PTS Update 47 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities Changes

Islyn

I just got back - lol I guess I am not gonna update any builds yet. Let's see what they destroy this go-round 1st. I feel like we JUST HAD u46.

Yusuf

I still remember how years ago, you guys added the passive damage to grim focus so it wouldn't be overly complicated to handle the stacks.

The intention was, as you put it back then, that perfecting the usage of the proc would be overall more dps but you'd still get something out of the skill if you didn't handle it perfectly.

Yes, the entire skill-line is overperforming if every every dps subclasses into it.
But as with anything in this game it's due to a lack of viable options (like Bound armaments just being basically the same skill but worse).

Faint_One

About Exist Changes:

All-Ult-Generations:Absolutly ridiculous，based on PP and pearl nerf，its no reason to makes class passive share same power-line（or lower）with them and potions.
A simple thing is, we have no alternatives if we use any source of minor or major heroism，it makes passive totally waste.
Try to roll-back PP/Pearl and such based on player's skill level sets or only adjust passives to a slower/smooth way is an good option.

Grim Focus:Good nerf for subclass，and crit buff also well，but not good for NB himself，should buff something else on NB to compensate pure class loss.

BoundArmaments:Not in same slot buff and hit power with Grim Focus, but with same mech，need a bit buff.

Narvuntien

#Nerf Arcanist

ZhuJiuyin

Why is the Sorc skill line getting more and more confusing?

This patch is a mess of inconsistencies and blatant discrimination. If Daedric Summoning is a tank line (and it probably should be), why did Bound Armaments get Weapon Critical and Spell Critical, a DPS buff?

Not to mention that many have pointed out that Bound Armaments' damage and ability effectiveness lag far behind similar Grim Focus, which deals more damage, provides additional healing, has a lower cost, and has a permanent stacking time.

Also, didn't the developers notice that Sorc is the only class without a passive way to gain extra ultimate points?

Over the past several patches, people have repeatedly asked why Sorc is always treated the worst and even ridiculed by the developers multiple times. The "If you don't like pets, you can replace blah blah..." line will be brought up again and again and deepen the animosity between players and developers before Sorc is seriously redesigned. Is this really what ZOS wants?

Koshka

Honestly, this ulti change is horrible, I don't see how this is beneficial to anyone. It makes the affected passives totally useless. What is even the point of subclassing when everything becomes a bunch of standartized boring slop?
Taking power away from people is a really, really bad idea. If you want more diversity, just buff the underperforming skill lines instead!

Renato90085

how about this ult passive change?
class ult passive: still minor or major heroism,but when you use your class line ,you can save you old passive?
stupid thing that makes them stackable
i first day see subclass leak discord in march ,i know stupid thing that makes them stackable is a problem fast

Koshka

Renato90085 wrote: »

how about this ult passive change?
class ult passive: still minor or major heroism,but when you use your class line ,you can save you old passive?
stupid thing that makes them stackable
i first day see subclass leak discord in march ,i know stupid thing that makes them stackable is a problem fast

Yeah, that could actually be a good compromise and it would make the choice of the base class more impactful.
Subclassing was always going to be a mess, and many people predicted just that... Tons of blanket nerfs and pure classes being dead. But people still defended it thinking it will be like in Skyrim lol.

heaven13

Further down the rabbithole we go, homogenizing classes to the point that the class-defining skills for most of the base classes have just been so watered down they're barely recognizable at this point. It started with hybridization and every patch it just gets worse and worse. I fail to even see the point of the class system anymore, tbh, and it was one of the things I liked about this game.

VixxVexx

What a mess.

Most of these changes aren't needed or miss the mark completely. You could have changed nothing in the past 5 years regarding class abilities and combat in general, and we'd all be better off.

I think it's high time you stop ignoring feedback or at least create a system that filters out the bad.

Gadamlub14_ESO

i miss the lol reacts for posts.

Arthtur

Why do i even bother...

