Okay, I'm going to mention my own biggest Champion System issue, and it's one which hasn't been mentioned before...

** Climbs on soapbox **

The Champion point UI is absolutely terrible. Now, it might be a reasonable UI if you're using a Gamepad, but for Keyboard/Mouse users, it's a truly horrible UI design. (I'd say it was the worst possible design for this, but Skyrim still holds that crown -- the equivalent setup in Skyrim was, by far, the worst UI design I've ever seen in ANY game, bar none.)

Radial UIs in general are a bad idea on PCs (the Quickslot menu, and the non-configurable multifunctional overloading of the Q key, is my other biggest pet UI peeve about ESO) because they turn what ought to be a simple single step point and click (or bind key) into a multi-step directionally-dependent operation, but this one heaps, on top of that bad idea, the even worse idea of placing each control in a constellation pattern, with no real rhyme or reason for placement other than the visual pattern of the stars. You want to see which passive you get when you have 10 points in a constellation? You pretty much have to roll over all of them reading the tooltips until you find the right one. You want to see, at a glance, what you've spent points on? You have to rotate your way through ALL the constellations. Assigning these things positionally to the constellation stars is an organizational mess and uses up huge amounts of screen real-estate which could have been put to much better use actually informing us about the various perks and passives.

What really gets me about choosing this UI design is that there was already a highly useable design in the game which could have presented all of this information in a much easier to navigate and more intuitive UI -- the Skill points UI. Instead, shiny glitter severely trumped functionality, making it WAY harder to do every single task using this UI.

I seriously doubt my words will convince you to change this, but I couldn't resist this chance to get on my soapbox about it. I'll return you to your regularly scheduled discussion about whether this 0.001% increase in something is better or worse than that 0.001% decrease in something else...

** Climbs off soapbox **

Thanks @Wrobel for the quick recap!

Question for the community; should Champion points alter dmg / heals in the first place? I know its a very popular placement for CP's but do we want the black hole associated with offering an increase then a way to counter it?

Is it easy to turn points over to effect how skills are used versus the dmg themselves?
Examples:

- decrease cast time for magicka spells
- increase range of arrows
- increase elemental status effect chance
- increase magicka penetration. (Which we already have spell pen.)

Then you have passives that alter the way you play:

- 6% chance on spell penetration to chain lighting.
- % chance at multiple penetration with arrow
- increased crit hit dmg and chance with melee when you hit behind a enemy
- heal allies for 1000 when you dispel a negative effect. Occurs only once per 6 seconds.


You get the idea. Thoughts?

Lorkhan wrote: »

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

Ofc. I just don´t like having yet another passive (most people don´t have points for anyway) just to counter shields when the passive buffing shields does not makes sense in the first place.

Minno wrote: »

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.

The problem with your though is: Eventually people will have dmg passives maxed out and dmg reduction passives maxed out. These cancel each other out (roughly - reduction is a tad more effective).

What remains (at a point where people have enough cp to spec most things they´re interested in) then is healing passives and bastion.
At that point you have +25% dmg -25% dmg but nothing to combat the effect of 16% increased healing taken and 25% outgoing healing resulting in basically ~45% better heals and 25% stronger shields while dmg stays the same. That´s where the problem lies and why i don´t think these passives are well thought out.

Wrobel wrote: »

Guys, thanks for all the feedback thus far. Here are some suggestions we really like and are considering so far:

• No longer requiring players to invest in multiple different stars if their build does more than 1 type of damage

@Wrobel Could you clarify what you mean by this? For instance a Sorcerer wont need to put points into Thaumaturge and Elemental Expert?
Are constellations going to have more stars than others?

Wrobel wrote: »

Calling all ESO forum posters! We are currently reviewing the Champion System bonuses and would love hear your feedback on them. Our goals for this review are:

• Ensure bonuses have a counter weight
• Improve infrequently selected bonuses
• Effectively communicate all bonuses so it’s easier to understand what they’re doing

Ensure every bonus has a counter weight:
For the Champion System, every offensive bonus should have a defensive counterpart and vice versa. For example: Offensive players can get increased spell penetration from Spell Erosion, while defensive players can get increased spell resistance from Spell Shield.

Improve infrequently selected bonuses:
Some of the Champion Point stars are much less popular than others. It’s not intended that all specs are equally useful, but they should be somewhat useful for some playstyle. Nourishing is a great example of a passive we are looking at in our review. It’s in the same constellation as Quick Recovery and gives a similar bonus of increased healing. However, Nourishing only works every 45 seconds when you can use a potion and Quick Recovery works all the time on all abilities, from both ally and self cast sources.

