PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Mr_Stach

The Formatting is very important here, Scorch and ALL Morphs get the 14% . Fissure gets the Buff on the 2nd hit that has a 6s Delay. Sub has a faster Cadence but no Damage Buff.

Also Note they did note state they were changing the Damage Nerf from week one, it would have been mentioned, which means it's in place. which has been Tested and Confirmed.

So it's a 21% Nerf to the Damage, the 2nd hit on Fissure is only a 12% Buff.

So that's not good.

James-Wayne

Few quick things now that I have tried all the content in the game (except Trials):

Templar Jabs is easier to weave with but with only 3 jabs over 4 on live the damage is way reduced compared to where it should be. Add the burning passive reduction and

virtus753 wrote: »

In a game that the studio head himself calls not an MMO (a genre label he has explicitly rejected for years) but an “online RPG,” it’s not just about how much damage we do but how we’re doing that damage. Class identity is particularly important in an ES RPG, and genericness is the antithesis of that. Classes become more generic the more generic the skills that make up their rotations, both in terms of how many times skills are cast and in terms of their damage contribution.

This is seriously threatened with the current state of templar, especially stamplar. If a PvE stamplar is not running Jabs because Rapid Strikes gives significantly more damage on the boss (which it does even without the Thaumaturge bug that was fixed today - at the same observed crit rate it's 8% better than Jabs for me), we’re down to essentially only a burst skill as the standard bearer for class identity, a skill that can't be cast more than once every 6 seconds and does at best 10% of the overall damage of a parse.

Jabs has been nerfed over 20% effectively.
Burning Light has been nerfed at least 67% - and that's just on paper. The losses are worse in my parses.
Ritual of Retribution was nerfed even worse than other ground-based DoTs and has gone neglected for the past two weeks when other ground-based DoTs got reverted. (I'm not talking about its long-time 2-second cadence but its heavy damage nerf and the increased scaling that only exacerbated that compared to the losses other ground-based DoTs took in Week 1.)
Solar Barrage's Empower got flatly erased for competitive PvE today.

We got compensated for any of this...where, exactly? You've barely even written the word "templar" this PTS cycle in patch notes or in comments here on the forums outside of nerfs - the only exception was when you reverted Spear with the rest of the ground-based DoTs (while, again, ignoring Ritual for the second week now).

When it comes to the question of class identity, it’s not just a matter of whether that class has a higher numerical ceiling than another. It might do decent damage in terms of pure numerical output when optimized (though that's a matter that will likely need serious attention in light of today's patch and whatever comes next week), but its class identity is threatened if it isn’t worth the name of templar in doing it. Being asked to choose between doing higher damage (for our own sake and to help the group) and preserving a decent sense of class identity isn't reasonable when it's eminently within the devs' power - and in fact arguably expected within the context of an RPG as a genre - to allow us to have both.

That doesn't mean every skill on our bars has to be class-based - I'd be happy if even half our power (as measured by skill casts and overall damage) in an optimized parse came from class-based sources to preserve a sense of class identity in PvE.

Since you want numbers instead of anecdotes, here's what I found in comparing parses today, noting that Rapid Strikes itself outparsed Jabs and the overall parse was higher as a result (both with and without accounting for the lost Piercing Spear passive by adding a Spear skill for the passive bonus):

Rapid Strikes as spammable: class-based damage was about 26% of the total damage done by active skills (not LAs), and just over 22% when considering LA damage as well; class-based skills were about 30% of non-LA casts (15.2% of all casts, including LAs).

Jabs as spammable: class-based damage was 55.1% of the overall total disregarding LAs, and still above 50% when considering LA damage; class-based skills were nearly 80% of the total non-LA casts (around 40% of all casts, including LAs).

That's an enormous difference in class identity: double the damage from class-based sources, and over 2.5x the percentage of class-based casts. It would still be so even if some of our non-spammables and passives were buffed to compensate for the nerfs to jabs, simply due to how often we're casting spammables.

You said years ago you didn't want a "class-agnostic meta." You're going to need to help templars out a bit here if you want your spreadsheets to support your vision instead of detracting from it.

Just re-highlighting this, Devs you need to look at Templar. Since PTS Week 1 everything has gone unchanged for this class.

As a bare minimum you need to fix Jabs which only does 3 jabs now, the power is WAY below where it should be especially now that Empower no longer affects Light Attacks so sure we can weave easier with Jabs but our light attacks are not giving us no where near the power they need to buff our main spammable.

