Which Skill Line Categories should get Vengeance skills next? Assume no passive abilities.

Erickson9610

During the Update 45 livestream, we were shown a preview of the upcoming Vengeance campaign for Cyrodiil, which replaces all of the player skills with specialized versions designed to be more balanced and performant in PvP. Currently, we are shown that only Class abilities have been designed for this new campaign, and we can expect to not receive any passive abilities, including those from the Racial, Armor, and Alliance War categories:


We also see from the Update 45 Preview article that we can expect to receive "greater options . . . in the future":


I know this test hasn't officially started yet, but I'm really excited to try this out. I hope this revamp of Cyrodiil combat can separate PvE from PvP, and give PvP more balance and performance while potentially allowing some form of many of the build options currently available in PvE to be used in PvP. That being said, which skill line categories should be adapted for Vengeance next? Assume that no passive abilities will be made, so categories like Racial skills are off limits.

Soarora

Alliance War (Assault and Support active abilities; no passives such as those from Emperor)

Weapon would be nice, but I feel like alliance war makes sense because its uh... for cyrodiil haha.

Lumsdenml

Weapon (no weapon passives)

Soarora wrote: »

Weapon would be nice, but I feel like alliance war makes sense because its uh... for cyrodiil haha.

Exactly what I was going to say!

Estin

Weapon (no weapon passives)

Weapon skill lines will be the most important, imo.

Not every class has access to major/minor breach. Not every class is effective at range. Not every class can provide good healing.

If added early on, it has the potential to pinpoint if the healing skill line has the biggest impact on performance. Alliance war can be useful to figure this out too due to echoing vigor, but alliance war doesn't provide much variety in gameplay, and opening up build diversity, even if it's only a little, would be beneficial by giving players more of a reason to continue testing.

YandereGirlfriend

Weapon (no weapon passives)

Estin wrote: »

Weapon skill lines will be the most important, imo.

Not every class has access to major/minor breach. Not every class is effective at range. Not every class can provide good healing.

If added early on, it has the potential to pinpoint if the healing skill line has the biggest impact on performance. Alliance war can be useful to figure this out too due to echoing vigor, but alliance war doesn't provide much variety in gameplay, and opening up build diversity, even if it's only a little, would be beneficial by giving players more of a reason to continue testing.

As far as I understand things, I don't think that buffs or debuffs exist or are meant to exist in the template Cyro. So things like Breach don't matter. Everyone has cloned stats and they cannot be modified by any means. The entire idea of builds does not exist.

Erickson9610

Weapon (no weapon passives)

I feel that generally, Weapon skills round out the Class skills. While I'd love to be able to actually transform into a werewolf in this mode, I don't expect World skill lines to be added any time soon, due to generally being a rather insignificant part of one's build.

It is a little strange that the Alliance War skill lines weren't covered initially, but given that this first test is meant to test the balance between the base Class skills, it makes sense why they are currently omitted. I personally find more value in Weapon skills than I do in Alliance War skills.

Tommy_The_Gun

Class Only & nothing else.

^ That way there is a chance to see Ball Groups with no 10x Vigors & 10 Rapid Regens & 10 shields all stacked. Small, but there is. Depending on what skills will do in this mode (they teased that healing for example will be single target only), Ball groups may all play as templars or sorcs, but also - there is a possibility that Ball Groups wont be participating in this tests at all (which will cause "false" results as BGs are causing all kinds of lag & server issue & they seem to be one of the primary server performance cultrips).

Anyway - even if ball groups wont be playing in this mode (cuz it may be too hard for them), it is worth to play it just to see no-proc & no heal stacking & no broken pull sets & stuff. It all really depends on what Class skills will do and they will be reduced to do less. So, even if I won't be able to cloak on my NB (since cloak might be doing something different in this mode, we don't know) - it is worth to pay such price to be able to play lag free & balanced Cyro.

ZDunlain

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Class Only & nothing else.

^ That way there is a chance to see Ball Groups with no 10x Vigors & 10 Rapid Regens & 10 shields all stacked. Small, but there is. Depending on what skills will do in this mode (they teased that healing for example will be single target only), Ball groups may all play as templars or sorcs, but also - there is a possibility that Ball Groups wont be participating in this tests at all (which will cause "false" results as BGs are causing all kinds of lag & server issue & they seem to be one of the primary server performance cultrips).

Anyway - even if ball groups wont be playing in this mode (cuz it may be too hard for them), it is worth to play it just to see no-proc & no heal stacking & no broken pull sets & stuff. It all really depends on what Class skills will do and they will be reduced to do less. So, even if I won't be able to cloak on my NB (since cloak might be doing something different in this mode, we don't know) - it is worth to pay such price to be able to play lag free & balanced Cyro.

