why are siege engines doing half damage (or worse) relative to 1.5 ???

Lava_Croft · March 2015

Thank you, sounds great! Now we just need to be able to actually place siege equipment while everybody is lagging out.

Juraigr · March 2015

Nice work Brian, this is more or less ALL we as long time players ask from you devs, some damn communication on what's going on with the game.

This is brilliant and kudos to you for it, while on the topic of PvP how do people feel about the ultimate gains, (May start separate thread) I for one don't mind it a little slow and I disagree that it's basically set on cooldown when the game was advertised as not having them, what I'm worried about is how it might turn into a numbers game making it hard for small bomb squads (12 or lower) to combat them due to the static gains allowing those with more numbers to drop more compared to pre 1.6 where less numbers can generate more due to hitting more targets and it's dynamic gain.

Also the changes to combat frenzy and the additional ultimate upon kill (the non frenzy version) I think were unnecessary considering how important killing blows are. (dks have no execute makes it a bit hard, also no range

separate rant)

Phaedrus · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

This will be skipping PTS and going straight to live as an incremental patch coming next week (hopefully). With that being said, I figure getting some feedback on direct number changes here is good. Some other changes are in the works too from the combat\gameplay team regarding XP, battl

Remember that these changes in damage are vs. players except for the Trebuchet extra damage noted vs. keeps. Also take note that the goals of each weapon type dictate their damage so while the catapult damage looks low, it's meant to be low in comparison to a Treb.

Lastly the changes to the Treb damage, as some of you have noted, will change keep assault preferences to some degree as well as the Flaming Oil changes. The DPS of an Ice treb however is still lower than a standard ballista bolt since you know...it's a ball of ice and not a rock or a flaming rock, or a steel tipped 100 lb bolt...

We've bounced these numbers around a few times internally and have them currently set up and feeling pretty good in our tests:

Flaming Oil: 9000 DoT <-- This was a bit higher at first, but in the most common situation where several pots are being used and once, we toned this down a bit.

Meatbag: 4260 (health debuff stays the same)
Oilpot: 4260 (snare stayed the same)
Scattershot: 4260

Standard Ballista : 6390
Lightning Ballista : 6390 + DoT vs players
Fire Ballista : 8520 + DoT vs players

Stone Treb : 17040 vs players, 4000 vs. keep walls
Fire Treb : 12780 +DoT vs players, 3500 vs. keep walls
Ice Treb : 10650 + Snare vs players, 3000 vs. keep walls

Are these damage numbers total after DOT's duration or initial hit? For instance the Flaming Oil: 9000 DoT, does that mean 9000 on first hit or something like 4,500 on first hit then an additional 4.500 over x seconds?

Glurin · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Standard Ballista : 6390
Lightning Ballista : 6390 + DoT vs players
Fire Ballista : 8520 + DoT vs players

So looking at this, what is the incentive to use a lightning ballista over a fire ballista?

Agrippa_Invisus · March 2015

Glurin wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Standard Ballista : 6390
Lightning Ballista : 6390 + DoT vs players
Fire Ballista : 8520 + DoT vs players

So looking at this, what is the incentive to use a lightning ballista over a fire ballista?

The snare component.

EnOeZ · March 2015

How much are the DOTs ?
Over what duration ?
For what DPS ? (ok we can compute that one ourselves but ...eh)

Not giving that info is giving addons users an advantage again

We would like complete info/transparency about game mechanics for once...
Well we would really appreciate complete info all the time anyway (and accurate translations in French of abilities descriptions, but that's another story...).

EnOeZ · March 2015

And will we -by chance- find our armors and elemental resistances able to mitigate siege damage again ? (would love too)

RinaldoGandolphi · March 2015

@ZOS_BrianWheeler this and the XP gain, but especially this is the best news I have heard all year!

Brian you are awesome!!!!!!!!! Woo hoo!

Manoekin · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

9k on the flaming oil is high for sure, but considering most cases where it's used, at least as far as I've seen in my experience, there's almost always a healing circle going on where those pots are aimed either on flags, breach points, rams, etc. In our testing we found it's a nasty hit, but can be healed through if someone is healing. Also note that it won't kill you outright, but it will get close.

