1.6 Changes to Potions and Related Passives/Abilities: Issues and Possible Solutions

ThatNeonZebraAgain · February 2015

For those not aware, 1.6 had some mostly undocumented changes that introduced big changes to potions and their related passives and enchants. While there are a number successes and issues with 1.6 that have been discussed at length, I wanted to bring all potion-related things together as another aspect of 1.6 that needs evaluating. The changes are:

Increased global potion cooldown to 45 seconds (used to be 30 seconds)
Increased duration of potion effects to roughly 19-25 seconds for 2-ingredient potions, and 23-30 seconds for 3-ingredient potions (with some exceptions and depending on how many points are invested into Medicinal Use). For example, with 3/3 invested into Medicinal Use, three-ingredient Invisibility lasts for 15.1 seconds (2-ingredient lasts 12.5); Detection potion lasts for 25 seconds; 2-ingredient stat regen lasts for 25 seconds; 3-ingredient stat regen lasts 30.2 seconds.
Combined potion effects with the new Major/Minor Buff System, so that, for example, the +spell damage effect from a potion has the same value as the effect from a class/weapon/etc ability (note only one major/minor buff of each type can be active at a time, and the values are fixed).
Healing Potion Effectiveness glyphs have been replaced with Potion Boost Glyphs that increase duration of potion effect (Potion speed glyphs are still the same).
Nightblade passive Catalyst (Siphoning line): After drinking a potion, you gain 12 Ultimate. [used to be +30% Potion Effectiveness]
Argonian racial passive Amphibious: Increases swimming speed by 50% and whenever you drink a potion you gain 6% of your Max Health, Magicka, and Stamina. [used to be +15% Potion Effectiveness]
Added Determination in the Lord Constellation (120 point reward): Absorb 1547 damage for 15 seconds after drinking a potion.
Added Nourishing in the Lord Constellation: Increase effectiveness of healing potions 25% (at 100 points invested).

As is evident, these are pretty big changes to how potions are used, as well as to valuable abilities (especially for Argonians, who don't have much else going for them other than general badassery). The changes make sense from a design standpoint in terms of streamlining how buffs/effects work, but it's what their unintended consequences are for gameplay and class/racial balance that I found problematic. The main issues that I see from these changes are:

With the bundling of potions into the Major/Minor buff system, potion effects overwrite (or are overwritten) by abilities that grant the same buff. Since the values of Major/Minor buffs cannot be altered, this renders any kind of general "potion effectiveness" ability obsolete (which is why they understandably removed it). With effects from potions and abilities now competing (instead of stacking), it raises the question of why use potions whose effects could just be overwritten by an ability you have on your rotation? This mechanic makes it so that health/magicka/stamina potions are the most reliable choice (invisibility and movement speed would be other situational potion choices not often found in abilities), which leads to a lack of diversity in the kinds of potions players use, thus rendering a large swath of one crafting skill even more meaningless (because potions with negative effects, ie poisons, are currently useless). Moreover, as others have pointed out, it flattens difficulty and skill in PvE (and to a certain extent PvP) because all you need now is just 1 ability to provide a major buff and 1 ability to spam for maximum DPS, rather than timing/maximizing potion use alongside your combat rotation. In short, while people will still of course use potions (and likely a narrower range of potion types), the dynamism that they created in gameplay is largely gone.
Argonians and Nightblades lost one of their best passives (major/minor buffs can't be modified, so they had to go as part of new system), and received new passives that provide much less utility/value. There have been several threads about this on the official forums, but it is plain to see the new passives are not nearly as good as what they replaced, and what they replaced were by no means overpowered or unbalanced. The NB passive provides no real-world benefit during combat due to longer potion cooldown and myriad of other (and less costly) ways to quickly build ultimate with the new ultimate generation mechanic. The new Argonian passive essentially equates to 1 or 2 "ticks" of stat regeneration, which can only occur every 45 seconds (or 30 if you use three potion speed glyphs). With these changes, and in terms of race/class selection, many players are locked into a choice based on information that is no longer valid due key design changes, and there is currently no way to even partially rectify that change if you did make an educated choice based on your racial/class attributes. Moreover, with the lack of softcaps, Argonian passives are now extremely underpowered compared to pretty much all other racial passives.
While the longer duration potion effects help offset the new 45-second cooldown, the invisibility potions duration renders NB clock ability very lackluster. Further, currently on 1.6, you can steal while invisible from the potion, but not while invisible from Cloak.
Sorcerers and Nightblades, who have no reliable self-heals (only HoTs, mostly based on damage dealt, number of targets hit, or critting, and that largely do not proc against damage shields) relied heavily on potions to keep up with DK and Templar health sustain. Increasing the cooldown and decreasing potion effectiveness serves to exacerbate this disparity between classes and further pushes to reliance on Resto staff (or maybe 2h because Momentum rules).
The easily attainable by everyone heal-potion effectiveness enchantment was removed in favor of a constellation passive that does the same thing, but now will require investment of CP to get something we already access to (although it does eventually becomes more powerful than the old glyph). Given the increased potion cooldown, the new glyph (increase potion effect duration) may be useful, but now having to grind for yet another thing people already had is not a good design for current players.

