Arcanist nerfs are a bit over-the-top

taugrim

EDIT: The purpose of this thread is to discuss the 2 changes in the 10.2 patch notes related to Arcanist survivability, which were clearly in the context of PVP based on the Developer comments.

If you've got a bone to pick with Arcanist in PVE, please start your own separate thread.

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Impervious Runeward: Reduced the size of this morph’s shield after the 1 second window by ~56%.

Runeguard of Freedom: Reduced the healing granted by this morph by 50%. Increased the Armor granted to 3300 at rank IV, up from 3000. Increased the duration of the Armor and Crowd Control Immunity granted to 7 seconds. Fixed an issue where the Crowd Control Immunity failed to apply until after the Armor effect ended.

The defining characteristic of the Arcanist class in PVP is its survivability.

These 2 nerfs combined are bigger than needed in terms of shielding / healing reduction.

I would suggest the following instead:

Impervious Runeward: Reduced the size of this morph’s shield after the 1 second window by ~56%25%.

Runeguard of Freedom: Reduced the healing granted by this morph by 50%25%. Increased the Armor granted to 3300 at rank IV, up from 3000. Increased the duration of the Armor and Crowd Control Immunity granted to 7 seconds. Fixed an issue where the Crowd Control Immunity failed to apply until after the Armor effect ended.

The other tweaks to Runeguard of Freedom are unneeded. The existing 3k armor is fine, and the existing window of 6 of CC immunity secs is fine. Please don't change what's not broken or doesn't need changing - rather, tone down what's too strong but do it incrementally. The 25% reductions I proposed above are meaningful but not drastic.

Major_Mangle

Arcanist changes are long overdue, class has way over the top survivability that needed to be adjusted to appropriate levels.

taugrim

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Arcanist changes are long overdue, class has way over the top survivability that needed to be adjusted to appropriate levels.

Adjusted, yes.

But as I noted above the 2 changes together seem to be overdone.

As someone in my PVP guild pointed out, Arcanist is lacking in tools related to healing over time. If the damage shield and reactive healing are over-nerfed, the class will have a weaker kit than others.

Major_Mangle

taugrim wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Arcanist changes are long overdue, class has way over the top survivability that needed to be adjusted to appropriate levels.

Adjusted, yes.

But as I noted above the 2 changes together seem to be overdone.

As someone in my PVP guild pointed out, Arcanist is lacking in tools related to healing over time. If the damage shield and reactive healing are over-nerfed, the class will have a weaker kit than others.

I´ll expand a little bit more regarding my previous comment. The problem with arcanist at the moment is not a 100% issue with the class itself, but rather how the current meta synergies so incredibly well with it (which kinda makes it an arcanist issue to be fair).

The first problem is the fact that their most potent defensive mechanics scale of max HP (we all know how balanced for PvP that is). On top of that the class has incredibly good sustain through it´s passives (Wellspring of the Abyss) depending on how your skill bar looks like, but it´s not much of a challenge to get 2k+ unbuffed recovery stats without any sustain sets on arcanist. Another problem is how easy it is to stack up a lot of HP with essentially 0 downsides (not arcanist unique problem but it becomes more problematic on classes with HP scaling defensive tools).

I´ll speak mainly from a battleground perspective where I find the following kind of arcanist builds/playstyle to be very problematic. The first type of build which I´d say is the most common one is where you stack 40-45k HP and rely on status effects and procs to essentially wear your opponent down (and while arcanist doesn´t have the most impressive burst damage, it does have pressure, which is still damage imo). Monster sets like Jerall (which has very little downside on an arcanist since Jerall doesn´t affect shields) or maarselok are the most commonly used. The 2nd setup that you see is the bashcanists that comes with some rather oppressive damage/pressure + it´s even tankier.

Now what´s the problem with these two playstyles? You can´t kill them, or at least not anyone that´s semi competent on the class. The skill I´ve the most problem with here is Runeguard of freedom. Majority of these builds sit at 40-45k HP, which means I´ve to burst through 20k+ HP (in practice more since the heal on runeguard puts them above 50% HP) on a cc immune target. Unless you severely outnumber these setups, you´re not bursting down 20-25k HP on a target with cc immunity. If the player isn´t afk they´ll obviously use impervious and runemend to heal up even more. I personally would´ve reworked the cc immunity on runeguard and make it root/snare immunity instead. With the other morph rooting nearby enemies, having runeguard of freedom giving you root/snare immunity would make sense.