Exactly this. Just class skills.

Reginald_leBlem

Alliance War (Assault and Support active abilities; no passives such as those from Emperor)

It would make NO sense not to have alliance war skills added eventually, even if I don't think they are as impactful.

Estin

Weapon (no weapon passives)

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Estin wrote: »

Weapon skill lines will be the most important, imo.

Not every class has access to major/minor breach. Not every class is effective at range. Not every class can provide good healing.

If added early on, it has the potential to pinpoint if the healing skill line has the biggest impact on performance. Alliance war can be useful to figure this out too due to echoing vigor, but alliance war doesn't provide much variety in gameplay, and opening up build diversity, even if it's only a little, would be beneficial by giving players more of a reason to continue testing.

As far as I understand things, I don't think that buffs or debuffs exist or are meant to exist in the template Cyro. So things like Breach don't matter. Everyone has cloned stats and they cannot be modified by any means. The entire idea of builds does not exist.

I'm going to assume this is only the case for the testing since everything is disabled except basic class skills. If in the case they start adding more to this test campaign, I would assume they'll tone back the template stats.

Either way, having access to more combat skills would help with it feeling too basic if they continue to do more testing.

Estin

Weapon (no weapon passives)

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Class Only & nothing else.

^ That way there is a chance to see Ball Groups with no 10x Vigors & 10 Rapid Regens & 10 shields all stacked. Small, but there is. Depending on what skills will do in this mode (they teased that healing for example will be single target only), Ball groups may all play as templars or sorcs, but also - there is a possibility that Ball Groups wont be participating in this tests at all (which will cause "false" results as BGs are causing all kinds of lag & server issue & they seem to be one of the primary server performance cultrips).

Anyway - even if ball groups wont be playing in this mode (cuz it may be too hard for them), it is worth to play it just to see no-proc & no heal stacking & no broken pull sets & stuff. It all really depends on what Class skills will do and they will be reduced to do less. So, even if I won't be able to cloak on my NB (since cloak might be doing something different in this mode, we don't know) - it is worth to pay such price to be able to play lag free & balanced Cyro.

Ball Groups are a problem because of the current in game skills. Since they're giving us basic and toned down PvP specific class skills, the same can be done with other skill lines so the problematic skills making ball groups possible can properly be adjusted without affecting PvE.

silky_soft

Just class skills and remove the free range from battlespirit

Zodiarkslayer

The entire point is to have just the class skills ...

Muizer

Weapon (no weapon passives)

The next iteration could just be one expanding on the class skills. I say this, because I suspect the main focus is on testing the number of calculations per skill cast.

That means adding equally simplified weapon skills alongside the simplified class skills would not actually bring us much closer to what the engine can handle.

So yeah, form a pov of rebuilding a complete game, I'd say weapon skills, but in terms of testing it may be premature.

Major_Mangle

I pray this is just a data collection test (which is fine) and not something they actually plan to implement. The entire point of ESO PvP is the large variety of options to choose from, it's what makes PvP fun.

"Preset PvP" is arguably one of the worst PvP systems to exist.

xylena_lazarow

This looks like the PvP equivalent of putting more water into your skim milk, to wash down your bread sandwich.

Unless it's somehow absolutely spectacularly awesome, i.e. deletes the ball meta, it's DOA.

Zodiarkslayer

Major_Mangle wrote: »

I pray this is just a data collection test (which is fine) and not something they actually plan to implement. The entire point of ESO PvP is the large variety of options to choose from, it's what makes PvP fun.

"Preset PvP" is arguably one of the worst PvP systems to exist.

Then again, this is also why it is so darn hard to get into PvP in ESO. And why success in PvP depends entirely on your build and how much time and money you sink into it.

And in the new system its all about player skill. I think some people are afraid of that.

katorga

If I understand what they are saying, no sets, no passives, and a fixed template of neutered skills - no more builds?

They just killed social media content that evangelizes their game to new players.

Long term players who love the complexity of theory crafting builds will continue to hemorrhage away from the game.

They way this ends up is:

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.
2. If they do actually equally balance all vengeance skills lines then 1 on 1s are stalemates
3. Ball Groups will be even stronger....because simple numbers will decide all fights. 2 will always beat 1 and so on.

xylena_lazarow

katorga wrote: »

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.

Yup I'll put gold on 1 that there ends up one busted class/skill combo that dominates the meta.

katorga

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.

Yup I'll put gold on 1 that there ends up one busted class/skill combo that dominates the meta.

You can start with which classes have a high percentage of ground effect skills....just write them off.

