Thinking of returning to the game....

coop500

Hello everyone, long time player with 5K hours sunk into the game. But around a little after Blackwood's release or somewhere around there, I quit the game. But I am considering coming back, and I was curious to test the waters, and get an idea of how the game works now before jumping in.

I remember that they were doing away with stamina and magicka focused builds being the strongest and trying to make hybrids viable, but I never heard how that went or if it was successful. How are basic builds made now? Do we still pick stam or mag and stack into it or how does that go now? Any other major 'rules' get changed? Like is crit resistance still a PVP only stat?

Sorry I know it's a broad question, but I appreciate any and all insight!

colossalvoids

Monsters aren't critical striking, but procs are generally criting again if not having a ramp up scaling to them (like zaan).
Hybridisation was implemented more like homogenisation, stuff mostly scales with just higher offensive stat now rather than mag or stamp so you still having one primary resource pool but can run "magicka" vigour, caltrops etc. it just scales off spell damage and critical. Can use any ability you can sustain basically. Also more buffs are made more universal rather then spec specific, skill changes were a thing to accommodate that.

Erickson9610

coop500 wrote: »

I remember that they were doing away with stamina and magicka focused builds being the strongest and trying to make hybrids viable, but I never heard how that went or if it was successful. How are basic builds made now? Do we still pick stam or mag and stack into it or how does that go now? Any other major 'rules' get changed? Like is crit resistance still a PVP only stat?

Yes, you still stack only one attribute, as abilities scale off the higher of your Maximum Stamina or Magicka, as well as scale off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage. Splitting your attributes between Magicka and Stamina makes the maximum of the two smaller.

Though, note that there are very few ways to increase just Weapon Damage or just Spell Damage individually — namely from Class Minor Buffs and potions at this point. You'll usually be given Brutality+Sorcery and Savagery+Prophecy from most other sources.

coop500

Thank you guys, that helps a lot. I am considering bringing my friend along this time and he very much will be looking to me for guidance, so I want to make sure I can provide and not giver him outdated info.

Dare I ask, how have werewolves been treated? haha.

tomofhyrule

coop500 wrote: »

Dare I ask, how have werewolves been treated? haha.

Uhh... probably not.

I love werewolves. It's so much fun to play but... oof. Yeah. At least weretanking is now possible, despite it being a total meme. It's a fun meme though. Werewolves do have a dedicated taunt.

I do hope they eventually give werewolves some love, but they really do need to look at werewolves as their own class instead of as a handful of skills - mainly since you don't exactly have an ultimate when you're in wolf form. As it is now, they're super underpowered, and their only self heal leaves a lot to be desired. I hope we'll eventually see some good stuff there.

But the one thing I'm hoping for: give us chooseable werewolf colors. They've started to add variant colors to some skills and they've mentioned that pet skins are in the cards, so hopefully that means werewolf colors are also in planning. My wolf needs the greyish-brown of the unmorphed skill, so it's doubly ineffective for me to do anything major on him since I keep it unmorphed for RP reasons... which only makes a bad build even worse.

Erickson9610

coop500 wrote: »

Dare I ask, how have werewolves been treated? haha.

Well, it's a mixed bag.


You can now taunt with werewolf's toolkit by slotting Deafening Roar and performing a heavy attack. Deafening Roar now grants Major Protection while slotted, rather than Major Savagery/Prophecy. This upsets Werewolf tanks who wanted the crit for their heal and PvP Werewolves who used Deafening but built more for damage. Also, AoE taunting has been removed entirely from the game, so Tormentor is a single target taunt, as is Werewolf Berserker heavy attack with Deafening Roar slotted.

Piercing Howl and its morphs lost the positional requirement for the bonus damage, but now the total bonus damage and uptime was nerfed — there's this new Terrified effect which you or other werewolves must apply to enemies with the Ferocious Roar morph. The idea is to incentivize grouping up with other werewolves and encourage werewolves to use all of their abilities, but that hasn't really worked as intended — you get higher DPS still by accepting the nerf to Howl of Agony and never casting Ferocious Roar.

Additionally, Howl of Despair's Feeding Frenzy synergy is a self-synergy which grants Empower and Minor Force for 20 seconds. Howl of Despair only gets +10% damage against Terrified enemies, while Howl of Agony gets +10% against Terrified enemies and another +10% against Off Balance enemies. Remember than Howl of Agony used to be +25% bonus damage when the enemy faces you — and now that half of the current +20% bonus is tied to Off Balance (which has 7 seconds of uptime and a 15 second immunity period afterward) there's only a 31.8% uptime (down from potentially 100% uptime) of that nerfed bonus damage, presuming the enemy doesn't outright purge the Terrified effect before you need to reapply it every 10 seconds.

Werewolves get a 100% chance Hemorrhaging proc on the initial hit of Pounce, which becomes an AoE proc with Brutal Pounce. The damage type of our light/heavy attacks is changed from Physical to Bleed, and they now have a chance to proc Hemorrhaging as well. Sorcerer Werewolves are nerfed by this change, because they received bonuses to Physical Damage.

