Veteran Hard-Mode is the problem.

Marto

GloatingSwine wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Veteran Hard-Mode

And for some dungeons and trials, Veteran mode itself.

The only content in the game where a 2% change in DPS is the difference between success, and your team wiping over and over for hours.

Is this really fun? Is this right?

For some people, yeah, it is. They want to have a narrow margin of success that can only be reached by thorough understanding of how everything fits together and co-operation as a team.

And having optional VHMs that provide nothing but bragging rights for the people who enjoy them is absolutely fine.

I understand that, and I absolutely respect and accept if that's the enjoyment people want to get out of this game. I've done it too, plenty of times, and I like it. The feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment I get after finally succeeding after dozens of attempts is exhilarating.

But if you want content with such a narrow margin of success, you also have to accept that any balance change, no matter how minor, will result in that margin shifting. And the narrower the margin, the more the shift will be felt.

M0ntie wrote: »

What is your definition of a "scalpel" change?"
A: Reducing an OP skill or set to an in balance but still useable level.

And there's the crux of the problem. I feel like many players have had their definition of "useable" skewed dramatically, thanks to ESO being built around such narrow margins.

Look at Oakensoul, for example. An item set that still provides you with a substantial amount of buffs.



Because most of this bonuses are multiplicative, the impact is less than what would be apparent. For example. The change from major protection to minor protection has resulted in an increase to damage taken of 1.4% - 2%, depending on your specific setup.

You lose access to 5 skills, sure, but the amount of buffs it gives you is more than what you could usually get out of 5 skills.

The item is still a substantial improvement over making a 1-bar build without Oakensoul. Which means it's not useless. It's still very much useable, and still an improvement in the vast majority of scenarios. There's only a couple scenarios in which Oakensoul is barely an improvement, and those are high-tier Trial groups with a high uptime on all buffs. But if you do that sort of content, you're already way outside the target audience of Oakensoul.

Yet there are dozens of threads calling it "unusable" or "worthless". Why?

Because the standards of the ESO endgame community are way too strict.

And why are the standards so strict?

Because the standards of ESO endgame content are way too strict.

It's a vicious cycle. And I think it'd be healthier for the game if that cycle was broken, or at least toned down.

boi_anachronism_

A 50% nerf would make the game nigh unplayable for the vast majority, forget about vet content. What a statement to make.

Marto

HEIIMS wrote: »

[snip]

[snip]

Go online, and look at what non-ESO communities are saying about Update 35. Look at what MMORPG forums and communities are saying, or what TES communities are saying.

The overall sentiment is that.

• The combat in ESO is bad.
• Longer duration DoTs and Buffs are good, because ESO's combat is way too fast already. High APM, high focus combat breaks immersion and makes you focus less on things like visuals, music, or animations.
• Making LA/HA weaker is good, because it means weaving is less impactful, and a player that never performs weaving is now a lot stronger, relative to end-game players.
• A 2-20% change in DPS is too little, and it feels like ZOS is taking one step forward and two steps back by not nerfing players enough.

[snip]

Look, I'm not trying to dismiss the experience of others, nor do I want to be reductive and start throwing insults at X or Y players. I'm not talking about this topic or making these suggestions because I hate end-gamers or want end-gamers to suffer.

I want ESO's end-game to thrive, and for people to have fun. Even people with different playstyles than mine.

And you know what I'm seeing in these forums, discord servers, guilds and communities? People are not having fun. People are constantly angry, frustrated, and it feels like they're impossible to please.

How do we solve this problem?

Many would say the solution would be for ZOS to just "leave it alone" and "don't make changes people don't ask for". But that would just lead to rampart power-creep, even worse than what we have right now. And like all power-creep in all games, it feels good on the short term, but creates more frustration, more elitism, and less accessibility on the long-term.

I think a better solution would be to make end-game requirements (in things like hard-mode and trifectas) less strict. So balance changes do not lead you to feel you need to change your entire build, and do not feel like you just had months of progress invalidated.

I'm making these suggestions because I think they'd make the game better for you.

[edited for baiting & to remove quote]

chessalavakia_ESO

Marto wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

And what do the parses and other data show? Fairly similar results. Perhaps a bit lower, but not so much. And they keep increasing with each week, meaning a lot of the loss is players needing to get used to the timings.

Remember, they added a whole bunch of new buffs to the trial dummy this patch as well. So the loss of dps is obfuscated by those increased buffs for the testing environment.

They're estimated to be worth about a 20% increase in dps. So the fact that they are "similar" to live right now, means that the true loss is that 20%.

