Damage in PvP

Ghost-Shot · July 2016

Anazasi wrote: »

_Chaos wrote: »

Anazasi wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

Here's how to accomplish what you are asking for, Sypher:

Remove Battle spirit, reintroduce soft caps.

been there done that.

They removed battle spirit and brought back soft caps? When did they do that?
I can guarantee you since the introduction of battle spirit they have not removed it, not once.

no battle spirit was 20% at launch but AR assualt line allowed you to negate it almost completely with buff. They also had an option at launch to turn off battle spirit. So if one can turn it off than it was removed right. So lets try thinking down a path that ZOS would be likely to consider.

You could turn off Battle Leveling not Battle Spirit.

Cinbri · July 2016

One thing i remember for sure after Battle Spirit was increased - it became sugnificantly harder to kill big groups by small group.

Grunim · July 2016

Bashev wrote: »

This balance that you are talking about was accomplished in the old combat with the soft caps. Especially the spell damage wasnt affected by the weapon that you had, it was based on level and the bonuses that you had. On top of that t was capped.
Currently almost all classes can chieve high damage, high sustain and high mitigation except mDKs. Thats why when you start playing your mDK you feel that something should be done. I totally agree but I dont believe that it will happen though @wrobel mentioned in one of the shows that he wants to change the combat and they were in a prototype phase --> https://youtube.com/watch?v=bKu7GnANIO8&feature=youtu.be&t=3654

Thank you so much for linking this. I completely forgot this was mentioned back in February's ESO Live show.

So five months ago or so it was still in prototype phase. Does anyone know how far along that means before it reaches a testing stage for players? Six more months from now? 12 months? 18 months from now? Any guesses?

Ffastyl · July 2016

Over the course of the game's life, Battle Spirit has had the following effects:

Increase Maximum Health by 500
Increase Armor Penetration by 500

Increase Maximum Health by 5000
Decrease Incoming Damage by 20%
Decrease Healing received by 20%

Increase Maximum Health by 5000
Decrease Incoming Damage by 50%
Decrease Healing received by 50%
Decrease Damage Shield strength by 50%

Ffastyl · July 2016

Grunim wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

This balance that you are talking about was accomplished in the old combat with the soft caps. Especially the spell damage wasnt affected by the weapon that you had, it was based on level and the bonuses that you had. On top of that t was capped.
Currently almost all classes can chieve high damage, high sustain and high mitigation except mDKs. Thats why when you start playing your mDK you feel that something should be done. I totally agree but I dont believe that it will happen though @wrobel mentioned in one of the shows that he wants to change the combat and they were in a prototype phase --> https://youtube.com/watch?v=bKu7GnANIO8&feature=youtu.be&t=3654

Thank you so much for linking this. I completely forgot this was mentioned back in February's ESO Live show.

So five months ago or so it was still in prototype phase. Does anyone know how far along that means before it reaches a testing stage for players? Six more months from now? 12 months? 18 months from now? Any guesses?

Coding is almost always faster from scratch. Given it takes 4 months for a zone to be added (which is largely new content/coding) and they mentioned it was in prototyping stage, about 12 to 18 months is my guess. Editing code takes a lot longer because you need to understand what every line does in the grand scheme before you edit it or the whole thing can fall apart. How long it has taken to improve lag in Cyrodiil is a good example how difficult editing pre-existing code can be.

On the "prototyping" part, one of the Devs that coded in the system allowing us to pick up anything in the environment like in the single player games explained this on a now very old ESO Live. Prototypes are literally proofs of concept, often no more than bare code - something a coder could whip up in a day or two. The code is written pertaining just to the concept and is as bare bones as possible - just to prove/show how the concept can work or be implemented. It very often won't play nice with pre-existing code since it wasn't written with that code in mind, so once a prototype has been made and the concept approved, the team starts from scratch writing the code for the actual ingame system. The advantage of prototypes for the Devs is they are quickly written, and therefore quickly rewritten, and can afford to scrap, scrap and scrap again, not losing any real investment. For us players, prototypes mean they are before the stage where the Devs even know if they will consider it, and loooooooong before the stage where they could test anything on internal servers. By now there may be a version being tested on internal servers, but is likely in alpha or pre-alpha stage at best.

rfennell_ESO · July 2016

Sypher wrote: »

I'm eager to discuss this more with you guys. Let me know what you think.

The main issue I see is that the max damage builds don't seem hindered by lacking regen.

Sypher wrote: »

I'm basically trying to bring back the effects of soft caps without bringing back the actual soft cap system. Zenimax will not ever bring back softcaps, the game has changed a lot for them to do that. There are other ways to achieve similar results though.

The importance of regen being nil to certain players is really the issue.

