PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

Brewssie

Really not a fan of the changes. On a necro (and i imagine most classes) 20 second dot duration makes the rotation completely braindead. If you want to slightly increase dot durations to ease the management of them for newer players thats fine, but 20 seconds on everything is just way too much. You are literally just sitting there unga bungaing your spammable for 10+ seconds in a row if you're only running a few dots.

Other than that i genuinely fail to see how these changes are meant to help the people who need them the most. The people who were struggling on dps checks like Dread Cellar pillars or Nazaray HM spirits will now struggle with them even more due to the damage nerfs and the changes to dot durations.

This very much feels like a "change for the sake of change" sort of thing.

Quagile

I mainly play PVP and basically only play one character which is a stam nightblade, so I will only comment on that. I think surprise attack granting crit 100% of the time from the flank may be overkill. Ganking has been a problem in the current meta and that just adds onto it. Along with that it still provides minor breach, off balance and CC. I definitely appreciate buffs being made to the only class I play, however I do not believe this is a healthy change for the game overall.

Also no nerf to the caluurion's legacy set? Unless I missed something in the patch notes, its super fun getting HA, incapped and having caluurion's proc for 10K+ damage.

AmendmentI

The changes are pretty bad. This doesn't really help anyone. If damage is lower then how is content more easily accessible? If you couldn't do damage before then you certainly won't be able to now if it gets lowered. Content will be more of a challenge and less skilled players will suffer since the damage won't make up for it as much as it could before. This doesn't really bridge the gap as players that are less skilled will still be less skilled. Standardizing dots doesn't suddenly make you a better or more experienced player.

Tannus15

live parse

114k



pts parse, same build

96k


build if anyone is interested

that's 20% dps loss on a dummy that has a 10% damage buff + 200 weapon damage compared to live
they did the usual thing of buffing the target dummy while nerfing skills to try and cover for the dps loss, but it has made no difference.
in real terms this is more like a 25% damage loss.

i haven't got around to attempting to adjust my build yet to see if the damage can be made up somewhere else, but for now at least this is a massive dps loss.

Didgerion

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

This is the best patch in years. Fixes so much stuff and reduces power creep. Unfortunately players are too attached to the power level of their characters and simply can’t handle being made “weaker” even if it makes the game significantly better. And that’s why this thread is filled with masses of people who haven’t even tested the changes threatening to quit

This is just a reset patch, I fail to see how this is good.
The changes that ZOS is pushing with this update will require many many iterations of balancing.

And players are threatening to quit not because of DPS loss but because they worked hard to bring the game where it is today. And all this work is tossed into the garbage bin for no good reason.

Mazra

Blanket nerfs like these are basically stat squishes in disguise, so I don't mind. What I do worry about is that NPCs won't be balanced around it. If you stat squish players without squishing NPCs, you've set everyone back to start. People won't be able to clear content they could previously clear. It would be like wiping Champion Points, except worse.

divnyi

Speaking from PvP perspective:

The main problem are not the changes as it is, but the sheer amount of them. We had almost perfectly balanced meta, except Oaken overperforming (remove Major Heroism) and flame heavy attack builds being broken, healing&crosshealing being too strong, and burst being too deep (both could be changed without any skill changes, just change values on battle spirit).

Now you introduce a whole lot of changes, some of which:
a) Nerf solid skills to the ground with no good reason, like necro mender, manifestation of terror, daedric mines, bound armaments
b) Buff already solid skills to the skies, like Surprise Attack, Falcon Swiftness, Crystallized Slab
c) Seriously cripple class staple skills, like Jabs, Burning Light, Crystal. Yes they were overperforming, no, you don't need to kill them for good. Nerf is 5-10%, not like 30%+ difference.
d) Changes that can't be explained, and when you read developer comment it even gets worse. Like Dive. It looks like you don't understand what you are doing. Your reasoning was "uh someone can stack sets to make it work, so we nerfed it". What, seriously? Anyone complained about Dive? PvE? PvP? No, because it's horrible. And you nerfed it even further.
e) So it wouldn't look like I'm only bashing, I love a whole lot of changes too: DC, Plaguebreak, Protective Plate, Killer's Blade, Mark Target, Mass Hysteria, Bound Aegis, Conjured Ward, Summon Storm Atronach, Arctic Wind, Wall of Elements, Frost Destructive Clench

This happens in the same patch with LA/HA changes. Those changes alone deserve a separate patch with no other changes to digest.

This happens in the same patch you introduce new crazy sets. Crazy broken sets.