Exactly. The LA changes account for >10% of that. The DoT timing changes account for <10%.
Other changes like Jabs/Sweeps make up even less of that change.

It's a scalpel change that most players have interpreted as a sledgehammer change.

I guess you could argue that's ZOS' fault for not wording things better.

And If you're still upset about a 20% DPS decrease... ask yourself this.

Is a 20% DPS reduction beneficial or harmful for...

• Overland content and delves
• Public dungeons
• World bosses
• Normal dungeons
• Veteran dungeons
• Veteran HM dungeons
• Arenas
• Trials
• Veteran trials
• Veteran HM trials

Keep in mind people use different skills in different ways.

On paper, Puncturing Sweeps is getting the following changes:

1. Healing reduction from 40% to 33% of damage dealt.
2. Cost Reduction from 2700 to 2295.
3. Snare duration reduction from 1s to .5s
4. 7% AOE Damage increase
5. Fixed a bug when it wasn't healing off of 6 targets
6. Attack duration reduced from 1s to .8s
7. Reduced primary attack damage by 21% as the skill no longer incurs damage loss from weaving.

Individually, only the 21% damage change sounds bad and since it's got an explanation from a text basis it doesn't sound that bad.

The thing is, in game that means someone that isn't weaving and spams puncturing sweeps is losing around 1/5th of the damage from sweeps in single target situations. As the healing scales with the damage done the combination of the healing % and the damage nerf will lead to a loss of around 1/3rd of the healing.

It's possible you might be able to miss a 20% damage loss but you will notice losing 1/3rd of your healing.

Any content the player runs that actually challenges them now while spamming sweeps is going to be either far harder or impossible without changing their build.

Marto

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Keep in mind people use different skills in different ways.

On paper, Puncturing Sweeps is getting the following changes:

1. Healing reduction from 40% to 33% of damage dealt.
2. Cost Reduction from 2700 to 2295.
3. Snare duration reduction from 1s to .5s
4. 7% AOE Damage increase
5. Fixed a bug when it wasn't healing off of 6 targets
6. Attack duration reduced from 1s to .8s
7. Reduced primary attack damage by 21% as the skill no longer incurs damage loss from weaving.

Individually, only the 21% damage change sounds bad and since it's got an explanation from a text basis it doesn't sound that bad.

The thing is, in game that means someone that isn't weaving and spams puncturing sweeps is losing around 1/5th of the damage from sweeps in single target situations. As the healing scales with the damage done the combination of the healing % and the damage nerf will lead to a loss of around 1/3rd of the healing.

It's possible you might be able to miss a 20% damage loss but you will notice losing 1/3rd of your healing.

Any content the player runs that actually challenges them now while spamming sweeps is going to be either far harder or impossible without changing their build.

Jabs/Sweeps received a 20% increase in cast speed, and a 21% reduction in damage. This leads to approximately a 1.2% DPS reduction. (2-3% if your weaving is good, 1-2% less if your weaving is poor)

In scenarios like end-game PVE, where you are standing relatively skill and casting skills many times on static targets, Jabs/Sweeps is virtually the same as before. You damage is fairly similar, and the healing from sweeps is reduced by 25%. The only change there is the burning light nerf (which is a different topic)

But in scenarios like PVP or high-movement PVE (like Arenas), where you can only reliably land a couple of casts of Jabs/Sweeps this means that burst damage and burst healing are both reduced more substantially.

I think ZOS' intention is pretty clear. Nerf the skill's high-burst potential in PVP, but keep it fairly similar in PVE.

The change to burning light is a definite nerf to all players utilizing Jabs/Sweeps, and a definite buff to players that do not use Jabs/Sweeps (Like werewolves, to give one example). But the changes to Jabs/Sweeps itself are not a blanket-change, and are intended to reign down PVP more.

tmbrinks

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

HEIIMS wrote: »

[snip]

[snip]

Go online, and look at what non-ESO communities are saying about Update 35. Look at what MMORPG forums and communities are saying, or what TES communities are saying.

The overall sentiment is that.

• The combat in ESO is bad.
• Longer duration DoTs and Buffs are good, because ESO's combat is way too fast already. High APM, high focus combat breaks immersion and makes you focus less on things like visuals, music, or animations.
• Making LA/HA weaker is good, because it means weaving is less impactful, and a player that never performs weaving is now a lot stronger, relative to end-game players.
• A 2-20% change in DPS is too little, and it feels like ZOS is taking one step forward and two steps back by not nerfing players enough.

