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Greetings everyone. In no particular order I will write about some of my recent thoughts. Please feel free to add to this list with your own discussion of bugs, mechanical difficulties, or culture within this game. Please also try to post proofs regarding the issues that you take up.
Tanking Videos1. Maw Second Bosshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCHNPTBCHYg
Honestly, I dreaded the fact that there would be dungeons that required two tanks to work together on the same boss. I also hate how there is almost no need for tanks so I was going along with a new focus by the dungeon team of making tanking a more needed role.
That being said, the reason why I dread multiple tanks taunting along side each other is shown in the above video. For some reason, that particular enemy does some really strange stuff when I taunt it the same way that I would taunt any other boss. Even his light counterpart isn't weird. I feel like something is messed up with the taunts, it has to do with multiple taunts, and I don't have a clear cut way of preventing the issue. Taunting every other attack or waiting for the very first taunt I put on him to fully expire seems to help the aggro loss issue, but this is a strange enemy for sure. Hopefully multi-tank raids in the future don't end up with a boss that has this issue.
2. Knock Back Long Stunhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=987snMBZGTk
Some instances of being knocked back and, I think hit by another attack at close to the same time, result in being knocked back, but then being stunned for a long period of time. As the video shows, such an occurrence can be quite costly.
3. Extended Chainshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMN7gm-q1Sk
In this video I show a bug where enemies can not be targeted by the Extended Chains gap closer ability because they are "too high or too low."
This bug often happens despite enemies being on the same level ground compared to the caster and there are even times where a caster can use chains successfully on enemies that are actually much higher or lower than themselves.
On top of these issues, this bug is strange because using a potion prevents the too high or too low error from preventing chains being cast.
One would think that this issue would be fixed after being well known for over a year, but welcome to the Elder Scrolls Online where the developers joke about broken abilities on April Fools Day and do little else to address certain bugs.
4. Chains and Siege Shieldhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8bmQddcwqI
I don't feel like taking away more of chains versatility is fair. This change to chains was a really ham-fisted way of trying to stop abuse. Why does this skill and gap closers in general give the development team so much trouble? That trouble is really concerning to me.
5. Bar Swapping and Effectshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFkIu1RExw
The number of people that I've had to tell to not use the Ebon sword and shield is in the double digits. The development team should really work on making sure that same effects which are on two bars don't fall off during the bar swap. To the development teams credit, at least entropy works good now, but shield enchantments still fall off.
6. Vulnerable Frameshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqsFNZ0LgQ
Vulnerable frames just aren't fun. It is probably true that the vast majority of tank deaths are because of vulnerable frames meeting latency or FPS lags. As a special bonus, at least developers may be able to use the same fix to the Ebon set to remove the vulnerable frames that happen when a bar swap occurs.
Other Stuff Without a Video1. Orc Passives
The PTS Orc passives just don't feel that good and that is mostly because they are inconsistent. It's racials are just setup in a way where there are too many effects and no individual effect is powerful enough on it's own to make the Orc interesting. Remember, like the Maelstrom Sword, the more effects that something has, because of balance reasons, the more lackluster and situational each effect must be. HP regen is a throw away passive and it's counterpart, healing received, isn't even useful in PVE. Additionally, the Orc increased damage passive only, out of all of the morphed weapon skills, will increase the damage of 5 of those skills and 3 of those are part of the Sword and Board tree.
Compared to Imperial (The best tank race) Orc isn't that great because, as a tank, the extra health and stamina is a much better buffer for survivability than hp regen or healing received. That is just how the cookie crumbles because in the only content that is currently a good gauge for tank builds, the tank, when dying, is dying to a one shot or mechanic and that means that healing received literally can't be effective in that case.
Compared to Khajiit (The best stam DPS race) Orc isn't that great because, as a DPS, the extra DPS from the Orc passive doesn't even effect skills that are used in end game PVE builds. Khajiit increases the damage of bow abilities, abilities greater than 5 meters, and each tick of every dot by, on average, increasing the chance of those effects to be critical hits and, on top of that, the critical hit meta is very important. The Orc passive, compared to the Khajiit passive, is like going from speed 1 to 80 in 6 seconds - it is jarring imbalance.