Given these changes and issues, here are some ideas for small adjustments I think would fairly promote player skill, class/race balance, and interesting overall gameplay.

Potions need to stack with active ability buff effects. Obviously, it can't be a simple additive equation as that would be extremely overpowered, but there needs to be a way to keep potions as situational temporary boosts to one's stats/abilities.If an ability you use grants Major Brutality, drinking a potion that gives that same buff should add on top of that in some way. This should be a "smart system," so that if the ability effect wears off, but the potion effect is still active, the potion scales to become the Major buff; if you were to re-use the ability that grants Major Brutality the same potion effect was still active, the potion effect would scale down to its "stacked" value. This should hold true for all buffs/effects, including hp/mag/stam regen. This doesn't affect the value of potions themselves, but rather effects how they interact/stack with the same effects offer by abilities in order to retain the complexity and dynamism that skilled potion usage offers. The more ways players can use skill to improve their combat and survival, the better; simplifying combat makes for boring interactions, and leaves little room to hone one's capabilities.
Nightblade's Catalyst passive should not focus on ultimate generation as it is easy enough to generate ultimate without the tiny bump offered by drinking a potion every 30-45 seconds. Rather, it should provide another, actually useful potion-related benefit, such as reducing potion cooldown or increasing potion duration, increasing effectiveness of hp/mag/stam potions, etc.
Argonians' Amphibious passive should either be increased in value, and/or take the same approach as the NB Catalyst passive above. I would also argue that Argonians' other passives should have their values doubled (e.g. up to +12% healing received, +6% max health, etc) to be at least competitive with those of other races.
Relating to the last two issues I identified, we need more than 70 Champion Points, or the amount of XP per CP needs to be reduced, or non-quest end-game XP (eg crafting at max level, Trials, and PvP) needs to be increased. I realize this is another thread in itself, but 70 CP is not enough to retain the current flexibility and power of our current builds.

So, thoughts? Opinions? Ideas for fixes?

sabresandiego_ESO · February 2015

Well written, and some of your concerns are valid. Personally, I like the new system. Spamming potions was a serious problem and they fixed it. They also fixed overpowered stacking of buffs with their new system as well. Potions should definitely not stack with other buffs, that would be overpowered. Thats why I do not agree with several of your suggestions. I like how potions are in 1.6, significantly more than in 1.5. Also, catalyst was overpowered and had to be rebalanced.

Now what I do agree with you about is racials. Racials need to be rebalanced and improved, especially for some particular races. I also agree that 70cp is a bit low.

Helluin · February 2015

I agree on many of your points.

About NB Catalyst, I hope they will change it to previous one (but it's an issue with major/minor buff system) or to any of the options you suggested.