[snip]

I don't get why so many arguments are "Well this MMO does it this way... ESO should be the same"

Why do we want them all to be the same? The combat in ESO is what makes it unique. If you don't like it, that's okay, there's a dozen other MMOs you can play that might suit your style.

[edited to remove quote]

deleted221205-002626

I like ESO's uniqueness but I would like to see things adjusted pvp/pve so theyre is a standard. As for veteran HM, there always need to be a challenge or goal or u get bored and theres nothing todo. Imagine the hardest there was is vet fungal grotto!! And we got all the kewl things to get in login rewards right away after char creation!! fun? not even slightly =p

Ph1p

Marto wrote: »

Jabs/Sweeps received a 20% increase in cast speed, and a 21% reduction in damage. This leads to approximately a 1.2% DPS reduction. (2-3% if your weaving is good, 1-2% less if your weaving is poor)

That's not how combat works in ESO. You can still only cast one jab or sweep per second due to the global cooldown. Just because the channel time is now 800 ms doesn't mean you can chain 5 jabs together in 4 seconds.

Ph1p

Marto wrote: »

I think a better solution would be to make end-game requirements (in things like hard-mode and trifectas) less strict.

I agree that ZOS should not balance new trial hard modes and trifectas based on the utmost top end of the spectrum, which represents maybe a few thousand or even just some hundreds of players globally. However, the suggestion in your original post, which sounded a lot like getting rid of them and having regular veteran as the highest accomplishment, did not resonate.

code65536 wrote an excellent post about exactly this issue - the combination of a large power gab, with only a tiny number of people at the top end, and new endgame content being balanced towards that high end. Well articulated and a good read!

Marto

Ph1p wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Jabs/Sweeps received a 20% increase in cast speed, and a 21% reduction in damage. This leads to approximately a 1.2% DPS reduction. (2-3% if your weaving is good, 1-2% less if your weaving is poor)

That's not how combat works in ESO. You can still only cast one jab or sweep per second due to the global cooldown. Just because the channel time is now 800 ms doesn't mean you can chain 5 jabs together in 4 seconds.

Correct. That's how most skills in ESO work.

Except for Jabs/Sweep in the live servers.

In the live server, you can't really cast Jabs 60 times in 60 seconds unless you forgo weaving altogether. That's what ZOS meant by "the skill no longer incurs damage loss from weaving".

tmbrinks wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

[snip]

I don't get why so many arguments are "Well this MMO does it this way... ESO should be the same"

Why do we want them all to be the same? The combat in ESO is what makes it unique. If you don't like it, that's okay, there's a dozen other MMOs you can play that might suit your style.

I'm not saying I want ESO to be the same as other games.

I want ESO to be a good game. A better game. That's better designed, more fun, and engaging without being too frustrating.

And how are we supposed to see where the flaws are, if we're not willing to look at other points of view? We all have a bias, it's inevitable. We have to be open to other opinions to break past that.

[edited to remove quote]

mpicklesster

tmbrinks wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

And what do the parses and other data show? Fairly similar results. Perhaps a bit lower, but not so much. And they keep increasing with each week, meaning a lot of the loss is players needing to get used to the timings.

Remember, they added a whole bunch of new buffs to the trial dummy this patch as well. So the loss of dps is obfuscated by those increased buffs for the testing environment.

They're estimated to be worth about a 20% increase in dps. So the fact that they are "similar" to live right now, means that the true loss is that 20%.

^This! If you do an apples-to-apples comparison of parses, you do find about a 20% drop in DPS. Those were in fact the results I got when I parsed on my DK on the 6mil dummy on the live and PTS servers. (For my NB, it was closer to a 25% drop because light attack damage is integral to their DPS--and it got the nerf hammer.)

You have to build differently to parse on the 6mil (e.g., sustain is harder; penetration is lower), but at least you can ensure that the test conditions are the same between the live and PTS servers.

So, once you see the unadulterated results, it's easy to be so disappointed with this PTS. What's the point of a 20% DPS loss? How does that raise the floor or improve accessibility? Also--my rotation on the PTS is about as complicated as it is on live. It's just different. How does that improve accessibility or raise the floor?

tmbrinks

Marto wrote: »

We all have a bias, it's inevitable. We have to be open to other opinions to break past that.

