Static DoT Standards Not Matching Up.

MashmalloMan

Objective (PTS Week 3): Compare all class aoe static dots to eachother and check if the listed standard of 14% dps of a spammable, once a second actually applies.

Spoiler for prep, reasoning and what the standard is based on:

Preperation:

1. Khajiit passives on.
2. 64/64 Stamina.
3. No CP slottables or passives.
4. No class passives.
5. No passive increase from skills slotted like Fighters/Mages guild.
6. No armor, jewelry or weapons slotted.
7. No food.
8. No mundus stone.
9. No self applied buffs via potions or skills.

Reasoning:

1. Standards should be a stepping off point to make every skill worth slotting at a base level.
2. Passives from classes and morph effects are addative to what a skill is capable of at a minimum, thus they are removed from the equation. This aspect is what makes skills unique from each other so it shouldn't be accounted for when talking about standards, although those aspects are important for overall class balance and identity - that isn't the purpose of this post.

What is the standard really based on?

• The standard is based on instant melee cast spammables. Veiled Strike (unmorphed) is the prime example. The morphs increase in damage done by around 1% per rank (4 ranks) which puts it above the standard ZOS uses, just like class passives, ranking is a way for a skill to go above standards, every skills ranks up in some way.
• Instant melee spammables do not do 10% more damage than ranged spammables, ranged spammables do 10% less damage than melee spammables. Important distinction.
• Proof = (Veiled Strike) 3150 x 0.9 = (Imbue Weapon) 2835... if you reverse it, it comes out wrong. 2835 x 1.1 = 3118.5

Results:

• Winters Revenge (6m) - 399/1s over 12s. -30% movement speed, x5 status effect chance
• Lightning Splash (4m) - 381/1s over 10s. Damage Synergy.
• Lightning Flood (6m) - 511/1s over 10s. Damage Synergy.
• Twisting Path (15m cone) - 393/1s over 10s. Major Exp 4s.
• Unnerving Boneyard (6m) - 432/1s over 10s. +30% damage from corpse, Major Breach. Damage + Lifesteal Synergy.
• Eruption (5m)- 2440 + 432/1s over 15s. -70% movement speed
• Blazing Spear (6m) - 3174 + 245/1s over 10s. Resource restore synergy.
• Caltrops (8m) - 381/1s over 10s. -50% movement speed
• Necrotic Orb (8m/moving) - 428/1s over 10s. Resource restore synergy.
• Mystic Orb (8m/moving) - 442/1s over 10s. +100 mag/stam/hp reg, resource restore synergy.

Standard to compare to is 3150 damage from Veiled Strike. At 14% dps, that should be 441 damage per second.

• Winters Revenge needs a minimum 10% damage increase.
• Lightning Splash needs a minimum 16% damage increase.
• Lightning Flood increases in damage from the morph effect, so it's above the standard by nature, can't make an objective argument for where it should be.
• Twisting Path needs a minimum 13% damage increase.
• Boneyard needs a minimum 2% damage increase.
• Eruption and Blazing Spear are hard to be objective about because they have upfront damage that may be accounting for their damages power budget.
• Caltrops needs a minimum 16% damage increase.
• Necrotic Orb needs a minimum 3% damage increase.
• Mystic Orb is oddly the only skill to match the standard, but the skill increases in damage as it ranks (as well as for the regen)... This doesn't make sense as ranking shouldn't be used to meet standards, it should put it above standards.

Final thoughts:
Standards are used as a minimum baseline, many of these objectively fall short of that or have values that don't match. Why? What is the point of standards if they're not being used properly? The ranking, morph effects and class kits are what make the skills unique beyond the standards which is why I removed them from the equation to find how they factually compare to each other using ZOS's own logic.

Some classes are allowed to excel at different aspects of the game so I didn't find it necessary to compare things like Boneyard giving 30% more damage with a corpse or 10% more dot damage from the Necro kit which obviously makes it a very strong aoe static dot in comparison to the others. Again, those are special variables that are suppose to bring skills above standards, they're not used to meet them.

Then you have things like radius and duration which differs from as small as 4m to as large as 8m, yet none of the abilities seem to take that into account. Lightning Splash is the smallest at 4m, with the lowest dps, but it includes a synergy. Is it deliberately weaker because it has a synergy? We don't know if that was the logic, but we do understand the standards as ZOS clearly defined them, and it doesn't meet them objectively on almost all accounts. I wouldn't count Mystic Orb because it ranks up in damage to meet the standard.

MashmalloMan

Should note, many of the suggested increases should be more due to ranking that I didn't calculate for.

