Update 35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes

Bragerth

In theroy AWA is not Truly Account wide, it still tells you which character earned the achievement. would have been nice to hide the all earned by names then relying on more addons to take those tooltips away.

Jazraena

I actually like the new animation of Jabs. What I dislike is that it now has me pull out a Nighthollow Staff from nowhere and pretend it's a magic spear.

I'm using swords. If I'm to use a magic spear, either give me actual spears to use or give me back the vaguely spearshaped blob of energy from before.

Breaking immersion a bit there.

Dagobertfuk

Im talking from pvp perspective, with halfed heal

Dark Cloak how it is on actual PTS will be a Skill nobody will use ever again. A nerf for no *** reason. Like it was stronger than other Heals. Vigor was way stronger. And since vigor gets major resolve its even less worth it, to even think about using it as a Nightblade.

My Nightblade in Cyrodiil on live servers with 40k HP gets 2,6k hps with dark cloak. After the first Dark Cloak Nerf in pts week one or two, i had to be 50% Player HP to get the heal value from live servers. Right now on pts after the second nerf, i have to be at 10% player HP to get almost old value of 2520 hps. I did the math with the pts maximum of 14%. Even Vampire Drain, a skill nobody with more than 2 braincells is using in PvP to heal up, heals more than actual PTS Dark Cloak.

Any reason why anyone should use PTS Dark Cloak instead of another healing ability other than for style? I can't think of any. Mainly because every other healing ability heals me more by a frightening margin, no matter how much HP I have, except at 10% where Dark Cloak get it old healing value.
Image when i dont have 40k HP. Hard to imagine but it gets even worse rofl.

Dark Cloak nerf makes it totally useless in PvP. With all that crosshealing going on and hybridscaling everyone is anyway running around with high weapon/spellpower. Those stats even make post pts Vigor stronger than pre pts Dark Cloak.

Altrough Vigor will heal for a lot more and grant more uptime on Major Resolve than Dark Cloak with the NB passive Shadowbarrier does with full heavy armor setup.

Full heavy armor NB Major Resolve 16s vs vigor's 20s per cast and more healing than pre PTS Dark Cloak.

And overall a skill that only really works, when i am already with both legs in the grave, and pretty far into execute range to eat 400% extra dmg from enemy execute's, is a total abilityslot waste.

anvilbert

Even with the alterations made U35 is still a dumpster fire . It needs to be scraped.

Kirawolfe

It's encouraging to see that folks are making tweaks to this patch based on feedback.

Please restore the old Flurry animation from the Dual Wield skill line. That skill felt awesome to use.

You've used the missed dual wield light attack animation. It's absolutely horrible. There's nothing rapid about it, and it feels like missing.

I'm going to lose my long time playing buddy over this change, on top of the damage nerf, the Warden nerfs, etc. He's just going to leave.

acastanza_ESO

Are you kidding me? This entire patch is an absolute insult. 8.1.4 makes things even worse. Now you've killed Crushing Wall as a backbar option, AND failed to deliver the buffs Sorcerers were promised.

Jazraena

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno
I strongly suggest that, aside whatever explicit changes will be in the final patch notes two weeks down, the team communicates their intents well, well before those two weeks are over, and very seriously considers dropping the changes altogether.

DoT Durations are still all over the bloody place. Worse than live, worse than the first PTS Patch. Every single class change aside perhaps some DoT Buffs makes me scratch my head. Even the Surprise Attack change make me groan as a Stamblade main and ask you to just give me back my flank stun instead of this unreliable sometimes maybe guaranteed autocrit.

As of now, U35 is still an unmitigated mess that is in every single conceivable way a worse, and even more importantly a more confusing mess of a game and thus less accessible than the Live state.

Veesk

Templars are still gutted and facing jabs/sweeps animation changes most people hate. I kinda figured this would happen, wish that players were listened to more (for this and everything else wrong with U35).

All of this so far is the most confusing and fun killing update I've ever seen.

jaws343

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Are you kidding me? This entire patch is an absolute insult. 8.1.4 makes things even worse. Now you've killed Crushing Wall as a backbar option, AND failed to deliver the buffs Sorcerers were promised.

I actually wonder if the crushing wall changes are a buff to AOE damage. Definitely a single target nerf, but it appears to be nearly doubling the damage that WoE does across the board to all enemies. So for AOE fights, WoE will be even more effective.

