Upcoming Racial Balance Changes for Update 21

Left4Daud · January 2019

Wood elves losing disease immunity and stealth bonuses for a worthless detection bonus?

I just don’t get why you guys are trying to reinvent the wheel with these changes. You didn’t need to take anything away from our beloved characters, small tweaks to the numbers over a series of monitored updates would have more than sufficed.

Now wood elves will have these unexciting passives for the next two years until you decide to smash everything and change it again.

I’m just not enthused about this and I know nothing I say will have any influence over the balance direction so I won’t even bother making suggestions. All I can say is that if I wasn’t so attached to my wood elves I’d delete them after seeing this news, that’s how much of a let down it is.

AlienatedGoat · January 2019

Wow, Dark Elf is completely ruined for my magicka builds.

ZOS, what the hell were you thinking?

zyk · January 2019

Tonturri wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Basically, ZOS has made it less bad for casual pug raiders with sub-optimal builds.

Competitive PVE raids will still require optimal race selection.

PVP racial balance will worse or the same -- except different races will be OP.

ZOS should fine tune the current system. This new system is too disruptive.

Raiders will require what is most optimal meta as long as there are numbers to number crunch to figure out what is most optimal. Nothing has changed there.

Same for PvP - this or that race, as long as there are numbers to crunch...*shrug*

Uhm, that's the point. The system doesn't actually fix anything. It just waters things down a bit.

Tonturri wrote: »

Obviously there should - and likely will - be some fine tuning. But c'mon. People whine 'n complain that ZOS nerfs/buffs with a sledgehammer. Now they get this - nerfing/buffing not with a sledge hammer - and...just, goodness.[/qipt

I'm curious as to further elaboration on your 'too disruptive' comment. To what? How?

ZOS has taken a sledgehammer to the current system and that is disruptive. Just ask a Khajiit Stamblade or Dunmer MagDK.

colossalvoids · January 2019

Sorry for my english at first!
For the most part changes looking good, but there are some problems as i see it.

First one Nord being more exposed to bleeds and oblivion damage.

Second one about two viable magicka pve dps options, one being sustained damage as Altmer and another damage oriented one with an extra bit of stamina - a Dunmer.

What is the main magicka dps problem and getting worse each patch? Right, sustain issues.
(for sake of making us invest into sustain and not all to damage anymore i guess)

What we can see clearly now, that there is no other viable pve dps option other than Altmer.
They got sustain buffed, even for stamina character option - which is good.
Reduced damage taken while channeling / casting, which every magicka character do.
Max magicka bonus of 2000.
258 spell damage is probably a buff, as it's not a percent on top of percent and so on as it was before.

But what about Dunmer?
There was 1% max magicka difference, which now 1250 compared to 2000 Altmer will have.
Then we got 600 health (???) and buffed fire resistance by a bit. (from 2079 to 2310)
And a 258 spell and weapon damage, which is good for hybrids that don't work in pve.

So Dunmer got less magicka, no sustain at all and no compensation in a damage dealing ability as a magicka dps.

It could be nice to acknowledge this to make some changes and not just leaving a hybrid lackluster race when there far more good dps options for a stamina and magicka both.

There could be lots of solutions to this.
Two main ones are to give some form of sustain (both magicka and stamina) be it even less than Altmer will have (like orc compared to redguard as example, maybe even only while doing flame damage as magicka and disease/poison as stamina to made their life even harder) or some form of damage dealing bonus, be it more weapon/spell power or something more tricky and correct from lore standpoint as bonus in form of spell damage to fire damage abilities and as a hybrid weapon damage to physical (disease/poison? morag tong anyone?) damage too. Magicka damage providing ultimate generation? Anything useful at all?

sneakymitchell · January 2019

Minno wrote: »

Didn't think it would happen but Nord got a Nerf against bleed builds lol

Well at least resistance. Guess if oblivion hits me I get hurt with that normal damage.
Some complain about the resistance.
The ult will help me get in werewolf little quicker be a beserking nord stam DK. Suits the nord heck probably tanks as well will use nord!

Savos_Saren · January 2019

So just to point out:

Argonian

Khajiit

Dunmer

Are the most balanced classes to play any/all rolls... whether they're magicka/stamina/health based. They're the best for people who may like to hop between tank, healer, or DPS.

I applaud the Devs for these three. The rest are a little pigeon-holed... but you have to have the min/maxer builds, I guess.

kojou · January 2019

Breton seems a bit weak IMO... I would have expected it to be closer to the magicka equivalent of Redguard, but it is not even close.

ArchMikem · January 2019

Lets look at my two Races i play.

You just outright nerfed Argonians.

And you buffed Khajiit, but not nearly in line with other Races. High Elf gets 2000 more Magic but my Stamblade only gets 750 Stamina?

