PTS Update 45 - Feedback Thread for Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · January 23

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play.

katorga · January 23

React wrote: »

This new system, with all of it's flaws, isn't going to suddenly inspire 5x the number of players to jump into PVP - in fact, I'd be surprised if there was any net positive population gain whatsoever given the full removal of buildcraft, skill decisions, etc. This is concerning because it gives an air of pointlessness to the entirety of the project - why gut the entire build/combat system to allow for a playerbase that doesn't exist?

It will be interesting to see if it increases population. I would like to see the exact numeric pop cap during vengeance and the current number of players per faction in the campaign selection screen.

After bopping around on PTS a bit, it feels like a copy of vanilla WoW pvp.

Estin · January 23

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play during the test.

Battlespirit is disabled, so in live cyrodiil terms, everyone has 35k HP and 16k resistances. Most classes only have access to major resolve which brings them up to 22k. Players are actually pretty squishy, and I really haven't noticed a difference in the TTK compared to live even though I'm not that good. Duels come down to sustain more than anything because everything costs a hefty amount of magicka which means you have to be careful about your skill usage between offensive and defensive.

J18696 · January 23

I have not noticed any major issues with the campaign systems themselves but I do worry about balance even though it's not what the test is aimed towards mainly due to the overall experience vastly changes between the classes.

Pretty much every class but nightblade and sorc just gas out of resources in 10 seconds and all fights just devolve into heavy attack spam never fully being able to recover and I think most people would rather not contribute to the test at all than play the campaign.

Even just giving people basic gear to let them apply glyphs at least would go a long way with making the experience somewhat enjoyable or lower the resource cost of some skills using dk as a example without combustion and battle roar cannot sustain at all and all its skills are to expensive for how little sustain the class now has.

MincMincMinc · January 23

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play.

If you seriously spent any amount of time dueling you would know it is fine and no reason to complain. It is actually very well balanced. If you can't do enough damage that is your problem. Don't get scared and freak out because of the number of health....... the numbers of stats are completely arbitrary, no point in even bringing it up.

Even if healing and tanking was stronger, that would only help the test keep people alive and perpetuate the large zergs that are necessary for the test to be successful.

Estin · January 23

I've had the time to test out Necro, Sorc, Nightblade, Warden, and Templar. I'll test DK later, and I don't have an Arcanist. I mainly did testing by soloing resources given that battlespirit is disabled and damage numbers are going to be similar to an actual player. I only did a couple of duels as sorc and necro.

All the classes I've tried except sorc felt smooth to play with, and I didn't have much trouble taking resources on my own. Nightblade seems to be the strongest and most fluid to play as, but warden is pretty good too. Necro has great survivability, and has the potential of having the strongest combo because you can stack siphon, skulls, and a skeletal mage tick all on the same GCD due to siphon exploding after 1 second. Templar didn't really stand out to me other than its instant stun with eclipse.

For sorc, I cannot for the life of me do good on it. I'm not entirely sure if the twilight heal is working properly because it doesn't feel like it's even healing me for its tool tip amount. Sorc also doesn't have a great spammable. Shards has a cast time, and overload is your pseudo spammable that costs ult which means you have to stick with shards until you have a decent amount of ult. I also seem to blow through my magicka on this class too, but that's most likely because I keep using twilight to heal for what feels like nothing. It's my least favorite class that I tested.

Balance isn't going to matter as long as the test has a lot of players (I'll suggest again, please give a better incentive than AP to attract as many players as possible), so I'm not too concerned about it right now, it's just something to look at in the future.