Classes that get a lot of their capability from class passives...write them off. (think about that, as a DK)

Classes that are primarily 15m range or less...write them off.

I assume, we don't get ANY skills outside of class skills, no weapon skills, no scribing skills, no guild skills, no vampire, no werewolf, no mythics, no sets, no CP, no racial passives. Heck will they even have Emperor in the vengeance campaign?

Overall it just sounds boring.

JaxontheUnfortunate

World (Soul Magic and Werewolf/Vampire active abilities; no passives such as Undeath)

Also no mundus

Soarora

Alliance War (Assault and Support active abilities; no passives such as those from Emperor)

katorga wrote: »

If I understand what they are saying, no sets, no passives, and a fixed template of neutered skills - no more builds?

They just killed social media content that evangelizes their game to new players.

Long term players who love the complexity of theory crafting builds will continue to hemorrhage away from the game.

They way this ends up is:

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.
2. If they do actually equally balance all vengeance skills lines then 1 on 1s are stalemates
3. Ball Groups will be even stronger....because simple numbers will decide all fights. 2 will always beat 1 and so on.

Its a test. They repeated it a whole bunch in the stream really trying to make it clear that it’s just a test and this will not be how they fix Cyrodiil. I don’t know what they plan to get out of the test considering they’re dropping everything down to the most basic form of class skills, but they must have some reason.
Something people aren’t mentioning too is that potions will be infinite and so will siege, because its a test environment.

YandereGirlfriend

Weapon (no weapon passives)

katorga wrote: »

If I understand what they are saying, no sets, no passives, and a fixed template of neutered skills - no more builds?

They just killed social media content that evangelizes their game to new players.

Long term players who love the complexity of theory crafting builds will continue to hemorrhage away from the game.

They way this ends up is:

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.
2. If they do actually equally balance all vengeance skills lines then 1 on 1s are stalemates
3. Ball Groups will be even stronger....because simple numbers will decide all fights. 2 will always beat 1 and so on.

There also appears to be a return of the dreaded AOE target cap for offensive abilities.

So if you are getting swarmed by 30 Xv1ers it's basically auto-GG because you can only damage 3 of them per AOE attack.

There is a good reason why the AOE cap was abolished in the early days of the game - it rewards zerging and punishes individual skill.

Ilsabet

Weapon (no weapon passives)

Weapon skills seem like a pretty basic thing to include. That would allow for a bit more variety in skill loadouts and would make weapon choice actually matter.

I was going to say something about how playing stamblade with no ranged options doesn't sound like very much fun, but then I remembered that there don't seem to be morphs for the simplified skills, so now I'm wondering how stam/mag builds are even going to work. If my stamblade can just spam Strife instead of Snipe, I guess that nullifies my concern about not having access to range without weapon skills.

Jestir

Alliance War (Assault and Support active abilities; no passives such as those from Emperor)

It has to have at least the alliance war and weapon based skill lines. The former exists for the campaign and the later is absolutely necessary for build diversity

katorga

Ilsabet wrote: »

...but then I remembered that there don't seem to be morphs for the simplified skills...

That could really sink some classes...losing haunting curse for daedric prey for example. But maybe they are simplifying the un-morphed version.

Luck of the draw, whichever class gets the best vengeance line will be the only class played.

ChaoticWings3

Weapon (no weapon passives)

katorga wrote: »

Ilsabet wrote: »

...but then I remembered that there don't seem to be morphs for the simplified skills...

That could really sink some classes...losing haunting curse for daedric prey for example. But maybe they are simplifying the un-morphed version.

Luck of the draw, whichever class gets the best vengeance line will be the only class played.

We will see how it plays out over time. At the moment it hasn't really started yet and could still be pivoted later if some things are not working out.

In either case if we are just talking about what skill lines should be included next besides the class skills I would defiantly say the weapon ones since that increases the overall diversity the most. The alliance war lines is second not because I wouldn't want it but there are more skill variances with the weapon lines for build theory.

Iriidius

katorga wrote: »

If I understand what they are saying, no sets, no passives, and a fixed template of neutered skills - no more builds?

They just killed social media content that evangelizes their game to new players.

Long term players who love the complexity of theory crafting builds will continue to hemorrhage away from the game.

New players just have to make an account, lvl to lvl 10 to join campaign (if they do not remove that requirement) and can immediately pvp competitive with the same stats than veterans loosing only 1v1 when they are less skilled or not used to their skills.
They will therefore profit from this as they can immediately start PvPing like in League of Legends or other competitive PvP games/esports rather than having to develope their characters for month if not years or spend real money to speedup/skip.
ESO PvP will be competitive PvP like an esport.

