U35 what is wrong?

TaSheen

CatoUnchained wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

[snip]

This is it right here. If there's one person here who knows every bit of minutia about the game and its mechanics, it's code.

Simply, U35 was hated because it was a DPS nerf. People don't generally like to have their damage taken away, so that's why there was such a backlash to it. And we now see that people are able to output numbers even higher than it was, so in theory people should get over it.

However, there was a more problematic part of U35, and it was more about what it meant for the playerbase. It was intended to raise the DPS floor and lower the ceiling, but it ended up accomplishing a global lowering of DPS. The issue was that the high-skill players were easily able to recover, whereas the mid-skill players were not, so it essentially furthered the skill gap. This meant that many mid-tier progs ended up severely backsliding, while the top-tier trifectas were being more focused towards the 1% of the 1% (which therefore put it only more out of reach of many players, since now fewer players we part of that elite set). Because of that, many raid leads were less interested in brining others along, others left the game in frustration, and that left the endgame PvE population in shambles with very few people to try to help bring others into the fold.

The way it was done also raised hackles. Every update had sweeping combat changes which made "keeping up with the meta" into a massive rollercoaster. And then this was yet another massive overhaul which required players to regear again. The changes to class skills and DoTs also meant that many needed to redo their entire rotations this time, not just gear, and many just got off the rollercoaster instead of adapting once again to a volatile meta. This was also one of the biggest recent times where the feedback on PTS was completely ignored, and then the negative predictions veteran players had all came true exactly as they said it would.

In short, U35, while it was designed to reduce the skill gap between low- mid- and high-tier players, ended up only increasing the gap between the mid- and high-tier by completely kneecapping the mid-tier. Low-tier players were mostly unaffected and high-tier players recovered easily, but mid-tier players needed a lot of work to get back to where they were.

There was also the healing changes, which were honestly a bigger issue but was completely drowned out in the noise of the DPS loss since most players DPS. Reducing the healing tick rate to once every 1 or 2 seconds was a massive problem in places where a global DoT ticked every 0.5 seconds, meaning healers' jobs ended up getting much harder since the incoming damage ticked much faster than they could outheal it. And when the point was made that some PvE encounters would end up almost unbeatable because of this, the answer was to simply nerf the health of the bosses by 10%. This of course didn't affect the incoming damage, and indeed shortening the encounter TTK essentially was a cookie for the DDs to try to assuage their concerns about lost DPS, while leaving healers feeling like the forgotten stepchildren again.

A lot of people also disliked the homogenization of classes, as many class skills ended up underperforming compared to general skill lines. After all, why bother using your Templar, or DK, or whatever for a run if they all fight the same way anyway?

I'll also offer that the cosmetic changes of U35 to change the Flurry and Jabs animations (and the unnecessary and lazy replacement of the light spear model with an in-game staff model used by vampires that has a lorebook explicitly saying "this is generally not used for stabbing") which were extremely poorly received - yes, the animations did need to change as the attack cadence did, but the quality of the new animations did not at all match what players wanted - and the cosmetic issue was completely ignored by the developers.

So, not sure what they wrote because [snip], but @code65536 is who took over for Nefas.....now look what's happening. Scary stuff I guess.

@CatoUnchained - in case you haven't found it yet:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8247232/#Comment_8247232

CatoUnchained

TaSheen wrote: »

CatoUnchained wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

[snip]

This is it right here. If there's one person here who knows every bit of minutia about the game and its mechanics, it's code.

Simply, U35 was hated because it was a DPS nerf. People don't generally like to have their damage taken away, so that's why there was such a backlash to it. And we now see that people are able to output numbers even higher than it was, so in theory people should get over it.

However, there was a more problematic part of U35, and it was more about what it meant for the playerbase. It was intended to raise the DPS floor and lower the ceiling, but it ended up accomplishing a global lowering of DPS. The issue was that the high-skill players were easily able to recover, whereas the mid-skill players were not, so it essentially furthered the skill gap. This meant that many mid-tier progs ended up severely backsliding, while the top-tier trifectas were being more focused towards the 1% of the 1% (which therefore put it only more out of reach of many players, since now fewer players we part of that elite set). Because of that, many raid leads were less interested in brining others along, others left the game in frustration, and that left the endgame PvE population in shambles with very few people to try to help bring others into the fold.

The way it was done also raised hackles. Every update had sweeping combat changes which made "keeping up with the meta" into a massive rollercoaster. And then this was yet another massive overhaul which required players to regear again. The changes to class skills and DoTs also meant that many needed to redo their entire rotations this time, not just gear, and many just got off the rollercoaster instead of adapting once again to a volatile meta. This was also one of the biggest recent times where the feedback on PTS was completely ignored, and then the negative predictions veteran players had all came true exactly as they said it would.