Even if you had the best of your will to fix all the stupid things introduced by this patch, you wouldn't be able to do that.
And previous PTS shown us one thing: feedback doesn't matter. You will introduce all the broken things to the live server as is.

Evemir

Weaving is what made the game special. Something that made it possible to distinguish a good player from a weak one. Something that opened up the opportunity to become better

Instead of the nerfing weaving, they should be buffing it. Make it more relevant.
And bring weaving training right into the game so that players know the mechanics and start learning it from the very beginning. So that they know that they have all the tools to get better.

CameraBeardThePirate

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Is there any reason why Spirit Mender and Restoring Tether didn't have their durations adjusted?

Why is Spirit Mender still a 16/8 seconds duration skill and Restoring Tether a 12 seconds one when their damage counterparts(Skeletal Mage and Shocking Siphon) were changed to the ''10/20 seconds ruleset''

Honestly please keep mender at 8 seconds. It's the only reliable method of corpse creation if you need to create a lot of corpses quickly (i.e., necrotic potency or animate blastbones) since you can make a corpse every 4 seconds with it.

CameraBeardThePirate

Quagile wrote: »

I mainly play PVP and basically only play one character which is a stam nightblade, so I will only comment on that. I think surprise attack granting crit 100% of the time from the flank may be overkill. Ganking has been a problem in the current meta and that just adds onto it. Along with that it still provides minor breach, off balance and CC. I definitely appreciate buffs being made to the only class I play, however I do not believe this is a healthy change for the game overall.

Also no nerf to the caluurion's legacy set? Unless I missed something in the patch notes, its super fun getting HA, incapped and having caluurion's proc for 10K+ damage.

Sorry I just love that you're a NB main talking about how silly the surprise attack change is. Just shows how crazy it is.

You're a God dude.

Foxtrot39

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Quagile wrote: »

I mainly play PVP and basically only play one character which is a stam nightblade, so I will only comment on that. I think surprise attack granting crit 100% of the time from the flank may be overkill. Ganking has been a problem in the current meta and that just adds onto it. Along with that it still provides minor breach, off balance and CC. I definitely appreciate buffs being made to the only class I play, however I do not believe this is a healthy change for the game overall.

Also no nerf to the caluurion's legacy set? Unless I missed something in the patch notes, its super fun getting HA, incapped and having caluurion's proc for 10K+ damage.

Sorry I just love that you're a NB main talking about how silly the surprise attack change is. Just shows how crazy it is.

You're a God dude.

Don't need to play NB to see the absurdity at least cloak is ressource extensive but guaranteed crit on a spammable that also get a guranteed off balance? Could slot that on my tank just for laughs

CaptainVenom

To say these balances are atrocious would be a monumental understatement.

MarioSMB

Instead of allowing dodging lightning and restoration heavy attacks, why not simply give the caster less resources if the target is blocking? This is the standard way of countering channeled abilities.

kieso

Not a fan of the molten whip change.

PrinceShroob

Brewssie wrote: »

Really not a fan of the changes. On a necro (and i imagine most classes) 20 second dot duration makes the rotation completely braindead. If you want to slightly increase dot durations to ease the management of them for newer players thats fine, but 20 seconds on everything is just way too much.

I agree that the 20-second duration makes rotations very boring. I do not think standardizing durations is a bad idea (ex. Twisting Path becomes 10 seconds, etc.), but 20 seconds is far too long.

It's not even a matter of a DPS loss, it's a loss of engagement.

iaminc

@ZOS_RichLambert.

Are you kidding us with your tweet?

For years now ZoS has consistently changed the way everything works buffing and nerfing classes into oblivion , adding OP items just to sell DLC just to nerf them right after again.

No MMO I’ve ever played messes up the class/combat balance so much so often.

ZoS continues to let down its customers and the ESO community , when we speak after testing and give feedback it is ignored , when we react to something that isn’t heathy , we are ignored and you have the audacity to ask for us to TRUST you and the team without any good reason.

The current PtS patch notes are certainly the worst I have ever seen in ESOs lifetime , you guys are seriously out of touch with your playerbase (most of who are paying customers).

Perhaps now would be the time to come out and explain just what the thinking is for this cycle , a little transparency and communication would go a long way to calm the masses right now instead of patronising us.

Edit: also could you expand on why a mystic item that YOU GUYS said was to promote accessibility and that was so helpful so to so many players with disabilities and other issues was just nerfed into gold plating? Guess you sold enough copies of High Isle?

tmbrinks

20second+ DoTs/HoTs make combat boring and repetitive... lay down dots and spam your spammable 8-12x, rinse and repeat.