It'd be nice if this advice applied to everybody in the thread

chessalavakia_ESO

Marto wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Jabs/Sweeps received a 20% increase in cast speed, and a 21% reduction in damage. This leads to approximately a 1.2% DPS reduction. (2-3% if your weaving is good, 1-2% less if your weaving is poor)

That's not how combat works in ESO. You can still only cast one jab or sweep per second due to the global cooldown. Just because the channel time is now 800 ms doesn't mean you can chain 5 jabs together in 4 seconds.

Correct. That's how most skills in ESO work.

Except for Jabs/Sweep in the live servers.

In the live server, you can't really cast Jabs 60 times in 60 seconds unless you forgo weaving altogether. That's what ZOS meant by "the skill no longer incurs damage loss from weaving".

tmbrinks wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

[snip]

I don't get why so many arguments are "Well this MMO does it this way... ESO should be the same"

Why do we want them all to be the same? The combat in ESO is what makes it unique. If you don't like it, that's okay, there's a dozen other MMOs you can play that might suit your style.

I'm not saying I want ESO to be the same as other games.

I want ESO to be a good game. A better game. That's better designed, more fun, and engaging without being too frustrating.

And how are we supposed to see where the flaws are, if we're not willing to look at other points of view? We all have a bias, it's inevitable. We have to be open to other opinions to break past that.

The thing is, many people forgo weaving.

When people talk about combat in ESO being bad on other sites many of them are talking about weaving.

Moving skills that have existed for years without needing to weave into the weaving category isn't great for the many people who do not weave.

It really seems counterproductive to the idea of accessibility to change it the way they have.

But hey, I don't Templar that much so maybe the other that do it more will like it.

[edited to remove quote]

HEIIMS

Marto wrote: »

[snip]

[snip] The endgame community has offered countless solutions to solving various accessibility issues regarding U35. You do realize every single one of us started from 0 just like everyone else? Every single endgame player can relate to what made them learn the game and push themselves into the endgame, what helped the most and what didn't. Many members of endgame community have worked really hard for it and shared their knowledge with the community via guides, videos, answers etc. Back in the day I asked so many questions and got so many answers from them.

Marto wrote: »

Look, I'm not trying to dismiss the experience of others, nor do I want to be reductive and start throwing insults at X or Y players. I'm not talking about this topic or making these suggestions because I hate end-gamers or want end-gamers to suffer.

I want ESO's end-game to thrive, and for people to have fun. Even people with different playstyles than mine.

And you know what I'm seeing in these forums, discord servers, guilds and communities? People are not having fun. People are constantly angry, frustrated, and it feels like they're impossible to please.

How do we solve this problem?

Many would say the solution would be for ZOS to just "leave it alone" and "don't make changes people don't ask for". But that would just lead to rampart power-creep, even worse than what we have right now. And like all power-creep in all games, it feels good on the short term, but creates more frustration, more elitism, and less accessibility on the long-term.

Again this is just wrong, [snip] power creep is definitely a thing, but it's not a sole reason for the skill gap, if anything it has helped a lot of more casual groups do the content that otherwise was unavailable to them.

Marto wrote: »

I think a better solution would be to make end-game requirements (in things like hard-mode and trifectas) less strict. So balance changes do not lead you to feel you need to change your entire build, and do not feel like you just had months of progress invalidated.

I'm making these suggestions because I think they'd make the game better for you.

No it wouldn't, this patch (U34) is the easiest patch ins eso history, yet people are still struggling, not because of elitism, gatekeeping or power creep, but because they don't seek out the knowledge that is already available to them. Also endgame community has gotten a lot smaller than say back in Elswyer patch. Less endgamers = less people capable of helping and teaching others. [snip] It has been proven countless time with hard data that U35 utterly fails in this aspect, furthermore making the game more confusing for newer players, making all pre-existing knowledge outdated, and guess where the new knowledge is gonna come from if endgame is not existent?

There are many examples where zos has successfully nerfed endgame without touching the lower-end: arkasis prebuff, thrassian, pale order + vamp toggle, bash weaving, introducing crit dmg cap, I could go on. Did this ever help the lower end? No, however keeping the endgame in check so it doesn't get too ridiculous is a good thing. But when zos makes sweeping changes to core combat in the effort of nerfing endgame, they will ALWAYS screw the lower-mid tier way more than the endgame, which is why proposed changes fail in this regard.

[edited for baiting & to remove quote]

doesurmindglow

Most of the numbers being used in this post are just flat wrong.

But the fact though you've come this deep into the PTS cycle without actually knowing the correct figures for the DPS reduction observed in testing by players in multiple scenarios suggests there is no point making a specific correction here.

