Hero of None’s 2015 End of the Year Feedback and Suggestions

HeroOfNone · December 2015

Introductions (Hello!)

Hello folks,

Happy end of the year! I'm here to discuss a few major ideas and concepts that I believe will help the game for both the PVE and PVP players. These sort of interconnect, so I'm making this as one major post. These ideas are not "fix over night" ideas, and developers may already be working towards these goals. Here is a list, to get us started:

stamina & magicka damaging abilities & Armor sets
stamina and magicka regeneration debuffs
increased armor mitigation & improve Heavy armor in PVP
elemental & spell affinity shifts on class abilities
changing abilities effects in PVE & PVP

Got you interested, concerned, excited, angry? Continue on for more about the problem we're facing and how some of this will help.

The Issues We’re Addressing

There are several issues we will need to face in ESO as it ages. We're already seeing some of them as systems like the veteran system is removed and the champion point system replaces it. Others come from the continued growth as new patches and DLC comes out.

Narrow progression & power creep in each DLC

ESO can be a complex game at lower levels in PVE, looking for the right combination of health, mitigation, avoidance, CC, and other factors. But when we look at PVP and caps to armor mitigation, CC cool down timers, diminishing returns for dodge rolling/bolt escape; things start to focus on DPS & HPS. This leads to

DPS gates in PVE content that require min/maxing builds rather than relying doing fight mechanics.
Nerfing down our PVP damage and heals since it exceeds our mitigation.
Stagnant end level builds that rely on only a few sets
Little difference with a PVE and a PVP gear to differentiate the two
Each DLC armor set, to be viable, will need to increase the DPS/HPS output of the player

And, if we continue with this we may fall into a Guild Wars 2 or World of Warcraft progression at some point. This would mean

Special stats to affect only a certain set of dungeons (GW2 agony system)
Special stats that only affect PVP attacks (WoW)
We ignore both and return to the one shot kills we lowered the damage in PVP and raise the PVE DPS Gate
We continue to nerf damage in PVP for the current sets and increase the power in the next DLC & still raise the DPS gate requirements.

We have major class balance issues.

In each class restructuring we seem to run into issues with Class balancing. This seems to go while we even damage amounts in PVP and then restructure the Meta roles in PVE. Since DPC burst builds in PVP are so closely tied to the burst ganking in PVP, we constantly see the two step on each other’s toes. This is only highlighted by folks grinding characters up to the new Meta each patch

1vX DragonKnights prior to 1.5 that took a group to kill
Templars when radiant destruction would super tick and kill people in a few seconds
Bow when folks could fire off 2-3 shots and be back in stealth when the body dropped
The current NB meta build with fast burst stamina or life syphoning magicka builds
The blinking sorcerers that has been tried to be nerfed, but still hyper burst with dawn breaker and other abilities.

We’ve gone from builds that stood up a long time and would only die due to poor reaction time down to burst builds that kill you quickly, and the fastest killers right now are the NightBlade and Sorcerer.

Part of this isn’t just an issue with the classes, but the way the champion points are structured. For example:

Stamina DragonKnight use stamina morphs of your abilities you’ll likely want to put points into the Ritual Champion Line. But, your stamina abilities are flame based, which are improved by using elemental expert under the Apprentice Champion Line.
The NightBlade’s stamina abilities, in comparison, does magical damage, boosted by Thaumaturge in the ritual line.

Now this isn’t to say there are some nasty builds out there some skilled players have made despite these limitations. These represent an upper epsilon of players that have the resources for a lot of good gear, ground their way to have a lot of champion points, and skilled enough for their classes. Even these players though are Pidgeon holed into a specific style of build, and would do better than most using the Meta builds that have become the norm.

The gearing and gear synergy issue

As discussed with the current requirements for damage, many gear focuses on DPS or HPS. This has led to some powerful min/max builds that have been nerfed by attrition since there was no counterpart to it. It also has made it so a lot of gear that PVPers want is in PVE, and a lot of gear PVErs want they buy from PVP players. We also have sets that make little sense in the way their weapon or styles are implemented. For example:

Poison damage increase with Morag Tong is nice but doesn't do much when bow and arrow does most of the poison abilities and it has no bow, instead we get two daggers that cannot poison unless we have poison glyphs.
The winter born set is nice ice damage, but locks players into an ice staff to use it. Some of these sets don’t make sense for end level gear builds, and it seems a lot of them affect PVP gear the most.
The sun set is great for DKs & Templars, but leave little option but the fire destruction staff for NBs and Sorcerer, which is part of the reason why it’s not been upgraded to v16
The Elemental Succession set is good for DKs with a lightning and frost staff, Sorcerer with fire and ice, or Templar with lightning and frost, but leaves a NightBlade with at least one element they can’t really follow through with

Currently the sets are limited to a few sets of min/max builds and then the rest, most others unused for various reasons, most lacking good abilities that work well with certain builds.

Armor mitigation is horrible in PVP and many PVE challenges

Inside PVP and PVE there is little reason to go with heavy armor or watch mitigation. In PVP, with the amount of gear that has improved armor pierce, a guy in heavy armor (at hard cap) can take maybe 2-3 more hits than a guy in medium from a fully decked out player. Stack on animation canceling that means a whole 1-2 seconds more to do nothing. On the PVE side, groups are giving up tanks on a lot of challenges in favor of a DPS build to take on some of the hard challenges.