darvaria · January 23

Do characters properly zone into Cyrodiil with templatized Stats and Gear? Yes
Do characters earn XP/AP/Gold upon leaving? no but I just logged off and didn't leave Cyro
Do siege weapons still function with the limitations of only deploying 1 type at at time? Yes reload several times too. I put down 1 stone treb and 1 ballista
Did any of your characters become ‘corrupted’ if they leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc? If you encounter character corruption, please provide the following feedback when using /bug in-game.no
account name Darvaria
character name Darv of the North (Warden)
What happened to trigger the corruption (leave Cyrodiil mid battle, lost connection, got booted, etc)?
screenshots and video
What are your initial thoughts on Cyrodiil Champions (Vengeance Campaign)? played on a warden. spell casting was flawless but not many ppl around. I like the limit of siege. Sometimes on GH I can cast a meat bag into a ball group and it does so much damage, my screen actually freezes for a sec. Same with the ball groups all casting hots, aoe's, etc. Really a lot smoother.
Do you have any general feedback? This is a more basic style of PVP. Players that run in ball groups will hate it. I think you may bring back some of the players from 2015ish before everything was proc sets and pulls.. I like getting to use only my class skills too. This will probably be a niche market but I think there will be enough interest in it to form a campaign. I would limit campaigns to one week. I think you will find more players engaging in PVP and not just tower humpers and players pounding down keeps. It will take more time to control the map. Equal sides at all times would be a major change. Every player there would have a contribution. Not 50 players running over 10 players and taking the whole map. Players that like to beat up on under geared and less experienced players will not like this. These players only like to play where they have a definitive advantage.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · January 23

MincMincMinc wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play.

If you seriously spent any amount of time dueling you would know it is fine and no reason to complain. It is actually very well balanced. If you can't do enough damage that is your problem. Don't get scared and freak out because of the number of health....... the numbers of stats are completely arbitrary, no point in even bringing it up.

Many players already do more damage on Live than what's being provided in the Vengeance test. Except now everyone has 70k health. So TTK has effectively doubled while removing all build diversity.

There are almost no performance issues in Cyrodiil now due to low population. I can't remember the last time my abilities had noticeable delay. Maybe 6+ months ago during a weekend tri-keep siege.

I agree with basically everything @React has said about this test and the dev team's "roadmap". Spot on.

Estin · January 23

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play.

If you seriously spent any amount of time dueling you would know it is fine and no reason to complain. It is actually very well balanced. If you can't do enough damage that is your problem. Don't get scared and freak out because of the number of health....... the numbers of stats are completely arbitrary, no point in even bringing it up.

Many players already do more damage on Live than what's being provided in the Vengeance test. Except now everyone has 70k health. So TTK has effectively doubled while removing all build diversity.

I will say again that battlespirit is disabled. Battlespirit, in case you didn't know, reduces damage done and taken by 50%, and healing by 55%. In vengeance, healing is only 5% stronger than live, but the low resistances makes up for this by a lot. The TTK is effectively the same as live, and in some instances, shorter.

Turtle_Bot · January 23

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So that we can try and get back on track, we checked in with the team for an order of operations for this test, between PTS and the Live test in March. So hopefully this will help and we can get back to the core feedback needed for this portion of the test.
Functionality on the PTS server is first and the goal of that is to make sure we can provide the best play experience when this goes to the live server in March.

We look at the data from the PTS functionality test to ensure things are working properly for the live test.

If everything looks good, we move on to the test on the live server.

After the test on the live server is done, we shut down Vengeance and review the data.

Next steps will be determined based on the data. Nothing else related to the test will immediately go into the live game, including any Vengeance Class/Skill kits.

We will share next steps once we evaluate the data.

Thanks for keeping up with the communication on this, it has been very refreshing on my end to see (I hope it hasn't been too draining/frustrating for you).

I just wanted to ask, since the test is all about performance by reducing everything to a base level; Would it not also be a prudent idea to remove cast times and channel times from all abilities that have those, since those abilities would need to check if they are interrupted mid cast which then requires a CC immunity check and also applying the hard lock (grey out) on the interrupted ability if it is actually interrupted?

I do understand and appreciate that balance is the last thing on the list for this test, but you did say that if there are some egregious outliers they would be looked at and that you wanted to provide the best play experience possible, so I just wanted to note a few of the more egregious outliers that I noticed in my testing of the different vengeance abilities that were making for a bad play experience (i.e. not fun to play/use):

Cast time on Sorcerer crystal shards (just feels like a clunky/slow necro flaming skull)
the length of the cooldown on sorcerer surge (Didn't need to be 6 seconds when 2-3 seconds would have sufficed)
clunkyness/delay on bolt escape (although others seem to not have the same issue I have with it so maybe it's a ping issue? I will have to test this further I guess)
over-reliance on fatecarver for arcanist damage (this is an issue with Arcanist design overall, even on live, so is not unique to this test)
cast time on templar flare (just feels like a clunky/slow crystal shards, which is just a clunky/slow flaming skull)

Outside of tweaking some numbers for Arcanist to shift some of beams power to runeblades or flail, most of these issues are more QoL things that would go a long way to ensuring a good play experience for these classes, which was the biggest issue I was having with them in my testing.

