PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

aetherial_heavenn

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.

Pretty fundamental to any bench-marking, I would have thought

Tannus15

aetherial_heavenn wrote: »

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.

Pretty fundamental to any bench-marking, I would have thought

it's literally what they do everytime they nerf something

last time they did nerfs they added major vuln and minor brittle to the dummy.

Haarkan

Feels rough to adapt to drastic meta changes as frequently as the playerbase has. I don't understand how less damage over all for everyone is in any way making things more accessible. LA damage nor DoT damage were the issue of DPS. DPS didn't go from 50k to 140k top in a few years because people discovered some way to left click that much harder. Incredibly powerful sets being the only source of personal player progression (since there is no increased level caps or increased CP cap) vs increasingly higher HP bosses (86.2m hardmode Hel Ra Citadel final boss vs. 276m hardmode Kyne's Aegis final boss) is the frankly awkward balancing act.

Dropped about 25k DPS between live and PTS without changing anything (102k to 75k). I can likely adapt as i've had to numerous patches but at a certain point I got to wonder why when the game is so up in the air about large sweeping changes.

Faulgor

BretonMage wrote: »

Regarding DOTs:

I don't understand the reasoning behind making DOTs tick every 2 seconds instead of one? And/or lowering the damage per tick? That will just make fights last even longer, which is the last thing low DPS players need.

If they truly wanted to raise the floor, they'd leave the ticks and damage unchanged and just extend the duration a little, to make it more forgiving for players struggling with their rotation.

As a sorcerer I'm going to have to drop my pets and WoE now. Is this really what they wanted?

Absolutely, this. DOTs help low APM players tremendously because they have to only be used once and then deal damage on their own. I can get the rationale in extending their duration, but the bottom line of these changes is that DOTs will be useless in most encounters and rotations will be almost entirely consistent of spammables, which have to be used continuously and are much harder to keep up than DOTs.

The problem with keeping up DOTs was mainly a difference in their uptime, requiring you to look at the UI to figure out which has to be replaced. All you had to do was standardize DOT durations to change this.
With a longer DOT uptime, rotations actually become harder for me, because I have to play the metronome game on the front bar for longer. Whereas previously I had to count to 7 or 8 before I returned to my back bar to re-apply my DOTs, now I have to count to 17 or 18. It's mind-numbing and exhausting at the same time.

What's probably going to happen is that Oakensoul builds will become even more appealing, because dropping DOTs altogether (and thus, less need for a back bar) will simplify your rotation tremendously without a significant loss in damage.
Even in longer encounters where a DOT can run its course, replacing it with a spammable will only lower your dps by 1 spammable worth of damage over 20 seconds. Let's say your spammable hits for 10k, that's a dps loss of merely 500. Small price for all the Oakensoul buffs and a simple rotation of spam spam spam.

Unfortunately I have to wait for the EU copy to test most of this myself, but I'd really love for someone to compare 2 bar builds to Oakensoul builds on PTS, or just DOTless in general.

James-Wayne

Tannus15 wrote: »

for those curious, how do things look outside the 21m with it's buff changes etc

3m live - 56k



3m pts - 45k



so 11k dps lost, just over 20%

So average player DPS on 240ping loses damage as well.... yeah Id hate to see entry level players

Light attack damage nerf was fine because that only reduces damage on people weaving.... Damage Over Time nerf was not as that affects everyone!

Tannus15

lost 13k dps on my warden build.
98k down to 85k.
sooooooo, uninstall?

James-Wayne

Tannus15 wrote: »

@Gaisma this is FAR more useful info than my own parse.

The negative impact on people who are trying to get into vet content should have far greater weight than those at the top end. Yes, the nerfs are really going to set back our vRG HM prog, but if it's stopping other people from doing vet content at all then that's devastating.

Totally agree with this as well, we shouldnt be stopping players to have a chance to play Veteran content. Sad day.