In short, U35, while it was designed to reduce the skill gap between low- mid- and high-tier players, ended up only increasing the gap between the mid- and high-tier by completely kneecapping the mid-tier. Low-tier players were mostly unaffected and high-tier players recovered easily, but mid-tier players needed a lot of work to get back to where they were.

There was also the healing changes, which were honestly a bigger issue but was completely drowned out in the noise of the DPS loss since most players DPS. Reducing the healing tick rate to once every 1 or 2 seconds was a massive problem in places where a global DoT ticked every 0.5 seconds, meaning healers' jobs ended up getting much harder since the incoming damage ticked much faster than they could outheal it. And when the point was made that some PvE encounters would end up almost unbeatable because of this, the answer was to simply nerf the health of the bosses by 10%. This of course didn't affect the incoming damage, and indeed shortening the encounter TTK essentially was a cookie for the DDs to try to assuage their concerns about lost DPS, while leaving healers feeling like the forgotten stepchildren again.

A lot of people also disliked the homogenization of classes, as many class skills ended up underperforming compared to general skill lines. After all, why bother using your Templar, or DK, or whatever for a run if they all fight the same way anyway?

I'll also offer that the cosmetic changes of U35 to change the Flurry and Jabs animations (and the unnecessary and lazy replacement of the light spear model with an in-game staff model used by vampires that has a lorebook explicitly saying "this is generally not used for stabbing") which were extremely poorly received - yes, the animations did need to change as the attack cadence did, but the quality of the new animations did not at all match what players wanted - and the cosmetic issue was completely ignored by the developers.

So, not sure what they wrote because [snip], but @code65536 is who took over for Nefas.....now look what's happening. Scary stuff I guess.

@CatoUnchained - in case you haven't found it yet:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8247232/#Comment_8247232

you can show that post because, unlike the post that @tomofhyrule cited, it's still on the forum.

alpha_synuclein

Marto wrote: »

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

You mean Fatecarver?

BananaBender

Marto wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

And yet, ZOS continues to behave the same way. The latest example I can think of is the Merciless Charge nerf from Update 44. Why nerf a set that’s nearly a decade old? Just because a few players were doing 4% extra damage? What’s the point?

Because it wasn't a 4% difference. It was a 20-40% difference.

For only two specific skills.

The set was designed to increase the damage of direct damage abilities by ~8%. And it did. Except for two skills (Flurry and Templar Jabs), which saw a 20-40% increase in damage from that set.

20-40% increase. For equipping 1 two-piece set.

And this is what I think is emblematic of how the community reacted to U35, and of the issues ZOS has balancing the game. It's not that they can't or they don't know how to. It's that the ESO community refuses to acknowledge that power needs to go down. They refuse to acknowledge that sometimes the way to improve balance is to nerf things.

You all claim you want balance. But a lot of you only want power and numbers to go up, up, and up. And the problems with difficulty the game faces now are the result of years of unchecked power creep. ZOS is scared to do something about power creep because the ESO community has shown time and time again that they aren't willing to accept it.

ZOS has not reverted U35 because people losing 10-20% DPS wasn't a problem. It was the intended result. It was the solution to the problem of power creep.

ESO would be a beter game if everyone dealt less damage. It would be more engaging, with a better combat pace, with choices in sets and builds that are more impactful, with more variety and easier balance.

I disagree. There needs to be power creep. Power creep is what keeps players interested and looking forwards to new updates and patches, we want our characters to get stronger. Nobody want to play a game where each patch something gets toned down and you get weaker and weaker overtime.
Of course, this would mean the power creep is controlled and not going all over the place, and this is the exact situation that has been going on. They toned down everyone's damage because they themselves toned everything too high. Then after a few patches they release arcanist which is a class that is pretty much on par with other classes pre U35. Instead of a slow pace upwards, the power of our builds is just jumping up and down seemingly by random.

I would be much more positive about the changes in U35 if ZOS had a clear vision on what they would like the combat to be, and stuck to it. But that has not been the case, not in the slightest. Now it's just a question of which class is getting nuked, and which set or class gets massively buffed out of nowhere like Azureblight did.

In short, people don't like power they have taken away from them only to be pushed to the next class resulting in no better environment as a whole.

tomofhyrule

CatoUnchained wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

CatoUnchained wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

[snip]

This is it right here. If there's one person here who knows every bit of minutia about the game and its mechanics, it's code.

Simply, U35 was hated because it was a DPS nerf. People don't generally like to have their damage taken away, so that's why there was such a backlash to it. And we now see that people are able to output numbers even higher than it was, so in theory people should get over it.

