To preface this i have not played the pts (xbox player) Just my thoughts about the balance changes currently being proposed.

Resource management.

Mostly i dislike most of the changes proposed here, I understand the desire for this from ZOS's perspective but as a player it is a nightmare running out of magika/stamina. In most high end gameplay you run out and you are dead. Though even with these changes it would probably be possible to sustain with the right sets you would take a significant loss in dps for running these instead of the current BIS gear.

The changes to a lot of skills that restore resource to scale based off character level seems a bad one, nearly every class in the game stacks a single stat most dps/healers running at 35k plus main stat and tanks running at around 20k of each. to base these values off character level rather then a percentage of the stat that the build has focused into seems unintuitive.

For pvp i understand that having access to large amounts of regen or abilities to restore resource is a problem however can this not be solved by an addition to the modifiers you receive upon entering cyrodyll. I understand the amount of programming required would be rather large to split apart the effects of many skills and passives between pve and pvp, plus the problem of easy transition for newer players. However my argument would be there is no way to properly balance such a large variety of skills so they work effectively in both pve and pvp, as for the problem of newer player transition pvp is always hard on the newer players even with the game as it is now its a wildly different skillset.

If i was thinking about changing the way resource management worked in pvp i would add a second playlist of the battlegrounds that had new modifiers each week (similar to the Blizzard type brawls in their games) these would be fun for the community while providing valuable data for ZOS on changes that might be worthwhile going into the rest of the game.

Dragonknight

Battle roar change: Dragonknights arguably have the most problems sustaining in long fights a nerf to the amount of recorce they restore for their stacked stat would really hurt them in long fights, i personally preferred it when this passive restored 75% of each resource. i know this is a problem in pvp i my mind changing this skill to restore 30-40% of resource in pvp would fix this problem, as in pve having the flood of resource in a long battle is needed for dks to sustain.

Helping hands: Not a terrible change mainly a nerf to stamina dragon knights, wont hurt tanks too much.

Igneous Shield: Really dislike this the shield is fairly negligible for all builds but tanks on my magika and stam dks the shield only protects for around 6k, in maelstrom or in a fair few dungeons it will be all but impossible to utilize major mending, maybe change it so on activation it provides a 3 second major mending buff but you can only get that buff every 6 seconds from this ability.

Nightblade

Not well practiced on night blades, i like that leaching strikes is now a stamina morph, Night blades so suffer in survivability so an addition to health restore would be welcome. don't know how this will affect them without seeing the magnitude of the nerf.

Sorcerer

Dark exchange: already takes a while to cast but cant see 0.2 seconds making much of a difference.

Templar

Spear Shards: i dont really understand the reasoning in the developer notes in this, this change wont mean the Templar wont have to feed resource to the team (if anything it will be more due to the changes) not keen on making this and necrotic orb the same, seem to take away from class specialization.

Eclipse: Never used it however in pve 3.5 second abilities are horrible to maintain (wasn't the sorcs curse changed so it lines up a bit better, why make one rotation good and in next patch hurt a different classes rotation?).

Repentance: This is a horrible change, it will become a pointless morph for anything but a stam Templar, Takes away an efficient heal and stam restore from Templar healers.

Rushed ceremony: I dont mind this too much the heal hasn't been nerfed will just require a little better positioning from healers.

Sacred ground: I understand why Zos wants to change this but maybe tack major mending onto a different skill in the templar skill lines. templars are a healing class they should have some access to this buff without having to heavy attack with a resto staff.

Armor

The cost reduction nerf in these skill lines is really going to hurt with the nerfs to champion points ect.

Vigor

I get it it is probably too cheap, however it is also the only unconditional heal that most stam classes have access to in pvp, this will make maelstrom a ton harder for stam classes.

Caltops

Thankyou, thankyou so much.

Racial

Argonian: this is fine if all the character level scalings were at a "cap" of 38k i wouldn't have too much to complain about.

Redguard: Redguard is chosen for stam dps for a sustained fighter i dont hink i have ever met a stam dps with less stam then 16k why nerf this?

Champion System

I like the front loading that seems like a good idea it will open up trials and maelstrom for more players. I really dislike the nerfs to the most commonly used passives losing 10% damage and resistances is a huge deal in a game that has so many bosses based on doing enough damage to a boss in a given time.


Bow-Expert/Melee expert I like these changes this will make the tree much more useful as a whole.

Ironclad: good change will make this more desirable in pvp

Magician/Warlord: really dislike this change as i have said above running out of makgica and stamina is not fun gameplay, with the removal of these passives i have no idea what to put points in in the red trees for a dps most of the things are useless, if these passives are being removed the red tre needs to have a whole revamp to give each style of play (tank/healer/dps) an efficiant way to use these points.

Summary

Im worried, really worried. I was extremely exited for Morrowind, now after reading the PTS patch notes im sat here wondering if im even going to be able to complete maelstrom and veteran trials. Zos i understand where you are coming from with these changes, when you made the game you wanted it to be about resource management with no cooldowns, however today management is not really a thing f you are good at maintaining your rotations and buffs and you know what, thats fantastic i love the combat system in this game, i love there are no cooldowns and i love that with practice at my rotation with a good healer i can have strong dps for as long as i need to. With these changes i can see myself being continually frustrated in combat, i feel like trials teams will either not be able to get the dps to get through bosses or have the team run out of everything halfway through.

In my opinion the only way to balance both Pve and Pve is to have a deeper split between the two, have skills work differently in each, then when there is a problem with one ability in a certain area it can be changed without affecting the other side of the playerbase.