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, Spell Erosion and Piercing are looking at the attackers stats instead of the defenders so the number don't end up being what you may expect. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

We would love to hear what your top three changes would be to the Champion bonuses. Keep in mind the criteria above, and as always, please keep things constructive!

how about get rid of CP?

Please stop asking for soft caps, people! Soft caps would break the Champion System, and that would break ESO.

What is the point of playing the game hour after hour if my progression is rendered null and void by a mathematical nerf wall?!

This post is getting rather lengthy, so in the spirit of keeping my opinion original, I'm going to state my perspective without reading the thoughts of others until after I post.
If I repeat things others have said, take it as a sign it's a priority.

1) The end points 120/75 really favor stamina dps over magicka; magicka needs to have more high end dps equivalents.
Example:
stamina says: "increase damage delt to off balance targets" or "increase chance of attack making target go off balance" (i forget which is a duel wield passive & which is the champion tree)
There should be something for "increase chance of causing burnning or concussion" or "increase damage of burning or concussion"
What about a magicka ability at 120/75 pts that allows magic users to critically strike magicka shields?

2) I've spoken with a few people who feel the spell penetration & armor penetration ratings are unbalanced. For instance a player can penetrate armor with a weapon damage build easier & greater than a player can penetrate spell resistance using a magicka damage ability. (maybe these numbers can be adjusted in the tree?)
Surprise attack is a nightblade class ability which drastically reduces the enemies armor. While this is different, armor reduction can be looked at as similar to penetration rating due to the fact that you are mitigating their armor. There is no magic equivalent but destruction staff can increase spell penetration per the destro tree passive but the result is no where near surprise attack + armor penetration.

3) Many of the abilities/numbers the champion point system reflects have no equivalent in the character sheet; is there any way this can be added as an advanced menu? For instance I would like to know what my critical strike damage rating is after stacking points into elfborn. Or, how much thaumaturge actually affects my increased damage with spells.

Just for grins... here's a 4th
4) I have points stacked into elusive (Reduces the duration of all snare, fear and disorient effects on you by [x]%.)
Yet, if I am hit & knocked down with the first wrecking blow, there is not enough time at all to get back up or pop a heal before getting killed by the 2nd wrecking blow & this is happening consistently where players are spamming this. This "elusive" should allow for enough time to mitigate getting hit by the 2nd wrecking blow if you were indeed knocked down by the first; please look into this.
If elusive will not help me against a wrecking blow spammer please look into providing an extra ability that will.

& a...
5) decrease chance of being hit with concussion, burning, etc.. (magicka)
decrease chance of being taken off balance, bleeding (stamina) "like a tough skin, or a sturdy stance"

As an added question...
@Wrobel , why can I affect a boss in pve with burning & yet I can't knock him off-balance with a duel wield ability? Are those both not passives of weapon abilities with one being magicka & the other being stamina?

I like the idea of don't let anyone in game have more than 50% champion points, but as an added touch, scale the 100% mark to the 50% mark (or vice versa). Example:
50% champion points means I can't max all values at 100 so I can do:
100 in spell resist & 0 in elemental or 50 in each, but at 50 I get the same prevention as if I had 100 because right now it just feels like putting 100 points into something often gives very minimal results.

Armitas wrote: »

1. I'd like to see a cumulative cap on aspects of the champion system that combine. For example my searing strike fire dot rolls through, spell mitigation, elemental mitigation and dot mitigation. If the CP cap on spell mitigation is 20% I think the maximum my fire dots should be reduced by is 20%...regardless of how many CP mitigations it checked against.

2. This is complex and I don't have a balanced solution but I'll mention it anyway. Certain things increase stats by a flat amount and other things increase your stats by percentage. This means that already strong power skews can be made even stronger easily but the weaknesses have a harder time developing because their base value is low. So in my magicka build I want stamina regen but my regen is low to begin with so I don't get as much as I would by investing in magicka. Or in my heavy armor build I want to get spell penetration but since I have no base spell penetration I get almost nothing out of it. I'd like to have the ability to develop my weaknesses better. Maybe flat amounts are the way to go across the board. They allow low stats to rise evenly and prevent high stats from accelerating out of control. That said, this is a raw thought and needs some deep consideration as to the balance consequences of it. (posters please challenge this if you think it's bad)

3. Give us a real UI so we can see these values on our character sheet without using harvens extended stats which isn't always accurate.

