Empower: Success and Implications

LeonAkando

For the uninformed, this week ZOS decided to make a rather significant rework to a core buff in the game, empower.

Buffs and Debuffs
Empower: This buff now increases your damage against monsters with Heavy Attacks by 80%, rather than your damage done with Light and Heavy Attacks by 1800 from PTS v8.1.0 or 40% from the live servers.

I want to start out by commending ZOS for balancing this buff separately in PVP and PVE environments.
I cannot state this enough. Please continue balancing these game modes differently.
Furthermore there are a lot of benefits to this change but also some significant drawbacks.

I believe this change is healthy for the game. Empower was an overtuned and uninspired buff. Not only is it just unfun to see that light attacks make up the lionshare of your damage, but the buff was almost always applied in a clunky way such as Empowering Grasp or Galenwe which had certain conditions and short durations to balance the potency of the buff. Moving this to a Heavy Attack buff (and a significant amount of power over its prior iteration) gives it a stronger identity as a mainstay for builds that utilize heavy attacks.

As well, pairing this buff with Oakensoul and adding Minor Slayer to Oakensoul in particular is a brilliant addition. I have noticed an intent to bring more heavy attack sets into the game. Naturally I tried to make builds around a heavy attack magsorc, as I have always been attracted to the idea of the shock mage and the unique feel to the Lightning Staff heavy attack. However, when making heavy attack builds it becomes cumbersome to try and find a Minor Slayer set that is decent for them. Oakensoul solves that by providing Minor Slayer, so that people can slot 2 heavy attack sets with Oakensoul also giving them 100% uptime on their core buff of Empower.

However, we cannot ignore its implications and problems.
1. Use Cases
2. Existing Empower Sources

Firstly, the use cases of this reworked Empower are niche. This is not a bad thing overall, but the issue is that even within its niche cases it's not very strong. Heavy attack builds will almost always run Oakensoul now because of it's 100% Empower uptime, and the ability for it to allow 2 Heavy attack 5p sets. However, ZOS themselves said it is their intention that Oakensoul is limited to being an accessibility item, and that it should only exist " without showing up on veteran player’s bars".

This is fundamentally a mistake. Oakensoul should be a viable (but maybe not optimal) option inside of a PVE environment. Limiting this item, and therefor all heavy attack builds, into being too weak to run in challenging PVE content is a needless blow to diversity. Everyone knows the current iteration of Oakensoul is not even close to the power of traditional PVE builds, and these upcoming nerfs are not helping it there. Balance this item separately between PVE and PVP environments.

Second, there has to be a full evaluation of the existing Empower sources. Abilities such as Empowering Grasp, Solar Barrage, Wrecking Blow, and Howl of Despair just to name a few, are balanced around the universally useful and immensely powerful Empower buff as we currently know it. Same goes for sets that utilize Empower such as Galenwe.
Now that this buff is more niche, and weaker for the average user, the abilities that offer it need to be reworked as such. Either to grant much greater uptimes as is required for the builds it intends to play with, or a removal of Empower and slight rework to the abilities to grant them a different effect.

Lastly, it must be considered that Empower has no benefit in a PVP environment, and as such the power budget of these abilities must reflect that the bonus effect of Empower will have no use in a PVP environment.

JustAGoodPlayer

DK lose unoque buff.
Moltan armaments now is lose of damage.
The same skill other classes have with good dot or good damage + debuffs.

Moltan armaments are now underperforming. Add to all this that DK has not got good DPs passives.

Moltan Armaments needs a buff in such condition.
And they remove one of our unique skills again.

the same time - sorcs and NB as example - do not lose any unique skill for all this time.

DK already lose wings and moltan armaments.

VaranisArano

Because the Devs have not (yet) rebalanced the lack of Empower comprehensively for PVP, I am disappointed with their implementation of the new buff.

Perhaps the Devs have a plan for the final PTS week in which they comprehensively rebalanced PVP Empower to account for class skill, sets, werewolves, etc. Perhaps it will even test out that their comprehensive rebalance works, and need no further tweaking.

But if they do not, then PVPers are stuck waiting for at least several months while ZOS figures out how to balance their bandaid fix. PVPers are stuck changing their builds, again, when ZOS does balance Empower comprehensively in future patches.