Firstmep

WreckfulAbandon wrote: »

Nocturnals Ploy is an abomination that should never see the light of day. PvP in this game is dead to me if it goes live.

This set is going to be the biggest xv1/zerg tool.
Good luck playing with 0 buffs on if you are fighting more than 1 person.
And even in 1 on 1, you will have to constantly rebuff, and it's just going to be an uphill battle.
I don't hate the concept, but the cooldown needs to be like 10 seconds, and on the target not the wearer of the set.

Tannus15

crystal weapon + bound armaments

96k

crushing weapon + crystal frag

101k


this looks like pretty convincing evidence that sorc was over nerfed to me.

Bound armaments is objectively terrible now. you're better off running a 2nd spammable.

Nevidyra

Templar - PvP/Duels

I did some testing on the PTS tonight. 800ms jabs is nice, but we lost an entire damage tick and the remaining primary damage was FURTHER nerfed by 21%. This is incredibly damaging to Templar's offensive kit in PvP and doesn't make sense. Sure, it's easier to weave now, but with the LA nerfs, it doesn't compensate for the loss of an entire tick AND a nerf to burning light ontop. The ability is one of the worst spammables in the game now.

Please get rid of the 21% nerf to primary damage and provide more damage to compensate for the ability only ticking 3 times now instead of 4, please. We don't want Templar going back to being a healer only class in PvP.

Aldoss

Just spent some time dueling on the pts.

The warden changes are absolute trash. This class needs BUFFS! We don't deserve these nerfs in the slightest.

It's literally all bad, minus the Falcon Swiftness change.

104% crit dmg, 16k pen against a target with 26k armor and shalks barely crits for 6k while Sea Serpent's is active... Let's not even discuss the timing change, but this is absolutely terrible damage. What a let down to be forced to operate completely around this ability, have to spend so much concentration to time it and to aim it, and to have it crit for less than some spammables in the game... an average hit over a several minute long duel is 3.2k.

Seriously, what are you doing?

Meanwhile, surprise attack hits me for 6k PER SECOND.

I'm so confused.

Arctic ticks for ~400 dmg now. The heal is only a little more than it was on live, but it still cannot be sustained as a burst heal. This heal needs to go completely. This skill needs a full rework. Back to the drawing board.

The LA/HA change is also a big nerf to Magden. On live I'm getting heavy ice crits for 7k when I proc off balance. One of our only reliable bursts atm, given the pitiful damage of shalks, is to proc off balance, load shalks, and heavy into a dive or frost reach as shalk goes off. The one extra second is already infuriating, but the largest crit heavy I got tonight was 2.2k.

These are massive nerfs. I don't even know what was going through your minds when writing this...

To anyone saying, "when everyone is upset, then the changes are fair": that only is true if all classes were balanced to begin with. Magden is already so bad. We needed massive changes to bring us back to even B tier. As the pts changes are, Magden will continue to be bottom tier, especially now that Nightblade got some incredible buffs.

It's lonely down here.

code65536

The Nightblade Dark Cloak change is a mixed bag, from a PvE tank perspective.

The heal is a buff below around 50% health, and it's a nerf above that. On first glance that seems like it should be fine, as the heal gets stronger when you need it more. But in practice, after tanking the new dungeons on my NB tank main, I'm not that thrilled with this change.

Pros:

1) It's nice in an "oh crap, I just took an unblocked light attack for 35K" scenario.


Cons:

1) This makes the Dark Cloak really bad for Trauma (heal absorption) mechanics (and there is yet another one of those in these new dungeons). I'd like to break through and get rid of that heal absorption before my health bar has taken a massive hit. Waiting for low health to get rid of the trauma is pretty horrible.

2) I like to be able to keep myself topped off so that I'm at or near full when the next bursty attack happens. In that regard, one of the best things about the old Dark Cloak was that it worked well to counter DoTs.