Heavy armor builds can block more, but that’s limited. In PVP if you’re blocking you’re not assaulting, and if you’re not attacking you’re likely dead in no time. Not to mention there is a general hatred for block builds, and we’ve had nerfs like 0% stamina regen while blocking. In PVE, you have some fights that require blocking, but you’ll find yourself out of stamina fast unless you run a high magicka regen DK pumping out earthen heart abilities quickly to keep their stamina up or relying on Templar spears during certain fights.

I get the reason though; back in 1.5 & 1.6 there were folks that would block build with an insane amount of armor, stamina pumping abilities, and dynamic ultimate generation. At this point though damage shields and roll dodging can give you more survivability, and where one avoids all damage and the other can reduce any critical chance to 0.

Ideas and Solutions for the Future

Now not all is doom and Gloom, there are several things we can do to change things.

Attacking a players Stamina & Magicka, damaging resources and Debuffing Regeneration
Up till now, most player abilities have always targeted health. There are a few ways to take away someone’s stamina, but each time it required them to block or dodge roll to avoid attacks. Recently however ZOS has been exploring adding magicka damage from lightning ballista and stamina damage from oil catapults. Based on this change there are new ways to offer growth to characters:

Minor/major Resource Debuff, reducing resource regeneration by 5% (minor) or 10% (Major)
Resource damaging based on a fixed number
Resource Damaging based on a % of the enemy’s max resource

Examples of PVP armor sets changes

5 piece Shieldbreaker takes away of a player’s 10% of max Magicka if they have a shield up, 4 second cool down.
5 piece Morag Tong to give minor debuff stamina regeneration by 15%
5 piece Light of Cyrodiil to give minor debuff magicka Regeneration by 15%
5 piece twin sisters damages X stamina of enemy attacks blocked while in melee range
5 piece Beckoning Steel Set giving a minor debuff of both Magicka and Stamina for any projectiles summoned to the target

More can be added, modified to this list, this is just an initial example of how sets can be changed to have a base impact in Cyrodiil

Examples of Skill changes

Assault skill lines – some could be added or modified to add in more utility to players
- Anti-Cavalry Caltrops – Deals x stamina damage every second while in the field, in addition to its damage and anti-mount ability
Support skill lines –
- Scorching Flare – Deals x Magicka damage while in the field, in addition to its reveal and damage
Weapon Skill lines
- Ice staff – focuses on damaging stamina of targets
  - Destructive Clench damages x stamina
  - Elemental Blockade damages x stamina while in its field
- Lightning staff – focuses on damaging magicka of targets
  - Destructive Clench damages x Magicka
  - Elemental Blockade damages x Magicka while in its field
- Fire staff – focus on damaging the targets, no effected changes
- Restoration staff – focus on healing and buffing, no effected changes, but a purge ability should be added
- Bow – Focus on debuffing and reducing the regenerations of targets
  - Venom Arrow gives major Magicka regen debuff when target is interrupted
  - Draining Shot damages x stamina
  - Acid Spray gives Minor Stamina regen debuff
  - Lethal Arrow gives a major Stamina regen debuff
- Dual wield – focus on damage, though giving stamina regen debuff minor with axes
- 2 hander - focus on stamina and magicka damaging abilities, alternative to its DPS builds
  - Dizzying Swing damages x stamina on target in addition to reducing damage
  - Cleave builds ultimate and takes x magicka for targets.
  - Reverse slice damages x magicka in addition to hitting multiple targets
- Weapon and shield - focus on mitigation, no effected changes?
Class Line Skills
- DragonKnight – Currently one of the most hurting class in PVP, and can probably use the biggest boost
  - Flame Lash damage x Magicka on target
  - Burning Embers damages x stamina when effect ends
  - Choking Talons gives Major stamina regen debuff while in the talons
  - Deep Breath damages x Magicka on all targets interrupted
  - Draw Essence gives Minor Magicka regen debuff on the hit
  - Stone Giant damages x Stamina on Target
  - Eruption - gives minor stamina regen debuff while in the cloud
- NightBlade – being the meta damage dealers, I don’t feel they need major buffs with this, but we could offer alternatives to their high damage abilities
- Sorcerer – being our runner up with burst damage in Cryodill I feel they should be given the least buff from these abilities, but alternatives could be given
- Templar – the purge abilities will be more important with several of these debuffs

Increased armor mitigation & give Heavy armor natural critical reduction
As stated above, there aren’t many good reasons to use heavy armor in PVP given the amount of armor penetration and reduction effects out there. This should be turned around in a few ways

Grant the Juggernaut passive a natural impenetrable passive to reduce the damage from incoming hits
Allow bracing to delay the stamina regen buff by .5 seconds and 1 second (per rank)with a 3 second cooldown to promote smart blocking
Increase the amount of armor granted by armor in PVP
- 1x light
- 1.25x medium
- 1.5x Heavy
Reduce the amount of damage based on the armor
- It shouldn’t be reduced to 0, but a person at softcap shouldn’t be hit with abilities half their health

Elemental & spell affinity shifts on class abilities
A lot of classes are currently stuck in one affinity or another, which has caused issues with champion point spreads, armor sets, and more. Giving players the ability to change sets would add another layer of customization for your character. While there will be more complexity that could lead to balance issues, given the above changes we can see the builds scale out much more evenly across the classes.

Method A: change any elemental damage on a stamina to magic or poison damage. This is a simple fix, but will help multiple builds that are using the ritual lines and possibly give certain armor sets a better use

Method B: Offer specific elemental changes on a few morphed abilities
A little more complex, but offering different elements each class can go into will help give more complexity into builds

Method C: a base switch of all elemental damage to another element
A bit more complex, but offering a full shift of elements for all class abilities. This would require a skill reset to change back. The basics of each would be:

Fire – high damage, lingering effect damage
Ice – moderate damage, focus on snares and stamina damage
Lightning – moderate to high damage, focus on CC and magicka damage

Possible Additions, for further complexity.

