Champion System Ability Review

Minno · December 2015

Derra wrote: »

juan0316 wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

I'm a little disappointed.

Seeing a lot of feedback regarding lack of physical resistance in CPs. I have the feeling you're going to buff sorcs and magicka nightblades, who already have ridiculous damage and survival, when you should be asking us how we want to buff DKs and Templars.
The Champion System isn't in such a bad place right now as class balance is. That's the real issue. Can we look at this after we know what's going on with the classes?

So much this

No that is actually the wrong way to go about it. You first need to balance out what´s same to all classes - which happens to be the champion system - so it does not show bias towards certain specs/classes.

After everyone is on a level playing field with the cp system you can adjust the performance of the classes and magica/stamina balance.

If you balance classes based on a borked system favoring certain playstyles for certain activities you have to rebalance the classes again when you adjust the CP system afterwards effectively doubling the work. Not smart.

Agreed. Deal with the blanket change that looks to be unfinished, then balance the classes. But HAS to be done and issued for testing via PTS before the major update.

And if the community notices major issues, ZOS needs to address it vocally and fix it subjectively.

Brrrofski · December 2015

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

zerosingularity wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

guys, please NOTE:

this does Not apply to "PVP"
this is only for "PVE" very soon will be a NON-CP cryodiil campaign

Not all campaigns will be non-CP, so this still applies to PvP.

that campaign will be empty. i promise you, it will be empty.

Nah, the non CP ones will. 100%

Stikato · December 2015

Tear the whole thing down and rebuild the entire system from scratch. No one will listen to this, but it is the solution.

+0.2% this or that is meaningless.

I'd rather have CP that takes 10x longer to get, but means something significant. And it doesn't have to be a flat % system either.

Zaldan · December 2015

MissBizz wrote: »

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
Blessed: Increases the effectiveness by any healing you initiate by [x]%.
Elfborn: Increases your Spell Critical damage and healing by [x]%.

I don't even know if I understand it correctly (so I think that fits into easier to understand category) but one CP star makes my healing stronger, and one CP passive give me spell crit AND stronger healers? (I imagine this only means my spell crit is higher.. which yeah, then my heals would then crit more.. but that's not reason to mention healing in elfborn IMO)

I took that as meaning it increases the amount of damage a crit does and increases the amount of healing a crit heal does.

iamalejandro_ESO · December 2015

The way I see it, when it comes to direct player power (Weapon Damage, Spell Damage, etc) those will take priority over any other stat taken simply because they are static increases to player power at all times. The same for tanks or healers when it comes to healing done and reducing damage taken. What I feel would be best is to actually reverse the current system by having those flat increases of power given as the player puts points into a constellation as a sort of mini level up (20 point milestone = 5% spell damage increase). An alternative is to also have them be conditional increases in power to promote varied engagement which might be even better (20 points = 20% spell damage for 3 seconds after blocking or dodging a spell). In this way, players can have their power increases without having to feel shoehorned into getting certain abilities. This type of switcheroo should be done for the sake of promoting variety and the below are just suggestions.

Allowing flat power increasing milestones that vary on different conditions with different constellations allow more of the constellations to be used and possibly be more thematic. Like Tower, Lover, and Shadow would each grant differently levels of Weapon Damage buffs, but maybe one requires the player to start combat in stealth, have picked a lock successfully earlier that day, or survive while doing a /lute for 3 seconds while being damaged in combat.

Now to replace the void of previous flat power increases in regular champion point usage, I'd recommend everything be utility based which can vary on different playstyles. Maybe something like increasing slows with a type of weapon, healing reduction, picking flowers faster, increasing running speed, etc.

josh.lackey_ESO · December 2015

Note: I mainly play PvP.

Physical damage is highly favored by the current CP passives.

Add a flat Physical damage reduction passive. Bonus should be on par with Hardy and Elemental Defender.
Move the magic damage increase passive from The Ritual to The Apprentice.
Have a single Armor Focus that offers a flat benefit regardless of armor type. (There is only one Spell Shield, not three!)
Make the physical resist bonus percentage from Armor Focus equal to Spell Shield. (Armor Focus gives such a small percentage bonus, it is basically a waste of CP!)

k9mouse · December 2015

One have to remember that any CP power changes will affect PVE besides PVP. I hope will keep this fact in mind and do not screw over their PVE player based.

RoamingRiverElk · December 2015

I truly do not see the need to reduce healing initiated / received in order to make healing debuffs more powerful. Healing debuffs will be extremely powerful once the star works as intended.

Opux wrote: »

Reducing physical damage should absolutely not be an option. People are forgetting that sorcerers can already ignore:
Resistant due to shields being uncritable.

