PTS Patch Notes v2.7.0 (Homestead)

Titansteele · January 2017

Wow with all those nerfs I am glad that I can buy a walled off house to hide behind as fighting things is clearly no longer the intent

Universe · January 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Combat & Gameplay
General

Sorcerer
Velocious Curse (Daedric Curse morph):
Renamed this morph to Haunting Curse.

This morph no longer shortens the duration of the curse to 3.5 seconds from 6 seconds; instead, it causes the curse to echo and trigger one additional time 6 seconds after the first explosion.

Weapon
Destruction Staff

Elemental Storm:
Force Shock: This ability and its morphs can no longer be reflected. Beam-type attacks cannot be reflected, but are able to be blocked.

The nerf to velocious curse is unnecessary.
There are already too few abilities a sorcerer can utilize in order to burst down an enemy in pvp, now this ability is much less effective.
The fact that force shock and it's morphs can no longer be reflected is great.
It is now viable against Dragonknights who spam their wings, more pressure.
Also, I believe the following shields should be buffed to 12 seconds:
1) Hardened Ward
2) Harness Magicka
The reapplying of those shields every 6 seconds is just too much for sorcerers.
Those shields are the only line of defense for sorcerers(light armor is essentially useless) and there isn't enough time to cast the different damage abilities, not enough burst.
It is possible to burst an enemy in pvp but it is much harder than it used to be.
Also, the magicka cost of reapplying the shields every 6 seconds is significant.

The prices of the homes are fine but I believe that if a player buys the 3 manors from the crown store, he/she shouldn't receive the associated title...
This is extremely wrong...
The associated titles should be blocked by achievements and the amount of gold the player has accumulated.
The titles system needs to be separated from the crown store.
Furthermore, I believe that certain homes should be removed from crown store purchase:
1.Large Homes.
2.Manors.

If anyone can buy the home from the crown store, why bother with gold ?
This isn't right.
The player should work harder to gain access to those homes.
I don't like the casual approach that anyone can buy any home from the crown store.
Please make the purchase of the higher tier homes harder so it will be a real achievement.

I have a lot more to write about the "balance" update but I won't make this post tldr.
In conclusion, it's obvious to me that this update didn't address many major balance issues, such as the superiority of the heavy armor skill line & stamina builds.

Enodoc · January 2017

Lord wrote: »

I believe that if a player buys the 3 manors from the crown store, he/she shouldn't receive the associated title...
This is extremely wrong...
The associated titles should be blocked by achievements and the amount of gold the player has accumulated.
The titles system needs to be seperated from the crown store.

Definitely agree with this. No titles if you buy from the Crown Store.

MarkusLiberty · January 2017

Definitely agree with this. No titles if you buy from the Crown Store.

That would make those titles permanently unavailable to those players, I don't think that's a fair solution.

LittlePumpkin030 · January 2017

Enodoc wrote: »

Lord wrote: »

I believe that if a player buys the 3 manors from the crown store, he/she shouldn't receive the associated title...
This is extremely wrong...
The associated titles should be blocked by achievements and the amount of gold the player has accumulated.
The titles system needs to be seperated from the crown store.

Definitely agree with this. No titles if you buy from the Crown Store.

Who actually cares about titles? O__O

Franieck · January 2017

To me this has been the most useless update so far... Couldn't care less about housing, the balance update only nerfed my magtemplar and from reading the posts I don't think they actually managed to solve the issues they were trying to address in PVP but actually managed to make PVE worse...
Only good think (to me at least) coming in this update is the Ebony motif... Looking forward to see how it looks

Hellsbunnies · January 2017

I'm assuming as nothing else has been said, that the furniture skill will use the existing motifs?

LittlePumpkin030 · January 2017

Hellsbunnies wrote: »

I'm assuming as nothing else has been said, that the furniture skill will use the existing motifs?

They said the 10 styles of races

Izaki · January 2017

Love Wizard wrote: »

Decent changes, but it annoys me to see so much ignorance when it comes to PvE balancing. Nightblade still remains the worst, and you decide to nerf it in wierd ways, I guess the nerfs are according to PvP, but still. I'd understand if you'd want to nerf raid dps as a whole, but why do you then end up in buffing magicka sorc and magicka dk, with changes that seems to impact PVE solely.

Anyways, nice updates. Hoped for some more balance, but this time I expected nothing less from you ZoS ^^

Time to close my nightblade threads and give up on this hopeless class as everyone else has been doing, I thought you were gonna make it ok at best, but now it's just lightly put a pile of horseshit.

