Update 35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes

Elsonso

BretonMage wrote: »

I'd love to know: Is it not recommended, or did the team not envision, having a static DoT and a sticky DoT on the same bar? I have on my back bar: a buff for 33s, an AoE for 10s and a DoT for 20s. Bar swapping is nothing short of chaotic with this updated PTS.

Anyone else have a similar situation? Can someone please help me make sense of it?

One could theorize that they considered this, but decided to go ahead anyway.

Observation: The pressure to do 20/2 DoTs seems very strong in this update. They relented on "Static dots" because of community pressure, and yes, I appreciate that. If they agree that this is not working, I am not ruling out the possibility that they might use their Spoon of Undo to restore them back to 20/2 before it hits Live. Maybe in some Update down the calendar if it is too late for Live.

I am perfectly fine at the idea of looking more closely at 20/2 "static dots" if they do 2.x times the damage, more than two 10 second DoTs on Live, at no added cost. No added cost because we will probably have to recast them every 10-ish seconds anyway. Everything has a price.

December7854

I hope there's an open dialogue about buffing templar's single target component of biting jabs/puncturing sweeps to make up for the loss of 1 tick from the channel. I personally would like to see the 4th tick regained, making it hit once every 200ms over an 800ms channel.

Greeed2025

I only want atleast one morph of jabs beeing stronger then flurry. Pls ZOS I beg you

BretonMage

Elsonso wrote: »

BretonMage wrote: »

I'd love to know: Is it not recommended, or did the team not envision, having a static DoT and a sticky DoT on the same bar? I have on my back bar: a buff for 33s, an AoE for 10s and a DoT for 20s. Bar swapping is nothing short of chaotic with this updated PTS.

Anyone else have a similar situation? Can someone please help me make sense of it?

One could theorize that they considered this, but decided to go ahead anyway.

Observation: The pressure to do 20/2 DoTs seems very strong in this update. They relented on "Static dots" because of community pressure, and yes, I appreciate that. If they agree that this is not working, I am not ruling out the possibility that they might use their Spoon of Undo to restore them back to 20/2 before it hits Live. Maybe in some Update down the calendar if it is too late for Live.

I am perfectly fine at the idea of looking more closely at 20/2 "static dots" if they do 2.x times the damage, more than two 10 second DoTs on Live, at no added cost. No added cost because we will probably have to recast them every 10-ish seconds anyway. Everything has a price.

Taken by itself, the idea of shorter static DoTs and longer sticky DoTs didn't seem so bad, but in practice and in the context of a rotation, it doesn't seem to work out at all.

If they are so keen to stretch DoTs out to 20/2s (due to the rumoured server issues?), they should have just done so with the increase in damage as you suggested. What we have now is neither here nor there, really.

Necrotech_Master

BretonMage wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

BretonMage wrote: »

I'd love to know: Is it not recommended, or did the team not envision, having a static DoT and a sticky DoT on the same bar? I have on my back bar: a buff for 33s, an AoE for 10s and a DoT for 20s. Bar swapping is nothing short of chaotic with this updated PTS.

Anyone else have a similar situation? Can someone please help me make sense of it?

One could theorize that they considered this, but decided to go ahead anyway.

Observation: The pressure to do 20/2 DoTs seems very strong in this update. They relented on "Static dots" because of community pressure, and yes, I appreciate that. If they agree that this is not working, I am not ruling out the possibility that they might use their Spoon of Undo to restore them back to 20/2 before it hits Live. Maybe in some Update down the calendar if it is too late for Live.

I am perfectly fine at the idea of looking more closely at 20/2 "static dots" if they do 2.x times the damage, more than two 10 second DoTs on Live, at no added cost. No added cost because we will probably have to recast them every 10-ish seconds anyway. Everything has a price.

Taken by itself, the idea of shorter static DoTs and longer sticky DoTs didn't seem so bad, but in practice and in the context of a rotation, it doesn't seem to work out at all.