Cyber10

Dual Wield Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced by approximately 28%

This seems very drastic!! Why such a huge drop in damage for SW?

ssewallb14_ESO

I CAN FEEL THE LOVE thank you !



I got ~2k more with a mines build, but it's useless against any enemy that isn't completely stationary.

Tannus15

as far as i can see warden dps is still in the dumpster

86k PTS


98k Live


if these are the only warden changes then it's still a disaster for frost warden builds

YandereGirlfriend

I would like to re-iterate this for the combat team folks who are evidently trying to turn Scorch into "The Warden's Version Of Haunting Curse".

1. Scorch is a skill-shot that often does not land against a moving opponent. Curse is NOT a skill-shot (rather, being fire-and-forget) and will always deal its full damage. A skill that has a (relatively high) chance to miss should be rewarded with significantly greater base damage.

2. Ten seconds is not a viable window for delayed burst. As stated above, Scorch often misses even with its shorter three second countdown. Nobody will ever get meaningful utility out of the second Deep Fissure tick in PvP. That has the effect of simply nerfing the entire skill by ~21% in PvP, which is disastrous for an already weak class.

3. Major Evasion, a very basic buff, already mitigates 20% of Scorch's damage. This is something that also ought to be taken into consideration when tuning its damage. Again, this is not something that Haunting Curse has to worry about.

Please, please - revert the Scorch changes back to how they came out in 8.1.0 and circle back around in the next patch cycle with some new ideas.

sbr32

I cannot believe that this is where we are 4 weeks into this. This entire PTS cycle has been an absolute travesty. it is clear that there was no long term plan or vision going into this, as you all still seem to be throwing new darts at new dartboards each week without actually addressing much of the incredible amount of incredible feedback your customers are giving you FOR FREE!

This entire Combat re-work must be scrapped entirely, and if you still think it needs to happen you need to extend the PTS cycles and involve the player community in the process.

I have seen a bunch of people, though not as many lately, ask the hypothetical/sarcastic question 'do you really think the devs are intentionally trying to ruin their game?' Right now the honest answer is, I don't know what would look different if the answer was Yes.

Faded

Reduced the damage that Light Attacks do by approximately 26% compared to what’s currently on the Live servers, to ease back on their overall impact while retaining their importance in a rotation.

Ok. Good luck finding another way around the problem you were trying to solve in the first place.

The Empower change looks good though.

o7

xylena_lazarow

Elsonso wrote: »

I don’t understand the point of the change to sticky dots...

They are trying to bring down damage per second in this patch.

Sticky DoTs were already underpowered and underused in PvP (I'm sure ZOS can look at their internal skill usage statistics) and now most of these skills are still nerfed to Literally Unplayable as of 8.1.4 with no comment from ZOS. There is absolutely no point to bringing down PvP damage like this, those instakill builds have already been nerfed separately.

Janni

I for one do not appreciate the changes to Scorch! As I'm sure many others have stated already...

We want the 3-second cadence to remain.

We want the damage to remain at the level it is on live.

There's nothing more that needs to be done here. Just leave it alone. No one in the entire world is breaking dungeons or trials with the damage of this skill. And no one is oneshot obliterating everyone left and right in Cyrodiil with this skill. There is nothing wrong with it on live. One morph for better dps. One morph for better burst. YOU GUYS came up with that. And it is fine. NO ONE is complaining that it was a bad setup this way.

francesinhalover

Make endless and stampede 20 or 10 secs. 15 sec is bad for rotations.


That is all. Idk where to give feedback, here or upcoming changes?

Thank you for your time.

Hopefully last pts week is a good one

Nord_Raseri

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I CAN FEEL THE LOVE thank you !



I got ~2k more with a mines build, but it's useless against any enemy that isn't completely stationary.

Isn't there still a 10-12% difference between 21m dummy on pts vs live? If so that'd be closer to 78-80k actual, yeah?

virtus753

Nord_Raseri wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I CAN FEEL THE LOVE thank you !



I got ~2k more with a mines build, but it's useless against any enemy that isn't completely stationary.

Isn't there still a 10-12% difference between 21m dummy on pts vs live? If so that'd be closer to 78-80k actual, yeah?

About 9.5% on the low end and I’ve heard of 18% on the high end. Most builds will probably be within 12-15%, but it depends on a lot of factors. It’s a big part of why the actual damage losses are so obfuscated. These changes were overdue, but it was precisely the wrong time to implement them.

Lalothen

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I CAN FEEL THE LOVE thank you !