HoTs only ticking every 2 seconds will make several encounters (with a little bit of poor RNG) impossible to survive for tanks. They can easily take 25-30k damage a second in encounters in the last three trials/6-8 dungeons. And if those 2s ticks line up together (or I'm casting one of my ST abilities/shield/etc at that time), they can take 50-60k damage (with the health based DoTs that are in all the latest content, they can't just "stack more health").

This will likely be the only feedback I give. I spent hours and hours of my life providing feedback for other changes, only to see nothing changed, nor my feedback even acknowledged. Bugs reported that still haven't been fixed months after release.

Trust from your players needs to be earned. Listen. Respond. Adjust.

PurpleScroll

Sigh, ZoS never seems to listen to the community. I'm a mid-range player and these patch changes are going to affect my damage really badly.

neferpitou73

The nightblade buffs are good I guess?

I’m having trouble finding something positive or even neutral to say about these patch notes.

The devs can’t be playing the same game as us. I can’t believe half this stuff was considered let alone making it onto the PTS.

These can’t go live

MindOfTheSwarm

The Light Attack changes are fine in my opinion. The DoT changes are absolutely not fine, maybe the single target ones at a stretch, but not the ground ones.

Ground DoT’s needed a buff to make them threatening in PvP. Also, the lower damage and longer duration makes them not only useless for trash fights but also high end content.
Maebroogha is always moving around and DoT’s are critical for the circle and void portal mechanics. DPS is extremely critical for this fight. I just about managed it before, but now I can’t do it at all. I just don’t have the damage numbers to stop her healing to 100%. This is on my Frost Warden.

Also, speaking of ground DoT’s why buff some but nerf others? Especially Winter’s Revenge. You said it yourself in a previous patch that Winter’s Revenge was meant to be the exception among all other ground DoT’s, in that it was meant to be the hardest hitting one. Now it’s the weakest, Frost Wardens are dead now and only a couple of patches after you made Frost Clench a DPS spammable. Why give us something nice just to pull the rug under us a few patches later? Are you trying to make people leave the game for good?

I said it a bunch of times already, but to cater for low end players you need to make changes like this optional.

Use the CP system.

TPishek

If they had taken some of the power out of the light attacks and put it into the longer dots then I might have been mostly cool with that, even though I still don't think that would have closed any skill gap. But they're just changing the way we do our rotations AGAIN, making us change our setups AGAIN, completely arbitrarily. It's annoying and frustrating when there has been several patches where almost everything is fairly balanced outside of one or two outliers, and then BAM they mess up everything and make it all the more unpleasant to play.

godspeedfxb14_ESO

I parsed 100k on my MagDK with 2h backbar on live, and I just parsed 100k on PTS on my MagDK with staff backbar and more dots, AND I was able to use orb, and also talons almost on cooldown.

Works for me.

MindOfTheSwarm

This is the solution you’re looking for. I’m sorry about being adamant about this but if you want to make the game easier for casuals then you need to make at an option not force it on everyone. READ THIS

Add this as a slotted CP star next to the resource nodes on the blue tree:

Cost: Make it cheap for disabled players. Say about 30 CP. Not sure what it would be called. Maybe, Master of Decay or something.

“Increases the damage of your ground damage over time effects by 75% and your single target damage over time effects by 20% and increase their duration by 10 seconds, but reduce the damage of all Direct Damage by 75%. This star does not affect Ultimate abilities, main DPS skills, status effects or Heavy Attacks.”

THEN TEST IN PTS AND ADJUST NUMBERS LITTLE BY LITTLE


No stages, an all in star designed to make the game easier for slower players or those with disabilities, negating the need for weaving or repeatedly clicking, while allowing them to get good parses without it being meta due to the huge direct damage loss.

With such a star, this entire combat change that is planned is no longer necessary and everyone wins. If super high damage is still a concern, then nerf Light Attacks but not to the degree you have done. Maybe a 25% nerf. Also, it might be wise to reduce base Critical Damage to 25% instead of 50%.


What would this CP do?

Ultimate and Heavy Attacks would be unaffected for two reasons, The first is to prevent certain Ultimates like Elemental Rage from being overpowered, while allowing other direct damage Ultimates still having use.

Heavy Attacks would maintain their power so that the player has one source of burst to use while their Dot's are ticking.

This CP would not affect Status Effects also, due to Burning becoming OP, while other direct damage CP effects deal low damage anyway.

Also, YES it would affect process sets. This would in effect make most process sets that deal damage not worth it when taking the CP star.

