They should just have nerfed the crit bonus on gear and left shadow, thief and precise alone and all would be fine.
The crit on gear was the only thing that was overperforming

Honestly vrit builds just were too good. All the nerfs are appropriate imo and overall what came out in the end was a really good patch tbh.
They should have just put it on pts last week so we can test and whatever so it doesnt feel like all your testing was for nothing in the end.

Kneighbors wrote: »

Diversity doesn't means it's cool to have every player wearing differently. Farming together some sets was big part of the game for me. This update was a straightdown hammer to group farming DD's sets.

Could not disagree more: it would be very cool to have every player wearing differently. If half the sets in game could be combined with buffs and abilities for even one or two classes and be competitive with BIS, that would be fantastic. It'd be the super deluxe LEGO set for theorycrafters.

Human beings are inventive, they learn, they don't do the same things in the same way over and over again even if it works and certainly not if it doesn't. This is why PvP is so much more engaging than PvE: human opponents are unpredictable and smart. Any broadening of options to give people more choices in their inventiveness means better fights and more fun.

Kurkikohtaus wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

There was multiple set ups for different scenarios.

Nope. More or less the entire population would have been running Julianos/Sorrow/Shadow, period.

Prior to the change in 5th piece Sorrow on the PTS, the values of gear and mundus were pretty close.
Obviously there'd always be some sort of BiS (which would be different for petsorcs to magblades to magDKs), but if they'd fine tuned that crit and left everything else intact, you'd see a lot of diversity with minimal (500-1k dps) difference.

With the crit set bonuses being so effective I can see why that was changed.

I would even be okay with the change that didnt come to precise or the nerf to TFS and mothers sorrow (that was really needed), but that overkill nerf to shadow just broke something inside me when I read the patch notes a second time, because I assumed, as there were almost no changes during the whole PTS weeks, that mundus and traits would launch as shown before.

It hurts so bad when you expect to finally be able to run shadow with a nice critbuild, because thief is finally not all the way better, just to have shadow destroyed and you have to use the *** warrior mundus for PVE..

I think it's awesome all the people complaining that, "this patch left so much confusion about what's BiS"... then ZOS has done their job perfectly!! People should have to figure things out for themselves and the game should be open to ALL sets, not just a couple that are OP. People kick players who aren't wearing BiS... guess what... now perhaps people will now focus more on their skills and playing the game instead of worrying about what everyone else is wearing.

Gan Xing wrote: »

Still reading the notes, but it seems like ZOS decided to change things that they had in PTS. Gilliamtherogue critiques the changes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60e7KbZ8MI

ZOS really stuck a dagger into Gilliam and he works hard for the players and the devs! Now the poor guy can't even test anything since the PTS has not been updated with the sweeping changes! This is by far the worst most unorganized launch I have seen from any developer on any game for any platform.

Disgusted.

ZOS... Destiny 2 is weeks away you'd better get your act together and FAST.

ADarklore wrote: »

I think it's awesome all the people complaining that, "this patch left so much confusion about what's BiS"... then ZOS has done their job perfectly!! People should have to figure things out for themselves and the game should be open to ALL sets, not just a couple that are OP. People kick players who aren't wearing BiS... guess what... now perhaps people will now focus more on their skills and playing the game instead of worrying about what everyone else is wearing.

If you thint that we now march in the beautiful era of diversity, you are very wrong. I fooled around a bit yesterday on several chars and from what I saw... we are right back from where we started.

On PTS you actually had options. Several combinations of sets/munduses/traits gave approximately the same result so you could take what you liked or what you have and make it work. Now?

Now it's not clear what is the BiS, but it's clear that there is a set-in-stone-BiS.

Take my magDK, for example. I had both Sun and BSW and swapped them based on situation. If I went to dungeon I chose BSW, because fights are relatively short in dungs so I needed burst dmg. If I went to trial I chose Sun, because I needed reliable damage.

Now? It's only BSW. I simply cannot afford losing crit.

And now extrapolate. With nerf to crit on sets, you cannot afford losing crit. With nerf to penetration you cannot afford losing penetration. In PvE you need certain amount of crit and penetration no matter what. The only question is - which combination gives it.

These nerfs pretty much killed diversity and also yet again hit "the floor" of the playerbase.