Some people might come with the counterargument that this is just a "proc set issue". But ESO has always been a game where sets and non-class skills are as much part of a "class identity" as the skills/passives a class actually have (stamsorc is the prime example of this).

coop500

I don't PVP but the fact in most dungeons it feels like 50% of players are Arcanists, then it feels like this adjustment is fair.
And this is coming from someone who's main favorite RN is an arcantist.

taugrim

coop500 wrote: »

I don't PVP but the fact in most dungeons it feels like 50% of players are Arcanists, then it feels like this adjustment is fair.
And this is coming from someone who's main favorite RN is an arcantist.

PVE players don't slot Runeguard of Freedom, it's overkill for DPS players.
Runespite Ward is rarely needed in PVE as mobs don't focus fire DPS (unless the tank is completely incompetent).

The reason Arcanist is popular in PVE / dungeons is because Fatecarver is an AOE with high single-target damage. It's easy-mode damage, but that has nothing to do with the proposed nerfs here.

zammo

coop500 wrote: »

I don't PVP but the fact in most dungeons it feels like 50% of players are Arcanists, then it feels like this adjustment is fair.
And this is coming from someone who's main favorite RN is an arcantist.

Neither of the two skills in question are contributing to the 100k+ PvE parses.

xylena_lazarow

Arc is the most overrated class in PvP, talked up by players who drink laser because they don't move or press buttons. They're nothing more than a group shield bot, their already bad offensive PvP kit ate a massive unjust nerf last patch with Flail, and now their survival is being hit harder than Sorc (Hardened Ward deserves the sledgehammer not the scalpel).

Joy_Division

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Arcanist changes are long overdue, class has way over the top survivability that needed to be adjusted to appropriate levels.

Class survivability is too strong for PvP. Class offensive kit is unsuitable for PvP. Adjust one and not the other, typical ZOS.

taugrim

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Arc is the most overrated class in PvP, talked up by players who drink laser because they don't move or press buttons. They're nothing more than a group shield bot, their already bad offensive PvP kit ate a massive unjust nerf last patch with Flail, and now their survival is being hit harder than Sorc (Hardened Ward deserves the sledgehammer not the scalpel).

Yea I moved away from Fatecarver because it is too inconsistent in PVP. Great in PVE, but easy to avoid in PVP.

I did feel that Flail was doing too much previously (AOE + root + damage buff + heal + execute scaling). The nerf made it less attractive as a crux building spammable.

It is ironic that Arcanist survivability is getting much harder than Sorc. Hardened Ward is only losing 33% of its healing, when the HW shield still scales superbly and the healing is icing on the cake, with 67% of that icing still existing in U44.

taugrim

Joy_Division wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Arcanist changes are long overdue, class has way over the top survivability that needed to be adjusted to appropriate levels.

Class survivability is too strong for PvP. Class offensive kit is unsuitable for PvP. Adjust one and not the other, typical ZOS.

I'm fine with toning down both Impervious Runeward and Runeguard of Freedom.

But kneecapping them makes Arcanist struggle to have a role in PVP aside from bubble bot, and in DPS builds there isn't room on the bars to slot Chakram Shields.

sbam66

Every arcanist doing great damage with 40k health will finally have a chance to be killed. Good change.

xylena_lazarow

sbam66 wrote: »

Every arcanist doing great damage with 40k health will finally have a chance to be killed. Good change.

Sure you can run Arc as a pressure proc vessel, but DK and StamSorc are far stronger with the same setup.

Major_Mangle

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

sbam66 wrote: »

Every arcanist doing great damage with 40k health will finally have a chance to be killed. Good change.

Sure you can run Arc as a pressure proc vessel, but DK and StamSorc are far stronger with the same setup.

And those pressure proc vessels (and bash arc, which is honestly one of the stronger setups in the game) is why arcanist isn´t as overrated as you claim them to be. You can´t conveniently say that "class offensive toolkit is bad" while it has the best survivability in the game (if sorc didn´t have streak arc is easily #1 in terms of survivability) and some of the best sustain, which allows it to get it´s offensive from sets/procs. With scribing and buffed vamp spammable, arc has access to a good offensive toolkit, maybe not from it´s class skills, but it still got access to it.

It´s the same reason why stamsorc has never been in a bad spot since it became a thing. The only thing that ever dictated if stamsorc was S-tier or A was whether [insert proc set here] synergized well with the class. The exact same thing can be said about arcanist.