I agreed so much I couldn't just hit the agree button. XD

Ishammael wrote: »

Wrobel wrote: »

Calling all ESO forum posters! We are currently reviewing the Champion System bonuses and would love hear your feedback on them. Our goals for this review are:

• Ensure bonuses have a counter weight
• Improve infrequently selected bonuses
• Effectively communicate all bonuses so it’s easier to understand what they’re doing

Ensure every bonus has a counter weight:
For the Champion System, every offensive bonus should have a defensive counterpart and vice versa. For example: Offensive players can get increased spell penetration from Spell Erosion, while defensive players can get increased spell resistance from Spell Shield.

Improve infrequently selected bonuses:
Some of the Champion Point stars are much less popular than others. It’s not intended that all specs are equally useful, but they should be somewhat useful for some playstyle. Nourishing is a great example of a passive we are looking at in our review. It’s in the same constellation as Quick Recovery and gives a similar bonus of increased healing. However, Nourishing only works every 45 seconds when you can use a potion and Quick Recovery works all the time on all abilities, from both ally and self cast sources.

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, Spell Erosion and Piercing are looking at the attackers stats instead of the defenders so the number don't end up being what you may expect. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.

We would love to hear what your top three changes would be to the Champion bonuses. Keep in mind the criteria above, and as always, please keep things constructive!

@Wrobel -- thanks for starting this discussion.

From your list:

1. Ensure bonuses have a counter-weight.

- Replace "Thick Skinned" with "decrease physical damage". Hardy and Elemental defender cover all other DoTs except bleeds, which would then be covered by the new bonus.
- Light, Medium, and Heavy Armor Focus passives need to be consolidated into a single "increase armor by [X]%" passive.
- Add equivalent of "Spell Shield" for physical resistance.

2. Improve infrequently selected bonuses.

- Add a "increase movement speed by X%" in place of one of the removed passives (in Steed star).
- Increase bonus of "Phase" by 10x or replace.
- Replace "Reinforced" with something like "Regenerate stamina while blocking for the first 3s"
- "Resilient" and "Critical Leach" are good in concept, but the strength of the bonus is poor. Improve by 5-10x.
- "Physician", "Infusion", and "Revival" are just bad. Consolidate into one "after res" bonus then add two other more interesting passives.
- "Determination" is horrrrrrible. Don't even know what to do with this.
- "Vengeance" needs to be re-worked since blocking is no longer viable for magic users. Perhaps change to "after you are hit by 3 spells, cooldown 10s".
- "Foresight" needs to be slightly better, perhaps reduce cost of next 3 spells or something.
- "Arcane Well" pales in comparison to "Unchained". Simply remove the %chance and add a cooldown.
- Consolidate Blade, Heavy Weapon, and Bow expert.
- "Mara's gift" and "Inspiration Boost" should be replace.
- "War Mount" should provide an effective while in combat, e.g. be able to mount in combat.
- "Wind Running" should be +5-10% movespeed.
- Improve the bonus of "Shade"
- Remove "Fortune Seeker", "Treasure Hunter", "Merchant Favored", "Plentiful Harvest", and "Master Gather". These need to be added into a track of achievable bonuses NOT connected to the CP system since they do not improve the power of your character. For instance, tie them to achievement points or Undaunted Ranks.

3. Effectively communicate all bonuses so it's easier to understand what they're doing.

I suggest simply posting the formulas. Make a toggle in the options menu to display them when you mouse-over each star.

Wrobel wrote: »

Guys, thanks for all the feedback thus far. Here are some suggestions we really like and are considering so far:

• Ensuring equality between Stamina and Magicka users with the new counter weights in place
• Combining together some of the weaker Champion passives
• No longer requiring players to invest in multiple different stars if their build does more than 1 type of damage

There are also a bunch of cool ideas in here for new stars, which we’re keeping in mind!

We also want to make an edit to the original post. Befoul is currently working correctly, however we do want to ensure it's a proper counter weight to the increased healing passive. Apologies for the confusion. We've updated the last section on clarity and replaced the example so it now reads as follows:

“It’s unclear exactly how some champion passives work just by reading their tooltips. For example, Spell Erosion and Piercing are looking at the attackers stats instead of the defenders so the number don't end up being what you may expect. We’ll be cleaning up instances of tooltips like this so they are easy to understand.”