I got ~2k more with a mines build, but it's useless against any enemy that isn't completely stationary.

Glad to see this! I've been getting some much more appreciable numbers with my MagDK tests (still optimising atm):



I remain concerned that Infallible isn't being touched. As the premiere HA DPS trial set it's well behind both Relequen & Whorl in terms of output potential, because that extra 900 on heavies doesn't translate to anywhere near the 5-8k DoT dps, and minor vuln is already easily covered. It really needs something to give it some oomph.... in fact I'd probably suggest that its 5-piece be swapped with Sergeant's Mail's 5-piece.

That'd give Sergeant's Mail 900 on heavies + minor vuln, and Infallible a more powerful, stacking 5s buff that's a little more micro-managey and in keeping with a trial 5-piece.

TheKaan

My guild made a video (over a dozen veteran players were involved) about the combat changes and direction of Update 35. I already posted it in PTS, but since it contains a lot of feedback, here it is again.

Because it's a collective response, it's recommendations are more general than specific.

In short, we're glad the long DOTs and Light/Heavy Attack nerfs were largely reversed, but also very alarmed that such things were even being considered. We're all long-term players and do a lot of dungeons, trials and organised group PvP, so we have biases for sure, but ALL our experience with ESO suggests the 'power gap' is mostly a 'knowledge gap' and can probably not be closed simply by patching the game. Incentivising new/casual players to dig into the combat system early on, as many games do, would probably be far more effective.

Thanks for listening ZOS.

https://youtu.be/3RGriZmq2mc

Elsonso

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I would like to re-iterate this for the combat team folks who are evidently trying to turn Scorch into "The Warden's Version Of Haunting Curse".

1. Scorch is a skill-shot that often does not land against a moving opponent. Curse is NOT a skill-shot (rather, being fire-and-forget) and will always deal its full damage. A skill that has a (relatively high) chance to miss should be rewarded with significantly greater base damage.

It is a skill shot that does not tell the caster what it is going to be doing, either. This skill just sort of happens over two distinct damage events.

katorga

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I would like to re-iterate this for the combat team folks who are evidently trying to turn Scorch into "The Warden's Version Of Haunting Curse".

1. Scorch is a skill-shot that often does not land against a moving opponent. Curse is NOT a skill-shot (rather, being fire-and-forget) and will always deal its full damage. A skill that has a (relatively high) chance to miss should be rewarded with significantly greater base damage.

The scorch changes only make sense if the developer only ever dummy parses.

Yes it can miss so should have higher damage to compensate. While they are at it, buff blastbones 100% to compensate for the fact that you have a chance of it just NOT working at all.

acastanza_ESO

90k+ Resto Heavy Parses are Not Okay
Seriously. That's what the current version of this patch has enabled.
Resto staff is particularly egregious but across the board this is completely overboard on heavy attack builds.
Not to mention that classes like Sorcerer and Warden don't even have in-class access to empower, whereas Templars, DKs, Necros, and Nightblades ALL do. How is this fair?!
Also, this doesn't even require a fully charged heavy attack! So... a medium weaving meta? Seriously?
One step forward, two steps back doesn't even begin to describe this patch.

ESO_Nightingale

I understand the dev comment about scorch talking about recasting early for more damage over time and stuff, but really all the collosal nerf to the initial tick is cripple scorch's performance in pvp, forcing you to wait for 9 seconds after casting in order to actually do any damage. It's not like we have anything else on the kit to actually do delayed burst damage with. We just have dots and a spammable. Can we please just revert the damage values back to either week 1 or live values? The skill is not causing us to overperform as is on live.

RevJJ

Well, at least the change to Empower frees up a skill slot on my necro healer because Empowering Grasp will be completely useless 🤷🏻‍♂️

xaraan

code65536 wrote: »

Stop treating the combat in this game as some sort of lab experiment.

Code's entire post is excellent, but I have to highlight this.

Why is the game being overhauled what feels like every year (sometimes more)? We are long out of beta. Changes at this point should be balance adjustments and that is it. I think one big rework for a long running game is understandable, maybe even two. But at this point it's just ridiculous.

