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To be constructive for a moment...
RagedAvenger
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In between my very heavy criticism of how this patch has been implemented, I would like to do a short writeup on changes that I think could have actually met the stated goal of lowering the ceiling, or at very least keeping it stagnant while raising the floor. For context, I have already cancelled my future sub and gotten a refund processed on my current one, but may not quit the game entirely as long as I don't pay into it.
1. Capped Stats
To my knowledge, there are two stats ingame that have a cap, in which stacking more of them do not increase your damage dealt. These are penetration, and Critical Damage. I believe that the floor could have been raised without impacting the ceiling by making these two stats more easy to reach. I wouldnt support capping every stat, as that would be difficult to balance, but having pen and crit damage capped is a good thing, preventing extreme power creep. I would like to call attention to a note from this patch that I actually think is a good change:
Warden
Animal Companions
Advanced Species: This passive now increases your Armor Penetration by 495/990 per Animal Companion skill slotted, rather than damage done by 1/2%.
This is a good change for lowering ceiling and raising floor, as it replaces an uncapped stat with a capped stat. Optimized groups reach this penetration cap through their buffs/debuffs and builds, but unoptimized players often fall far short of pen cap. Same goes for Critical Damage. Anecdotally speaking, even in groups I've played in, which push moderately fast titles, I have found that running extra penetration and critical damage has led me to do more damage because of downtimes. I personally believe things such as war horn/crusher uptime have a greater impact on high end damage than the actual damage dealers themselves. A well raid led trial with a strong uptime on major force, crusher, brittle... can enable DPS to do at least 50% more damage than the same damage dealers in an unoptimized group.
An example of this is this DSR I just did, where I ran a maximum critical damage of greater than 130%, despite the cap being 125%
https://www.esologs.com/reports/rJmR3p2ZwTF1gBfD#fight=32&type=auras&ability=61747
Here you can see downtimes on major force, which are far worse in groups less experienced than this one. I think something that has been absent from the conversation about this skill gap is that supports tend to have more of an effect on group DPS than the damage dealers do. By making these capped stats easier to access, ZOS can give unoptimized players an opportunity to reach higher damage numbers with inexperienced supports.
Other ways to increase capped stats could be looked at, including:
Reducing the armor of enemies from 18,200 to something lower.
Increasing class access to Major and Minor Breach, replacing more uncapped stat passives with capped stats. Templar Critical Damage, Nightblade CD/Pen, Now Warden Pen, Necro Pen are all great. Maybe Necro's passive crit chance could also be crit damage
Buffing Critical Damage Champion point slottables
Increasing access to buffs such as major force without reliance on supports. Possibly put it on sets that dont have horrible stats so they're actually worth running.
2. Sets
A lot of the skill gap comes from sets that are difficult to manage. Below is a list of proposed buffs, nerfs and ease of use changes to some strong sets and explanations.
Kinras - Now procs on damage dealt, instead of on light attacks | More important than the damage of a light attack itself are the secondary effects they can proc, including enchants, ultimate generation, and set effects. Kinras is difficult to uptime for inexperienced players because missing light attacks leads to the buff dropping. I would also add 1 second to the set so you can spend a little more time on backbar.
Advancing Yokeda - Now procs on critical damage - Not much to explain just make this mirror Tzogvin
Relequen - Now has a 1.5 second cooldown on generating stacks | This prevents the set from being too dependent on light attack weaving, as you will not be able to get a double tick from every light attack you hit. Maybe adjust the damage of the proc upwards a bit to normalize the change. Or you could just make the stacks proc on something that isn't light attack if you want to reduce importance of weaving.
Siroria is honestly probably fine, maybe give it a little less WD/SD.
The resource management sets are a large driver of the skill gap, as precise resource management is far above the skill level of much of the community.
Bahsei and Coral should cap out at like half of what they give now, but weapon damage is less important with these nerfed dots so theyre already less valuable this patch
The game also needs procs that can do decent aoe damage, as sets like relequen and pillar of nirn do not hit enough targets to be really worth running in most content.
I think that the changes to light attacks are fine, and the current level of damage is also fine. What is not fine is the change to dot/hot cadence, as the game becomes significantly more boring. It now takes nearly 15-20 seconds for some dots to become worth casting over spammable, which means that in raid rotations will be very very spammable heavy, moreso than on dummy. The above changes are, in my opinion, less radical ways for ZOS to have met it's stated goals.
Edited by RagedAvenger on July 14, 2022 3:30AM 1. Capped Stats
To my knowledge, there are two stats ingame that have a cap, in which stacking more of them do not increase your damage dealt. These are penetration, and Critical Damage. I believe that the floor could have been raised without impacting the ceiling by making these two stats more easy to reach. I wouldnt support capping every stat, as that would be difficult to balance, but having pen and crit damage capped is a good thing, preventing extreme power creep. I would like to call attention to a note from this patch that I actually think is a good change:
Warden
Animal Companions
Advanced Species: This passive now increases your Armor Penetration by 495/990 per Animal Companion skill slotted, rather than damage done by 1/2%.