If they are so keen to stretch DoTs out to 20/2s (due to the rumoured server issues?), they should have just done so with the increase in damage as you suggested. What we have now is neither here nor there, really.

yeah i dont mind the longer dots, or the reduced tick rates on the dots, so long as the dmg was increased to compensate, but the dmg decrease on top of the tick nerf makes them less enticing

600 dps for a dot is terrible, thats what i on avg see in PVP on live with existing dots

so if the dots on pts are doing effective 500-700 dps, that means in pvp they would be doing 150-300 dmg per tick

in pve the dot should at minimum be doing 2000 dmg per tick, or 1000 dps, preferably a little higher like 3000 dmg per tick or 1500 dps

siddique

BretonMage wrote: »

I'd love to know: Is it not recommended, or did the team not envision, having a static DoT and a sticky DoT on the same bar? I have on my back bar: a buff for 33s, an AoE for 10s and a DoT for 20s. Bar swapping is nothing short of chaotic with this updated PTS.

Anyone else have a similar situation? Can someone please help me make sense of it?

There is no sense to this madness. This is the absolute worst update in the history of this game. It has laid bare the incompetency of the devs and the callous behaviour of the management towards its playerbase.

In their meaningless confusion, they have managed to alienate their endgame and make the game inaccessible to a vast majority of players.

It was a good 7 years with ESO.

TPishek

For years now the devs have been taking power out of the individual characters and putting it into coordinating buff sets to try and make the game more complex and engaging. They then get upset that these groups that coordinate are stronger than the people who don't/can't and are confused by this, so their solution is to... double down on shifting power out of the characters and into sets? Ridiculous backwards logic. Either make the buff sets easier to use/more forgiving/easier to acces, or take the power out of them and put it BACK into the individual classes and skills. Nerfing dots and light attacks goes counter to the goal.

CapnCrunchYT

Please please please for the love of god dont let Nocturnals Ploy go live in its current state. Currently on the PTS you can strip another player of Major brutality, major resolve and 2 minor buffs in 4 seconds using ele drain.

IonicKai

I know this has been asked many times now but seriously who are these changes actually for and do they achieve the stated goals. The listed goals were to 1. Reduce the gap between floor and ceiling and 2. Improve accessibility of content. The current proposed changes force people to completely relearn mechanics of the game again.... The nerfs in the proposed changes further the gap by making buff uptimes even more important to your overall damage and take away options that are performing fine on live forcing a bigger pigeon hole for what is going to be high combat efficiency. The content has not been touched or adjusted which means that if you are struggling or working towards a goal on live you will loose progress after the nerfs. The adjustments to dots now create more timer confusion and worse than that honestly probably force some skills completely out of use that were previously staples in combat.

In no way to I feel player feedback has actually been heard. 8.1.2 feels like a small concession on a long list of problems raised during this cycle and the honest solution seems to be to just going back to the drawing board. You are going to make content that is accessible now to an ok number of players become unaccessible to more or even down right unachievable to virtually everyone. Just stop and pull these changes back.

If you want a way to bridge some of the gap within groups look at making the group buffs more accessible by giving them more sources and easier to manage uptimes such as making brittle work when chilled occurs instead of while on staff bar with chilled applied and giving it a 10s timer instead of 4s. Also things like putting all intended raid buff sets to target 12 people instead of 6 so that it doesn't require knowledge of double casting etc. These are both examples that would do very little for the groups already maintaining high up time but would bring better uptimes to the average group thus shrinking that gap a little.

If you want to make content more accessible adjust the content itself. Many posts throughout this cycle have pointed out that the hardmodes for more recent content are absurd to achieve for even most vet raiders. The dps checks and sheer amount of damage we are expected to live through are simply overtuned for even the top 5% of players and it's worse on console where there is no way to optimize per pull without taking a lot of time making trifectas feel impossible or nearly unachievable.

