New Mara's balm "fix" does nothing at all to address the issue with this set

React

We've just been informed that the "fix" for mara's balm, which has released on console and will release tomorrow on PC, is that the tooltip value has been halved down to 951 base. This means that in PVP it will proc for about 500 BASE healing (this scales up with every healing modifier you can think of in the game) on every instance of the proc, and when the purge procs every effect it removes will heal you for a base 500HP.

The issue with Mara's balm was/is not the value of the heal. It is the fact that the set does not have a cooldown. This has been illustrated numerous times by many experienced players. Without adding a 1 second cooldown to the heal portion MINIMUM, the set will continue to be absurdly broken.

In addition to the lack of a cooldown, the proc condition itself is misunderstood by many people. While it states "Whenever a negative effect is removed from you", it actually also includes negative effects being re-applied, expiring, or failing to be applied to you. Some examples:

• When a status effect is re-applied before expiring, it procs the heal.
• When two or more players are applying the same effect and overwriting eachother, it will proc the heal on every instance of this.
• When a set like night mothers gaze refreshes on instances of crit damage before it expires, every refresh will proc the heal.
• When a player is snared by something like the 70% snare from eruption, every attempt to apply a lesser snare to the player will proc the heal as eruption overwrites and "removes" those snares
• When a blockable stun is cast on a player who is blocking, the failure of the ability to stun the player will proc the heal as the "stun state" is removed from the player.
• When abilities like caltrops, eruption, or jabs re-apply their snares, the heal will proc on every re-application.
• When a player breaks free or uses a snare immunity, it will proc the heal.
• When ANY negative effect you can possible think of expires, it will proc the heal.

I hope this help to illustrate how many instances of the heal you can potentially have EVERY SINGLE SECOND from this set. But if that isn't enough, I want to provide some visual context.

Below I will link a video of a player tanking while wearing mara's balm. The healing numbers can be seen to the right of his character, and most of the time the mara's procs are coming in so rapidly you cannot even count them. Also, I encourage you to skip to 3:40 in this video. The player gets stunned and does not break free for 5 full seconds while 15 or more people and 5 or more guards are hitting him. He also has the guard puncture debuff on him, which is +30% damage taken (it is a unique debuff, not major fracture). His health does not drop below 90%. He then proceeds to send a few messages and check his map while continuing to be hit by 15 people. Keep in mind that through most of these fights, he isn't even blocking. He is just standing there and mara's is not allowing his HP to drop below 100%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf0thgK-DDk

I just don't know what to say at this point. I do not understand why the developers will not listen to the playerbase about this set. It was reported well over a month before the patch went live, and we have provided so many examples of why it is broken and so many suggestions as to what could be done to fix it.

EDIT - I wanted to add one thing to this post that I forgot to mention. On PC NA since they replaced the servers, we have had overall very good performance with almost no lag at all. Since Update 35 launched, we have seen a severe drop in performance in cyrodiil, to the point where during prime time there is consistent ability delays of 2-3 seconds. I would not be surprised at all if this is due specifically to the number of calculations mara's balm is causing. The amount of players using this set is extremely high on PC NA, and the nature of the set must be causing a huge number of calculations per second on any player wearing it.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Stratforge

Broken set needs a real fix not a minor adjustment. Excellent video evidence.

Drauz

Thanks for the explaining, hope they fix this broken set soon

Battle_Hymn

Did you really expect anything less than this HA "nerf"?

I am beginning to think this is all a ploy to drive away the PvP crowd to such levels that they then turn around and say it's not worth fixing PvP.

Some of the design decisions over the past 18 months are truly staggering.

VixxVexx

That'll be at least another 2 weeks at their speed. Pain.

Holycannoli

Yes it needs a cooldown.

Just like Nocturnal's Ploy got a cooldown bump to 15 seconds. It needed it too and now nobody even talks about the set anymore.

TheGreatBlackBear

Holycannoli wrote: »

Yes it needs a cooldown.

Just like Nocturnal's Ploy got a cooldown bump to 15 seconds. It needed it too and now nobody even talks about the set anymore.

So the end result is another useless set and yet another piece of gear to destroy. I'm not sure that making Mara's share the same fate is good. Then what even was the point of introducing the set?

Oakenaxe

Good post with good explanations and examples. I totally agree with you.

I just don't know what to say at this point. I do not understand why the developers will not listen to the playerbase about this set. It was reported well over a month before the patch went live, and we have provided so many examples of why it is broken and so many suggestions as to what could be done to fix it.

- This sums up my feelings as well. I really hope we get a response from the dev team on this issue.

React

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Yes it needs a cooldown.

Just like Nocturnal's Ploy got a cooldown bump to 15 seconds. It needed it too and now nobody even talks about the set anymore.