You've made up your mind that the changes are minor and clearly won't consider any data to the contrary.

Ph1p

Marto wrote: »

Jabs/Sweeps received a 20% increase in cast speed, and a 21% reduction in damage. This leads to approximately a 1.2% DPS reduction. (2-3% if your weaving is good, 1-2% less if your weaving is poor)

Could you explain your calculation here? I'm not sure how a 20% decrease in channel time and a 21% decrease in damage lead to the conclusion that you lose only about 1.2% DPS.

• If you don't weave and just spam 10 sweeps in 10 seconds, you lose 21% damage, not even counting the effect of the Burning Light change.
• If you do weave, it now fits better within the global cooldown window as you said. Say your weaving average goes from 0.25 to 0.15 seconds because of that, speeding up your jabs/sweeps weaving and DPS by 8%. But you still do 21% less damage, have 33% less Burning Light damage, lose a significant amount of light attack DPS, and your DoTs were nerfed as well.

I'm not trying to be pedantic about numbers here and maybe I made a mistake somewhere. But a central part of your original argument was that the changes only lead to a small DPS loss of like 2%. If that was the case, most people wouldn't care. But almost every test on the PTS points to much higher changes, especially if you factor in the buffs to the trial dummy itself (which by the way feels like a sneaky way to disguise the magnitude of the impact).

This is now leading to a rebalancing of the content and likely further combat adjustments over multiple update cycles. Surely, going the "scalpel" route and slightly shifting HM and trifecta requirements away from the absolute top end could have accomplished your original balancing suggestion with far less disruption to the player base.

MECHA_STREISAND

Absolutely 100% agree with the OP, and have just said the same in another post.

Actually I think I 90% agree.. Personally, I don't care if overland mobs die in one hit, because that's not what I'm there for. I actually find it super annoying if I'm trying to get to a mundus stone for example and get knocked off my mount by some aimbot mobs. It'd be really annoying if I then had to spend a minute or two of my time killing them.

(Basically, if I want an overland challenge, I'll use an alt)

I think the fix is to let DPS creep happen, at least to a reasonable extent, so that the endgame content gets more accessible as people improve. Newer, harder content can then be released that presents a greater challenge.

pklemming

Marto wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Non-HM Veteran difficulty is much too easy, even if damage was nerfed 50% it would not be a challenge. The mechanics are greatly reduced, and DPS checks can be accomplished with a one-button rotation. Many players would be bored and end up quitting if this was the greatest challenge offered.

Does that not make all of this anger and frustration the community is experiencing even more ridiculous?

If you're saying power could be nerfed by 50% and content would still be difficult, that makes every claim of "the game is broken", "X is unplayable" and "Y class is gutted" seem like a huge overreaction.

If a 50% damage reduction means "99.99% of content is still not a challenge", it doesn't make sense for a 20% reduction to mean "The game is ruined".

I understand wanting harder content to chase. But I don't think it's reasonable for 99.99% of the game to be remain un-patchable and un-balanceable for the sake of HM.

FrankonPC wrote: »

The resto damage and heavy attack changes were not a small percent. The dot changes were not a small change per tick, just had similar effectiveness over a longer duration. Empower is not a small change. Dark cloak doing 150% more healing by doing less is not a small change. Jabs and sweeps have lost a substantial amount of dmg more than 2-5%, as well as having a staple animation changed. Flurry looks like you're spamming light attacks, crystal weapon was initially nerfed by 40%.

I'm not sure what patch notes you're referencing tbh

And what is the result of these changes, when aggregated and looked at from afar?

Dark cloak heals for 13% less than live.
Jabs/Sweeps deal 1.3% less DPS than live (The ability is now 20% faster and deals 21% less damage)

Changes like Burning light are more substantial, true.

If using Jabs/Sweeps, burning light deals 50-66% less DPS than live. (It will proc on 50-75% of casts instead of 100%, and deal 33% less damage when it does proc).
But burning light makes for a relatively small component of your parse. Meaning the impact on overall DPS is far lesser than than any changes to Jabs/Sweeps.

And what do the parses and other data show? Fairly similar results. Perhaps a bit lower, but not so much. And they keep increasing with each week, meaning a lot of the loss is players needing to get used to the timings.

And Update 35 is a big patch. Update 34 was a lot smaller (which is surprising, given the number of calculation changes that happened), and so were updates 33, 32, etc.

And either way, my argument is not that these changes don't matter so much. My argument that these changes shouldn't matter so much.

My argument is that ZOS should not design ESO in such a way that this matters so much.

