16% health reduction + 16% damage reduction =?

Hilgara · July 2014

There have been a few people saying that a 16% nerf to mob health and a 16% nerf to their damage results in a 16% overall nerf . (yea I know the damage nerf has since been proved to be around 30%)

So I decided to test this

Lets say pre nerf you could kill 2 standard mobs before dying. They would get 10 hits in on you and the 10th hit would reduce your health to zero so each hit taking 10% of your health

Now for arguments sake (and to make the maths easier) lets say you reduce the mobs health and damage by 20%.

This means that the time to kill will be reduced by 20% right. They get 2 less hits in leaving you with 20% health when they die.

But the hits themselves are also reduced by 20% so instead of those 8 hits taking 10% of your health each hit they are only taking 8%. 2% less damage per hit reducing their outgoing damage by 16%

So now you have 36% health at the end of the fight.
So its not quite as simple as adding 16 + 16 but neither is it a flat 16% nerf.

cazlonb16_ESO · July 2014

Percentages of different stuff are still just different stuff.

What you would need to do if you wanted to calculate overall nerfage impact from the basic values of mob hp, mob burst/sustained dmg, your burst/sustained dmg, etc., is to first construct a weighted index of their individual impact on combat performance. Then look if and how each of them changed.

Or you could just try to measure combat performance directly.

Lord_Hev · July 2014

Enemy hits are not reduced at all. VR 1 mobs still brought me to half health.

Harvesters still one-shot.

lolpyromancers are still lolpyromancers.

But yeah, my survival has increased as I don't have to unload my entire arsenal on a single bandit no-life anymore. Which is nice and immersive.

Hilgara · July 2014

Lord_Hev wrote: »

Enemy hits are not reduced at all. VR 1 mobs still brought me to half health.

Harvesters still one-shot.

lolpyromancers are still lolpyromancers.

But yeah, my survival has increased as I don't have to unload my entire arsenal on a single bandit no-life anymore. Which is nice and immersive.

Enemy damage has been proved to be reduced by around 30%. May vary depending on armour.

forthewinn2 · July 2014

just posted this in a similar thread but I'll add it here too

If prior to the patch it would take you 10 seconds to kill a mob and if you take 100 damage per second fighting that mob you would take a total of 1000 damage for the duration of fighting that mob, now after the patch it would take around 8.4 seconds to fight the same mob(because the mob has 16% less health) and you would take 70 damage per second fighting the mob(the mob now does 30% less damage) so over the course of the fight you would take 588 damage.
This basically means over the course of a fight you would take 41.2% less damage.

How this is converted to the % easier is beyond me, but I personally consider damage taken during the entire duration of a fight to be a reasonable indicator of how difficult that fight was (with of course a few exceptions ie very long fights where you take very low damage per second, are still easy).

Dayv · July 2014

Whatever the numbers, to me it FEELS just about right. This is more or less the subjective experience I'm looking for.

Hilgara · July 2014

forthewinn2 wrote: »

How this is converted to the % easier is beyond me, but I personally consider damage taken during the entire duration of a fight to be a reasonable indicator of how difficult that fight was (with of course a few exceptions ie very long fights where you take very low damage per second, are still easy).

Not sure it can. I think the difficulty moves in steps not a linear scale. At some point the damage reduction means you don't need to dodge. That's a whole mechanic you can ignore. Then you don't need to move out of the red. Theres another. Then you can ignore blocking and interrupting. To the point where its just a matter of unloading onto a mob. Each step makes it successively easier.

cazlonb16_ESO · July 2014

Hilgara wrote: »

Enemy damage has been proved to be reduced by around 30%.

I very much doubt that. The one before/after picture with different level and equip between the two certainly is not proof.

Lord_Hev · July 2014

Hilgara wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

Enemy hits are not reduced at all. VR 1 mobs still brought me to half health.

Harvesters still one-shot.

lolpyromancers are still lolpyromancers.

But yeah, my survival has increased as I don't have to unload my entire arsenal on a single bandit no-life anymore. Which is nice and immersive.

Enemy damage has been proved to be reduced by around 30%. May vary depending on armour.

By someone wearing improved armor and gear.