Spell Ward/(Light|Medium|Heavy) Armor Focus because shields don't take into account resistances (and also because they're trash).

Hardy/Elemental Defender because of Annulment

This makes it a no-brainer to dump 100 points into this theoretical new star, and we suddenly have light armor sorcerers that are harder to kill than other classes in plate.

Not that it isn't already that way, mind you, I'd just not rather have us fall even further back into Elder Staves Online.

Just because the magicka variant of one class is focused on shields, it does not warrant not being able to reduce physical daage in CP. For reasons why the star should exist, I don't think I need to go repeating them here since the reasons have already been given earlier in this thread.

Ezareth · December 2015

Cinbri wrote: »

Wrobel wrote: »

Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing:
It’s unclear exactly how some Champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Befoul reads: “Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities by 33%”. This bonus is actually additive, so a 30% debuff ends up being a 63% debuff when this passive is maxed. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

Really. Why than with 100 Befoul, Dark Flare from 30% reduction becoming 40%?

This was my understanding from my testing as well. Befouled *isn't* additive....it is multiplicative. Unless there was a change in the last patch or two that fixed this (and wasn't mentioned in the patch notes) I have concerns that the understanding of these abilities by ZoS and the actual function of them are going remain disconnected. The tooltips aren't always clear primarily because of bugs just like this.

@Wrobel perhaps posting your own understanding of how each of the passives *should* work would be a great way to begin balance discussions. I'll post my own suggestions when I'm able sometime next week if this discussion is still ongoing then.

pilotfish · December 2015

Ezareth wrote: »

@Wrobel perhaps posting your own understanding of how each of the passives *should* work would be a great way to begin balance discussions.

This is in line with the reason my previous post had only to do with the "Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they are doing" element of this thread.

Docmandu · December 2015

I wonder if we'll even get multiple "presets" of champ point distribution, so that you can quickly (few seconds) switch between a CP loadout. I fear that one day we'll start seeing PVE-centric and/or PvP-centric stars, which would mean that suddenly you can't use your character anymore to do PvE or PvP, depending on spec.

A form of this is already present in the game.. no mob will ever crit you, so the star to reduce crit damage is useless for PvE.. same issue with doing something like Maelstrom, for that you need to setup your CP just for the content (which they stated is what they want).

If they keep going this route, soon we'll be locked into 1 playstyle unless we constantly respec (costly, but most of all annoying having to respec).

Hence, giving us a way to toggle between CP loadouts would be very nice.. heck they can even give the preset expansion slots as a quest reward, pvp reward and/or $$$ shop.

RIFT had something similar (albeit for skills), where you could have 8 (?? forgot the number) soul loadouts, which was pretty neat. Think opening the extra slots cost in-game currency, been a while so I might be wrong on the details here.

Sharee · December 2015

RoamingRiverElk wrote: »

Opux wrote: »

Reducing physical damage should absolutely not be an option. People are forgetting that sorcerers can already ignore:
Resistant due to shields being uncritable.

Spell Ward/(Light|Medium|Heavy) Armor Focus because shields don't take into account resistances (and also because they're trash).

Hardy/Elemental Defender because of Annulment

This makes it a no-brainer to dump 100 points into this theoretical new star, and we suddenly have light armor sorcerers that are harder to kill than other classes in plate.

Not that it isn't already that way, mind you, I'd just not rather have us fall even further back into Elder Staves Online.

Just because the magicka variant of one class is focused on shields, it does not warrant not being able to reduce physical daage in CP.

Actually, it does. Because otherwise what today is just one variant of one class will one day become 98% of cyrodiil's population. People always choose the path of least resistance. Superior mobility, superior shields, high damage AND highly resistant to physical damage? Yes please.

Not that i am against adding a physical mitigation star per se, mind you. It just has to be implemented in such a way as to prevent the above scenario.

Lorkhan · December 2015

@Wrobel, "Ensure bonuses have a counter weight"

bastion - "increases the effectivness of damage absorb effects" aka OP damage shields

i think we should have some place in the cp system to buff damage against shields

CP5 · December 2015

Lorkhan wrote: »

@Wrobel, "Ensure bonuses have a counter weight"

bastion - "increases the effectivness of damage absorb effects" aka OP damage shields

i think we should have some place in the cp system to buff damage against shields

Careful about asking for this, we all know how they have interpreted 'damage to shields' in the past.

Derra · December 2015

Lorkhan wrote: »

@Wrobel, "Ensure bonuses have a counter weight"

bastion - "increases the effectivness of damage absorb effects" aka OP damage shields

i think we should have some place in the cp system to buff damage against shields

With that train of thought you´d have to remove all healing passives aswell as they don´t have a counter weight and you can´t design one.

