PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Necrotech_Master

olsborg wrote: »

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.

with the change to dark cloak for NB, i might have to consider dropping it, i use it on my NB for pvp, because right now its a half decent heal that doesnt drain my primary resource and gives minor protection, but if the heal amount is nerfed to 1/4 of what it is, it wont even be worth using

i could get the major resolve from vigor for basically the same effect (i use vigor too but its on my back bar, but im gonna consider swapping that out if worse comes to worse, or just put vigor on both bars lol)

virtus753

You kept the 52% nerf to the first tick of Ritual of Retribution and kept the new increased scaling of 12% per tick.

I'm not going to repeat my math here on how damaging that is to the skill.

It's only a 33% nerf when you wait the full 20 seconds before recasting. It's a 44.6% nerf when you recast it at its current duration of 12 seconds, which already doesn't work for most mobile or phased fights.

I get that this skill ticks every 2 seconds on live as well, so I wasn't expecting you to change it back to 1 second like it was quite a while ago, but you do need to revert the scaling changes if you want to keep this skill competitive in PvE content, where relatively few bosses sit happily in ground-based AoEs for 20 seconds at a time.

codestripper

Here's some feedback for the latest PTS patch.

See Below Spoiler for Live vs PTS dummy parsing:

Live Setup:


PTS Setup:



Live Trial Dummy:


PTS Trial Dummy:



Live 6 Mill:


PTS 6 Mill:

See Below Spoiler for Live vs PTS vMA Logs:

Live - https://www.esologs.com/reports/R6TxnC4a9K2cJjp3

PTS - https://www.esologs.com/reports/rzXMmqG4tCZhkcQw

Honestly speaking, I see no difference between this PTS cycle and last PTS cycle for my DPS or ability to perform in vMA. My deaths this time I can just attribute to being stupid. The same issue still exists where my burst DPS feels extremely weak with my current spammable, and it feels a bit more of a grind.

In terms of my DPS differences, you can see for yourself. I uploaded a screenshot of my average parse from Live and PTS. I'll try to get a group together soon to run some HM DLC dungeons to see how that compares to live. But base game Normals and Vets are as easy to solo as ever...for the ones that can be without a mechanic blocking you at least.

Overall, it's just another patch where you adjust and pray. I won't be quitting. None of the content I did before seems impossible or unplayable. And I'm not a top 1% player so I was never going to prog vCR+3 or Trifecta vDSR in the near future. I'll miss hitting that 80k parse though ngl.

(If @ZOS_Finn ever reads this for some reason, please make pets not die on the spider boss on Arena 3 jeez, so annoying)

TPishek

codestripper wrote: »

Here's some feedback for the latest PTS patch.

See Below Spoiler for Live vs PTS dummy parsing:

Live Setup:


PTS Setup:



Live Trial Dummy:


PTS Trial Dummy:



Live 6 Mill:


PTS 6 Mill:

See Below Spoiler for Live vs PTS vMA Logs:

Live - https://www.esologs.com/reports/R6TxnC4a9K2cJjp3

PTS - https://www.esologs.com/reports/rzXMmqG4tCZhkcQw

Honestly speaking, I see no difference between this PTS cycle and last PTS cycle for my DPS or ability to perform in vMA. My deaths this time I can just attribute to being stupid. The same issue still exists where my burst DPS feels extremely weak with my current spammable, and it feels a bit more of a grind.

In terms of my DPS differences, you can see for yourself. I uploaded a screenshot of my average parse from Live and PTS. I'll try to get a group together soon to run some HM DLC dungeons to see how that compares to live. But base game Normals and Vets are as easy to solo as ever...for the ones that can be without a mechanic blocking you at least.

Overall, it's just another patch where you adjust and pray. I won't be quitting. None of the content I did before seems impossible or unplayable. And I'm not a top 1% player so I was never going to prog vCR+3 or Trifecta vDSR in the near future. I'll miss hitting that 80k parse though ngl.

(If @ZOS_Finn ever reads this for some reason, make pets not die on the spider boss on Arena 3 jeez, so annoying)

They buffed the trial dummy, so you're not quite comparing things 1:1. You'd probably be closer to 72k post patch.

boi_anachronism_

Firstmep wrote: »

Remathilis wrote: »

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

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

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

STAMBLADES are BUFFED. Magblades got twisting path nerfed and that's basically it. So yeah, it's hybridization or death for magblades now. So yeah, as a magblade main, I'm butthurt. It was a cool and unique skill that always had a place on my bar and now it's in the bin because there are objectively better off class skills. Now here I am trying to figure out a new build after just 6 months of play. I can either hybridized somehow or respec into stam. That's my choice.

Everyone acts like stam and mag are are the same. They just aren't with the unfinished hybridization changes. These buffs are useless to me.

Necrotech_Master

TPishek wrote: »

codestripper wrote: »

Here's some feedback for the latest PTS patch.

See Below Spoiler for Live vs PTS dummy parsing:

Live Setup:


PTS Setup:



Live Trial Dummy:


PTS Trial Dummy:



Live 6 Mill:


PTS 6 Mill:

See Below Spoiler for Live vs PTS vMA Logs:

Live - https://www.esologs.com/reports/R6TxnC4a9K2cJjp3

PTS - https://www.esologs.com/reports/rzXMmqG4tCZhkcQw

Honestly speaking, I see no difference between this PTS cycle and last PTS cycle for my DPS or ability to perform in vMA. My deaths this time I can just attribute to being stupid. The same issue still exists where my burst DPS feels extremely weak with my current spammable, and it feels a bit more of a grind.