However, there was a more problematic part of U35, and it was more about what it meant for the playerbase. It was intended to raise the DPS floor and lower the ceiling, but it ended up accomplishing a global lowering of DPS. The issue was that the high-skill players were easily able to recover, whereas the mid-skill players were not, so it essentially furthered the skill gap. This meant that many mid-tier progs ended up severely backsliding, while the top-tier trifectas were being more focused towards the 1% of the 1% (which therefore put it only more out of reach of many players, since now fewer players we part of that elite set). Because of that, many raid leads were less interested in brining others along, others left the game in frustration, and that left the endgame PvE population in shambles with very few people to try to help bring others into the fold.

The way it was done also raised hackles. Every update had sweeping combat changes which made "keeping up with the meta" into a massive rollercoaster. And then this was yet another massive overhaul which required players to regear again. The changes to class skills and DoTs also meant that many needed to redo their entire rotations this time, not just gear, and many just got off the rollercoaster instead of adapting once again to a volatile meta. This was also one of the biggest recent times where the feedback on PTS was completely ignored, and then the negative predictions veteran players had all came true exactly as they said it would.

In short, U35, while it was designed to reduce the skill gap between low- mid- and high-tier players, ended up only increasing the gap between the mid- and high-tier by completely kneecapping the mid-tier. Low-tier players were mostly unaffected and high-tier players recovered easily, but mid-tier players needed a lot of work to get back to where they were.

There was also the healing changes, which were honestly a bigger issue but was completely drowned out in the noise of the DPS loss since most players DPS. Reducing the healing tick rate to once every 1 or 2 seconds was a massive problem in places where a global DoT ticked every 0.5 seconds, meaning healers' jobs ended up getting much harder since the incoming damage ticked much faster than they could outheal it. And when the point was made that some PvE encounters would end up almost unbeatable because of this, the answer was to simply nerf the health of the bosses by 10%. This of course didn't affect the incoming damage, and indeed shortening the encounter TTK essentially was a cookie for the DDs to try to assuage their concerns about lost DPS, while leaving healers feeling like the forgotten stepchildren again.

A lot of people also disliked the homogenization of classes, as many class skills ended up underperforming compared to general skill lines. After all, why bother using your Templar, or DK, or whatever for a run if they all fight the same way anyway?

I'll also offer that the cosmetic changes of U35 to change the Flurry and Jabs animations (and the unnecessary and lazy replacement of the light spear model with an in-game staff model used by vampires that has a lorebook explicitly saying "this is generally not used for stabbing") which were extremely poorly received - yes, the animations did need to change as the attack cadence did, but the quality of the new animations did not at all match what players wanted - and the cosmetic issue was completely ignored by the developers.

So, not sure what they wrote because [snip], but @code65536 is who took over for Nefas.....now look what's happening. Scary stuff I guess.

@CatoUnchained - in case you haven't found it yet:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8247232/#Comment_8247232

you can show that post because, unlike the post that tomofhyrule cited, it's still on the forum.

That's the post I linked. I just snipped it myself to avoid quoting a wall of text with my own wall of text attached.

JiubLeRepenti

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

I’m still trying to understand the connection you're trying to make between the new jab animation and the reduction of jab damage.

They could reduce its damage without altering the animation.

I just feel like you're trying to justify the whole thing by "it's was clearly OP". Ok, but they could have fixed it in a far better way: just by reducing the skill damages.

Vonnegut2506

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

I guess this is a perfect illustration of someone willing to justify any change ZOS makes. Let me say it again s l o w l y for you: How did changing the animation of jabs or flurry address power creep?

spartaxoxo

The change to jabs wasn't to combat power creep but to make it easier to weave.

TaSheen

tomofhyrule wrote: »

CatoUnchained wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

CatoUnchained wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

[snip]

This is it right here. If there's one person here who knows every bit of minutia about the game and its mechanics, it's code.

Simply, U35 was hated because it was a DPS nerf. People don't generally like to have their damage taken away, so that's why there was such a backlash to it. And we now see that people are able to output numbers even higher than it was, so in theory people should get over it.

However, there was a more problematic part of U35, and it was more about what it meant for the playerbase. It was intended to raise the DPS floor and lower the ceiling, but it ended up accomplishing a global lowering of DPS. The issue was that the high-skill players were easily able to recover, whereas the mid-skill players were not, so it essentially furthered the skill gap. This meant that many mid-tier progs ended up severely backsliding, while the top-tier trifectas were being more focused towards the 1% of the 1% (which therefore put it only more out of reach of many players, since now fewer players we part of that elite set). Because of that, many raid leads were less interested in brining others along, others left the game in frustration, and that left the endgame PvE population in shambles with very few people to try to help bring others into the fold.

