What was wrong with the 3rd bar?

DorianDragonRaze · September 2018

All right, enough about that painful shield nerf. I'll probably adjust to keep my PvE experience fine. I did not play much of the hardest content with my magsorc anyway.
But what was wrong with the 3rd bar? I need it so much! Just why is it getting removed? Who was hurt?

That is just ridiculous. @Alcast has better words in his video that I wouldn't dare to post, but you know how I feel.
and it is upsetting that zos wouldn't listen
(yet keeping hope that they would)

Lylith · September 2018

yet another brilliant inroad toward that mythical and ever elusive 'balance.'

Starlock · September 2018

I'm fairly indifferent about this, honestly. I don't care about the loss of the third bar as much as I am annoyed at the removal of "BAM - hit like a truck" light attack.

Come to think of it, I had no clue there was a third bar at all for the longest time. My lightning mage was my first character, and I remember just being confused about it at first and thinking it was a glitch. It's not really pointed out to you in game that you get a third bar, or how you can change skills on it.

Arunei · September 2018

The main reason we got a third bar, I believe, is because you were robbed of both your weapon bars (and thus likely at least a few weapon skills) once you went into Overload mode, so you were given the third one to still be able to use skills that didn't require weapons. You can't swap out skills during battle, so there was no way to remove useless skills from whatever bar you were stuck on and replace them with usable ones, which would essentially leave a person with a gimped bar.

Now that you'll have access to your weapon skills even while using Overload, there's no need for the third bar. It kind of sucks but no other skill in the game gives you a third bar, so this is also probably to bring it in line with every other skill.

Tasear · September 2018

Arunei wrote: »

The main reason we got a third bar, I believe, is because you were robbed of both your weapon bars (and thus likely at least a few weapon skills) once you went into Overload mode, so you were given the third one to still be able to use skills that didn't require weapons. You can't swap out skills during battle, so there was no way to remove useless skills from whatever bar you were stuck on and replace them with usable ones, which would essentially leave a person with a gimped bar.

Now that you'll have access to your weapon skills even while using Overload, there's no need for the third bar. It kind of sucks but no other skill in the game gives you a third bar, so this is also probably to bring it in line with every other skill.

How do you feel though that some thins still have to be double bared?

Drummerx04 · September 2018

The main reason a sorc's bars are so crowded is a combination of toggles and skills that must be slotted for passive boosts. For the last several patches, mNB got 8% max mag, 10% crit (chance or damage, Idk which), major resistances, major expedition, and self heals as passive effects for slotting skills that fit directly and actively into their damage rotations.

Magsorc slotted Aegis for 8% mag, surge if they wanted healing, boundless if they wanted protection or expedition, and two bar slots if they wanted a pet. The overload bar was a way to actually fit utility onto a sorc, but I guess that was too much fun, so *** me I guess.

lagrue · September 2018

Tasear wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

The main reason we got a third bar, I believe, is because you were robbed of both your weapon bars (and thus likely at least a few weapon skills) once you went into Overload mode, so you were given the third one to still be able to use skills that didn't require weapons. You can't swap out skills during battle, so there was no way to remove useless skills from whatever bar you were stuck on and replace them with usable ones, which would essentially leave a person with a gimped bar.

Now that you'll have access to your weapon skills even while using Overload, there's no need for the third bar. It kind of sucks but no other skill in the game gives you a third bar, so this is also probably to bring it in line with every other skill.

How do you feel though that some thins still have to be double bared?

I cri everytime. You should suggest something to ZOS like - have the pets single barred - but when you swap to a different bar, instead of de-summoning they lose 50% of their DPS or something until you swap back to their proper bar - anything to allow bar swapping without desummoning.

NordSwordnBoard · September 2018

It caused envy and threatened the devblades' supremacy with creativity and variety.

Koolio · September 2018

Arunei wrote: »

The main reason we got a third bar, I believe, is because you were robbed of both your weapon bars (and thus likely at least a few weapon skills) once you went into Overload mode, so you were given the third one to still be able to use skills that didn't require weapons. You can't swap out skills during battle, so there was no way to remove useless skills from whatever bar you were stuck on and replace them with usable ones, which would essentially leave a person with a gimped bar.

Now that you'll have access to your weapon skills even while using Overload, there's no need for the third bar. It kind of sucks but no other skill in the game gives you a third bar, so this is also probably to bring it in line with every other skill.[/quote]

You mean this Class had something unique and different than other classes so we must make them all the same

Nerfed FUN for another generic class.

Koolio · September 2018

Sorry was on phone

maboleth · September 2018

Nothing was wrong. It was a unique sorc ability that came with a price, as overload was highly reflected and dodged. Nobody used it unless needed for their builds, mostly for the 3rd bar. Nobody complained. Pet sorc used it due to reserved 2 slots.

But zos likes touching stuff that don't need fixing and likes to even everyone out. Mediocrity unleashed.

Artim_X · September 2018

All of my builds are affected by the loss of the 3rd bar. I was prepared for shields to be nerfed, but I never expected to lose my class defining 3rd bar. Now I don't want to be mean, but whoever is responsible for removing it is being quite inconsiderate to the player base who actually uses it.