In terms of my DPS differences, you can see for yourself. I uploaded a screenshot of my average parse from Live and PTS. I'll try to get a group together soon to run some HM DLC dungeons to see how that compares to live. But base game Normals and Vets are as easy to solo as ever...for the ones that can be without a mechanic blocking you at least.

Overall, it's just another patch where you adjust and pray. I won't be quitting. None of the content I did before seems impossible or unplayable. And I'm not a top 1% player so I was never going to prog vCR+3 or Trifecta vDSR in the near future. I'll miss hitting that 80k parse though ngl.

(If @ZOS_Finn ever reads this for some reason, make pets not die on the spider boss on Arena 3 jeez, so annoying)

They buffed the trial dummy, so you're not quite comparing things 1:1. You'd probably be closer to 72k post patch.

in their images they do include the 3 mil dummy on live and pts as well, and the parse only dropped about 1-2k

i agree it kind of is annoying that they changed the buffs on the trial dummy so that it doesnt much show data

i think the logs for the vMA is more accurate analysis as that is real content

WrathOfInnos

codestripper wrote: »

Live 6 Mill:


PTS 6 Mill:

[/spoiler]

Something seems off about this, you should be losing significantly more than 3k DPS. Why do you have 80 light attacks on live and only 105 on PTS when the fight time is within 2s? Why did your volatile familiar pulse hit 61 times vs 82? Relequen was clearly kept up better on PTS with more ticks and much more damage. Why is your spell pen averaging 700 higher on PTS (solved, it's the Perfect Maelstrom Staff vs normal, giving ~2% DPS)? Where did the extra 60 Spell Damage come from? I'm also noticing that every buff has better uptime on the PTS parse: Major Prophecy 95% to 99%, Minor Prophecy 94% to 97%, Minor Berserk 91% to 99%, Minor Force 89% to 93%, Major Intellect 94% to 100%, Weapon Damage Enchant 89% to 95%. None of these are very impactful alone, but together they can make an significant difference. It seems like the PTS example was the peak performance of that build, while the live parse had some mistakes that make it a questionable comparison.

Tannus15

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

codestripper wrote: »

Live 6 Mill:


PTS 6 Mill:

[/spoiler]

Something seems off about this, you should be losing significantly more than 3k DPS. Why do you have 80 light attacks on live and only 105 on PTS when the fight time is within 2s? Why did your volatile familiar pulse hit 61 times vs 82? Relequen was clearly kept up better on PTS with more ticks and much more damage. Why is your spell pen averaging 700 higher on PTS (solved, it's the Perfect Maelstrom Staff vs normal, giving ~2% DPS)? Where did the extra 60 Spell Damage come from? I'm also noticing that every buff has better uptime on the PTS parse: Major Prophecy 95% to 99%, Minor Prophecy 94% to 97%, Minor Berserk 91% to 99%, Minor Force 89% to 93%, Major Intellect 94% to 100%, Weapon Damage Enchant 89% to 95%. None of these are very impactful alone, but together they can make an significant difference. It seems like the PTS example was the peak performance of that build, while the live parse had some mistakes that make it a questionable comparison.

prey on PTS had 19 hits while on live it had 15, so either prey had significantly better uptimes on PTS or it was recast on live before the explosion.

There is so much wrong with these 2 parses from a comparison stand point, however 3k dps a 40k parse is STILL just under 10%. It's a significant loss.

It's not wrong to note that back in vMoL / vAS days trials requirements was to hit that 40k benchmark. Guess who just got dropped from the team...

codestripper

Tannus15 wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

codestripper wrote: »

Live 6 Mill:


PTS 6 Mill:

[/spoiler]

Something seems off about this, you should be losing significantly more than 3k DPS. Why do you have 80 light attacks on live and only 105 on PTS when the fight time is within 2s? Why did your volatile familiar pulse hit 61 times vs 82? Relequen was clearly kept up better on PTS with more ticks and much more damage. Why is your spell pen averaging 700 higher on PTS (solved, it's the Perfect Maelstrom Staff vs normal, giving ~2% DPS)? Where did the extra 60 Spell Damage come from? I'm also noticing that every buff has better uptime on the PTS parse: Major Prophecy 95% to 99%, Minor Prophecy 94% to 97%, Minor Berserk 91% to 99%, Minor Force 89% to 93%, Major Intellect 94% to 100%, Weapon Damage Enchant 89% to 95%. None of these are very impactful alone, but together they can make an significant difference. It seems like the PTS example was the peak performance of that build, while the live parse had some mistakes that make it a questionable comparison.

prey on PTS had 19 hits while on live it had 15, so either prey had significantly better uptimes on PTS or it was recast on live before the explosion.

There is so much wrong with these 2 parses from a comparison stand point, however 3k dps a 40k parse is STILL just under 10%. It's a significant loss.

It's not wrong to note that back in vMoL / vAS days trials requirements was to hit that 40k benchmark. Guess who just got dropped from the team...