If you want to give sets that are easier to use for accessibility then leave oakensoul alone in PvE and just create a PvP related nerf. It is actually the best tool that has ever been introduced to help the average player and it's the perfect example of a tool that isn't overpowered for top tier players while benefiting the average. Take inspiration from that!

Please just rollback all combat changes this patch or extend the patch long enough to adjust things to actually meet the stated goals because the current proposed changes just do not meet those goals and work directly counter to them.

RusevCrush

What's the purpose of normal dungeons/trials? Pretty sure they were the og devs idea of accessibility.

Not every player is entitled to completing the most difficult content. But as long as we're going down this road, would you mind making the emperor title more accessible? I immediately wrote this off and accepted I'll never get it. Perhaps, there's hope yet.

Necrotech_Master

RusevCrush wrote: »

What's the purpose of normal dungeons/trials? Pretty sure they were the og devs idea of accessibility.

Not every player is entitled to completing the most difficult content. But as long as we're going down this road, would you mind making the emperor title more accessible? I immediately wrote this off and accepted I'll never get it. Perhaps, there's hope yet.

not to get too far off topic, but emperor isnt all that hard to get lol

its especially easy after the midyear mayhem is over and they end up leaving those 7 day campaigns up for an extra week after the event ends lol

tomofhyrule

Here's something interesting I just found out - the new static light attack damage is a buff... assuming you have a certain build.

I really only do higher-level content on my tank, and my style is pretty well being the type of tank to stack heath and just laugh off hits. As such, I've gotten pretty good at managing sustain since I have none whatsoever, but that also means I hit like a wet noodle. My LAs on live hit for 1523 damage with my 2723 Weapon Damage. On PTS, they're saying LAs will hit for 2250 regardless of build. I went onto one of my other characters who's built more for fun, but with the proper 64 points in stam, and his LAs hit for 2959 (4398 Weapon Damage), so in his case it's a nerf.

I think one of the major differences between the forums and ZOS's internal blackbox is that we on the forums aren't even considering someone running a damage build with anything less than 64 attribute points in stam/mag. Meanwhile, I remember when I first came into this game from Skyrim (where a lot of people are coming from), you got the best mileage from putting points in each attribute to make a well-rounded character. Nothing in game tells you that splitting attributes is actually a bad idea in ESO - and I have a feeling ZOS wants that to no longer be a bad idea. I'm wondering how much of ZOS's "raise the floor" idea comes from the fact that the 'floor' is 'Skyrim imports... which would be below what the forums are taking as the 'floor' as 'a DPS that only does normals.'

I also assume this is the genesis of the hybridization argument, where they're trying to let someone with 21/22/21 attributes (which would be great in Skyrim) be viable. Right now, it's almost like building anything other than 64/0/0 or 0/0/64 is just losing damage and gaining nothing. Now as to whether that accomplishes those goals... I'll let someone who is more adept at theorycrafting make that call.

Now this is just an observation, not a judgement. I will admit I'm a bit nervous about these changes because I would like to get into some higher-level content - I'm not a full endgame tank, but I've got all but 3 dungeon HMs and a handful of partial trial HMs done and progging. I really want to get something like vKAHM eventually, but the reports of it becoming next to impossible for the elite players to do with the changes is more than a little disheartening.

It really does feel like the combat and encounter teams aren't in communication at all. The latest dungeons and trials have been a major step up since the previous, ostensibly to balance around the best of the best groups. But that leaves the rest of us behind. I've also noticed that the gap between norm/vet/HM in a given piece of content is widening drastically (we could breeze through nDSR and still not know the mechanics, while even vDSR needed progging over several weeks), and as such it feels like norm is not even close to preparing people for vet, and then for HM you need to relearn everything from scratch anyway.

Necrotech_Master

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Here's something interesting I just found out - the new static light attack damage is a buff... assuming you have a certain build.