I will still be aiming to participate in the tests, but unless the QoL issues listed above that make some of the classes unfun to play are addressed, I will likely just be sticking to DK, NB, Warden or Necro for the tests since those 4 classes felt the most fun/fluid to play on the PTS (not even talking power level differences, just that their abilities as a whole kit were fluid and intuitive and not jarring to use when not just spamming the 1 ability over and over).

In contrast to the list above, I do want to also give props to the designs of vengeance abilities that I liked, since that does tend to get overlooked a lot in feedback being given:

Power of the light (smaller upfront damage then guaranteed burst when it ends) I hope the team looks into porting this design choice for this ability and morphs over to the live servers. The ability felt good to use again now that it was no longer tied to some very convoluted damage calculations/checks that were nigh-impossible to achieve in PvP.
Pets in general (being converted to a direct ability) Really helped the abilities to feel useful in PvP where pets have traditionally struggled. Hopefully the team can consider some morph choices for pet abilities where 1 morph remains a pet, but the other would be a more traditional DoT ability.
Stone fist (single target ranged interrupt, like destro staff crushing shock morph), felt fluid and intuitive to use, no awkward double cast or stacks to keep track of, just simple point and click. Like I mentioned with the pets, maybe look into changing 1 morph to function more like this design.
Detonating Siphon (see my point above regarding pets), felt really clean and easy to use since the tether time was only 1 second before it automatically detonated applying a sticky DoT to enemies hit by the detonation.
flaming skulls (with all the convoluted conditions and clauses removed) it actually feels good to use. I hope the team can take this feedback to the live version of skulls, remove all the convoluted conditions with GLS, the third cast etc.
Runeblades (and runemend) being a single instance of damage/healing respectively felt nice. Could maybe use a little bit more oomph on runeblades itself but the ability kept its fun to use feeling that it has when using it on live.
Spirit mender animation, I really like the animation for this, simple, unique and smooth. Not sure how this would work with guardian morph though since that requires transferring damage thus would need a health bar etc. but it was something I liked.

I hope the team can consider addressing some of these QoL points before running the live test, it would go a long way to making the test a good experience overall for all classes, not just half of them, and would likely help to bring more people in for the test if their class would provide a fun experience.

Erickson9610 · January 23

I had some duels (on a Templar vs a Nightblade) on the PTS and I'm genuinely surprised by how evenly matched two players can be. It reminds me a lot of Werewolf vs Werewolf dueling, since by nature of having a restricted toolkit, two players in a 1v1 have to rely on strategy to gain the upper hand.

This was genuinely the most fun I've had in Cyrodiil in a long while. I'll definitely be playing this when it comes to Live.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · January 23

Estin wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play.

If you seriously spent any amount of time dueling you would know it is fine and no reason to complain. It is actually very well balanced. If you can't do enough damage that is your problem. Don't get scared and freak out because of the number of health....... the numbers of stats are completely arbitrary, no point in even bringing it up.

Many players already do more damage on Live than what's being provided in the Vengeance test. Except now everyone has 70k health. So TTK has effectively doubled while removing all build diversity.

I will say again that battlespirit is disabled. Battlespirit, in case you didn't know, reduces damage done and taken by 50%, and healing by 55%. In vengeance, healing is only 5% stronger than live, but the low resistances makes up for this by a lot. The TTK is effectively the same as live, and in some instances, shorter.

TTK ends up much higher on Vengeance because you lose the power uplift from gear, food, mundus, cp, etc. I've tested it.

Real Examples

Live Player A: 15k dps against an enemy player with 35k health (TTK = 2.92s)
Live Player B: 27k dps against an enemy player with 36k health (TTK = 1.33s)
Vengeance: 12k dps using curated skills against an enemy player with 70k health (TTK = 5.83s)

Many players can even achieve 35k+ dps on Live. (mostly with gank blades)

VixxVexx · January 23

Very few people will actually participate, the way it is set up now. Even ignoring the class balance.

Make it a free to play week, announce it everywhere, hype it up, let's try to break this
Give everyone a free character slot and double EXP/AP
Give a reward of participating
Give a special reward for reaching a certain amount of AP
Give increased rewards for time spent in the Vengeance Campaign

As it is now, you'll have about 300 concurrent players the first day of the test. After that, it'll just die out making this entire endevour pointless.