I'm not even a vampire, but that damage seems a little high. Oil was always the highest DPS in pvp until 1.6, but now this is just far above anything that can be done in the game right now whereas before character abilities could be somewhat compared. 6k would be a better number. 9-27k damage is definitely able to be healed through, but if you're going to factor that in you also have to factor in that the enemy isn't going to just let you waltz right in and let you take the keep if you manage to heal through the oil. Also I'm skeptical of current HP values being taken into account when coming up with this number. That's easily 1/3 health burst from a fire and forget ability for the majority of players and likely more than that for a good chunk.

Another angle to this is that you're probably doubling the chance of success for defending a keep, which is going to only increase the necessity of zerging a keep with a million players because half the players will probably die on the breach or stairs.

RinaldoGandolphi · March 2015

Finally we will have viable oilpots, god I'm ticklecd pink! Finally siege hits hard like it should, finally its worthy to be called field artillery.

The oil pot boost was needed, now defenders who are outnumbered will now actually have a fighting chance to hold on to.a keep for a change.

ItsRejectz · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

This will be skipping PTS and going straight to live as an incremental patch coming next week (hopefully). With that being said, I figure getting some feedback on direct number changes here is good. Some other changes are in the works too from the combat\gameplay team regarding XP, battl

Remember that these changes in damage are vs. players except for the Trebuchet extra damage noted vs. keeps. Also take note that the goals of each weapon type dictate their damage so while the catapult damage looks low, it's meant to be low in comparison to a Treb.

Lastly the changes to the Treb damage, as some of you have noted, will change keep assault preferences to some degree as well as the Flaming Oil changes. The DPS of an Ice treb however is still lower than a standard ballista bolt since you know...it's a ball of ice and not a rock or a flaming rock, or a steel tipped 100 lb bolt...

We've bounced these numbers around a few times internally and have them currently set up and feeling pretty good in our tests:

Flaming Oil: 9000 DoT <-- This was a bit higher at first, but in the most common situation where several pots are being used and once, we toned this down a bit.

Meatbag: 4260 (health debuff stays the same)
Oilpot: 4260 (snare stayed the same)
Scattershot: 4260

Standard Ballista : 6390
Lightning Ballista : 6390 + DoT vs players
Fire Ballista : 8520 + DoT vs players

Stone Treb : 17040 vs players, 4000 vs. keep walls
Fire Treb : 12780 +DoT vs players, 3500 vs. keep walls
Ice Treb : 10650 + Snare vs players, 3000 vs. keep walls

Just want to say it's great to finally get some big changes to PvP. A lot of us play this game mostly for the PvP and have felt over the last few months, that PvP wasn't as much as a priority to ZOS. Looking forward to seeing what the future holds for PvP

mananull · March 2015

Manoekin wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

9k on the flaming oil is high for sure, but considering most cases where it's used, at least as far as I've seen in my experience, there's almost always a healing circle going on where those pots are aimed either on flags, breach points, rams, etc. In our testing we found it's a nasty hit, but can be healed through if someone is healing. Also note that it won't kill you outright, but it will get close.

I'm not even a vampire, but that damage seems a little high. Oil was always the highest DPS in pvp until 1.6, but now this is just far above anything that can be done in the game right now whereas before character abilities could be somewhat compared. 6k would be a better number. 9-27k damage is definitely able to be healed through, but if you're going to factor that in you also have to factor in that the enemy isn't going to just let you waltz right in and let you take the keep if you manage to heal through the oil. Also I'm skeptical of current HP values being taken into account when coming up with this number. That's easily 1/3 health burst from a fire and forget ability for the majority of players and likely more than that for a good chunk.

Another angle to this is that you're probably doubling the chance of success for defending a keep, which is going to only increase the necessity of zerging a keep with a million players because half the players will probably die on the breach or stairs.

Didnt see a problem with the damage. If there is too much oil on the walls use some trebs to get rid of them, or break down another wall. I hope there will be some more tactics required to take a keep now. it certainly seems so.