The way it was done also raised hackles. Every update had sweeping combat changes which made "keeping up with the meta" into a massive rollercoaster. And then this was yet another massive overhaul which required players to regear again. The changes to class skills and DoTs also meant that many needed to redo their entire rotations this time, not just gear, and many just got off the rollercoaster instead of adapting once again to a volatile meta. This was also one of the biggest recent times where the feedback on PTS was completely ignored, and then the negative predictions veteran players had all came true exactly as they said it would.

In short, U35, while it was designed to reduce the skill gap between low- mid- and high-tier players, ended up only increasing the gap between the mid- and high-tier by completely kneecapping the mid-tier. Low-tier players were mostly unaffected and high-tier players recovered easily, but mid-tier players needed a lot of work to get back to where they were.

There was also the healing changes, which were honestly a bigger issue but was completely drowned out in the noise of the DPS loss since most players DPS. Reducing the healing tick rate to once every 1 or 2 seconds was a massive problem in places where a global DoT ticked every 0.5 seconds, meaning healers' jobs ended up getting much harder since the incoming damage ticked much faster than they could outheal it. And when the point was made that some PvE encounters would end up almost unbeatable because of this, the answer was to simply nerf the health of the bosses by 10%. This of course didn't affect the incoming damage, and indeed shortening the encounter TTK essentially was a cookie for the DDs to try to assuage their concerns about lost DPS, while leaving healers feeling like the forgotten stepchildren again.

A lot of people also disliked the homogenization of classes, as many class skills ended up underperforming compared to general skill lines. After all, why bother using your Templar, or DK, or whatever for a run if they all fight the same way anyway?

I'll also offer that the cosmetic changes of U35 to change the Flurry and Jabs animations (and the unnecessary and lazy replacement of the light spear model with an in-game staff model used by vampires that has a lorebook explicitly saying "this is generally not used for stabbing") which were extremely poorly received - yes, the animations did need to change as the attack cadence did, but the quality of the new animations did not at all match what players wanted - and the cosmetic issue was completely ignored by the developers.

So, not sure what they wrote because [snip], but @code65536 is who took over for Nefas.....now look what's happening. Scary stuff I guess.

@CatoUnchained - in case you haven't found it yet:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8247232/#Comment_8247232

you can show that post because, unlike the post that tomofhyrule cited, it's still on the forum.

That's the post I linked. I just snipped it myself to avoid quoting a wall of text with my own wall of text attached.

Which is why (when I do that - infrequently) I use <self-snipped for brevity>.

Marto

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

I guess this is a perfect illustration of someone willing to justify any change ZOS makes. Let me say it again s l o w l y for you: How did changing the animation of jabs or flurry address power creep?

For many, many years, the Jabs animation had a lot of problems.

Its duration was longer than one second. That meant it had a different weaving timing than any other skill in the game. You or any other "Templar veteran" may look at that and say it's not a problem, but that's just because you're already used to it. Making the game more accessible requires you to look at things beyond just your own experience.

Jabs used to last close to 2 seconds at launch, which was fine for the time, as the game was designed around the 1s global cooldown. Jabs would simply be considered to last two GCDs. But as the game evolved, the pace accelerated, and weaving became a thing, that meant Jabs was falling behind. It needed to have a lot of damage to make up for it.

ZOS tried to alleviate this by speeding up the skill, until it reached a duration of 1s. It dealt damage at 0ms, then again at 333ms, 666ms, 999ms. But because the animation was entirely out of sync, leading to a lot of perceived "lag" in PVP and other fast-paced scenarios. ZOS adjusted it to deal damage at 0-300-600-900ms, but the desync was still too extreme, and the last "hit" happened long after the damage had already been dealt in the server.

Their solution was to change Jabs to be 0.8s, the same duration as many other stammables. And they changed the damage timing to 0ms, 400ms, and 800ms. Less damage ticks more spread out was probably done to improve server performance, too. Made it made more sense visually, with the damage ticks more in-sync with the animation. In PVP it made it easier to anticipate, block, roll, etc. You were no longer taking "phantom damage" from a skill that didn't even look like it hit you.

Having it behave similarly to other spammables also makes it more predictable and probably easier to balance. No need to account for Templar players having less light attacks per parse, or having to give it its own unique coefficient or calculations. Because jabs got in the way of weaving, any small change to jabs had drastic consequences for Templar DPS. That's why Templar between 2014-2022 was either extremely overpowered, or extremely underpowered.

So yeah, that's why the animation needed to change.

Don't like it, subjectively? Sure. Whatever. That's your opinion. Maybe ZOS will change the animation, maybe not. I personally would like to see it use a unique spear model. And have some of the bloom reduced.

But it's staying 0.8s, changing that would just be unwise and having drastic consequences.

Valion

Marto wrote: »

ESO before U35 was a mess. An even bigger mess than we have right now.