Not going to get in how or why, but there are far too many max damage builds that don't seem to have the resource problems they ought be having.

For instance... a recently posted damage build with no sustain that was posted recently... if you have seen the build creator in game, you would know that not only does low regen not remotely hurt him, he spends most of his time in combat dodging everything and roll dodging with impunity.

If you refocus the priority on resources and their replenishment you narrow the strength of max damage builds. It's not even really a refocus, just make it so the rules always apply and if someone really wants to go no sustain they won't be sustained.

Lokey0024 · July 2016

So move the CPs from the green % recovery tree into the blue tree so you have to choose sustain v dmg out put.

Or Jack up the midigation on armors so the only way to get 100% midigation is thru abilities (corrosive armor) or specing thru the cp tree by making it scale up to an extra 25% dmg (approx 16k penetration) to balance with the amount of dmg that can be got from Mighty or Elemental expert.

Or reverse the cp scaling on the low end of cps. Make it increase slower at first, then once you hit 50 invested it starts scaling higher.

Just a couple random thoughts.

Bashev · July 2016

Lokey0024 wrote: »

Or reverse the cp scaling on the low end of cps. Make it increase slower at first, then once you hit 50 invested it starts scaling higher.

Just a couple random thoughts.

This is very interesting idea.

juhasman · July 2016

Remove or lower Battle Spirit and make all campaigns non CP. I know stupid idea but who said i cant dreaming?

1st month after Tamriel unlimited still was fun on PvP when people had not much cp and there was no soft caps.

Sandman929 · July 2016

IMO the problem is that mitigation and healing are tied to the same attributes as damage output. The effectiveness of healing, CC break cost, block cost, dodge roll cost (and perhaps a chance of successfully dodging) to name a few should be tied to max health.
That would divorce mitigation from damage and players would have to balance.

Zheg · July 2016

Sandman929 wrote: »

IMO the problem is that mitigation and healing are tied to the same attributes as damage output. The effectiveness of healing, CC break cost, block cost, dodge roll cost (and perhaps a chance of successfully dodging) to name a few should be tied to max health.
That would divorce mitigation from damage and players would have to balance.

Youd need an exception for trollplar. My weakness once upon a time was a limited stam pool, if dodge were cheaper ... GG. And that was before the heavy armor and invig drain buffs.

Mako1132 · July 2016

You must reintroduce soft caps, and you can even integrate it into the CP system in a way that would feel rewarding. Anything else is just foolish. Stats are too extreme for changes to any ability to provide meaningful balance. If you nerf an ability (or every ability in battle spirit's case) because it does too much damage/healing you then make it only viable for the build you intended to decrease its effectiveness for. Trying to balance the game around these kinds of stats for the last year has only pushed everyone into that max damage meta in order to stay effective. The game would be much more enjoyable with slight (relatively compared to now) differences in stats regardless of gear, and more emphasis put on what skills/passives you use and why in combination with 5pc set bonuses/ an expanded CP system that has more talents like Arcane Well and less passive state enhancers.

tinythinker · July 2016

However the goal from the video is accomplished, I have wished for it for a while. I'm one of those players who was best in PvP during 1.5. In BWB I was very effective as a Sorc only wearing blue gear with sets like part Twilight's Embrace and, what was it, either Torug's or Seducers, and got plots of killing blows yet also protected/healed my small group with my resto staff. No spell damage glyphs or anything. Similar with my Templar on the vet server then.

I'm NOT asking to go back to 1.5, but, it did have more build diversity and you could have OK but not all golded BIS gear and still be very competitive. Obviously the people with the best gear and most skill still had an advantage then, and they should still have one now, but it would be so nice to diversify builds and roles in Cyrodiil. I will still be a derpy potato scrub, but it will be good for the game overall if the limits of the damage spectrum is moved toward the mean. The idea of having to make hard choices between sustain and damage is also important.

Who knows, maybe a dev will show up here and chime in?

DHale · July 2016

This would seriously screw pve rip trials and vet dungeons. That is if you lower ppls damage under any circumstances.

tinythinker · July 2016

DHale wrote: »

This would seriously screw pve rip trials and vet dungeons. That is if you lower ppls damage under any circumstances.

He said it would be PvP only.

Wollust · July 2016

DHale wrote: »

This would seriously screw pve rip trials and vet dungeons. That is if you lower ppls damage under any circumstances.

Possible damage output is way too high for any of the Veteran Dungeons though.
Same goes for all the trials actually.
The only exception may be vMoL Hard Mode, though can't really be said as no one has finished it yet.

So no, it would not screw PvE, it would make PvE more demanding, challenging and ultimately more fun.
Wtb mantikora with actual mechanics instead of stacking up and burning it with 40k+ dps

Ffastyl · July 2016

DHale wrote: »

This would seriously screw pve rip trials and vet dungeons. That is if you lower ppls damage under any circumstances.

