The Gold Road Chapter – which includes the Scribing system – and Update 42 is now available to test on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/
Update 35 combat overhaul, a postmortem (at least for endgame PvE)
f047ys3v3n
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It's been 5 months now. Frankly, it has probably taken that long to really get the full effect minus any temporary negatives that always occur when you make a major change to combat. I think we can now certainly agree that the update 35 combat changes are an unmitigated failure.
1) On their own stated terms
2) In terms of player response
3) In terms of build variety
4) In terms of the playability of a meta build in actual content.
For those who don't remember, the primary changes in update 35 were to:
1) Massive reduction in light attack and heavy attack damage as well as multipliers to this.
2) Increase in the duration of some DOTs and adjustment of the base DOT / spamable multiplier from a DOT = 1.5x the damage of a spamable to a DOT = 2x the damage of a spamable.
3) A rescaling so that there is little difference between one DOT and another in damage.
The reasoning for all this was the same as always. Lower the dps ceiling, raise the floor. Or as they put it:
The result of course was of course the opposite. It significantly raise the ceiling while dropping both the floor and probably all but the top 1% of DD's like an anvil. More than half of all raid groups have disbanded and ZOS lost something like 15% of the games general population (according to Steam Charts). It's bad and I'm here to analyze a little about specifically why.
First, why the changes failed by their own stated terms:
Dps is clearly up at the top end and way down for everyone else. The reason for this is simple. The ratio of spamable to DOT damage was changed from 1.5x to 2x. This makes simpler spamable type builds, or builds that utilize fewer DOT's in order to have some utility such as a heal or shields less viable. Having a larger mix of DOT timings by adding 20sec ones also increases the difficulty of managing them all. Meanwhile, the absolute optimum damage with perfect DOT management is increased. Hence, 120k parses are now common. Ceiling raised, everything else less viable. Similarly, though bottom end players clearly had problems with or did not weave light attacks in, everybody from the middle on up did this fine. Nerfing them was a big nerf to the middle. Light and heavy attacks are, after all, the only damage skills on everyones bar.
Why the changes failed in terms of player response:
This is really two fold. Players always hate huge combat changes and re-learning the game to no obvious purpose. It's a naked waste of effort and that change over effort derails any progress in other areas such as currently running prog groups. This disrupts those social networks requiring yet more effort to re-form. The second half of this though is the changes themselves. In this case those changes ment a bigger weight on DOT heavy builds that do very poorly when things don't go perfectly in raid and also struggle with more mechanics heavy and mobile fights. "Fragile builds" as I tend to call them. Maybe enough dps to skip bridges in the final fight of vDSR but no ability to do a bridge if need be. Hence, this is what the invite to a simple vDSR farm run now looks like:
Yea, Mechanics need not apply because the difference between a build that can do mechanics and one that can't is massive.
Why changes failed in terms of build variety:
After making mag and stam the same thing and DOTs so vital your whole bar has to be them, what did you expect. Some DOT's are still slightly better than others. Some weapons and sets clearly better than others. It should not be a surprise there is less variety now than at most other times in the games history. Interesting, not so much. Well suited to a variety of content, not at all.
Speaking of actual content how are these builds at doing that:
Well, given most difficult hard mode content (especially 4man HM dungeons) goes better with the ability to do some damage at range, heal ones self, and sheild, not so well. If you run one of those builds, you will have a lot less damage than you did pre-update 35. The result is that a lot of proging on that type content got derailed. When you do 20% less damage than before it's a bit hard to progress further on stuff you have been working on. Plainly, more versatile DPS builds, those with heals, shields, and range are doing a lot less damage than before.
What should be done:
Obviously, the basic DOT and light / heavy changes should be reverted. They had exactly the opposite effects from what was desired. Also, high DOT damage multipliers are a generally terrible idea in a game with only 10 ability slots as poor choices quickly arise between build versatility and damage output. Beyond that, now that magic and stam have been unified work should be done to better balance them. Merging the damage and resource casting aspects of mag and stam into a single "power" pool and having the stam pool handle block, dodge, and sprint only would make this easier. Though, it might not be worth while from a changes just generally *** people off point of view. I suggested it back in 2015. It was right then and is still correct now if less appealing given the operatic balance misteps of the last year. Lastly, if you want to nerf top end dps, nerf group and personal buff strength. Keeping those things up is the major reason top groups are top. If you want to keep people from skipping mechanics like bridges, you might also want to make this impossible and not just require a bit more dps. Second bridge comes up and group wipes, now for instance. More dps people will find if it means skipping mechanics. They will find it no matter what.