For example, Winter's Revenge started around 380 damage at rank 1, but increased to 399 at rank 4.

Like I mentioned, ranking is suppose to take the skill above standards so I should of noted the damage of the skils at rank 1 instead. I may go back and find those values eventually and edit the post.

Conclusion still stands, buffs are needed to meet standards.

SeaUnicorn

There are also some passives that character model on PTS has unlocked that might impact the tooltips. Did you check cost per second standards? Cuz HOTs have costs all over the place, I assumed that devs might forgotten about HOTs, but looking at this post it might be just that standardization was not applied consistently all around.

Mr_Stach

This is one of the things that I personally was concerned about from the very first day of the PTS and what concerns me is I think they are going to swing the other direction on Week 5 and it's going to be too late to give feedback and for them to adjust before it goes live.

I think for many people the best case scenario is a Zero Sum Patch. Where non of the Combat changes go live, which I think in some cases would be too bad because there are a few nice things that happened.

But I think at this point it's about minimizing the collateral damage as much as possible.

MashmalloMan

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

There are also some passives that character model on PTS has unlocked that might impact the tooltips. Did you check cost per second standards? Cuz HOTs have costs all over the place, I assumed that devs might forgotten about HOTs, but looking at this post it might be just that standardization was not applied consistently all around.

I didn't check cost or heals, focus was the damage standard, but I'm sure they messed up there too in some places judging by the PTS notes. Luckily, cost isn't a factor in the damage they deal so the post can stand on it's own.

I may go back when I get more time to check that, I believe it's suppose to be 270/s. There's a few skills like Wall of Elements, Stampede and Volley I didn't check for damage either.

For the character, If you look at the spoiler section i listed the prep I did to make sure they were directly comparable. The only thing effecting tooltips would be 64/64 stamina, Khajiit passives and being max level. Just to be sure, I double checked a few universal skill line tooltips on each swap.

Sandman929

Whatever is in week 5 is what we get, so where's the trust, knee-jerkers?

MashmalloMan

Mr_Stach wrote: »

But I think at this point it's about minimizing the collateral damage as much as possible.

Yep. It's crazy that they thought nerfing everything except spammables would somehow increase the floor and lower the ceiling.

This is the problem with balancing strictly from spreadsheet and they couldn't even do that right. The standards are suppose to improve the ease of balancing as it's just numbers, yet they seem to do this time and time again.

It took me all of a few hours of testing on PTS to find these results and they have direct access to the coding behind the scenes. How does the scaling get messed up this hard?

I can only assume ZOS is slightly aware of this problem becasue the 3 aoe dots that are underperforming by a noticable gap are NB, Warden and Sorc, all of which were mentioned as receiving changes for week 5.

Worries me they'll buff those skills to the standard and call it a day.

ESO_Nightingale

And also secondary effects should be considered too for making outliers to the standard. Winter's revenge arguably has the worst utility of the bunch because chilled proc is pretty rng and not much of a damage increase. Lightning splash definitely needs a solid buff too as it's been pretty meh for a while. Twisting also really didn't need the same destructive nerf that winter's got.

MashmalloMan

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

And also secondary effects should be considered too for making outliers to the standard. Winter's revenge arguably has the worst utility of the bunch because chilled proc is pretty rng and not much of a damage increase. Lightning splash definitely needs a solid buff too as it's been pretty meh for a while. Twisting also really didn't need the same destructive nerf that winter's got.

Yep.. looking at the PTS again recently, if I add the 10% frost passive on, Winter's Revenge hits 439... which esentially means ZOS's team balanced the ability downwards so that when you add the passive it meets the 441 target I mentioned or 14% dps.

This is entirely wrong as to how and why we have standards. Why give a 10% frost damage passive if it's only used to meet standards?

For Lightning Splash, I'm willing to bet they also balanced it with the 5% Shock and 10% damage done passive on which explains why it's the weakest of ALL the ground aoe dots and would require about 16% more damage to match the standard.

This is from my other post, but I suggested Lightning Splash gets +6% shock damage debuff for 3s to targets hit - make it feel more unique and on more on par with Flame damage's debuff.

VixxVexx

Hmm interesting, I might take a look at the coefficients for all these listed abilities they classify within the same category.

IMO class passives should make classes better with things outside of their own kit. So that they are better at some things than other classes, not just having 15(18) exclusive skills. A class passive just boosting its own 5 abilities is kind of lame and boring. That should just be part of the base ability.

Example: [*] ]Elder Dragon (DK) gives +2m range to ST melee abilities so some weapon skills are easier to land. Or really any bonus damage to a specific damage type.