Zabagad · January 23

@ZOS_Kevin - My whole post is for your information too.

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Streak will be actually very strong in this mode as there aren't really many ways to boost mobility. So Sorc will be way harder to catch up with than in regular pvp.

There is a 3s penalty and compared to the 30% speed boost like 6s from warden....
Nah - streak is useless and sorc is slow af.

Estin wrote: »

It's saddening to see so many players, especially big PvP names, complaining because they can't X anymore in a campaign that is watered down for the sole purpose of stress testing.

It's not like that - it's a difference between a non-balanced campaign and a non-playable-campaign.
As a sorc (only) player I have nothing to do in that campaign - I can just go in there to waste my time.
I have nothing to do as a solo-sorc without any possible chance to kill somebody and only a challenge to survive. (because I have no speed + no good defense compared to others.)
So I don't care about no balance for buffs/debuffs and all that - but without a spam I have a problem. I need at least a spammable skill without casttime. Otherwise I will not enter Vengeance.

At the same time - I'm one of the older PvPer and I don't try to learn a complete new way to play with a total different surge, a total different ulti (no toogle), a 3s delay on streak, a 6s delay on the heal and a 0,8s delay on my spammable.
So there is no reason for me to play in that campaing and so I cannot participate and cannot help in this stress test.
I found your statement "You're not going to have to learn a new game." - And this above was an indirect answer to this too. Because I have to learn a new game for that one week!
Or I can only just run arround which would produce not much stress anyway and would only misslead the results.

"I cannot stress this enough. If nobody shows up for this test, we will be stuck with the laggy and stagnated pvp forever"
I agree and this problem leads to exactly this result...

DrGIggles80 wrote: »

peopleare focused on balance because the weak classes will not be played, therefore affecting the whole test.

Exactly this - I see no reason to play a sorc - IF i would participate at all, I would play a warden which is in any catageory better playable(!) (stronger too - but this is not the real problem) during that one week.

mmtaniac · January 23

Classes are not balanced at all for that mode.

Zabagad · January 23

mmtaniac wrote: »

Classes are not balanced at all for that mode.

If that was a response to my post - please read again.
I don't care about balance - but I care about playability.

And btw: they did some strange changes to the skills on purpose - like give NBs another heal (they had already enough) on cloak or take away the usual buffs from surge and instead put a 6s lock on it.
So I don't see any reason for them to fix at least the biggest of the problems regarding playability - even if they don't care about balance.

So - remove cast time on frags and remove the 6s on surge (why can other classes have a shield + many heals if they don't care about balance? And if not - why the 6s?)

@Turtle_Bot - yes the delay from us eu-players is always a major problem on streak. But not sure you even saw the 3s on it...?

SalamanNZ · January 23

Hey guys. I haven't seen one comment about performance. Is the Lag and rubber banding better or worse. I don't care about balance or new abilities. They are all useless if the old lag issues remain

RaidingTraiding · January 23

I'm more inclined not to log in and test. it just seems unfun, and theres really no incentive to do so. What we get double ap or something? that's not really worth it to play guinea pig in a severely limiting and unbalanced environment. Double ap isn't even enough anymore to fill midyear mayhem campaigns. i feel like this is likely not going to see enough players to get any meaningful data. Also I know this is just a test but I don't really like the direction this is headed. Having limits on your build really discourages people to play. just look at how the no cp campaign turned out with proc sets disabled. even when proc sets came back, whatever players were playing in there before, most never came back, its still dead.

Zabagad · January 23

SalamanNZ wrote: »

Hey guys. I haven't seen one comment about performance. Is the Lag and rubber banding better or worse. I don't care about balance or new abilities. They are all useless if the old lag issues remain

On the PTS you cannot say anything about rubber banding or lags anyway.
If there are lags, then maybe the PTS-server itself is not in the same power category as the live servers are?
I there are no lags (I had not more/less then I usually have on the PTS. But for EU-players it's anyway more laggy then playing on the live-server.) then maybe only not enough players are playing.

So a real answer to your question can only be given by the real test on the live server in march.