Wut? Sorcs got buffed in PvE? If loosing 42% of damage per cast on Curse is a buff to you, then what's a nerf?!

Elsonso · January 2017

MrSinister213 wrote: »

At least [snip] is right around the corner.

Eventually, this is going to become the slogan for that game.

blazjit420 wrote: »

DOES THIS PATCH FIX LAG? IF NOT I DONT WANT IT!

I think they have done all they are going to do on that subject.

Enodoc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Combat & Gameplay
Buffs & Debuffs
Created a new debuff category, Minor Magickasteal. This is a debuff applied to enemies that restores a flat value of Magicka to the attacker every second (400 Magicka every second at CP160).

There has got to be a better word to use than 'Magickasteal'. It's quite cumbersome. My first thought, to go along with 'Lifesteal' (which is not called 'Healthsteal' for probably the same reason), would be 'Manasteal'.

Tend to agree that "magickasteal" not only looks odd, it parses wrong. Magicka Teal is how I read it the first time. Now I am worried I have a peech impediment.

InvitationNotFound wrote: »

I just took a short peak at the patch notes, but somehow this feels like a *** up social experiment.

This is because the changes seem random and incomplete, and I cannot argue against that.

As near as I can tell, the individual changes of buffs and nerfs are fine. Specific play styles will be gleeful or upset, depending on builds and preferences. Naturally, when a nerf hits a popular build, we end up with Chicken Little comments at every turn.

What boggles me is that there is no apparent overarching goal for these changes. They appear to be a series of individual goal-oriented changes, where the goal is not the same from change to change. I am seeing mathematics driving changes, where they are changing a skill due to some global Business Intelligence research. These are along the lines of "X is over/underused" and so they make a change to correct that. This is "ZOS Normal" for skill changes.

That might be considered balancing, but some of the changes have me wanting to hear from Wrobel what the deal is.

I am curious as to what problem they were solving when they changed Coagulating Blood from health to Magicka. My guess is that they want a Magicka->Health transfer skill, probably in conjunction with trying to make a hybrid character more viable, but there are better ways to do this.

One of the problems in ESO that I guess will be with us until the end of time is the idea of "Stamina morphs", since we add Relentless Focus to the growing list of mistakes in this department. They really need to stop doing this. They need to sit down and design Magicka skill lines, and Stamina skill lines. This is like wanting to buy an electric car, but you have to first buy a gasoline car and drive it for a while, then you can change it to an electric car. All the class skills start as gas engine Magicka.

If you want to make a hybrid class work, what you start with is a collection of Magicka skill lines and Stamina skill lines. They start with an attribute and stay with that attribute. No morphs that change from one to the other. You make both types of skills something that people will want. You don't even have to change destruction staff.

Destruction staff. Why does blocking with a frost destruction staff with the tri-focus passive use magicka instead of stamina? This just seems very targeted at an extremely specific and narrow goal. A social experiment to get people to slot and use Magicka skills?

In the end, it makes me think that the combat devs really don't see a difference between Magicka and Stamina. They pick whichever one meets their goals at the moment, and those goals seem to include correcting "misuse" by players. They should just admit it and reduce to one combat attribute: Power. Leave Stamina with the physical movement (sprint, block, dodge, etc) and base all class and weapon skills off of Power. This better fits the goals of the original game, to be a Magicka (Power) based game. It is not as if any of this is rooted in Elder Scrolls, anyway.

The Combat team also seems too micro-goal oriented, and I question whether they are stepping far enough back to see the whole picture. This is not the first update where I have felt that they are number and spreadsheet driven and those tools dictate specific changes to specific skills at a micro-level, without taking into consideration enough of the macro-level.

Summary:
1. If they want to keep Magicka and Stamina, make class skills lines that are based on specific attributes from the start. No morphs to change attributes. This makes the game more consistent, and would actually be easier to explain to new players. It can also help to encourage hybrid builds, when done properly.
2. If they are going to insist on making Magicka and Stamina two sides of the same coin for combat skills, just merge them into one attribute and stop worrying about it. The efforts being undertaken within the existing system make the combat team look arbitrary in execution.

cschwingeb14_ESO · January 2017

The curse change should be a DPS buff for PvE. You get 2 explosions for 1 cast every 12 seconds, with your spamable taking up the other casts.