Other ideas:
- "Restores X% max health, stamina, magicka over time when using a potion".

- "Restores X% health when activating (or dealing damage with) a Siphoning ability".
It would require a low percentage or a CD to be not OP, even if for a stamina build it could be not the best passive.

- "Increase armor/spell penetration of Siphoning abilities by X%".

- "Siphoning abilities bypass X% damage shields; Siphoning Strikes grants health, magicka and stamina (according to the morph) against shielded targets".
When Siphoning Strikes is toggled on, you would simply gain resources from shielded target even if not dealing damage.
Since NB has no class shields and direct heals, it can be an option to have a class able to counter shields but I prefer the previous ideas because of balancement, because they seem easier and they have always an utility from a passive.

TheBucket · February 2015

Yea, this basically butchered my current builds on Live, so instead of using potions to counter not using a Resto Staff. I'll most likely be going resto staff like everyone else in pvp

ThatNeonZebraAgain · February 2015

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

Well written, and some of your concerns are valid. Personally, I like the new system. Spamming potions was a serious problem and they fixed it. They also fixed overpowered stacking of buffs with their new system as well. Potions should definitely not stack with other buffs, that would be overpowered. Thats why I do not agree with several of your suggestions. I like how potions are in 1.6, significantly more than in 1.5. Also, catalyst was overpowered and had to be rebalanced.

Now what I do agree with you about is racials. Racials need to be rebalanced and improved, especially for some particular races. I also agree that 70cp is a bit low.

Thank you for taking the time to read it. Since beta, using potions as quickly as every 15 seconds was never a serious problem (especially for those that don't use a Resto staff, or don't have class damage shields or direct heals), nor nearly as overpowered as some basic class skills. I don't recall ever seeing a thread saying NBs, Argonians, and potions were OP. Also, in part of what served to keep it in check was the size of your wallet and how many mats you could find, since potions (and ingredients) are pretty costly and Alchemy mats are the most difficult to farm. It took a very niche race/class/playstyle to maximize potion effectiveness and speed, which required making sacrifices to other areas of your character's build. Because of these trade-offs and checks, I always saw it as actually pretty balanced.

Given how a player has access to almost all Major/Minor combinations through class/weapon/guild abilities, if potions don't provide anything different, what's their point? Why waste the gold/mats on them if their effects will be the same as/overwritten by an ability? I agree directly stacking potion and ability buffs would be ridiculous, which is why I suggested some kind of scaling mechanism when they are occurring together.

TheBucket wrote: »

Yea, this basically butchered my current builds on Live, so instead of using potions to counter not using a Resto Staff. I'll most likely be going resto staff like everyone else in pvp

Yea, I currently use Bow and 1h/Shield in PvP with 2 potion speed glyphs. Looks like I'll need to switch to Resto and either DW or 2h in order to stay alive, especially since HoTs and Siphoning things don't work against damage shields.

AlnilamE · February 2015

Thank you for the write-up. It's good to see all the changes in one place.

I think that the best solutions would be to rework the passives. I agree with Catalyst being changed to either increase the effectivenes of H/S/M potions, or the duration of the tick.

I think for the Argonians, I'd rather see buffs to their other stats to make up for the loss. If create a passive that stacks with Catalyst, you are again going to create a "go to" race/class combo for a specific build, and then if anything is tweaked, we are going to be in the same place we are now.

Denidil · February 2015

Yup. Potions need to not be on the unified buff system. and that NB passive is just a horrible waste of SP now. just like the last passive in bow.

ThatNeonZebraAgain · February 2015

AlnilamE wrote: »

Thank you for the write-up. It's good to see all the changes in one place.

I think for the Argonians, I'd rather see buffs to their other stats to make up for the loss. If create a passive that stacks with Catalyst, you are again going to create a "go to" race/class combo for a specific build, and then if anything is tweaked, we are going to be in the same place we are now.