I'd like to thank you for flipping the medal a bit, too.
One aspect you did not mention as far as I saw it was the simple reduction of server-sided calculations. U35 might have made the game run a bit smoother in the long run, since less things happen at the same second now.

Back then, I was among the few that were not totally against the change. In fact, I wanted people to accept change as a concept even more.
Boy, was I naive.

But people were raging - and one of the biggest problems of today became obvious. (To me, at least. I am sure others already knew that.)
ZOS neither listened to well formulated, constructive criticism when the patch was hitting on the PTS, nor did they communicate on eye-level after they dropped the bomb.
They lost much of the trust and faith they still enjoyed in our ranks back then.

But if you skip back to the old threads, you can witness that since then, instead of listening more carefully, they've just heavied their hand when it comes to moderating and cutting comments.
The discussion was openly fought -
but it did not really matter for the devs.
They did what they wanted to do, losing many players forever, as far as I remember.

U35 was frustrating on many levels since it was undemocratic to the core.

Vonnegut2506

I think more than anything, U35 taught all of us that ZOS values feedback as much as I value U35.

Ph1p

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

Wow, there is a lot of misinformation to unpack here:

• Jabs and its morphs didn't deal "nearly full damage" to secondary targets, but rather about 38%. More importantly, U35 actually increased that share, and Biting Jabs now deals 65% AOE damage, for example.
• Jabs wasn't "so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant". Pre-U35, there were literally high-end (PVE) builds out there that didn't use it at all. The one irreplaceable Templar skill was and is its beam, which U35 actually buffed by 23%.
• While Jabs was definitely strong, it was also resource-intensive and difficult to weave due to its 1.0 second channel time, which you're conveniently ignoring.

Still, the changes might still make sense. By reducing the channel time to 0.8 seconds, U35 made Jabs more beginner-friendly and thus arguably nerfed the ceiling while raising the floor. But your entire argumentation becomes moot with U38, which introduced the Arcanist's Flail and Fatecarver. These actually deal 100% AOE damage, heal/shield you, and trivialize PVE fights against multiple targets.

Elowen_Starveil

virtus753 wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

If I'm plotting the data points on a graph, it seems like ZOS would like to finally remove the glitch-that-stuck that enabled weaving in the first place from the game entirely. If they do it all at once, then half of everyone will leave immediately. In another couple of years, I suspect changes will be made to make it worthless to do (weave), and then they can finally just remove it. When your DPS meta relies on a mythic that nullifies all LA attack damage, and people running Drake's Rush and imbibing heroism pots makes ultimate generation much less dependent on basic attacks, where else is this headed?

If they are trying to remove light attack weaving completely, there were other things they should have done (or avoided doing) long ago and a lot, lot more yet to do, which doesn't seem to be able to be drawn out over time.

In the first place, if they wanted to remove weaving (at the speed that takes advantage of animation cancelling), they should have started by not adding a loading screen tooltip that literally instructs players to do it and how. It's one thing to say "this use was never intended and we never officially endorsed it" - that ship sailed with this loading screen, if not before. The game has shown this tip for many years. Why take the time to teach that as a mechanic if they had any thought they might want to remove it? And while they are entitled to change their minds, if they removed LA weaving-with-AC now, it would not be as a glitch or a bug but as an officially endorsed and officially taught feature of combat.

They reiterated that support for LA weaving by redesigning Bound Armaments to rely on building LAs like Grim Focus. Get rid of LA weaving, and everything that relies on that stacking needs another drastic overhaul to remain viable.

On a similar note, they'd have to overhaul or design viable alternatives for Rele, Depths, and many other sets that are designed around LA weaving. (This is a big part of why Velothi doesn't actually nullify LA damage. It reduces it by 99% instead of 100% so it can keep proccing these sets. And also LAs still fully benefit from Stagger, which is unaffected by Velothi, since they technically still do damage.) Now Rele might be functional when light attacking once every 4-5 seconds, but you'll only get up to the tooltip damage that way. The set does further damage in direct proportion to off-the-GCD AC weaving: it ticks every LA in addition to its once-per-second DoT, so you can end up with ~1.4 ticks per second, ~40% more than the tooltip promises. Without that, the set is not nearly as competitive. A set like Depths only requires one LA at much longer intervals, but Depths specifically provides a much-needed alternative to Coral for a variety of players, specs, and situations. It would not be as viable an alternative if we had to sacrifice a GCD to proc it, which is not something we have to do with Coral. Even if LA proc sets were rebudgeted (where possible) to account for losing a GCD, putting LAs on the GCD system while continuing to have proc sets rely on them would add a component to the game where we would have to monitor even more proc cooldowns and deliberately choose whether and when to use an LA in place of a skill. That would significantly increase the difficulty and complexity of combat, which is directly contradictory to their stated goals. They have said they do not want to encourage watching timers that tell us what to hit on which GCD. Putting LAs on the GCD would do that.