Now look at this.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

In my opinion the overload 3rd bar was a work of art that made playing a sorc feel unique. There are many people who came to the realization of just how useful it could be and decided to utilize it in a variety of ways (group utility, buffs, ganking, etc.). I never felt like my sorc was complete till I started using the 3rd bar and now on the PTS overload was buffed for those who never cared for it while in a way it was nerfed for those who did care. Sure I like using the buffed power overload heavy attack to melt weak mobs, but that will never make up for all the skills I've lost.

Edited: typo.

Morgul667 · September 2018

They have no idea hat they are doing, what other explain is there ?

ParaNostram · September 2018

Super nerf to petsorcs.

C3N50R3D · September 2018

Drummerx04 wrote: »

The main reason a sorc's bars are so crowded is a combination of toggles and skills that must be slotted for passive boosts. For the last several patches, mNB got 8% max mag, 10% crit (chance or damage, Idk which), major resistances, major expedition, and self heals as passive effects for slotting skills that fit directly and actively into their damage rotations.

Magsorc slotted Aegis for 8% mag, surge if they wanted healing, boundless if they wanted protection or expedition, and two bar slots if they wanted a pet. The overload bar was a way to actually fit utility onto a sorc, but I guess that was too much fun, so *** me I guess.

Yeah you get it. OL bar was a utility bar for runners in vMoL, portals in vCR, etc. They need to fix pets so you don't need to slot them on both bars instead of deleting a third bar.

qbit · September 2018

What’s funny is they spent what was probably significant developer time fixing the GUI for slotting skills in the third bar. Like it was always clunky and you had to go into overdrive mode to slot anything and it was confusing to a new player. They specifically fixed the UI to fully support slotting the third bar that made sense. It was in the last patch.

Only to remove the third bar the next patch...

Lends some credence to the idea that they will revert these changes and planned to all along. So they appear to be listening to the community.

Recremen · September 2018

lagrue wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

The main reason we got a third bar, I believe, is because you were robbed of both your weapon bars (and thus likely at least a few weapon skills) once you went into Overload mode, so you were given the third one to still be able to use skills that didn't require weapons. You can't swap out skills during battle, so there was no way to remove useless skills from whatever bar you were stuck on and replace them with usable ones, which would essentially leave a person with a gimped bar.

Now that you'll have access to your weapon skills even while using Overload, there's no need for the third bar. It kind of sucks but no other skill in the game gives you a third bar, so this is also probably to bring it in line with every other skill.

How do you feel though that some thins still have to be double bared?

I cri everytime. You should suggest something to ZOS like - have the pets single barred - but when you swap to a different bar, instead of de-summoning they lose 50% of their DPS or something until you swap back to their proper bar - anything to allow bar swapping without desummoning.

Or have pets act like any other buff where you can refresh duration they're out by casting the skill again. That way as long as you're rolling buffs before they expire like a normal person you've always got your pets up EXCEPT IN THE BANK OR BY CRAFTING TURN INS unless you're doing it on purpose just to troll.

C3N50R3D · September 2018

Recremen wrote: »

lagrue wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

The main reason we got a third bar, I believe, is because you were robbed of both your weapon bars (and thus likely at least a few weapon skills) once you went into Overload mode, so you were given the third one to still be able to use skills that didn't require weapons. You can't swap out skills during battle, so there was no way to remove useless skills from whatever bar you were stuck on and replace them with usable ones, which would essentially leave a person with a gimped bar.

Now that you'll have access to your weapon skills even while using Overload, there's no need for the third bar. It kind of sucks but no other skill in the game gives you a third bar, so this is also probably to bring it in line with every other skill.

How do you feel though that some thins still have to be double bared?

I cri everytime. You should suggest something to ZOS like - have the pets single barred - but when you swap to a different bar, instead of de-summoning they lose 50% of their DPS or something until you swap back to their proper bar - anything to allow bar swapping without desummoning.

Or have pets act like any other buff where you can refresh duration they're out by casting the skill again. That way as long as you're rolling buffs before they expire like a normal person you've always got your pets up EXCEPT IN THE BANK OR BY CRAFTING TURN INS unless you're doing it on purpose just to troll.

That's another pet peeve of mine. They never changed the transparency of pets to UI interaction commands to allow players to interact through them like they did with other textures and players.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · September 2018

The problem with the 3rd bar was that it was one way.

The purpose of ZOS's patches is to take things that were one way, and make them another way.

DorianDragonRaze · September 2018

Ok, if no 3rd bar, then just make pets single slotted please!

godchucknzilla · September 2018

Pets should be a 5 minute buff you recast every five min with no need for double bar.

idk · September 2018

Well, if dod allow sorcs to carry a few more skills with them. However, the change means overload is kill re playable and if also means it will only be sloted if it’s actually useful. In PvP it has done ok but in PvE it os r anything special.

eso_lags · September 2018

DorianDragonRaze wrote: »

All right, enough about that painful shield nerf. I'll probably adjust to keep my PvE experience fine. I did not play much of the hardest content with my magsorc anyway.
But what was wrong with the 3rd bar? I need it so much! Just why is it getting removed? Who was hurt?