You guys ask for trust, but it hasn't looked like you know what you are doing for years now. And criticizing knee-jerk reactions that are more accurate than what you guys think the changes will bring just makes it look like you are throwing a fit and getting defensive for being called out. i.e. adds to the 'not know what you are doing' feeling.

francesinhalover

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

90k+ Resto Heavy Parses are Not Okay
Seriously. That's what the current version of this patch has enabled.
Resto staff is particularly egregious but across the board this is completely overboard on heavy attack builds.
Not to mention that classes like Sorcerer and Warden don't even have in-class access to empower, whereas Templars, DKs, Necros, and Nightblades ALL do. How is this fair?!
Also, this doesn't even require a fully charged heavy attack! So... a medium weaving meta? Seriously?
One step forward, two steps back doesn't even begin to describe this patch.

Might of the Guild Skill from mages guild gives empower for 3 secs after using a mages guild skill, could be usefull if you slot 2 mages guild dots + ulti

Artim_X

Feedback from initial patch:

Artim_X wrote: »

I'm probably one of the most casual players in the game. However, I strive to get the best stuff to ensure that my experience remains stress-free. That being said, I'm going to try my best to be as unbiased as possible when explaining my feedback in relation to my personal experience with the changes.

My live rotation: Buff up with Boundless Storm and Crit Surge with Twilight Tormentor activated, weapon swap immediately after casting the previous skill, drop Thunderous Rage Ultimate if it's active, then Destructive Reach, Unstable Wall of Storms, quickly weapon swap, Lightning Flood, two heavy attacks, activate either Surge or Boundless, cancel the animation of the buff used with a weapon swap, and repeat. During the execute phase (around 20% health) replace the second heavy attack with about 4 Mages' Wrath, but if boss is melting quickly just keep spamming Wrath (hold heavy attack while spamming Wrath).

Consistent 30k + on 3million Dummy with Elemental Susceptibility active (top right corner)


My PTS rotation after messing around a bit:

Buff up with Boundless and Crit Surge with Twilight active, weapon swap immediately after casting the previous skill, drop Rage Ultimate if it's active, then Reach, Unstable, quickly weapon swap, Lightning Flood, three heavy attacks, Surge, then Twilight Tormentor (replace with light attack after enemy health is under 50%), light attack, then three heavy attacks, cancel the animation of Boundless with a weapon swap, and repeat. During the execute phase (around 20% health) After one heavy attack, spam Mages' Wrath 4 times, then heavy attack, active Surge, then 4 more Wraths, then heavy attack, cancel animation of boundless, and repeat execute version of rotation.

While Elemental Susceptibility is active, Kinras is only able to help me get a consistent 25k+ if I swap out my crit sets (one-piece Slimcraw and Mora's Whispers) for the new Archdruid Devyric monster set, my damage becomes a consistent 26k+ if I change out Kinras for the new set that grants empower after dealing damage with a heavy attack (Rage of the Ursauk) while still wearing the new monster set, and finally I put back on my crit sets while still wearing Ursauk which still got me past the 26k mark. Overall, what felt best was the 3rd setup, since my crit with a spell crit pot active was still around 60% which is where I feel most comfortable at.


After testing for 3 days this will be my PvE feedback for the damage changes.

Light and Heavy Attacks

• Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? My heavy attacks, which is my primary form of damage in PvE seems to have less oomph, which is to be expected.
• If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? In relation to wanting to hit at the very least 25k+ on the 3 million dummy without forsaking my ideal level of crit, I'd say it's a worse experience. My reasoning is that I already use two sets that buff my heavy attack damage (Infallible Aether and a Perfect Maelstrom Staff), and I'm not particularly fond of needing to farm another heavy attack set just to reach my goal. Of course, I am grateful that Rage of the Ursauk exists, since I don't want to play around with either of the two undaunted heavy attack sets or Sergeant's mail).
• What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point. As mentioned above, I parsed a bit to see what I could manage. I played around with the idea of incorporating even more light attacks and less heavy attacks in my rotation, but it just didn't feel right, since it was harder for me to personally to maintain. The rotation I mentioned above feels more in line with how I typically play.
• Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning. Since my playstyle is very particular, heavy attacks will always be important. As long as I maintain my rotation, I could technically still provide a meaningful amount of damage.

Damage over Time

• Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? Very hard not to notice when this particular change is what completely overhauled my rotation.
• If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? I feel like it's worse, since my live rotation is simpler while my PTS rotation feels needlessly long.
• What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point. My parse was definitely affected due to the rotation change. My character had the last two stages of Maelstrom Arena left on Vet so I decided to complete it for fun. I didn't die and I didn't need any of the sigils to clear, but it did take longer to kill things and I needed to make more effective use of my stun to ensure that the enemies stayed long enough in my AoEs to actually be hurt by them.
• After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning. In PvE I made no changes to the amount I used, since they are crucial to my playstyle.
• While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience? AoEs that last a long time means that I can stay longer on my primary bar and I have more time to do things like actually use the buff from Twilight Tormentor, but I still don't agree with the logic of the damage ticking every 2 seconds especially when enemies can easily move out of your AoE. Other than that, I definitely need to test out PvP at some point. I'm curious to see if the healing nerf will balance out the DoT nerf so that a DoT build is still viable.