ArctosCethlenn · January 23

At the end of the day, this test needs to pull in the non-pvp community to participate if you really want good data. It could be with undaunted keys and gold mats, special Vengeance rewards of the worthy with dungeon items and furnishings instead of regular pvp drops, it doesn't matter as long as there's a reason for the players who never pvp to want to go in and actively participate to pump up the player count. "Help us learn how to fix lag in cyrodiil!" isn't going to motivate them, because lag in cyrodiil doesn't effect Timmy the Housing Guy.

Balance is going to be a mess, but that's only really a priority if the player count stays similar to live cyrodiil. My big worry when it comes to balance is that zos will take the wrong lessons from people's reactions to the vengeance skills and push some to live, massively oversimplifying combat just because they can rather than in a methodical way that preserves gameplay people enjoy.

Wolfshade · January 23

You simply cant compare pts and live server performance. The hole thing of collecting data from a pts with a special ruleset campaign, what is the point? To campare this data with data from a live server? You cant compare these datas, not with datas from grey, not from raven. So what is the point?

It seems more the point to me to reduce sieges crosshealing and so on, to reduce servercalculations. Are you sure that reduce live-servercalculations will improve performance on cyro? After 10 Years you argue in the golden age of collecting data with collecting more data? How many data will you collect without getting work on cyro-performance, not serverperformance!?

What data will you collect with great imbalance of classes? You cant compare ttk-datas with all that in mind with data from life server without coming to the end to reduce all of that what cyro once made huge. Did the pop raised up on raven, no. No no no, all of that sounds like the 10 Year bubble discussion of performance in cyro. If you want to raise performance you can do that, even on grey with all of this calculations, the hardware refresh showed that over several month. Did you raised up pop there? No.

So please @ZOS_Kevin , what is the point of arguing with collect data and raise population without doing that and instead of keep the playersbase busy with pts and another, the third ruleset campaign with absolute no class balance. What combat data with no class balance will you compare with those from live?

MincMincMinc · January 23

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I don't see this Vengeance Cyrodiil being any fun. Everyone has 70k health and there's far more healing than damage. The abilities don't feel impactful and player choice has been taken away. So I don't understand why I would even play.

If you seriously spent any amount of time dueling you would know it is fine and no reason to complain. It is actually very well balanced. If you can't do enough damage that is your problem. Don't get scared and freak out because of the number of health....... the numbers of stats are completely arbitrary, no point in even bringing it up.

Many players already do more damage on Live than what's being provided in the Vengeance test. Except now everyone has 70k health. So TTK has effectively doubled while removing all build diversity.

There are almost no performance issues in Cyrodiil now due to low population. I can't remember the last time my abilities had noticeable delay. Maybe 6+ months ago during a weekend tri-keep siege.

Again it doesnt matter what happens on live. Think of this test as its own game. No part of live numbers affects the test. 70k health means nothing. Resists arent the same, mit isnt the same, skills arent the same........ Give up on the notion that they need to balance it to mimic live. the only thing that matters is performance and that combat functions from a basic standpoint. Which it works perfectly. TTK is fine if you spend 5 mins reading your skills. All the base classes have a single 5 skill rotation that will kill an enemy player. Today I will test the dlc classes, but I expect it will be fine.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So that we can try and get back on track, we checked in with the team for an order of operations for this test, between PTS and the Live test in March. So hopefully this will help and we can get back to the core feedback needed for this portion of the test.
Functionality on the PTS server is first and the goal of that is to make sure we can provide the best play experience when this goes to the live server in March.

We look at the data from the PTS functionality test to ensure things are working properly for the live test.

If everything looks good, we move on to the test on the live server.

After the test on the live server is done, we shut down Vengeance and review the data.

Next steps will be determined based on the data. Nothing else related to the test will immediately go into the live game, including any Vengeance Class/Skill kits.

We will share next steps once we evaluate the data.

I do understand and appreciate that balance is the last thing on the list for this test, but you did say that if there are some egregious outliers they would be looked at and that you wanted to provide the best play experience possible, so I just wanted to note a few of the more egregious outliers that I noticed in my testing of the different vengeance abilities that were making for a bad play experience (i.e. not fun to play/use):
Cast time on Sorcerer crystal shards (just feels like a clunky/slow necro flaming skull)

the length of the cooldown on sorcerer surge (Didn't need to be 6 seconds when 2-3 seconds would have sufficed)

clunkyness/delay on bolt escape (although others seem to not have the same issue I have with it so maybe it's a ping issue? I will have to test this further I guess)

over-reliance on fatecarver for arcanist damage (this is an issue with Arcanist design overall, even on live, so is not unique to this test)

cast time on templar flare (just feels like a clunky/slow crystal shards, which is just a clunky/slow flaming skull)

Outside of tweaking some numbers for Arcanist to shift some of beams power to runeblades or flail, most of these issues are more QoL things that would go a long way to ensuring a good play experience for these classes, which was the biggest issue I was having with them in my testing.

