Wow. That is crazy. Thanks for the link. i have been watching some of Kerviz too and must have missed that.

So while you can still "see" the nb in cloak, you can't attack them. I really don't know about this. I can't see how this will be good for the game. If you are detected you should be vulnerable.

My biggest gripe with cloak was when you cloaked but then got pulled out by an attack. I can't count the number of times I've had to spam cloak just to get one to hold when a player was chasing me with single target attacks. I thought that's what I saw happening to sypher on his stream the first day. He would cloak and if the attacker started his attack just as the cloak popped off, it would dispel the cloak and instantly reveal him. I wouldn't mind the damage still going through but short of a detect potion, flare, mage light etc. your cloak should hold for the 2.9 seconds.

Domander wrote: »

ScruffyWhiskers wrote: »

Wow. That is crazy. Thanks for the link. i have been watching some of Kerviz too and must have missed that.

So while you can still "see" the nb in cloak, you can't attack them. I really don't know about this. I can't see how this will be good for the game. If you are detected you should be vulnerable.

My biggest gripe with cloak was when you cloaked but then got pulled out by an attack. I can't count the number of times I've had to spam cloak just to get one to hold when a player was chasing me with single target attacks. I thought that's what I saw happening to sypher on his stream the first day. He would cloak and if the attacker started his attack just as the cloak popped off, it would dispel the cloak and instantly reveal him. I wouldn't mind the damage still going through but short of a detect potion, flare, mage light etc. your cloak should hold for the 2.9 seconds.

That's weird, I have been on both sides of stuff going through cloak. Maybe someone was using mage light or it's aoe's hitting/breaking it. Aoe is supposed to hit, and it's supposed to be the counter play.

It might just be buggy, because I swear single attacks were breaking my cloak constantly. Spamming it, trying to get one to hold is exactly the way I'd describe it.

Single attacks missing even though you can see the nightblade is exactly the way I expected it to work. Aoe being the thing needed to break it.

I run Radiant consistently on my guy and it doesn't seem to give away that I detect NBs. They constantly cloak and I just follow them and light attack them to annoy them (I can't really kill on my healer). So could have been magelight.

Though that video manny posted above with kerviz is weird. Not the behavior I'd expect from either side the dark cloak/det pot pov.

One additional thing I forgot in my OP was that the travel to player still works if you join a group with them and are not home or guested in a campaign. But it was an issue that is known I believe and they said would be fixed by live.

Farorin, I can see how cloak can be equalized that way (I use magelight, helps as well) but I think there are other weird things going on with it right now, so might not be worth sweating over until it's polished.

As for the spawn, yeah, you can be mobile sometimes, but sometimes when group v group you're still fighting the rest when the dead respawn and it becomes an endless line. That's my concern I guess.

Domander wrote: »

manny254 wrote: »

ScruffyWhiskers wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

• Nightblades cloak seems a bit too strong now and you cannot attack them with detect pots/single target attacks anymore as was previously feared by many. After much testing with an enemy nightblade, the only decent way to counter them is to run radiant magelight. Secondary might be blanketing an area with flare.

Are you sure about this? Pretty sure Gina said that the detect potions working on nb cloak was NOT in the update and was just a rumor.

Also from the streams that I have been watching, it seems pretty clear that single target attacks are still pulling nbs' out of cloak. First night on sypher's stream he tested this out and each hit was pulling his magicka nb out...at least that's how I remember it.

twitch.tv/kerviz/v/9076731

Go to 3 hours 36 mins

While using a detect pot point blank I could not hit him with light attacks, and flying blade also did not work.

Flying blade wouldn't hit them on live either. I've been able to attack them, but single attacks seem to miss, aoe's will pull them out. Lotus fan was working well for this, I'd bet the templar aoe charge would as well.

No, he is saying you see them but attacks won't trigger, not like they miss. Like when you are in a city and can't attack an NPC if you have it set to not harm friendlies and your abilities just won't work.