Artim_X wrote: »

• What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point.
  
  I beat Vet Vateshran Hollows on the PTS with my new setup. Took some getting used to. It's been a hot minute, since I set foot in that arena. Other than dying to stupid, it wasn't painful to clear. I was going for no death, no sigils, and speed. I didn't use the lover mundus like I did on live (Rage of the Ursauk already gives penetration), which is what helped me get the speed aspect of things on my original clear. I probably could do better with more practice with the rotation. Most notable difference, is not having too worry too much about recasting my AoEs while I could focus on staying on my primary bar doing damage and surviving mechanics. If ZOS decides to make any changes in the coming weeks, it is my hope that they ease up on all the damage nerfs so that everything is bit more palatable.

I didn't bother commenting on the second patch change, since all it did was essentially give me back my old rotation. Although my parse was noticeably higher like 1-2k, but nothing to write home about.

This new patch however had me quite giddy, since I knew right away that it would most likely be enough to give me back my damage post nerf, just as long as I use the new empower set (Rage of the Ursauk) like I had been on the PTS.

Feedback for Patch v8.1.3:

• Light and Heavy Attacks
  • Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? Very noticeable especially when fighting adds. My heavy attacks definitely got their oomph back.
    • If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? Better experience than the first version of the patch that's for sure.
    • What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point. I once again did a parse on the 3 million dummy and the big trial boi. I can once again parse around 30k (close to live value) on the 3 million dummy while using a fire staff on my back bar which is how I would normally play in a group setting and I could hit above 50k on the trial dummy. The trial dummy parse when compared to hitting around 40k in version 1 of the patch is quite significant. Overall, these numbers might not seem like a lot, but it makes the difference between still being viable on a build that's easy on the hands and just being a burden to the team. I was also able to clear Vateshran Hollows at a more comfortable time without sigil use when compared to my patch version 1 attempt where I was most certainly over the time. Of course, I still died to stupid at least once hehe. This run was also a lot more fun due to the AoE changes in the previous version of the patch, so instead of a long boring rotation, I can more easily restart my rotation on the fly when dealing with a new or moving threat.
      
      
  • Do you feel like Light and Heavy Attacks still provide meaningful impact to your play experience after the adjustments? Please explain your reasoning. I most certainly feel it. Combat is fun, my damage is back to where it was, and I feel rewarded for building into my playstyle
• Damage over Time
  • Did you notice these adjustments on the PTS while playing? My AoEs feel fine now that they tick every second again. Destructive Reach still lasting 20 seconds and doing damage every two seconds is still not my favorite. Especially in PvP land where I'm all about them sticky dots.
    • If you did, was it better or worse in your experience? In PvE, my destructive reach still adds to my damage being done but using it on every enemy is no longer that important. The duration increase means that I could change up my rotation a bit.
      Live:
      Buff up with Boundless Storm and Crit Surge with Twilight Tormentor activated, weapon swap immediately after casting the previous skill, drop Fiery/Thunderous Rage Ultimate if it's active, then Flame/Shock Reach, Unstable Wall of Fire/Storms, quickly weapon swap, Lightning Flood, two heavy attacks, activate either Surge or Boundless, cancel the animation of the buff used with a weapon swap, and repeat. During the execute phase (around 20% health) replace the second heavy attack with about 4 Mages' Wrath, but if boss is melting quickly just keep spamming Wrath (hold heavy attack while spamming Wrath).
      PTS:
      Buff up with Boundless Storm and Crit Surge with Twilight Tormentor activated, weapon swap immediately after casting the previous skill, drop Fiery/Thunderous Rage Ultimate if it's active, then Flame/Shock Reach, Unstable Wall of Fire/Storms, quickly weapon swap, Lightning Flood, three heavy attacks, activate either Surge or Boundless, cancel the animation of the buff used with a weapon swap, and repeat rotation without activating Reach (activated every other rotation). During the execute phase (around 20% health) replace the second heavy attack with about 4 Mages' Wrath, but if boss is melting quickly just keep spamming Wrath (hold heavy attack while spamming Wrath)
    • What activities did you primarily feel the differences in, if any (parsing, dungeons, overland, dueling)? Please feel free to include before and after images of metrics on data, such as combat logs, to showcase your point. As mentioned above, I engaged in parsing and Vateshran Arena. The changes I made to my build to incorporate empower made the sticky DoT nerf a non-issue. I probably will need to shake things up for PvP land, which has always been the case when compared to PvE land, but perhaps the healing nerf will help balance things out.
  • After the balance changes, did you make changes to the amount of Damage over Time abilities your build utilized? Please explain any reasoning. There is a roleplay aspect to why I use the skills I use in PvE Land and PvP Land so there was never a chance of me swapping a DoT out in PvE. For PvP on the other hand, I just need to find skills that are interesting while still getting the job done.
  • While using Damage over Time effects, did you notice any other impacts on your play experience? Overall AoEs are good, while sticky DoTs leave something to be desired. I definitely don't want another DoT meta, but it would be nice for DoTs to tick every second again for half the time that they currently tick for.

