I understand you wanted to buff light attacks but..

OrphanHelgen · August 2018

Medium weave attacks deals less damage than a light attack, which is a bit strange since you do hold down the button a bit longer and you clearly see two fireballs hit the target instead of one.
Also looking at the newest items, abilities and changes coming out, favors light attacks only and not heavy attacks.

In Patch Notes v4.0.5 - Summerset & Update 18:

Rebalanced Light and Heavy Attack damage across weapon types to reinforce the concept that Light Attacks are for dealing damage and Heavy Attacks are for restoring resources. In general, this means:
Light Attacks with One Hand and Shield, Dual Wield, Bow, Destruction Staff, and Restoration Staff weapons will deal more damage.
Light Attacks with Two Handed weapons will deal less damage.
Heavy Attacks with Destruction Staff and Restoration Staff weapons will deal more damage.
Heavy Attacks with Two Handed, One Hand and Shield, Dual Wield, and Bow weapons will deal less damage. (stealth nerf to stam dk)

Empower: Increase the damage of your next light attack by 40%
Aegis of galanwe: After successfully blocking, you have a 50% chance to grant Empower to 3 allies within 15 meters, increasing the damage of their next Light Attack by 40%. This effect can occur every 1 seconds.
Blood moon: When you deal Critical Damage with a melee Light Attack, you gain a stack of Blood Scent for 8 seconds. When you gain 5 stacks, you become Frenzied for 5 seconds, increasing your melee Light Attack damage by 50% and attack speed by 50%. This effect can occur every 18 seconds.
Essence thief: When you deal damage with a Light Attack, you have a15% chance to draw essence from an enemy. Collecting the essence heals you 4300 Health, restores Stamina and increases your damage by 12% for 10 seconds.
Imbue weapon: Infuse your weapon with power, causing your next Light Attack used within 2 seconds deal an additional 2583

My main question here would be,
Would it ruin the game if these abilities, sets and buffs also applied to heavy attacks?
Would it make DK's overpower to get a buff to molten armaments to compensate for all these changes?
Is the lower damage on medium attack intended?

Nestor · August 2018

Medium attacks should give more DPS than at least an unbuffed LA.

kojou · August 2018

My fix:

Anything less than .5 seconds is a light attack then scale damage linearly to a full heavy attack.

firedrgn · August 2018

Blood moon is 30% damage and 50% speed looks like some fun builds might be possible.

asuitandtyb14_ESO · August 2018

I'll suggest something unpopular. Get rid of light and heavy attacks all together. Buut whhyyy?! Because there are two completely separate types of combat in this game, and they clash completely. It's like halfway through they decided they wanted a classic mmo button bar (or the other way around), and decided to just throw them together and hope for the best. It's been a mess from the get go.

psxfloh · August 2018

imho buffing light attacks is clearly against "lower the ceiling, raise the floor".

Good players weave light attacks, very good players hardly ever miss a light attack weave.
Not so good players will sometimes, bad players will often miss light attack weaves if they even try.

So good players profit the most from buffs to light attack damage, while not so good players "suffer", which widens the gap between floor and ceiling.

My conclusion: in order to bring floor and bottom closer together, light attack damage should be significantly lower, so missing a light attack weave here and there doesn't have such a big impact on overall dps!

Only very, very bad players will maybe do nothing but light attacks, but with lowered light attack damage even they would realize they shouldn't play ESO like single player elder scrolls games any more, and start using their skills.

Ragnarock41 · August 2018

I'm still trying to understand the 2h nerfs.

Zer0oo · August 2018

Didaco · August 2018

What I wonder is: Why did they go full nerf-berserk with the HA nerfs in the first place?
LA weaving has always been superior in terms of DPS, why overnerf HA effectively killing any chance to have an alternate way to fulfill the role (see DK)?

jcm2606 · August 2018

The one suggestion I can 100% back here is making Imbue Weapon apply to heavy attacks. Would make it less awkward to use when you're getting low on resources and want to heavy attack weave your spammable.

Didaco wrote: »

What I wonder is: Why did they go full nerf-berserk with the HA nerfs in the first place?
LA weaving has always been superior in terms of DPS, why overnerf HA effectively killing any chance to have an alternate way to fulfill the role (see DK)?