The skill is now completely useless in PvP though. Why not combine haunting curse with the pet curse. 12s of pet curse that explodes twice. And leave V Curse alone

Please no "PvP nerfed because of PvE" comments. They are just not constructive

As a sorc, I'm mostly saddened by all the attention pets are getting. They are so terrible for anything endgame. It's not like the guys soloing v dungeons with them need the buff

Hellsbunnies · January 2017

@LittlePumpkin030 really? Dammit I wanted a daedric toilet!

SantieClaws · January 2017

Hellsbunnies wrote: »

@LittlePumpkin030 really? Dammit I wanted a daedric toilet!

It is always possible that Daedric style housing items may be later added. Khajiit thinks possibly a bedroom suite in that style might be very popular with some dark elves yes. The ones downstairs at the tavern ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Elara_Northwind · January 2017

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!

lucky_Sage · January 2017

why was whip buffed. why wasn't the dots made more valuable.
don't know about Coagulating Blood was hoping for a HoT though
happy with new fire leap
why nerf standard?
why nerf Velocious Curse if the new version doesn't stack with each other magsorc or gone in pvp still nerfed it it does.
why take Templars only good stun
no buff to magblade?
destroy ult only 5% nerf really?
wish proc would have global cooldown would be better so wouldn't get killed by 2 or 3 proc at a time

and where is pts?
is this patch notes a new years prank is that why pts isn't up yet

Taternater · January 2017

There's the racial styles, there's aquatic furniture that randomly gets caught while fishing, there is also dark brotherhood furniture that the shadowy supplier randomly gives. And regarding motifs, the notes say that you won't need motifs to craft the racial styles. However motif knowledge affects for frequently master writs drop from max tier writ boxes.

@Fran - There's actually additional new motifs than just ebony. 2 come out of the Shadows of Hin Fist dlc dungeons, one can be looted from craglorn chests and bosses, and one that's bought with currency gained from master writs. Of course you may have seen that and are just interested in ebony. It will probably look cool.

Witar · January 2017

Hey guys. How much crowns will the manors costs? Gold pricing is kind of high, maybe it will be easier to get those for crowns.

bebynnag · January 2017

@ZOS_GinaBruno

I was happy to see the following change

Exploration & Itemization

Updated all Motif Books, Motif Chapters, and Provisioning recipes to stack to 200!

but is it possible that treasure maps could also be made stackable!

nothing worse than finding a treasure map, that you already have a copy of in your inventry & in you bank, aspecially when it is for a zone you need an item for, and your feeling lucky!

AzureTheAware · January 2017

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

2 questions:

1) so does that mean invisibility is now fixed for nbs?

2) will Stygian set still work with clouding swarm or did that just get completed killed instead of just making the invisibility unbreakable like it used to be?

RIP Stygian i would say

Enodoc · January 2017

MarkusLiberty wrote: »

Definitely agree with this. No titles if you buy from the Crown Store.

That would make those titles permanently unavailable to those players, I don't think that's a fair solution.

Hmm... I see what you mean. But you shouldn't be able to buy titles either, as they are supposed to be a reward for completing content.

Taternater · January 2017

Enodoc wrote: »

MarkusLiberty wrote: »

Definitely agree with this. No titles if you buy from the Crown Store.

That would make those titles permanently unavailable to those players, I don't think that's a fair solution.

Hmm... I see what you mean. But you shouldn't be able to buy titles either, as they are supposed to be a reward for completing content.

What if the title is The Great Whale? bought with 10,000 crowns?

SophiCat · January 2017

I think zenimax is missing out on a big chance to sell here. They could put a token amount of storage in the houses... say 20 or 30 slots, then sell more through the crown store.
Could be a big seller!

I'm also very very glad some things will be stacking...
any way we could stack up siege items like trebuchet???

SantieClaws · January 2017

SophiCat wrote: »

I think zenimax is missing out on a big chance to sell here. They could put a token amount of storage in the houses... say 20 or 30 slots, then sell more through the crown store.
Could be a big seller!

Khajiit expects that will be the case in a future update.

It is just that storage was simply not ready to be released at this time.

Yours sincerely
Santie Claws

Hellsbunnies · January 2017

SantieClaws wrote: »

Hellsbunnies wrote: »

@LittlePumpkin030 really? Dammit I wanted a daedric toilet!