And yes without tactics you will need a lot more attackers than defenders. That's how it should be.

Manoekin · March 2015

mananull wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

9k on the flaming oil is high for sure, but considering most cases where it's used, at least as far as I've seen in my experience, there's almost always a healing circle going on where those pots are aimed either on flags, breach points, rams, etc. In our testing we found it's a nasty hit, but can be healed through if someone is healing. Also note that it won't kill you outright, but it will get close.

I'm not even a vampire, but that damage seems a little high. Oil was always the highest DPS in pvp until 1.6, but now this is just far above anything that can be done in the game right now whereas before character abilities could be somewhat compared. 6k would be a better number. 9-27k damage is definitely able to be healed through, but if you're going to factor that in you also have to factor in that the enemy isn't going to just let you waltz right in and let you take the keep if you manage to heal through the oil. Also I'm skeptical of current HP values being taken into account when coming up with this number. That's easily 1/3 health burst from a fire and forget ability for the majority of players and likely more than that for a good chunk.

Another angle to this is that you're probably doubling the chance of success for defending a keep, which is going to only increase the necessity of zerging a keep with a million players because half the players will probably die on the breach or stairs.

Didnt see a problem with the damage. If there is too much oil on the walls use some trebs to get rid of them, or break down another wall. I hope there will be some more tactics required to take a keep now. it certainly seems so.

And yes without tactics you will need a lot more attackers than defenders. That's how it should be.

Those aren't legit tactics, it's just prolonging the siege so the enemy can regroup better and more people can show up to the keep and lag the *** out of it. I'm gonna enjoy wiping all the blind people who can't see the issue with this. Not going to affect my group one bit.

Tintinabula · March 2015

Joy_Division wrote: »

I stopped wasting my AP on siege weapons and my time on using them.

I find it disappointing that there is a virtual consensus about the ineffectiveness on siege weapons from the people who actually play the game, a consensus that is ignored by ZoS because it is worried that some level 15 might get one shotted from a fire ballista.

OoooooooooK...how exactly are you going to save that level 15 when I snipe him or wrecking blow him?

QFT

Pchela · March 2015

Thank you for buffing siege! Can't wait to try it out.

ZOS_BrianWheeler · March 2015

The Fire ballista DoT is the 8520 ticking 2 more times.
The Fire Treb DoT is a separate 6390 ticking 2 more times after the initial impact of the 12780.

Weberda · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The Fire ballista DoT is the 8520 ticking 2 more times.
The Fire Treb DoT is a separate 6390 ticking 2 more times after the initial impact of the 12780.

So after Monday people are going to pour back into Cyrodil (many already have) and keep sieges are going to once again look like a 4th of July celebration......I sure hope you have some really really good engineers working on the lag/performance issues.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · March 2015

Weberda wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

The Fire ballista DoT is the 8520 ticking 2 more times.
The Fire Treb DoT is a separate 6390 ticking 2 more times after the initial impact of the 12780.

So after Monday people are going to pour back into Cyrodil (many already have) and keep sieges are going to once again look like a 4th of July celebration......I sure hope you have some really really good engineers working on the lag/performance issues.

Siege by its nature spreads people out a bit will probs be better for the lag.
...

Fire ballista will do 25560 total per hit and fire trebs will do 25560 too (but 4k more initial impact)

I would suggest lower the ballista dot by 2000 per tic because ballista can be fired faster and are more accurate

Ghostbane · March 2015

Efficient Purge you say, whats that?

Jauriel · March 2015

xylena wrote: »

The only thing that changed is the fact that you can't have more than one healing debuff on yourself. So no more spamming of purge 5-6times in a row before you can finally land a heal successfuly on yourself. You purge once and you're clear.

RIP meatbags as an effective anti-zergball weapon

RIP oil catapults that couldn't be purged, was so nice to be able to stop a zergball in its tracks

RIP ground oil, best small group versus zergball defense weapon ever

Almost seems like ZOS is deliberately encouraging and dare I say rewarding the zerg mentality, huh?