It may have been a bit strange because of the other target dummy i had accidentally hit before this parse. Here, I think this one looks a bit more comparable? I don't have another perfected lightning at the moment on live but I can recreate one with gems if you'd prefer seeing that. I don't think the extra pen really matters that much.

codestripper

Also, I'd like to point out the regen vs drain on the dummy. I wasn't using elemental drain or anything to help me with sustain so it was a bit difficult to keep uptimes on things the same between the 2 parses.

ESO_Nightingale

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

"Warden improvements in Week 3 and beyond had better feature a reversion of the Deep Fissure timing changes." - basically any MagDen that still plays the game.

and ffs a reversion to advanced species as well as a dps buff to arctic blast to make it legit viable.

well hey, that's at least 1 thing.

Elsonso

Updated my thoughts on Warden Scorch/Deep Fissure skill. I use this on EU, but not NA. (EU character copy this week) Generally, I don't like it on Live because of the rather lengthy delay. I frequently miss because everything moves around a lot. PTS is worse, since it now takes an additional second before it pops. The 3 seconds on Live was already too long.

I'm starting to feel like I need to phone in a shalk reservation before the combat starts.

Please consider returning this to 3 seconds. Better yet, 2 seconds.

exiledtyrant

Tested 15 Second Back Back Bar Rotation vs 10 second Back Bar rotation today. Video of 4 parse set found here:

https://youtu.be/bgWmju_p0dI

Results:

Loadout 1
Crystal + Flurry + Whirl 15 second Parse 58.7k DPS
Flurry + Whirl + 15 second Parse 60.1k DPS
Both used 15 second volley and lightning splash morphs

Loadout 2
Crystal + Flurry + Whirl 10 second Parse 55.2k DPS
Flurry + Whirl 10 second Parse 57.5k DPS
Both use 10 second volley and lightning splash morphs

Initial Conclusions:

• The 15 Second rotation outperforms the 10 second in static encounters even with more clipping
  
  
• 10 Second rotations will probably outperform 15 second rotations in very high movement fights
  
  
• The ability to perform my spammable over twice as long in a 15 second rotation vs a 10 second rotation is probably where the gap is coming from.
  
  
• With regards to static 15 vs 10 second high movement niches. Both rotations perform close enough that you could just stick to one or the other depending on playstyle with little to no draw backs. Only diehards would feel the need to spec for either niche scenario.
  
• Crystal weapon still under performing and also seems to be messing with combat metric calcs. I had quite a few parses using crystal that recorded 3x-5x more weave misses than usual but only on parses with crystal weapon. Even before the 2 part change crystal weapon parses never showed such a large pool of misses

I also recorded a small rotation video comparing a 10 second, 15 second, and 20 second rotation. This has nothing to do with actual numbers and more about how each feels compared to each other. Rotation video can be found here:

https://youtu.be/_iymHQ3huA8

My observations after completing the test are as follows:

• The 10 second rotation felt frantic and often did not let me use my spammable more than 2 times per rotation. A soon as I am done setting up my DOTS I am right back to setting up my DOTS. I like using my spammable and do not like having to swap as often as 10 seconds demands.
  
  To put this in perspective I time my rotation around poison injection. On a 10 second rotation that means swapping back down between 14-15 seconds on poison injection's timer. From back bar to front bar you go from 20 seconds of injection to 17. That's 2-3 seconds on front side before you have to swap back again for DOTS. For 15 second rotations you swap at around 6-8 seconds giving me 9-11 seconds of front bar time. For 20 second rotations I can go all the way to 2 seconds giving me 15 seconds of front bar time. The amount of bar swapping due to these time constraints is worlds apart and is a large reason why I never liked 10 seconds.
  
  
• The 15 second rotation felt far more comfortable but not as good as 20. I would settle for this as a middle ground however, as long as other skills are scaled up and standardized to fit the 15 second window. I liked being able to use my spammable more but I didn't like having to clip my 20 second skills.
  
  
• The 20 second rotation is still my favorite. I get a lot of front bar time and the 20 sec timer feels far less punishing than the 10 sec window.

That's it for now. Will try a formal DPS ceiling test sometime this week if not tomorrow.

code65536

The Dark Cloak changes in Update 35—and in PTS week 3 in particular—are just plain horrible. And after testing it in the new dungeon hard modes, I think it's pretty safe to say that you've ruined this skill.

I had already written about the problems with the new Dark Cloak back in PTS week 1, so imagine my surprise when, instead of seeing a fix for those issues in PTS week 3, I see a change that further exacerbates those problems.

Before I begin, as background, I’m speaking from the perspective of endgame PvE tanking. My main character is a nightblade, and my main role is a tank, so, yes, I’m one of those rare people who actually tanks vet HM content on a nightblade on a regular basis, even though it’s probably the second- or third-weakest tank class. Because it’s my main and I like it.

First problem: Missing-health healing is intrinsically reactive. Yet, HoTs are generally used proactively. Most players use HoTs to keep themselves topped off and to take care of problems before they get bad. Reactive heals should be burst heals, not HoTs. Dark Cloak has no burst component: if you spam it in a panic, all you’re doing is wasting resources. So why are you adding a missing-health clause to a HoT—a heal that, by its very nature, is best used proactively, not reactively?