The patch is awful. The players who got their fun last patch are now losing it because you are actually "not" fine with the power creep. The funny thing? Some of the changes would be pretty solid if not for subclassing.
The players who didnt like last patch werent adressed and on top of that they get punished in this patch too. You never look at other players when making decisions. You have some kind of Tunnel Vision that you ignore any consequences of your decisions that affect others.
Ult gain too high in trials? You screw over everyone. Tho i dont rly see a problem with high ult gain when players actually build for that... and that hurts DK again whose Battle Roar got nerfed last patch because of that high ult gen. Make it make sense.
Grim focus providing too much power for a single skill spot? Well it was, compared to other skill lines. And probably still is. But thats why NB suffered in some other areas to pay for that. Now they lost it witout gaining anything. Again punishing everyone.
You want to balance skill lines around skill lines but they werent balanced in first place. Last patch you barerly did anything and the same in this one. Why are you torturing everyone with those slow changes? Do you want to finish balancing in 2030? Tho you still didnt finish problems with hybridisation after 3 years so...

Just to be clear i never really hated the ideas you come with. I believe all of them could make game better for more players. As long as done right. But you fail every single time. Every single time you focus on 1 part of the community while ignoring everyone else and slowly pushing them away. And subclassing isnt diffrent. Just like always you only focused on players who "want" subclassing above everyting else, ignoring players who loved their classes and actively punishing them for staying pure. On top of that picking the most lazy way of reusing class skill lines without adding anything new.
I play DK because i love this class. I want DK to be good. Not to give DK a laser to make it good. But i always wanted an alchemy skill line to make an alchemist. I dont believe an entire class is possible but a single skill line should and that would be amazing with subclassing. But yeah, i should be happy with being able to use lightning on my Flame/Posion class... Sigh...


Why till this day we dont have a proper second combat system around HA builds? Why are they still forced into 1 bar build or 1.5 bars? Why the problem with weapon swapping isnt resolved for those builds? You keep adding new mythic and sets but refuse to fix fundamental problems. Nobody would be punished if players who prefer slower combat had a better way to play the game.
Why "mastery" of the game was removed? You said it yourselves, LA weaving was a "mastery" of combat and yet the strongest mythic removes it from the game. it was supposed to be a mythic for players who dont like LA weaving so why is it the strongest combat mythic? Why accessibility comes at the cost of players who like that mechanic?
Every single time you focus on one of those groups, everyone else suffers, because it always comes at the cost of others.

And i dont feel like pointing out more so i will focus on some balancing issues.

All those nerfs will kill Pure Classes becuase every single nerf forces subclassing more and more. This patch should be scrapped and you should focus on reducing power of subclassed skill lines or increasing the power for staying pure.
If you wont do that then you will just push away players who like thier classes (like me) for no reason. Dont ignore everyone else just because you want to deal with Subclassing problems.

There is still no competition with Arcanist Beam, or rather with beam. Because after this patch every class will be run... with beam. Because that's the only way to get good aoe damage.
So again, the nerfs dont resolve the problem, they only punish everyone else.
We need more aoe potential in other builds. If subclassing wouldnt be so OP then a pure DK or Necro could compete with good sets, but because their aoe potential comes at the cost of subclassing... it wont happend until either Subclassed skill lines are weakend or Pure Classes made stronger... And i would advise second choice because its too late for nerfs. Taking away power after giving it will only push players away.

Sustain needs to be looked at as currently some classes (DK mainly) suffer in solo play (anything where u dont have a healer) because the sustain was too good in trials or PvP. Just another example of how eveyrone was punished for problems of few. And i dont mean that those few arent important.

Now for the last i guess, the only good thing in patch notes. Sets Rebalance.
Not enough. Its great you are finally doing it but we desperatly need more variety in Monster Sets, Dungeon Sets etc. as there are barerly any good options or they are blocked by mechanic.
Kinras's Wrath for example. Major and Minor Berserk is solid for solo play or with groups without those buffs but the time it takes to get it up and how it can fall off during mechs makes it akward to use. Simple fix for it is to increase the timer to 10s after getting 5 stacks which would make it a lot easier to keep up after getting it started. It wouldnt be perfect but a lot better to use anyway.

And that's it for now. Let see how next weeks unfold. I don't have much faith tho. I really feel like it is the last year where i can still somewhat enjoy eso.

MincMincMinc

EnerG wrote: »

Zos im a big believer in reducing the power creep that happens over time but I cant get behind any of this. It just seems so heavy and inconvenient for anyone who dares to not subclass.

HARD disagree, power creep has only been perpetuating more and more. The only anti power creep thing as of late has been vengeance.