Poison – moderate damage in dots, focus on debuffing magicka and stamina
Magic - high damage straight damage.

Changing ability's effects in PVE & PVP
This is intended to change some of the targeting and mechanics to abilities in PVP particular. We’re seeing certain abilities changing now to only affect people in your party in Cyrodiil. This needs to continue, use it to reduce the lag, add skill to abilities, and reduce the easy mode abilities

Change most player targeting AOE abilities to ground target. Example: Meteor & Dawn Breaker
AOE cap on support spells to those in your group
Uncap AOE damage to enemy players, if possible. This is to help battle zergs but won’t make power grinding excessive.
If we're going to give all gap closers a snare, then giving all a minimum cast distance should come as a penalty. Teleporting strike has no cast restriction though, and is typically used for high DPS builds in PVE. Either get this consistent with other gap closers in PVP with a cast distance or remove it's snare, that affects mainly PVP.

How this changes things and How do we get there

Most of these are suggestions that I don't expect to be implemented as I've laid out. ZOS takes in a lot of suggestions and add on a lot more or chop out others to fit with their current development. With that in mind here is where I envision these ideas as they are currently laid out.

Intended Effect of these changes

To change the PVP game from a 5 - 6 second fight or and endless resource fight and change it to a war by inches, where you have time to react and fight back but won't necessarily win if you don't time out your abilities and watch your resources. We saw a good start to this with global damage, healing, & shield reduction. This was short lived though. And while the healing and mitigation remains low, min/maxers found ways to keep the fights under a few seconds. With this, we can bind back that survivability but give a way to get around it.

Build wise we should see sustain builds like the 1.5 DK 1vX builds but with clear counters so a single player doesn't requires a warband to kill. Being versatile with a hybrid build may finally catch on, able to either work as a resource sapping build or being able to counter others draining your resources be swapping to the other. Burst builds will still be a thing, but spamming an attack, not weaving in a heavy attack, and not watching if your target is block casting abilities to drain your resources could rob you of your damage and your escape.

More avenues for growth and class balance. When DPS/HPS is the focus, there is little wiggle room for balance since you want all classes to be able to do the same. With these changes however you can have lower DPS builds that maximize mitigation, or others that maximize taking out resources. This gives each class a unique role and ways to balance each class.

Finally, this gives PVPers another set of tools specific to them, armor specifically to make them stronger, with little to no impact on the PVE side of things. with addition stamina and magicka damage, it's not going to make monster fights in PVE any weaker. it's going to instead buff up PVP players that know how to use it and weave it into battle.

More importantly new builds with older armor sets, new armor sets, and unused abilities should see a resurgence if done properly. Min/maxing will always be a thing with damage, but with the ability to pull in other ways to attack will offer different min/max builds or ideas. This also means we can see an expansion of this in DLC with the possibility that each new DLC won’t require us to buy it to have THE strongest build out there, but to have a possibility of ONE OF the strongest builds out there.

Possible Implementation

Stamina & Magicka Damage
Phase 0 – Stamina & Magicka damage added to Cyrodill siege. This is expected in either a weekly patch or the next DLC
Phase 1 – Armor set bonuses added or changed. This would be expected in a DLC
Phase 2 – PVP skill lines altered to a add in stamina/Magicka damage. This would be expected as patch change to test the new damaging effect.
Phase 3 – Class and weapon skills changed to include damage. This would require a major restructuring of the abilities and thus would likely be tied with another DLC

Heavy armor changes
Phase 1 – grant critical reduction on juggernaut passive. Can be done during any patch
Phase 2 – give bracing the ability to delay stamina regen debuff with smart blocking ability. May be done with any patch or a class balancing update
Phase 3 – increase the armor and mitigation given in PVP per the numbers, expected with a DLC patch corresponding with magicka/stamina damaging abilities

Elemental shifting Class abilites
Phase 1 – introduce magic damage on stamina mophs to all classes. Can be done during any patch
Phase 2 – Introduce morph alternatives to certain Player abilities. This could be done with a class balancing update
Phase 3 – Allow full shifts of abilities as part of a DLC, Spell crafting is the prime candidate.

Changing ability effects in PVE and PVP
No phase, do it as needed. This should keep going on as part of the regular maintenance to balance and fix PVP

The End (And what players can do)

This has been an open letter to ZOS on feedback. If you like these ideas, or even one of them, post a reply, this helps ZOS know where to place their priorities. If you hated all of this post as well, more than happy to debate.

If you want to reuse or modify any of the ideas above, go ahead. I don't stake claim in any of it and can certainly be schooled more about what other class skills need modification.

As for ZOS, thank you for another year of a great game so far and I hope to see continued improvements and growth in the game. Happy New Year.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_AWholeLotOfNamesICan'tSpellOrRemember

HeroOfNone · December 2015

And congrats if you managed to get through all this. Put 2 stickers on your winter reading program if you did.

shugg · December 2015

theres alot to read and take in however i do feel this is in the right direction, I think i get what you are trying to do with some of the skills - by reducing the enermys pools you are prolonging the fights thus removing/lowing the damage out put of the current meta as people will need to run more sustain builds - the part i feel this may effect more would be pve where lowing a mobs/boss magic pool means nothing. Or are we talking a secondary effect to skills?