What was supposed to change (from my understanding) was that, for example, if I trigger an attack like a shard and you cloak, it's not supposed to hit you and bring you out of cloak. Maybe that was a misunderstanding on my part. But what is actually happening is a bit odd if you watch that video posted above.

I agree with almost every statement of the OP, so I'll just focus on the bits I disagree with below:

- CC: personally, I think it's fine the way it is for 1v1/small group fights. It might even be a bit weak in big fights. I say this from the perspective of a build that pretty much could not be countered if CC were to be made any weaker...
- loss of tel var stones: personally I would advocate keeping the 100% loss on player kill. But, if a reduction is seen as better by the majority, I would still argue that anything below 50% loss on player kills turns this mechanic from an actual threat into a minor annoyance...

Stamplar Biting Jabs damage is also too high in PvP. Everyone is spamming it lol

I like the post, but can't comment on many things - will jump on PTS coming weekend only. A few things I would like to expand on a bit, nonetheless.

• Bug on flying blade: Did you (as in ZOS) manage to replicate the liquid lightning bug from last patch? It suspiciously sounds like it. Stacking brutality, perhaps?
• Stamina while blocking: I begin to believe that the majority will not be able to just shrug this off (mind, I am a notorious bad blocker so I am for sure in that group). I like the idea of giving back some regen to tanks. My proposal would either be to have both bracing & fortress active, this provides 20% regen back (limit its exploitation probability by nailing the player to 5HA + 1H&S together, which really is a tank tank). Secondly, I agree to each block enchantment giving 10% back since you forgo the cost reduction enchants for this. This then just needs to replace the block cost reduction part on the enchant. Altogether, this would bring you back to 50% regeneration - a fair compromise.
• Another compromise would be to have the 5-HA perk give you precisely 400 (or 500 or 300, community tanks to give input) stamina per second while holding block. This is a flat value cannot be modified in any way by enchants, skills, passives, potions, food or whatever provides bonus regeneration. The only thing still working is the flat stamina from a potion (as said - not the regen) or skills like the spear shard synergy (again, only flat number recovery, no regeneration bonuses count).
• Do not limit the criticism to proximity detonation, because inevitable is a similar fail. Since it has such a large arming timer, huge tell mechanism and in conjunction with the fact that it can be blocked, this skill has exactly one use: prevent NBs from cloaking away. If you want a zerg buster in that ability, this needs to be made unblockable. Reduce the base damage to 50% of existing (not counting in addition to the Battle Spirit change; neither I nor anyone else should want a 1-shot-ability for single targets that cannot be reduced/purged/prevented) and give it a 5% bonus damage for each target beyond 1 it hits. Actually, this should be the better scaling morph of the two, since at least it provides a tell to react upon - proximity does not.
• They should make existing pvp sets available for V15/16 for AP and limit TV to the new sets. In case you are hesitant because of deconstructing/craft materials gain for those that have banked 12 million AP: Make these have a zero chance to yield ingots/cloth/leather as well as style materials and only yield upgrade and trait materials. You have a similar mechanic with the white 0-gold-items from looting. Don't make my last year of enduring the issues in Cyrodiil completely worthless.
• Barrier is also a long standing complaint for me. In order to retain its use, the mechanic itself in my opinion should not be changed too much. But the two changes necessary to prevent chaining barrier are:
  1. You cannot refresh barrier - if you have a barrier active and another barrier is cast (even if it is the other morph) only duration should be reset, not strength or function.
  2. Getting a barrier makes you immune to a second barrier within 10 seconds.
• The glass motif. If you think about the fact that getting the right page after collecting all these (s)crap(s) AND dumping 25k gold is depending on RNGeezus... I can't even... If you at least could decide which chapter you get (and lore/realism be b0rked), but no, full RNG mode.
  
  Now, if the rumor is true (don't remember seeing any official confirmation/refutation) and you can't even sell/trade the page if you get the wrong one... That is so messed up I really can't even find words. My mind drifts towards rage fueled reactions that may be unwanted.