It's Zenimax. Rather than going at a problem with a nerf scalpel, they'd rather bash the patient and the table with a nerf sledgehammer.

scipionumatia · August 2018

I was thinking the same thing with imbue weapons. its not easy to animation cancel and its awkward to use. you need to prep it to do damage with a light attack and it just feels off. maybe its a learning curve but I find myself not liking it. If imbue weapons was an attack in of itself and then it boosted the damage of the next light attack it would be less awkward. They did give us a lot of incentive to use this spamable in the passives, the damage mitigation when casting or channeling, the free auto cast spell/physical orb when you reach X stacks are really good passives and the fact that it inflicts a status effect guaranteed is amazing. its because of all those things im trying to make it work.
Perhaps make it a toggle ability? though this would require changes to psijic passives

Nightfall12 · August 2018

I still never understood why games always seem to favor multiple speed attacks over single heavy hitting attacks.
Lets look at reality...i know we have magic and stuff, but lets just look at reality of Physical weaponry
Sure 6 quick jabs with 2 daggers will do a good amount of damage and will probably kill you...not at first be slowly bleeding to death..BUt 1 strike from a fully wound up battleaxe will kill instantly.
A light attack is just a quick attack without real concentration or aim its like swinging quick "get away"
a medium or heavy attack is taking the time to aim or put a lil something extra into it.
In a fight lights attacks would serve more to throw your opponents timing off...the draw back to a heavy attack is by being telegraphed it has more chances to be prepared for.

If anything games should make medium attacks standard mid damage. Light attacks should be fast but low damage, heavy attacks should be hard hitting but slower.

The changes we have were to only to maximize weaving and as far as heavy attacks regaining resources?

I guess these changes only make sense because we have magic staffs and such....

jcm2606 · August 2018

scipionumatia wrote: »

I was thinking the same thing with imbue weapons. its not easy to animation cancel and its awkward to use. you need to prep it to do damage with a light attack and it just feels off. maybe its a learning curve but I find myself not liking it. If imbue weapons was an attack in of itself and then it boosted the damage of the next light attack it would be less awkward. They did give us a lot of incentive to use this spamable in the passives, the damage mitigation when casting or channeling, the free auto cast spell/physical orb when you reach X stacks are really good passives and the fact that it inflicts a status effect guaranteed is amazing. its because of all those things im trying to make it work.
Perhaps make it a toggle ability? though this would require changes to psijic passives

For me, it's more a mental challenge than anything.

Assuming you light attack weave into another ability following your spammable, it should function identically to any other spammable, except the damage is delayed until the next light attack. Think about it:

LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Skill

You can see that if you have a light attack weave into a skill following your spammable, say a buff that can carry into your back bar, Imbue Weapon is functionally identical to other spammables, just the damage is delayed until the next LA. The problem is you're so used to the damage being dealt immediately, so it messes with you mid rotation. If you treat it as any other spammable, though, it actually feels very nice. About as smooth as Surprise Attack, I'd say, and I consider that to be the smoothest spammable in the game by far.

It falls apart when you use a heavy attack, though, which I tend to do when I weave into the last skill if I'm low on resources. So in that case, the damage isn't applied, though I am refunded Imbue Weapon's cost, so I don't lose any resources in doing so.

Nightfall12 wrote: »

I still never understood why games always seem to favor multiple speed attacks over single heavy hitting attacks.
Lets look at reality...i know we have magic and stuff, but lets just look at reality of Physical weaponry
Sure 6 quick jabs with 2 daggers will do a good amount of damage and will probably kill you...not at first be slowly bleeding to death..BUt 1 strike from a fully wound up battleaxe will kill instantly.
A light attack is just a quick attack without real concentration or aim its like swinging quick "get away"
a medium or heavy attack is taking the time to aim or put a lil something extra into it.
In a fight lights attacks would serve more to throw your opponents timing off...the draw back to a heavy attack is by being telegraphed it has more chances to be prepared for.

If anything games should make medium attacks standard mid damage. Light attacks should be fast but low damage, heavy attacks should be hard hitting but slower.

The changes we have were to only to maximize weaving and as far as heavy attacks regaining resources?

I guess these changes only make sense because we have magic staffs and such....

It makes even less sense given how just last year with Morrowind they nerfed sustain hard to push people into heavy attacking more often. And they succeeded. They succeeded so well that they actually pushed people to adopting full heavy attack builds to just sustain with some classes/playstyles.