I agree with the heavy armour buff which is needed, however again its pointless for pve unless it has a second effect e.g - reduces crit to x% and x% mitigation based on how many HA you are wearing.

everything you say about the new sets is correct, havent found any worth while - the vet WGT and vet prison ones are the most fun but they arnt that good for tanking - they need to balance sets with each class and take into acount roles. most tanks still roll hist - (i roll leaching for +heales)

I will read more of it when not at work ><, but it deffently needs to be looked at by zos

would scaling all damage of weapons and using pools for amount of casts fix alot of issues or is that to much like soft caps?

Good Job

Gidorick · December 2015

Impressive sir.

I always find it intriguing when people take the time to make specific number suggestions like these. I personally don't pay attention to numbers... I'm more of an immersion/rpg player. I assume ZOS knows better than players about the specifics of combat and whatnot but with the amount of specific suggestions that get posted on this forum I'm starting to wonder if that's true.

Ra'Shtar · December 2015

Excellent post and i agree with almost all of it, there is little build diversity and encounters are mostly about a dps race and not about mechanics that you need to learn to avoid/use to down the boss, with the removal of softcaps now everyone goes for spell damage and weapon damage making almost every magicka DPS that you see out there using the same magicka/stamina sets, adding to this the increase to vr16 made many of the old sets useless reducing even more build diversity.

Looking upon the available single target DPS skills that are actually viable there are very few leaving your bars almost the same as everyone else and making many spells not desired or just down right awful (blood altar anyone?) a look upon the skills that are less used and a redesign of said spells would be beneficial to us all increasing the pool of spells you can choose to use (almost every stamina dps that uses Two Handed uses Wrecking Blow as the main source of dps mostly sorcerers and dragon knights if they don't want to use molten weapons there is not too much choice for them) i love this game so much but the ''class'' systems it gives you little to no choice in what you want to be if you don't want to suck at dps'ing.

Preyfar · December 2015

Some pretty awesome feedback overall!

HeroOfNone · December 2015

shugg wrote: »

theres alot to read and take in however i do feel this is in the right direction, I think i get what you are trying to do with some of the skills - by reducing the enermys pools you are prolonging the fights thus removing/lowing the damage out put of the current meta as people will need to run more sustain builds - the part i feel this may effect more would be pve where lowing a mobs/boss magic pool means nothing. Or are we talking a secondary effect to skills?

I agree with the heavy armour buff which is needed, however again its pointless for pve unless it has a second effect e.g - reduces crit to x% and x% mitigation based on how many HA you are wearing.

everything you say about the new sets is correct, havent found any worth while - the vet WGT and vet prison ones are the most fun but they arnt that good for tanking - they need to balance sets with each class and take into acount roles. most tanks still roll hist - (i roll leaching for +heales)

I will read more of it when not at work ><, but it deffently needs to be looked at by zos

would scaling all damage of weapons and using pools for amount of casts fix alot of issues or is that to much like soft caps?

Good Job

The mitigation and blocking changes would be pretty significant I believe. We'd be changing what is a 10 hit death into a 15 hit fight, giving enough time for other sustain abilities to be used. I would not, however, want to see it going overboard on the PVE side that we need to over stack mitigation for most fights to keep them challenging.

Scaling the damage would also be a bit like doftcaps, but also would lead some not to bother with getting better gear.

Gidorick wrote: »

Impressive sir.

I always find it intriguing when people take the time to make specific number suggestions like these. I personally don't pay attention to numbers... I'm more of an immersion/rpg player. I assume ZOS knows better than players about the specifics of combat and whatnot but with the amount of specific suggestions that get posted on this forum I'm starting to wonder if that's true.

As a developer in my 9 to 5 life I can tell you we have an idea of what we're doing but sometimes customer requirements will sometimes inspire unique and innovative code out of me. These suggestions are just fuel for that fire that will hopefully inspire positive change.

shugg · December 2015

"The mitigation and blocking changes would be pretty significant I believe. We'd be changing what is a 10 hit death into a 15 hit fight, giving enough time for other sustain abilities to be used".

now that makes sence, i would love to have longer fights with more skills than spam - this would give us time to use other skills that normaly wont be considered becouse of time to kill like reveberating bash or cleave for a small shield buff, or even enougth time to add a counter to whats going on.

Jar_Ek · December 2015

Nice write up. I generally agree but would add in two reminders.
1. Zos will need to carefully consider the law of unintended consequences such that this doesn't simply shift the imbalances between classes, champ pts, and resource usage.
2. Not all sorcerers are magicka builds and all characters should be able to access stamina and magicka rebuffs if they are introduced. On and buffing the already OP 2h skills more than the far less useful DW would be a mistake. Each weapon skill line should have the means to apply stamina and magicka debuffs. Or they get added from DB and thieves guild.

HeroOfNone · December 2015

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Nice write up. I generally agree but would add in two reminders.
1. Zos will need to carefully consider the law of unintended consequences such that this doesn't simply shift the imbalances between classes, champ pts, and resource usage.
2. Not all sorcerers are magicka builds and all characters should be able to access stamina and magicka rebuffs if they are introduced. On and buffing the already OP 2h skills more than the far less useful DW would be a mistake. Each weapon skill line should have the means to apply stamina and magicka debuffs. Or they get added from DB and thieves guild.

I don't know if I really addressed sorcerers as just being magicka builds, just that they are good burst damage. They are a prime target for some magicka debuffing abilities given how a lot if them stack on multiple damage shields.

As for magicka stamina debuffs and attacks I view that all should have access to them, but not everyone will be a master of them or may need to choose different weapons. The same way that anyone can heal or give others a damage shield with a healing staff; but DK can give a damage shield to more with theur class skills or a templar can group heal with thiers.