Jauriel · March 2015

Roechacca wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

I had a meatbag on a breach the other night at Nikel. Blue streamed in and even though I hit over 8 or them according combat log statistics it did not do as much damage as pre 1.6. I do not know (or care) whether its mitigation, light, heavy, med armor, debuffs or any other variable. It is not doing the damage output of a simple spell in context to the damage before 1.6 update. Not surprising, they swarmed me and I died. Next time I will throw caltrops down and spam wall of elements and volcanic rune. I will live a bit longer and do more damage. I can now directly hit players on siege and the siege breaks before they do. I can also siege while getting hit with counter siege without constant heals from others no siege shield required and I could not do that before. I can alt off the siege put a HOT on then go back to sieging easily now. I would be interested to hear if anyone else feels differently.

No that's pretty much how all trebs have been working . I've tested lightning , fire , oil , scattershot and meat bag . Damage is too minuscule to justify their defensive use in my opinion . Might as well be throwing harsh language .

Remember the claim by ZOS they were looking at "changing the behavior" of players to minimize the zerg/lag? Gee, one would almost think the exact reverse opposite is true when they rob us of one of the most effective ways of breaking apart the blobs, huh? Aiming lightening or fire at ep blobs was one of my favorite passtimes in the not so distant past. Now it does little to nothing to scatter and force them to de-blob.

Jauriel · March 2015

Grim13 wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Siege damage was increased but not to the extent that it one shots non-veteran players or players who have not put a lot of points in health picks while wearing light/no armor.

We are aware of the damage feeling lesser than it did prior to 1.6. and monitoring siege vs. players in all armor types along with the champion resists/bonuses.

Today, EP breached the east postern at Alessia, there were 6 oil pots over the stairs, caltrops everywhere and multiple cats and ballistas aimed at the hole... the Ep zerg just ran right up the stairs, no harm no foul, and killed everyone with Meteors and Radiant Destructions.

You said that you wanted to reduce the ridiculous amount of zerging in this game. I'm not seeing it. Make siege useful, ffs.

As it stands, the balance of power during a siege is on the attackers side, never mind how much more so it is with lag, and the balance during any siege should always favor the defenders (unless they're vastly outnumbered). Otherwise, what's the point of defensive fortifications!?

One can comfortably come to the conclusion ZOS is encouraging zergballing. Not discouraging it as they claim.

Jauriel · March 2015

sc_prabhu1986rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Tintinabula wrote: »

"We wanted to make sure that you know..ppl playing in vet areas who maybe should be in non vet areas..or ppl who pour all their points into damage rather than health..can you know..not die and get away with it."

seriously?...what?..

This line of reasoning from ZOS is quite frankly silly...a whole new level for them. If people want to play with fire (for example by going full light armor; by not wearing armor at all; by not using fire resistance glyph as vamps; by being a lvl 10 and going head to head against a v14; etc) then they bloody well deserve to pay the price for it.

And if the new philosophy at ZOS is to be a carebear for all these people, then I want to know when can low-level pvpers expect to no longer be worried about being 1-shot by snipes/wrecking blows? Or by any other attacks by v14s in purple/gold gear?

ZOS, we know you messed it up with the siege damage. Don't own up to it, we don't care anymore. But please don't ignore it. Fix it now. Thank you.

Well, I wear 5 pieces of light and unless I take a meteor to the knee it usually takes about 3-4 to snuff me.

Roechacca · March 2015

I'm still in shock . I'll post a reaction when it wears off .

Jauriel · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Light armor typically doesn't have the HP boosts that heavy/medium armor wearing players have which is why armor was mentioned there. Not all players optimize their gear/HP/STA/MAG for surviving in Cyrodiil and while new players entering the zone will have bonus stats to survive weaponry via Battle leveling, the direction to make Siege not over punishing to new players was desired. Siege mitigation changes in 1.6 were aimed at abilities that can mitigate Siege Damage and also Battle leveling stats are being investigated for a future update, and we are still looking at the damage of weapons vs. players with those changes in mind. We are aware that it's on the lighter side of the damage scale at the moment.