Some class passives which affect Werewolf were also changed. Notably Sorcerer's Expert Summoner passive, which grants Max Health when you have pets (Pack Leader) or Max Stamina+Magicka when you don't have pets (Werewolf Berserker). I'd double check your class passives to see which ones work in form and which ones don't. Arcanist Werewolf still doesn't have a lot of applicable passives in Werewolf form, sadly.

Just recently, we received our first Skill Style, which is Roar, Verdant Green. I'm grateful that ZOS gave us one so soon — and I understand that we may need to wait until next year for a shot at getting any Werewolf Scribing abilities. Though many of my friends love the look of this Skill Style, it has been described as bile or bad breath — so hopefully this isn't the last of the Werewolf Skill Styles we get! I'm personally hoping for Skill Styles to change our fur color, and Grimoires to enable new playstyles like healer or support.


That's a brief summary of some of the most pressing changes. A lot of these developments are really good! I don't want to sound ungrateful at all. Though, the playstyle has been changed in other ways which aren't that favorable for every person — like how some people like the damage type change of our light/heavy attacks while others don't.

And I have to stress that on the same update that Werewolf Tanking is made legitimate by ZOS, we also received a direct nerf to our main spammable and were given this new Terrified mechanic which encourages damage dealers to use crowd control abilities, which is the tank's job. It's a mixed bag, but we'll see where the playstyle ends up in the future.

coop500

Thank you all for the detailed updates! I think I'll stick around at least for a little bit and see how I feel, and maybe pick up ESO+ if I decide we want to play. Might delete a character or two so I can make new ones though.

JinKC98

coop500 wrote: »

Hello everyone, long time player with 5K hours sunk into the game. But around a little after Blackwood's release or somewhere around there, I quit the game. But I am considering coming back, and I was curious to test the waters, and get an idea of how the game works now before jumping in.

I remember that they were doing away with stamina and magicka focused builds being the strongest and trying to make hybrids viable, but I never heard how that went or if it was successful. How are basic builds made now? Do we still pick stam or mag and stack into it or how does that go now? Any other major 'rules' get changed? Like is crit resistance still a PVP only stat?

Sorry I know it's a broad question, but I appreciate any and all insight!

What's your current CP? 5k hours are quite a lot for me!

To answer your question, most builds still require you to dump all attribute points into one of the two resources yea, including some of the hybrid builds. And light attack weaving is still a thing.

coop500

@JinKC98

My current CP is around 1100 but I didn't really grind for it. I made a lot of alt characters instead lol.

And okay, that's good to know! I went ahead and got the new class for a new character, and am currently easing into the game that way, plus waiting for more deletes to remove some of my old cringy characters I don't want anymore.

coop500

OH and in terms of like, how to build (I love theory building), so we still have to use a staff for magicka based classes? Or are melee weapons doable when technically going full magicka?

Erickson9610

coop500 wrote: »

OH and in terms of like, how to build (I love theory building), so we still have to use a staff for magicka based classes? Or are melee weapons doable when technically going full magicka?

Melee weapons (particularly dual wield daggers, due to the crit chance bonus) are actually meta in terms of Magicka damage dealer builds, funnily enough. Naturally, one disadvantage is that you can't restore Magicka with your martial weapon heavy attacks.

JaxontheUnfortunate

I second this usually run either dual maces or dual daggers though I am running a stam DK mele wolf

JinKC98

coop500 wrote: »

OH and in terms of like, how to build (I love theory building), so we still have to use a staff for magicka based classes? Or are melee weapons doable when technically going full magicka?

I mainly play DK. I have seen people utilize Magicka build with full melee weapon, both front and back bars. So yes I think that's doable. Personally if I play a Mag-based build, I prefer Daggers front bar and staff back bar or double staves.

Theory crafting is the main highlight for me too in this game. The satisfaction when your own build works is just superb.

By the way, if you wanna go meta as soon as possible, I recommend checking out Skinny Cheeks DPS guide for each class. Or you can go at your own pace and create some interesting off-meta builds! (I always keep an eye for new off-meta builds in ESO Hub site)

ssewallb14_ESO

I'd maybe check out a new players guide, ZoS went nuts with overhauls for a few years. Some major ones off the top of my head:

1. The CP system was completely overhauled. There's a max possible vertical power height, then you get to pick 4 stars at a time per tree to slot. Much of the power from the old system is now baked into base stats. There's no longer an increasing secondary cap.

2. Everything is hybridized except skill resources costs, with a handful of exceptions. Resource cost is the main thing separating magicka and stamina. It's rare to see only mag or stam skills on almost any build.

3. No more armor passives requiring 5 pieces, and all the passives are hybridized. Ideal armor weights have changed a lot, especially in PvP.

4. Weapon passives were all hybridized, the Ancient Knowledge passive was changed significantly. Dual wield and lightning staff are dominant as front bar weapons, all the others are situational as backbar. You almost never see front bar flame staff anymore.

5. Almost all dots were doubled or more in duration, and the damage significantly reduced. Durations are very random and don't line up well for most classes.

6. Many major class specific changes, too many to list