As for buffing 2h, I was addressing several under used abilities. Dual wield I could see getting a few buffs, but the line is pretty well used to pump up spell and weapon damage users for the buff, and I'd imagine it would get used more with the introduction of hybrid builds. As for the current skill line, thrown dagger (over bow even), steel tornado, and blade cloak are used pretty regularly in PVP and PVE. Flurry us used a bit in PVE, and blood craze has lost favor when Valkyn Skoria got nerfed. Might be able to squeeze in something. Keep in mind not being able to do everything with one weapon set is what builds up diversity, so I tried to limit some repeats.

CaptainObvious · December 2015

So here is how you buff heavy armor in PvP:

1. Interrupts bypass CC immunity just like they do in PvE.
2. By default, single target attacks can be used to interrupt AoE attacks/actions 100% of the time.
3. Interrupted AoE attacks consume full resources.
4. Ultimates are exempt from or half chance interrupts since they are supposed to be better than standard AoEs (PTS testing to tweak the numbers).
5. Heavy armor decreases this chance. 20% on the 3 primary slots and 10% on the secondary slots.
6. Medium armor decreases this chance. 10% on the 3 primary slots and 5% on the secondary slots.
7. Damage shield mitigation is changed thusly. The appropriate spell penetration/weapon penetration percentage bypasses the shield. So 100 points in weapon penetration means that 25% of your damage bypasses a damage shield and is directly applied to the target in addition to using sharpened/nirnhoned. This means that a nirnhoned destro staff will go a long way to shield bypass as well as a sharpened blunt weapon.
8. Healing back to 100% or remain at 50% based on PTS feedback.

Having single target interrupts would/could the alter the strategy of just moving as a blob with AoE spamming on both damage and healing. There would be a tradeoff of power versus reliability.
This brings power attack interrupts to PvP that have been lacking. PvE enemy attacks can be interrupted regularly, but that whole mechanism was simply ignored for the most part in PvP.

HeroOfNone · December 2015

CaptainObvious wrote: »

So here is how you buff heavy armor in PvP:

1. Interrupts bypass CC immunity just like they do in PvE.
2. By default, single target attacks can be used to interrupt AoE attacks/actions 100% of the time.
3. Interrupted AoE attacks consume full resources.
4. Ultimates are exempt from or half chance interrupts since they are supposed to be better than standard AoEs (PTS testing to tweak the numbers).
5. Heavy armor decreases this chance. 20% on the 3 primary slots and 10% on the secondary slots.
6. Medium armor decreases this chance. 10% on the 3 primary slots and 5% on the secondary slots.
7. Damage shield mitigation is changed thusly. The appropriate spell penetration/weapon penetration percentage bypasses the shield. So 100 points in weapon penetration means that 25% of your damage bypasses a damage shield and is directly applied to the target in addition to using sharpened/nirnhoned. This means that a nirnhoned destro staff will go a long way to shield bypass as well as a sharpened blunt weapon.
8. Healing back to 100% or remain at 50% based on PTS feedback.

Having single target interrupts would/could the alter the strategy of just moving as a blob with AoE spamming on both damage and healing. There would be a tradeoff of power versus reliability.
This brings power attack interrupts to PvP that have been lacking. PvE enemy attacks can be interrupted regularly, but that whole mechanism was simply ignored for the most part in PvP.

I don't think this will correct the issue and it will serve the weaken several AOE that are already pretty poor (carve, dragon breath, wall of elements, cinder cloud, etc)

The damage shield bypass is interesting, but the damage that bypasses the damage shield would then be mitigated by armor value, correct? Or is it straight unmitigated damage?

The issue I still see here is a lot of min/max builds already focus single target attacks with wrecking blow, executioner, and several single target class abilities. They have such high penetration that they will hit a light armor at 10k, then 8k on the medium, and maybe 7k on the heavy armor. The light armor has the resources to heal, the medium can dodge for less, and the heavy can block for less. This trade off means the light & medium can still do more damage, the heavy can lose more resources and has a chance at a small bit of resources back. As a result, most will agree that heavy armor is not worth using except in a few instances and builds

Also consider what you expect your counter to be. If a heavy armor user were a valid counter to a burst damage build, what would you need to counter them and how would you stop the burst build from healing based on the same resources? Some new mechanics instead of damaging health would have to be considered.

petraeus1 · January 2016

Very insightful write up - I hope you mentioned some of the Champion Point synergy issues in the megathread mr. Wrobel is supervising. They're obviously a minor part of your essay, but relevant in ZOS' current efforts.

CaptainObvious · January 2016

For that, improving the passives to give a chance of interrupt on block. Concept similar to the riposte passive, but placing short stuns on the opponent when the heavy armor user blocks. Add that to the 5 or more passive.

Once again, AI opponents in PvE go into block and if you strike them then you are stunned and put off balance. PvP doesn't have that. Counter for the stun is distance. However, same as the AI block, spells/ranged attacks still can trigger the stun/off balance effect when blocked at close range.

If you want to affect channels like wb specifically then have ability channel time added to stun duration.

Since there is no direct stamina regen on block, then stamina is still for the most part a finite resource.

Jar_Ek · January 2016

Jar_Ek wrote: »
Nice write up. I generally agree but would add in two reminders.
1. Zos will need to carefully consider the law of unintended consequences such that this doesn't simply shift the imbalances between classes, champ pts, and resource usage.
2. Not all sorcerers are magicka builds and all characters should be able to access stamina and magicka rebuffs if they are introduced. On and buffing the already OP 2h skills more than the far less useful DW would be a mistake. Each weapon skill line should have the means to apply stamina and magicka debuffs. Or they get added from DB and thieves guild.