The defensive adjustment to arc next patch are more than justified. Just wished zos could make the class somewhat interesting to play in PvE (outside of spamming tentacle and beam).

xylena_lazarow

Major_Mangle wrote: »

And those pressure proc vessels (and bash arc, which is honestly one of the stronger setups in the game)

Very strong into players who don't move or press buttons. Sorc laughs at Arc.

Stafford197

I’m not sure how the balance will pan out, but the fact anything can receive a 50%+ nerf is a total balancing failure.

Not even to mention that Arcanist came out a whole two years ago and yet these abilities are only having this happen now.

Bashev

Major_Mangle wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

sbam66 wrote: »

Every arcanist doing great damage with 40k health will finally have a chance to be killed. Good change.

Sure you can run Arc as a pressure proc vessel, but DK and StamSorc are far stronger with the same setup.

And those pressure proc vessels (and bash arc, which is honestly one of the stronger setups in the game) is why arcanist isn´t as overrated as you claim them to be. You can´t conveniently say that "class offensive toolkit is bad" while it has the best survivability in the game (if sorc didn´t have streak arc is easily #1 in terms of survivability) and some of the best sustain, which allows it to get it´s offensive from sets/procs. With scribing and buffed vamp spammable, arc has access to a good offensive toolkit, maybe not from it´s class skills, but it still got access to it.

It´s the same reason why stamsorc has never been in a bad spot since it became a thing. The only thing that ever dictated if stamsorc was S-tier or A was whether [insert proc set here] synergized well with the class. The exact same thing can be said about arcanist.

The defensive adjustment to arc next patch are more than justified. Just wished zos could make the class somewhat interesting to play in PvE (outside of spamming tentacle and beam).

How can you compare stam sorc to arcanist? It is not about a damage skill outside of the class. Remove streak from Stam Sorcs and lets see how good they are.

Arcanists are tanky because as people said their defense scale with HP and in the current meta this is the best attribute to stack.

Still I dont know why the class was hit harder then the sorcs' nerf and warden heal which is way more problematic because it heals one more ally is not touched.

OtarTheMad

If I had to guess, and it’s a huge guess, there was a time when these Arc abilities were complained about a lot and I think ZOS took note of that but wanted to nerf Arc slowly. However, in that span of time between the complaints and these fixes players got used to Arc, learned weaknesses and counters. Plus, other classes got changed and buffed so these abilities weren’t so bad anymore… but were still on the list so we got what we got.

50% seems like a lot too. We’ll see what the next few patches do.

Silaf

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Joy_Division

Major_Mangle wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

sbam66 wrote: »

Every arcanist doing great damage with 40k health will finally have a chance to be killed. Good change.

Sure you can run Arc as a pressure proc vessel, but DK and StamSorc are far stronger with the same setup.

You can´t conveniently say that "class offensive toolkit is bad" while it has the best survivability in the game (if sorc didn´t have streak arc is easily #1 in terms of survivability) and some of the best sustain, which allows it to get it´s offensive from sets/procs. With scribing and buffed vamp spammable, arc has access to a good offensive toolkit, maybe not from it´s class skills, but it still got access to it.

Sure you can. As you noted, Sorcerer does have streak. As long is it does, which it will as long as ESO's servers are up, it is by far the superior spec with everything: range, burst damage, good skills, mobility, EZ survivability, etc. Mid-tier specs by definition are not OP, even if some of their capabilities are annoying or strong (or better put: inconvenient for the actual classes that might deserve a nerf).

PvP tiers this patch:

Sorcerer/Nightblade


[gap]


Warden/DK/Arcanist
Templar
Necro

Nothing below Sorc/Nightblade should be nerfed. It just kicks mid-teir specs to Necro status.

taugrim

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Both of the changes in U44 for Arcanist are strictly focused around PVP.

If you want to complain about Arcanist being too strong in PVE, start a different thread. And FWIW, I don't disagree that Arcanist DPS is too strong in PVE - I just don't care because for 95% of content in PVE, balance doesn't really matter.

