Before I start in on my comments I would like to not that at this time I have one max level toon of each class, Stam dps, Magica dps, and heals. So, when it comes to comments on sets, class balance, and stam vs magica, I do not have a dog in this fight or, more precisely, I have all the dogs. Though I do favor some toons over others it is most to my benefit to have things as balanced as possible as it makes it easier for me to get more toons on the leaderboard every week.

I will start my comments with the wins column for the new content:

1) First and foremost it has been noticed that some of the changes in this new content have fixed some of the cheats being run by certain players for the better part of a year. These players now die like dogs in the street and hit like little limp noodles. We appreciate the changes and enjoy teabagging these long time cheaters may they rot in oblivion forever. It is my hope that these changes also disabled the lag switches certain guilds have been known to run. A big thank you to the folks at ZOS for addressing the problem of hacking.

2) The new content is absolutely gorgeous. I think these are some of the best textures in the game in particular. It is very atmospheric even to the point of being distracting. The white gold tower is particularly awesome.

3) Love the mechanics of the new Vet dungeon bosses. They may need a little tweaking with regard to total boss health (2-5 complete mechanics cycles is ideal, 15 is far to time consuming) and I think some of the non mechanics attacks (the ones you will take no matter what) are a bit high in magnitude (as a healer I had little time between breaths to buff my team) but I liked the mechanics and also liked the increased difficulty.

4) I like the idea of a steal able currency as it prevents PVP players from profiting by playing both sides of a fight with friends. This was a big problem in the past.

5) I liked the massive PVE / PVP mix in the content. Which are you playing? who knows. If it moves kill it.

Next lets talk about the new gear sets:

1) On the crafted: The armor master crafted set looks like an excellent tank set, the other two are garbage. You guys really have to make some of these 9 trait sets worth a damn as people have spend a lot of time and gold in ninrcrux to research them. So far you are 1 for 4 on that.

2) You have one lousy tank jewelry set and a generic dps or heals set for magica and stam. Damn that is uninspiring. Do you know the problem with sets now? It is that we have a million interesting sets and like 2 jewely possibilities. Do you know why everyone wears healer now...? Because you can actually configure it between jewelry and armor because it has all of both. Guess what? People will still prefer healer and footman if you can get it in V16 from weeklies, Morag tong, and ravager to any of the new stuff. Why, because they have jewelry. That could be a problem as all the PVP V16 stuff appears to be BOP and if V16 PVE only comes BOE from weeklies the same 4 guys in EP are going to make like 5 million a week as they lock down half that leaderboard. The fix...... Drumroll please. Scrap the new 3 jewelry/weapon sets and make every other new set include weapons, jewelry, and armor. And all Gods people said Amen. Who wouldn't want an overwhelming surge, spell power cure, or sheer venom set with 3 jewelry peices? And yes, those are my picks for the win. 2% spell or weapon crit BTW is a LOL. You guys are living in like 1.5 if you think we give a rats about spell crit or weapon crit, especially at 2%.

3) Now about that raid gear. Do you really want this to be useless? Let me tell you, that is what it is at V12 or V14. Are the weeklies going to be V16? Are you ever doing any more raids? I enjoy raids and I feel like weeklies were fun but guess not. I also liked the rare dungeon drop sets like Worm cult but guess those are out the window as well. I tell you, if you don't make the new sets include jewelry and weapons on all parts your gear is going to look mighty myopic. Even now it's pretty limited how you acquire it. From what I can tell it's sewers and districts or bust.

4) You nerfed Vicious Ophidian and Infalible Aether again. Seriously, there were like 3 people in the whole game left using the hardest armor to get in the game. Were you buddies with the serpent or something? So much hate. The horse is dead already. It has been rotting since 1.6. Quit kicking it. It's starting to stink.

III, Lets talk about those casuals bless their rotting corpses we do need them:

1) So far as I can tell the roll of a casual is to pick up telvar stones so I can take them from him. He will never have gear his level because he will never be able go gather enough mats for it, I will take all his stones, and he will not be able to complete any of the old vet dungeons (thanks to the roughly 20% dps nerf in the patch) let alone one of the new ones (which he really shouldn't be able to do because it's the new hardcore stuff.) Just how happy do you think that casual is going to be not even being able to craft gear his own level. That's some pretty insulting stuff. Do you think the 50th time I kill him he will come back to the game... ever. Oh, and you won't let him switch campains to escape me either. Meanwhile I can go in any campain. Do you know why? Because I, like all other hardcore players, have a stable of toons. Sure I'm not happy about only getting to play one in each campaign but that's the breaks I guess. Once I depress all the noobs in one campaign I will hop on over to another with all my buddies on our other toons and ruin their day. Do you see the problem? The people you intended to keep from reeking havoc by switching campaign are the only ones who will still be able to do it. God save you if you are blue. Maybe once a week you will even be able to get into imperial sewers on any campaign and how excited will we all be when you do. It will be a feeding frenzy.

2) Look at your RNG. Take a real hard, soul searching look. It took months to collect some sets before and, from the outside, this looks much worse. It now looks like it would take months even to craft a set. When is the next update scheduled? Will anyone even have this gear before it is replaced? I'm not fooling. Most of this stuff looks to be BOP and it takes a very long time to assemble 5 peice BOP sets with low RNG especially when, because of limited set construction options due to lack of jewelry / weapon combinations you have to have exactly the right pieces and all 5 to be worth a darn. In the past it took me 70 Sanctum runs to get that last infallible piece and by the time I got it infallible was worthless. I'm just saying this looks worse than that. You really need to let those casuals craft themselves a set of armor that is there level. It is so insulting that they will have to die in low level stuff. Jewelry crafting would also be a good move.