I don't know if I really addressed sorcerers as just being magicka builds, just that they are good burst damage. They are a prime target for some magicka debuffing abilities given how a lot if them stack on multiple damage shields.

As for magicka stamina debuffs and attacks I view that all should have access to them, but not everyone will be a master of them or may need to choose different weapons. The same way that anyone can heal or give others a damage shield with a healing staff; but DK can give a damage shield to more with theur class skills or a templar can group heal with thiers.

As for buffing 2h, I was addressing several under used abilities. Dual wield I could see getting a few buffs, but the line is pretty well used to pump up spell and weapon damage users for the buff, and I'd imagine it would get used more with the introduction of hybrid builds. As for the current skill line, thrown dagger (over bow even), steel tornado, and blade cloak are used pretty regularly in PVP and PVE. Flurry us used a bit in PVE, and blood craze has lost favor when Valkyn Skoria got nerfed. Might be able to squeeze in something. Keep in mind not being able to do everything with one weapon set is what builds up diversity, so I tried to limit some repeats.

Sorry I guess I meant that stamina sorcerers burst potential is only as good as any other weapon user, so maybe stamina morphs of sorcerer skills should have the rebuffs - and they can't stack shields effectively BTW.

I agree that the debuffs should be distributed through the weapon trees, but remember that stamina builds use stamina weapons and magicka use magicka weapons most of the time. Hence both magicka and stamina builds need access to the debuffs.

I would have to disagree wrt dual wield over 2h as wrecking blow, rally/momentum, critical charge/stampede and executioner are all well used in PvP and pve. Whereas dual wield has some pretty lacklustre abilities for pve (dots that don't work vs all mobs, clunky secondary mechanisms, etc) so the lesser used morphs too.

Davidfoxgpub17_ESO · January 2016

How does the weapon/abilities for stamina/magicka disparity factor into the changes you propose? While I love the detail and thought behind all of this, it seems that weapon skill lines shouldn't be neglected and would need to be addressed with all of this being implemented. What do you say for the pure stam build that just wants to slot weapon abilities and call it a day, where does that fit in? Just trying to understand and clarify. Brilliant post btw!

HeroOfNone · January 2016

CaptainObvious wrote: »

For that, improving the passives to give a chance of interrupt on block. Concept similar to the riposte passive, but placing short stuns on the opponent when the heavy armor user blocks. Add that to the 5 or more passive.

Once again, AI opponents in PvE go into block and if you strike them then you are stunned and put off balance. PvP doesn't have that. Counter for the stun is distance. However, same as the AI block, spells/ranged attacks still can trigger the stun/off balance effect when blocked at close range.

If you want to affect channels like wb specifically then have ability channel time added to stun duration.

Since there is no direct stamina regen on block, then stamina is still for the most part a finite resource.

Ah, I see where you're coming from now. while I don't dislike it, it still has issues where the tells aren't the same as in PVE (that ward symbol doesn't show up) and its a very passive way to handle heavy armor buffing. It also will not, in my opinion, stop some of the high damage stackers that are doing a few second kills that is the current meta.

Jar_Ek wrote: »

Jar_Ek wrote: »
Nice write up. I generally agree but would add in two reminders.
1. Zos will need to carefully consider the law of unintended consequences such that this doesn't simply shift the imbalances between classes, champ pts, and resource usage.
2. Not all sorcerers are magicka builds and all characters should be able to access stamina and magicka rebuffs if they are introduced. On and buffing the already OP 2h skills more than the far less useful DW would be a mistake. Each weapon skill line should have the means to apply stamina and magicka debuffs. Or they get added from DB and thieves guild.

I don't know if I really addressed sorcerers as just being magicka builds, just that they are good burst damage. They are a prime target for some magicka debuffing abilities given how a lot if them stack on multiple damage shields.

As for magicka stamina debuffs and attacks I view that all should have access to them, but not everyone will be a master of them or may need to choose different weapons. The same way that anyone can heal or give others a damage shield with a healing staff; but DK can give a damage shield to more with theur class skills or a templar can group heal with thiers.

As for buffing 2h, I was addressing several under used abilities. Dual wield I could see getting a few buffs, but the line is pretty well used to pump up spell and weapon damage users for the buff, and I'd imagine it would get used more with the introduction of hybrid builds. As for the current skill line, thrown dagger (over bow even), steel tornado, and blade cloak are used pretty regularly in PVP and PVE. Flurry us used a bit in PVE, and blood craze has lost favor when Valkyn Skoria got nerfed. Might be able to squeeze in something. Keep in mind not being able to do everything with one weapon set is what builds up diversity, so I tried to limit some repeats.

Sorry I guess I meant that stamina sorcerers burst potential is only as good as any other weapon user, so maybe stamina morphs of sorcerer skills should have the rebuffs - and they can't stack shields effectively BTW.

I agree that the debuffs should be distributed through the weapon trees, but remember that stamina builds use stamina weapons and magicka use magicka weapons most of the time. Hence both magicka and stamina builds need access to the debuffs.

I would have to disagree wrt dual wield over 2h as wrecking blow, rally/momentum, critical charge/stampede and executioner are all well used in PvP and pve. Whereas dual wield has some pretty lacklustre abilities for pve (dots that don't work vs all mobs, clunky secondary mechanisms, etc) so the lesser used morphs too.