I really only do higher-level content on my tank, and my style is pretty well being the type of tank to stack heath and just laugh off hits. As such, I've gotten pretty good at managing sustain since I have none whatsoever, but that also means I hit like a wet noodle. My LAs on live hit for 1523 damage with my 2723 Weapon Damage. On PTS, they're saying LAs will hit for 2250 regardless of build. I went onto one of my other characters who's built more for fun, but with the proper 64 points in stam, and his LAs hit for 2959 (4398 Weapon Damage), so in his case it's a nerf.

I think one of the major differences between the forums and ZOS's internal blackbox is that we on the forums aren't even considering someone running a damage build with anything less than 64 attribute points in stam/mag. Meanwhile, I remember when I first came into this game from Skyrim (where a lot of people are coming from), you got the best mileage from putting points in each attribute to make a well-rounded character. Nothing in game tells you that splitting attributes is actually a bad idea in ESO - and I have a feeling ZOS wants that to no longer be a bad idea. I'm wondering how much of ZOS's "raise the floor" idea comes from the fact that the 'floor' is 'Skyrim imports... which would be below what the forums are taking as the 'floor' as 'a DPS that only does normals.'

I also assume this is the genesis of the hybridization argument, where they're trying to let someone with 21/22/21 attributes (which would be great in Skyrim) be viable. Right now, it's almost like building anything other than 64/0/0 or 0/0/64 is just losing damage and gaining nothing. Now as to whether that accomplishes those goals... I'll let someone who is more adept at theorycrafting make that call.

Now this is just an observation, not a judgement. I will admit I'm a bit nervous about these changes because I would like to get into some higher-level content - I'm not a full endgame tank, but I've got all but 3 dungeon HMs and a handful of partial trial HMs done and progging. I really want to get something like vKAHM eventually, but the reports of it becoming next to impossible for the elite players to do with the changes is more than a little disheartening.

It really does feel like the combat and encounter teams aren't in communication at all. The latest dungeons and trials have been a major step up since the previous, ostensibly to balance around the best of the best groups. But that leaves the rest of us behind. I've also noticed that the gap between norm/vet/HM in a given piece of content is widening drastically (we could breeze through nDSR and still not know the mechanics, while even vDSR needed progging over several weeks), and as such it feels like norm is not even close to preparing people for vet, and then for HM you need to relearn everything from scratch anyway.

i personally like to put some attribute pts into health so i dont feel like a total glass cannon (i usually do like 20 pts in health and the rest in stam or mag depending on the toon build)

i know technically speaking it means lower dmg, but the way i see it, a dead dps does no dps, and that bit more health allows me to survive a bit better to keep up the dps

i also agree that dreadsail is a good example of how the normal and vet differs so much that normal in no way whatsoever prepares you for vet

the first boss channel attack is a wipe on vet, but ignorable on normal, the lightning stacks dont build on normal in the next section, the reef guardian doesnt 1 shot you if you fail a reef heart on normal, the final boss basically has no bridge mechanic on normal

most all of those mechanics are basically insta wipes on vet

Iron_Warrior

I've noticed a lot of the abilities are getting a cost reduction, so don't you think redguard needs some love now? Hybridisation made sustain a lot better and now with these new changes, sustain management would become even easier, so what's the point of redguard at this point? It needs something, some people suggested a passive that boosts the weapon traits effectives, i think that's going to help redguard a lot and it sounds like a fun passive

OnGodiDoDis

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

i really hope that you guys standardise arctic blast's dps as well, giving it 1 tick per second. as it stands, it's worst than most dots because it's damage is lower and it's cost is far higher. this is for obvious reasons, however, arctic blast is closer than ever to being a legit dps skill for pve dps. and it really should be as it's been a frost warden want for a long time. the stun still should be moved to another skill to finally offer us an on-demand stun.

scorch should stick to intervals of 3. (3,6,9). and deep fissure dealing frost damage would be great for frost dps builds while having no impact for other builds.

