[PvP] Balance

xylena_lazarow · May 19

StaticWave wrote: »

No reason to run a pressure melee DK when you can hop on a Sorc and do it from max range

If there's one thing that's tilting me about the Ward debates, it's how the Sorc apologists continue to conveniently ignore the massive advantage wrought by being fully ranged, as I keep saying it's like bringing a gun to a knife fight. And Scribing is just going to make things worse with all the powerful new max range attacks being added.

Edit: was happy to be wrong, Scribing helps, Dazing Soul as a ranged stun really messes up MagSorcs and other ranged attackers, but the constant ranged proc stack spam is not exactly peak PvP, and Hardened Ward is still nuts.

Tcholl · June 30

Hey!

My main is a DK and after recent patches had to come back to theorycrafting because everything seems lackluster. After testing a lot, had to come search for answers in the net. To be honest, all the feedback supports my recent experience.

Although damage still ok, does not have the burst of other classes and often cannot secure a kill against a well designed build. That may work on PvE but doesnt do the job well in PvP. As previous stated, everyone is tanky now and with buffed shields even more than DKs. Also, with the combustion nerf the sustain is not the same.

The groups are using DK as support and the best builds are very boring specially after the corrosive nerf. This is not what someone that chooses DK wants to play and i am not surprised we are seen less and less DKs on the cyro or bgs.

xylena_lazarow · July 1

@Tcholl try putting Fiery Contingency into your kill rotation before Petrify to burst on stun. Otherwise, the full dot pressure DK builds that run Draugrkin, MDW, and Vatesh Destro are still strong 1v1.

If you can work with the targeting, Healing Soul is an upgrade over Coag Blood, cheaper, with bar compression and a needed way for DK to burst heal allies. Major Vitality and Major Resolve are also valuable on DK.

Tcholl · July 1

Many tnx for the advice @xylena_lazarow! Really apreciate and i can see the contingency helping a lot. I am using almost the same contigency setup before talons on a ballgroup. I feel it is easier to time and still add some burst compared to using deep breath. As per the build, tnx again. I am using Ice Vate/MDW with DT, but did not try them with Draugrkin (with trickery is kind of boring build sometimes). Will give it a go for sure!

Tcholl · July 1

@xylena_lazarow Oh and forgot to mention the Healing Soul skill advice. That one I havent noticed and looks really good. I am sure to put it to use. I believe i can drop Coag and Degeneration and get a much needed skill slot since i should have the burst heal and brutality (not mentioning healing the team since i need the green vigor when playing solo). The only downside is not being able to hide corrosive but i am not using this ultimate much anymore after the nerf. Tnx one more time and have a great week!

katorga · July 2

In Cyrodill, the primary build seems to be some variation of bomber, running in groups to cross heal, stay alive long enough to draw out attackers to bomb. No other builds really matter, and you don't really need any scribing skills to make it work.

xylena_lazarow · July 2

katorga wrote: »

No other builds really matter, and you don't really need any scribing skills to make it work

[snip]

Part of the beauty of the Warden class is that it can play multiple roles. Obviously it brings excellent cross healing, which adds a new dimension for me personally. My build can bomb with shalks combos (especially when backed up by meatbags). Killing just one guy in the bomb and sending the others scattering is often enough to give us the initial edge we need to win the 4v12, and that one kill is often enabled by range stunning them with Dazing Soul inside the meatbomb.

What really sets it apart is that It has enough pressure to kill everything 1v1 short of tanks, hardcore duelers, and broken MagSorcs. The playstyle is largely enabled by Dazing Soul being an ranged instant stun that can set up numerous combos, avoiding the predictability problem I had on Arcanist in 1v1 situations. Anyone who gets baited out to the meatbag better have some 1v1 skill, despite what others ITT claim, 1v1 happens a lot in open world.

@Tcholl you're welcome! Haven't played much DK the past couple years, but the playstyle I used should still be decent, based around Talons + Blood Craze for both 1v1 pressure and the strong AoE + syngery for group, backed up by Shifting Standard for more group synergy. Trades 1v1 power for open world utility. They also changed the sound effect for Corrosive to the louder burst effect on Magma Shell so it's a lot harder to hide the cast (probably a good thing).

[edited for baiting]

Tcholl · July 2

Tnx for some more avice @xylena_lazarow! Tested the build with Draugrkin and looked solid. The heal scribed skill is also very good, much better heal than I first expected. It gets even more heal than coag if you are healing with a good amount of health still.

I would agree the corrosive changes were good, if they didnt have buffed other classes (looking at you sorc ward). Corrosive would be the ONLY thing to set DKs apart and now the builds around this skill are very boring.