Um, your numbers are massively off as you don't account for GCD recast time. Jabs/sweeps, for example does not do 1.3% less as you can only cast one skill in a GCD.

Marto

Ph1p wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Jabs/Sweeps received a 20% increase in cast speed, and a 21% reduction in damage. This leads to approximately a 1.2% DPS reduction. (2-3% if your weaving is good, 1-2% less if your weaving is poor)

Could you explain your calculation here? I'm not sure how a 20% decrease in channel time and a 21% decrease in damage lead to the conclusion that you lose only about 1.2% DPS.

• If you don't weave and just spam 10 sweeps in 10 seconds, you lose 21% damage, not even counting the effect of the Burning Light change.
• If you do weave, it now fits better within the global cooldown window as you said. Say your weaving average goes from 0.25 to 0.15 seconds because of that, speeding up your jabs/sweeps weaving and DPS by 8%. But you still do 21% less damage, have 33% less Burning Light damage, lose a significant amount of light attack DPS, and your DoTs were nerfed as well.

I'm not trying to be pedantic about numbers here and maybe I made a mistake somewhere. But a central part of your original argument was that the changes only lead to a small DPS loss of like 2%. If that was the case, most people wouldn't care. But almost every test on the PTS points to much higher changes, especially if you factor in the buffs to the trial dummy itself (which by the way feels like a sneaky way to disguise the magnitude of the impact).

This is now leading to a rebalancing of the content and likely further combat adjustments over multiple update cycles. Surely, going the "scalpel" route and slightly shifting HM and trifecta requirements away from the absolute top end could have accomplished your original balancing suggestion with far less disruption to the player base.

After double checking, I'll admit my math was off. I miscalculated LA timings when I first ran through numbers.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll do this with numbers from my own character. Although I also did the same calculation with base values.

On Live

Puncturing Strikes deals 13,644 Magic Damage. It has a duration of 1000ms, and a tickrate of 333ms.

If we assume the player has pretty average weaving skills, and can input the weave within 200ms, that will result on a total cast period of 1200ms. That means the skill is not being cast on GCD. There will be 50 casts within a 60s period.

13,644 x 50 = 682,200 damage/minute.
11,370 damage/second

Light attacks deal 3,029 damage

3029 x 50 = 151,450 damage/minute
2,524 damage/second

Aggregated, we're looking at 13,894 DPS

On PTS:

Puncturing Strikes should deal 10,778 Magic Damage. It has a duration of 800ms, and a tickrate of 400ms

Because the ability now lasts 800ms, on line with most other spammables, it can now be appropriately casted on GCD. There will be 60 casts within a 60s period.

10,778 x 60 = 646,725 damage/minute
10,778 damage/second. A 5.2% DPS reduction.

Light attacks should deal 2,241 damage

2,241 x 60 =
2,241 damage/second . An 11.2% DPS reduction

Aggregated, we're looking at 13,019 DPS. A total of 6.29% DPS reduction

K9002

Light attacks on live are affected by empower, which we have in the class kit. The light attack DPS becomes 3533 in that case and the live combined DPS is 14903, so the damage drop is 12.64%. This isn't even including Burning Light because as usual over the past month, you're constantly making arguments in bad faith and deliberately omitting information, ignoring wider context and lying about the numbers. Frankly you're not even worth responding to.

boi_anachronism_

[

Marto wrote: »

HEIIMS wrote: »

[snip]

[snip]

Go online, and look at what non-ESO communities are saying about Update 35. Look at what MMORPG forums and communities are saying, or what TES communities are saying.

The overall sentiment is that.

• The combat in ESO is bad.
• Longer duration DoTs and Buffs are good, because ESO's combat is way too fast already. High APM, high focus combat breaks immersion and makes you focus less on things like visuals, music, or animations.
• Making LA/HA weaker is good, because it means weaving is less impactful, and a player that never performs weaving is now a lot stronger, relative to end-game players.
• A 2-20% change in DPS is too little, and it feels like ZOS is taking one step forward and two steps back by not nerfing players enough.

Making heavy attacks weaker was NEVER good. It is one of the most widely used play styles of casual and newer players. That was a huge part of the kickback not light attacks.

Comparing what folks who play different mmos with styles widely different is disingenuous. The folks who play eso beyond normal are here because of the faster paced play style compared to other mmos, of course they are making wild assumptions, they don't like it. That's why they play other mmos. Why would I want eso to be like all other mmos?