The change in PTS week 1 frankly made no sense from this basic conceptual standpoint.

Second problem: Missing-health heals are bad in general. So let's talk a bit about that other missing-health heal. Did you know that many DK tanks have abandoned Green Dragon Blood, which is ostensibly the “tank morph” of the DK heal, in favor of Coagulating Blood, which scales off of offensive stats? That’s how bad and undesirable GDB is, that tanks find the “wrong” morph to be more useful.

To illustrate, here are screenshots of the log from a few Dreadsail Reef twins HM pulls on the Live server, where both tanks were DKs. The first is a tank using GDB, and the second is the other tank using Coagulating. I like this particular log comparison because there’s no “main” and “off” tank on this fight: both tanks are doing roughly the same thing, and it also highlights the problems with Trauma (which I will touch on later in this post).

So, if GDB’s missing-health heal is so bad that DK tanks are abandoning it in favor of the “wrong” morph, why on earth would I want the NB heal to follow that same path?

Third problem: Dark Cloak is no longer effective at keeping a player topped off, in preparation for a future damage burst.

Yes, I did test Dark Cloak on the PTS, by running the new dungeon Hard Modes on my NB tank, in both PTS week 1 and PTS week 3.

We ran Graven Deep Hard Mode today, and on the final boss, there is a mechanic that forces two players to stop what they’re doing and chase after a thing, which they must do quickly or they’ll die. The tank will not get this mechanic, but the healer can be targeted by it, which means that there will be periods of time where the tank must fend for themselves without healer support, when the healer must drop what they’re doing to attend to this mechanic. It’s moments like this where the inability for Dark Cloak to keep my health up is most acutely felt. I'm struggle to get myself to full, and if I take a burst of damage that hits for well over half my health in 0.4s, then I'm dead.

We eventually cleared Graven Deep Hard Mode again during PTS week 3 (I had previously cleared it in week 1)... After I logged off of my NB tank and logged onto a sorc tank, with a spammable self-heal that I can actually depend on. So much for playing the class I want, eh?

Fourth problem: This is a major nerf compared to Live.

Let’s say you took a burst of damage that took you down to 25% health. Assuming no crits, since my tank only has an 11% crit chance anyway...

• Old Cloak: 6 ticks of 9.2% max health = 55.2% max health recovered = 80.2% final health
• New Cloak: 10.5% max health first tick + 9.0% second tick + … + 4.9% final tick = 44.6% max health recovered = 69.6% final health

25% is generous, though, since that’s a pretty dire low-health situation. Even then, by the new Cloak is already underperforming starting from the third tick (27.3% cumulative recovered with new vs. 27.6% with the old). What if we looked at 50% health?

• Old Cloak: heals the player back to full
• New Cloak: 7% max health first tick + 6% second tick + … + 3.3% final tick = 29.8% max health recovered = I’m not at full health

Is there any scenario in which the new cloak is better than the old cloak? Yes, if I’m under constant damage that keeps my health always below 34%, then the new cloak can outperform the old cloak. But then this brings us back to the third problem above: with light attacks (I’m not talking about heavy attacks with clearly telegraphed windups that you can react to; I’m talking about fast light attacks that hit you in the fraction of a second) in the latest vet HM content that can knock out over half of a tank’s health if we happen to take it unblocked on a bar swap, we want to always be at full health, not 34% health.

Whoever wrote "this number may seem high" in the developer comment section of the PTS patch notes must have a cruel sense of humor to have the audacity to nerf this skill and its usefulness and then try to reassure us that this nerfed skill is not OP. Seriously, it's insulting.

Fifth problem: Trauma. I don’t know if the combat team is aware, but Trauma (aka, heal absorption) is the latest hot new mechanic in dungeons and trials. It’s featured on the first boss of Earthen Root Enclave (one of the new Update 35 dungeons) and throughout Dreadsail Reef. And you know what? Trauma is not counted as missing health. Oh, and unlike the Trauma applied in PvP, these are quite large (over 40K) and don’t go away on their own within a reasonable amount of time. So if I just got a 45K Trauma effect, but I haven’t yet taken any health damage, my new Dark Cloak (and Green Dragon Blood) will do absolutely nothing for that Trauma. And Trauma is definitely something that you want to get rid of before you reach low health because if I’m down to 25% health and still have a 20K Trauma on me, I’m pretty much going to die.

(Going off-topic a bit, Trauma causes other issues too, such as with heals that target low-health players failing to target players with Trauma who are not at low health. I reported this issue back in 2019, when Trauma was used for the Moongrave Fane Hard Mode.)

Sixth problem: Missing-health healing is not reliable. What do I mean? Well, if you took a chunk of damage, and the healer throws you a burst heal, and it lands 0.1s after your Dark Cloak ticks, then great, you get a big Dark Cloak tick plus the healer’s heal, and you’re back up to full, right? But what if your Dark Cloak instead ticked 0.1s after the healer’s heal? Then it heals for a piddling amount and you’re not brought up to full. I have one word to describe this sort of scenario: frustrating.

What needs to happen: Either completely revert Dark Cloak to what it was on Live, or if you really insist on missing-health, then you need to also add in a max-health component too. I.e., Dark Cloak NEEDS a guaranteed max-health heal component. Period. Either just max-health or max-health with a bonus additional amount based on missing health.