And now they've nerfed heavy attacks to push people back to light attacking more for damage, without addressing the fact that they nerfed sustain in the first place to push people away from doing so.

Talk about indecisive.

RedRook · August 2018

Nestor wrote: »

Medium attacks should give more DPS than at least an unbuffed LA.

Particularly if they're never going to fix the glitches with lightning and healing staves that make me bar swap to stop a heavy attack I wasn't trying to do in the first place. Oh, I get a damage penalty too! Fantastic.

Brutusmax1mus · August 2018

Trying to see the logic of why swinging a weapon harder restores resources instead of uses them

scipionumatia · August 2018

@jcm2606 that's exactly how I was trying to play with it, problem for me is exactly what you said, im used to throwing a heavy/med into my rotation. also for me it is not so easy to animation cancel but I agree its probably in my head.

idk · August 2018

OrphanHelgen wrote: »

My main question here would be,
Would it ruin the game if these abilities, sets and buffs also applied to heavy attacks?
Would it make DK's overpower to get a buff to molten armaments to compensate for all these changes?
Is the lower damage on medium attack intended?

Would it ruin the game to have those sets affect heavy attacks? Obviously not. But it is clearly not what Zos intends.

Also, lowering damage on medium attacks, in relation to light attacks was intended. Zos literally chose to make light attacks the way to go for damage. Zos started this change last year. What you copied and pasted was merely Zos reinforcing this and pushing it farther.

John_Falstaff · August 2018

So, that's an indirect buff to classes that can sustain full light attack rotation. Nerf sustain with Morrowind, forcing a number of builds into heavy attacks, then nerf heavy attacks and buff light attacks, further elevating the classes with good sustain and indirectly nerfing those with bad one (the meaning of Molten Armaments eludes me now - it buffs heavy attack damage, but ZOS lets us know that heavy attack isn't for doing damage). Perfect recipe for class balance. What could possibly go wrong.

ak_pvp · August 2018

psxfloh wrote: »

imho buffing light attacks is clearly against "lower the ceiling, raise the floor".

Good players weave light attacks, very good players hardly ever miss a light attack weave.
Not so good players will sometimes, bad players will often miss light attack weaves if they even try.

So good players profit the most from buffs to light attack damage, while not so good players "suffer", which widens the gap between floor and ceiling.

My conclusion: in order to bring floor and bottom closer together, light attack damage should be significantly lower, so missing a light attack weave here and there doesn't have such a big impact on overall dps!

Only very, very bad players will maybe do nothing but light attacks, but with lowered light attack damage even they would realize they shouldn't play ESO like single player elder scrolls games any more, and start using their skills.

Floor and ceiling should never be close.

However I agree that the LA buff was stupid, it's pointless power creep and screws melee mag builds.

technohic · August 2018

ak_pvp wrote: »

psxfloh wrote: »

imho buffing light attacks is clearly against "lower the ceiling, raise the floor".

Good players weave light attacks, very good players hardly ever miss a light attack weave.
Not so good players will sometimes, bad players will often miss light attack weaves if they even try.

So good players profit the most from buffs to light attack damage, while not so good players "suffer", which widens the gap between floor and ceiling.

My conclusion: in order to bring floor and bottom closer together, light attack damage should be significantly lower, so missing a light attack weave here and there doesn't have such a big impact on overall dps!

Only very, very bad players will maybe do nothing but light attacks, but with lowered light attack damage even they would realize they shouldn't play ESO like single player elder scrolls games any more, and start using their skills.

Floor and ceiling should never be close.

However I agree that the LA buff was stupid, it's pointless power creep and screws melee mag builds.

Ive been wanting a melee magicka weapon for a long time. I get it doesnt make much difference from where you use a staff but their damage is scaled similar to a bow and not like a 2h sword nor should they if you feel like melees risk should bring better reward. Frost staff has been a crappy option for a magicka 1h and shield but there is nothing otherwise. Its no wonder that magblades and sorcs do better as they are more equipped for range and kiting.

MashmalloMan · August 2018

What's even more great when you think about it, is we have to wait for chapters (yearly) to get any big changes like a new class or a new skill line. So if anyone is interested in getting hybrid weapon class like 1h weapon / grimoire your going to be waiting a long time.