I would like to add that PvP Wardens use War Maiden, being that all our animal companions skills are Magic damage. Converting Deep Fissure to frost is going to kill that build, leaving us with no other option, as War Maiden offers the highest damage than other sets.

boi_anachronism_

Olen_Mikko wrote: »

So, i guess sorcs and wardens were loud enough to get some changes reverted. Nightblades, make sure to be loud enough so we'll get our incoming buffs.

Stamblades are getting buffed, magblades are getting nerfed so um I'm not jumping for joy. I don't want to respec my build.

Eiregirl

I understand wanting to make the more difficult content assessable to more players and I respect that, but why do you want to do this by raising the floor and lowering the ceiling for damage dealers? This does nothing to improve a players knowledge of dungeon or trial boss fights. There are plenty of players who can parse 100K on a static dummy but have no knowledge of a Vet DLC hardmode and die every time they are revived.

Raising the floor and lowering the ceiling does not improve a players ability to weave light attacks which is the major reason highly skilled players can parse high numbers on static dummies that don’t fight back while wearing certain gear sets and using certain skills. What is being done is not going to make any player more skilled at dealing damage or improve their knowledge of boss fights.

If you honestly want to raise the floor then give players other options or ways of doing higher damage without using light attacks. I would not expect anyone to attain top damage parses without light attack weaving, but players should still be able to attain decent DPS even without weaving light attacks. A solid heavy attack build with no light attacks can easily reach 50K DPS on the iron atro dummy on the live server which is less than half what a decent player can do using light attack weaving.

There are plenty of skilled players out there that know the mechanics of the fights in dungeons and trials but just either can’t or don’t want to light attack weave so if you honestly want to raise the floor then give these players other ways to attain higher DPS. It does not have to be DPS that is on par with light attack weaving but at least get it on the same playing field.

The only other way to honestly raise the floor to be closer to the ceiling is to hope players will improve themselves and learn to light attack weave like a pro which will not happen for many who are sitting on the floor.

HalensShade

As long as concealed weapon still sets people off balance melee magblade should be fine. Bar space for a cc? Hilarious.

Ek1

Although this is highly entertaining to read I would like to point out that now a casual player is hitting top-tier DPS in light of when the content was created. Although success is nice and high DPS helps a lot to achieve that (less time to tank, less time to heal) it also chips a lot away from the challenge in the game. Stack and burn seem to be the default setting for everything nowadays.

If oakenring heavy attack build can achieve DPS of X then great, that will be the threshold of a casual player. Making DPS can't be much easier than that, that is something I hope we can all agree on. But if there is nothing to learn after that to get significantly more output done then the accessibility has taken a too big swing on the system.

Elsonso

@ZOS_Kevin ... I hesitate to ask this, but any chance that there will be another update with thoughts from the Combat Team before we exit PTS?

WrathOfInnos

Great job standardizing skill durations for an easy and accessible rotation. My Sorcerer has abilities that line up so well:

Crystal Weapon - 2s
Bound Armaments - 4s, 40s
Daedric Prey - 6s
Lightning Flood - 10s
Stampede - 15s
Hurricane - 20s
Carve - 12s, 22s, 29s (to keep duration)
Quick Cloak - 30s

It's actually difficult to come up with that many different numbers without accidentally repeating any, and the fact that so few share common multiples is truly impressive. Raise the floor, right?

Unfortunately other classes have it even worse, since the duration-modifying passives on Nightblade, Templar and Dragonknight were apparently forgotten. Mage's Guild skills have a similar issue. Mixing any ground and "sticky" DoTs gets messy fast. Warden is also in an awkward spot with Shalks no longer defining a rhythm of 3, and instead being extended to (the only?) 8s skill.

Necro still has the clunky Blastbones as a baseline, the only skill that gets to decide its own duration (3 or 4s). I guess it doesn't matter much now that neither of these options align with Siphon, Arcanist/Archer or Boneyard. We can just keep our eyes glues to chaotic timers at all times.