Crazy that one part of the combat team is working on bringing active skills back to being used as.....you know active skills. While the other team is willy nilly throwing more and more random major/minor buffs on skills. Scribing only furthered this precedent because now zos will have to evaluate every skill compared to the scribing skill standard. They literally designed themselves into a pitfall trap. Every skill will now have its core part+ a form of output+a secondary output effect+a buff. Some skills, sure, but not every skill needs to be a bland template.

Kickimanjaro

I strongly disagree with the changes to ult gen. Both the reasons for making the changes, the explanation of the "issue", and the proposed fix.

I wrote a bit more about it in another thread before this one was posted and others replied with some good info that I don't want to be lost, so I'll link it here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8340602

I'd also like to echo what another player said earlier in this thread regarding this, Minor Heroism is easy to source at 100% uptime now through scribing and potions. Having class passives provide Minor Heroism is redundant, useless, and a huge nerf that I don't think has been fully considered. This also has interactions with the Decisive trait which is further getting an indirect massive nerf due to these changes.

It is true that it was possible to build for massive ult gen, but I don't believe this was a problem. It required a combination of sets, class lines, potions, scribing abilities, and weapon traits all at the cost of not being specialized into other things like damage or healing.

Please immediately change these passives to the much rarer Major Heroism and see how it plays out if you absolutely must go through with this change. I don't think it's even worth testing with the current Minor Heroism versions, it's just redundant from the start and pointless--they may as well not be there at all.

Klingenlied

Some general thoughts / what my opinion is based on.

- Over time, a little bit of powercreep is not a bad thing.
- We don't need "perfect" balance, but we absolutely need "viability" for classes / skill lines.
- I strongly miss some kind of buff for "with 2 skill lines of your base class, you gain "x", with three lines, you gain "x" and additonally "y". Example: With 2 base skill lines, your stamina and magica recovery are increased by 98. With all 3 skill lines, you gain additional 258 weapon and spell damage as well as 2000 health.
- In a lot of cases, I think it ridicoulous when people talk about "skill expression" with complex rotations and high APM. If you aren't slow at typing, your typing APM will be higher then your's parsing. Experienced players still win against unexperienced ones. We have a lot of variety in builds, especially for PvP. Way more then people actually do seem to talk about.
- i dislike the "nerf Arcanist" crys. Just nerfing Arcanist is the wrong way. So many people explaining how it is bad to balance in a way that alienates one part of the community. Now Arcanist might be the class of a lot of Newcomers to ESO that some of you do not see as part of the community. But those players ARE part of the community as well by now. If anything, we might see more success with more cleave / ae on the "older" classes. Arcanist is fun to a lot of players. That's a good thing.

Patch specific:

- Ult changes are .. weird. Variety of builds and some more Options are always nice. Though I don't think this will effect casual play much, score runners and HM players will likely not be happy with this.
- I like the general idea behind the current skill line changes. But we need "more" and "harder" changes. Overall, the output and utility of skill lines should be comparable. We needn't have mathematically equal skill lines, but the gap should be small. And though this might be a unpopular opinion: "Destroying" some of the old class identity for more defined DPS, Tank and Heal-trees is the way to go. I furthermore really like those "dual bar" passives.
- I like a few set changes, I dislike some. But buffing Kaspiens is really good for example, I really hope it gets its place now. Some nerfs though are behind me. Like why nerf Relequen? Why nerf some dead sets that don't see any play at all? Why, in making a set easier to use, bring it down so far that it looses it's use case? There need be some number tweaks still.

RealLoveBVB

Now it started what players have predicted: Class nerfes due to subclassing.
They even changed all the unique Ulti-gen options due to subclassing, where you could build combos around Ulti-gen.

They are pretty much forcing you to subclass now.

Tommy_The_Gun

Ok, I finally found it:

PTS notes 6.2.2:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/548259/pts-patch-notes-v6-2-2
"Item sets and passives that generate Ultimate now require you to be in combat to activate, to help reduce their ability to continuously enter a fight at full Ultimate"

PTS notes 6-2-3:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/548984/pts-patch-notes-v6-2-3
Nightblade
- Siphoning
Catalyst: This passive can once again be used outside of combat.