Hm, another wall of text. I really need to learn to make my point in a more concise manner... Thanks for enduring my spiel, dear reader.

EDIT: Fixed wording to make things a bit clearer.

Yattaq wrote: »

Preyfar wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Who says we're not paying attention to it?

I think the biggest question is players may not know the direction the game is being taken. Is the zero stamina on blocking to make the game more exciting? To fix perma-blocking? There's not been a Road Ahead in a while, and I think players really need to/want to know more of what direction the game is taking. Not everybody watches the ESO Live videos.

You chose to ignore one of their most regular sources for communicating with players, and that's somehow ZoS's fault? I understand not everyone watches the stream or knows about it, but if people want answers to questions that have been addressed, they should put forth the minimal amount of effort to find them. Every ESO live usually gets summarized by a handful of players across these forums and reddit, so you don't even have to watch to get the big hits.

Road Aheads were generally about super high level changes to the game anyway; they weren't granular enough to address sort of specific combat mechanics.

He does have a point, though. They have not shared whatever direction they have in mind for class and race balance in the game. Either they think it is plainly obvious to everyone, they don't know themselves, or it is part of the super secret plan and we do not get a decoder ring for that.

Leandor wrote: »

I like the post, but can't comment on many things - will jump on PTS coming weekend only. A few things I would like to expand on a bit, nonetheless.

• Bug on flying blade: Did you (as in ZOS) manage to replicate the liquid lightning bug from last patch? It suspiciously sounds like it. Stacking brutality, perhaps?
• Stamina while blocking: I begin to believe that the majority will not be able to just shrug this off (mind, I am a notorious bad blocker so I am for sure in that group). I like the idea of giving back some regen to tanks. My proposal would either be to have both bracing & fortress active, this provides 20% regen back (limit its exploitation probability by nailing the player to 5HA + 1H&S together, which really is a tank tank). Secondly, I agree to each block enchantment giving 10% back since you forgo the cost reduction enchants for this. This then just needs to replace the block cost reduction part on the enchant. Altogether, this would bring you back to 50% regeneration - a fair compromise.
• Another compromise would be to have the 5-HA perk give you precisely 400 (or 500 or 300, community tanks to give input) stamina per second while holding block. This is a flat value cannot be modified in any way by enchants, skills, passives, potions, food or whatever provides bonus regeneration. The only thing still working is the flat stamina from a potion (as said - not the regen) or skills like the spear shard synergy (again, only flat number recovery, no regeneration bonuses count).
• Do not limit the criticism to proximity detonation, because inevitable is a similar fail. Since it has such a large arming timer, huge tell mechanism and in conjunction with the fact that it can be blocked, this skill has exactly one use: prevent NBs from cloaking away. If you want a zerg buster in that ability, this needs to be made unblockable. Reduce the base damage to 50% of existing (not counting in addition to the Battle Spirit change; neither I nor anyone else should want a 1-shot-ability for single targets that cannot be reduced/purged/prevented) and give it a 5% bonus damage for each target beyond 1 it hits. Actually, this should be the better scaling morph of the two, since at least it provides a tell to react upon - proximity does not.
• They should make existing pvp sets available for V15/16 for AP and limit TV to the new sets. In case you are hesitant because of deconstructing/craft materials gain for those that have banked 12 million AP: Make these have a zero chance to yield ingots/cloth/leather as well as style materials and only yield upgrade and trait materials. You have a similar mechanic with the white 0-gold-items from looting. Don't make my last year of enduring the issues in Cyrodiil completely worthless.
• Barrier is also a long standing complaint for me. In order to retain its use, the mechanic itself in my opinion should not be changed too much. But the two changes necessary to prevent chaining barrier are:
  1. You cannot refresh barrier - if you have a barrier active and another barrier is cast (even if it is the other morph) only duration should be reset, not strength or function.
  2. Getting a barrier makes you immune to a second barrier within 10 seconds.
• The glass motif. If you think about the fact that getting the right page after collecting all these (s)crap(s) AND dumping 25k gold is depending on RNGeezus... I can't even... If you at least could decide which chapter you get (and lore/realism be b0rked), but no, full RNG mode.
  