Jazraena

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Great job standardizing skill durations for an easy and accessible rotation. My Sorcerer has abilities that line up so well:

Crystal Weapon - 2s
Bound Armaments - 4s
Daedric Prey - 6s
Mystic Orb - 10s
Stampede - 15s
Hurricane - 20s
Carve - 12s, 22s, 29s (to keep duration)
Quick Cloak - 30s

It's actually difficult to come up with that many different numbers without accidentally repeating any, and the fact that so few share common multiples is truly impressive. Raise the floor, right?

Unfortunately other classes have it even worse, since the duration-modifying passives on Nightblade, Templar and Dragonknight were apparently forgotten. Mage's Guild skills have a similar issue. Mixing any ground and "sticky" DoTs gets messy fast. Warden is also in an awkward spot with Shalks no longer defining a rhythm of 3, and instead being extended to (the only?) 8s skill.

Necro still has the clunky Blastbones as a baseline, the only skill that gets to decide its own duration (3 or 4s). I guess it doesn't matter much now that neither of these options align with Siphon, Arcanist/Archer or Boneyard. We can just keep our eyes glues to chaotic timers at all times.

This so much.

I would very much hear from the combat team how the actual changes and the stated design goals here managed to be this mismatched.

Falcon_of_light

December7854 wrote: »

I hope there's an open dialogue about buffing templar's single target component of biting jabs/puncturing sweeps to make up for the loss of 1 tick from the channel. I personally would like to see the 4th tick regained, making it hit once every 200ms over an 800ms channel.

Yea, spamable, lowcost, aoe, slow with sigle target noslow spamable ability... Yea, nope, they need to nerf it more.

Tyrion87

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Great job standardizing skill durations for an easy and accessible rotation. My Sorcerer has abilities that line up so well:

Crystal Weapon - 2s
Bound Armaments - 4s
Daedric Prey - 6s
Mystic Orb - 10s
Stampede - 15s
Hurricane - 20s
Carve - 12s, 22s, 29s (to keep duration)
Quick Cloak - 30s

It's actually difficult to come up with that many different numbers without accidentally repeating any, and the fact that so few share common multiples is truly impressive. Raise the floor, right?

Unfortunately other classes have it even worse, since the duration-modifying passives on Nightblade, Templar and Dragonknight were apparently forgotten. Mage's Guild skills have a similar issue. Mixing any ground and "sticky" DoTs gets messy fast. Warden is also in an awkward spot with Shalks no longer defining a rhythm of 3, and instead being extended to (the only?) 8s skill.

Necro still has the clunky Blastbones as a baseline, the only skill that gets to decide its own duration (3 or 4s). I guess it doesn't matter much now that neither of these options align with Siphon, Arcanist/Archer or Boneyard. We can just keep our eyes glues to chaotic timers at all times.

@ZOS_Gilliam
Why do you even touch and mess with the durations if the end result (with the sticky effects lasting 20s or more) is worse than it is currently on live. How does this relate to your stated goal to limit the time players spending on staring at the skill bars and all the timers instead of looking at what is actually going on the screen combat wise? How does it help mid tier players performing their rotations? I think I don't follow your reasoning anymore...

K9002

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Unfortunately other classes have it even worse, since the duration-modifying passives on Nightblade, Templar and Dragonknight were apparently forgotten. Mage's Guild skills have a similar issue. Mixing any ground and "sticky" DoTs gets messy fast. Warden is also in an awkward spot with Shalks no longer defining a rhythm of 3, and instead being extended to (the only?) 8s skill.

I've said in some other thread that these passives are badly outdated and need a rework too. Maybe now instead of increasing duration they should increase the DoT intensity? The new coefficient is 0.105 so passives should bump it up to about 0.125.

Grandsheba

I simply ask that you play your own game instead of going off headcannon figures or the number of times something is used ONLY.