Developer Comment:

After monitoring the feedback from the recent adjustments to item sets and this passive, we agreed that class passives are not a fair comparison to item sets as passives are built in and cannot be removed, while item sets are designed with the thought that you will always wear them if you are attempting to utilize their bonus. Moving forward, we will ensure that item sets that generate Ultimate only do so while in combat, as well as buff effects with durations such as Major and Minor Heroism. Classes that can currently generate Ultimate outside of combat will remain as such, since they help reinforce the playstyle and roles that they try to bring to life.

So, around like 5 years ago (Markarth update) this was what ZOS was saying.

Back then, players also "disliked" (to put it lightly) this change and ZOS received a clear feedback - so this change never made it to the live server and was rejected - since it was a bad idea.

So... um.... what has changed ? Dev comment clearly says that "Classes that can currently generate Ultimate outside of combat will remain as such, since they help reinforce the playstyle and roles that they try to bring to life".

If something, we should get more options than less options - especially now when we have subclassing. Each class skill line should have "something". Something unique about it. Some feature that will make players to think more & experiment more. We should not have clear good ones & clear bad ones (hence why I don't understand why ZOS is focusing on NB's Assassination skill tree & not doing something about for example Consuming Darkness ulti etc).

Removing out-of comabt ulti gen was bad back then (and rightfully so it never made it to live server) and is also really bad now. Please ZOS, just don't do it. No one seems to like it. Reduce the ulti gen back to 20 from 30 if you have to, but keep this passive unique feature as now - not just NB's can benefit from it since we have subclassing. There is an actual reason why some one would want to pick this class skills tree.

Also... sub classing should be optional. So that you can min-max your niche build but not at a cost of a "pure" class builds. You should never look at class skills individually in a vacuum or treat them a sets that you can swap in blink of an eye. Also imho you should never think of any of class skill lines as a "flavour of the month" type of thing that you buff 3 or 4 for 1 year and leave others in the dust & keep repeating this proces each year / season so that people would have to grind. This is the worst you can do and is a perfect way to lose loyal player base.

Ragnarok0130

Since you‘re nerfing ultigen yet again surely you‘re going to revert the unjust nerfs that you made to Pillagers Profit and Pearls of Elnofey….right…right?

We gave the combat devs robust feedback in both the general forums and in the PTS forums before U46 went live and it was summarily ignored. Now after the few raid teams I was on that survived U35 shut down and exited ESO after U46 now you‘re trying to solicit feedback? You can start by looking at all of the feedback in the PTS from right before U46 to get a good baseline of where our feedback is. The previously identified issues don‘t magically disappear after a bad patch is released.

Trying to find roles to fill a roster after U46 has been a nightmare and it was all self inflicted (or more accurately cruelly inflicted on the player base by the combat team despite a myriad of warnings) and now U47 looks worse than U46.

Pure classes are largely irrelevant and will be moreso based on U47‘s patch notes. We told you that pure classes needed a buff to stay competitive and were ignored. Add in a form of battle spirit that affects only subclassed toon so you can nerf and buff subclassed skills without negatively affecting pure classes. Or if it‘s easier add in an effectiveness bonus for pure classes based on the number of parent class skill lines present to be on par with subclassed toons because you can‘t balance both using the same system and have pure classes not be in the hole.

CameraBeardThePirate

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Ok, I finally found it:

PTS notes 6.2.2:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/548259/pts-patch-notes-v6-2-2
"Item sets and passives that generate Ultimate now require you to be in combat to activate, to help reduce their ability to continuously enter a fight at full Ultimate"

PTS notes 6-2-3:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/548984/pts-patch-notes-v6-2-3
Nightblade
- Siphoning
Catalyst: This passive can once again be used outside of combat.

Developer Comment:

After monitoring the feedback from the recent adjustments to item sets and this passive, we agreed that class passives are not a fair comparison to item sets as passives are built in and cannot be removed, while item sets are designed with the thought that you will always wear them if you are attempting to utilize their bonus. Moving forward, we will ensure that item sets that generate Ultimate only do so while in combat, as well as buff effects with durations such as Major and Minor Heroism. Classes that can currently generate Ultimate outside of combat will remain as such, since they help reinforce the playstyle and roles that they try to bring to life.

So, around like 5 years ago (Markarth update) this was what ZOS was saying.

