Splattercat_83 wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

eso_nya wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

one question how all other (non NB) squishy dps (stamina) survived in vCR+3 without shields

Because the OP is wrong.

Magsorcs don't do vCR portals (especially at last boss) because they can shield. The heavy, continuous damage down there is Oblivion and shields do nothing.

What works down there are "self healing while I DPS" classes like NBs (in fact you bring 7 of them to vCR as of today) AND magsorcs with healing matron.

With the difference that once the portal is done, the NB pops out fresh like "just minted", whereas the magsorc will have used most magicka on perma-spamming the healing matron and thus her DPS will be mediocre afterwards.

Because of this, progression guilds just use NBs and the 1 magsorc only stays in as Alkosh "buff-bot" and little more.

While that makes perfect sense to me, i do not understand how major parts of the "shield nerf" threads claim vcr+3 will be impossible w/ the casttime as it rips "all magicka users" of their one and only defense?

If sorcs rnt the meta for progression grps and shieldstacking isnt meta in pvp (cause sloads, shieldbreaker and co), why do ppl even care about the cast time?

1) Because locking vCR + n to one (1) class is just wrong. It shows how poorly those "new" trials have been planned. Go vMoL or vHoF to experience trials that are professionally designed, awesome and fair to everyone.

2) Because outside of top progression guilds, there's a plethora of "between soft-core and hard-core" guilds which still allow "unlucky plebs" (sorcs, wardens, DKs...) into DPS positions. I play in 3 of those guilds.
These are not competitive guilds, because by not employing the top meta (read: exclusively only NBs), they cannot, ever, hope to race to be first at new encounters first kills.
However they are "good enough" for people like me, who know that just because they are not NBs, they are excluded and banned from top groups. As such, I accept I'll never be invited to a top guild and am happy to have joined a guild (one of my 3) that the day it has been created, we have cleared vMoL. If we had been all NBs, we could have cleared hard mode vMoL at day zero instead (due to the tremendous additional DPS).

3) vCR + 3, as I said above, is poorly made (like vAS). Instead of a proper, expensive trial, they made "quickies" (to develop) that just implement little content and that content is recycled too. Basically you can kill 2-3 (depending on trial) bosses and then kill the final boss, or you can go to the final boss and fight him + all the other bosses in one room.
The net effect is more or less (there are some tweaks) you get all the AoE, red cicles, 1 shot mechanics and so on all neatly packaged together. So it is a Rambo style Vietnam, where you constantly walk between napalm, mines, shooting and so on:

- magblades just enjoy their rich arsenal of damage evasion skills (and they can shield on top of that) and do it with no effort.

- magsorcs have ZERO evasion skills, so they have to spam shields like crazy, because while mechanic A is running and you have to run (meteors or similar) mechanic B is popping fire under your feet and mechanic C sends suicide bomb-npcs towards you and mechanic D create a massive lightning "pool" that almost 1 shots you. And all of this forms under your feet in less than 1 second.

- stam classes dodge roll like crazy. Good stam players will not die. Don't believe the dumb stuff that baddies tell you about stam players dying all the time. Many ranged players have to stay at melee range too: to bash adds (many setups don't use crushing shock), to stay in purge range, to stay in healers frontal cone (healers stand slightly behind melee in some encounters) and to use Zaan set.
What makes stam players less wanted is the fact that they are so busy dodging that they cannot do DPS.

You sound salty about nightblades, magblades in general. Here is a little juicy fact for you, get ready......I know this is going to blow your mind.... sorcs do almost the same damage a magblade does when you are in group. Here is why, you can proc frags more often than we can our bows, your liquid lightning hits harder than our twisting path, your curse hits harder than our cripple and you only have to cast it once, the frag procs because you have the skill slotted. We have to activate a skill which costs magick, and we have to actually pay attention to our weaving to proc it. We have access to minor beserk but you get that with combat prayer. Where we shined is the low cost of our spamables ele weapon, or swallow (that got nerfed because zos had to buy to many tissues for everyone that was jealous of it) we can execute earlier than a sorc, but sorcs have implosion that will stack with execute damage so that is neglagible.

With all this being said the only thing that separates the two are two factors minor berserk and sustain. Everyone's constant crying about nightblades is getting that screwed over. You should really behind getting sustain improved for the classes instead of crying about nightblades.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

So, here's what I think it comes down to.

Per Rob Garett's post, the design intent with the shield changes are to make a meaningful choice between damage and survival. Okay, that's fine. I get that. I can even empathize with that, coming from MMOs where the line is much more clearly drawn between healing (shields) and dps like Wow and Rift.