I will still be aiming to participate in the tests, but unless the QoL issues listed above that make some of the classes unfun to play are addressed, I will likely just be sticking to DK, NB, Warden or Necro for the tests since those 4 classes felt the most fun/fluid to play on the PTS (not even talking power level differences, just that their abilities as a whole kit were fluid and intuitive and not jarring to use when not just spamming the 1 ability over and over).

In contrast to the list above, I do want to also give props to the designs of vengeance abilities that I liked, since that does tend to get overlooked a lot in feedback being given:
Power of the light (smaller upfront damage then guaranteed burst when it ends) I hope the team looks into porting this design choice for this ability and morphs over to the live servers. The ability felt good to use again now that it was no longer tied to some very convoluted damage calculations/checks that were nigh-impossible to achieve in PvP.

Pets in general (being converted to a direct ability) Really helped the abilities to feel useful in PvP where pets have traditionally struggled. Hopefully the team can consider some morph choices for pet abilities where 1 morph remains a pet, but the other would be a more traditional DoT ability.

Stone fist (single target ranged interrupt, like destro staff crushing shock morph), felt fluid and intuitive to use, no awkward double cast or stacks to keep track of, just simple point and click. Like I mentioned with the pets, maybe look into changing 1 morph to function more like this design.

Detonating Siphon (see my point above regarding pets), felt really clean and easy to use since the tether time was only 1 second before it automatically detonated applying a sticky DoT to enemies hit by the detonation.

flaming skulls (with all the convoluted conditions and clauses removed) it actually feels good to use. I hope the team can take this feedback to the live version of skulls, remove all the convoluted conditions with GLS, the third cast etc.

Runeblades (and runemend) being a single instance of damage/healing respectively felt nice. Could maybe use a little bit more oomph on runeblades itself but the ability kept its fun to use feeling that it has when using it on live.

Spirit mender animation, I really like the animation for this, simple, unique and smooth. Not sure how this would work with guardian morph though since that requires transferring damage thus would need a health bar etc. but it was something I liked.

I played alot last night we had about 10 people dueling at ales (amazing that they gave us Forward Camps). We only got to test the core base game classes and they were all near perfectly balanced. No real issues with one vastly outperforming like people have been crying about.

Sorc is super fun. Curse> Scamp> Overload>> Streak(stun) > Endless. Then to a defensive rotation. Overload builds fast enough to be the "spammable" while gaining ult.
Streak works just like on live, I experienced no differences.
Dark deal being flat resource return is amazing and should be changed on live.
Crit surge having the cooldown isnt an issue.

DK is like old dk where you dot up and then mess with the enemy using cc and whip. DK has some strong 1vX tools like wings and Draw Essence

NB has great single target damage as expected. Dot and bow into concealed > incap > execute.

Zabagad · January 23

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Sorc is super fun. Curse> Scamp> Overload>> Streak(stun) > Endless. Then to a defensive rotation. Overload builds fast enough to be the "spammable" while gaining ult.
Streak works just like on live, I experienced no differences.

Ty for this information.

I did not even look to the pets so I don't know what the Scamp is doing. Maybe I should check out the flappy too? Maybe we get some kind of major sorcery somewhere?
But pls can you explain how many OL you cast in that rotation?
With only one OL your fury should be casted to early imo.
Because this is not a 6s rotation and so I assume 2-3 OL?

Major problem I have with your input - Cyro is not a 1:1 in >95% of the time - especially if there would be 300+ on each side.
And you will never come to a 6s offensive window in bigger fights without HoTs.
And when you fight more then 1 - will the pet (whatever it is doing) do it in time to the right enemy? I heard tab target is not working? (Didn't test that on my own)
And maybe surge 6s cd is no problem for you in a 1:1 - but in a bigger fight?

Streak is ofc different - I guess you mean only the delay?
Bc. it has the 3s (sure in a duell you dont try to make much distance - but in "real" cyro you need to do it from time to time) and only stuns in the arriving area which makes it harder to stun ppl even in a 1:1 and for sure much harder in mass fights.