  Now, if the rumor is true (don't remember seeing any official confirmation/refutation) and you can't even sell/trade the page if you get the wrong one... That is so messed up I really can't even find words. My mind drifts towards rage fueled reactions that may be unwanted.

Hm, another wall of text. I really need to learn to make my point in a more concise manner... Thanks for enduring my spiel, dear reader.

EDIT: Fixed wording to make things a bit clearer.

All good stuff. Thanks for sharing that.

For those wanting a fuller discussion of the new grind systems in IC/2.1 see (and contribute to) this thread.

To add a bug to your list, don't forget about the PvP "stuck in combat" bug!

Yea - not sure what combination is being used to make biting jabs deal insane damage, but that's probably the most frequent and annoying thing I'm seeing Templars do in IC. It is doing insane amounts of damage, much like those 20+k flying blades we're seeing, something isn't right.

Yattaq wrote: »

Preyfar wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Who says we're not paying attention to it?

I think the biggest question is players may not know the direction the game is being taken. Is the zero stamina on blocking to make the game more exciting? To fix perma-blocking? There's not been a Road Ahead in a while, and I think players really need to/want to know more of what direction the game is taking. Not everybody watches the ESO Live videos.

You chose to ignore one of their most regular sources for communicating with players, and that's somehow ZoS's fault? I understand not everyone watches the stream or knows about it, but if people want answers to questions that have been addressed, they should put forth the minimal amount of effort to find them. Every ESO live usually gets summarized by a handful of players across these forums and reddit, so you don't even have to watch to get the big hits.

Road Aheads were generally about super high level changes to the game anyway; they weren't granular enough to address sort of specific combat mechanics.

The problem with this is with text we can skim or control+f to find certain topics but in a video we have to watch the whole thing in case what we are after is a 1O second piece. Not sure if their videos have captions but if they don't that's yet another issue.

@ZOS_RichLambert
I agree with sorc shield stacking being OP, proxy det being a disappointment, crafting being too difficult/crown store setup, Alliance points need to be converted to tel var stones or new pvp vendor sets need v16 buffs.

Tel var stones have a really high difficulty to get a lot of them, but IMO most of those sets suck & need more work, they are primarily around stam users with little magic bonus.
Right now I have 5k tel var stones & I wouldn't spend it on a single set because they just aren't good enough to be worth it when compared to what I alread have.
People like flat rate, something that has a 10% chance on x is not reliable or worth it UNLESS there is an in game bug causing it to PROC WAY MORE than it should! As soon as it goes to "normal proc rate" nobody uses it any longer.

OP ARMOR SHOULD BE OP!

My biggest problem with the IC is that the mobs in the city are a bit to hard to kill and do too much damage also. it is not that i dislike the difficulty and I think that their difficulty would be actually cool for an instanced dungeon. The problem is that it feels like I am fighting mobs too much instead of players, in a PVP zone

The TV stone 100% on kill makes the system completely pointless in my opinion. In its current state it is something I will ignore. I will never hunt for stones and i will never go for the bank.I say snip the TV stones. If I need them for crafting I will just find some risk free farming method. For me they do not add any excitement since i don't give a damn.


What I like is that the IC introduced something like team DM with fast respawn which means that I will probably not go into the Horse Sim 2014 ever again . The only thing that will kind of ruisn this for me is the fact that many will actually take the TV system serious and it will not be about fun fast chaotic pvp it will be about efficient zergs farming TV stones.



Mechanics wise. The blanket damage/heal reduction is ridiculous unfortunately. The game system is much more complex and dynamic for this kind of change to actually work. The average TTK has increased but I have seen more invincible builds and stalemates in this build than before. It is now bit more erratic.I had fights that wouldn't end as much as I had fights where I didn't even know what happened.