Sorry but I don't understand or appreciate this hand holding of the new players. Give me a fricking break. Nobody held MY hand at launch when I was a baby 10 and faced anti personnel siege on the battle field. It's how I LEARNED to avoid it and heal through it. Now you wimp it out to cater to the newbs and the rest of us who take pvp seriously and are used to anti personell siege being a highly effective defense device are what? Just SOL?

NukeAllTheThings · March 2015

Jauriel wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Light armor typically doesn't have the HP boosts that heavy/medium armor wearing players have which is why armor was mentioned there. Not all players optimize their gear/HP/STA/MAG for surviving in Cyrodiil and while new players entering the zone will have bonus stats to survive weaponry via Battle leveling, the direction to make Siege not over punishing to new players was desired. Siege mitigation changes in 1.6 were aimed at abilities that can mitigate Siege Damage and also Battle leveling stats are being investigated for a future update, and we are still looking at the damage of weapons vs. players with those changes in mind. We are aware that it's on the lighter side of the damage scale at the moment.

Sorry but I don't understand or appreciate this hand holding of the new players. Give me a fricking break. Nobody held MY hand at launch when I was a baby 10 and faced anti personnel siege on the battle field. It's how I LEARNED to avoid it and heal through it. Now you wimp it out to cater to the newbs and the rest of us who take pvp seriously and are used to anti personell siege being a highly effective defense device are what? Just SOL?

I think you might want to read a little more and get caught up

Jauriel · March 2015

RedTalon wrote: »

Has a heavy armor vet player, I like the new siege damage and being able to stand there and take a few siege hits without breaking a sweat, while I go pee and come back to same health roughly just has walls are coming down.

Also not sure if this is a glitch but a few times today held block while taking siege hits and seemed to reduce it close to zero.

You must be ep. They LOVE it when the game is skewed to favor this very mentality you display.

Hypertionb14_ESO · March 2015

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

This will be skipping PTS and going straight to live as an incremental patch coming next week (hopefully). With that being said, I figure getting some feedback on direct number changes here is good. Some other changes are in the works too from the combat\gameplay team regarding XP, battl

Remember that these changes in damage are vs. players except for the Trebuchet extra damage noted vs. keeps. Also take note that the goals of each weapon type dictate their damage so while the catapult damage looks low, it's meant to be low in comparison to a Treb.

Lastly the changes to the Treb damage, as some of you have noted, will change keep assault preferences to some degree as well as the Flaming Oil changes. The DPS of an Ice treb however is still lower than a standard ballista bolt since you know...it's a ball of ice and not a rock or a flaming rock, or a steel tipped 100 lb bolt...

We've bounced these numbers around a few times internally and have them currently set up and feeling pretty good in our tests:

Flaming Oil: 9000 DoT <-- This was a bit higher at first, but in the most common situation where several pots are being used and once, we toned this down a bit.

Meatbag: 4260 (health debuff stays the same)
Oilpot: 4260 (snare stayed the same)
Scattershot: 4260

Standard Ballista : 6390
Lightning Ballista : 6390 + DoT vs players
Fire Ballista : 8520 + DoT vs players

Stone Treb : 17040 vs players, 4000 vs. keep walls
Fire Treb : 12780 +DoT vs players, 3500 vs. keep walls
Ice Treb : 10650 + Snare vs players, 3000 vs. keep walls

that would mean that the damage of ice treb would be closer to 6k. average boulder of rock has a weight almost 3x greater than a equal sized boulder of ice.

SCIENCE!

xylena · March 2015

@ZOS_BrianWheeler this is the most excited for an ESO update i've ever been, science be damned, this is a wizard game and it's about time ice trebs got some love

TheBonesXXX · March 2015

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Thank you for the great news of late.

Now to convince you to exaggerate/enhance terrain make more ledges, ridges, for use of siege equipment and greater field command, troop movement, and use of terrain. Superior tactics, play, and communication should trumph superior use of force always. Just like the Battle of Thermopylae.