In order to achieve bullet point one you will need to add more options for stamina skills. Third morphs of class skills would be welcome.

See suggestions above for how to combine weaker champion passives.

I don't think the multiple stars for damage is a big deal -- the class skills simply need to be re-balance. For instance, Dark Talons does three types of damage: physical, Fire, and magic. Stuff like this needs to be fixed.

In general, one of the biggest flaws of the CP system -- in the long run -- is that there are no limits. It is implied that players will be able to get everything. I suggest a permanent cap somewhere along the line that enables the choice of 1 or 2, 120-pt passives. This will require players to choose carefully how they place their CPs, rather than simply taking everything. As such, the 120-pt passives need to be rethought made more meaningful so that class builds can be based around them (or not). A good example is the suggestion to return some stamina regen while blocking for the first few seconds.

Another feature of the game meta is that most players focus completely on damage. There are a huge range of reasons for this

(1) no soft caps
(2) you get zero AP for "surviving"
(3) magicka/stamina divide forces players to choose one or the other
(4) unlimited resources enabled by CPs
(5) low HP totals
(6) improving damage ALSO improves defense and healing (e.g. Hardened Ward and Healing Ward get bigger with higher mana, healing gets bigger with more spell power and mana, vigor heals for more with higher damage).

The point is, soft caps needs to be considered. Carefully. Hybrid builds would make a huge comeback. Some sets would become more relevant.

I just had to post to comment how insightful and brilliant this post was. This. THIS. THIS!

The counter to healing debuffs are purge and minor + major mending though.

Not trying to argue about magica DK being in a bad state - but this topic is about the cp system. Don´t mix this with class/ability balance.

As many have said , start grouping some of the current cp like the increase armour for h/l/m and add some new ones that allow build diversity like 2h specialist - reduces damage while blocking or while dw increase resistance while blocking. This would also aid the amount of tank choice out there for pve. One a guild member mentioned he would love to see a cp that increass damage Of s&b - these would be more to you weapon style and could open up builds a but more. Couldnt think of any dps ones but some one will

Derra wrote: »

RoamingRiverElk wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

The counter to healing debuffs are purge and minor + major mending though.

Not trying to argue about magica DK being in a bad state - but this topic is about the cp system. Don´t mix this with class/ability balance.

They are intricately weaved together though - CP system and classes. We couldn't give any feedback on the CP system without considering how PvP and classes are in this game, unless we just want to talk pure theory - but while talking about pure theory can be interesting, there's the danger that that pure theory could be implemented without considering the context - the actual state of the game now, with all the things that affect gameplay.

CPs should be allowing for build diversity and helping each magicka/stamina/class combo. Another option could of course be buffing healing in general and removing it from the CP system completely. In any case, I'm bringing up an example about how changes to the CP system would affect a certain combo very negatively. And on the other hand, that very same change would affect other classes less - those that already are in a pretty good state compared to other classes/combos.

One could also say that with the current high DPS state of the game, minor and major mending are counters to high damage. And that high damage is a counter to minor and major mending. They aren't *literally* that, but in reality, they are. Looking at the CP system simply from the point of view of whether everything has a counter within the CP system is not fruitful in my opinion, because it can just as easily lead to other imbalances, which is something that I believe we're actually trying to avoid here.

Edit: I do of course think that classes should be looked at individually too.

Edit edit: Another point to discuss would be: is it a problem with the CP system or a problem with the class, that a magicka DK needs more CPs to be viable than a magicka sorcerer (just as examples I'm familiar with)? One could argue either way.

I strongly disagree on that point. The champion system has to provide a solid base for countless class/skill and build combinations (that´s how it should have been created in the first place - as it was not we now have to talk on a completely abstract theoretical level without looking at the state of classes).
This means (from my perspective ofc) it has to be discussed and balanced on a theoretical level to be able to provide that base in the first place - because it´s currently failing at doing that by blantantly favoring certain playstyles in different scenarios.

Well, I agree with you in that it is certainly not achieving that currently. But the thing is, I doubt they're going to overhaul all the rest of the system to go with the new CP system. And due to the current system not being balanced, I did want to bring up an example where doing a change in the CP system which would affect healing negatively, would affect certain classes and builds more than others. I wouldn't care if there was no healing passives in CP when I'm playing on my sorcerer, I've got shields to deal with that. I wouldn't care if I had a strong damage, ganking build as a nightblade, either. I certainly would care if I was playing pretty much any kind of a templar, or a DK.