So the end result is another useless set and yet another piece of gear to destroy. I'm not sure that making Mara's share the same fate is good. Then what even was the point of introducing the set?

If mara's balm has a one second cooldown on the HOT portion, it is still arguably the strongest defensive set in the entire game. Robes of the hist is currently one of the strongest defensive sets, and with a one second cooldown mara's would still be significantly stronger than hist. Because of how mara's works, with a one second cooldown you are basically gaining a 500 (but realistically 600-750 after scaling) HPS heal over time all the time - with a FULL purge/burst heal once every 15 seconds.

This would be completely different than nocturnal's ploy - that set fundamentally broke the buff & counterpart debuff system ESO has. Nocturnal's needed to be put into a place where it was useless, or it needed to be scrapped entirely and replaced. If a dispel was added to the game, it would need to be on something like one morph of negate (i.e one morph would instantly remove all short duration temporary effects from everything it hits when cast)

SaffronCitrusflower

React wrote: »

We've just been informed that the "fix" for mara's balm, which has released on console and will release tomorrow on PC, is that the tooltip value has been halved down to 951 base. This means that in PVP it will proc for about 500 BASE healing (this scales up with every healing modifier you can think of in the game) on every instance of the proc, and when the purge procs every effect it removes will heal you for a base 500HP.

The issue with Mara's balm was/is not the value of the heal. It is the fact that the set does not have a cooldown. This has been illustrated numerous times by many experienced players. Without adding a 1 second cooldown to the heal portion MINIMUM, the set will continue to be absurdly broken.

In addition to the lack of a cooldown, the proc condition itself is misunderstood by many people. While it states "Whenever a negative effect is removed from you", it actually also includes negative effects being re-applied, expiring, or failing to be applied to you. Some examples:

• When a status effect is re-applied before expiring, it procs the heal.
• When two or more players are applying the same effect and overwriting eachother, it will proc the heal on every instance of this.
• When a set like night mothers gaze refreshes on instances of crit damage before it expires, every refresh will proc the heal.
• When a player is snared by something like the 70% snare from eruption, every attempt to apply a lesser snare to the player will proc the heal as eruption overwrites and "removes" those snares
• When a blockable stun is cast on a player who is blocking, the failure of the ability to stun the player will proc the heal as the "stun state" is removed from the player.
• When abilities like caltrops, eruption, or jabs re-apply their snares, the heal will proc on every re-application.
• When a player breaks free or uses a snare immunity, it will proc the heal.
• When ANY negative effect you can possible think of expires, it will proc the heal.

I hope this help to illustrate how many instances of the heal you can potentially have EVERY SINGLE SECOND from this set. But if that isn't enough, I want to provide some visual context.

Below I will link a video of a player tanking while wearing mara's balm. The healing numbers can be seen to the right of his character, and most of the time the mara's procs are coming in so rapidly you cannot even count them. Also, I encourage you to skip to 3:40 in this video. The player gets stunned and does not break free for 5 full seconds while 15 or more people and 5 or more guards are hitting him. He also has the guard puncture debuff on him, which is +30% damage taken (it is a unique debuff, not major fracture). His health does not drop below 90%. He then proceeds to send a few messages and check his map while continuing to be hit by 15 people. Keep in mind that through most of these fights, he isn't even blocking. He is just standing there and mara's is not allowing his HP to drop below 100%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf0thgK-DDk

I just don't know what to say at this point. I do not understand why the developers will not listen to the playerbase about this set. It was reported well over a month before the patch went live, and we have provided so many examples of why it is broken and so many suggestions as to what could be done to fix it.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Thank you for posting this. The disconnect between player feedback and ZOS is just way too broken too.

SaffronCitrusflower

Battle_Hymn wrote: »

Did you really expect anything less than this HA "nerf"?

I am beginning to think this is all a ploy to drive away the PvP crowd to such levels that they then turn around and say it's not worth fixing PvP.

Some of the design decisions over the past 18 months are truly staggering.

I tend to agree with this thinking. They just keep doing things to make Cyrodiil less and less enjoyable, and they're doing it with full knowledge and player feedback with examples of how they are breaking the zone.

Holycannoli

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

So the end result is another useless set and yet another piece of gear to destroy. I'm not sure that making Mara's share the same fate is good. Then what even was the point of introducing the set?

I disagree as I think we have way too many sets. I'm all for nerfing it to near uselessness and getting back to U34's higher damage, higher death count PvP.

TheGreatBlackBear

React wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Yes it needs a cooldown.

Just like Nocturnal's Ploy got a cooldown bump to 15 seconds. It needed it too and now nobody even talks about the set anymore.

So the end result is another useless set and yet another piece of gear to destroy. I'm not sure that making Mara's share the same fate is good. Then what even was the point of introducing the set?