1) On their own stated terms
2) In terms of player response
3) In terms of build variety
4) In terms of the playability of a meta build in actual content.
For those who don't remember, the primary changes in update 35 were to:
1) Massive reduction in light attack and heavy attack damage as well as multipliers to this.
2) Increase in the duration of some DOTs and adjustment of the base DOT / spamable multiplier from a DOT = 1.5x the damage of a spamable to a DOT = 2x the damage of a spamable.
3) A rescaling so that there is little difference between one DOT and another in damage.
The reasoning for all this was the same as always. Lower the dps ceiling, raise the floor. Or as they put it:
ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »Greetings!
.... This update brings a massive slew of balance adjustments all at once to hopefully reduce the need of large sweeping changes in subsequent updates, since some seemingly minor changes affect a huge part of the game’s combat. The main focuses in Update 35 are twofold: improving accessibility to the game’s combat by increasing the duration of outgoing ability effects (such as damage over time, buffs, and debuffs) and a continuation of the attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end. Let’s start by breaking apart some of the fundamental realities of ESO today.
The result of course was of course the opposite. It significantly raise the ceiling while dropping both the floor and probably all but the top 1% of DD's like an anvil. More than half of all raid groups have disbanded and ZOS lost something like 15% of the games general population (according to Steam Charts). It's bad and I'm here to analyze a little about specifically why.
First, why the changes failed by their own stated terms:
Dps is clearly up at the top end and way down for everyone else. The reason for this is simple. The ratio of spamable to DOT damage was changed from 1.5x to 2x. This makes simpler spamable type builds, or builds that utilize fewer DOT's in order to have some utility such as a heal or shields less viable. Having a larger mix of DOT timings by adding 20sec ones also increases the difficulty of managing them all. Meanwhile, the absolute optimum damage with perfect DOT management is increased. Hence, 120k parses are now common. Ceiling raised, everything else less viable. Similarly, though bottom end players clearly had problems with or did not weave light attacks in, everybody from the middle on up did this fine. Nerfing them was a big nerf to the middle. Light and heavy attacks are, after all, the only damage skills on everyones bar.
Why the changes failed in terms of player response:
This is really two fold. Players always hate huge combat changes and re-learning the game to no obvious purpose. It's a naked waste of effort and that change over effort derails any progress in other areas such as currently running prog groups. This disrupts those social networks requiring yet more effort to re-form. The second half of this though is the changes themselves. In this case those changes ment a bigger weight on DOT heavy builds that do very poorly when things don't go perfectly in raid and also struggle with more mechanics heavy and mobile fights. "Fragile builds" as I tend to call them. Maybe enough dps to skip bridges in the final fight of vDSR but no ability to do a bridge if need be. Hence, this is what the invite to a simple vDSR farm run now looks like:
Yea, Mechanics need not apply because the difference between a build that can do mechanics and one that can't is massive.
Why changes failed in terms of build variety:
After making mag and stam the same thing and DOTs so vital your whole bar has to be them, what did you expect. Some DOT's are still slightly better than others. Some weapons and sets clearly better than others. It should not be a surprise there is less variety now than at most other times in the games history. Interesting, not so much. Well suited to a variety of content, not at all.
Speaking of actual content how are these builds at doing that:
Well, given most difficult hard mode content (especially 4man HM dungeons) goes better with the ability to do some damage at range, heal ones self, and sheild, not so well. If you run one of those builds, you will have a lot less damage than you did pre-update 35. The result is that a lot of proging on that type content got derailed. When you do 20% less damage than before it's a bit hard to progress further on stuff you have been working on. Plainly, more versatile DPS builds, those with heals, shields, and range are doing a lot less damage than before.
What should be done:
Obviously, the basic DOT and light / heavy changes should be reverted. They had exactly the opposite effects from what was desired. Also, high DOT damage multipliers are a generally terrible idea in a game with only 10 ability slots as poor choices quickly arise between build versatility and damage output. Beyond that, now that magic and stam have been unified work should be done to better balance them. Merging the damage and resource casting aspects of mag and stam into a single "power" pool and having the stam pool handle block, dodge, and sprint only would make this easier. Though, it might not be worth while from a changes just generally *** people off point of view. I suggested it back in 2015. It was right then and is still correct now if less appealing given the operatic balance misteps of the last year. Lastly, if you want to nerf top end dps, nerf group and personal buff strength. Keeping those things up is the major reason top groups are top. If you want to keep people from skipping mechanics like bridges, you might also want to make this impossible and not just require a bit more dps. Second bridge comes up and group wipes, now for instance. More dps people will find if it means skipping mechanics. They will find it no matter what.
