francesinhalover

What ability am i supposed to use with endless hail 15sec now when playing necro?

All necros dots are siphon 20 sec, boneyard 10 sec, archer 20 secs. So i don't understand how am i supposed to work out endless hail in to my build? Barbed trap also doesn't work,

Do i like use endless hail 15 sec and just use poison injection 20 when endless ends? or use a unmorphed volley? that seems like a way to hurt my overall dps and resources.

---

the archer was fine at 16 secs. At least keep endless hail at 20 secs now. or buff boneyard to 15. because i'm really not sure what to do with necro now.

I have also checked other dots and i don't see any i could use with endless hail... maybe anti cavalry caltrops? but i'm really not a fan of that ability overall

Maybe make all dots 20 secs, and all aoe dots 10 secs and be done with it.
Skills/passives that get extra dot duration increases should just be scrapped and add dmg to the dots instead or class

Necrotech_Master

francesinhalover wrote: »

What ability am i supposed to use with endless hail 15sec now when playing necro?

All necros dots are siphon 20 sec, boneyard 10 sec, archer 20 secs. So i don't understand how am i supposed to work out endless hail in to my build? Barbed trap also doesn't work,

Do i like use endless hail 15 sec and just use poison injection 20 when endless ends? or use a unmorphed volley? that seems like a way to hurt my overall dps and resources.

---

the archer was fine at 16 secs. At least keep endless hail at 20 secs now. or buff boneyard to 15. because i'm really not sure what to do with necro now.

I have also checked other dots and i don't see any i could use with endless hail... maybe anti cavalry caltrops? but i'm really not a fan of that ability overall

there is the option of the wide area morph of volley which would retain the 10 sec timer if that would make it easier on the build, better than base volley still

on the rest of the topic, i agree that the new timers are now even more scattered than they are on live

francesinhalover

HEIIMS wrote: »

Tbh sorc was fine (PvE wise). A strong single target class that offers very little aoe with added utility of 1k pen from Crystal Weapon. Taking away majority of its single target damage kinda makes them useless. Crystal Weapon should be a strong spammable, even though it is overperforming on live, absolutely gutting the skill doesn't make sense, maybe nerf the damage by 10%, see how it is, then if it's still overperforming heavily, nerf it by another 5% etc. For whatever reason ZoS never (or very rarely does this), they just turbo nerf it to make sure it's not overperforming and thus always gutting the skill/set. The problem of Crystal Weapon is that it adds unique pen debuff, if the spammable is not worth slotting on a dd, the skill will either be ignored or moved to a support class (in this case probably sorc tank) just look at supposed DK stamina spammable Stone Fist. However, Crystal Weapon would be very clunky to use on a tank, it would also require the tank player to constantly spam it with good weaving, and it just feels wrong to have a dedicated class spammable only viable on tanks when it was designed with dds in mind.

I would be happy if they just removed crushing we cough i mean crystal weapon from the game
and kept crystal frags has a spammable with a stamina physical dmg version that's instant cast for stam sorcerer but does less damage than the mag variant.

Faulgor

Alright, as promised, I did some parses after the EU character copy was completed.
Lots of testing and shuffling skills around, but I think these are the optimal skills for my setups.

2 chars, 4 builds.

All parses on 3M dummy, all but Stamina Templar had Major Breach.

Stamina Templar
Deadly Strike + Aegis Caller

LIVE: 40039



PTS: 38078

Hybrid Templar
Deadly Strike + Draugrkin

LIVE: 41203


PTS: 39919

Pet Sorcerer
False God's Devotion + Mother's Sorrow

LIVE: 37533


PTS: 33567

Shock Sorcerer
Storm Cursed's Revenge + Heartland Conqueror

LIVE: 32324


PTS: 31114

Anecdotally, I also ran normal Unhallowed Grave solo with my Shock Sorcerer.
Bosses took slightly longer, but AoE fights were comparable to LIVE.

Templar lost ~2k DPS, Pet Sorc 4k, Shock Sorc ~1.5k.

It's not as bad as I feared.

But still, why?

My Pet Sorc dropped from 50k in Wrathstone, to 44k, then 37k, and now 33k.

Is this the power creep everyone is talking about?

Who is actually benefiting from all these changes?

acastanza_ESO

Giving Nightblades a constant passive source of minor expedition is yet another slap in the face to Sorcerer. I get that the nightblade unique 25% speed buff from stealth was a pain to deal with, but at least keep it tied to their stealth. This is something that sorcerers running hurricane have to PAY stamina to get access to! Unless you're going to also change hurricane to give minor expedition while it's slotted passively this is some absolute nonsense that just steps on sorcerer's toes even more.

francesinhalover

pklemming wrote: »

James-Wayne wrote: »

TPishek wrote: »

People have been asking for .8 jabs for years. Jabs changes are bliss, the only good change of the update.

Faster Jabs is good but reducing the damage is not.

I remember the change from 0.92ms to 1 second on jabs and the reason they gave at the time. The reason being, "To better match the animation". Because 1 second matches a 1.55 second animation so much better.

We got used to the 1 second and apparently we now need it to be 800ms and a animation that looks like it was done by an intern on their first week, along with an equally confusing explanation

Flurry is also now the most ironic animation in the game.

all they had to do was add 1 extra hit to jabs and flurry, that's it. But instead they destroyed skills people liked.

Why can't they destroy twilight the most hated skill in the game?

Necrotech_Master

Faulgor wrote: »

Alright, as promised, I did some parses after the EU character copy was completed.
Lots of testing and shuffling skills around, but I think these are the optimal skills for my setups.

2 chars, 4 builds.

All parses on 3M dummy, all but Stamina Templar had Major Breach.

Stamina Templar
Deadly Strike + Aegis Caller

LIVE: 40039



PTS: 38078

Hybrid Templar
Deadly Strike + Draugrkin

LIVE: 41203


PTS: 39919

Pet Sorcerer
False God's Devotion + Mother's Sorrow

LIVE: 37533


PTS: 33567

Shock Sorcerer
Storm Cursed's Revenge + Heartland Conqueror

LIVE: 32324


PTS: 31114

Anecdotally, I also ran normal Unhallowed Grave solo with my Shock Sorcerer.
Bosses took slightly longer, but AoE fights were comparable to LIVE.

Templar lost ~2k DPS, Pet Sorc 4k, Shock Sorc ~1.5k.

It's not as bad as I feared.

But still, why?

My Pet Sorc dropped from 50k in Wrathstone, to 44k, then 37k, and now 33k.

Is this the power creep everyone is talking about?

Who is actually benefiting from all these changes?

interesting, most of your builds are only losing on avg 2k dps, which is not bad, your stam templar is not hugely far off what my stam templar is using gear wise (im using deadly + pillar of nirn, with 2h maelstrom front bar and maelstrom bow back bar)

the pet sorc looks like it lost the most dmg because it more heavily utilized light attacks

olsborg

Resolving Vigor: Why put major resolve on this skill?

Alot of classes have unique buffs built into their major resolve skill like Hurricane and Ice Fortress and dropping them isnt rly a good option so what will happen is this buff will be overlapped/overwritten all the time wich doesnt feel nice.