MashmalloMan

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/613722/sorc-adjustments-that-should-come-to-pts-week-4/p1

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Note: I wrote these as if they're patch notes for week 4, so weeks 1/3 are taken into context. While I think there is a lot more that should be changed like updating passives, morph choices being more interesting, healing accessibilty, double bar pets, or minor prophecy being hyrbidized.. these suggestions are within the scope of what I think can and should be done for update 35.

I understand the duration increases for Surge/BA may seem like a lot, but keep in mind, my focus here is Sorc. I fully believe ZOS's focus should of been to reduce buff management for skills like those across the board, not just Sorc or sticky dots which failed gloriously. I thought that was the entire purpose of Update 35's objective, to reduce buff management and how much time we spend looking at our bars.

Dark Magic:

• Negate Magic:
  • Suppression Field (morph):
    • This morph now deals Shock damage instead of Magic damage.

• Crystal Shard:
  • This ability and the Crystal Frag morph now deal Shock damage instead of Magic damage.
    • Crystal Weapon (morph):
      • Increases damage done by 1% each rank instead of penetration between 700 and 1000.
      • No longer reduces armor by a unique value of 1000, instead guarantees the Sundered Status Effect to help double down on Sorc's being the Physical/Shock masters of ESO.
      • The second hit now deals 50% damage of the first instead of 30%. When converting Melee Damage to Ranged Damage spammable standards, this results in 150% total damage instead of lives 222% damage.

• Encase:
  • Shattering Prison (morph):
    • This morph now deals Shock damage instead of Magic damage.

• Rune Prison:
  • Rune Cage (morph):
    • This morph now deals Shock damage instead of Magic damage.

• Daedric Mines:
  • This ability and morphs now deal Shock damage instead of Magic damage.

Daedric Summoning:

• Summon Storm Atronach:
  • This ability and morphs now last 20s up from 15s.

• Daedric Curse:
  • This ability and morphs now deal Shock damage instead of Magic damage.

• Conjured Ward:
  • This ability and morphs now scale based on weapon/spell damage and max stamina/magicka instead of just max magicka, but still capped by your max HP.

• Bound Armor:
  • This ability and the Bound Aegis morph no longer passively increases your Max Magicka.
  • This ability and the Bound Aegis morph now grant Max Magicka for 10 seconds after casting along with the Minor Protection.
    • Bound Aegis (morph):
      • The Minor Protection and Max Magicka now last for 20 seconds.
    • Bound Armaments (morph):
      • No longer passively increases your Light Attack Damage and Max Stamina.
      • Max Stamina now provided when any portion of the skill is active.
      • Increased the duration to 60s from 40s to decrease required buff management (purpose of update 35?).
      • Fully charged heavy attacks now grant 2 Daggers instead of 1 like its close cousin Grim Focus.
      • This ability can now be refreshed by reactivating when you don't have a target.
      • No longer reduces cost by 50% for reactivation.
      • For clarification, damage per hit is reduced by approximately 11% with weeks 1 and 3 combined.

Storm Calling:

• Lightning Form:
  • This ability and morphs tick every 1s instead of every 2s again. This was reverted to better support the idea of Lightning Form being a useful tool to proc Critical Surge in melee combat more consistently than similar skills like Blade Cloak.
  • This ability and morphs have their damage reduced by 50% to match reverted tick frequency.
    • Hurricane (morph):
      • Reduced damage scaling from 12% to 6% to match reverted tick frequency.