Hotdog_23

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

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.

DK’s would love expedition in their class toolkit outside of a gap closer that pulls you to the enemy. Which BTW is a skill that almost no one uses at all. In fact, I have only seen it used once or twice that I can think of off the top of my head against me. Tried to use it and but found it not very user friendly.

Empowering Chains

Target: Enemy
Range: 22m
Cost: 3780 Magicka
Skill description
Launch a fiery chain to grasp and pull you to an enemy, dealing 1438 Flame Damage and granting you Empower for 3 seconds, increasing the damage of your Light and Heavy Attack by 40%. Hitting the target grants you Major Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 30% for 4 seconds. This attack cannot be dodged or reflected.
New effect
Pulls you to the enemy instead. Grants Empower after casting.

from https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/empowering-chains

for reference
Hurricane

Cost: 2295 Stamina
Target: Area
Duration: 20 seconds
Radius: 5 meters
Effect
Manifest yourself as pure air, buffeting nearby enemies with wind dealing 238 Physical Damage every 1 second for 20 seconds. The winds grow in damage and size, increasing up to 160% more damage and up to 9 meters in size. While in this form you gain Major Resolve and Minor Expedition, increasing your Physical and Spell Resistance by 5948 and your Movement Speed by 15%.
New effect
Converts into a Stamina ability and deals Physical Damage. Increases in size and damage the longer it is active. Grants Minor Expedition while active, increasing your Movement Speed.
Stay safe

Rimskjegg

DPS has been successfully nerfed (but by roughly twice as much as the Combat Preview promised). Self-healing has been nerfed too. And the duration of some skills has been increased. But we were promised so much more and apart from what I've mentioned so far, the week 3 iteration of the PTS seems to break every other promise in the Combat Preview. I tried to make a comprehensive list then realized I'd end up with a whole novel, so I'll limit myself to the promises that were crystal clear. If this just piles on the mountain of feedback, may I humbly request the devs at least watch the last 5 minutes of SkinnyCheeks's latest video and consider it very carefully. If that makes you realize there just isn't time to get all this fixed before August 22, just take your time with these changes over the PTS for Update 36, don't rush. Because there are a lot of problems as the PTS currently stands, in week 3. If we can be provided with a game that has actually improved, I don't think we'd be so scared of change as some might think - but trying to fix a host of problems only after they go live can only result in confusion, frustration, change fatigue and players leaving.

Problem1: Heavy attack builds were promised you "wanted better" for them. Instead they've been nerfed far more than anyone else. This has been thoroughly documented already, but I'll post my results as well just to show this is fact, not anecdote. (Because the trial dummy has changed, I'll list my non-trial dummy tests since these are the only apples-to-oranges comparison.)


So my heavy attack MagSorc dropped from 28,3k on live to 21,7k on PTS. That means a heavy attack Sorceror still suffers a 23% drop in DPS and the biggest factors are the heavy attack nerf and the change to Daedric Tombs, which has been completely gutted. And I wasn't cheesing it on live; 48 explosions on 30 casts is easy to achieve on most bosses. But because of the new delay on the PTS, I had 29 casts and only 37 explosions there. The ability for Mines to explode several times has existed in the game since way back, I think since launch, though I may be wrong, I didn't play Sorc back in 2014. Suddenly treating this as a bug just deletes the ability's usefulness. Variations on this build have been used for a very long time by a lot of players who struggle with APM. So many players will be very disappointed by this - most of all those who read the combat preview. I also ran a quick test on a more regular light attack build on my StamSorc, and although the whole class has still been way over-nerfed, my results here "only" suffered a roughly 20% loss, from live DPS of 44-47k (mostly depending on my sub-par weaving) to 37k on the PTS. And this is despite buffing Stampede and Bound Armaments a little in week 3 compared to week 1.



On the bright side: Heavy attack item sets like Infallible Aether have been fixed for PvP now that their 5-piece bonus only apply to monsters. Well done!
Solution: At a minimum, buff heavy attacks back up. HA builds aren't a PvP problem any more!
Potential new problem: HA still need balancing against LAs and there isn't time to rebalance, test and evaluate before live. (We don't want HA builds to become the new meta, either, like when the Morrowind expansion was launched.)
New solution: Revert all combat changes before live and try again in PTS for Update 36.

Problem2: We were led to believe weaving would be less impactful, reducing the gap between high and low APM players. Instead it is at least as impactful for high end players due to changes to Empower, MA staff outperforming anything else back bar. etc. Also, beginner players who spam light attacks a lot are hurt more than anyone else.
Again data on this has been provided by pretty much everyone who has tested, see SkinnyCheek's video.
Solution: Revert all combat changes before live, reevaluate, and test again in PTS for Update 36.