Edit: Don´t get me wrong i´d be all in favor of removing bastion and healing passives alltogether but your statement is mixing class/ability balance with CP balance. You have to seperate the two.

jrkhan · December 2015

My top two list:

Consolidation of under-performing gear specific passives that detract from hybrid builds.
Add new passives that support hybridization.

Consolidation of under-performing gear specific passives that detract from hybrid builds:
This concerns the passives in the atronach, as well as the 'light/medium/heavy armor focus' passives.

Many champion passives 'stack' nicely. Consider 'The Ritual' passives where a player benefits from:
Physical damage increase,
Armor penetration on physical attacks,
Critical strike damage increase on physical attacks

You can safely put 40+ points of each of these, and have each of them benefit the majority of the things you do in combat, both abilities and light/heavy attacks.

Compare that to the atronach tree where the passives not only effect a single action 'heavy attack', but only if you happen to have a specific weapon equipped. Putting points in more then one of these is wasteful.
Consolidating all four of the passives in the atronach in to a single passive (increase heavy attack damage for all weapon attacks) would help achieve your goal of Improving Infrequently Selected Bonuses - and help support unconventional builds, (e.g. a destruction staff in one weapon set and a bow in the other)

'light/medium/heavy armor focus':
They each have the same exact effect - but only 1 of the 3 could possibly benefit your character at a time. Consider merging the three. 'Your armor is increased by x% while wearing 5 pieces of an armor type'
But, even better would be 'Your armor is increased by x%.' since there's no reason to rob players who are wearing only 4 of a single armor type of the benefit.

Add new passives that support hybridization:
That clears up some space for some new, more desirable passives in the Atronach, and the warrior.

To help ensure every passive has counterweight:
- 'Lasting torment' increases damage over time abilities. (It matches the 'Thick-skinned' DOT damage reduction passive that has currently no counter - and would be the rare Mage passive that both stamina and magika builds could benefit from)
- An anti 'Bastion' passive which increases damage done to damage shields.
- The often requested passive for flat physical damage reduction.

Finally - I'd like to see counterbalancing Atronach and Warrior passives, that provide a bonus based on your max health pool, but do so in a way that doesn't make it overshadow other offensive/defensive passives for players that don't have a significant investment in to health.

E.g.
- Increase Weapon and Spell damage by ~1% of your max health pool.
- Increases your armor and spell resistance by ~3% of your max health pool.

This way, a player with a high health pool is able to use both stamina and magika abilities more effectively, possibly opening up more room for hybrid builds.

---
Thank you @Wrobel for considering our feedback.

Cinbri · December 2015

I imagine OP reaction after reading all those posts.

Lorkhan · December 2015

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

@Wrobel, "Ensure bonuses have a counter weight"

bastion - "increases the effectivness of damage absorb effects" aka OP damage shields

i think we should have some place in the cp system to buff damage against shields

With that train of thought you´d have to remove all healing passives aswell as they don´t have a counter weight and you can´t design one.

Edit: Don´t get me wrong i´d be all in favor of removing bastion and healing passives alltogether but your statement is mixing class/ability balance with CP balance. You have to seperate the two.

@Derra , there is a counter weight to healing passives: befoul (Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities)

Derra · December 2015

Lorkhan wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

@Wrobel, "Ensure bonuses have a counter weight"

bastion - "increases the effectivness of damage absorb effects" aka OP damage shields

i think we should have some place in the cp system to buff damage against shields

With that train of thought you´d have to remove all healing passives aswell as they don´t have a counter weight and you can´t design one.

Edit: Don´t get me wrong i´d be all in favor of removing bastion and healing passives alltogether but your statement is mixing class/ability balance with CP balance. You have to seperate the two.

@Derra , there is a counter weight to healing passives: befoul (Increases the effectiveness of healing reduction abilities)

No it is not. Befoul requires the use of healdebuffs (which are counterable with purge) in the first place to work.

Bastion, Blessed and Quick Recovery work without the requirement of specific buffs/debuffs on the target/self. You could compare the two if for example blessed only worked on major mending (30% increased healing buff) and would modify it´s value - this is not the case.
These passives are flat modifiers that have no counter in the CP system.

Befoul also has no counter weight. It´s counterweight however would be a passive reducing the effectiveness of healing debuffs - NOT blessed or quick recovery.

If befoul were to counterweight healing passives it would have to reduce healing without any requirement (a passive healing debuff applied on any interaction with the target + there would be no way to determine it´s duration).
You would also have to split up the passive as it would require one to reduce outgoing healing and one to reduce all healing taken to be a proper counterweight for blessed + quick recovery.

You´re comparing apples and oranges and try to sell both as peaches atm.