This is not the fault of PVE players who like the Empower changes for their builds. It's a problem with how fast this new Empower is being rolled out as a fix for Oakensoul and to fix recent issues with heavy attack builds in PVP. For a Combat Team who keeps standardizing the game's systems, it's kind of frustrating as a player to see a buff get replaced without that sort of comprehensive standardization of all the skills, sets, and gameplay associated with that buff.

I get it: ZOS feels like they have to do something to address their goals and especially the concerns about overly nerfed HA builds in PVE and overly powerful HA builds in PVP. But I don't want to be reading "Because of the Empower change, we're adjusting X skill so it performs up to our new standards" for the next several Updates because this change got rolled out too fast for the Combat Team to appropriately balance it for ALL of ESO's gameplay.

JustAGoodPlayer

I feel like they just do not understand what they are doing.

Because it is hard balance the game if you can not even normally play it yourself )))

But ok - may be I do not understand some thing ))) We will see it on live soon )))

I think it will be some bad update again ) But i hope may be I am wrong - but unfortunatly it looks like I am not (

prof_doom

I just want to ask why they couldn't leave Empower's LA buff, and just make it "on monsters only" too.

Arcanasx

The empower changes are lazy, terrible, and overly cater specifically to lightning heavy attacks in pve.

JustAGoodPlayer

prof_doom wrote: »

I just want to ask why they couldn't leave Empower's LA buff, and just make it "on monsters only" too.

Because they nerfing like attacks i think. Do not try to find any logick in their actions )))

etchedpixels

It's another WW nerf on top of a WW nerf on top of a WW nerf, so that side is bad for PvP. It does need to do something in PvP though IMHO or the who skill situation becomes a bit unbalanced.

I can see why something is needed (the whole empower/crystal weapn/etc/etc gank boom instakill thing) and for PvE it might make Galenwe worth using again.

What's sad is yet again it's the wrong model. Just about every other sane game on the planet with these kind of skill stacks uses damage /effectiveness curves so sure you can stack every single weapon damage boost but they don't scale linearly so it's not normally a win and it discourages the kind of wild imbalances seen in ESO where theorrycrafters basically exploit a tiny oversight in the game and the linear scaling amplifies it instead of the effectiveness curve making it merely an amusing quirky build.

kindnuguz

I'm just happy to see changes back the other way.. No matter what they are as I have seen silence after big changes in the past.. So I commend the changes.

redspecter23

I'm shining up my resto staff. I want it to go live just to see the glorious results, even if it's only for a few weeks.

This change has me super excited for U35 now, but not for the reasons ZOS might think.

Arcanasx

All they had to do was introduce a NEW set that specifically increases the damage of lightning heavy attacks against monsters by X if they want to do something for those kinds of players, instead of making these absurd changes.

JustAGoodPlayer

Arcanasx wrote: »

All they had to do was introduce a NEW set that specifically increases the damage of lightning heavy attacks against monsters by X if they want to do something for those kinds of players, instead of making these absurd changes.

We do not need sets that do DPS on monsters.

The same time even more funny thing is - that some sets even now are not nerfed.

Even more funny thing is that Ha player in current live update do the same damage by not using HA sets - as example i can do more DPS in 2 not HA sets than i can do in undaunted infiltrator + one more HA set.

So ZOS just show that they fight wind windows like if i am correct in boook "Baron Munchausen"

And for me it is already funny because - it really is funny.

Undaunted infiltrator was not even the best HA set. It was one of first sets HA players use for a long time.

It has more history value )) So by nerfing it and do not nerfing all other sets = show that they just do some silly changes.

Yes we are angry but it ... but it is already even funny - so lets se what will be next ... .

As example in 2 buff sets i can do on HA 80 k DPS in Undaunted infiltrator + HA set = 77k

In 2 good META and no META sets i can do on HA about 95k DPS.

Before they nerf infiltrator DPS on HA with it was about 85 k DPS. Now 77k.

What they will do next ? )))

Tannus15

Arcanasx wrote: »

All they had to do was introduce a NEW set that specifically increases the damage of lightning heavy attacks against monsters by X if they want to do something for those kinds of players, instead of making these absurd changes.