Honestly people need to stop thinking about the logic behind heavy/light attacks. The point is a heavy attack STILL does more damage then a light attack. You aren't getting less dmg, what happens is you waste time getting a stronger hit, which means your rotation is slowed down but in turn you get resources back. It makes perfect sense. If you attack quickly with a light attack rotation you get more dmg but lose resources quicker.

The heavy attack meta was boring as hell. So slow paced, by buffing light attacks and nerfing heavy attacks they made it more viable to sacrifice something like dmg for recovery so that you can sustain a light attack rotation, but in doing so you need to make some type of sacrifice. That was the point of their morrowind changes. We were coming off of a time where you could have reduced cost built in to your CP so you didn't need to heavy attack or invest in to recovery at ALL.

That being said, night blades are now on top because they can directly sustain a rotation with light attacks and no recovery investment because of siphoning strikes, most of the other classes had no buffs to their sustain since morrowind so we have fallen behind.

I remember when morrowind was on pts, as a stam sorc with my setup at the time, I couldn't complete a full rotation on a 3m test dummy without heavy attacking at least 10 times. I was curious how DK's played so I tried 1 out, without a single investment in to recovery and no spamable, I was able to mindlessly pull off a heavy attack rotation and get higher dps then my stam sorc. How does that make any sense.. I was full stamina an entire parse.

With heavy attacks the animation canceling is also so easy with DW, simply hold left click then press your skill immediately, your heavy attack will fire off when it reaches the full animation required and the tail end of the animation, the recovery portion, will automatically cut off with a skill. Why would you reward that play style, it was way too easy.

ReachHalo · August 2018

@RedRook yes agree. HA with lightning staff without meaning to, and not being able to break it often means death in places like vMA.

But i find that light attacks are also bugged with lightning staff and often don't work. With the buffs to LA this must be affecting overall dps - maybe this 'bug' is just limited to xbox. However it could also be limited to my own uselessness

IZZEFlameLash · August 2018

ZOS philosophy always have been: Nerf several to uselessness to buff 1 and stack another buff on top. No wonder we still struggle with balance.

Elsterchen · August 2018

scipionumatia wrote: »

I was thinking the same thing with imbue weapons. its not easy to animation cancel and its awkward to use. you need to prep it to do damage with a light attack and it just feels off. maybe its a learning curve but I find myself not liking it. If imbue weapons was an attack in of itself and then it boosted the damage of the next light attack it would be less awkward. They did give us a lot of incentive to use this spamable in the passives, the damage mitigation when casting or channeling, the free auto cast spell/physical orb when you reach X stacks are really good passives and the fact that it inflicts a status effect guaranteed is amazing. its because of all those things im trying to make it work.
Perhaps make it a toggle ability? though this would require changes to psijic passives

I find this skill very hard to use, maybe its just me (I hope not), but the animation NEVER cancels (tested DW, sword-axe). As a result I only get imbued weapon + 1 medium attack ... and not as the tooltip suggests: 1 imbued weapon and up to 2 light attacks. This leads to quite a difference in expected vs obtained damage.

However, in the last PTS cycle there have been some changes to skill-animation. I wasn't able to test these, but I surely hope the changes included a now really instant cast imbued weapon skill.

CosmicChaos · August 2018

Orphan they actually specifically said they wanted light attacks to be damage focused and heavy attacks to be regen. While I agree with you I just don't think ZOS will. I'm convinced the people working on balance changes are intentionally keeping the game unbalanced to preserve their employment. lol

Kingslayer513 · August 2018

jcm2606 wrote: »

scipionumatia wrote: »

I was thinking the same thing with imbue weapons. its not easy to animation cancel and its awkward to use. you need to prep it to do damage with a light attack and it just feels off. maybe its a learning curve but I find myself not liking it. If imbue weapons was an attack in of itself and then it boosted the damage of the next light attack it would be less awkward. They did give us a lot of incentive to use this spamable in the passives, the damage mitigation when casting or channeling, the free auto cast spell/physical orb when you reach X stacks are really good passives and the fact that it inflicts a status effect guaranteed is amazing. its because of all those things im trying to make it work.
Perhaps make it a toggle ability? though this would require changes to psijic passives

For me, it's more a mental challenge than anything.