They’d also likely have to reconfigure weapon glyphs if we have to give up a GCD to proc them (or consider a suboptimal skill setup). Even running cloak on the front bar doesn't proc glyphs as consistently as light attack weaving, since cloak ticks every 2 seconds. This is another part of why Velothi doesn't actually nullify LA damage.

Personally I don't see that 3/s-for-9-seconds ult regen as superfluous, since most other sources of ult stack with that. (While they technically constitute alternatives to light attacking for this purpose, blocking damage and healing - not overhealing - group members are not nearly as universally reliable.) Heroism, Pillager's, etc., aren't going to be a replacement for this ult gen when they stack with it. It's hard to envision a scenario in which we're getting so much ult that we should disregard easily accessible additional sources of it. For the recent HMs especially impairing an important source of ultimate like this would make them harder than they were designed to be. We already saw the pushback from the encounter team when U35 was on PTS and we were initially told that no changes would be made to content to mitigate the loss of damage and healing on our end. Absent help from the encounter team, what would the combat team provide to make up for what we'd lose with the loss of everything dependent on weaving, and would all that work be worth it just to remove a mechanic they've already endorsed? It seems to me that lessening reliance on weaving provides the accessibility they want without undermining the many elements of the system specifically designed for it.

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

The power gap hasn't been reduced though. It just looks different now. There's a big damage output difference between a good arcanist and a bad arcanist, for example.

That's what you get when you're trying to fix skill gap without actually addressing players skill level. There will always be a difference.

Also, for me personally one of the most disturbing part of U35 is how ZOS seem to treat balance like a zero sum game. Introducing viable HA builds (or other alternative playstyles) did not require nerfing LAs. It's not like we can't have both in the same game... And reducing the power creep went to trash when they introduce arcanist anyways.

It's a bit different with the duration of DoTs and buffs, but even here I would rather have some variability. Making every DoT the same makes every class the same.

They compressed LAs. They gave a decent buff to LA scaling in order to raise the floor, and they capped the base damage of LAs in order to lower the ceiling. It wasn't a one-sided nerf. A better example of nerfing something in an apparent attempt to make the New Shiny more viable would probably be Iceheart upon the introduction of Mother Ciannait?

As for every DoT being the same, Ritual of Retribution (especially the changes made to it with U35) is a good case study in why variability is not always in our interests...

That was an awesome deep dive into the situation… and also a perfect example of why the combat in this game is so frustratingly obscure that ZOS desperately needs people like Nefas out there to explain it and make builds to account for it. And now all the big names I’ve been watching for years are gone.

SaffronCitrusflower

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

I guess this is a perfect illustration of someone willing to justify any change ZOS makes. Let me say it again s l o w l y for you: How did changing the animation of jabs or flurry address power creep?

For many, many years, the Jabs animation had a lot of problems.

.......s.

No, the jabs animation was just fine and matched the other spear animations used by templars. Now jabs isn't only jerky around the waist instead of thrust like a spear, now it's a night hollow stave instead of a spear of light.

SaffronCitrusflower

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

I think more than anything, U35 taught all of us that ZOS values feedback as much as I value U35.

By the way, did ZOS ever post that promised review and discussion thread they said they would after U35 dropped? Asking because I don't ever remember seeing it. Anyone able to link to it?

Soarora

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

I think more than anything, U35 taught all of us that ZOS values feedback as much as I value U35.

By the way, did ZOS ever post that promised review and discussion thread they said they would after U35 dropped? Asking because I don't ever remember seeing it. Anyone able to link to it?

No, we never got our Q&A. We remember. Instead, I think we got some post about ZOS' ideals for their combat system.

SaffronCitrusflower

Soarora wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

I think more than anything, U35 taught all of us that ZOS values feedback as much as I value U35.

By the way, did ZOS ever post that promised review and discussion thread they said they would after U35 dropped? Asking because I don't ever remember seeing it. Anyone able to link to it?

No, we never got our Q&A. We remember. Instead, I think we got some post about ZOS' ideals for their combat system.

That's what I thought. Thanks for the confirmation.

Vonnegut2506

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

I think more than anything, U35 taught all of us that ZOS values feedback as much as I value U35.

By the way, did ZOS ever post that promised review and discussion thread they said they would after U35 dropped? Asking because I don't ever remember seeing it. Anyone able to link to it?

If I am remembering correctly, which I'm not 100% sure since I took a year off after U35, there was a thread that kept asking when the Q & A was going to happen that got up over 50 pages. It was then mysteriously locked for reasons, slid into obscurity, and the Q & A never happened.

tomofhyrule

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

I think more than anything, U35 taught all of us that ZOS values feedback as much as I value U35.

