PTS Patch Notes v8.1.4

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The Elder Scrolls Online v8.1.4 is the final PTS patch before Lost Depths and Update 35 launch on August 22. During this week, we’ll be testing some tech to support the Battlegrounds weekends we had previous mentioned in this forum post. We have also made several additional adjustments to class abilities and item sets – a bit more than we typically do in the final week of PTS testing – so we look forward to reading any additional feedback you have. The size of this patch is approximately 156MB.

• New Features / Updates / Big Changes
  • Battleground Feature Testing
• Fixes & Improvements
  • Chapters & DLCs
  • Combat & Gameplay
    • Combat & Abilities
    • Itemization & Item Sets
  • Base Game

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Battleground Feature Testing
This week on the PTS, we will be testing tech being used to support upcoming Battleground weekends. Each day this week, we will be restricting Battlegrounds to a particular game mode (Domination, Deathmatch, Capture the Relic, Chaosball, Crazy King); during this time, you can ONLY queue for that game mode.

• Battlegrounds will grant a 25% AP bonus during the match.
• The Group Finder/Queueing interface for Battlegrounds will change slightly to highlight what battleground is being featured. It will have a different background and the default queuing option will only let you select that battleground mode.
• An announcement tile (bottom left on the character select) will also call out what is active when you log in, similar to other events.

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Quests

• The Dark Aeon: Fixed an issue where you could share this quest with other players who had not completed the appropriate preceding quests.

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General

• Fixed an issue that caused several High Isle quest reward items to not properly scale to your character’s level. These quests include:
  • Wisdom of the Druids
  • People of Import
  • Deadly Investigations
  • Scalding Scavengers
  • A Sheep in Need
  • Tournament of the Heart
  • Buried at the Bay
  • To Catch a Magus
  • Blood, Books, and Steel
  • The Corrupted Grove
  • An Experiment with Peace
  • The Missing Prowler
  • A Father's Pride
  • The Large Delegate
  • A Chance for Peace
  • Balki's Map Fragment
  • Ferone's Map Fragment
  • Rhadh's Map Fragment
  • The Long Way Home
  • The All Flags Curse
  • The Intoxicating Mix

General

• You will now receive automatic placement match wins when a new season begins based on your final tier in the prior season.
• Fixed an issue that allowed you to receive a Tales of Tribute invite while still in the summary screen from a previous match.

UI

• Clarified Tribute Patron tooltips to better communicate all their requirements and mechanics.

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Dungeons

• Earthen Root Enclave
  • General
    • The Fire Swarm ability can now correctly be dodged.
    • Player characters will no longer twitch while affected by the Wild Fire ability, and the visual effects for Wild Fire will no longer abruptly disappear.
    • Druid Laurel has a more impressive looking defensive spell.
  • Corruption of Stone
    • Stone Wall no longer has a chance to persist during the encounter.
• Graven Deep
  • General
    • The Big Bubble visual effects will now correctly display on all player characters.

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General

• By popular request, the raid target dummy now has Elemental Catalyst active on it to help improve accuracy of results for both Magicka and Stamina focused team compositions.
  • Note this bonus does not override Elemental Catalyst’s item set functionality and partially stacks with it due to its unique functionality, so keep this in mind as it may inflate your results if you are wearing this set while parsing on these target dummies.

Dragonknight

• Ardent Flame
  • Lava Whip
    • Molten Whip (morph): Increased the duration of Seething Fury to 15 seconds, up from 10 seconds, to help it be easier to keep up with the new duration timers of Fiery Breath and Searing Strike.

Nightblade

• Assassination
  • Assassin’s Blade
    • Impale (morph): This morph now also increases the execute scaling to 330%, up from 300%.
• Shadow
  • Path of Darkness
    • Twisting Path (morph): Increased the damage this morph deals by approximately 50% to help it stand out a bit more.
  • Veiled Strike
    • Surprise Attack (morph):
      • This morph’s guaranteed Critical Strike now can only occur once every 4 seconds, to prevent it from adding too much sustained burst.
      • Fixed an issue where the guaranteed Critical Strike could fail to work.
    • Concealed Weapon (morph): This morph now increases your damage done by 7-10% for 5 seconds after leaving Stealth or Invisibility, or when Major Expedition ends, rather than granting 285-300 Weapon and Spell Damage for 15 seconds after leaving stealth or invisibility. Note the in-combat requirement for this still remains.
      Developer Comment:
      The first iteration of this morph left it rather lackluster for PvE encounters, as stealth and invisibility do not work as readily or incur heavy operational costs in PvE encounters. This created a situation were more Magicka driven Nightblades were still quite a bit behind their Stamina focused cousins, so we’ve better adjusted it to something with a shorter up time but more impact and expanded requirements to try and help rectify that. There’s also more unique synergy here with emphasis on mobility, as this morph always was centered on. Here is a simple riddle to describe our favorite new interaction with it: “If your path is fraught with darkness, all shall be illuminated.”
  • Shadow Cloak
    • Dark Cloak (morph):
      • This morph once again heals for Max Health per tick, rather than missing health.
      • Reduced the base healing by approximately 42% compared to the live version.
      • This morph has a new added functionality where the Heal over Time is increased by 150% when not moving.
      Developer Comment:
      The reason this morph has been iterated on so many times is due to the difficulty in finding a sweet spot where it feels powerful enough for specific builds (primarily tanks in PvE encounters) without being too dominant/enabling in other areas (primarily PvP encounters). By finding a solution that is not as synergistic with some of the classes’ main advantages in PvP encounters, while empowering the enforced playstyle for the builds it is meant to help in PvE, we think the new iteration will finally reach a point where it can settle (aside from potentially adjusting the simple numbers) and see less swings in design.