Power creep is what allowed folks like me to break into higher level content because there was more power potential. With a cap of 140k getting to 90k feels achievable to folks at my level. With a cap of 100k a 90k dps seems miles away especially when the play style is so drastically altered. You will never truly nerf endgame the way that is being floated. They find a way around it because they have skills that are far and above what an average player can do, is better builds, medium weaving ect.

[edited to remove quote]

OBJnoob

HEIIMS wrote: »

[snip]

Marto wrote: »

[snip]

[snip]

@Marto I think you have a good point and a refreshing perspective whether I agree with all your points or not. However... Take it from me (someone who frequently pops into threads to tell everyone the world isn't on fire,) you're not gonna convince anyone. Some of these people have played the same character for years and they feel like their arm is being cut off.

I just think its funny, because me personally I'm a halfway casual player... The only thing I'm good enough at to mention is PvP... But I have so many characters, so many sets of gear in my bank, and so many mythic items... Nerfs and buffs don't bother me at all I just look at it as a chance to do something or play someone different for a few months.

Some of these people on the forums have really turned discussions about this video game into a theology session. What is morally right... How people should treat each other... What money making companies may owe their customers... I mean you might as well be talking politics for all the fervor and staunchness you'll find.

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[edited for baiting & to remove quote]

Ph1p

Marto wrote: »

Aggregated, we're looking at 13,019 DPS. A total of 6.29% DPS reduction

Thanks for adding more details here. But you really need to a full parse and not theoretical calculations to get to the full picture, plus there are some glaring omissions here:

• No one can do 60 skill casts with light attack weaving in 60 seconds. Look at really skilled players and you will see maybe 55-57. If you redo your calculations with 56, you will arrive at double the DPS loss you estimated, which only looks at jabs and LAs in isolation
• On top of that, @K9002 already mentioned the loss of Empower as a major source of light attack damage.
• Burning Light can account for over 9% of your total damage in a full rotation and has been massively reduced.
• Now add to that the impact on an actual rotation, where damage over time abilities have been reduced and sets nerfed.

All of that adds up to typically 20-25% of damage reduction, as has been attested across different builds and classes on the PTS. Yes, people might claw some of that back using different builds, but that in itself is a disruption for players as well - farming and golding out new sets and learning new builds again.

But the point is the following: You argued earlier that even a 20% loss is no big deal, when it only affects one tiny part of the game. But players at all levels struggle with something and if they lose 20% DPS they will struggle even more, so you can't just say that veteran hard modes are the only problem:

• Someone who is just good enough to solo base game world bosses now has to wait for someone else to join
• Someone who started vet DLC dungeons will find them harder than before
• Someone who just managed to clear vSS for the first time will find it more difficult to do that again
• Someone who is progressing towards vKA hard mode will find their whole group set back by weeks or even months

ZOS_Icy

Hi there,

Recently we've had to remove a few non-constructive and baiting posts, content that is against the Community Rules.

• Trolling or Baiting: The act of trolling is defined as something that is created for the intent to provoke conflict, shock others, or to elicit a strong negative or emotional reaction. It’s okay and very normal to disagree with others, and even to debate, but provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, etc. is never acceptable in the official The Elder Scrolls Online community. If you do not have something constructive or meaningful to add to a discussion, we strongly recommend you refrain from posting in that thread, and find another discussion to participate in instead. It is also not constructive or helpful to publicly call out others and accuse them of trolling, or call them a troll—please refrain from doing so. If you genuinely believe someone is trolling, please report the post or thread to the ESO Team, and leave it at that.

For further posts be sure to stay constructive and respectful to avoid thread derailment.

Thank you for understanding.

deleted221205-002626

a 20% loss in dps is fine.. tbh thats still 300% or more of what we had in the beginning. theyre need to drop it another 30% imo and remove battle spirit... then tweak vet dungeons and trials etc.. done

Ghaleb

sinnereso wrote: »

a 20% loss in dps is fine.. tbh thats still 300% or more of what we had in the beginning. theyre need to drop it another 30% imo and remove battle spirit... then tweak vet dungeons and trials etc.. done

I slowly feel like Groundhog Day here…

Yes, today there is a lot way more DPS in the game than in the beginning. But you also didn’t have trials vDSR or vRG, where today’s DPS is required.