So, for the sake of illustrating this problem, consider this example (with numbers rounded a bit to make the math easier):
- Boss applies a 4K/s DoT
- Tank has 40K health. Old Cloak heals for 10% of max health, New Cloak heals for 20% of missing health.

Old Cloak: take 4K damage every second, heal for 4K every second, and health remains topped off at all times

Now, with the new Cloak:
- Tick 1: take 4K damage, heal for 0.8K (36.8K health)
- Tick 2: take 4K damage, heal for 1.4K (34.2K health)
- Tick 3: take 4K damage, heal for 1.9K (32.2K health)

Eventually, this plateaus, and in this scenario, the asymptote is 24K health. So a heal that used to be able keep a tank topped-off at 100% health will now reach a new equilibrium at 60%.

This was a noticeable problem. I'm used to keeping myself topped off through mild ambient damage, so that I'm ready to take the next dangerous burst of damage at full health. And now I'm struggling to keep myself topped off through that mild ambient damage.

The heal-for-missing is one of the worst things about the DK tank heal, and it's frustrating to see the main weakness of GDB creep into another class.

TL;DR: If you're going to go with a heal-for-missing model, you really need to add a minimum heal. Otherwise it's worthless for trauma and it's worthless for keeping oneself topped off at full in anticipation of the next burst.

Nord_Raseri

On PlayStation my dps sits around 80k, Sometimes low to 76k or up to 84k(depending how bad my hands are acting up). Just my build with combat numbers turned on. Using only wrecking blow with maelstrom staff on backbar going, my LAs are hitting 30k. That's roughly 37% of my dps. If that 30k becomes 4- 7k, not even counting all the other nerfs I'm being hit with, that's a HUGE loss. I'm just at the level of being invited to vet trial progression groups. What the *** do I do when suddenly I'm barely over half of what I was? My back up plan was going to be to buy high isle for oakensoul and use a magplar, but looks like that's not happening either. After dealing with big changes for 6 years I tried to hold a modicum of faith for this game. After this? All gone.

Nevidyra

Nevidyra wrote: »

Templar - PvP/Duels

I did some testing on the PTS tonight. 800ms jabs is nice, but we lost an entire damage tick and the remaining primary damage was FURTHER nerfed by 21%. This is incredibly damaging to Templar's offensive kit in PvP and doesn't make sense. Sure, it's easier to weave now, but with the LA nerfs, it doesn't compensate for the loss of an entire tick AND a nerf to burning light ontop. The ability is one of the worst spammables in the game now.

Please get rid of the 21% nerf to primary damage and provide more damage to compensate for the ability only ticking 3 times now instead of 4, please. We don't want Templar going back to being a healer only class in PvP.

To add onto my post, Rapid Strikes are outperforming Jabs as a spammable on Templar in both PvE and PvP. PLEASE BUFF JABS.

LukosCreyden

I am genuinely concerned.
Soloing on Magcro was how I played this game and now, my ability to do so has been gutted.

Tannus15

Nevidyra wrote: »

Nevidyra wrote: »

Templar - PvP/Duels

I did some testing on the PTS tonight. 800ms jabs is nice, but we lost an entire damage tick and the remaining primary damage was FURTHER nerfed by 21%. This is incredibly damaging to Templar's offensive kit in PvP and doesn't make sense. Sure, it's easier to weave now, but with the LA nerfs, it doesn't compensate for the loss of an entire tick AND a nerf to burning light ontop. The ability is one of the worst spammables in the game now.

Please get rid of the 21% nerf to primary damage and provide more damage to compensate for the ability only ticking 3 times now instead of 4, please. We don't want Templar going back to being a healer only class in PvP.

To add onto my post, Rapid Strikes are outperforming Jabs as a spammable on Templar in both PvE and PvP. PLEASE BUFF JABS.

rapid strikes are also out performing crystal weapon.