Durham · July 3

Currently balance is jacked because of several reasons. Almost every build in the game has a destro staff on one of its bars. Last night I PvPed for 3 hours, 90% of my damage was from ranged abilities. The best classes are simply ones that can reset fights with no draw backs. The damage arc types are ones that include ranged since there is virtually no penalty.

1. Range damage creep vs melee giving 28m damage on par with 7 meter damage.
2. Because 28 meter damage is very close to melee classes mobility becomes huge. Night blade can cloak ranged damage. Sorc can streak just out of range instantly. DK and Warden have reflect but you will run out of Magic with no way reset the fight like the two mentioned above.
3. Healing for ranged builds is just as strong as melee builds.
4. Proc damage sets like tarnished on ranged abilities.
5. CC is everywhere and melee toons are soon out of stam from sprinting and breaking cc. Scribing has added a ton of CC for everybody on every class.
6. Gap closers tend to be expensive and lackluster in damage and can be CCed immediately.

1. Sorcs and Nightblades are the meta right now
2. Nothing is close
3. Warden is next however ranged ice warden is best and 6 secs of speed and ranged shields. Shields are expensive you still need some structure. With no ability to reset the fight.
4. DK because of lack of moment and healing is the same as it’s has been for years while the other classes healing has been boosted this class is regulated structure fighting. Again no ability to reset the fight.
5. Necro is in a bad place period in pvp.

Note I have not played the new DLC class but that class has moment issues also.

Durham · July 3

Tcholl wrote: »

Tnx for some more avice @xylena_lazarow! Tested the build with Draugrkin and looked solid. The heal scribed skill is also very good, much better heal than I first expected. It gets even more heal than coag if you are healing with a good amount of health still.

I would agree the corrosive changes were good, if they didnt have buffed other classes (looking at you sorc ward). Corrosive would be the ONLY thing to set DKs apart and now the builds around this skill are very boring.

DK had no way to reset fights and most of its abilities are melee. So yea it should be a beast up close and personal.

Firstmep · July 3

I'll be honest before any class changes l, I'd like them to delete undeath, and also maybe look at weapons balance, 2h in particular could use some help to put it on par with dw, and sword and board could use some love(outside of bash builds).

xylena_lazarow · July 3

Durham wrote: »

Last night I PvPed for 3 hours, 90% of my damage was from ranged abilities

Same, pretty rare to see melee attacks on my recaps at all. If take no risk, you should do no damage.

Durham wrote: »

Warden is next however ranged ice warden is best and 6 secs of speed and ranged shields. Shields are expensive you still need some structure. With no ability to reset the fight. Note I have not played the new DLC class but that class has moment issues also.

Arc, DK, and Plar all have the similar problem of being slow melee brawlers. Warden generally outclasses them all, but you made a really good point that not even Warden resets the fight like Sorc or NB can. It's the indefinite resetting, enabled by range spam and overpowered defensive synergy, that makes them broken and miserable to fight against. Of course players who could never actually kill anyone in PvP are fine with this, as they are unable to tell the difference.

Nobody even knows what Necro is supposed to do. The class is mechanically incoherent.

TechMaybeHic · July 3

When you have 7 classes and 2 of them account for 50% of the players in Cyrodiil; you know where the problem is for the most part. But its also the range is too close to as effective as melee. Elusiveness is one thing, but the ones with lack of that should be able to really hurt if they get ahold of you and I think thats the only reason Wardens 3rd. Part targets defense but part offense of the other 3 that do not rise enough above ranged options to matter

xylena_lazarow · July 3

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

But its also the range is too close to as effective as melee.

It's not close. Range blows melee out of the water. My Warden ends up spending most of its time on its back bar Master Ice pressuring from range, only really going for DW melee to close kills with an execute combo.

Tcholl · July 3

Exactly. Sorcs reset fights, make huge damage from range and now have a panic button to spam and survive to almost anything you can throw at them. NB has its problems but its nowhere near the issue with Sorc Ward.

Melee brawler classes should never have less tankyness and survivibility than someone shooting from distance. This is why this Ward buff does not make any sense at all. Have anyone here seen a shield with burst heal in any other game? On a ranged spec class?!?!

By some comments, I am starting to believe that ZOS wants to create an EZ mode with Sorc granting low skill players a panic button so they can tackle contents like vet vateshran that dont allow them to hide in a team. Which does not make any sense since there is plenty of acessible content in the game for thousands of hours of casual gameplay. This is the only reasonable explanation I can think of so far.

The ward buff wasnt needed for PvP or PvE and is not wanted by the majority of players!

DrNukenstein · July 3

Tcholl wrote: »

By some comments, I am starting to believe that ZOS wants to create an EZ mode with Sorc granting low skill players a panic button so they can tackle contents like vet vateshran that dont allow them to hide in a team. Which does not make any sense since there is plenty of acessible content in the game for thousands of hours of casual gameplay. This is the only reasonable explanation I can think of so far.