• Surge:
  • This ability and the Power Surge morph now last 30s instead of 33s (even numbers, yay!).
  • This ability and the Power Surge morph now heal for 2000 instead of 2550
    • Power Surge (morph):
      • Reduced the cooldown from 3s to 2s to better align with heal tick frequency.
    • Critical Surge (morph):
      • This morph now doubles in duration from 30s to 60s (purpose of update 35?).

• Lightning Splash:
  • Enemies that take damage from this ability and morphs now take up to 6% extra shock damage for 3 seconds based on your weapon/spell damage.

TLDR: One can dream right?

francesinhalover

The empower and heavy attack changes are surprisingly really good

it's easier to weave, less tiresome, helps people with disabilities!
+ Dots lasting longer, makes the game a lot easier.

Good job there, you still need to fix some hard to use 15 sec dot durations, but i already left feedback about it.

The issue i have is empower is just useless for anyone that doesnt heavy attack.

You could make empower buff also light attack dmg by 5% or 7%. Or something else.

Thank you.

A step in the right direction imo.

Hopefully you revert jabs and flurry though, thats probably the biggest change that will cost you players. Many play templar just for jabs.

Cominfordatoothbrush

The heavy attack and empower changes look great, however... and I'm assuming this is an oversight, literally any medium attack duration seems to benefit from empower. Since you can basically weave mediums at almost the same speed as lights (or maybe the same? idk I didnt learn this skill in Morrowind chapter) this seems a little broken.

WrathOfInnos

Cominfordatoothbrush wrote: »

The heavy attack and empower changes look great, however... and I'm assuming this is an oversight, literally any medium attack duration seems to benefit from empower. Since you can basically weave mediums at almost the same speed as lights (or maybe the same? idk I didnt learn this skill in Morrowind chapter) this seems a little broken.

That is unfortunate, I'm not looking forward to a medium weaving meta. They are much harder to perform well than light or heavy attacks, but at 80% increased damage it will be worth doing. This absolutely raises the skill ceiling, and most players will not be able to master medium weaving.

Lykeion

I sincerely hope you will reconsider the changes you made to Dark Cloak, and I made another thread that goes into more detail about why PTS Dark Cloak is a bad healing skill:https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/613860/the-reason-why-pts-dark-cloak-is-wrong-and-the-logic-of-healing-skills.
In short, healing consists of HOT and burst healing. The purpose of HOT is to keep your health at a good level while taking continuous lower damage, while burst healing is to quickly bring your health back to a safe level when you've already taken serious damage.
PTS Cloak of Darkness does not meet the needs of either of these cases: it never gets you back to full health when taking continuous lower damage, and when you've already taken serious damage it heals too slowly, leaving you vulnerable to being killed by any succession attack. It is an unreliable healing skill in any situation.

Lalothen

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

That is unfortunate, I'm not looking forward to a medium weaving meta. They are much harder to perform well than light or heavy attacks, but at 80% increased damage it will be worth doing. This absolutely raises the skill ceiling, and most players will not be able to master medium weaving.

Setting aside the fact that MA weaving is a pain, isn't that the right order of mastery?

HA weaving - easiest to master, lowest peak potential with mid-range easily reached.
LA weaving - harder to master, higher peak potential.
MA weaving - hardest to master, highest peak potential.

I guess there is another option for Empower to avoid an MA meta if it's going to be incredibly unpopular though:

Empower - increases the damage of fully-charged heavy attacks against monsters by 240%.

I'm basing that percentage on a lightning staff heavy which currently has 3 tics total on the PTS, so instead of 3 tics buffed by 80% it'd be the 1 final tic buffed by 240%.

This would likely open the door a bit more too for non-lightning (or resto, lolz) heavy builds... I think?

Rimskjegg

EDIT: Screwed up the CPs, especially on the DK, so deleted that and kept the Sorc info.

Although there are many highly skilled players who have tested the week 4 heavy attack changes already, I'll offer my more "low-end" perspective as well. I admit, my Sorc has not used the HA setup in content for a very long time.

On live my old heavy attack Sorc got 27-28k (posted before). In PTS week 4 she got 25k, up 4k week 3, but still down 2k or 10% from live due to Daedric Mines being "fixed". This was without Empower, however, so of course if I swap Mines for a Mages Guild ability (Volcanic Rune as a Mines replacement maybe) then heavy attacks should be up by 80%. That should add 6,5k or so and she'd be up by roughly 4k, or some 14%.