Treeshka

The damage was reduced for dots of course but with this patch you have significantly more time to use your spam skill which might compensate the damage. With this change some players may think it is boring but personally for me it is not a decider factor for to spend my time in this game.

I did new dungeons on hard mode yesterday and with all these changes they are clearly doable. One downside though where some bosses move a lot and it forces you to cast your dots earlier then their duration.

I did a few parses last night and of course damage of the light attacks were reduced a lot thus my damage too but with Nightblade i did not feel much difference to the live server parses i was doing. Maybe it is because of the player skill or maybe the changes that introduced the class. I also do not think i can ditch light attack because the class is heavily based on that particular combat movement.

I also did not change the amount of dots in my build and actually just used the same abilities on my Nightblade and just utilized more spam skill and Merciless Resolve in my rotation.

One side note some classes received heavy nerfs this patch and it should be done like that or other classes should be buffed that much so they can perform similar to over performing classes. No other class should surpass other classes by that much. Just look at the Stamina Sorcerer on the live server. Those things should not happen in my opinion.

Swagata01

I got into the game about 2 months ago. I was so excited about mag templar and okensoul for pve. Now they nerfed them to the ground for pve. I cant believe I wasted my time here. I should have gone with Guild wars 2.

terrasight

Well, you killed my Sorc main. A class intend to be the single target machine in the game. Yes the damage this patch was too much, no question. But this is not a fix or a nerf, this is destruction of a class.

So... why should I play now? Why should I play a game where all classes nearly feel the same now? How we do trifectas an console now? What was the reason for alle this? To wipe out 90% of the endgame community? If yes...gratz, here you go...

I can't believe this...

Firstmep

Melee templar nerfs are way over the top. Burning light cut by 67% overall, puncturing strikes 40%ish. Its way too much of a reduction.
People are switching to rapid strikes, thats how bad jabs is.
And dont even get me started on the new animation.

AJA

This is my feedback

Eweroun

Sorry to say, but the only combat adjustment this patch will do is killing the combat...
Which leaves...
Well... ...nothing..

I don't get why you still don't understand people are playing this game because of the unique combat system

Removing that is basicly the same as making a massive amount of people uninstalling it

meneerpeer

Well the damage nerf is one thing.

What bothers me most is that these changes makes it outright boring to do combat. It's waaay to slow with the everlasting dot's.

PrincessOfThieves

I'm really not a fan of these nerfs. I'm a semi-casual player and I have a mild disability, so reaching acceptable dps for vet dlc content is already very difficult for me. If these changes go live, I will be excluded from vet content.

ApostateHobo

I haven't played the game in months because I didn't like the direction of this year's content, but I saw a bunch of posts on reddit and came to see what all the commotion was about. I just....what even??? Who took a look at these changes and went "yep that's perfect the players will love this". This is genuinely some of the most insane crap I've seen zos do since they tried to make damage shields have cast times with that "I'm taking a huge dump" animation. I mean if the goal was to get people to stop playing then good job I guess? I definitely won't be coming back after seeing this mess. It shouldn't be stressful to play a game, you shouldn't have to dread having the whole game turned on it's head every few months. It's just baffling how you guys keep doing this.

Troodon80

Tannus15 wrote: »

live parse

114k



pts parse, same build

96k


build if anyone is interested

Out of curiosity, what changed between Live and PTS for the critical damage to be reduced by ~10%? @Tannus15

Medicate

Bad ZOS, stop.
Sorry, but this complete PTS seems like you have next to no idea what you doing.
You kinda embarrass yourself with the changes you try to do there.

LAs don't scale because LA weaving adds astonishing 15% dps? if this would be what separates good from casual players, it wouldnt be the isse. just teach your folks your game mech!

DoTs now last the same 20 sec? this makes any uniqueness any class ever had irrelevant. Except necro blastbones you tried to cramp anything into that window. Even warden? bruh. just stop it or give a macro that does the same lame rotation on every class anyway.
You guys would ruin the very core of what makes the game fun. I can only speak for myself but i'm pretty sure that it's the case with thousand others in the endgame part.