The ward buff wasnt needed for PvP or PvE and is not wanted by the majority of players!

This is partially true. The real reason is that they were sick of reading the cloak threads from cranky Magsorcs so they gave Magsorcs something for the community to complain about even more.

I recommend that vocal Necromancer mains complain about ward more than other's too see what they can get out of it.

xylena_lazarow · July 3

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I recommend that vocal Necromancer mains complain about ward more than other's too see what they can get out of it.

PTS notes 11.3.2 say that all Necro pets are now fully targetable, cannot be damaged, and have had their hitboxes tripled in size to ensure that they randomly body block as intended, to provide maximum engagement.

divnyi · July 3

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

I recommend that vocal Necromancer mains complain about ward more than other's too see what they can get out of it.

PTS notes 11.3.2 say that all Necro pets are now fully targetable, cannot be damaged, and have had their hitboxes tripled in size to ensure that they randomly body block as intended, to provide maximum engagement.

TBF when I hear "nercomancer" I have a picture of a dude having a personal zombie/skeleton army, not a guy who buffed himself with bones and summons explosive skeletons from time to time. If it indeed was a summoner type of class, that would be dope. Sadly, all the pets on all the classes are *** and they don't know how to balance them so they wouldn't be a free DPS in PvE and would be useful at all.

Joy_Division · July 3

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

When you have 7 classes and 2 of them account for 50% of the players in Cyrodiil; you know where the problem is for the most part ... Elusiveness is one thing, but the ones with lack of that should be able to really hurt if they get ahold of you and I think thats the only reason Wardens 3rd. Part targets defense but part offense of the other 3 that do not rise enough above ranged options to matter

But's not a problem that ZOS can fix easily, if at all, because it is part and parcel to their combat system. Since ZOS combat emerged in its form we are familiar with back with the 1.6 changes, no two classes have spent more time as "S" tier options than Sorcerer and Nightblade and it's not even close (to be more specific, mag sorc and stamblade). This is because these two classes were originally designed with limited healing and tanking options, but have since acquired these with the mantra of "play as you want" (except that slow brawlers never got tools like streak and cloak in their kit). That PvP has almost always favored burst damage further favors these two classes.

According to ZOS, everyone and every class needs to do the exact same DPS with all its abilities following a standardized formula: my DoT costs X resources and does Y damage, your DoT costs X resources and does Y damage. The max range pew power standing 40+ meters away (the actual range in Cyrodiil) does the same damage as the 2H bruiser at 7 meters. Occasionally some questionable balance change will come about that other classes can exploit (e.g., busted harmony proc with Necors, crazy DoTs with templars, etc.). Then these get nerfed and the cream eventually rises to the top. More than 4% of the PvPers would like to play Necros. But their default design and passives are terrible in Zos's combat model.

xylena_lazarow · July 3

Joy_Division wrote: »

But their default design and passives are terrible in Zos's combat model.

It's bizarre because at launch, Necro was getting banned from dueling tournaments. Major buffs were still 30%. Similar to Warden at the time, the seemingly intended playstyle was to juggle overpowered buffs while SnB turtling, drop your wombo combo with all those crazy multipliers, then back to SnB turtling to reset the fight and try again.

Even more bizarre, this was supposed to be the rot-and-decay DoT-and-Defile pressure class, with that hyped dot buff passive, but they didn't give it any actual DoTs, instead the wild multipliers and delayed burst were perfect for the turtle-and-combo playstyle that was already dominant. Oh and their delayed burst nuke also randomly body blocks.

At the same time was all that confusion over how to balance DoTs in general, with the infamous 30% buff followed by a 60% nerf (yeah they've definitely overshot the mark before, Ward apologists). Later, the Necro candle would be burned at both ends, with Major buffs getting rightfully nuked from 30% to 10%, Defiles nuked, while Necro's own skills were inexplicably nerfed. Repeatedly. Now you have the hardest class to play, with no payoff for all that juggling. F Tier.

Theignson · July 3

I agree with all of these comments.
Last Campaign, after playing only my MagSorc for a while, I decided to play all my classes and see how they fared

Necro: horrible. No major brutality/prophecy just for slotting OP skills (see NB). No real combo. A punching bag

Templar: strong heals and when played as a ranged Plar is not terrible

DK: Surprisingly lackluster. Several patches ago, before MagSorc Ward, DK was a monster. Now the limited mobility and constantly being Pew-pew-pwed by ranged NB and Sorc , (Plus if you go in for the melee some RoA bomber will blow you up) makes this class tough.

Arcanist: very tanky with its Rune, so hard to kill. Some decent class skills. Not very good mobility

Warden: string heals makes this the second best melee class now.