That is just ridiculous. @Alcast has better words in his video that I wouldn't dare to post, but you know how I feel.
AND IT IS UPSETTING THAT ZOS WOULDN'T LISTEN
(yet keeping hope that they would)

Stam sorcs are hurt now. This change not only hurts mag sorcs but it ruins one of the few unique things that make stam sorc a class even worth playing. I hope they revert this change because this is such a massive mistake. Who is the stam sorc class rep? anyone know?

DorianDragonRaze · September 2018

godchucknzilla wrote: »

Pets should be a 5 minute buff you recast every five min with no need for double bar.

Kind of agree but wouldn't like to have my pets expired in the middle of a tough boss fight.

BuddyAces · September 2018

itzTJ wrote: »

DorianDragonRaze wrote: »

All right, enough about that painful shield nerf. I'll probably adjust to keep my PvE experience fine. I did not play much of the hardest content with my magsorc anyway.
But what was wrong with the 3rd bar? I need it so much! Just why is it getting removed? Who was hurt?

That is just ridiculous. @Alcast has better words in his video that I wouldn't dare to post, but you know how I feel.
AND IT IS UPSETTING THAT ZOS WOULDN'T LISTEN
(yet keeping hope that they would)

Stam sorcs are hurt now. This change not only hurts mag sorcs but it ruins one of the few unique things that make stam sorc a class even worth playing. I hope they revert this change because this is such a massive mistake. Who is the stam sorc class rep? anyone know?

Last I heard our class rep was a NB main. Not their fault though. They were just a funnel for the community on specific aspects that zos had questions on. That's all they are, a funnel. How any of them want to continue in their position is beyond me. Ego boost maybe?

eso_lags · September 2018

BuddyAces wrote: »

itzTJ wrote: »

DorianDragonRaze wrote: »

All right, enough about that painful shield nerf. I'll probably adjust to keep my PvE experience fine. I did not play much of the hardest content with my magsorc anyway.
But what was wrong with the 3rd bar? I need it so much! Just why is it getting removed? Who was hurt?

That is just ridiculous. @Alcast has better words in his video that I wouldn't dare to post, but you know how I feel.
AND IT IS UPSETTING THAT ZOS WOULDN'T LISTEN
(yet keeping hope that they would)

Stam sorcs are hurt now. This change not only hurts mag sorcs but it ruins one of the few unique things that make stam sorc a class even worth playing. I hope they revert this change because this is such a massive mistake. Who is the stam sorc class rep? anyone know?

Last I heard our class rep was a NB main. Not their fault though. They were just a funnel for the community on specific aspects that zos had questions on. That's all they are, a funnel. How any of them want to continue in their position is beyond me. Ego boost maybe?

Well no matter what they are they can still speak to zos about this. But if they are a nightblade main then thats sad. Any stam sorc knows how important overload is to us. Even if they just put in a morph with the 3rd bar. As a stam sorc you are lacking basic things that all other classes have so it is important to have that bar to compensate some of those things.

The_Brosteen · September 2018

The new overload sounds like it could have its use but the 3rd bar was a very unique thing sorcs had, especially stam sorcs.

Apart from mobility, burst sustain and a third bar were the two unique strong points of stam sorcs in pvp. You were able to use alot of utility and area denial abilities in your build with a 3rd bar. Now both got nerfed. Kind of a bummer.

BuddyAces · September 2018

itzTJ wrote: »

BuddyAces wrote: »

itzTJ wrote: »

DorianDragonRaze wrote: »

All right, enough about that painful shield nerf. I'll probably adjust to keep my PvE experience fine. I did not play much of the hardest content with my magsorc anyway.
But what was wrong with the 3rd bar? I need it so much! Just why is it getting removed? Who was hurt?

That is just ridiculous. @Alcast has better words in his video that I wouldn't dare to post, but you know how I feel.
AND IT IS UPSETTING THAT ZOS WOULDN'T LISTEN
(yet keeping hope that they would)

Stam sorcs are hurt now. This change not only hurts mag sorcs but it ruins one of the few unique things that make stam sorc a class even worth playing. I hope they revert this change because this is such a massive mistake. Who is the stam sorc class rep? anyone know?

Last I heard our class rep was a NB main. Not their fault though. They were just a funnel for the community on specific aspects that zos had questions on. That's all they are, a funnel. How any of them want to continue in their position is beyond me. Ego boost maybe?

Well no matter what they are they can still speak to zos about this. But if they are a nightblade main then thats sad. Any stam sorc knows how important overload is to us. Even if they just put in a morph with the 3rd bar. As a stam sorc you are lacking basic things that all other classes have so it is important to have that bar to compensate some of those things.

What's f'ing funny is that you can read daily about whiny kids crying to nerf everything under the sun but I never seen anyone cry about a third bar. How that even was a topic is baffling. So glad the devs are spending time working on these changes instead of actually doing something worth while.

Lylith · September 2018

make it fair:

take one third of everyone's skill slots, see how that plays.