As I see it, they originally made sets a bit too strong and that's exactly where diversity was coming from. You had enough from different combinations - in one case you were a bit low on crit, in other case you were a bit low on SPD, in other you were a bit low on max magicka - but you had enough.

That led to the maximum DPS being higher than in Morrowind. And ZoS are terribly afraid of that. So yet again - they nerfed everything because of a possible performance of 0.0001% playerbase. Leaving average players far behind.

And so here we are. Nerfed again and waiting for the word from Masters of Math.

ZoS just likes to come with interesting decisions... only to cut their own head in the end.

"Si Non Confectus, Non Reficiat" (c)

JinMori wrote: »

Malic wrote: »

Gilliam is one of those people you meet in business sometimes. They are extreme specialists, they know their poop inside and out on a particular vein. Like a commodities trader, or a brain surgeon or DNA researcher. Ive watched a lot of his videos and he is able to retain a great deal of detail over time through different iterations to form a comparative.

Im not here to blow smoke up his poop shoot but lets just say I have two observations:

1. Given the opening paragraph, imagine someone like that having their apple cart upset. He's a bit of a geek, its not a put down its meant in a positive light but its clearly an overreaction. He's talking about things being "nerfed to oblivion" which they werent.

2. he is correct in his overall observation of the situation pertaining to Zenimax. They are not very good at this, there is really no reason we should be at this place at this time. The game has been out for years we should be much closer to balance then we are.

I like Gilliam a lot, the problem is one of expectations. He placed too high expectations on ZOS.

Dude, this is a company that is making a product for us to consume and spend money on, you SHOULD have high expectations.

You can;t continue to excuse zenimax for their bad work. There should be someone to do the balancing properly, and this kind of *** in inexcusable, the guys who are balancing are PAID workers, which means that they should be some kind of expert on the subject.


If you continue to excuse their work, by saying, oh your expectations were just too high, then you will continue to get a *** product.

The things that gilliam does, they should do it also, instead, most of the time i see the developers responding to *** threads like what is your favorite pet in the game, instead, on the the threads that talk about balancing, absolute silence, is this the mark of a great company? I think not.

This.
We always get less than we expect, thats a fact. So if we have mediocre standards we'll get low quality work. If we have high standards we'll at least get a mediocre result.

Kneighbors wrote: »

MyKillv2.0 wrote: »

I know it has been said a couple of times but did anyone not see this coming? I was surprised that it happened this quickly but if you run the SAME sets on every magic class, how is that diversity? Especially when none of those sets are trial or new content sets?

Props to Zo$ for watching PTS and fixing something BEFORE it goes live....wow, what a concept from the company.

Diversity doesn't means it's cool to have every player wearing differently. Farming together some sets was big part of the game for me. This update was a straightdown hammer to group farming DD's sets. Now the concept of "Don't farm, just put what you have, the difference isn't big anyways" is not healthy to the game if you ask me. People hate farming, people complain and cry on it, but they continue to do it and feel pleasure when they get what they were looking for. This is essential part of the game no matter how much you "hate" it (or is it love? :-) )

Totally agree with this, You play for the grind just like any other mmo. I love the sound of mail when i know its a trial or vma reward and when you finally get what you want it feels amazing. For these sets to be basically the same as a set you get some bloke from Deeshan to craft for you is not right and not good for the longevity of the game.

Rickter wrote: »

Hey guys, its really easy to point the finger at zos. And i understand the frustration with the nerfs. But ive been hearing very positive things about the patch from players in game. I think we all need to take a step back and enjoy the content and make the gradual adjustments to accommodate the changes just like any other patch. Gilliam has indeed done alot for the community and works tirelessly at testing information. But hes also the same guy that posted a negative analysis video ( https://youtu.be/fK5D32QGsy0 ) about the morrowind patch changes which launched these boards into hysteria. Fast forward three months and stam dps is not dead and everyone has no sustain issues and dps is at an all time high.

I feel a lot of you should try and find the answers yourselves instead of taking the words of a few as gold.

That video was from the very first version of the PTS for morrowind patch... after that, and thanks to the community the massive nerf was not THAT massive, still crap, but at least playable. So yeah, things would have been really worse if, among other members of the community of course, Gilliam wouldnt have done such a detailed analysis of the *** ZOS was bringing to the table.

Thanks.