NB: ranged NB is strong as is brawler. NB has the best buffs. Spectral Bow is completely, nonsensically broken, it appears to ignore resisits-- it hits harder than all ultimates. The NB now just builds 400 WD and a bow with Pew-pwe at range, then cloaks, gets a gauranteed crit on its Incap/Bow combo. NB is the strongest melee , has absurd healing, also strong ranged

StamSorc: very strong now. You can even use ward on a stamsorc although I dont know if its best.

MagSorc: High Magicka MagSorc is a Monster now and I think the strongest class.

Tcholl · July 3

DK is lackluster because it has no identity at all righ now.

Necro are the worst class for sure, but they make great tanks and most important have the group rez ulti. Templars have good heals and quick rez. Arcanist have great shields and mechs to sustain for ages. Wardens have great burst damage. NB have all that you said and more. Magsorc are totally busted and have everything on top of a magic reset fight button (ward). DKs are relegated at the moment to group utility with minor brutality and synergies (talons and standard). There are even groups running with no DKs on the comp. Some ppl will say that still has great damage but doesnt have any burst at all. The bulk of the damage on the log will always come from oblivion which does not help much when you really need.

Dk used to be the tanky class with great pressure damage but the tank/healing meta, along with those non sense changes (ward for example) made everyone tanky and burst damage is what really matters.

At least, this is my personal experience nowdays playing this class.

divnyi · July 3

Tcholl wrote: »

DK is lackluster because it has no identity at all righ now.

It used to be the tankiest class one day. It certainly doesn't feel like that today. All that dot toolkit is OK if you are able to stay there and apply pressure.

Tcholl · July 3

The DOT kit doesnt help much with bar compression either.

xylena_lazarow · July 3

Tcholl wrote: »

The DOT kit doesnt help much with bar compression either.

Really wish Talons would count towards Molten Whip, like make it stack on any damaging DK skill.

TechMaybeHic · July 3

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Tcholl wrote: »

The DOT kit doesnt help much with bar compression either.

Really wish Talons would count towards Molten Whip, like make it stack on any damaging DK skill.

I kind of like that idea. DK can be pretty rhythmic IMO, cycling to get whip stacks; but restricting it to limited other abilities in that one skill tree makes it very rigid

Tcholl · July 3

The mechanic could be good, it is fun, but even with more ticks to reach 3, the whip still does not have enough burst right now. At least im my humble opinion.

Specially if you compare with something like the merciless resolve for example. People are too tanky and the leap and the whip doesnt have the burst to surpasse the new era of tank/healing/shield. I just faced a NB on IC and took literally 28k damage in 3 sec, with vigor and hardened armor up, no dots on, both resolves up, 30k resist, ironclad cp and everything (I have video footage). The player only blocked and face tanked during the whole fight and was tanky as hell. Of course, there is skill related too, but the point is that DKs dont have anywhere near this burst in ANY situation or combo. Not mentioning that with this type of tank with huge damage (NBs and Sorcs can buid this way) it is very hard to keep any mech up or even complete your offensive rotation.

What some Dks used to do is using spin to win with corrosive but even this style now is boring because of the nerf. Also, to help making it worse, ZOS recently nerfed combustion in a class that already had some sustain issues and had this passive as an alternative to help the build.

Maybe, DK is just right as it is now and is certainly still a blast to play. I believe that other classes are the ones in need of some balance atm.

Tcholl · July 3

I just saw the new class set for DK and it might bring some pressure and needed burst since there is a scaling mech with it:

Dragonknight: Pyrebrand
2 items: Adds 1487 Offensive Penetration
3 items: Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
4 items: Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
5 items: Your Light Attacks deal 1084 Flame Damage every 2 seconds over 6 seconds. Your fully-charged Heavy Attacks consume up to 3 of your damage over time effects to deal 2384 Flame Damage in a 6 meter radius on the target, dealing up to 200% more damage to enemies below 33% Health. The damage scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell damage and is increased by 20% for each damage over time effect on the target, up to 60%.

Have no idea how would that work in real world though.

xylena_lazarow · July 4

Tcholl wrote: »

Have no idea how would that work in real world though.

Sure hope the stacks aren't consumed if your heavy attack misses, 33% is a terrible threshhold in PvP, and DK won't be able to cloak away its heavy attack windup. Remember Doylemish? No clue what's up with those numbers, if it's anything like Scribing they're double what they should be according to UESP or ESO Hub.

However, the light attack effect is interesting, should be as strong as Way of Fire but can spread to multiple targets with one light attack on each every 6 seconds, can be single barred and has a better 4pc. Worth checking out on a back bar Bow or Destro to give DK some ranged firepower in this crazy ranged meta (please ZOS save us).

Tcholl · July 4

The worst part is to farm IA to try it out. I hate this place.