The DK remains a far less accessible option because all her DoTs are still out of sync, Flames of Oblivion at 15 seconds, Claw at 24 seconds and so on. Really can you please at the very least stabilize the long sticky DoTs at 20 seconds so they might line up with Deadly Cloak, Poison Injection, etc. Make the Searing Heat passive do something other than increasing duration. Maybe the passive could move the damage from the extra 4 seconds into the first 4 seconds instead? That would make it less punishing to recast it a little early? Again that would of course require testing, but who knows, it might even be feasible to bring the DoTs into a 15-second easy rotation, that way. Not optimal perhaps, but still decent as an accessibility option. Now, a shorter duration would be a huge nerf to Dragonknight Standard and its 15% increase to all damage, so it really needs a big damage boost to compensate, but I think in terms of accessibility to combat, giving more burst to the initial 4 seconds of damage would be welcomed by newer players. Then they won't lose as much damage if the boss moves away 5 seconds after the Ult was cast. I'll get back to this after the actual DK heavy attack results.

On the plus side for the PTS, DK now has access Empower due to Molten Armaments, which is a really nice change from live, where Empower would have to come from Empowering Chains, which has the (in this case) annoying side effect of being a cap closer, as well as doing measly DPS.

EDIT: DK parses weren't apples-to-apples for CP reasons, deleted.

Now for the wider picture. It's pretty obvious from testing I'm sure you've already seen that Resto staff heavies could use a nerf, it's a healer weapon after all, not a DD one.

Concerns have also been raised about medium attack weaving. I'm 100% with SkinnyCheeks on this one. Make Empower apply only to fully-charged Heavy attacks. Medium attack meta avoided.

This would leave Empower as a very niche buff, however. Empower is an evocative name. Maybe give it something else, something heavy attack users don't need. A sustain buff maybe?

So in short, the two changes that affect every class this week is still in need of further tweaking. So perhaps we are finally at least moving in the direction of shortening some of the DPS gap - but only between light and heavy attack builds. And then there are all the other concerns left over from last week, like sticky DoTs, sticky HoTs, debuff durations, convoluted rotations, werewolves and other light attack spammers, damage output by PvE enemies, the list goes on and on.

If you want to continue to work toward reducing the "gap", messing around with nearly all the DoTs and HoTs in the game is still just about the worst thing you can do. The only way this could be an accessibility gain is if the new rotations were so much easier than before, that "low-end" players would pick them up really quickly. But this is not the case at all. With our skill durations even more out of sync than before, everyone is going to have to learn new rotations or fall behind. [bIf you must standardize the sticky DoTs and HoTs, do so based on optimal re-cast times in a rotation rather than their base durations./b]

Truth is, you are always fighting at a disadvantage when trying to reduce the damage gap and increase accessbility by introducing sweeping changes to abilities, because sweeping changes always tend to widen the gap.

Let me use the target dummy as a very simplified example. The DPS gap here is down to many factors, but I posit that these 2 are the most important:
1) There's a gap in knowledge.
2) There's a gap in the amount of practice players put in.

1)Sweeping changes always widen the knowledge gap because the "high end" keep abreast of changes. The "low end" may barely notice that they happen, at least not in detail, and much more often base their choices on old outdated info.
2) Sweeping changes to abilities widen the practice gap because "low end" damage players don't like to practice on a dummy at all, but whatever rotation practice they may have put in before will now feel pretty much wasted because the rotations are suddenly new. If these players find the new rotations really, definitely, beyond question more accessible than before, they might benefit. If they just find them more convoluted than ever before? They didn't like dummy parsing before, they're going to feel like there's no point anyway now since whatever work they put in one patch is wasted next patch anyway. But the "high end" damage players, unless they quit the game outright, go to learn and practice new rotations on the dummy and pull further ahead than before, relative to the lower end.

TL; DR: Two steps in the right direction IMO. Only problem is, 22 August is looming closer and closer and the distance still left to go is marathon-like. I won't insult you by saying we need more time than that before this is even remotely test-proof enough to go live, because you have to know that just as well as I do. What worries me is that someone might consider just giving the PTS a week or two extra and then hit live. In addition to all the combat changes, next week you promised every single dungeon and trial in the game will have been adjusted. Figuring out whether the essentially all the group content in the game was re-balanced properly is a gargantuan project! Even testing over the whole course of the next PTS cycle until Update 36 is starting to look ambitious now, though perhaps not entirely unrealistic. Anything less than that will unleash so much broken stuff and frustration on live, we will just lose even more players.