But I will check it out again (when PTS has the EU chars) and try it with a pet (first time since 2019) and OL as the spammable. Even if I cant believe that sorc is on the same level as NB and Warden (have you fought one?) in other fights then a 1:1 - but I'm fine if OL really is usable as the spammer - like you claim.

Wolfshade · January 23

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NB has great single target damage as expected. Dot and bow into concealed > incap > execute.

Great heals too. You can simple outheal Arc ult-combo by spamming "offering" and using Major Protection from "consuming darkness".

HatchetHaro · January 23

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So that we can try and get back on track, we checked in with the team for an order of operations for this test, between PTS and the Live test in March. So hopefully this will help and we can get back to the core feedback needed for this portion of the test.
Functionality on the PTS server is first and the goal of that is to make sure we can provide the best play experience when this goes to the live server in March.

We look at the data from the PTS functionality test to ensure things are working properly for the live test.

If everything looks good, we move on to the test on the live server.

After the test on the live server is done, we shut down Vengeance and review the data.

Next steps will be determined based on the data. Nothing else related to the test will immediately go into the live game, including any Vengeance Class/Skill kits.

We will share next steps once we evaluate the data.

I just want to note that most players who care about PvP wouldn't be hopping on to test the performance; they'll notice any performance changes, sure, but what they care about more is what it ultimately means for PvP balance.

Look, historically, ZOS has made multiple "guys guys we are only doing this as a very temporary test and the goal is to collect data" claims, and even when reiterated many times, many players will still be all doom and gloom "nooooo ZOS is ruining everything". The only way to counteract this is to make the "temporary test" as enjoyable to the players as possible, especially when it's something low-effort like changing some numbers on a few skills.

Besides, look at it this way: if people hop onto Vengeance PvP on the first day and it's not balanced, chances are, they wouldn't continue playing the rest of the week, and would be spreading negativity among their friends "yeah they didn't balance it at all, so it's wacko". Assign one combat designer to allocate maybe a few hours over the course of the PTS to check the forums for feedback and implement quick numbers tweaks on a few abilities, and you'll get much better player retention during the test once it hits Live, and therefore better data on server performance.

MincMincMinc · January 23

Zabagad wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Sorc is super fun. Curse> Scamp> Overload>> Streak(stun) > Endless. Then to a defensive rotation. Overload builds fast enough to be the "spammable" while gaining ult.
Streak works just like on live, I experienced no differences.

Ty for this information.

I did not even look to the pets so I don't know what the Scamp is doing. Maybe I should check out the flappy too? Maybe we get some kind of major sorcery somewhere?
But pls can you explain how many OL you cast in that rotation?
With only one OL your fury should be casted to early imo.
Because this is not a 6s rotation and so I assume 2-3 OL?

Major problem I have with your input - Cyro is not a 1:1 in >95% of the time - especially if there would be 300+ on each side.
And you will never come to a 6s offensive window in bigger fights without HoTs.
And when you fight more then 1 - will the pet (whatever it is doing) do it in time to the right enemy? I heard tab target is not working? (Didn't test that on my own)
And maybe surge 6s cd is no problem for you in a 1:1 - but in a bigger fight?

Streak is ofc different - I guess you mean only the delay?
Bc. it has the 3s (sure in a duell you dont try to make much distance - but in "real" cyro you need to do it from time to time) and only stuns in the arriving area which makes it harder to stun ppl even in a 1:1 and for sure much harder in mass fights.

But I will check it out again (when PTS has the EU chars) and try it with a pet (first time since 2019) and OL as the spammable. Even if I cant believe that sorc is on the same level as NB and Warden (have you fought one?) in other fights then a 1:1 - but I'm fine if OL really is usable as the spammer - like you claim.

It seems like alot of people are "testing" on the pts just to ignore the pts and complain on the forums. Many people simply didn't even spend 5 mins to figure out how to make it work.

In that rotation "Curse> Scamp> Overload>> Streak(stun) > Endless." you cast overload such that your endless hits right after scamp dot ticks and curse goes off. The streak stun just confuses the enemy, which you may not even need. I put the >> meaning to keep casting. Generally by the time you streak they are really low and will start dodge rolling... so streak will catch them out during a roll instead of you wasting a gcd.