Back then, players also "disliked" (to put it lightly) this change and ZOS received a clear feedback - so this change never made it to the live server and was rejected - since it was a bad idea.

So... um.... what has changed ? Dev comment clearly says that "Classes that can currently generate Ultimate outside of combat will remain as such, since they help reinforce the playstyle and roles that they try to bring to life".

If something, we should get more options than less options - especially now when we have subclassing. Each class skill line should have "something". Something unique about it. Some feature that will make players to think more & experiment more. We should not have clear good ones & clear bad ones (hence why I don't understand why ZOS is focusing on NB's Assassination skill tree & not doing something about for example Consuming Darkness ulti etc).

Removing out-of comabt ulti gen was bad back then (and rightfully so it never made it to live server) and is also really bad now. Please ZOS, just don't do it. No one seems to like it. Reduce the ulti gen back to 20 from 30 if you have to, but keep this passive unique feature as now - not just NB's can benefit from it since we have subclassing. There is an actual reason why some one would want to pick this class skills tree.

Also... sub classing should be optional. So that you can min-max your niche build but not at a cost of a "pure" class builds. You should never look at class skills individually in a vacuum or treat them a sets that you can swap in blink of an eye. Also imho you should never think of any of class skill lines as a "flavour of the month" type of thing that you buff 3 or 4 for 1 year and leave others in the dust & keep repeating this proces each year / season so that people would have to grind. This is the worst you can do and is a perfect way to lose loyal player base.

This already changed a few patches ago. They removed Necro's ability to generate Ultimate outside of combat with changes to corpses last year (the year before?) and have been slowly chipping away at it ever since. Their backtracking this patch isn't anything new - they never adhered to that promise in the first place.

tomofhyrule

I'll also come in to say that the ult gen passive changes are really hurting, and especially anyone who still plays DK.

Our sustain is in the garbage can since the last patch - Combustion and Battle Roar's nerf (over 50%!) really hurt sustain, and then Pillager and Pearls made it so we can't really get much ult from groupmates either to take use of Battle Roar. And now the DK passive is getting another hit to make a unique ult-gen into a common Minor buff.

I thought the original idea of DK was that they were designed around low sustain supported by frequent ultimates. If we can't toss out ults frequently, that essentially forces DKs into heavy-attack-only builds because we can't sustain anything else.

Also, please consider making pureclassing viable for U48. Right now, if you choose to pureclass, you are knowingly not playing at your best and that is rude to your groupmates. Because of that, we are ...encouraged... to run a Subclassed build, or leave the group to make room for someone who does want to play with others. And the nerfs to individual lines because of a Subclass interaction severely hurts the players who run that line and not others.

There really should be a bonus to running multiple lines of the same Class or a penalty to running multiple Classes. I think the easiest way would be to rework the skill line passives to have 3 levels each, but players can only buy the number of passives that they have lines of the parent class - so a pure DK can buy the 3rd level of all passives, but a winter/soldier/earthen character can only get the 1st level of the passives in those lines since they are each from a different Class. That would nicely tone down the "I took this line for the passives" we've seen, and also give more power to those who choose to stay pure.

Zyaneth_Bal

Give hurricane back major resolve, storm calling can only be used as a secondary damage line and in pvp it is now very difficult to subclass, not to mention that minor force is already one of the most common buffs. Daedric summoning is a very weak tank line that gives very little in terms of both stats and utility, it has some damage skills that are also very weak. It will never be slotted as a source of major resolve, the line needs solid buffs and replacing minor protection with major resolve is not even a buff but a meaningless change.

L_Nici

Why the change to Hurricane? How do Stamsorcs get Major Resolve now? Bound Armaments, the Stamina morph of Aegis does not grant Resolve to us. Also it forces Sorcs basically to use all their 3 lines to be effective in PvP, they can't properly Subclass anymore or lose an important buff and forces them on Magicka as the Stamina side lost its buffs.