Problem3: We were led to believe with longer DoTs, we'd have "less stressful rotations" and our eyes could watch the game instead of being glued to our timers. Instead we now have to look at timers even more than before because even sticky DoTs still have all kinds of different durations, just as Nefas showed in his week 1, day 1 video. Trap doesn't last for 20 seconds, for instance. It lasts for 20 secs +1.5 seconds to arm. Dragonknight abilities like Embers and Fiery Breath last for 24 seconds when all passives have been unlocked. There are many more examples, and the net effect is that rotations using long durations are now much more complicated and stressful than rotations with short durations. And that's not even going into the stress of combining ground and sticky DoTs in one rotation, or the far worse stress of of everyone having to learn new rotations.
Solution: Consider the ideal time to re-cast (after passives, delay timers etc) - the base duration in itself just doesn't work as unit on which to base rotations. This was handled expertly with Endless Hail, which now lasts effectively 15 seconds because 13 seconds + 2 seconds downtime. Now make it so sticky DoTs actually line up at 20 seconds until re-cast. That way it's at least possible to set up a sticky DoT rotation for low DPS players where those DoTs can be activated in sequence, without losing even more DPS to early or late re-casts. Otherwise longer durations just don't add any "accessibility to combat" for anyone. This is even more important for DoTs that ramp up in damage over their duration, like Embers and its morphs, but all sticky DoTs need to be considered.
Potential new problem: there may not be time to rebalance, test and evaluate before live here either?
New solution Revert all combat changes before live and test again in PTS for Update 36.

Problem4: We were led to believe there would be a 6-11% damage nerf. Instead both my Sorcs have been nerfed by 15-25%. Just see above.
Solution: Revert all combat changes before live, reevaluate, and test again in PTS for Update 36.

Problem5: You promised to shorten the gap between high end DPS and not harm "the low-end experience". Yet all these changes as they now stand only widen the gap and hurt the low-end far more than anyone else. The low-end is also much slower to adapt to sweeping changes. Furthermore, it now looks like the strongest PvE DPS may consist of running 10-second ground DoTs. One point that I don't think anyone has brought up yet, but which was very clear from living in Europe and testing on American PTS server, is that Players with high ping notoriously struggle with targeted ground DoTs because lag affects targeted ground skills a lot more than other skills Again, this won't hurt the top players on low ping, just those who are already playing from a distance that handicaps their connection.
Solution: Revert all combat changes before live, reevaluate, and test again in PTS for Update 36. When the changes are ready enough to go live, make sure to give advice for "low-end" players in a multitude of channels so they aren't just left wondering " huh, guess some of my skills last a lot longer now, I wonder if that matters in any way? Also, why have my dungeons and arenas suddenly gotten slower and harder?" Help these players instead of harming them. That was what you said you wanted!

TL DR:
You as developers can't say something like the Combat Preview, then ask for our "trust" on Twitter, then break the vast majority of your promises like this. If someone is breathing down your neck about deadlines, show some courage and tell them to wait. Release the new dungeons and content. Shelve everything else till the next PTS cycle so there's time for proper testing.

Lykeion

On Dark Cloak, I'd like to share my opinion on its changes in PTS3 by doing some simple calculations first. While the live server Dark Cloak restored 9.2% of your max health per second, in the latest PTS3, the cloak's effect was changed to restore 11%-14% of your lost health per second. The break-even point for this change is about 16%, which means you have to lose up to 84% of your health in PTS to get the same amount of health restored per second as in the live server, which is literally one blow to death, even if you are a tank. Also, PTS cloak's healing drops dramatically as soon as you regain a bit of health. This makes cloak an unreliable skill, if not a useless one.
I believe that the mechanic of healing based on health lost comes from DK's Dragon Blood. Extending this mechanic to other class erases the differences between classes, which is not good. Also, even though DK is the best tank class in the game, the Dragon Blood mechanic is not that welcome. Its ability to restore based on lost health may save your life in a pinch, but it's obviously not reliable at all times. Besides, Dragon Blood provides a lot of buffs in addition to recovery, but Dark Cloak provides only a Minor Protection. It's neither fair nor reasonable to have them use the same mechanics.

As a NB, the Dark Cloak is the only skill in the class that restores scaling off the maximum health, and it is the only recovery skill that NB tanks can rely on. In normal trials, other skills may be used as alternatives to cloak, such as Refreshing Path, such as Vigor, but considering that they all recover scaling off maximum resources, their healing effect is hardly enough to meet the damage to the tank in harder trials. I've never seen a NB tank in the HM log that didn't use a cloak. And if PTS change comes to live, veteran trials may be enough to keep NB tanks out of the door.

I barely ever hear anyone say that this skill is too overpowered. It's just okay. In pve it is only used by NB tanks. For NB dps its recovery is not as effective as Vigor and Strife. In pvp, apparently the other morph of the cloak is more widely used. And the recovery ability of pvp NB tanks using Dark Cloak is only average. Dark Cloak doesn't need to change, it's balanced enough now. Or, at least, it doesn't deserve such a horrible nerf.

@ZOS_Gilliam

Faulgor

I've found a strange outlier.

My bow DK DPS has increased on PTS.

LIVE: 37325


PTS: 42068


What I noticed on PTS is that Snipe is significantly easier to weave. Like, it's not even close. I don't know if they made any changes or it's something to do with the server or server location, but it's very noticable. You can see my number of light attacks, 39 on LIVE vs 61 on PTS.

Has anybody noticed something similar?

Also, the easy access to Empower for DK on PTS almost completely covers the loss, at least in my case.

virtus753

Rimskjegg wrote: »

Problem4: We were led to believe there would be a 6-11% damage nerf. Instead both my Sorcs have been nerfed by 15-25%. Just see above.