J18696

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

BananaBender

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

J18696

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

Dk is pulling more dps than arcanist at the highest end people use arcanist because it has a very low skill ceiling and is incredibly easy to use effectively compared to the other classes eso logs is going to show majority arc because that's what everyone is using why put more effort into playing the content when arc can get good enough results with far less effort

BananaBender

J18696 wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

Dk is pulling more dps than arcanist at the highest end people use arcanist because it has a very low skill ceiling and is incredibly easy to use effectively compared to the other classes eso logs is going to show majority arc because that's what everyone is using why put more effort into playing the content when arc can get good enough results with far less effort

There are fights where DK can compete with Arcanist and even do better damage, but in majority of the fights, it's just not the case. The theoretical/potential damage on DK is higher, but apart from literally the top 5 groups or so, people are not going to reach the potential limit of their class, and in those situations arcanist is just better. The fact is that right now arcanist doesn't have a weakness and its kit is stuffed with insane passives. If you just look at parses and some individual pulls on esologs where someone managed to do insane damage on a class other than arcanist, you are going to miss what actually makes arcanist so good right now. The class gets a ton of free penetration and crit damage, which means that organized groups can provided the required penetration and crit damage with just Tremorscale and Lucent Echoes. And in this situation you are just worse off on literally any other class, because you have to commit extra resources from you CPs and gear to cover the missing stats that Arcanist gets for free. What arcanist also doesn't have to worry about is the boss moving around or having to switch targets, because only a tiny portion of their damage is tied to ground AoEs, unlike other cleave classes like DK and Necro. They also get the benefit of being able to do damage at range, which is insanely valuable in fights like Ansuul HM, where the fire attros can be cleaved by arcanist without ever dropping damage on the main boss. Aaand of course there is the elephant in the room which is their extremely cheap and strong ultimate, which allows for ST and AoE burst damage that no other class can match. By dropping and ultimate (Eye or Destro ult) in the beginning of the fight, then receiving a Pillager and full Cryptcannon, Arcanist can drop another ultimate straight away resulting in a 20-ish second damage window where no other class comes even close to competing on damage. And on top of all this they can choose to get a massive shield on their main damaging skill, which you can refresh pretty much for free. I'm not even going to go on about how they also have the most flex slots of any class giving them even more flexibility and utility choices.

Part of the popularity is definitely Arcanists ease of use, there is no doubt about that, but it is also just so damn strong and versatile class in general where you really need to think hard to find fights where it isn't the best class to go with. All of this rambling results in a graph that looks like this ↓

Credit for the graph to @Geldis1306

Bashev

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

Dk is pulling more dps than arcanist at the highest end people use arcanist because it has a very low skill ceiling and is incredibly easy to use effectively compared to the other classes eso logs is going to show majority arc because that's what everyone is using why put more effort into playing the content when arc can get good enough results with far less effort

There are fights where DK can compete with Arcanist and even do better damage, but in majority of the fights, it's just not the case. The theoretical/potential damage on DK is higher, but apart from literally the top 5 groups or so, people are not going to reach the potential limit of their class, and in those situations arcanist is just better. The fact is that right now arcanist doesn't have a weakness and its kit is stuffed with insane passives. If you just look at parses and some individual pulls on esologs where someone managed to do insane damage on a class other than arcanist, you are going to miss what actually makes arcanist so good right now. The class gets a ton of free penetration and crit damage, which means that organized groups can provided the required penetration and crit damage with just Tremorscale and Lucent Echoes. And in this situation you are just worse off on literally any other class, because you have to commit extra resources from you CPs and gear to cover the missing stats that Arcanist gets for free. What arcanist also doesn't have to worry about is the boss moving around or having to switch targets, because only a tiny portion of their damage is tied to ground AoEs, unlike other cleave classes like DK and Necro. They also get the benefit of being able to do damage at range, which is insanely valuable in fights like Ansuul HM, where the fire attros can be cleaved by arcanist without ever dropping damage on the main boss. Aaand of course there is the elephant in the room which is their extremely cheap and strong ultimate, which allows for ST and AoE burst damage that no other class can match. By dropping and ultimate (Eye or Destro ult) in the beginning of the fight, then receiving a Pillager and full Cryptcannon, Arcanist can drop another ultimate straight away resulting in a 20-ish second damage window where no other class comes even close to competing on damage. And on top of all this they can choose to get a massive shield on their main damaging skill, which you can refresh pretty much for free. I'm not even going to go on about how they also have the most flex slots of any class giving them even more flexibility and utility choices.

Part of the popularity is definitely Arcanists ease of use, there is no doubt about that, but it is also just so damn strong and versatile class in general where you really need to think hard to find fights where it isn't the best class to go with. All of this rambling results in a graph that looks like this ↓

Credit for the graph to @Geldis1306

And the nerfs are not PvE related at all. I think the class will be the next Necro in PvP for the next 1-2 years.

Iuppiterr

Bashev wrote: »

And the nerfs are not PvE related at all. I think the class will be the next Necro in PvP for the next 1-2 years.

i think this price will go to the Templar first in PvP

Renato90085

why surprised
except for dk, there no other class that well in pvp/pve both...