Also, want to add my thoughts on some of the new added sets:


(Posted what sets I've seen shot or found online here so far: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/gathering-screen-shots-of-new-imperial-city-sets/)

Mara's Blessing - THANK YOU ZoS for finally making a quest reward that is decent and part of a set drop. Hopefully players realize however you need to do this quest at max level so you get the v16 version since you can't redo the quest portion. It might drop elsewhere in the vaults as well, haven't opened one yet, but if not could be an interesting thing to take note of.

A lot of the sets now have pretty decent 2-4 piece options for mixing and matching a bit better even if you don't like the five piece. And the random traits, though I'm sure it always sucks to get the crappy ones in a drop, will be nice to have the good trait versions out there to find. I also found it odd that some of them seem to drop in various armor types (like some obvious tanking sets dropping in non-heavy as well as heavy) but I guess with undaunted passives that can be a bonus for many.

Sets that stuck out for good or bad:

Agility set - I think this may be an old dungeon drop 3pc set scaled up to v15/16 drops in those dungeons. But it is kind of a lame 3pc bonus - not too many people running sword/board will need a small weapon power increase that they can probably get the same or more of from running two hander or dual wielding. But if it's an old set, I can understand why it wouldn't be revisited.

Molag Kena 2pc - This is a bit overpowered IMO, but just for the first trait. I think we'll see every stamina build running the head or shoulder of this set, even if they don't use the 2pc of it. Personally I think it should be cut down to like an 85 power bonus to both weapon and spell power - it will still be use if someone wants to run as a one piece and it will be more useful to hybrid builds they way the 3pc seems targeted.

Shield Breaker set - Not really useful as is. No, doesn't need to be a one-shot win set, but for a 5pc, I'd expect it to be more useful. Combined with better (not that the 2-4 on this is bad) but other sets let you stack more damage and a better 5pc like Hundings would just be more beneficial than this (especially if you make the change to criting on shields). Why only do 1K damage to guys with shields when you could probably up your damage by more than that on everyone? Perhaps something like letting 25% of your damage go through the shield would actually make this one useful.

Black Rose set - Will be almost a necessity for tanking in many builds. Though the 2-4pc fits with the set, for what you give up having to run this set for the 5pc you also lose a lot of good 2-4 pc bonuses from other sets that help various builds. I'm not a fan of the no stam while blocking (but fall somewhere in the middle thinking there should be a penalty). One of the things I don't like is how it limits the variety of decent builds out there in a game where there are already a limited number of strong builds.

Reactive set - Not a bad set at all, BUT not really worth running over all the other options in the game. I'd lose the 4pc health bonus and maybe add more stam regen, but it's not bad. Mostly I'd considering upping the 5pc bonus by 5-10%. You have to remember, a lot of 5pc bonuses in the game are useful 100% of the time in a fight (add damage or cost reduction or other) and some, like this, are only going to be useful for certain small situations - getting CC'd without having stam to break free. Maybe combine the damage reduction with a break free cost reduction as well would make it worthwhile. (I realize there are sets that give 5pc break free reduction, like the pvp gear - but no one uses those for a reason - mentioned above).

The 3 crafted sets - Not great. Probably the best is the Armor Master for tanking, but even that isn't great compared to some other sets. But the other two, Redistribution and Noble Conquest, have horrible 2-4 bonuses (something I think should be better on crafted sets for mixing and matching - how about a set that adds regen to all three stats instead of just adding x amount to them - we've seen that in Arena already). The five pieces of those two are 'ok' but again, better options are out there. Maybe that's by design, making the better stuff come from drops and the stuff you can make readily a little less desirable, but many crafters are going to see this as well and not be happy.

Shock set - don't have it in front of me, I think its' on my PTS guy and I didn't cap it yet. Called overpower or something like that...? But it is a bit strong, maybe since it's a melee range radius on the caster you thought it would be ok to be strong - we'll see how it goes. But it will definitely be on a lot of sorcs and adding to their already powerful damage output.