What I would like to see is pretty simple. Increased ultimate received instead of healing would be a great boon for Orcs that are tanky and this would be an exciting passive for PVE and PVP. Increased % of weapon damage instead of increased damage done with very specific and limited attacks would be a great boon for DPS in PVE and PVP. Orcs would become a strong tank choice in between Nord and Imperial because they would lack the survivability of those other races, but offer more group utility. Orcs would become a good choice for the DPS role in between Redguard and Khajiit because they would lack the resources of the Redguard and the damage of the Khajiit, but would be able to use their coolest and hardest hitting abilities more often.
I see these above changes as creating a good opportunity for players to think about making a race change to Orc or to start a new Orc toon. Placing Orcs in the middle of already well known and established races, instead of in dead last place, will create many opportunities for players to explore new options. Additionally, I feel that the changes that I mention are in line with the Elder Scrolls world.
Ultimate received has, in the past, been part of this game.
Doesn't that passive just shout out "berserker" class. It would be so cool if the berserker archetype was part of this game via the ultimate regen system.
Come on, this would be too cool to not implement.
2. HA Passives and The Maelstrom Sword
Rapid Mending, Wrath, and the Maelstrom sword all share a similar issue. To echo what I said earlier about Orc racial balance,
Remember, like the Maelstrom Sword, the more effects that something has, because of balance reasons, the more lackluster and situational each effect must be.
All 3 of those tanking tools are just too busy and suffer for it. I know from my own personal experience designing game components that it is hard to make something feel exciting and cool without adding more effects to that thing. For simplicity sake and the sake of making stats valuable, we have to keep focused when we design an effect. Without focus, we end up tacking on a bunch of effects to a component, but then have to dull down each of those individual effects.
I don't put points into wrath, I don't use full charged heavy attacks, I doubt that healing received is helping me much because I pretty much only die to being one-shot and because heals are over-healing to begin with, I will never use the Maelstrom Sword.
3. Master Weapons
A picture is worth 1000 words, so I will save you some reading.
The item may say it is CP160, but nobody would be able to tell that this isn't patch 1.5 with a weapon that increases an attacks damage by a lousy 500 points. Let's at least hope that these things still don't chew through soul gems like groceries.
4. Current Ban Waves
We have to get smart and find out what in the world is going on here. We've got cheaters playing, fair players banned temporarily and permanently, and the persons who seem to be in charge of the current banning system seem to have made some very dubious claims which call into question their and their tools ability to detect real cheaters, not have false-positives, and be fair to everyone. There is some real crooked stuff happening and again, it's time for us to get smart about this subject. There need to be some investigations of what exactly is going on.
5. DLC Direction
I don't really know anybody that is content with the upcoming DLC dungeons. There just isn't much content with those places and the itemization isn't that great either. I'd hate to see this game become rotten at it's core due to a DLC system that is more focused on generating microtransactions instead of full plates of content. The microtransaction system just seems to be taking a real sour and anti-consumer turn because of how it currently stifles player voice via requiring subscriptions for a certain tremendous bonus. I want companies to focus on giving me better products and more of those products with each transaction. I don't want to be given less of a product for the same amount of money that used to get me a hearty amount of product. Don't you want players telling non-players that "Wow the DLC is truly superb, it adds alot to the game and is worth every penny" rather than "You don't really need the DLC, it is short and not really worth it, and the player interest is dying?"
End
That is all for now. I hope that this list makes for some good reading, that my suggestions are helpful to you, and, in some cases, see implementation.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @Wrobel @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_Finn . Thank you for reading.
To Record:
Pierce Armor/Elemental Drain Interactions
Synergy Button Mechanics
Critical Chance Modifier Mechanics
Auto Weapon Sheathe
Loot Radius