By the way, did ZOS ever post that promised review and discussion thread they said they would after U35 dropped? Asking because I don't ever remember seeing it. Anyone able to link to it?

Yes and no.

They eventually posted a Deep Dive into their combat values as a whole, which really didn't address U35 directly but instead tried to offer insight into how the team sees combat in the game. This was posted some time after the release of U36.

From the original thread asking for the Q&A:

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone. We know everyone has been asking about the Q&A related to combat. After internal conversations with the team, we have decided to shift from a Q&A. Instead, we've gone through the questions many have been asking and taken those back to the combat team to address the core themes we saw asked across the community. With that, the combat team has drafted an ESO Combat Vision statement, designed to give the community a clearer picture around the goals the combat team has always strived for and will continue to strive for. You can find the statement here for the forum discussion link. While we know the Q&A was initially proposed, we hope the statement helps to clarify some questions around the vision for ESO combat. Thanks for your patience around this topic.

Vonnegut2506

Aah yes, the developer deep dive which said nothing of any substance and didn't answer a single question most people had about U35. I forgot that gem.

moderatelyfatman

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

You mean Fatecarver?

Mic drop!

If I recall, Jabs was mainly used on my Stamplar allowing for a very simple build in pve. Their damage was good but they did not top the dps in content, unlike the class mentioned above. It was great for back when I was early vet progging as it allowed me to do harder content and focus more or mechanics rather than rotations. The downside was that it was a pure melee build and templar was relatively squishy at the time so it was easy to get smoked.

I do recall there was a patch where Templar was stupidly overpowered in PvP (I got ganked by one in IC!) but that didn't last long. They've been mediocre ever since.

Aurielle

Marto wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

My initial response was going to be “imagine writing this when Arcanists exist,” but I see I was already beaten to the punch.

Templars are a shadow of what they once were. Any of the actually useful class identity we once had was stripped away to make room for the Arcanist. The only remaining Templar class identity that ZOS stubbornly holds onto is the whole forcing us into our “house” thing — something that has ensured Templars are undesirable to play in PVP and other high mobility encounters.

liliub17_ESO

LPapirius wrote: »

The casual quester who doesn't engage in any end game content didn't notice anything wrong with U35 because they don't participate in any of the content that U35 borked. The people who noticed how bad U35 was are the people who play daily for hours and know the combat system well. The people who just do overland questing didn't notice because they aren't running any challenging content.

This.is.wrong.

I am one of those pesky "casual questers". Typically I don't engage in what passes for end game content. Generally I don't sit and parse out every single damage point or scrutinize each set of armor to see if I can squeeze out the last iota of effectiveness from synergies.

And yet, I DID notice the changes. Before this particular update, I DID play for hours daily (after or before work). For me, nearly always running solo - I came late to the reliance on a companion idea - there was content which required thought and some form of strategy rather than brute force. As a result of this update, my in-game time dropped off dramatically and has not recovered.

I am also an older gamer - some of us did not spend our formative, or even young adult, years with computers. While in reasonably good health, the simple passage of time has made sure that my twitch reflex will not match many gamers' nor is constant clicking between two bars of skills easy, enjoyable, or some days doable.

And yet, I play ESO as well as multiple often quite different type games. And yet, I did notice the changes in U33 and U35 even though I did not (still do not) run certain sets of armor - or seek out "end game" content - or spend an inordinate (to me) amount of time scrutinizing the every detail of every DPS possibility vs any other every detail of every DPS possibility.

Again, the ones in charge of creating and implementing game changes for this game have a long and storied history of ignoring player feedback. Some of the reasoning may be schedule deadlines, some may be coding difficulties, some of it may be hubris and the inability to admit the player base may actually know the ins-and-outs of the game better than they. We have no idea.

Just remember - us filthy casuals who don't (or can't) bob and weave DO play this game, and we're not oblivious as you seem to believe.

Thysbe

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

Just remember - us filthy casuals who don't (or can't) bob and weave DO play this game, and we're not oblivious as you seem to believe.

And that was the real main achievement of U35 - disuniting casual and hardcore players with all the talk about closing the gap betweeen the player groups, no one has cared about or was bothered by before.

liliub17_ESO

Thysbe wrote: »

And that was the real main achievement of U35 - disuniting casual and hardcore players with all the talk about closing the gap betweeen the player groups, no one has cared about or was bothered by before.

Exactly. Even my own guild - the best bunch of folks you'd ever hope to meet - suddenly became aware/critical of the gap between "normal" players and their own very good skills with the ham-fisted changes when it honestly had not been an over-riding issue before.

Do I (ALL of us) have room to improve? Definitely, no question about it.

Did this update make that easier or better? No. All it seemed to do is alienate many of the higher skilled players, discombobulate many of the players in general, and cause unnecessary strife.