This is a good change for lowering ceiling and raising floor, as it replaces an uncapped stat with a capped stat. Optimized groups reach this penetration cap through their buffs/debuffs and builds, but unoptimized players often fall far short of pen cap. Same goes for Critical Damage. Anecdotally speaking, even in groups I've played in, which push moderately fast titles, I have found that running extra penetration and critical damage has led me to do more damage because of downtimes. I personally believe things such as war horn/crusher uptime have a greater impact on high end damage than the actual damage dealers themselves. A well raid led trial with a strong uptime on major force, crusher, brittle... can enable DPS to do at least 50% more damage than the same damage dealers in an unoptimized group.
An example of this is this DSR I just did, where I ran a maximum critical damage of greater than 130%, despite the cap being 125%
https://www.esologs.com/reports/rJmR3p2ZwTF1gBfD#fight=32&type=auras&ability=61747
Here you can see downtimes on major force, which are far worse in groups less experienced than this one. I think something that has been absent from the conversation about this skill gap is that supports tend to have more of an effect on group DPS than the damage dealers do. By making these capped stats easier to access, ZOS can give unoptimized players an opportunity to reach higher damage numbers with inexperienced supports.
Other ways to increase capped stats could be looked at, including:
Reducing the armor of enemies from 18,200 to something lower.
Increasing class access to Major and Minor Breach, replacing more uncapped stat passives with capped stats. Templar Critical Damage, Nightblade CD/Pen, Now Warden Pen, Necro Pen are all great. Maybe Necro's passive crit chance could also be crit damage
Buffing Critical Damage Champion point slottables
Increasing access to buffs such as major force without reliance on supports. Possibly put it on sets that dont have horrible stats so they're actually worth running.
2. Sets
A lot of the skill gap comes from sets that are difficult to manage. Below is a list of proposed buffs, nerfs and ease of use changes to some strong sets and explanations.
Kinras - Now procs on damage dealt, instead of on light attacks | More important than the damage of a light attack itself are the secondary effects they can proc, including enchants, ultimate generation, and set effects. Kinras is difficult to uptime for inexperienced players because missing light attacks leads to the buff dropping. I would also add 1 second to the set so you can spend a little more time on backbar.
Advancing Yokeda - Now procs on critical damage - Not much to explain just make this mirror Tzogvin
Relequen - Now has a 1.5 second cooldown on generating stacks | This prevents the set from being too dependent on light attack weaving, as you will not be able to get a double tick from every light attack you hit. Maybe adjust the damage of the proc upwards a bit to normalize the change. Or you could just make the stacks proc on something that isn't light attack if you want to reduce importance of weaving.
Siroria is honestly probably fine, maybe give it a little less WD/SD.
The resource management sets are a large driver of the skill gap, as precise resource management is far above the skill level of much of the community.
Bahsei and Coral should cap out at like half of what they give now, but weapon damage is less important with these nerfed dots so theyre already less valuable this patch
The game also needs procs that can do decent aoe damage, as sets like relequen and pillar of nirn do not hit enough targets to be really worth running in most content.
I think that the changes to light attacks are fine, and the current level of damage is also fine. What is not fine is the change to dot/hot cadence, as the game becomes significantly more boring. It now takes nearly 15-20 seconds for some dots to become worth casting over spammable, which means that in raid rotations will be very very spammable heavy, moreso than on dummy. The above changes are, in my opinion, less radical ways for ZOS to have met it's stated goals.
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Mr_Stach✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Some good thoughts here but I will 100% fight you on the Advanced Species change.
I really think that switching it to pen is a bad change. You basically punish players for being efficient, not to say that Pen doesn't need to be in the Warden kit at all, maybe add Pen to Piercing Cold. But losing 6-12% damage on top of all of these other changes hits Warden too hard.
That's my hill to die on but there we go.Altoholic, Frost Warden Sympathizer and Main
Glacial Guardian - Main - Frost Warden Zealot
The Frost Man Cometh - PC Frost Backup5 -
Mr_Stach✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭RagedAvenger wrote: »
Then you also need to compare how the other nerfs get nerfed more because of it, Shalks was by 8%, Winter's Revenge by 33%, Fetchers by 24%. But on live you would have a 6-12% buff from advanced species, so each of those values take another hit in reality.
That's why I'm against it. I don't think they compensated the DoT nerfs with the loss of Advanced Species. I need to do more testing on it though. Just to be sure.Altoholic, Frost Warden Sympathizer and Main
Glacial Guardian - Main - Frost Warden Zealot
The Frost Man Cometh - PC Frost Backup0 -
Skjaldbjorn✭✭✭✭✭
✭RagedAvenger wrote: »
If it was changed to 1% weapon power and 1% crit chance per skill or something, fine. Pen is a pretty much useless stat, especially for any Warden player in light armor. Basically, Magdens get nerfed even harder. What the hell's the point? You can't strip 6-12% raw damage from a class that's consistently hovering in mid-tier and expect that to be "fine".0