The problem comes in when you look at high level PvE content in this game. There are tons of scenarios where DPS don't have access to proper healers, but are still expected to dps and perform at that high level, while taking huge amounts of damage. The most common example being thrown around right now is VCR+3, where any players doing the orbs / spears in the shadow realm take almost constant, heavy damage. Doing it without a dedicated healer for each dps is only possible because of shields, as I understand it. There's also VMA, which is a totally solo Raid where you are often taking your entire health bar in damage, and quite frequently, while being tasked with killing the big baddie quickly. Instant shields are the only reason most sorcs (and magicka users in general) can get through that content. Maybe everything is technically doable without instant shielding, but the skill level required is so high that it becomes achievable only by the top 1 or 2%. You're officially in Wildstar territory, and we know how well that turned out.

And then there's the matter of reactive vs pre-emptive combat. Part of this grand design intent by the developers is to make defensive measures pre-emptive instead of reactive. My first thought is: have you guys played your own game? The vast majority of ground aoe, attacks, spells, etc happen in the timeframe of under 1 second. Often times, there are no telegraphs ahead of time, especially in the arena of PvP. Basically, ESO is a reactive MMO. It's very fast paced, for better or for worse. Trying to input measures to make combat pre-emptive goes against the way encounters actually work.

So, we've reach a point where the developer's design intent is in direct opposition with the content the developers have actually created.

If these changes go through, the only logical recourse on Zenimax's end to properly address this core conflict is a massive balance pass on all high level content. Basically, content needs to function much more like traditional "holy trinity" MMOs. They need to eliminate all those scenarios where players are expected to perform multiple roles at once. They also need to slow PvE down significantly, pretty much across the board. There's a reason WoW would never implement VMA - they would have to give DPSers so much utility and self healing / shielding that they would lose their identity. That's always been the way ESO has operated - with blurred lines between the roles. If they want to make those lines less blurry and slow things down, they need to go back and fix all the content that supported the blurriness and the pacing.

Vahrokh wrote: »

Splattercat_83 wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

eso_nya wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

one question how all other (non NB) squishy dps (stamina) survived in vCR+3 without shields

Because the OP is wrong.

Magsorcs don't do vCR portals (especially at last boss) because they can shield. The heavy, continuous damage down there is Oblivion and shields do nothing.

What works down there are "self healing while I DPS" classes like NBs (in fact you bring 7 of them to vCR as of today) AND magsorcs with healing matron.

With the difference that once the portal is done, the NB pops out fresh like "just minted", whereas the magsorc will have used most magicka on perma-spamming the healing matron and thus her DPS will be mediocre afterwards.

Because of this, progression guilds just use NBs and the 1 magsorc only stays in as Alkosh "buff-bot" and little more.

While that makes perfect sense to me, i do not understand how major parts of the "shield nerf" threads claim vcr+3 will be impossible w/ the casttime as it rips "all magicka users" of their one and only defense?

If sorcs rnt the meta for progression grps and shieldstacking isnt meta in pvp (cause sloads, shieldbreaker and co), why do ppl even care about the cast time?

1) Because locking vCR + n to one (1) class is just wrong. It shows how poorly those "new" trials have been planned. Go vMoL or vHoF to experience trials that are professionally designed, awesome and fair to everyone.

2) Because outside of top progression guilds, there's a plethora of "between soft-core and hard-core" guilds which still allow "unlucky plebs" (sorcs, wardens, DKs...) into DPS positions. I play in 3 of those guilds.
These are not competitive guilds, because by not employing the top meta (read: exclusively only NBs), they cannot, ever, hope to race to be first at new encounters first kills.
However they are "good enough" for people like me, who know that just because they are not NBs, they are excluded and banned from top groups. As such, I accept I'll never be invited to a top guild and am happy to have joined a guild (one of my 3) that the day it has been created, we have cleared vMoL. If we had been all NBs, we could have cleared hard mode vMoL at day zero instead (due to the tremendous additional DPS).

3) vCR + 3, as I said above, is poorly made (like vAS). Instead of a proper, expensive trial, they made "quickies" (to develop) that just implement little content and that content is recycled too. Basically you can kill 2-3 (depending on trial) bosses and then kill the final boss, or you can go to the final boss and fight him + all the other bosses in one room.
The net effect is more or less (there are some tweaks) you get all the AoE, red cicles, 1 shot mechanics and so on all neatly packaged together. So it is a Rambo style Vietnam, where you constantly walk between napalm, mines, shooting and so on:

- magblades just enjoy their rich arsenal of damage evasion skills (and they can shield on top of that) and do it with no effort.

- magsorcs have ZERO evasion skills, so they have to spam shields like crazy, because while mechanic A is running and you have to run (meteors or similar) mechanic B is popping fire under your feet and mechanic C sends suicide bomb-npcs towards you and mechanic D create a massive lightning "pool" that almost 1 shots you. And all of this forms under your feet in less than 1 second.

- stam classes dodge roll like crazy. Good stam players will not die. Don't believe the dumb stuff that baddies tell you about stam players dying all the time. Many ranged players have to stay at melee range too: to bash adds (many setups don't use crushing shock), to stay in purge range, to stay in healers frontal cone (healers stand slightly behind melee in some encounters) and to use Zaan set.
What makes stam players less wanted is the fact that they are so busy dodging that they cannot do DPS.