I am mostly pleased with the current state of ESO. Please do continue to ban cheaters though and you guys have to find out who is duping gold and how because the economy is currently non-functional.
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kojou✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭There are so many good ways the stated goals could have been achieved without breaking combat or at least with out turning it on its head. There have been so many posts bringing up good alternatives as well. Unfortunately the developers didn't choose any of them.
I play the game to run dungeons with my friends not farm gear for a new meta or practice a new rotation on the stupid dummy. it might be selfishness on My part but I think people like me are who the game should be balanced around. We have jobs, money, and we like playing with other people and having communities. Unfortunately we also have limited play time, so if I have to do something I don’t like to do (farm gear and dummy practice) for the limited time that I have, I am going to choose to do something else (ie, not play ESO). Don’t get me wrong, a little practice to get timings correct from time to time is fine, but when I have to re-evaluate my entire build over and over again I get annoyed and just want to log out or not log in to begin with.
My favorite periods in the history of ESO are when DPS rotations were simple enough you could keep it up while doing mechanics (and mechanics mattered) and when the combat team didn’t make large changes that forced me to relearn everything. I wish they would find a balance in combat that would be good enough to just leave it alone and then address bugs, inconsistencies, and outliers.Playing since beta...11 -
KlauthWarthog✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭f047ys3v3n wrote: »The result of course was of course the opposite.
Yup, and because of that, I am fairly confident they are going to do yet another massive overhaul in the future.Edited by KlauthWarthog on December 11, 2022 5:48AM8 -
MidniteOwl1913✭✭✭✭✭
✭I think that ZOS goals for U35 were met. They just weren't the stated ones. Remember that on the PTS at first, the changes were much much worse. I think they knew full well what they were doing when they nerfed damage and healing into the ground. What I don't know is why. Also, U36 didn't have a sniff of repairing the damage of U35. At this point, I don't think they will revert any of the changes, or tell us why they made them.
PS5/NA7 -
CGPsaint✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »At this point, I don't think they will revert any of the changes, or tell us why they made them.
We could just ask them during the Q&A...
"Some enjoy bringing grief to others. They remind M'aiq of mudcrabs—horrible creatures, with no redeeming qualities."19 -
Zodiarkslayer✭✭✭✭✭
✭MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »At this point, I don't think they will revert any of the changes, or tell us why they made them.
We could just ask them during the Q&A...
🤣🤣🤣read, think and write.In that order.3 -
Armanie✭✭✭f047ys3v3n wrote: »The ratio of spamable to DOT damage was changed from 1.5x to 2x. This makes simpler spamable type builds, or builds that utilize fewer DOT's in order to have some utility such as a heal or shields less viable. Having a larger mix of DOT timings by adding 20sec ones also increases the difficulty of managing them all. Meanwhile, the absolute optimum damage with perfect DOT management is increased.
This is why I'll never be able to do high DPS. I just can't manage all those dots with different timers.0 -
I'm surprised that the Devs made the same mistakes in mmos regardless of the studio.
One thing you can see left and right is the change of systems because it made their job, in this case balancing, easier.
Its understandable from a Dev point of view (I'm engineer so I may have a idea of inventing stuff...) but made it the product really better or just your job ?
If you look at the changes, it was an attempt to made multiple changes to cut down the balance workload, most ppl are not aware that the "live Team" is normally really small. Around 10-15 ppl are common because this team just cost money, the content team on the other side sell something.
Also Devs dont sit in a dark room and think how to made the game worse, some stuff you just cant do because the workload is to big, have no priority or even the analysts say "with option b we make more money..." you just cant do what ever you want.
But this changes smell a bit lazy, its a cheap attempt to eradicate the issues with weaving, dps gap, balancing between mag and stam und also to comfort the analysts beloved casuals.
Maybe worth to rething this changes, if they really made the game better or just your day?3 -
xylena_lazarow✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭U35 killed every PvP playstyle that isn't either ball groups or the zergers haplessly chasing them.PC/NA || CP/Cyro || RIP soft caps2 -
f047ys3v3n✭✭✭✭✭
✭Did a few vCR+3 runs looking for some already gold Rele jewelry to spare me the expense of golding out sticker book recons. [snip] If you need an excuse for the fact that would make it free to make purple jewelry recieved in vCR+2 recon gold, just make it drop gold as well. Is it really a problem that people doing only +2 would get gold. Every other trial drops it in straight vet with no HM at all.