BananaBender

Bashev wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

Dk is pulling more dps than arcanist at the highest end people use arcanist because it has a very low skill ceiling and is incredibly easy to use effectively compared to the other classes eso logs is going to show majority arc because that's what everyone is using why put more effort into playing the content when arc can get good enough results with far less effort

There are fights where DK can compete with Arcanist and even do better damage, but in majority of the fights, it's just not the case. The theoretical/potential damage on DK is higher, but apart from literally the top 5 groups or so, people are not going to reach the potential limit of their class, and in those situations arcanist is just better. The fact is that right now arcanist doesn't have a weakness and its kit is stuffed with insane passives. If you just look at parses and some individual pulls on esologs where someone managed to do insane damage on a class other than arcanist, you are going to miss what actually makes arcanist so good right now. The class gets a ton of free penetration and crit damage, which means that organized groups can provided the required penetration and crit damage with just Tremorscale and Lucent Echoes. And in this situation you are just worse off on literally any other class, because you have to commit extra resources from you CPs and gear to cover the missing stats that Arcanist gets for free. What arcanist also doesn't have to worry about is the boss moving around or having to switch targets, because only a tiny portion of their damage is tied to ground AoEs, unlike other cleave classes like DK and Necro. They also get the benefit of being able to do damage at range, which is insanely valuable in fights like Ansuul HM, where the fire attros can be cleaved by arcanist without ever dropping damage on the main boss. Aaand of course there is the elephant in the room which is their extremely cheap and strong ultimate, which allows for ST and AoE burst damage that no other class can match. By dropping and ultimate (Eye or Destro ult) in the beginning of the fight, then receiving a Pillager and full Cryptcannon, Arcanist can drop another ultimate straight away resulting in a 20-ish second damage window where no other class comes even close to competing on damage. And on top of all this they can choose to get a massive shield on their main damaging skill, which you can refresh pretty much for free. I'm not even going to go on about how they also have the most flex slots of any class giving them even more flexibility and utility choices.

Part of the popularity is definitely Arcanists ease of use, there is no doubt about that, but it is also just so damn strong and versatile class in general where you really need to think hard to find fights where it isn't the best class to go with. All of this rambling results in a graph that looks like this ↓

Credit for the graph to @Geldis1306

And the nerfs are not PvE related at all. I think the class will be the next Necro in PvP for the next 1-2 years.

I think they are, just not DD related. Arcanist was the tank with by far the most survivability and I was surprised it took them this long to nerf it tbh. I guess the game doesn't have enough tanks to begin with so ZoS didn't want to drive away the few that started tanking thanks to arcanist.

taugrim

BananaBender wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

Dk is pulling more dps than arcanist at the highest end people use arcanist because it has a very low skill ceiling and is incredibly easy to use effectively compared to the other classes eso logs is going to show majority arc because that's what everyone is using why put more effort into playing the content when arc can get good enough results with far less effort

There are fights where DK can compete with Arcanist and even do better damage, but in majority of the fights, it's just not the case. The theoretical/potential damage on DK is higher, but apart from literally the top 5 groups or so, people are not going to reach the potential limit of their class, and in those situations arcanist is just better. The fact is that right now arcanist doesn't have a weakness and its kit is stuffed with insane passives. If you just look at parses and some individual pulls on esologs where someone managed to do insane damage on a class other than arcanist, you are going to miss what actually makes arcanist so good right now. The class gets a ton of free penetration and crit damage, which means that organized groups can provided the required penetration and crit damage with just Tremorscale and Lucent Echoes. And in this situation you are just worse off on literally any other class, because you have to commit extra resources from you CPs and gear to cover the missing stats that Arcanist gets for free. What arcanist also doesn't have to worry about is the boss moving around or having to switch targets, because only a tiny portion of their damage is tied to ground AoEs, unlike other cleave classes like DK and Necro. They also get the benefit of being able to do damage at range, which is insanely valuable in fights like Ansuul HM, where the fire attros can be cleaved by arcanist without ever dropping damage on the main boss. Aaand of course there is the elephant in the room which is their extremely cheap and strong ultimate, which allows for ST and AoE burst damage that no other class can match. By dropping and ultimate (Eye or Destro ult) in the beginning of the fight, then receiving a Pillager and full Cryptcannon, Arcanist can drop another ultimate straight away resulting in a 20-ish second damage window where no other class comes even close to competing on damage. And on top of all this they can choose to get a massive shield on their main damaging skill, which you can refresh pretty much for free. I'm not even going to go on about how they also have the most flex slots of any class giving them even more flexibility and utility choices.