It is always possible that Daedric style housing items may be later added. Khajiit thinks possibly a bedroom suite in that style might be very popular with some dark elves yes. The ones downstairs at the tavern ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Yes @SantieClaws but the sheets would have to be a seducer set. :P

LittlePumpkin030 · January 2017

SantieClaws wrote: »

Hellsbunnies wrote: »

@LittlePumpkin030 really? Dammit I wanted a daedric toilet!

It is always possible that Daedric style housing items may be later added. Khajiit thinks possibly a bedroom suite in that style might be very popular with some dark elves yes. The ones downstairs at the tavern ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

@SantieClaws This one greets you with a formal bow. I can't wait that we can dance together in our homes

SantieClaws · January 2017

Khajiit has thought of a most important question.

Will the template characters come with some mudballs? Otherwise this puts the template travellers at a great disadvantage to those who have been copied over to Test Tamriel.

Yes this one is so twitchy and so full of so many questions. The misery of ignorance can only relieved when Test Tamriel it lives again!

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

LittlePumpkin030 wrote: »

SantieClaws wrote: »

Hellsbunnies wrote: »

@LittlePumpkin030 really? Dammit I wanted a daedric toilet!

It is always possible that Daedric style housing items may be later added. Khajiit thinks possibly a bedroom suite in that style might be very popular with some dark elves yes. The ones downstairs at the tavern ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

@SantieClaws This one greets you with a formal bow. I can't wait that we can dance together in our homes

Ah hah - so you are the very same Little Pumpkin

Khajiit she wondered!

Oh yes - this one intends for there to be many parties and much dancing!

EnOeZ · January 2017

Mmm... that Black Rose nerf

Moglijuana · January 2017

EnOeZ wrote: »

Mmm... that Black Rose nerf

What nerf. Now it's more useful for mag & stam gets a bit more utility.

Countcalorie · January 2017

Mazio wrote: »

Adenoma wrote: »

I think the chains major expedition buff is really interesting, but I still think that it's so weird to attach a motility buff to a gap closer. Typically, we want mobility to get away from things and a gap closer to... close the gap to things. Why attach the ability to escape to an ability to get close?

The change to coagulating blood is profoundly odd. Now we've made our healing independent of the urgency of the heal? Just for example, if I were to have a 40k magicka pool and I were down to my last cast of coagulating blood I'd only have an approximiately (doing some pretty round numbers off the cuff) 6k heal (but now it can crit). That doesn't strike me as overwhelming. It just means that coagulating blood is only useful in a situation where you are both incredibly low on resources - about to die due to low magicka. Often when you're desperate for a burst heal you want to be in a recoverable position, but this means that in order to burst heal you've got to have nothing left in the tank with which you can follow up.

Well, you see the major expedition was increased from 2 seconds to 8, making it extremely useful on a gap closer.

Basically, i think the intended use is that you can now gap close to your intended victim, give them a couple of whips with the new super buffed mega lethal 5% extra dangerous whip, pull their pants down and use the remaining few seconds of major expedition to get kinda moderately but not really that far away from your now very angry and exposed victim.

Then, using your shiny new ice staff you will block all incoming damage from the angry attacker that is now chasing you, depleting all your magicka ready for that burst heal from coagulating blood that you obviously don't need anyway because you have your new magic tanking stick of doom. But in the event they break your shield twig you can pop your awesome new burst heal. Now one of two things will happen. You will die because you used all your magicka pool for one heal, or a Templar who has realised that after the nerf to Jesus Beam their class is now entirely broken and has now devoted their life to helping others will Magickalsteal an entire zerg for you and give you resources.

Unless your victim was a Mag Nightblade, in which case they probably give 38% less of a **** about what you did to them and poof into the shadows, never to be seen or heard from again.

*this post was written with much alcohol, and even more sarcasm

"Best post of 2017 yet"

Enodoc · January 2017

SophiCat wrote: »

I think zenimax is missing out on a big chance to sell here. They could put a token amount of storage in the houses... say 20 or 30 slots, then sell more through the crown store.
Could be a big seller!

I'm also very very glad some things will be stacking...
any way we could stack up siege items like trebuchet???

It would be great if they would look into stacking siege again. @SophiCat for a bit of history, siege weapons used to stack up to 5, back at launch, but there was a bug where a part-used siege would stack with an unused siege, and then either all sieges of that type would lose some durability, or the part-used siege would be restored to full health. To get around this, they disabled siege stacking. I would suggest though, that if they just made it so that used sieges couldn't stack, and unused ones could, that would alleviate this issue.