Aside from that, it was interesting to be doing +3 for the first time since update 35. Two big issues I noticed in the post U35 world and keep in mind, these runs were with a much better group than some I have cleared with in the past. About half these folks were Griffin Hearts and all but one had a clear. I've helped prog groups clear before that had no GH's and 4+ with no clear.
The first issue I noticed was downstairs getting the crystals done. This was sketchy both runs. The bottom line is that when damage needs to be done quickly, it is lower than post U35 by a lot. DOT's may be stronger which combined with more buffs on the dummy makes parses higher, but because light attacks are so weak now, killing low health stuff quickly in real content with mechanics happening is a lot harder now. I used to get 3 crystals down before the first port up most of the time running pfgd / medusa. Now, with higher dps gear (pwod / OW) and running 7k less health to be able to run that gear, I never get a 3rd crystal down. Bottom line is that when your not in a situation where you have a good bit of time to ramp up damage, damage is substantially lower than before. We had portals occasionally fail on both +3 runs despite experienced portal folks. If anything goes wrong such as somebody being late down or real bad luck with which crystals have orbs and where the chains are, the portal might fail. There is not a lot of room for things not going perfect. In the past, almost always I would finish before second jump up phase, Now, only one of my portals finished before.
The second issue I found was that the yet again nerfed heals were really just insufficient for the amount of damage in vCR+3. In both runs there were deaths that weren't really mechanics, just damage outpacing heals. Too many overlapping things your supposed to heal though but the heals just arn't strong enough any more. This happened a lot. The healers were good healers. Heals are just hella weak now.
Overall, it was pretty sad to see such strong experienced groups having problems. Only one of the runs even cleared in the end and that was 11min and not very smooth. Certainly, any groups proging this before Update 35 must have felt pretty bad. They didn't have a snowballs chance after. The difference is quite substantial.
[edited for bashing]Edited by ZOS_Icy on December 25, 2022 7:20PMI am mostly pleased with the current state of ESO. Please do continue to ban cheaters though and you guys have to find out who is duping gold and how because the economy is currently non-functional.4 -
f047ys3v3n✭✭✭✭✭
✭ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »
As such, coming in Update 35, we are increasing the duration of many of these effects in game, primarily damage over time, buffs, and debuffs. By extending the duration, we hope to reduce the stress of many combat rotations, allowing for you to focus more on the action in front of you rather than the action of juggling buffs and debuffs on your ability bar and making the game far more accessible.
Common dots on a meta DK hybrid build:
Degeneration: 24 sec
Stampede: 15 sec (+a weird hang duration cast due to the charge that dosen't weave smoothly)
Carve: 12 sec
Eruption: 18 sec
Engulfing flames: 20 sec
Venimous claw: 24 sec
Barbed trap: 20 sec
flames of oblivion: 15 sec
That's 8 DOT's with 5 different durations
Dots on a sorc magica build trying (unsuccessfully) to stay ranged:
Volatile familiar: 20 sec
Daedric prey: 6 sec
Unstable wall: 10 sec
Degeneration: 24 sec
Barbed trap: 20 sec
Lightning flood: 10 sec
hurricane: 20 sec
That's 7 DOT's with 4 different timers
I'm not sure exactly why Gilliam thinks longer DOT's are easier to manage. They are no different. What is difficult to manage and has you staring at bars instead of mechanics is a bunch of different timers for each DOT. Having 5 DOT's with all 10 sec timers would be easy. Lay them all down one after the other, bar swap, count 5 spamables on the front bar, swap and re-apply them all in a row again. No need to even have timers up. It is a bunch of different durations, not the length of the DOT that makes it hard to manage. So far as I can see, we now have more different durations than before because he made a bunch, but not all of the common 10sec dots longer adding new durations. It's harder, not easier. Look at that meta DK build for Akatosh sake. 5 different freaking durations to manage not including your potion cool down which is a 6th. Try not staring at your bar for that one.
What is most infuriating about this mess, is that we were right here before. Just a couple years ago. DOT dominated builds with a bunch of different durations, a high DOT / spam-able multiplier, and lower light attack damage. The devs at that time wanted simplify things to shrink the dps gap (don't they always). In a series of patches they increased light attack damage, brought more DOT's to a standard 10 sec length, and lowered the DOT / Spam-able multiplier (I remember that being the order of changes). Basically, it worked and we have had that formula for several years now. I do not understand why Gilliam would think reversing this would have the opposite effect from what it was before. He was playing the game at that time. I can't imagine he doesn't remember each change or how wildly unsuccessful the brief, one patch, experiment with uber DOT builds was.
I am mostly pleased with the current state of ESO. Please do continue to ban cheaters though and you guys have to find out who is duping gold and how because the economy is currently non-functional.2