If they builds aren't bursty then they might not be as effected by this change. if its a stamina sorc that never uses shields for example, shield breaker won't work on them, then it will be a straight out melee fight or might require focusing stamina abilities, and hopefully we'll see a different type of fighting with that.

As for the magicka/stamina debuffs I think I laid that out alright with the staff types (ice verses lightning) and for melee I think bow and 2 hander were both pretty good with this. there are still class abilities to factor in. these weapons are also the counter balance to this type of attack as well, where a heavy attack with melee or a staff will regenerate resources.

As for the duel wield line, I get what you're saying that a lot of solo players use it a lot more in the meta, but I still see a lot using duel wield and could see them improving the DPS on it if the 2 hander gets this buff, thus diverging the two play styles a little. I wouldn't expect that the weapon skill lines would remain untouched though.

Davidfoxgpub17_ESO wrote: »

How does the weapon/abilities for stamina/magicka disparity factor into the changes you propose? While I love the detail and thought behind all of this, it seems that weapon skill lines shouldn't be neglected and would need to be addressed with all of this being implemented. What do you say for the pure stam build that just wants to slot weapon abilities and call it a day, where does that fit in? Just trying to understand and clarify. Brilliant post btw!

I'd expect to see added tweaking so there would be a clear abilities or morphs for DPS and then others for stamina/magicka based attack. so you can go with the damage dealer like wreaking blow for your damage, but if you go with dizzying swings you'd knock out their stamina, making it potentially harder for them to recover or making it painful for them to block rather than dodge, plus any buddies they have around. keep in mind that while I add effects to some of these abilities this would not stop them upping the damage or modifying other abilities in other ways to achieve a balance. The best thing is that the decision making will expand a bit too, where folks stop looking for just what has the highest damage and consider more utility in their build for PVP.

HeroOfNone · January 2016

petraeus1 wrote: »

Very insightful write up - I hope you mentioned some of the Champion Point synergy issues in the megathread mr. Wrobel is supervising. They're obviously a minor part of your essay, but relevant in ZOS' current efforts.

oh yeah, I posted to be on the first page of replies =3

ninjaguyman · January 2016

Nice write up,

In regards to your suggestions for heavy armor changes, I think heavy armor needs a little more than just additional mitigation to be viable in pvp, although that is still definitely needed. I still try to use heavy armor in pvp, and my main problem with it is usually resource management. Both of the other armor weights offer both regen and cost reduction for the respective resource pool that they use. Heavy armor on the other hand offers health regen(which is often times overlooked or completely dismissed) and no cost reduction into either resource pool even though tanks are more likely to utilize both resources at the same time.

The Constitution passive was obviously meant to replace a straight increase to passive regen and i like the concept of it; the more you get hit, the more resources you get back. but i personally think it needs to be buffed somehow. ZOS could easily just bring the cooldown from 4 seconds to 2 seconds, but that would basically be like normal regen which ticks every 2 seconds. How about leave the starting 4 seconds and change it so that the cooldown is reduced by X%for every Y amount of nearby enemies, down to a cap of say 1 second? maybe even .5? How much constitution should give back and the scaling of the cooldown reduction is really up to ZOS. It might also depend on the question, how many people should a tank/heavy armor wearer be able to hold off in pvp? 4 people? 8-12? definitely not a whole raid. I'd love to hear what ZOS actually thinks tanks should be capable of on the battlefield.

Having a scaling cooldown and your suggested mitigation changes, if implemented right, would make it so a smaller group would still have a chance to run a tank out of resources while the tank would still have a fighting chance against a larger group. Well not exactly a fighting chance, but such that the tanks would not insta-die against the zerg, giving them enough time to cc/fear/talon/etc to actually make an impactful difference to the battle.

As for a cost reduction passive, im not sure where it would go or if it would actually be needed if my suggested constitution passive was implemented. After all, we probably don't want to load up heavy armor so much it becomes the new fotm and every ones starts jumping on the heavy armor bandwagon in pvp.

This would also effect pve somehow, but extra resource management would probably be welcomed. But there should probably be different types of Constitution cooldown scalings between mobs in pve and real people in pvp.

MisterBigglesworth · January 2016

Great write-up, @HeroOfNone. Love the suggestions. Doesn't go far enough, in my opinion.

In the past I've tried advocating for small steps, tinkering with the existing system, small tweaks here and there... but I think I've finally come to the realization that an MMO (unless it is a pure sandbox MMO) simply cannot be allowed to exist with the ridiculous amount of player agency and customization that ESO has... if it wants to foster anything resembling a legitimate competitive scene.

ESO's greatest weakness (considered a strength, I'm sure, to both the traditional Elder Scrolls fans, as well as theorycrafters who abuse take advantage of the game's broken convoluted mechanics) is that it has almost no restrictions to how people can build their characters. The developers seem to have a laissez-faire attitude towards their own game and playerbase.

In my view, this game has been irreparably ruined by the Champion System and the removal of softcaps.

Further reading:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/149933/why-champion-system-will-kill-the-game-if-its-implemented-as-is/

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/219283/the-root-of-the-problem-a-lack-of-limits/

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/199179/elder-scrolls-online-is-an-mmorpg-and-denying-that-is-where-most-of-its-issues-spring-from/

Jar_Ek · January 2016

@HeroOfNone What I am saying is that DW should have the option for damage or debuff the same as all of the skill lines in your remaining except for restored staves. If WB is damage and Dizzing is debuff, then Rapid strikes should be damage and Blinding should be debuff. If this doesn't happen, then you'll just have 2h for debuff and DW for damage only.