Your argument sounds like an odd thing my mother always said that a loaf of bread only cost 15 cents in the past…

Her’s was misleading and not considering development. Your’s is neither.

boi_anachronism_

Ghaleb wrote: »

sinnereso wrote: »

a 20% loss in dps is fine.. tbh thats still 300% or more of what we had in the beginning. theyre need to drop it another 30% imo and remove battle spirit... then tweak vet dungeons and trials etc.. done

I slowly feel like Groundhog Day here…

Yes, today there is a lot way more DPS in the game than in the beginning. But you also didn’t have trials vDSR or vRG, where today’s DPS is required.

Your argument sounds like an odd thing my mother always said that a loaf of bread only cost 15 cents in the past…

Her’s was misleading and not considering development. Your’s is neither.

You did not have things like 8 second wipe mechanics a few years ago like vrg metors. You didn't have massive dps checks and you didn't have adds like bannermen that one shot your group unless you kill them quickly. When hm craglorn trials were the hardest content in the game that dps level was acceptable. That just isn't the reality anymore because content was created around what was possible at the time it was introduced. 50k was bomb a few years ago. If a group went into vrg now with everyone doing 50k it would be a 5hr shlog even if they could clear... And that's a big if.

Folks are thinking if we keep nerfing dps suddenly end game prog groups will take everyone. That's just a fantasy. You will just need to work harder, parse more, know mechs better and be closer to the tippy top of the meta.

Necrotech_Master

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Ghaleb wrote: »

sinnereso wrote: »

a 20% loss in dps is fine.. tbh thats still 300% or more of what we had in the beginning. theyre need to drop it another 30% imo and remove battle spirit... then tweak vet dungeons and trials etc.. done

I slowly feel like Groundhog Day here…

Yes, today there is a lot way more DPS in the game than in the beginning. But you also didn’t have trials vDSR or vRG, where today’s DPS is required.

Your argument sounds like an odd thing my mother always said that a loaf of bread only cost 15 cents in the past…

Her’s was misleading and not considering development. Your’s is neither.

You did not have things like 8 second wipe mechanics a few years ago like vrg metors. You didn't have massive dps checks and you didn't have adds like bannermen that one shot your group unless you kill them quickly. When hm craglorn trials were the hardest content in the game that dps level was acceptable. That just isn't the reality anymore because content was created around what was possible at the time it was introduced. 50k was bomb a few years ago. If a group went into vrg now with everyone doing 50k it would be a 5hr shlog even if they could clear... And that's a big if.

Folks are thinking if we keep nerfing dps suddenly end game prog groups will take everyone. That's just a fantasy. You will just need to work harder, parse more, know mechs better and be closer to the tippy top of the meta.

was the period where 50k considered extremely good from before they had the trial dummy? because 40-50k on a 6 mil is still considered "god tier" dps, but its the equivalent of 100-120k on the trial dummy

thats why i usually prefer testing on the 3 mil dummy, or on WBs to get my numbers during a realistic scenario, if you can hit 30-45k on a WB solo, then you can sure hit harder when in a group running additional buffs/debuffs

Ksariyu

For the most part, I agree a lot with the general concepts you present in the OP, and I appreciate when someone can look at the game from an outsiders perspective, which a lot of people on these forums forget about. Really I think the only place you shot yourself in the foot was putting specifics after urging people to stop looking at the specifics. That said, I agree that one needs to zoom out from the numbers and statistics and really look at the design as a whole, and gauge not just if combat is balanced mathematically but whether or not its fun (Right now we're kind of in a bad middle area).
To answer your questions:
1. I think having an extra layer of challenge is cool. I'm the type of person who likes to really dig into something and get better at it over time, so I'm okay with having harder versions of the same content. That said, the content has to actually be fun to play, and right now I don't find trials to be all that fun.
2. A sledgehammer change is one that either changes an mechanic (i.e. Empower) or one that significantly changes the speed or potency of an ability (i.e. double-length DoTs, though even a 50% increase would be big). I'm okay with sledgehammer changes as long as they stay on the PTS long enough to actually properly consider and address player feedback. Things like the Basic Attack test they did a couple years back, even if the changes themselves were poorly received, are how they should test big changes like the ones presented in U35.
3. A scalpel change is one that modifies some stat by, we'll say less than 5%. These changes fix a player's ability to do very specific things, like say modifying Volley to just out-damage the healing of Springs (As a very random and generic example).
4. No, not really. I'd much rather see buffs to the floor (Oakensoul I believe was a great addition in theory, but a paywalled grind isn't the best place to put it).

francesinhalover

The problem isnt hard mode, its the rewards stuck Behind hard mode.

If skins like dro m athra were vet only reward 90% of players wouldn't care at all about hard mode.
Same applies to skins like the one from scalecaller peak, beast personality etc