Were there any good points in the update? I'm sure there were, but when the perceived or actual negative completely overshadows the gain, it's a net loss.

JiubLeRepenti

There was a straightforward way to reduce the gap: make people parsing, training, studying how builds and sets work, and dedicating time to improving step by step.

I’m nearly CP2500, and I can’t even count how many dozens of hours I’ve spent on training dummies to achieve decent DPS. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve scribbled on a sheet of paper to calculate the buffs and debuffs my group would need for the most optimal build to support my teammates.

So here’s my point: why should all that effort I made (or at least a significant part of it) be wiped out because some players don’t want to, don’t have time to, or don’t have the capacity to reach a certain level?

That’s how I feel about it. I’ve trained literally hundreds of hours to handle high-level content years ago. Why should I accept that ZOS’s goal is to make this high-level content more accessible by reducing the gap? Because that’s what we’re talking about, right? I mean, 95% of the PvE content in ESO is already accessible to players with a casual approach to the game. So I guess the idea of “reducing the gap” is to make this high-level content more reachable?

Reducing the gap by taking away a part of high-level players' achievements is something I will never accept, no matter how many topics or threads I’ve read trying to justify it.

liliub17_ESO

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

...

So here’s my point: why should all that effort I made (or at least a significant part of it) be wiped out because some players don’t want to, don’t have time to, or don’t have the capacity to reach a certain level?

That’s how I feel about it. I’ve trained literally hundreds of hours to handle high-level content years ago. Why should I accept that ZOS’s goal is to make this high-level content more accessible by reducing the gap? Because that’s what we’re talking about, right? I mean, 95% of the PvE content in ESO is already accessible to players with a casual approach to the game. So I guess the idea of “reducing the gap” is to make this high-level content more reachable?

My jaded opinion is that the bean counters wanted more players (meaning more to buy the game) and the short-term way to make that happen was to "close the gap" - dumb things down to the point that ESO became more of a homogenous point-and-click than the more nuanced, multi-class layered game it was evolving into. Is that the reality of why U35? :: shrugs ::

In a well designed and balanced game, the play up to higher content is essentially training for the player to gain the skill and knowledge to be able to be successful. That makes sense and jibes with your spending all the effort and time to improve your gameplay. Much of what these ESO updates do, however, is reduce or remove such 'training' necessity. Each new class introduced, each new boss mechanic, adds a layer of balancing needed with the existing mechanics. Obviously some blend well, some don't.

From the few game coders I know, the idea is to introduce new things which enhance, not break the existent structure. An intelligent design takes the existing into account before adding new. Yet, that doesn't appear to be what we have here. What we get instead is ::gestures vaguely to the game::.

Personally, as a casual player, I was and am perfectly happy for end-content gamers to do their thing; I admire their grit and knowledge even though I admit I don't have the same ambition to achieve that level. I was and am perfectly happy for PvPers to have a viable, enjoyable game even though I myself do not enjoy or have intention to PvP. I do not expect the entire game to be adjusted to me simply because I find it somewhat challenging to use both skill bars constantly or think there's too much grind to get just the right set of armor to turn me into max-dps (class).

The problem is that whomever makes the decisions on the dev side of the house does not listen to the players. Why? Again, ::shrugs:: Maybe it's the bean counters, maybe it's hubris, maybe it's some other factor altogether.

moo_2021

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

You mean Fatecarver?

It's only overpowering in under 50 BGs.

Turtle_Bot

Aurielle wrote: »

Templars are a shadow of what they once were.

Maybe they shouldn't have picked up the nighthollow staff (I jest, sorry I couldn't resist that one )


When it comes to jabs changes from U35, imo it would have gone down better if they had simply kept the old spear model and animation, but cut the 4th "stab" from it and stretched the duration of the animation out to match the new attack cadence. At the very least it would have still looked like the old jabs, even if it wasn't hitting like the old jabs.

As for my stamplar (for PvP now), I'm running either dizzy or a scribing skill instead with good results so far. But I'm probably playing plar very differently to most plars (more like a stamsorc than a stamplar using race against time as my (very effective) mobility tool). It definitely has ways to play in the more mobile encounters (for PvP) thanks to some of the changes since U35 (like rune still providing its baseline benefits when outside of it, just with bonuses when standing in the rune), so it's getting there (slowly).

My biggest issue with plar currently (outside of jabs) is just PotL. I've worked around this lack of delayed burst using a front bar set paired with javelin (that works well together in PvP since both ignore armor), but if they could address the issue of PotL essentially being double dipped by battle spirits damage taken reduction (reducing the initial copied damage of other abilities then also reducing the damage PotL itself deals), that is essentially making it impossible to deal any significant damage with the ability in PvP, I could see plar making its way back into the PvP meta.