QueuesAsTanks

Hi gang, I have a few questions but for brevity's sake I'll keep it to the Vet encounter HP reduction bit of 8.1.4.

> Trials
>Reduced the health of all bosses, Champions and Bannermen in Veteran difficulty.


How much HP reduction is happening? (This might be too long to answer if it's not a general flat or %-based rate)

Are Vet HM encounters seeing adjustment?

If Vet HM encounters are being adjusted, is that scaling from the Vet reduction or a flat rate?

Being selfish here but almost all of my trial groups have quit in the last month and I'm really concerned that my last remaining group will also be disbanding after the patch goes live, so any information about Xalvakka HM in particular would be really stellar.

FlamingBeard

Don't include ZOS on your resume if you plan to stay in this industry.

@ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert

Rimskjegg

So enemy damage output in content wasn't even touched, and you're still launching on August 22? You cannot possibly believe 2 weeks is enough to properly test every dungeon and trial in the game. You're going yo risk it anyway just to stick to an arbitrary deadline?

You are gambling MUCH too high here. Put these changes on hold. It's still not too late to avoid massive frustration on the live servers.

francesinhalover

Where are the medium attack dmg fixes... where are the restoration staff heavy attack dmg fixes?
Where are the dot duration fixes? you made everything 20 and 10 seconds so making builds with skills that are 15 is impossibly hard now...

Aldoss

Complete failure of the dev team to do anything meaningful to warden.

The notes this patch prove two things for me:

1. This forum is entirely pointless. No one at ZOS reads this forum and it's entirely for PR. ZOS will do whatever they want with no regard for their respective communities and how proposed changes will affect them.

2. ZOS's words mean nothing. This patch week was promised to make major changes to magicka sorcerer, nightblade, and warden. What we got were some changes to magblade and worthless changes to magden. Magicka Sorcerers literally weren't even mentioned besides a minor tweak.

How are we to ever trust anything you say?

@ZOS_RichLambert asked for trust at the beginning of this patch cycle. A cycle, might I add, that was foreshadowed previously by ZOS as only being "minor tweaks".

That one point set the stage for this tragedy of Shakesperian proportions. You've directly attacked nearly every micro community present in your game, except maybe the housing community.

You've asked for feedback, and then directly ignored or worse, implemented the exact opposite of what those communities asked for.

My wife and I have been huge ESO proponents for the last 3 years, both PvP Magdens. We buy annual subs. We buy big crown packs. We buy the new chapters.

Our wallet is now closed. Good luck to you.

Jazraena

On a side note, though I don't play a DPS Mag Warden - Are we seriously trying to hardlock specific class/resource combinations into specific weapon types again before we even finish the hybridization changes?

Seriously?

DeathStalker

How does anything in this disaster of a PTS cycle raise the floor?

ThirdEye_PULSE

You have managed to make every single class less appealing to play with U35. You have managed to make combat boring. You've completely eliminated sticky DoTs from PVP due to insanely low damage. You've made gameplay more focused around spammables, at the same time that you've nerfed almost every class spammable in the game.

I'm impressed, really. Not a single class is happy with the patch. Bad players, mid-tier, end gamers all upset with the patch... even when the whole purpose was helping bottom players tier players. You've even managed to alienate PVP and PVE players at the same time.

You've finally done it... a patch so despised by everyone that you've united the entire ESO community against U35. I didnt think it could be done, yet here we are. A feat I dont think has ever been accomplished before in ESO history. At least not with this amount of unity.

Im here to say it... feels like an echo into the void... a chant that is slowly rising from the depths of the entire ESO community... PLEASE for the love of ESO and the health of this game, do not make U35 go live. The few good things about the patch are completely and utterly overshadowered by the horrible things.

At the end of the day, you should be asking yourself one simple question. You can forget about the spreadsheets, the mathematical formulas... all of it. Theres a time and place for that after you've asked yourself the most important question any developer should be asking themselves.. "Is this fun gameplay"?

