Do "Heavy Attack" builds deserve that high damage?

Billium813

Braffin wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Remember U35 where those top LA builds lost like 25% of their total DPS?

I also remember when it was initially being celebrated at the time by the players who would eventually throw a tantrum over a small 3-6% nerf.

Yeah, can't wait for them raging as soon as the real "nerfs" come in, especially to sergeant's mail

Just a little bit of history for those interested and who think ZOS has this all planned out.

PC/Mac Patch Notes v6.0.5 - Greymoor & Update 26 (2020)

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6779134/#Comment_6779134

• Sergeant’s Mail: Increased the damage bonus for Fully Charged Heavy Attacks to 2257, up from 1634.

PC/Mac Patch Notes v7.3.5 - Ascending Tide DLC & Update 33 (March 2022)

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7539805/#Comment_7539805

• Sergeant’s Mail: This set now adds 3031 Weapon and Spell Damage to your fully charged Heavy Attacks, rather than increasing their damage by 2257.
  
  Developer Comment:
  
  Sets like this one have all been adjusted off flat damage modifiers on these attacks due to the nature of how these values interact with additional bonuses, causing them to double dip in effects while other modifiers do not. Rather than outright nerfing these values to the point where they would never eclipse other bonuses, we've converted them into a bonus that can still be increased with some effects such as Major Brutality or Sorcery.

PC/Mac Patch Notes v8.1.5 - Lost Depths DLC & Update 35 (Aug 2022)

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7694098/#Comment_7694098

• Sergeant's Mail: This set has been reworked to now grant you a stack of Sergeant's Focus for 5 seconds whenever you deal damage with a Heavy Attack, increasing the damage of your Heavy Attacks by 645 per stack. This effect can occur once every half second and stacks up to 4 times.
  
  Developer Comment:
  
  We're moving the focus of this set to be on any Heavy Attack to aid in the flexibility and use case of the set so that more builds can engage with it, while also reducing its potential as a front-loaded burst set.

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TLDR;

1. Sergeant's Mail was a FULLY CHARGED HA set that got buffed. I guess that's an OK change, even though the patch notes give absolutely no reason why...
2. Then, it got changed from flat damage modifier to W/S Damage because of "how these values interact with additional bonuses". Fair change I suppose, seems like they get the point and are fixing things...
3. Finally, it got changed from FULLY CHARGED HA to just HA AND changed back to flat damage modifiers! Suddenly, this set is absolutely broken on Lightning Staff builds and is heads/tails better than any other HA set.

This is ZOS in a nut shell...

Buff something, then change it to do something else, then completely change it again, but keeping the initial buff and absolutely breaking it in the process. U35 was a MISTAKE ZOS. Fix it.