ESO_Nightingale

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

And also secondary effects should be considered too for making outliers to the standard. Winter's revenge arguably has the worst utility of the bunch because chilled proc is pretty rng and not much of a damage increase. Lightning splash definitely needs a solid buff too as it's been pretty meh for a while. Twisting also really didn't need the same destructive nerf that winter's got.

Yep.. looking at the PTS again recently, if I add the 10% frost passive on, Winter's Revenge hits 439... which esentially means ZOS's team balanced the ability downwards so that when you add the passive it meets the 441 target I mentioned or 14% dps.

This is entirely wrong as to how and why we have standards. Why give a 10% frost damage passive if it's only used to meet standards?

For Lightning Splash, I'm willing to bet they also balanced it with the 5% Shock and 10% damage done passive on which explains why it's the weakest of ALL the ground aoe dots and would require about 16% more damage to match the standard.

This is from my other post, but I suggested Lightning Splash gets +6% shock damage debuff for 3s to targets hit - make it feel more unique and on more on par with Flame damage's debuff.

This really annoys the hell out of me. Winter's Revenge went from the best to the worst. Thanks zos.

MindOfTheSwarm

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

And also secondary effects should be considered too for making outliers to the standard. Winter's revenge arguably has the worst utility of the bunch because chilled proc is pretty rng and not much of a damage increase. Lightning splash definitely needs a solid buff too as it's been pretty meh for a while. Twisting also really didn't need the same destructive nerf that winter's got.

Yep.. looking at the PTS again recently, if I add the 10% frost passive on, Winter's Revenge hits 439... which esentially means ZOS's team balanced the ability downwards so that when you add the passive it meets the 441 target I mentioned or 14% dps.

This is entirely wrong as to how and why we have standards. Why give a 10% frost damage passive if it's only used to meet standards?

For Lightning Splash, I'm willing to bet they also balanced it with the 5% Shock and 10% damage done passive on which explains why it's the weakest of ALL the ground aoe dots and would require about 16% more damage to match the standard.

This is from my other post, but I suggested Lightning Splash gets +6% shock damage debuff for 3s to targets hit - make it feel more unique and on more on par with Flame damage's debuff.

If this is true then this is completely dumb. I hate standardization on skill types but if you're gonna do it, then you do it BEFORE passive buffs are applied.

MacRibs

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

And also secondary effects should be considered too for making outliers to the standard. Winter's revenge arguably has the worst utility of the bunch because chilled proc is pretty rng and not much of a damage increase. Lightning splash definitely needs a solid buff too as it's been pretty meh for a while. Twisting also really didn't need the same destructive nerf that winter's got.

This is the problem of nerfing winters revenge, besides the dmg it has barely any utility attached to it.
No synergy, no increased radius, no instant dmg and even the snare is weak.

I also hate standardization on skills but they cannot in all honesty balance a skill without comparing it with other similar skills an what they bring to the table and right now winters revenge brings a barely empty plate.

Altyrann

Plus Ritual of Retribution seems to be stuck at the old 20s duration / 2s tick from week 1.

MindOfTheSwarm

MacRibs wrote: »

I also hate standardization on skills but they cannot in all honesty balance a skill without comparing it with other similar skills an what they bring to the table and right now winters revenge brings a barely empty plate.

Yes they can. Comparing similar skills and making them deal comparable damage is what got us into this standardisation mess in the first place. And this ever pursuit of balance has got to stop. Linear balance is bad as it causes everything to be the same, asymmetrical balance is what the goal should be. Parses in PvE hitting similar levels but achieved in different ways, with different sets and different builds.

PvP is a different animal and should be handled as such.

Firstmep

You know what's funny is that they standardized sticky dot durations to 20 seconds so it's all the same and lines up nicely , except for the classes with dot duration passives, where you will still be looking at your skill bar anyway.

jcasini222ub17_ESO

Just shot in the dark but can anyone test leeching plate with around 50k plus health. On live, not fully optimal that poison damage heal tool tip is a shade under 1700 per second. I don’t think they have looked at dot sets at all.

MashmalloMan

Firstmep wrote: »

You know what's funny is that they standardized sticky dot durations to 20 seconds so it's all the same and lines up nicely , except for the classes with dot duration passives, where you will still be looking at your skill bar anyway.

It's way worse imo. For example, DK's, you could do 15s rotation with Blockade/Endless/Stampede since Claw/Breath/FoO/Eruption/Barbed Trap are all so close to each other, you don't really lose too much for casting a few seconds early or late.

Now.. my god. 24s Claw/Breath, 10/15s weapon dot, 15s FoO, 20s Trap, 18s Eruption. More complicated than ever.