If at any point the answer is no, whether by yourself or by the entire community... it doesnt matter how beautiful the spreadsheets are or the math looks, you need to go back to the drawing board. Fundamentally, that is why we are all here. To have fun. Using the "fun metric", U35 is a complete failure. Please, please reconsider what you're doing. Not only will PVE be more boring for me, not only are you killing your PVE end game for players that have only just started down that path like myself, but your also killing your other end game with this patch: PVP.

We need to be able to put pressure on our opponents in PVP. DoTs is one of those things.. one of the few tools we have for constant pressure. Static DoTs are already nearly useless in PVP. Now sticky DoTs are joining them too. Not to mention a few classes are going down to the status of dumpster fire once this patch goes live in the PVP tier list. The only silver lining I see is several patch cycles away, once you've cleaned up this mess you have created.

Sandman929

Jazraena wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno
I strongly suggest that, aside whatever explicit changes will be in the final patch notes two weeks down, the team communicates their intents well, well before those two weeks are over, and very seriously considers dropping the changes altogether.

DoT Durations are still all over the bloody place. Worse than live, worse than the first PTS Patch. Every single class change aside perhaps some DoT Buffs makes me scratch my head. Even the Surprise Attack change make me groan as a Stamblade main and ask you to just give me back my flank stun instead of this unreliable sometimes maybe guaranteed autocrit.

As of now, U35 is still an unmitigated mess that is in every single conceivable way a worse, and even more importantly a more confusing mess of a game and thus less accessible than the Live state.

It would be an interesting read, but there's no story where this makes sense and doesn't involve either alcohol or blackmail.

Howda

Hi,

I kindly suggest with good intentions to:

- Provide us with the more precise goal in the future
- Create a roadmap of changes on yearly basis so we can kind of expect

*I recognize some floor and ceiling effects and accessibility tweaks, however I also recognize some other impacts like:

- Giving alternatives to LA weaving by introducing new combos with empower
- Increasing TTK in some PVE encounters


*For the near future, I strongly suggests:

- make HoTs named buffs that stack 2 times only

- bring stun, stagger, weakness on bosses

- add some new buffs and debuffs on class skills, on expense of Dots, because dots are not action combat. Having every skill being a dot makes the game little bit boring.

- Reducing the LA importance in combat (not fully implemented) if you ask me add all those effects that LA is applying to class skills and make LA just for resource recovery

- Make heavy attacks dmg dealing only and they can apply all LA effects like enchants and status effects, make enchant effects more visible like a combat text, so players can be more aware when to heavy attack. (Heavy Attacks are rooting players to ther ground they should not allow players to move even further, dmg should be buffed and resource recovery should be back on LA or completely moved to class skills, companions, healer sets and healing skills.

- tanking should be all about CC, taunt and positions not dmg buffs. Make tanks and healers more important.

Thank you for considering.

Trundik

Trial Sets
Mantle of Siroria:
Reduced the duration and cooldown of this set’s Area of Effect to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds, to help it be slightly more mobile in encounters where you need to move.
Increased the Weapon and Spell Damage granted per stack to 63, up from 52, to ensure its high requirements are better rewarded.
This set’s 4-piece bonus is now 129 Weapon and Spell Damage, rather than 1096 Max Magicka.

What about perfected Siroria bonus? With change of 4th bonus it seems to be fine at ranged physical builds, but perfected version will have no addition to it... Seems odd

tomofhyrule

A question for final-PTS-week raiders (and a comment for ZOS on what is scaring more than a few upper-mid-tier raiders):

How are the new PvE bosses? Particularly the HMs?

With the new DPS loss being balanced out by the health nerf on the bosses, I'd guess fight time is still the same. But for many of those, particularly the latest HMs, the fight going a little longer or shorter wasn't as much a problem as the constant room-wide DoTs that need to be outhealed.
We know that heals (particularly HoTs) got hit with the nerfhammer as well, but it doesn't look like boss damage output got the same nerf, so...

Are these bosses now outputting damage too great for all but the top 1%? In essence, making HMs less accessible by making it so only the top groups can handle them (by being able to nuke everything before the DoTs get them).

Personally, I'd have thought that nerfing the boss damage output would be more important to match with the healing nerfs rather than than nerfing their health to deal with the DPS nerfs, but I don't have a group that can go in on PTS and test the content, particularly not on an EU copy. It just seems on the surface that this makes the top players/rest of us gap wider rather than trying to reduce that gap.