Lorkhan · December 2015

#nerfshields

Derra · December 2015

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Cinbri · December 2015

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

Derra · December 2015

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

It would hit everyone really. Basically every build apart from magica sorcs (which would get hit by taking bastion) relies on selfheals. Nothing templar exclusive.

Cinbri · December 2015

Derra wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

It would hit everyone really. Basically every build apart from magica sorcs (which would get hit by taking bastion) relies on selfheals. Nothing templar exclusive.

Not true, while dks can rely on scales/interrupts/choke talons, nb on cloak, sorcs on shields/escapes, templars have only rushed ceremony spam as only class defense.

Minno · December 2015

Derra wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

It would hit everyone really. Basically every build apart from magica sorcs (which would get hit by taking bastion) relies on selfheals. Nothing templar exclusive.

One could counter and say, the CP's that increase dmg shouldn't exist either.

Ezareth said it best, ZOS needs to let the players understand how they Invision Champion points from concept to implementation. Then we can really start to balance this aspect of ESO.

It's like me walking into a meeting, telling a client "you'll get 'x' if we do 'y'." But come launch I just put out 'cvfg'anyway without communication or presenting the proposed changes. End result is that our expectations aren't met because our vision differs from ZOS's.

They are on the right track though with this.

Minno · December 2015

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

It would hit everyone really. Basically every build apart from magica sorcs (which would get hit by taking bastion) relies on selfheals. Nothing templar exclusive.

Not true, while dks can rely on scales/interrupts/choke talons, nb on cloak, sorcs on shields/escapes, templars have only rushed ceremony spam as only class defense.

And purges. Templars purge negates quite a bit of ranged effects.

Derra · December 2015

Minno wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

It would hit everyone really. Basically every build apart from magica sorcs (which would get hit by taking bastion) relies on selfheals. Nothing templar exclusive.

One could counter and say, the CP's that increase dmg shouldn't exist either.

Ezareth said it best, ZOS needs to let the players understand how they Invision Champion points from concept to implementation. Then we can really start to balance this aspect of ESO.

It's like me walking into a meeting, telling a client "you'll get 'x' if we do 'y'." But come launch I just put out 'cvfg'anyway without communication or presenting the proposed changes. End result is that our expectations aren't met because our vision differs from ZOS's.

They are on the right track though with this.

But these actually have counters in the cp system (apart from physical dmg). So no not a valid point.

Lorkhan · December 2015

i still think we should have some star to burst damage against shields in the champion system, @Derra
you can have your opinion too, np

Nikkor · December 2015

3) Nourishing

This is bad for these reasons:
- Drastically low extra health returned
- Drastically long cooldowns

Solutions? [Reduced cooldown for potions, or increased effects duration (invisibility detection, resource regen...) of potions.]

--

If I see at least 1 of these changed, I'll call it a day.[/quote]

/\ this is the best thing I have seen so far to tackle nourishing. perfect.

Minno · December 2015

Derra wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Cinbri wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Lorkhan wrote: »

#nerfshields

Not the place to make these demands.

Blessed, Quick Recovery and Bastion have no reason to exist in the CP system (only for bastion it would be possible to easily implement a counterweight mechanic).

I´d scrap all of them.

Nerf templars thread so far...

It would hit everyone really. Basically every build apart from magica sorcs (which would get hit by taking bastion) relies on selfheals. Nothing templar exclusive.

One could counter and say, the CP's that increase dmg shouldn't exist either.

Ezareth said it best, ZOS needs to let the players understand how they Invision Champion points from concept to implementation. Then we can really start to balance this aspect of ESO.

It's like me walking into a meeting, telling a client "you'll get 'x' if we do 'y'." But come launch I just put out 'cvfg'anyway without communication or presenting the proposed changes. End result is that our expectations aren't met because our vision differs from ZOS's.

They are on the right track though with this.

But these actually have counters in the cp system (apart from physical dmg). So no not a valid point.

Yea but they have a soft counter; the fact you have to make a choice between healer or dps . 10 points into blessed means you can lose out on hitting 100 points in thaumaturge. If you do have thaumaturge maxed, you have to give up spell pen or crit.

Flip side, for stam build they don't need blessed because they have a heal that works with weapon crit/dmg, thus a CP dedicated towards adding to weapon crit heals. Counter to that is also not on the CP system; they only have two heals and no access to Templar heal passives.

My argument is that if you want to buff your healing, you have to remove points from dmg points. Same for tanking. There shouldn't be an actual counter point for healing, since the dps class or dps options whole point of existing IS TO REDUCE your health points.

ZOS just needs to show us a preliminary CP system for the new update, and their vision for said system. Because without that we can go in circles what should get removed versus others.