The inital change to Plaguebreak was great as skills like shrouded dagger will hit 3 targets but only proc one target. When hitting a pet or set summon this acts as an immortal shield which impedes the function of this set when it really shouldn't.

From the perspective of someone that is affected by this set, getting hit one by one makes purging overly complicated to the point that its not useful. If my group all got hit at roughly the same time then we would all have that window to purge and heal. It allows for telegraph patterns to be utilized in combat where its already severely lacking.

Additionally azureblight reaper set still doesnt work with all dots as its ststed to work with all dots and did prior to update 32. Please fix this bug.

Grandsheba

The game has alot of class skills that have more positive effects than other while necromancers are the only class to have multiple negative effects or conditions to utilize their abilities as well as the fewest positive effects per skill.

Looking at necromancers summoners armor this skill is outclassed by every single armor/defense based morph


For example: harden scales
Release your inner dragon to gain Major Resolve and Major Ward, increasing Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 5280 for 20 seconds.

You gain a Damage Shield equal to 15% of your Max Health for 6 seconds.

While active, the armor returns 143 Magic Damage to any enemy that uses direct damage against you in melee range.

Rune focus:
Create a rune of celestial protection. While active, the rune grants you Major Resolve and Major Ward, increasing Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 5948.

Standing within the rune increases Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance granted by 50%.
Its morphs add resource recovery of Magicka or Stamina per second for 20s

Ice Fortress:
Wrap a thick cloak of ice around you and nearby allies. The ice grants  Major Resolve, increasing Physical and Spell Resistance, by 5948 for 24 seconds.

You gain Minor Protection, reducing your damage taken 5% for 24 seconds.


Hurricane:
Manifest yourself as pure lighting, zapping nearby enemies with electricity dealing 82 Physical Damage every 1 second for 15 seconds. The winds grow in damage and size, increasing up to 150% more damage and up to 9 meters in size.

While in this form you also gain Major Resolve, and Minor Expedition, increasing your Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 5948 and your Movement Speed by 15%.


Shadowy disguise:
Cloak yourself in shadow to become invisible for 3 seconds.

Your next attack within 3 seconds will always be a Critical Strike.

(While not mentioned, in use this skill preveypu from. Being attacked entirely at any time..)

And the Summoners armor:
Wrap yourself in hardened bone, granting you Major Resolve and Major Ward, increasing your physical resistance and spell resistance by 5948 for 20 seconds.

While active, reduces the cost of Blastbones, Skeletal Mage, and Spirit Mender by 15%.

Creates a corpse when complete.

Necromancers are know for tricks, hexs, undead manipulation. This skill lacks in making up a difference but can by re applying the skills boneshard to the playable necromancers in thjs fashion.

[Accept Namira's blessing, wrapping yourself in embered Ebon bone, granting you Major Resolve, increasing your Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 5948 for 20 seconds.

When you take damage, 5% of your damge-taken is stored in the bone armor. When the armor is removed a bone shard is summonded over the created corpse. The shard last for 3 seconds before exploding in 4m radius for the total damage stored as magic damage.

While active, reduce the cost of Blastbones, Skeletal Mage, and Spirit Mender by 15% and creates a corpse when the effect completes.]

Much like the initial warden, this class has some under performing skills. Some due to lag and Ai issue's while others are due simply to the lack of positive effects and negative effects.

Grandsheba

Eays to bring necro skills more in balance with other similar skills of other classes.

Resitant flesh: Sacrifice your own power to repair damaged flesh, healing you or an ally in front of you for 3600 Health but applying Minor Defile to yourself for 4 seconds, reducing your healing received and Health Recovery by 8%. You grant the target Spell and Physical Resistance equal to half the amount healed for 10 seconds. This effect can stack 3x.