I appreciate many of the other points you've raised, but this particular point is not what the Combat Preview suggests.

The quote with the 6-11% damage loss figure is under the Weaving section of the Combat Preview and clearly only applies to the change in damage from the changes to Light Attacks.

"For reference, in many of ESO’s high-end experiences and activities, the average build sees roughly 15–20% of their overall damage coming from Light Attacks alone, which is a huge contribution to the delta of power we see. While testing these adjustments internally, we’ve seen a reduction of 6–11% to overall damage, which allows for a much smaller and healthier gap while still retaining the sense of mastery and expression of that mastery with weaving."

This 6-11% figure refers specifically to the loss from "these adjustments" to "weaving." At this point in the Combat Preview, no other adjustments have been mentioned, as this paragraph is the third of four under the first section, called "Weaving," which refers only to Light Attack changes.

Combat Effects are in the next section, where they are unfortunately not equally transparent about the observed or expected damage loss from changes there. Since skills were hit quite hard (33% at least for most DoTs, 75% in the case of a templar class passive, up to 100% in the case of a warden class passive), 6-11% from weaving was only ever going to be the tip of the iceberg.

Tannus15

For some reason the have over buffed trap with the Hemorrhaging status effect. It's literally doing more damage the dot from the skill.

you can see it in @Faulgor parse and you can see it in mine:



when you add up all 3 damage effects from trap it's actually doing comparable damage to the greater storm atro or twilight tormentor.

katorga

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

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.

They slipped in a lot of wish list items for NB this patch. Minor expedition, various other things.

Yet you still have classes out there with no class access to minor/major buffs forcing them to waste skill slots.

Oshea_OK

I consider myself an average player. Often using a damage shied set and using an extra heavy attack to help with sustain and other little stuff like this. I wanted to test using my skill set and setup rather than the perfect dps set up and high skill.

Templar
Deadly Strike/Order's Wrath

**Heavy Attack Testing and Wall of Elements**
(no other buffs were used except the Trial dummy)
Keep in Mind My character has more golded armor and better traits on the PTS.

17,300 -- (PTS 15,700) Heavy Attack & Wall of Elements
26,700 -- ( PTS 18,300) Heavy Attack and Puncturing Sweeps

(Observation: Wall of Elements is not overpowered. Puncturing sweeps is taking a dps hit, and I don’t know why it was so big.)

Oakensoul testing Wall of Elements
(Puncturing sweep, Blazing spear, __x___, Purifying Light and Thunderous Rage)

With Wall of Elements.
49,000 (PTS 39,000)

Trading Wall for Solar Barrage.
43,700 (PTS 43,400)

(Observation: WOE is taking a big hit in dps, 10,000 k. If WOE is to get the same dps of Solar Barrage (using 43,500 as a base line skill dps), then it needs about half of the dps taken from it given back. )
(suggestions: All three of these attacks (Wall of elements, Heavy Attacks, and Puncturing Sweeps) are bread and butter for new and average players. If this patch is supposed to help this targeted group, then the current patch is gutting too much dps from skills used by this target group, and thus they need more dps added back to these, particularly Wall of Elements and Heavy Attacks. The nerf to WOE is too much.)

**Skill Timer & 2Bar Test**
Same set up, but with Maelstrom staff on back bar and Ice Heart for 2 bar setup.
49,300 ( PTS 43,200)

(Observation: The timers are better overall, in their implementation. With Oakensoul, using Wall of Elements for 10 seconds with Blazing Spear for 20 was fine. However, using Wall of Elements on the Back Bar, for only 10 seconds, when using other 20 second buffs for Crit Chance and Crit Damage, was difficult to use.

(Suggestion: Maybe Wall of Elements can have 2 versions, one for 10 for more dps and one for 20, when meant for a back bar.)
(Also, Oakensoul is not able to add dsp to me in the current PTS, which does meet the goal of helping average players. I still recommend Hack the Minotaur's suggestion)

I hope the developers find this helpful.

exiledtyrant

Did a DPS Ceiling Test for Blackrose Dual Wield vs VMA Inferno staff. Video of parses can be found here:

https://youtu.be/4yzQQC0rqG4

Results:

Black rose Double Dual Wield - 81.9k
VMA Inferno Staff - 79.8k

I used the elemental blockade morph instead of unstable as I didn't feel like chasing the 10 second timer. I doubt it changes much if my previous test results were valid as 15 seconds rotations were beating out 10 second rotations if only by a slim margin. I don't do trials so take the data points for what they are. Its far more DPS than what I would need for the normal and vet dungeon content I enjoy. If people are parsing 80k+ and still not getting close to vet hard mode trial goals maybe the trials just need to come down in power instead?

On a side note double dual wield felt really smooth. As easy as breathing with no clipping. Definitely something I'm going to build towards if the changes go through. Sustain also still feels so good this PTS cycle. Whatever the reductions were they seemed to have hit a lot of major pain points. At least on the loadouts I tested.

codestripper

Here's some more parses that are interesting. I think they are fairly comparable. I believe the spell damage difference is due to the dummy now applying minor courage for you. Everything else I tried to match up as closely as possible.