Queen's elegance is that set. it already exists. I wonder if they will put empower back on it 100% now since adding it after the heavy attack is bad.

This is a very smart, very good change.
This is the definition of raising the floor and lowering the ceiling. Empower is no longer a good end game trials buff, but it's the most important buff for heavy attack builds.

Obviously some balancing needs to happen around skills and sets that provide this buff as it's not longer as useful as it was, but this will actually achieve the goals they set out in this update.

Vylaera

Additionally, empower does not have a limitation to "fully charged heavy attacks" so medium weaving is about to become standard if that's not fixed, meaning that content and dps is even less accessible.

VaranisArano

prof_doom wrote: »

I just want to ask why they couldn't leave Empower's LA buff, and just make it "on monsters only" too.

Because the light attack nerfs are primarily aimed at PVEers doing high DPS. ZOS very much wants to reduce the percentage of damage done by light attacks this patch, as if that alone will close the gap between weavers and non-weavers.

(Pay no attention to sets like Relequen or Kinras behind the curtain.)

JustAGoodPlayer

Bad changes again ... .

So just make fun. I do not expect some thing like normal balance in 1-2 next years )))

Fun is only thing left to us )))

Urzigurumash

Vylaera wrote: »

Additionally, empower does not have a limitation to "fully charged heavy attacks" so medium weaving is about to become standard if that's not fixed, meaning that content and dps is even less accessible.

Well couldn't that be a good thing if it increased the skill cap for scoring, but didn't exclude players from being able to finish content? Like Bash Weaving once was right? I don't really PvE so I might be off on those but I'm a long time Molten Armaments Medium Weaving D Swinger in PvP so what you say sounds cool to me.

Unrelated to your comment but I don't mind this sacrifice of Power for Melee StamDK since it's even further outside of the meta than ever before and the Flame HA builds are exploiting our signature Ult (Corrosive) better than we can. We can't have it all and within the very limited scope of PvP DK, with absolutely no regard for anything else, I think it's a balanced adjustment.

But, one of the morphs of Molten Weapons needs a tune-up to encourage its use in PvP over Rally/Degen for the purpose of Class Identity.

JustAGoodPlayer

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

Additionally, empower does not have a limitation to "fully charged heavy attacks" so medium weaving is about to become standard if that's not fixed, meaning that content and dps is even less accessible.

Well couldn't that be a good thing if it increased the skill cap for scoring, but didn't exclude players from being able to finish content? Like Bash Weaving once was right? I don't really PvE so I might be off on those but I'm a long time Molten Armaments Medium Weaving D Swinger in PvP so what you say sounds cool to me.

Unrelated to your comment but I don't mind this sacrifice of Power for Melee StamDK since it's even further outside of the meta than ever before and the Flame HA builds are exploiting our signature Ult (Corrosive) better than we can. We can't have it all and within the very limited scope of PvP DK, with absolutely no regard for anything else, I think it's a balanced adjustment.

But, one of the morphs of Molten Weapons needs a tune-up to encourage its use in PvP over Rally/Degen for the purpose of Class Identity.

Molten Weapons - is dead skill. It is lose of DPS - useless skill. Now with delete of moltan armaments it is not even unique skill.

So for last years DK lose 2 good unique skills.

Whyle sorcs and NB lose nothing.

Even Templar losing his Jabs = but for NB and sorcs = no nerf. Balance ? I do not think so.

And I hope templars will not lose their only unique skill. because as class that already lose 2 such skills i know how bad it is.

But not for NB and sorcs - where each skills looks like unique skill ... .

merpins

kindnuguz wrote: »

I'm just happy to see changes back the other way.. No matter what they are as I have seen silence after big changes in the past.. So I commend the changes.

LA is the same though. Since Empower doesn't effect LA, weaving has approximately the same damage scaling as 8.1.0 with the nerfs they did to LA. They needa bring back 40% LA to empower.

DairyCat

merpins wrote: »

kindnuguz wrote: »

I'm just happy to see changes back the other way.. No matter what they are as I have seen silence after big changes in the past.. So I commend the changes.