Assuming you light attack weave into another ability following your spammable, it should function identically to any other spammable, except the damage is delayed until the next light attack. Think about it:

LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Skill

You can see that if you have a light attack weave into a skill following your spammable, say a buff that can carry into your back bar, Imbue Weapon is functionally identical to other spammables, just the damage is delayed until the next LA. The problem is you're so used to the damage being dealt immediately, so it messes with you mid rotation. If you treat it as any other spammable, though, it actually feels very nice. About as smooth as Surprise Attack, I'd say, and I consider that to be the smoothest spammable in the game by far.

Actually, the way imbue weapons is programmed makes it activate the effect on the next LA that does damage. So in practice if you've gotten used to LA + Skill weaving with no delay in between, it actually does function identically to a normal spammable because the ability is instant cast while LAs have a delay in dealing damage. If you've mentally ingrained the LA + Skill combo in your brain, then it functions as a normal spammable 100% of the time and applies damage to the LA you fired immediately before the ability. You can test it on a dummy to see for yourself.

Now of course the paradoxical thing is that this only applies to practiced endgame players, so most of the playerbase is left out in the dust again.

Elsterchen · August 2018

Kingslayer513 wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

scipionumatia wrote: »

I was thinking the same thing with imbue weapons. its not easy to animation cancel and its awkward to use. you need to prep it to do damage with a light attack and it just feels off. maybe its a learning curve but I find myself not liking it. If imbue weapons was an attack in of itself and then it boosted the damage of the next light attack it would be less awkward. They did give us a lot of incentive to use this spamable in the passives, the damage mitigation when casting or channeling, the free auto cast spell/physical orb when you reach X stacks are really good passives and the fact that it inflicts a status effect guaranteed is amazing. its because of all those things im trying to make it work.
Perhaps make it a toggle ability? though this would require changes to psijic passives

For me, it's more a mental challenge than anything.

Assuming you light attack weave into another ability following your spammable, it should function identically to any other spammable, except the damage is delayed until the next light attack. Think about it:

LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Spammable -> LA -> Skill

You can see that if you have a light attack weave into a skill following your spammable, say a buff that can carry into your back bar, Imbue Weapon is functionally identical to other spammables, just the damage is delayed until the next LA. The problem is you're so used to the damage being dealt immediately, so it messes with you mid rotation. If you treat it as any other spammable, though, it actually feels very nice. About as smooth as Surprise Attack, I'd say, and I consider that to be the smoothest spammable in the game by far.

Actually, the way imbue weapons is programmed makes it activate the effect on the next LA that does damage. So in practice if you've gotten used to LA + Skill weaving with no delay in between, it actually does function identically to a normal spammable because the ability is instant cast while LAs have a delay in dealing damage. If you've mentally ingrained the LA + Skill combo in your brain, then it functions as a normal spammable 100% of the time and applies damage to the LA you fired immediately before the ability. You can test it on a dummy to see for yourself.

Now of course the paradoxical thing is that this only applies to practiced endgame players, so most of the playerbase is left out in the dust again.

I know and reguarly use above sequence with any spammable, with imbued weapons it fails. The animation of this skill isn't canceled by a following LA -> IT cancels the following LA (i.e. an LA immediately klicked after firing the spell will not get registered). The pre-skill LA on the other hand doesn't get buffed (no orb from that one!). Its not working unless one actually does: LA - skill (count "21") - LA - skill (count "21") -LA (rinse repeat) ... and even in that case most "LA"s are not true LAs but medium attacks.

I am using sword and axe trying to utilize imbued weapon, I tried often and I think I know what I am doing, too. I am not perfect on any rotaion, but specifically on imbued weapon its striking that the animation is not canceled, hence weaving is not possible....and specifically for imbued weapon (remember spell costs are refunded when it fails to fire) it really doesn't matter if you start a sequence with LA or skill, one shouldn't loose anything doing it any of those ways.

Maybe its the weapons? LA attack speed is faster then with 2H or staff.

ATomiX96 · August 2018

im really curious how the blood moon set works, does it just shorten the time of the light attack animation so that you can mash mouse1 even faster?

erlewine · August 2018

ATomiX96 wrote: »

im really curious how the blood moon set works, does it just shorten the time of the light attack animation so that you can mash mouse1 even faster?

yes