On live you are more used to slotting other skills purely for their strong passives. In vengeance you end up actually having open slots for utility skills like gap closers or stuns/roots. I should have gotten a snipit of my bar layouts for each class.

Streak functions exactly like on live, except with a cooldown.

I dueled all of the base classes with all of the base classes. They are all balanced fine that 99.9% of people wouldnt be able to figure out a difference. Your skill as a player is worth exceedingly more than the current "balance" issues people are trying to claim.

Zabagad · January 23

MincMincMinc wrote: »

It seems like alot of people are "testing" on the pts just to ignore the pts and complain on the forums. Many people simply didn't even spend 5 mins to figure out how to make it work.

When I started it was not my goal at all and I spended more then 5mins - but I got so disapointed and checked the warden to compare.
Then I was sure that this all is a big [snip]. Maybe I gave up to early.
But at least your input gave me some hope that I can participate at the test and have at least a bit of fun...

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I dueled all of the base classes with all of the base classes. They are all balanced fine that 99.9% of people wouldnt be able to figure out a difference. Your skill as a player is worth exceedingly more than the current "balance" issues people are trying to claim.

Sounds to good to be true

I had a different feeling by comparing warden vs. sorc - but as I said I give it another try soon and check out pet+OL.

TY (even if you dont react to any cyro vs 1:1 argument)

Cast_El · January 23

Zabagad wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

Sorcerer is fine, not Op. I meet 4 NB and manage to survive, but not abble to kill anyone by my own. And I did 1v1 against sorc then 1v1 against NB.NB is too strong and too oppressive.

Ok thirdsecond time now you say this. (Edit - one time was this I11I comedian)
Then pls enlighten us how you play?
Curse->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->Fury?
Or Curse->HA->HA-Fury?
Or how can this "fine not OP" sorcerer kill anyone?

Shield, familiar, curse, rune prison, frag=>overload with a roll dodge. Frag and overload will hit at the same time, repeat frag overload.

When frag hit with overload and curse, it hurts really bad, you can use fury.
I did kill a veteran Player, like that. Keep up curse and familiar all the time. If you don't have ultimate, keep the pressure, and stay defensive while generating ultimate.

Zabagad · January 23

Cast_El wrote: »

Zabagad wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

Sorcerer is fine, not Op. I meet 4 NB and manage to survive, but not abble to kill anyone by my own. And I did 1v1 against sorc then 1v1 against NB.NB is too strong and too oppressive.

Ok thirdsecond time now you say this. (Edit - one time was this I11I comedian)
Then pls enlighten us how you play?
Curse->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->->hardcastfrag->Fury?
Or Curse->HA->HA-Fury?
Or how can this "fine not OP" sorcerer kill anyone?

Shield, familiar, curse, rune prison, frag=>overload with a roll dodge. Frag and overload will hit at the same time, repeat frag overload.

When frag hit with overload and curse, it hurts really bad, you can use fury.
I did kill a veteran Player, like that. Keep up curse and familiar all the time. If you don't have ultimate, keep the pressure, and stay defensive while generating ultimate.

Thanks too - I will test this and Mincs suggestions soon.

MincMincMinc · January 23

Zabagad wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

It seems like alot of people are "testing" on the pts just to ignore the pts and complain on the forums. Many people simply didn't even spend 5 mins to figure out how to make it work.

When I started it was not my goal at all and I spended more then 5mins - but I got so disapointed and checked the warden to compare.
Then I was sure that this all is a big [snip]. Maybe I gave up to early.
But at least your input gave me some hope that I can participate at the test and have at least a bit of fun...

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I dueled all of the base classes with all of the base classes. They are all balanced fine that 99.9% of people wouldnt be able to figure out a difference. Your skill as a player is worth exceedingly more than the current "balance" issues people are trying to claim.

Sounds to good to be true

I had a different feeling by comparing warden vs. sorc - but as I said I give it another try soon and check out pet+OL.

TY (even if you dont react to any cyro vs 1:1 argument)

In 1vX situations each class will play differently. For example:

NB will probably have to do more cloak and path hit and run kiting
Sorc streak ranged
DK has wings, talons, draw essence

I will be testing the dlc classes against sorc later today. I thoroughly enjoyed sorc, nb, and dk as they all felt unique with their own combos. I didnt play templar much because we swapped to live greyhost, but i dueled against them enough to know they will be balanced fine.