You sound salty about nightblades, magblades in general. Here is a little juicy fact for you, get ready......I know this is going to blow your mind.... sorcs do almost the same damage a magblade does when you are in group. Here is why, you can proc frags more often than we can our bows, your liquid lightning hits harder than our twisting path, your curse hits harder than our cripple and you only have to cast it once, the frag procs because you have the skill slotted. We have to activate a skill which costs magick, and we have to actually pay attention to our weaving to proc it. We have access to minor beserk but you get that with combat prayer. Where we shined is the low cost of our spamables ele weapon, or swallow (that got nerfed because zos had to buy to many tissues for everyone that was jealous of it) we can execute earlier than a sorc, but sorcs have implosion that will stack with execute damage so that is neglagible.

With all this being said the only thing that separates the two are two factors minor berserk and sustain. Everyone's constant crying about nightblades is getting that screwed over. You should really behind getting sustain improved for the classes instead of crying about nightblades.

I am not salty. Magsorcs are the original, pure ranged casters. Magblades (and I have one of them) should be the poorer alternative, because their baseline is a melee "rogue" blueprint and that's where they should shine. Like in every other MMO.

But even skipping this, "do almost the same damage a magblade does" is totally, utterly FALSE.
Perhaps one magsorc or 2 in he world can do more than 47k DPS, whereas Gilliamtherogue beginner nightblade fixed rotation setup does 43k. But we don't bring beginner players for vMOL+ trials and our NBs would feel ASHAMED if they just did 47k. Most of them are in the middle to upper 50k.

Objective proof: 7 (seven) magblades are taken to trials by progression guilds and 1 (one) magsorc (for Alkosh buff, certainly NOT for DPS!). Not vice versa.

Objective proof2: I have played magsorcs since beta (and have pets to prove it) and 1 month old, handful hours /played magblade in purples and guild trader purchased gear. Guilds ask me to bring my magblade and not my sorc. That is, they value a badly geared character I have little experience with (and I am very vocal about that) over a fully golded, BiS elder magsorc.

Aaaaaand... all of this, before the gutting nerfs. Imagine when they will go live!

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

So, here's what I think it comes down to.

Per Rob Garett's post, the design intent with the shield changes are to make a meaningful choice between damage and survival. Okay, that's fine. I get that. I can even empathize with that, coming from MMOs where the line is much more clearly drawn between healing (shields) and dps like Wow and Rift.

The problem comes in when you look at high level PvE content in this game. There are tons of scenarios where DPS don't have access to proper healers, but are still expected to dps and perform at that high level, while taking huge amounts of damage. The most common example being thrown around right now is VCR+3, where any players doing the orbs / spears in the shadow realm take almost constant, heavy damage. Doing it without a dedicated healer for each dps is only possible because of shields, as I understand it. There's also VMA, which is a totally solo Raid where you are often taking your entire health bar in damage, and quite frequently, while being tasked with killing the big baddie quickly. Instant shields are the only reason most sorcs (and magicka users in general) can get through that content. Maybe everything is technically doable without instant shielding, but the skill level required is so high that it becomes achievable only by the top 1 or 2%. You're officially in Wildstar territory, and we know how well that turned out.

And then there's the matter of reactive vs pre-emptive combat. Part of this grand design intent by the developers is to make defensive measures pre-emptive instead of reactive. My first thought is: have you guys played your own game? The vast majority of ground aoe, attacks, spells, etc happen in the timeframe of under 1 second. Often times, there are no telegraphs ahead of time, especially in the arena of PvP. Basically, ESO is a reactive MMO. It's very fast paced, for better or for worse. Trying to input measures to make combat pre-emptive goes against the way encounters actually work.

So, we've reach a point where the developer's design intent is in direct opposition with the content the developers have actually created.

If these changes go through, the only logical recourse on Zenimax's end to properly address this core conflict is a massive balance pass on all high level content. Basically, content needs to function much more like traditional "holy trinity" MMOs. They need to eliminate all those scenarios where players are expected to perform multiple roles at once. They also need to slow PvE down significantly, pretty much across the board. There's a reason WoW would never implement VMA - they would have to give DPSers so much utility and self healing / shielding that they would lose their identity. That's always been the way ESO has operated - with blurred lines between the roles. If they want to make those lines less blurry and slow things down, they need to go back and fix all the content that supported the blurriness and the pacing.

Vahrokh wrote: »

- stam classes dodge roll like crazy. Good stam players will not die. Don't believe the dumb stuff that baddies tell you about stam players dying all the time. Many ranged players have to stay at melee range too: to bash adds (many setups don't use crushing shock), to stay in purge range, to stay in healers frontal cone (healers stand slightly behind melee in some encounters) and to use Zaan set.
What makes stam players less wanted is the fact that they are so busy dodging that they cannot do DPS.

Agenericname wrote: »

The cast time feels awkward, especially for ESO, theres no getting around that. Perhaps it would feel more natural if it were a loading screen.