And besides that, most other nerfs are way over the top. Maybe stop adding so many OP sets and don't ruin my favourite classes Sorc and Warden. Only using a Sledgehammer to "improve" a very carefully balanced sandbox is kinda stupid imo.
My only guess is, that the current balancing team has never played the game and only sees Stamsorc exceeding in logs. Can we have the old guys back? with a slight powercreep and only meaningful nerfs?

GL with your game if this [snip] goes live...

[edited for profanity bypass]

couriersix

These changes are atrociously bad. I have been playing for four years now, and while there were definitely patches where I disagreed with or didn't like certain combat adjustments, these are outright going to kill endgame PVE and make content unnecessarily difficult for a large number of players.

Here are some parses and some notes, I am a disabled player, and a full time college student. I am not the most optimized player since I don't have time to farm for gear, level up skills, or practice parsing. That said, I do not find parsing incredibly difficult, and can comfortable hit above 70k+, sometimes 77k+ if I'm paying attention enough. This is enough to let me do most trials and endgame content even with my disability and schedule in mind.

This is from live:



Parsing on live can be a bit straining on the hands, but it's tolerable. It feels easy and rewarding to be able to parse.

From the PTS:



This did not feel easy or good. The sudden change in timers was very frustrating to me from a muscle memory standpoint, and it feels still like I'm putting in the same amount of work- only to do 10k less dps for arbitrary reasons. It feels like it's punishing me for playing the game and is a bad hit for my morale as a player.

The build I was using on both live and PTS- nothing changed between them.



There has to be a better way to go about this, and additionally I don't understand why ranged weapons deal 10% less light attack damage than melee. The last few patches were dedicated to increasing build diversity, but by making some weapons deal inherently less LA damage it will only push more players toward melee and will decrease diversity.

On a final note too, if this is about accessibility, then why were several skills, playstyles and sets which were commonly used by disabled players nerfed? Why has endgame content suddenly become more difficult for all players, abled or disabled?

Troodon80

Genuinely curious, did I miss the part in the patch notes where critical damage took a 10% hit or is this a Combat Metrics issue?

IZZEFlameLash

couriersix wrote: »

These changes are atrociously bad. I have been playing for four years now, and while there were definitely patches where I disagreed with or didn't like certain combat adjustments, these are outright going to kill endgame PVE and make content unnecessarily difficult for a large number of players.

Here are some parses and some notes, I am a disabled player, and a full time college student. I am not the most optimized player since I don't have time to farm for gear, level up skills, or practice parsing. That said, I do not find parsing incredibly difficult, and can comfortable hit above 70k+, sometimes 77k+ if I'm paying attention enough. This is enough to let me do most trials and endgame content even with my disability and schedule in mind.

This is from live:



Parsing on live can be a bit straining on the hands, but it's tolerable. It feels easy and rewarding to be able to parse.

From the PTS:



This did not feel easy or good. The sudden change in timers was very frustrating to me from a muscle memory standpoint, and it feels still like I'm putting in the same amount of work- only to do 10k less dps for arbitrary reasons. It feels like it's punishing me for playing the game and is a bad hit for my morale as a player.

The build I was using on both live and PTS- nothing changed between them.



There has to be a better way to go about this, and additionally I don't understand why ranged weapons deal 10% less light attack damage than melee. The last few patches were dedicated to increasing build diversity, but by making some weapons deal inherently less LA damage it will only push more players toward melee and will decrease diversity.

On a final note too, if this is about accessibility, then why were several skills, playstyles and sets which were commonly used by disabled players nerfed? Why has endgame content suddenly become more difficult for all players, abled or disabled?

It never was about accessibility. Their attempts at 'more accessible' have always ended up hurting the very player base they claimed to want to help.