The CP would also negatively affect damage Enchantments, thus making Infused undesirable when running something like a Frost Enchant. However, Alchemical Poison's being single target DoT's would receive the 20% buff.

Effects that have mix of DoT and burst would be affected proportionately. Unstable Wall for example would gain 75% more damage per tick but 75% LESS damage on its burst. A set like Plaguebreak would deal 20% more DoT damage but 75% less on explosion etc.

Since Light Attacks would deal 75% less damage, players who have difficulty weaving would no longer need to do so.

Yes, such a star would limit what skills would be effective on your bar, but this is besides the point. The whole point of this CP suggestion is to bridge the gap between slower players and pros with fast APM. It would also, dramatically increase accessibility for players that have disabilities, allowing them to feel useful in all content.

What about PvP?

It wouldn't be too bad. Yes, the ground DoT's would become very scary, but the whole point of ground DoT's in PvP is that they act as zone control. Something, they currently fail to do as people can simply heal through it. Also, most players simply step out of them anyway. However, players running this node would have REAL utility in BG and Cyrodiil, giving them a support zone control role. As for single target dot's, 20% of what is live right now is no biggie.

The numbers are a bit extreme?

Only on the ground DoT's, but that is why there is such a heavy price on Direct Damage to compensate. If the number's were smaller, weaving would remain very relevant. The only way to make it so weaving does not matter for casuals is to make LA not worth using, but that has to be counter balanced with power injection into something else. This can't be direct damage due to burst being too strong and it can't be single target DoT's either due to them sticking to targets. Ground DoT's are the logical choice.

Why I feel strongly?

With the proposed changes to bring down damage and bridge the gap between top end players and casuals, the combat update will in fact do the opposite. Making weaving even more important.

Secondly, I have a couple of friends who can’t play ESO well due to arthritis in the hands despite them saying they would if high APM wasn’t so mandatory. My suggested change would allow for a play style that requires a much lower APM while still remaining relevant in trials and vet content.

If you want to lower overall damage, then keep the Light Attack changes.

I’LL SAY IT AGAIN. THIS DOES EVERYTHING YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE WITHOUT DESTROYING THE GAME FOR EVERYONE. IT IS OPTIONAL.

noblecron

I have no feedback in regards to combat itself. I just want to say, I really love how you changed the shape of the Templar spear and the animations. I love the changes so much. I'm also really loving the change to solar flare because I've hit that by accident so many times. Thank you

MurkyWetWolf198

Honestly, I don’t mind all of these changes. I think they’re a bit drastic, and I think that some classes got hit too hard. Honestly, maybe change dots 15secs rather than 20, and allow abilities to tick on a 1sec frequency rather than 2. With dots so long, all end games players would be doing most of the time is using a spammable, making gameplay quite boring. Furthermore, don’t nerf sorcs so hard. Make them equal to other classes not worse. Give them empower for crystal weapons duration, and buff it’s damage back up slightly. I like the changes to the Surprise attack morphs, as they were underperforming in pve. However, they’re going to OP in PvP. Also, give necros a stronger spammable if you’re going to need their dots. Finally, as I’ve said before, if you want to increase accessibility for the game, teach new players the basic mechanics like weaving, rotations and dot uptimes
The game shouldn’t feel slow. That’s not fun, and it would really make everything rather bland. Let us all have fun. Being weak isn’t fun

MindOfTheSwarm

NB buffs are good, Sorcs have been brutalised, DK’s are hurting, Necros are fine, Templars are fine, Wardens are crying.

siddique

You guys need a boardroom meeting with whoever is designing combat/ suggesting these random changes. I am not going to type out anything because I am too tired. But to say the very least, combat designers are out of touch with this game.

Sandman929

We all should just trust the vision...I mean, sure, it wasn't the vision last week, and it's a different vision from the other visions we should have trusted for years and years, but this time it's a solid vision.
Longest beta ever.

DrNukenstein

nb changes are great and the new pvp sets look awesome.

almost worth giving up that weave

Pevey

EnderSouth2468 wrote: »

It is going to be hard to determine true differences between live and PTS when adjustments have been made to the target dummies. Is there any possibility of the dummy being adjusted to the same settings as live for a period of time so that we can better understand the impact of changes on our live dps vs dps with the changes? Changing combat systems and the standards of measuring their impact at the same time could obfuscate data and confuse players.

Lol, that would defeat the whole point of why they added the buffs right at this particular time in the first place.

They’ve done the same exact thing in the past to obscure nerfs. But this time, even the massive buff (slayer) to the dummy can’t obscure the nerfs completely.

I wish people would use the other dummies more for comparison.