Blighted blastbones: Summon a decaying skeleton from the ground after 2.5 seconds. The skeleton runs after the target and explodes when it gets close to them, dealing 3600 Disease Damage to all enemies nearby and applying Major Defile to them for 4 seconds, reducing their healing received and Health Recovery by 16%. The corpse causes Rot within 4m dealing 20% of the targets Resistance as disease damage.

Creates a corpse on death.

SideshowBob

tl;dr; I am a newish, mid-tier player that would like to advance into more Vet DLC content. In short, someone struggling to progress into advanced content. This patch, as it stands now, will undo months of progress as a DPS. Details below.

Context:
I've played for about a year now, and can parse roughly 80K DPS on multiple classes (trial dummy), can clear vet arenas (though no-deaths are usually out of reach), and am working with a 4-man dungeon group that is progressing, but struggling to advance, on DLC HM dungeons.

Live vs. PTS:
On the current live sever, as I said above, I can parse about 80K DPS across several classes (magden, mag sorc, stam sorc, mag DK). On PTS, that drops to 70K at best on most of those classes, even with the extra buffs to the trial dummy. On my Mag Warden, however, I get about 55K DPS (more on that below).

Problem:
I'm a mid-tier player. I worked hard over several months to get better at DPS to help the group I run with. We aren't great. We still need to focus on survival; keeping high buff/de-buff uptimes is still a dream for another day. So, I switched my DPS main to my Mag Warden to help provide sustain, survivability, and add a bit of emergency healing (when needed). In short, I adapted to a more off-meta build/rotation to help our group in areas we struggled. This seems to be a perfect example of a group U35 is meant to help, as per the mission statement of "improving accessibility to the game’s combat". The results of U35, however, are actively setting our efforts back by months of progress.

As pointed out by another player, a day or so ago, a bog standard NB (I think) parse on a 3M dummy was getting roughly 45K DPS. On the trial dummy, this jumps to over 90K DPS. The cause of this is readily evident with very minimal examination: high buff/de-buff uptimes dramatically increase DPS for organized groups. For groups like ours, we simply don't have access to keeping those buffs/de-buffs up most of the time.

To be honest, we never really wanted help with this. It's a matter of 'git gud', and we'll get there eventually. That said, if U35 is meant to improve accessibility for groups like us, it is simply not hitting the mark. We still won't have access to high buff/de-buff uptimes, but our DPS will be nerfed. I personally, will have to retire my Warden from dungeon duty (assuming nothing drastic happens before U35 goes live), and switch back to a more selfish DPS character. Even so, our DPS will be down from where it is today. To add to the troubles, the other DPS is a stam sorc.

Solution (from a mid-tier perspective):
Closing the gap between low/middle tier players and endgame players requires addressing the DPS increase made available by maintaining high buff/de-buff uptimes. So, first increase base damage by some percent, thus increasing damage coming from sub-optimal groups. This will, obviously, further boost damage for end-game players, but that can be addressed by cutting the effects of buffs/de-buffs by some percent (e.g., decrease Major Force from 20% to something lower) I don't know the correct percentage here, but it can be balanced against the base damage increase from above.

This boosts DPS for all player in sub-optimal groups (PUG tanks will thank you, for sure; source: I am one). It doesn't fundamentally alter the balance between classes, and need not severely impact end-game progressions like Godslayer and Planesbreaker.

As for the DOT changes, I see where the combat team is coming from, but I don't really agree with it. For me, personally, the only class my rotations really struggle on is Necro. But, if the goal is to improve accessibility of DOT uptimes, would this not be better accomplished through CPs or other means. For example, a CP in the blue tree that "increases DOT duration by X%, but reduces per-tick effects by Y%". Buffs and debuffs could have similar CPs dedicated to them. This gives new players the opportunity to ease into DOT based gameplay, without adversely impacting endgame players. A similar approach would be the addition of morphs on DOT skills, or something akin to a new "training" guild line with passives that alters DOT/buff/debuff durations.

OsteelbladeO

When are these changes going into effect?