Veteran PvPer will miss their builds giving them individuality or build advantage against worse build players and I will miss mine too so it would be good if current PvP stays available as an option after test rather than be replaced/removed.

katorga wrote: »

They way this ends up is:

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.
2. If they do actually equally balance all vengeance skills lines then 1 on 1s are stalemates
3. Ball Groups will be even stronger....because simple numbers will decide all fights. 2 will always beat 1 and so on.

1. probably
2. Only if dmg stats are weaker than defense stats or playerwant to stalemate playing very defensive.
In an equal match where they can kill their enemy players are more willing to go offensive risking to get killed than in a fight where they have no chance to kill their enemy and all they can hope for is staying alive.
3. Ballgroups will be much weaker without all the multitarget setprocs, HoTs, Heals and Buffs they give to and get from groupmates (making everyone stronger than without and increasing groupstrength
quadratically with numbers) and probably not even exist anymore.
They are not the same as Zergs althought Zergling also sometimes get multitarget setprocs, buffs and heals from allies and be weaker without them but still work.
Both are groups and often outnumber players but ballgroups are organized, rely on sharing buff/heal and can also fight outnumbered.
Winning outnumbered fights should be the result of playing better and not abusing op builds that can also help you win X/1v1.
Bombers will be missed without deto/VD but overall I doubt numbers will be stronger.

ZDunlain

katorga wrote: »

Ilsabet wrote: »

...but then I remembered that there don't seem to be morphs for the simplified skills...

That could really sink some classes...losing haunting curse for daedric prey for example. But maybe they are simplifying the un-morphed version.

Luck of the draw, whichever class gets the best vengeance line will be the only class played.

I thought the same, at the end we will be all magic users lol

Iriidius

katorga wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

1. The one class that ends up with the mathematically best vengeance skill line is the meta.

Yup I'll put gold on 1 that there ends up one busted class/skill combo that dominates the meta.

You can start with which classes have a high percentage of ground effect skills....just write them off.

Classes that get a lot of their capability from class passives...write them off. (think about that, as a DK)

Classes that are primarily 15m range or less...write them off.

I assume, we don't get ANY skills outside of class skills, no weapon skills, no scribing skills, no guild skills, no vampire, no werewolf, no mythics, no sets, no CP, no racial passives. Heck will they even have Emperor in the vengeance campaign?

Overall it just sounds boring.

Classes relying on passives will suffer and classes with many ground skills already do.
Meele classes are fine and meta not that long ago.
Range builds will suffer without destro/physic/bow spammable, procsets and statuseffekts as most of their dmg come ofrm it.


Warden and Necro will suffer as they do have bad ranged spammable and no meele spammable.
Scythe is AOE and too lower dmg against single targets than single target spammables.

Arcanist class dmg kit is great in Trials but not the best in PvP without master rending slashes.

Magsorc will still have good ranged dmg but shield will suffer without mag stacking.
DK will suffer without ultregensets(bloodspawn and trickery) and battleroar passive.
Templar will be like now as they mostly use torc. and class dmg despite complaining it is bad.
Meele NB only need their class skills but will miss their passives and burstsets like balorgh/tarnished.

RaidingTraiding

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Class Only & nothing else.

^ That way there is a chance to see Ball Groups with no 10x Vigors & 10 Rapid Regens & 10 shields all stacked. Small, but there is. Depending on what skills will do in this mode (they teased that healing for example will be single target only), Ball groups may all play as templars or sorcs, but also - there is a possibility that Ball Groups wont be participating in this tests at all (which will cause "false" results as BGs are causing all kinds of lag & server issue & they seem to be one of the primary server performance cultrips).

Anyway - even if ball groups wont be playing in this mode (cuz it may be too hard for them), it is worth to play it just to see no-proc & no heal stacking & no broken pull sets & stuff. It all really depends on what Class skills will do and they will be reduced to do less. So, even if I won't be able to cloak on my NB (since cloak might be doing something different in this mode, we don't know) - it is worth to pay such price to be able to play lag free & balanced Cyro.

We had a no proc camp for years, and guess what? no one ever played in it. How boring would it be to play class only on top of no proc and no other skill lines? and all because you don't like ball groups. That would be a real quick way to have no one in pvp. but hey i guess that's great for the pvdoor population. heres another idea: how about just delete cyro? ball groups can't play if they don't have a map to log on to!

Also isn't the general consensus that ball groups cause lag because of all the healing spam, buffs, and calculations from sets? if theres none of that then why would they cause lag during the test, and why would their absence give false results? does logging on as a 12 man and identifying as a ball group automatically cause you to generate lag?