If mara's balm has a one second cooldown on the HOT portion, it is still arguably the strongest defensive set in the entire game. Robes of the hist is currently one of the strongest defensive sets, and with a one second cooldown mara's would still be significantly stronger than hist. Because of how mara's works, with a one second cooldown you are basically gaining a 500 (but realistically 600-750 after scaling) HPS heal over time all the time - with a FULL purge/burst heal once every 15 seconds.

This would be completely different than nocturnal's ploy - that set fundamentally broke the buff & counterpart debuff system ESO has. Nocturnal's needed to be put into a place where it was useless, or it needed to be scrapped entirely and replaced. If a dispel was added to the game, it would need to be on something like one morph of negate (i.e one morph would instantly remove all short duration temporary effects from everything it hits when cast)

Maras and Nocturnals were clearly designed to be a counterplay to each other. You can't demand a viable counter to Mara be gutted then screech that Maras is OP. Mara will eventually be given a CD and end result will be as I said two useless sets.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Dear ZOS,

It is perfectly okay to take a mulligan once in a while. Just say, our bad, delete the set, and move on (should have done that with Dark Convergence a while back). I mean, you could probably take a mulligan for U35 across the board, but if its easier to start small, we get it.

Seriously, this set is beyond broken and beyond repair. I get the idea of a one second cooldown, but that basically just turns it into a health recovery stat. Not worth it at that point. Delete and move on!

React

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

React wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Yes it needs a cooldown.

Just like Nocturnal's Ploy got a cooldown bump to 15 seconds. It needed it too and now nobody even talks about the set anymore.

So the end result is another useless set and yet another piece of gear to destroy. I'm not sure that making Mara's share the same fate is good. Then what even was the point of introducing the set?

If mara's balm has a one second cooldown on the HOT portion, it is still arguably the strongest defensive set in the entire game. Robes of the hist is currently one of the strongest defensive sets, and with a one second cooldown mara's would still be significantly stronger than hist. Because of how mara's works, with a one second cooldown you are basically gaining a 500 (but realistically 600-750 after scaling) HPS heal over time all the time - with a FULL purge/burst heal once every 15 seconds.

This would be completely different than nocturnal's ploy - that set fundamentally broke the buff & counterpart debuff system ESO has. Nocturnal's needed to be put into a place where it was useless, or it needed to be scrapped entirely and replaced. If a dispel was added to the game, it would need to be on something like one morph of negate (i.e one morph would instantly remove all short duration temporary effects from everything it hits when cast)

Maras and Nocturnals were clearly designed to be a counterplay to each other. You can't demand a viable counter to Mara be gutted then screech that Maras is OP. Mara will eventually be given a CD and end result will be as I said two useless sets.

Nocturnal's ploy does nothing whatsoever to counter Mara's, and Mara's is equally strong regardless of how strong nocturnal's ploy is. I do not think you are understanding how Mara's functions currently, despite the fact that I outlined how many procs per second are possible in my initial post.

Again, with a one second cooldown on the heal AND with the current base heal value of 951, Mara's is probably the strongest defensive set in the game. Saying that it would be useless with a one second cooldown is either dishonest or just oblivious.

EldritchSun

Stratforge wrote: »

Broken set needs a real fix not a minor adjustment. Excellent video evidence.

They need not to be released when their broken-ess is noticed by ANYONE on PTS.

Holycannoli

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Maras and Nocturnals were clearly designed to be a counterplay to each other. You can't demand a viable counter to Mara be gutted then screech that Maras is OP. Mara will eventually be given a CD and end result will be as I said two useless sets.

If Mara's was working how it was theoretically designed it wouldn't be so bad, but it procs off way too many things and with no cooldown to curb it.

In theory it sounds like they wanted it to heal you whenever you purged or had an effect removed. In practice, the way the game works it counts too many conditions as "a negative effect is removed from you".

It's sort of like Plaguebreak proccing off dying. Probably wasn't intended that way but that's how the game works.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Holycannoli wrote: »

TheGreatBlackBear wrote: »

Maras and Nocturnals were clearly designed to be a counterplay to each other. You can't demand a viable counter to Mara be gutted then screech that Maras is OP. Mara will eventually be given a CD and end result will be as I said two useless sets.

If Mara's was working how it was theoretically designed it wouldn't be so bad, but it procs off way too many things and with no cooldown to curb it.

In theory it sounds like they wanted it to heal you whenever you purged or had an effect removed. In practice, the way the game works it counts too many conditions as "a negative effect is removed from you".

It's sort of like Plaguebreak proccing off dying. Probably wasn't intended that way but that's how the game works.

I think that is 100% correct. Still doesn't change the fact that this set is beyond broken, and that the amount of calculations this set must perform to operate must be staggering. Might be good in theory, but the execution was a complete miss.