Hurricane was fine for 11 years and took many nerfs, by the change to Implosion, by the loss of damage on the skill itself (Honestly rather make the damage flat 0 than taking away Resolve), by the loss of the abillity to uncloak targets and now you take away resolve? Honestly if PvE and PvP players alike tell you thats a bad idea, you really made a bad change.

calamity192

Over time, Ultimate has become more and more accessible to players, greatly increasing the frequency in which these combat altering abilities can be activated. This has allowed for strategies that hyper focus on the generation of this resource to amass and creep up over time, creating cases where some Ultimates can be activated incredibly quickly. We're going through many sources of Ultimate and converting effects over to the Major and Minor system so they still offer powerful bonuses, but with a much more controlled ceiling. We've started with class passives in efforts to make it harder to stack their effects with subclassing in mind, while also trying to mitigate the need to gain this effect from things like scribed abilities or consumables.

1. Have you built at least one character that does invest into Ultimate generation enough to spam Ultimate? This is the same form of investment as in any other strategy. What's next? Stop players from amassing Spell Power and Weapon Power and make all passives that grant flat amounts into Major Brutality and Sorcery? It requires a lot of investment and a lot of sacrifice in other places to build a consistently high Ultimate uptime.
2. What will happen to scripts now? It was a reliable source of Major / Minor Heroism, to the bin them?

It's just a bad approach, if you feel like it - then tune numbers, but changing flat into buff is odd.

MincMincMinc

For the Ulti gen change people are also glossing over the fact of the playstyle differences. Numerically 30 ult every 45s vs 2ult/s for 15s every 45s is the same...... however playstyle wise they are completely different and unique. Maybe they are close to ult and really need it, so they can pop their potion timed well to get instant ult and buff up at the same time.

A similar playstyle loss happened with darkdeal when Warden was launched. Zos gutted and removed an entire different way of playing the game to make darkdeal more over time instead of instant. Before stamsorc's could play smarter and more peaky in and out combat. You could dive in losing resources and then come up for a breath of air. Afterwards you were forced into the cookie cutter everyone has X regen per minute.

The different playstyle sources of sustain originally in the game have been gutted completely and lost all to satisfy a bland guaranteed sustain over time. PvP wise it was a huge loss in uniqueness, but PvE wise it was being mandated because people love power creep.

Zyaneth_Bal

Indeed, bringing everything to a standard is an easy way to balance but "standardization" has long gotten out of hand and has been taken to the extreme effectively not making skills or skill lines perform at an equal level but making them the same one thing. Many skills suffered this fate through the years and lost much of their unique flavour. Now ultimate generation passives suffer the same fate this time in the name of subclassing(multiclassing). It might not seem like much but it makes the game feel ever so bland. Diversity and flavour have been peeled bit by bit by standardization, hybridization and now subclassing.

The fact that this change is just the first step is extremely disturbing. I'm certain that many players myself included would love to see balancing taken care of in a manner that incentivizes diversity of feel and playstyles rather than the other way around.

MincMincMinc

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Indeed, bringing everything to a standard is an easy way to balance but "standardization" has long gotten out of hand and has been taken to the extreme effectively not making skills or skill lines perform equally but making them the same one thing. Many skills suffered this fate through the years and lost much of their unique flavour. Now ultimate generation passives suffer the same fate this time in the name of subclassing(multiclassing). It might not seem like much but it makes the game feel ever so bland. Diversity and flavour have been peeled bit by bit by standardization, hybridization and now subclassing.

Dilution has alot to do with it now. No build stands out if everyone has capped stats and every major/minor buff on. At that point we are at no different a spot than vengeance, except with more calculations

BasP

While I understand the nerfs to Grim Focus and the Arcanist's Class Mastery, I really hoped to see some buffs for underperforming skill lines this patch as well. The developers obviously have more data, but this chart with the skill lines that are picked by PvE DDs is pretty telling. I reckon the changes on this PTS thus far won't alter the meta skill lines too much though (this build, for example, has really only lost the extra Weapon/Spell Damage it got from Merciless Resolve).

As for some more concrete feedback, a lot of players have already mentioned Bound Armaments, but it still deserves another mention I suppose.


It's just a worse Relentless Focus in every way. It deals less damage, doesn't have a secondary effect such Relentless Focus' heal, costs more and the stacks fall off. Not to mention that the skill line's passives are worse too, so players don't benefit from slotting the skill as much. Hence, I think BA really deserves a buff this PTS cycle.


Similarly, Dark Magic's Exploitation is basically a worse version of Hemmorhage. I think it'd be great if it received a strong secondary effect that benefited just the player too. If it would, for example, buff Direct Damage by 6% (or some other value) a lot of skill lines could benefit from it, and maybe the iconic Crystal Fragments skill would see some use again too.