Sorcerer

• Dark Magic
  • Crystal Shard
    • Crystal Weapon (morph): Increased the damage of the second hit of this ability to 45% of the original hit’s damage, up from 30%.
• Daedric Summoning
  • Daedric Curse
    • Daedric Prey (morph): Increased the bonus to your pets’ damage to 45%, up from 20%.

Templar

• Dawn’s Wrath
  • Radiant Destruction: Increased the base damage of this ability and its morphs by approximately 23% to ensure it stands up to execute abilities when looking at their ability to be more frequently weaved with.

Warden

• Animal Companions
  • Cliff Racer
    • Screaming Cliff Racer (morph): Increased the bonus Weapon and Spell Damage for hitting Off Balance targets to 300, up from 200.
• Winter’s Embrace
  • Arctic Wind
    • Arctic Blast (morph): Increased the chances of applying a status effect with this morph to 15%, up from 1% per tick.
  • Impaling Shards
    • Winter’s Revenge (morph): This morph now deals 30% more damage if you cast it with a Destruction Staff equipped, to help Magicka focused Wardens get some extra sustained damage.

Weapon

• Two Handed
  • Carve: Increased the duration of the final stack to 32 seconds, up from 30, to grant it a better grace period in a real rotation when paired with other duration effects.

World

• Werewolf
  • Howl of Agony: Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs were not properly updating their facing requirements to your current target.

Alliance War

• Assault
  • Vigor
    • Resolving Vigor (morph): Reverted the healing reductions made to this morph. It now grants Minor Resolve, rather than Major Resolve, to prevent the skill from actively harming class identity and importance to run other sources of this buff.

Ability Altering Weapons

• Caustic Arrow: Fixed an issue where this set was not lasting its full duration.
• Cruel Flurry: Fixed an issue where this set was not working.
• Crushing Wall: This set now increases the damage of your Wall of Elements by 1250, rather than increasing the damage done with your Light and Heavy Attacks against enemies in your Wall of Elements by 1358.
  Developer Comment:
  Based on some fair feedback during the early iterations of Light and Heavy Attack changes, we have decided to remove the more intense skill interaction of this set to be closer in power and requirements to other Maelstrom sets. We have slightly reduced the damage bonus to make up for the fact that it now has much more readily available cleave damage potential.
• Merciless Charge:
  • Reduced the damage per tick of this set by approximately 32%.
  • Increased the duration to 10 seconds, up from 7.
  Developer Comment:
  This change was done as the set no longer needs to carry the damage of Stampede to be more competitive with other weapons and should help it bite a little less in PvP encounters.
• Stinging Slashes: Fixed an issue where this set was not lasting its full duration.
• Thunderous Volley: Increased the ramping damage per stack to 191, up from 143, to help make this set stand up to others with its added requirement of the full duration dealing damage.

Mythic Items

• Oakensoul: Fixed an issue where this set’s Empower was not working.

PvP Sourced Sets

• Powerful Assault:
  • Increased the duration of this set to 15 seconds, up from 10, to better match the durations of many of the morphs in the skill line.
  • Increased the radius to 12 meters, up from 10.

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.

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Dungeons

• Reduced the health of all bosses in Veteran difficulty.

Trials

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

Witches Festival

• Fixed an issue where the Ghastly Visitation Memento was sold by the Impresario in an unbound runebox form instead of the collectible directly.
• The icon for the Crowborne Horror's quest reward plunder skull is now the same as other Dremora plunder skulls.

General

• Fixed an issue causing some of the Cyrodiil Gear Vendor bags to give level 1 items instead of items scaled to your character’s level. This affected the following item bags:
  • Unidentified Light Armor
  • Unidentified Medium Armor
  • Unidentified Heavy Armor
  • Unidentified Dark Convergence Item
  • Unidentified Hrothgar's Chill Item
  • Unidentified Plaguebreak Item

Furnishings

• When changing time of day with the Sacred Hourglass of Alkosh, the stars and clouds in the sky now shift with the changing time. No time lapse photography required!
• Fixed an issue where Cadwell (or his mighty steed, Honor) would fail to appear when interacting with Cadwell’s Astounding Portal.
• Improved the preview positioning for the “Target Deadlands Harvester, Trial” and “Common Cargo, Reinforced” furnishings, to better match other furnishings.

General

• Fixed a crash that could occur when holding down an input while logging out.

Tutorial

• The Gates of Adamant: Fixed an issue where the High Isle portal in the Tower of Balfiera lacked its chains if you didn't have access to the chapter.