3) I hope I have gotten my point across. The truth is that I don't even particularly like slaughtering casuals. I like 12 man raids but I also like gear and it looks like you now make that out of the hides of casuals. I think that is very poor planning on ZOS part as I'm pretty sure that the casuals are the ones that keep the doors open. I know I don't buy very many pretty ponies.

IV, Now lets talk about class and resource balance:

1) Most of us were expecting some kind of a buff to magica builds after, with the exception of sorcs, pretty much all players went stam for PVP and at least half for PVE as well. Instead we got a substantial buff to Stam with the most popular line, dual weild getting major brutality on thrown blade and a buff to that skills damage. I think you might get better ranged dps with that skill spammed than with a bow weave now. You also got some nerfs to bread and butter staff skills and a huge nerf to most magica users with the flame resistance of everything in imperial city. While I understand that DK DOT masters were the highest DPS build, did you ever think that a blanket nerf to all magica dps and to all flame abilities in the only zone that matters might not be the smartest fix. Here is an idea. Since those DK DOT master builds are 2 bar builds and 2 bars in the same rotation was never really the goal or we would have just 1 big bar maybe you make all dots and buffs stop when you switch bars just as the toggles are supposed to end (though there are ways around this arn't there.) That would be an elegant and limited solution to one problematic build. This ham handed set of fixes unintentionally hurts sorcs, ranged magica templars, and the last magjica NB in the game if he exists.

2) Speaking of ham handed..... No stam regen while blocking in PVP, a 50% dps nerf in PVP, and a 50% healing nerf in PVP. All I have to say is yikes. I know it is work to really fix the block casting thing since all mobs would need to be rescaled and most abilities would have to be make to not cast when blocking but that is the cost of actually fixing the problem. The no stam regen thing will cause more problems than it solves. As for the 50% nerfs, I applaud the realization that all skills cannot work the same in PVP as PVE and still provide balanced compelling combat in each. Unfortunately this has to be handled on a skill by skill basis and balanced carefully by people who, gasp, play the game on the live server a lot. The 50% nerf may make things better and it may make them worse. Who knows. I am pretty sure it won't balance things though.

3) As for class balance, my impression in 1.6 is that templars are the strongest followed by dk's and sorcs depending on the situation with NB's really dragging. The balance changes in imp city seem to mainly hurt DK's and Sorcs with some splash over on Magica templar dps builds. It looks like a miss to me but I am always tenitive about these things as it usually takes months to figure everything out and by then a new giant blanket set of changes drops which reorganizes all of combat and makes everything completely different.

Lastly, some very specific abilities I think need addressed:

1) Healing springs, spear shards, and other similar aim then cast 2 button press abilities should be made 1 button press which both aims and casts. Currently the 2 button press mechanic seems to jam up the buffer of abilities being cast and delay any emergency breath of life casts to dying team mates. These abilities make combat feel very lethargic and buggy. A one button cast should fix this.

2) Chains (DK) - You didn't like zerg balls so you changed the one ability that somewhat broke them up to making it a major liability that no one uses anymore. Chains was OP when you could grab people off parapets or yank bosses around but it was not unbalanced in 1.5. The change was a bad idea. Furthermore, Chains was an integral part of good teamwork in PVE. Now between the trash mobs that become immune pulling the chainer around and the fact trash now has a CC immune timer (a chained in mob is immune to a root) and an auto flee mechanic (mob immediately flees on chaining) it is useless. My fix is to remove the yank the chainer around mechanic, and add a root mechanic to chains in PVE (but not PVP.) Chains was one of the most important utility skills in the game and should be brought back.

3) Fire ring (destro staff) - Reduce damage a little increase range to 8 meters. The truth is it has probably always hit a bit to hard and it's range at 6 meters it really crap.

4) Liquid lightning (sorc) - 4 meters, lol, not only is that not an AOE but you are lucky if you can keep a single target enemy in it. Sorcs need an AOE. Make it bigger and nerf the damage to compensate.

5) Mages fury (sorc) - Give it more damage in PVE. I understand the auto execute magic of it in PVP and that it can't be buffed there but it really needs to hit harder in PVE. Sorcs are somewhat dependent on cheating by back barring toggles right now for PVE damage. That should not be the case.

6) Nb skills - seriously guys, they need some dots that do enough damage to matter. The class hits like a wet noodle when it comes to sustain. That execute also needs a buff and both morphs should have some range even if it's only like 15 meters.

7) Corrosive armor (DK) - The skill works fine but I sure miss the days of having a DK group mitigation ultimate. We all know standard and corrosive armor but what is that other DK ultimate? Perhaps that should be a group mitigation one as nobody even remembers what it is.

Lastly lets talk about testing on the PTS:

1) Just e-mail me the new armor on my existing toons. It is not that hard you e-mail me PVP trash all the time.

2) New template toons should have everything unlocked.... Everything. I can't even craft glyphs on the damn things and I don't even have access to the zones with enemies I can test on.

3) Test dummies. Seriously, we need these in general. Every fighters guild needs a test dummy that has full 50% mitigation armor that we can wail on as long as we want on PTS and live. Do you really think I want to kill like 50 enemies of a variety of types to get any idea how changes pan out. What a waste of time.

4) Quit respecing my points I don't want to spend 30 min putting them all back in just make respecs free and I will do them if I want to.

5) If you want us to help you test on PTS you really have to make it less painful. We get the distinct impression you don't want our input. Do you not have better test tools yourselves? Maybe you need those dummies for your own use.

If you actually read the whole thing ZOS than thanks. My never to be humble opinions.