While Dawn's Wrath obviously has good skills, and the skill line is still used relatively often because of them (compared to skill lines like Dark Magic anyways), it's passives are pretty underwhelming. Prism and Illuminate combined are equal to just Mountain's Blessing. I still think it'd be nice if one of them got a unique buff.

Passives changed to grant Minor/ Major Heroism
As others have said, these changes basically mean that the passives are useless for some builds. Optimized setups will still want to get permanent Minor Heroism from e.g. potions or Scribing, and supports will gain Major Heroism from Trample. Similarly, everyone that uses Oakensoul already has permanent Minor Heroism too. At this point I'd prefer it if some of those passives would be changed into something completely else (adding a Bleed Damage or Hemorrhaging buff to Savage Beast would be great).

Other thoughts on certain skill lines
Shadow
Now that Shadowy Disguise doesn't have the passive Major Prophecy/Savagery anymore, there's even less reason for DDs to take this line. Which is unfortunate, in my opinion, because the Born From Shadow buff is fun and the skill line also has two DPS skills. Since those skills deal Magic Damage, perhaps a Magic Damage buff could be added to its passives? Something like that could also make the skill line interesting for subclass setups that deal a good amount of Magic Damage.

Animal Companions
It'd be great if Dive and Swarm would be buffed so that they're actually worth using. I'd personally like it if both morphs of Dive would be good spammables, for example. Maybe Cutting Dive could get a stacking bleed again, or perhaps the (direct) damage could be increased every third cast or something? And perhaps Growing Swarm's radius could be increased to 8 meters and it could grow in strength over its duration or have an increased chance to apply Hemorrhaging?

Draconic Power
In its current state I believe Draconic Power isn't used by optimized tanks (Winter's Embrace is just better) nor damage dealers (even though Burning Talons is good and Deep Breath was nice in trash setups prior to subclassing), which is why I think some sort of buff would be nice. Since Health Recovery is a relatively bad stat, the Elder Dragon passive could perhaps be revised? I'd personally like it if it got a buff that benefited DDs, similar to how Winter's Embrace has passives for tanking and DPS, but a unique buff to make the skill line better for tanks could be nice too.

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO

I do not understand why the push to nerf arcanist. It is the most popular as it has easy rotation without the need to ligh attack weave.
There are several class combinations without the arcanist beams that deal more DPS but they are all the same boring ones that require you to ligh attack weave (or as I say it "macro light attack when casting each skill") Please do not force us to get back to that.

The banner barrier Crux change is pointless as we already use as spell that grant crux when we have none

Joy_Division

Yeah. More dead and useless passives. The whole point of having a class (you know that thing we picked to define our characters) passive is to give a unique and unobtainable bonus for being that class. Not to get a generic buff I can get from a potion.

Also stop trying to "fix" abilities like Hurricane that have worked fine and have been used/enjoyed by many players for over a decade just so it fits in neat box "this skill should only do damage."

Radiate77

Joy_Division wrote: »

Yeah. More dead and useless passives. The whole point of having a class (you know that thing we picked to define our characters) passive is to give a unique and unobtainable bonus for being that class. Not to get a generic buff I can get from a potion.

Also stop trying to "fix" abilities like Hurricane that have worked fine and have been used/enjoyed by many players for over a decade just so it fits in neat box "this skill should only do damage."

Gotta say, normally I agree to most things you put up, that said… removing Resolve from Lightning Form is 100% the right direction.

Where I see the problem is that they are taking baby steps. Lightning Form looks horrible now because skills like Arctic Blast still exist…



… and if they’re gonna tackle identity, with the three Elemental skill lines having specific roles, like Lightning and Speed, Flame and Healing, why do we have Frost skills that Heal? This is applicable to other skill lines too, like why is Sun Shield on Aedric Spear instead of Backlash, when a literal spear comes down from the sky to deal it’s burst damage, or why skills derived from a giant ball of fire in the sky do Magic Damage… too many disparities in sense.

If developing Identity is the name of the game, they shouldn’t drip feed it, they should tackle the problem in a large swath and fix outliers they miss later on. The current approach feels timid, and bad for people that are on the receiving end.