SeraphsRose

I am baffled by the upcoming changes. ZoS claim to want to make content more accessible, yet nerfing damage and sets so much doesn't close the gap.
Accessibility isn't being increased, at all, you're just screwing with us long term players. I think this is actually going to make me finally cancel my subscription after 5 years.

Falcon_of_light

I dont get it, surprise attack on pts stun once again, or they just take off the guarantee crit (once every 4 guarantee crit its nothing) but dont get back stun?

ThirdEye_PULSE

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

I dont get it, surprise attack on pts stun once again, or they just take off the guarantee crit (once every 4 guarantee crit its nothing) but dont get back stun?

2nd one. From what i can gather. Seems like a nerf to me. 100% crit was a bad idea. Getting rid of stun was a bad idea for more skilled players that could rely on it. Now, you still have a really good spammable... just not as good as it was.

Should probably be happy though. 100% crit would have guaranteed a NB nerf in next patch. We all know ZOS doesnt just target the main problem. They would gut your class... kinda like position sorc is in.

Falcon_of_light

Just take back your non existing quarantee crit from surprise attack and get back stun on it. 1 every 4 seconds crit will not work in 80% of pvp scenarious, and taking stunf rom SA for THIS is just a straightforward nerf for cloack nb... Brusier nb already meta spec for it, dont nerf stealthblade anymore [snip]

[edited for profanity bypass]

ThirdEye_PULSE

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

Just take back your non existing quarantee crit from surprise attack and get back stun on it. 1 every 4 seconds crit will not work in 80% of pvp scenarious, and taking stunf rom SA for THIS is just a straightforward nerf for cloack nb... Brusier nb already meta spec for it, dont nerf stealthblade anymore [snip]

I love brawler NBs. Sad they are hardly viable anymore. I dont like stealth NBs.

[edited to remove quote]

Falcon_of_light

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

Just take back your non existing quarantee crit from surprise attack and get back stun on it. 1 every 4 seconds crit will not work in 80% of pvp scenarious, and taking stunf rom SA for THIS is just a straightforward nerf for cloack nb... Brusier nb already meta spec for it, dont nerf stealthblade anymore [snip]

I love brawler NBs. Sad they are hardly viable anymore. I dont like stealth NBs.

Ehrm... Bruiser nb is on really good state. 4 heals, high sustain damage, high survivability. And next patch it will be even better. BTW this game is about brawlers now.

[edited to remove quote]

AmendmentI

My feedback: Start over

ThirdEye_PULSE

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

Just take back your non existing quarantee crit from surprise attack and get back stun on it. 1 every 4 seconds crit will not work in 80% of pvp scenarious, and taking stunf rom SA for THIS is just a straightforward nerf for cloack nb... Brusier nb already meta spec for it, dont nerf stealthblade anymore [snip]

I love brawler NBs. Sad they are hardly viable anymore. I dont like stealth NBs.

Ehrm... Bruiser nb is on really good state. 4 heals, high sustain damage, high survivability. And next patch it will be even better. BTW this game is about brawlers now.

Weird. Every NB main ive talked too says brawler in a much worse state than gank nightblade. Your the first saying how great they are. See a lot less brawlers in pvp than ganker nbs.

Brawler was the meta two or three years ago.

[edited to remove quote]

Falcon_of_light

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

Just take back your non existing quarantee crit from surprise attack and get back stun on it. 1 every 4 seconds crit will not work in 80% of pvp scenarious, and taking stunf rom SA for THIS is just a straightforward nerf for cloack nb... Brusier nb already meta spec for it, dont nerf stealthblade anymore [snip]

I love brawler NBs. Sad they are hardly viable anymore. I dont like stealth NBs.

Ehrm... Bruiser nb is on really good state. 4 heals, high sustain damage, high survivability. And next patch it will be even better. BTW this game is about brawlers now.

Weird. Every NB main ive talked too says brawler in a much worse state than gank nightblade. Your the first saying how great they are. See a lot less brawlers in pvp than ganker nbs.

Brawler was the meta two or three years ago.

I'm nb main and i will say - brawler nb much better in 1v1-1v3 situations vs good players. U can make just unkilable nb but its feels more like dk or so, and why u will play nb over dk if this feels like dk who is better as brawler. Its about playstile, not balance.

[edited to remove quote]