Definitely. I think doubling the values of their current passives would put them on equal footing with other racial passives. And your sentence makes an interesting point -- who knows what tweaks/changes they will be making in the future. I would like to see Catalyst and Amphibian stick to potion-related things, and wouldn't mind them being the same (other races have passives that can be stacked with weapon/class passives), so long as they didn't make anything OP that would then be changed later.

Denidil wrote: »

Yup. Potions need to not be on the unified buff system. and that NB passive is just a horrible waste of SP now. just like the last passive in bow.

Yea, the last Bow passive is pretty interesting, but overall pretty 'meh.'

A1exeR · February 2015

I want to say only one - they killed alchemy

ashlee17 · February 2015

Interesting post with some well thought out ideas. Potions have often been the difference between life and the death of my whole group for my PvE Argonian Templar healer.
The new passive for argonians is much less fexible then our current live bonus. And the longer cool down on potions as well as ult generation changes has me worried that when the "Oh NO" moment arrives when we are fighting a boss, my poor healer might come up short.

I also hope they give the other three classes better access to pve group heals. These changes are going to hit them even harder than me. Us templars shouldn't have all the fun! They won't be able to self heal as reliably with the changes to pots.

Btw- selfish dream - Id love to see a passive to boost healing done for argonians- (not just self heals)
-

Naivefanboi · February 2015

just delte my account and get it over with zos. I give up your hopeless. fought for ya guys since beta. lesson learned.

PlagueMonk · February 2015

As a Arg NB, I am extremely ticked off with my double nerfing. The one nice thing about my race/class combo (ONE damn thing) was +45% to potion effectiveness.....*poof* gone now and I was given 2 absolutely crap abilities in place of them. I don't know who came up with the replacements (or who approved them) but they did an extremely poor job.

How about you pull your ******** ***** ******** ******* Zenimax and if you are going to remove an ability actually replace it with something decent. Or is it too much to ask for something that was well thought out?

Fizzlewizzle · March 2015

Looking at the nerf for the Argonians and NB potion effects... they could increase the time the new potions will have (like the jewellery will be doing), rather than the currently suggested effects.

Although its from another topic, just READ the potion effect bonus (Don't watch the video).

Sheuib wrote: »

Didn't they change the potion passives on Argonians and Nighblades simply because of the overall changes to potions anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKGqKcdD5BY

Yes, this means that basically everyone can do what you were doing with your specialized build.

The Potion duration Glimpses increase the time of those effects, which could give Argonians a 15% longer duration and NB a 30% longer duration.

Wisler89 · March 2015

The advantage I see with the inclusion of potions in the Major/Minor buff system is, that you can use potion to provide yourself the buff to damage and critcal strike chance and open up more skill slots to use different abilities (dots, selfheal, ...)

HebrewHatchet · September 2015

I agree with @Wisler89. I use potions on my v15 sorcerer to free my bar from surge and magelight. Now, I have more varied gameplay at the expense of keeping myself well supplied with potions. I also like the fact that if I run out of potions, I have the option to put surge and magelight back on my bar, or live without them or the crit/spell damage buff.

I'm not sure if the system is better or worse than anything else, I'm just saying that it does have it's merrits, in my case, I can basically spend gold to have a more varied and powerful build, if I want to.

Wisler89 · September 2015

Uiuiuiui, we have a necromancer here

HebrewHatchet wrote: »

I'm not sure if the system is better or worse than anything else, I'm just saying that it does have it's merrits, in my case, I can basically spend gold to have a more varied and powerful build, if I want to.

But I have to comment to this here. There is no better or worse here. The old system allowed for more diverse builds (primarly in PvP) the new system offers the chance to get the same buff with different skills (Surge vs Entropy vs Pots) and incraeses build diversity this way, at least in theory, we know how the reality looks. The only real problem I have with the new system is that there are still skill which provide buffs which aren't considered part of the minor/major buff system. Or some skills/passives are buggy and allow the stacking of the same buff. Or how some Ultimates are really bad now (in regards which ulti offers which buff).

Oh, that's more than one problem...