If the game parameters don't allow them to make the set function how they want, then it should be removed.

jcasini222ub17_ESO

If I notice a Templar still using jabs in a keep battle I actively move toward them, engage and then focused other targets hoping they will continue to parse me (bonus if they have a weak poison equipped). This is from a Templar wearing mara’s. I don’t carrying jabs on my bar any longer (go figure).

No gear set should be this stupidly broken with respect to one of the original classes full stop. My playtime even with a mara’s set up has dropped significantly. They really managed to suck nearly all the fun out of a melee-plar.

ForumBully

A proc heal with no cooldown...how many times must this same problem be introduced by the developers before the lesson sinks in?

mandricus

It's impossible that they does not know how this set is broken, after all the discussions on the forum, all pointing to the fact that the set does not have a cooldown. It was clear after week 3 of PTS. So, at this point let's be realistic: this "fix" that does not fix anything is intentional. So now the question is: why are they deliberately doing this? What is the real intention?

Holycannoli

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I think that is 100% correct. Still doesn't change the fact that this set is beyond broken, and that the amount of calculations this set must perform to operate must be staggering. Might be good in theory, but the execution was a complete miss.

If the game parameters don't allow them to make the set function how they want, then it should be removed.

I have no problem with removing it. Nocturnal's Ploy was nerfed to a point where it's almost like removing it. Do the same with Mara's.

If not, add a cooldown. Not one second although even that is better than it is currently. It's too strong in PvP and too taxing on the servers in large battles with everyone wearing it. Noone will ever convince me that the performance issues and crashes with U35 aren't because a lot of people are causing unlimited Mara's Balm calculations all at once.

React

Holycannoli wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I think that is 100% correct. Still doesn't change the fact that this set is beyond broken, and that the amount of calculations this set must perform to operate must be staggering. Might be good in theory, but the execution was a complete miss.

If the game parameters don't allow them to make the set function how they want, then it should be removed.

I have no problem with removing it. Nocturnal's Ploy was nerfed to a point where it's almost like removing it. Do the same with Mara's.

If not, add a cooldown. Not one second although even that is better than it is currently. It's too strong in PvP and too taxing on the servers in large battles with everyone wearing it. Noone will ever convince me that the performance issues and crashes with U35 aren't because a lot of people aren't causing unlimited Mara's Balm calculations all at once.

I added that to the original post, but I strongly agree that the performance issues we have seen since u35 launched on PC NA are likely being caused by maras. I've played most nights since the patch dropped, and it has seemingly gotten worse the further into the patch we have gotten (which would be synonymous with more people acquiring and equipping the set). Unless it's the longer effect durations that are hurting the performance, this set seems like it would be the obvious offender.

MetallicMonk

Everyone giving you the right answers from the start and you still get it wrong, impressive really zos.

ForumBully

MetallicMonk wrote: »

Everyone giving you the right answers from the start and you still get it wrong, impressive really zos.

When they do things like this it just seems petty and spiteful. I genuinely think they just don't like having bad ideas pointed out and have tantrums.

Jaraal

We told them all this for six weeks before it was released to live.

They didn’t listen then, and they won’t listen now. So it’s pointless for us to keep repeating ourselves. We just have to accept that this broken meta will be a part of Cyrodiil for the foreseeable future.

ForumBully

Jaraal wrote: »

We told them all this for six weeks before it was released to live.

They didn’t listen then, and they won’t listen now. So it’s pointless for us to keep repeating ourselves. We just have to accept that this broken meta will be a part of Cyrodiil for the foreseeable future.

Maybe if we post about how much we love it, they'll take it away?

SkaraMinoc

Mara's nerf will have more of an impact in battlegrounds.

In Cyrodiil, Soothing Shield + Mara's Balm * 0.5 will still outheal any damage, assuming no DoT siege.



Sorc tank mitigation hits 99%.



Mara's Balm gives you time to recover from crowd control (stuns, Javelin, etc) because there's no cooldown.

You don't get that with other selfish heal sets.

Jaraal

I held on to all the pieces I got from rewards instead of selling or deconstructing. I’m glad I did now, because if this is their “fix,” then it’s time to join the immortal party.

See you on the battlefield!

Jaraal

ForumBully wrote: »

MetallicMonk wrote: »

Everyone giving you the right answers from the start and you still get it wrong, impressive really zos.

When they do things like this it just seems petty and spiteful. I genuinely think they just don't like having bad ideas pointed out and have tantrums.

Sometimes clues to the mindset can be gleaned by observing social media and the light in which players are portrayed.

selig_fay

I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of adding a cooldown to this set. This will literally kill him, like all tank sets that get killed, because people were able to achieve good damage and indestructibility for them.
There is another way. Add -% damage to players. Then it will make many think.