Mobs can always be rebalanced around player stats.

Makkir · July 2016

-Stacking weapon dmg past a certain point starts to degrade your healing effectiveness

-Give Vigor the surge treatment in Cyrodiil

Ghost-Shot · July 2016

DHale wrote: »

This would seriously screw pve rip trials and vet dungeons. That is if you lower ppls damage under any circumstances.

We did just fine in trials when soft caps were a thing and everyone's damage was equivalent to less than half of what we do now, had a much larger trials community and pvp community back then too.

Lava_Croft · July 2016

Protip: Normalize your voice volume or stop moving all the time.

Good idea, but it's all useless if ZOS doesn't fix bugs, decreases latency and has an effective anti-cheating system in place.

Animus-ESO · July 2016

Sypher, the answer to all our issues are soft caps. If they are done right it would make it so we could get ride of battle spirit.

CyrusArya · July 2016

The high damage in PvP is balanced by how tanky some builds are capable of being atm. I don't think you can directly nerf damage without making certain builds truly unkillable.

rfennell_ESO · July 2016

jasonthorpeb14_ESO wrote: »

Sypher, the answer to all our issues are soft caps. If they are done right it would make it so we could get ride of battle spirit.

I liked the soft cap system, I still really don't get why it was scrapped.

DKsUnite · July 2016

makes me miss 1.5 and before

Ffastyl · July 2016

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

jasonthorpeb14_ESO wrote: »

Sypher, the answer to all our issues are soft caps. If they are done right it would make it so we could get ride of battle spirit.

I liked the soft cap system, I still really don't get why it was scrapped.

"By popular demand from the players."

Solariken · July 2016

Yes, I agree 100%. PvP would be a thousand times more enjoyable for everyone and would help level the playing field so that some really awesome build variety can occur.

Once the bottom end damage is increased, I feel that the first adjustment they should make is reducing the damage scaling of max stamina and max magicka. I want to feel like I can balance my resource pool sizes a little bit more without sacrificing so much damage.

Lokey0024 · July 2016

CyrusArya wrote: »

The high damage in PvP is balanced by how tanky some builds are capable of being atm. I don't think you can directly nerf damage without making certain builds truly unkillable.

how tanky some builds are...

Its like building a NB burst around how well a templar can heal, then nerf the heal.

Make armor midigate dmg. Currently about 10-14k armor pen is standard because of breech and rend (10k low end non mace, 14k high end of HA)

This makes for real easy gameplay because you CP all damage into mighty or elemental expert for the biggest gains in dmg. If you raise armor to a point where investing in penetration as a choice to combat heavy armor builds.( The amount per point would have to be raised. )

umagon · July 2016

I have played a heavy armor tankblade for quite some time and I find the problem is that the more tank related and utility setups are easily countered by a high damage out. Armor needs to be more effective and not easily by-passed by players just stacking damage and penetration. If the higher end of the damage spectrum is forced to lower their damage to pick up tools to allow them to defeat more utilitarian and tank builds, then there would also be greater build diversity. That isn’t saying tanks for example should become unstoppable but there needs to be more than two factors to defeat armor. Which now are just pure damage and penetration.

DDuke · July 2016

So here's another option:

Increase health in Cyrodiil by 50 000 (yes, 50 000).
Balance GDB, Bone Shield, Blazing Shield etc around the new health numbers.
Remove the 50% damage reduction in PvP.
Keep the healing/shield strength reduction.

What this accomplishes is the following:

With 70-80k average health you won't be getting instagibbed anymore, no matter how much someone stacks damage.
People will be able to outDPS healing/shield spam and kill their targets, even if they play a build not focused on max DPS.

On top of this, I'd also increase the skill costs significantly in Cyrodiil, as currently you're not really punished in any way for running full spell/weapon dmg jewelry & 100% dmg gear.

Lokey0024 · July 2016

DDuke wrote: »

So here's another option:
Increase health in Cyrodiil by 50 000 (yes, 50 000).

Balance GDB, Bone Shield, Blazing Shield etc around the new health numbers.

Remove the 50% damage reduction in PvP.

Keep the healing/shield strength reduction.

What this accomplishes is the following:
With 70-80k average health you won't be getting instagibbed anymore, no matter how much someone stacks damage.

People will be able to outDPS healing/shield spam and kill their targets, even if they play a build not focused on max DPS.

On top of this, I'd also increase the skill costs significantly in Cyrodiil, as currently you're not really punished in any way for running full spell/weapon dmg jewelry & 100% dmg gear.

Didnt they do this with WoW?