Part of the popularity is definitely Arcanists ease of use, there is no doubt about that, but it is also just so damn strong and versatile class in general where you really need to think hard to find fights where it isn't the best class to go with. All of this rambling results in a graph that looks like this ↓

Credit for the graph to @Geldis1306

And the nerfs are not PvE related at all. I think the class will be the next Necro in PvP for the next 1-2 years.

I think they are, just not DD related. Arcanist was the tank with by far the most survivability and I was surprised it took them this long to nerf it tbh. I guess the game doesn't have enough tanks to begin with so ZoS didn't want to drive away the few that started tanking thanks to arcanist.

*sigh*

Runeguard of Freedom

We're toning down the effectiveness of this morph from being a straight upgrade morph into more of a conversion morph, since the Crowd Control Immunity effect adds a tremendous amount of potential in PvP

J18696

BananaBender wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

J18696 wrote: »

Silaf wrote: »

Lol no arcanist need to be nerfed way more especially in PvE. The real question is why zos is taking so long to balance the game.

Arcanist is probably the weakest single target class in the game and somewhere in the top 3 for cleave dps at least for pve it really didn't justify a defense nerf it's just super easy to play similar to the old heavy attack meta situation

That's just not true. There is a reason why pretty much all raid groups are stuffed full of arcanists.

Dk is pulling more dps than arcanist at the highest end people use arcanist because it has a very low skill ceiling and is incredibly easy to use effectively compared to the other classes eso logs is going to show majority arc because that's what everyone is using why put more effort into playing the content when arc can get good enough results with far less effort

There are fights where DK can compete with Arcanist and even do better damage, but in majority of the fights, it's just not the case. The theoretical/potential damage on DK is higher, but apart from literally the top 5 groups or so, people are not going to reach the potential limit of their class, and in those situations arcanist is just better. The fact is that right now arcanist doesn't have a weakness and its kit is stuffed with insane passives. If you just look at parses and some individual pulls on esologs where someone managed to do insane damage on a class other than arcanist, you are going to miss what actually makes arcanist so good right now. The class gets a ton of free penetration and crit damage, which means that organized groups can provided the required penetration and crit damage with just Tremorscale and Lucent Echoes. And in this situation you are just worse off on literally any other class, because you have to commit extra resources from you CPs and gear to cover the missing stats that Arcanist gets for free. What arcanist also doesn't have to worry about is the boss moving around or having to switch targets, because only a tiny portion of their damage is tied to ground AoEs, unlike other cleave classes like DK and Necro. They also get the benefit of being able to do damage at range, which is insanely valuable in fights like Ansuul HM, where the fire attros can be cleaved by arcanist without ever dropping damage on the main boss. Aaand of course there is the elephant in the room which is their extremely cheap and strong ultimate, which allows for ST and AoE burst damage that no other class can match. By dropping and ultimate (Eye or Destro ult) in the beginning of the fight, then receiving a Pillager and full Cryptcannon, Arcanist can drop another ultimate straight away resulting in a 20-ish second damage window where no other class comes even close to competing on damage. And on top of all this they can choose to get a massive shield on their main damaging skill, which you can refresh pretty much for free. I'm not even going to go on about how they also have the most flex slots of any class giving them even more flexibility and utility choices.

Part of the popularity is definitely Arcanists ease of use, there is no doubt about that, but it is also just so damn strong and versatile class in general where you really need to think hard to find fights where it isn't the best class to go with. All of this rambling results in a graph that looks like this ↓

Credit for the graph to @Geldis1306

And the nerfs are not PvE related at all. I think the class will be the next Necro in PvP for the next 1-2 years.

I think they are, just not DD related. Arcanist was the tank with by far the most survivability and I was surprised it took them this long to nerf it tbh. I guess the game doesn't have enough tanks to begin with so ZoS didn't want to drive away the few that started tanking thanks to arcanist.

Well we can use your own graph if arcanist tank is so amazing why do we only see sorc necro and dk tanks the nerf was 100% pvp related because arcanist tank in pve is overshadowed by those 3 already

Arcanist definitely needed a tone down defensively but I think they are already not that great at dishing out dmg in pvp outside some bomb setups with pulls and beam now they are not even that great at defending themselves meanwhile we have sorc over here with a guaranteed heal that just got nerfed and still healing for more than arcs shield