If the whole game system was being built from the ground up, then at that point it could be relevant to make the CPs have theoretical balance/symmetry. But since the game system includes item sets, no softcaps, no dynamic ultimate, all kinds of different class passives, battle spirit, no stamina gain while blocking, increasing cost of roll dodge, aoe caps, etc, etc, I don't think CPs should be looked at separately from those. IF required balance adjustments were also made to those aspects of the game to go with the CP system, then that would be ok. But I really, really doubt that is going to happen. Why do I think so? Because it would be a big undertaking and I just don't have faith it would be done. As an example, it's already taking months to even buff DK, and the only thing we've really heard about that is that they'll be buffing DK dots. As though that were the reason magicka DKs have disappeared from Cyrodiil.

With your way of arguing you would lock certain classes into stars as obvious choices (such as bastion - which i´d also like to see removed - for sorcs) removing choice and idividuality from the system as by your approach a class is only in a balanced state when x points are spent into star y - not good if you ask me.

I'm not sure that would be the result. It totally depends on what is available in the stars, and how the stars are compiled into the different sections - red, blue, green, and what the 30 point, 120 point etc passives are. I'm all for increasing build variety, but I am very concerned about changes simply taking us further along the burst, no need to sustain road, where playing defensively is boring and/or not viable. ZOS has mentioned build variety and what they have ended up achieving, imo, is much less of it due to no soft caps, nerfs to defensive play, and the fact that most sets are not available in v16 and have not been upgraded to go with the new general changes (less healing, shield breaker, blocking nerf, roll dodging nerf, ultimate gain).

Making general changes is ok as long as you take into account the individual exceptions and adjust them accordingly. But as we've seen with magicka DKs, that did not happen over the course of the past nine months. I wanted to remind Wrobel, who hopefully does read this thread, that sweeping changes do have consequences for certain builds, even classes, and in some cases those changes end up being so huge that it ends up being totally visible when you look at the build 'variety' in Cyrodiil.

After the CP system has been brought to an internal balance with ideally every star being vaiable aswell as having their own counter within the CP system - then ZOS can truely begin to balance class performance without having to always worry about creating strange/unexpected synergies by class <=> championtree interactions.
Balance the CP system => balance classes = game changes => only balance classes no more worries about cp system as the basis is balanced.
Balance classes based on CP system and vice versa => game changes => balance again for both => and so on...

Edit: Why would you argue a magica DK needs more CP than a sorcerer to be effective in pvp? True the class is not in the best spot for pvp right now but i fail to see where it would need more points than a sorc.

That would be lovely if it worked. So far, huge rebalancing efforts have made the game worse from my point of view. There have been some good things, but there are plenty of people who miss 1.5.

As to why I would argue that a magicka DK needs more CP than a magicka sorcerer, it is due to the sorcerer being able to focus on magicka most of all. Perhaps others view things differently, but I'll attempt to list here what I see as the important stars to invest in for my magicka DK and magicka sorc builds:

Both magicka sorc and magicka DK:
-magicka regen
-spell cost reduction
-elemental/magic damage

Magicka sorc:
-bastion
(stamina management optional, such as stamina regen and dodge/break free cost reduction)

Magicka DK:
-bastion (a little)
-crit resistance (due to taking a lot of damage to health instead of strong shields)
-armor and spell resistance due to not using strong shields and not being able to escape, having to stand one's ground (I actually don't put points in these as magicka DK, I don't have enough points, other CPs take priority over these)
-stamina regen, dodge/break free - in order to be able to move (sorc can still bolt even when rooted), stamina also used for running to get to places
-blocking cost reduction. need to block, need all the stamina management one can get in order to reduce being burst due to not having 8k to 18k damage shields on top of one's health
-would need more damage output due to having to put points in max health and max stamina
-stamina skill cost reduction for gap closer, shuffle (magicka nbs get these kinds of skills for magicka)
-healing, no efficient healing skills -> need to invest a lot in healing done -> less points available for doing damage since they're all in the blue section

I think it's just fairly evident, if you try to put points into the trees that you will be a lot happier as a sorc than as a dk. The more CPs one has, the less awful it is to be a magicka DK. This, however, is not to say sorc should be nerfed. To the contrary, magicka DK just needs to be buffed. I'm happy where magicka sorcs currently are. Just not happy with the current gameplay system in general for many reasons that I won't begin to list here. The reason why I give magicka DKs and magicka sorcs as examples is because those are the classes I really have experience in playing in PvP (in very small groups).