DPS:

Live:


PTS:

INFO:

Live:


PTS:

Glantir

Empower is either to strong or every class needs access to this.

2 hander is not for any Content and group constelation viable and mages Guild only have dots or utility skills that you dont want to Spam.

BalticBlues

Fabi95 wrote: »

I did notice a serious discrepancy in healing with the "Radiating Regeneration" from Restoration Staff line, and "Vigor" skill from Alliance War line. They are now extremely similar in values, despite that "Regeneration" requires a restoration staff. "Vigor" is universal and does not need a weapon.

olsborg wrote: »

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.

I strongly am against healing scaling with damage, making DDs the best healers.
Since then, Healers are not required anymore for most content. However, if this is going to stay:
PLEASE MAKE RESOLVING VIGOR A MAGICKA MORPH.

If Vigor heals are as strong now as Resto heals without the need to wear a resto staff,
Magicka users should be able to run two destro bars plus Vigor as easily as Stam users can.

Lalothen

I've been thinking about the Infallible Mage set.... why hasn't this been touched? This set should be the go-to trial set for HA build users but it's significantly overshadowed by Relequen, WotD, Riptide - and even Bahsei in spite of the fact that keeping mag low requires more overcasting and/or using potions that offer little or no mag return.

ZOS probably won't bother touching the set, but here's a couple of options for what I'd do to try to make it competitive:

Option 1: All-out HA buffing vs. strictly non-player targets

(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(3 items) Grants Minor Slayer at all times, increasing your damage done to Dungeon Trial and Arena Monsters by 5%.
(4 items) Adds 500 heavy attack damage against monsters.
(5 items) Your Heavy Attacks deal an additional 2000 damage against monsters. Non-player enemies you damage with fully-charged Heavy Attacks are afflicted with "Exploited" for 10s, increasing their damage taken from Heavy Attacks by 20%.
(5 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance

Option 2: More splash-centric HA buffing vs. strictly non-player targets

(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(3 items) Grants Minor Slayer at all times, increasing your damage done to Dungeon Trial and Arena Monsters by 5%.
(4 items) Adds 129 weapon and spell damage.
(5 items) Your Heavy Attacks deal an additional 2500 magic damage in a 5m radius of your non-player target. The damage done is impacted by the higher of your weapon or spell damage, and capped at 4000 magic damage.
(5 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance

I'm not sure if either of those would bring it close to the aforementioned sets in terms of output potential... either of them might even be a little overtuned. The point is that as the main HA-themed trial set - Infallible - is woefully underpowered in its current Live server format, and if ZOS REALLY want to improve things for HA build lovers, then buffing this set provides a nice "endgame" goal for us without providing ANY benefit in PvP.

A newly-buffed Infallible Mage set could then be used as the "maximum threshold" for tweaking other HA-centric sets - and I'd also consider diversifying what the 5-piece bonuses of those sets do.

Why can't, for example, Noble Duelist's Silks buff heavy attacks to a lesser extent (say 1250 on a 10s timer; 5s is just too micro-managey) and cause fully-charged heavy attacks to do AoE direct damage within a 5m radius of the target?

Or how about Storm Master actually buffing heavy attacks with additional shock damage?

etc etc etc.

Lalothen

codestripper wrote: »

Here's some more parses that are interesting. I think they are fairly comparable. I believe the spell damage difference is due to the dummy now applying minor courage for you. Everything else I tried to match up as closely as possible.

DPS:

Live:


PTS:

INFO:

Live:


PTS:

So essentially if you take a build that almost completely disregards sticky DoTs, and then account for the Dummy changes on the PTS, then you're pulling about the same as on Live because nothing has fundamentally changed between the two comparisons.

codestripper

Lalothen wrote: »

codestripper wrote: »

Here's some more parses that are interesting. I think they are fairly comparable. I believe the spell damage difference is due to the dummy now applying minor courage for you. Everything else I tried to match up as closely as possible.

DPS:

Live:


PTS:

INFO:

Live:


PTS:

So essentially if you take a build that almost completely disregards sticky DoTs, and then account for the Dummy changes on the PTS, then you're pulling about the same as on Live because nothing has fundamentally changed between the two comparisons.

Do you think the only thing that changed were sticky DoTs? light attack damage, the duration of buffs, the duration of the storm atro ultimate, the wall of elements, I mean the tick rate of AOE abilities were adjusted back to 1 second but the damage has still been nerfed. Plus, hurricane is also technically a sticky dot, just on yourself, so that wasn't reverted back either. Finding builds with 1-2 sticky DoTs on live in various classes is fairly common.

prof_doom

codestripper wrote: »

Do you think the only thing that changed were sticky DoTs? light attack damage, the duration of buffs, the duration of the storm atro ultimate, the wall of elements, I mean the tick rate of AOE abilities were adjusted back to 1 second but the damage has still been nerfed. Plus, hurricane is also technically a sticky dot, just on yourself, so that wasn't reverted back either. Finding builds with 1-2 sticky DoTs on live in various classes is fairly common.

Good weaving, great uptimes on the DOTs.
Congratulations on proving what everyone has already said: This isn't going to hurt the high-end DPS as much as everyone else, which is why this patch is a complete failure of their stated goals.