LA is the same though. Since Empower doesn't effect LA, weaving has approximately the same damage scaling as 8.1.0 with the nerfs they did to LA. They needa bring back 40% LA to empower.

Lol at that point just walk back the light and heavy attack changes completely and all this patch will be is a change to HOTS/DOTS.

whiteshadow711jppreub18_ESO

What makes me mad the most is that the Empower change is proof that they CAN in fact split PvE and PvP.

Urzigurumash

JustAGoodPlayer wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

Additionally, empower does not have a limitation to "fully charged heavy attacks" so medium weaving is about to become standard if that's not fixed, meaning that content and dps is even less accessible.

Well couldn't that be a good thing if it increased the skill cap for scoring, but didn't exclude players from being able to finish content? Like Bash Weaving once was right? I don't really PvE so I might be off on those but I'm a long time Molten Armaments Medium Weaving D Swinger in PvP so what you say sounds cool to me.

Unrelated to your comment but I don't mind this sacrifice of Power for Melee StamDK since it's even further outside of the meta than ever before and the Flame HA builds are exploiting our signature Ult (Corrosive) better than we can. We can't have it all and within the very limited scope of PvP DK, with absolutely no regard for anything else, I think it's a balanced adjustment.

But, one of the morphs of Molten Weapons needs a tune-up to encourage its use in PvP over Rally/Degen for the purpose of Class Identity.

Molten Weapons - is dead skill. It is lose of DPS - useless skill. Now with delete of moltan armaments it is not even unique skill.

So for last years DK lose 2 good unique skills.

Whyle sorcs and NB lose nothing.

Even Templar losing his Jabs = but for NB and sorcs = no nerf. Balance ? I do not think so.

And I hope templars will not lose their only unique skill. because as class that already lose 2 such skills i know how bad it is.

But not for NB and sorcs - where each skills looks like unique skill ... .

Absolutely one of the morphs of Molten Weapons needs a good buff if Molten Armaments is going to keep Empower. If Empower remains popular for some PvE'rs and some actually use MA for that then that's fine, change Igneous to something better for PvP DKs.

Horny_Poney

This rework is imho a big mistake.
Has anybody seen any dd doing HAs in HL groups lately? I guess not, that’s because a proper rotation does more dps than HAs. I could be wrong but I think this won’t change with this rework, a rotation will still be stronger than HAs.
But sure, I understand that someone who can’t do a nice rotation will have better dps with HAs now. Good for them. But the problem now is that most of those players will be stuck in this HAs way of doing and will never improve their gameplay and dps by learning a rotation, since this pushes them in the opposite direction. And this will not shrink the gap between them and the other players, on the contrary.

Tannus15

i'm just going to drop this here.



please stop ranting and start testing.

JustAGoodPlayer

Urzigurumash wrote: »

JustAGoodPlayer wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

Additionally, empower does not have a limitation to "fully charged heavy attacks" so medium weaving is about to become standard if that's not fixed, meaning that content and dps is even less accessible.

Well couldn't that be a good thing if it increased the skill cap for scoring, but didn't exclude players from being able to finish content? Like Bash Weaving once was right? I don't really PvE so I might be off on those but I'm a long time Molten Armaments Medium Weaving D Swinger in PvP so what you say sounds cool to me.

Unrelated to your comment but I don't mind this sacrifice of Power for Melee StamDK since it's even further outside of the meta than ever before and the Flame HA builds are exploiting our signature Ult (Corrosive) better than we can. We can't have it all and within the very limited scope of PvP DK, with absolutely no regard for anything else, I think it's a balanced adjustment.

But, one of the morphs of Molten Weapons needs a tune-up to encourage its use in PvP over Rally/Degen for the purpose of Class Identity.

Molten Weapons - is dead skill. It is lose of DPS - useless skill. Now with delete of moltan armaments it is not even unique skill.

So for last years DK lose 2 good unique skills.

Whyle sorcs and NB lose nothing.

Even Templar losing his Jabs = but for NB and sorcs = no nerf. Balance ? I do not think so.

And I hope templars will not lose their only unique skill. because as class that already lose 2 such skills i know how bad it is.

But not for NB and sorcs - where each skills looks like unique skill ... .