HeroOfNone · January 2016

ninjaguyman wrote: »

Nice write up,

In regards to your suggestions for heavy armor changes, I think heavy armor needs a little more than just additional mitigation to be viable in pvp, although that is still definitely needed. I still try to use heavy armor in pvp, and my main problem with it is usually resource management. Both of the other armor weights offer both regen and cost reduction for the respective resource pool that they use. Heavy armor on the other hand offers health regen(which is often times overlooked or completely dismissed) and no cost reduction into either resource pool even though tanks are more likely to utilize both resources at the same time.

The Constitution passive was obviously meant to replace a straight increase to passive regen and i like the concept of it; the more you get hit, the more resources you get back. but i personally think it needs to be buffed somehow. ZOS could easily just bring the cooldown from 4 seconds to 2 seconds, but that would basically be like normal regen which ticks every 2 seconds. How about leave the starting 4 seconds and change it so that the cooldown is reduced by X%for every Y amount of nearby enemies, down to a cap of say 1 second? maybe even .5? How much constitution should give back and the scaling of the cooldown reduction is really up to ZOS. It might also depend on the question, how many people should a tank/heavy armor wearer be able to hold off in pvp? 4 people? 8-12? definitely not a whole raid. I'd love to hear what ZOS actually thinks tanks should be capable of on the battlefield.

Having a scaling cooldown and your suggested mitigation changes, if implemented right, would make it so a smaller group would still have a chance to run a tank out of resources while the tank would still have a fighting chance against a larger group. Well not exactly a fighting chance, but such that the tanks would not insta-die against the zerg, giving them enough time to cc/fear/talon/etc to actually make an impactful difference to the battle.

As for a cost reduction passive, im not sure where it would go or if it would actually be needed if my suggested constitution passive was implemented. After all, we probably don't want to load up heavy armor so much it becomes the new fotm and every ones starts jumping on the heavy armor bandwagon in pvp.

This would also effect pve somehow, but extra resource management would probably be welcomed. But there should probably be different types of Constitution cooldown scalings between mobs in pve and real people in pvp.

I disagree with having heavy armor get a lot of regen to their resources. That, to me, is where they should be weak. Able to perhaps do some moderate damage, get good heals, and great mitigation, but have a fatal flaw with resources when they block or move too much. As it stands now though they are moderate in damage and fall short on the other abilities, while others can stack on their resources and have high heals, damage, mobility, and regenerations without much penalty. I do think more needs to be done, but I'm afraid part of it would have to involve nerfing some of the other builds in some way.

MisterBigglesworth wrote: »

Great write-up, @HeroOfNone. Love the suggestions. Doesn't go far enough, in my opinion.

In the past I've tried advocating for small steps, tinkering with the existing system, small tweaks here and there... but I think I've finally come to the realization that an MMO (unless it is a pure sandbox MMO) simply cannot be allowed to exist with the ridiculous amount of player agency and customization that ESO has... if it wants to foster anything resembling a legitimate competitive scene.

ESO's greatest weakness (considered a strength, I'm sure, to both the traditional Elder Scrolls fans, as well as theorycrafters who abuse take advantage of the game's broken convoluted mechanics) is that it has almost no restrictions to how people can build their characters. The developers seem to have a laissez-faire attitude towards their own game and playerbase.

In my view, this game has been irreparably ruined by the Champion System and the removal of softcaps.

Further reading:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/149933/why-champion-system-will-kill-the-game-if-its-implemented-as-is/

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/219283/the-root-of-the-problem-a-lack-of-limits/

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/199179/elder-scrolls-online-is-an-mmorpg-and-denying-that-is-where-most-of-its-issues-spring-from/

I do think we need a roadmap of changes. small changes make sense, but a lot of us want to know where its leading us. if they start making major overhauls to things, people get antsy since their prior work could mean nothing, which would disenfranchise a of people that put in the hours.

As for the customization and softcaps, there are softcaps and other limits in the game, its just that they are handled through sets, generic abilities, and other mechanics. For example, your armor and spell resistance after 32k armor starts to be come worthless, and over a certain critical amount (50% I believe) you're critical hit rating starts to go down. Then, on top of this, weapon and spell damage are always limited by your v16 sets, runes, buffs (minor/major savagery/sorcery, and abilities. There is a limit there, they just say its open ended , and I'm certain they know where that limit it.

Now is the limit too high? you could say that, but the limit on DPS/HPS is MUCH higher than armor mitigation right now, mostly to deal with the prior sustain builds. there was little to no counter now that endless CC locking players is gone. It may seem that things are extremely complicated and this is making it that more difficult, but as I see it the equation is pretty simple to stack on your damage and resources, your regen getting some minor attention, and then ignoring your armor component since you'll be bursting folks down ASAP.

I think both can be saved, but we need more control, resource management, and utility builds to work within the systems in place. This opens up part of this path, though I think another big revelation would be with spell crafting.

Jar_Ek wrote: »

@HeroOfNone What I am saying is that DW should have the option for damage or debuff the same as all of the skill lines in your remaining except for restored staves. If WB is damage and Dizzing is debuff, then Rapid strikes should be damage and Blinding should be debuff. If this doesn't happen, then you'll just have 2h for debuff and DW for damage only.

I was thinking the two damage lines for the duel wield would be bursty type DPS and then a DOT based. I can see buffing up blinding, rending, and maybe shrouding then? make the debuff options opposite of the buffing or damage ones could work out easier to understand.

Oh, and thanks for all participating in the discussions here. Hopefully this will get some attention to see changes made that will help move us away from just the bursty DPS builds in PVP. just wish we could at least get a /lurk though.