Well, I guess that proves armor might actually mean something after all. Either that, OR... They lowered lolVR armor penetration from 90% (lol) to about 60% ish. Which means Armor may actually be useful! How about that??

forthewinn2 · July 2014

Imho people aren't upset purely because of the nerf to veteran content, they are upset because the nerf was executed poorly.
They didn't decrease the armor or spell penetration of veteran mobs they just gave them a flat damage decrease, a blanket nerf if you will.
If they were going to do this they should have decreased the damage done by mob light attacks and left heavyattacks/aoe alone, as it is currently (post nerf) there is no point in blocking or dodging.
Veteran content used to encourage people to play smarter and force them to adapt, it just doesn't do that anymore.

(and numbers mentioned by op are correct, mob health has been reduced by around 16.67% and damage output of mobs has been decreased by 30%)

Hilgara · July 2014

I would have preferred to see a ramped nerf from the original difficulty at VR10 down to 1 to 50 difficulty. Progression would then be a linear increase and picking up the techniques you needed to survive would be something that you did almost without noticing. It was the massive variations that hit people hard.

Hilgara · July 2014

While on the subject, has anyone noticed a change in the 1 to 50 content. Playing low level alts last night and it seems much easier than the last time I was playing them (and it was already pretty easy) I thought the nerf only applied to vet?

niocwy · July 2014

Is there an official source on the 16% and 30% numbers ? or was they found via testing ?

Also, does the 30% damage reduction is flat or just spell/armor penetration ? because I heard both.

YakoTaki · July 2014

16% health reduction + 16% damage reduction =?

Who cares?

niocwy · July 2014

YakoTaki wrote: »

16% health reduction + 16% damage reduction =?

Who cares?

Some people care. Now if you have nothing else to bring to the discussion, I nicely suggest that you go away, thanks

Hilgara · July 2014

niocwy wrote: »

Is there an official source on the 16% and 30% numbers ? or was they found via testing ?

Also, does the 30% damage reduction is flat or just spell/armor penetration ? because I heard both.

Not sure but I hope its achieved through a spell/armor pen nerf and not just a flat damage nerf. It would be good if armor actually meant something

forthewinn2 · July 2014

As far as I know it was only veteran content that has been changed.
Zenimax has not stated exactly what they have done but it has been confirmed through player testing(myself included) that the changes are around 16% less mob health and 30% less mob damage.
It was not armor or spell penetration that was changed, all of my personal testing was done without any armor on.

niocwy · July 2014

Hilgara wrote: »

niocwy wrote: »

Is there an official source on the 16% and 30% numbers ? or was they found via testing ?

Also, does the 30% damage reduction is flat or just spell/armor penetration ? because I heard both.

Not sure but I hope its achieved through a spell/armor pen nerf and not just a flat damage nerf. It would be good if armor actually meant something

It sure would. I'm running heavy anyway, both pre and post, so I clearly noticed the damage reduction (especially while fighting elite mobs or world bosses).

Also, I agree with you that they should have take time to implement some sort of progression through the VR content, butmaybe they did .They did not say much about how they actually change the difficulty so it's just guessing/testing at this point.

Edit :

forthewinn2 wrote: »

As far as I know it was only veteran content that has been changed.
Zenimax has not stated exactly what they have done but it has been confirmed through player testing(myself included) that the changes are around 16% less mob health and 30% less mob damage.
It was not armor or spell penetration that was changed, all of my personal testing was done without any armor on.

Thanks for your input !

Swampster · July 2014

Hilgara wrote: »

I would have preferred to see a ramped nerf from the original difficulty at VR10 down to 1 to 50 difficulty. Progression would then be a linear increase and picking up the techniques you needed to survive would be something that you did almost without noticing. It was the massive variations that hit people hard.

This is going to be a novelty.. I actually agree with this post, there should definately be a continuation of the curve from level 50 upwards getting progressively more difficult as you ramp upwards, however with that should be changes to rewards, skill levels etc.. ie, a consistant progression in all areas of the game.

ZOS have said, this was a first pass at the many changes to come to VR levels.. and I believe (hope) the recent change was simply a band aid fix with the aim of preventing the game haemoragging subs in the interim...

I have a sneaking suspsicion, they might be looking at a more logical approach to how VR works, similar to what we've described.. so it works more like standard progression but with perhaps a steeper difficulty curve.