Absolutely one of the morphs of Molten Weapons needs a good buff if Molten Armaments is going to keep Empower. If Empower remains popular for some PvE'rs and some actually use MA for that then that's fine, change Igneous to something better for PvP DKs.

With current to a lot of access to empower it is bad buff. So both morpth needs buff unfortunatly

The other morph and not morph skill = lose of damage. So bad this skill is now.

JustAGoodPlayer

Tannus15 wrote: »

i'm just going to drop this here.



please stop ranting and start testing.

I can do the same on live now. And it is only PVE.
The same time dummy is 20% buffed now, so it is like making 80k dps on live.

You can post the same 110k LA parse here in compare if you like to test that much.

So for me it is nothing more than lose of damage.

Tannus15

@JustAGoodPlayer honestly Succby, stop.

Empower heavy attack builds are very good on PTS now. A resto staff heavy attack build shouldn't be able to compete with the top tier meta.

Heavy attack 1 shot builds have been toxic in PvP for a long time and I doubt anyone is unhappy to see them nerfed, except you of course.

JustAGoodPlayer

Tannus15 wrote: »

@JustAGoodPlayer honestly Succby, stop.

Empower heavy attack builds are very good on PTS now. A resto staff heavy attack build shouldn't be able to compete with the top tier meta.

Heavy attack 1 shot builds have been toxic in PvP for a long time and I doubt anyone is unhappy to see them nerfed, except you of course.

It is worse than it is on live now. I can say it and i main HA builds for 5+ years so i know them perfectly.

HA one shots builds can be overplayed with:
1)New mythick
2)HA is visible and has sound even if you are not visible.
The same time one shot NB do not looks like a problem for you ?

So I do not see reason not to say truth and stop to say it.

And I do not see you say about stopping OP nbs, that do the same or sorcs, that have OP spammable for this patch, do you ?

And for you I am not succuby, I am its owner. Succuby is my sorc by the way. That with NB is a "little" overpowered. But ... it looks like no one see it. But if you see OP one shot HA, the same i will help you to see it too.

Tannus15

@JustAGoodPlayer yeah, you've been ranting about light attack builds for 5+ years.

anyone who pays attention to the PTS forums knows how irrational you are about heavy attack vs light attacks and how much you hate night blades and sorcs.

JustAGoodPlayer

Tannus15 wrote: »

@JustAGoodPlayer yeah, you've been ranting about light attack builds for 5+ years.

anyone who pays attention to the PTS forums knows how irrational you are about heavy attack vs light attacks and how much you hate night blades and sorcs.

I just say the truth. I do not have reason to hate some one. And if NB or Sorcs can easely cry and delete DK skills like wings as example, I see no reason why OP skills with no real counterplay like Invis or Streak must stay in game.

When my not optimal race/gear ALT character start to heawy overperform my main character - I do not see reason to not say about it.

If all is balanced, I am happy. But I do not see reason why one classes have much better skills, unique by the way that is much better than skills others have.

And if you remove one classes skill okey. For balance you need to remove other classes unique skills to. That is how real balance work.

Or to add unique skills to other classes to balance other classes unique skills.

So hate ? Nope. I even killed a lot of players on NB and some on sorc some time ago. Because it is hard not to do on such OP classes.

But I am more interested on normal play on my main class that was my first game choise. And unfortunatly it is not possible whyle classes are not balanced.

But do not worry - I do not feel good by playing on OP class. Some ... bad feeling you know ? May be not.

So I am interested on real balance, not just play on OP class

raynasa

@JustAGoodPlayer

JustAGoodPlayer wrote: »

DK lose unoque buff.
Moltan armaments now is lose of damage.
The same skill other classes have with good dot or good damage + debuffs.

Moltan armaments are now underperforming. Add to all this that DK has not got good DPs passives.

Moltan Armaments needs a buff in such condition.
And they remove one of our unique skills again.

the same time - sorcs and NB as example - do not lose any unique skill for all this time.

DK already lose wings and moltan armaments.

Meanwhile, nb fear -> turn evil, nb invisibility -> vampire passive, nb grim focus -> sorc bound armaments. And don’t forget about deleted skills such as haste and agony for example.