Gilcroix · January 2019

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Can we please start moving away from the need to use actual consumables to take advantage of Resourceful? I was hoping this whole rework would address this problem because it's still the only passive that requires you to go out of your way and spend gold (or time farming) to constantly take advantage of it. Having it be a sustain tool is great and all, but having it come with an out-of-pocket expense makes it extremely costly the longer it's used.

This ^

That has been the worst racial in game since beta. I can't believe it's been 5 years and it's still there. It's linked to something you try your best not to use , because it costs you, not only that but potions are not needed for much of the content. You can go days without ever having to use one. where other races have their bonuses tied to using weapons or spells , which is something you do constantly.

There are other racials that would seem to fit much better than potions. Scaly skin would give physical resistance. There is a lot of Shadowscale lore for stealth abilities. As someone who has walked across my share of swamp lands while deer hunting, I can tell you it is very difficult and tiring. Which makes me think argonians would have been better as a stamina race rather than magicka. I have never understood why they have magical healing abilities either. Since reptiles regenerate physically , you would think health regeneration would fit much better.

I don't really understand the + health for Dark elf instead of magikca.

I liked the Breton changes , not sure Nords should get the same spell resist bonus as a Breton though.

MartiniDaniels · January 2019

JobooAGS wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

grannas211 wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

The only racial that matters for bosmer is being bis for cuteness

The passives look very good as well

What's good in there? redguards got exactly the same stamina and recovery, but on top of that 8% stamina cost decrease.
Bosmers will be bow-rolling rofling jokers now, nothing more.

With these regen modifiers for pve stambalde (7 med (.28) .15 nb passive .15 cp .1 relentless .2 potion) a bosmer's 258 regen becomes 485 regen. Redguard gets only 380 from adrenline rush while still having the same stam modifiers, having poison resists, and movement speed bonuses

In a pvp perspective, we will assume nb with vampire, 5 medium, and 13% from cp. This will give you the same numbers. You can also add stealth detection too and movement speed is more prominent

Seems like passive regen is better than active regen.

Wow, minus 4% to stamina and health for extra 8% to stamrecovery. And you forgot about new 8% cost reduce on redguard. Well, overall bosmer was slightly improved, but redguard was directly buffed. Ok redguard will lose some maxstamina but with such cost reduction and sustain they can spam spammables even more to compensate.

tpanisiakb16_ESO wrote: »

I'm overall okay with it, but tanking Argonians can expect to lose 1.5-2k health. Hoping ZOS can meet us in the middle over that. 1000 is not a good compensation for losing 9% max health especially if we're losing healing received.

Read devs comment, in their opinion argonians were clearly overperforming so they quite severely nerfed them while buffing others

Aliyavana wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Wood Elf

[*]Stealthy: Reduces detection Radius by 3m and Increases Damage Done in Stealth by 10% → Hunter’s Eye: Increases your Stealth detection radius by 3m. After you use Roll Dodge you gain 20% Movement Speed for 3 seconds.

Can we please get something useful instead?
Reduced cost for roll dodge for example. Even just +10 health would be better than this.

no, 20 percent speed buff is amazing

You do realize that this is a weaker version of a passive that already exists in the Bow skill line -- which most Bosmer are probably already going to have due to their other passive? The +3m stealth detection bonus is a huge nothing since nearly 0.0% of PvE enemies use stealth. So, really, Bosmer completely lose a racial passive.

it will be useful if you do not run bow for mobility and its likely going to stack with other speed buffs since it seems to be a unique one, so ya it is useful

It won't help much if you are snared.. if this bonus also (or) removed all snares this will nice buff to overall survivability and unique one. Now it's just useful for niche pvp builds for 0.1% of players.

MLGProPlayer · January 2019

joshfong wrote: »

Interesting. For the most part, I like what I see. Still seems like Altmer might have the upper hand for magicka DPS over Dunmer though, but I'll wait for testing for a proper conclusion.

They will have the upper hand.

Altmer:

- 2000 max magicka
- 192 magicka recovery
- 258 spell damage

Dunmer:

- 1250 max magicka
- 258 spell damage

Dunmer will have other buffs that improve their survivability and possibly make them the better choice in PvP, but for PvE magicka DPS, it's altmer or bust.

I don't mind since I prefer the aesthetic of altmer anyway (and all my magicka DPS are already altmer), but it sucks for all the dunmer out there who will need to race change now.

Savos_Saren · January 2019

Honestly, these changes look good.

I love playing on multiple races. I like how it's set numbers vs percentages.

Now, people can actually intelligently invest points into health, magicka, and stamina instead of dumping everything into one resources in order to maximize their racial passive %.

Convince me otherwise.

JobooAGS · January 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

grannas211 wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

The only racial that matters for bosmer is being bis for cuteness

The passives look very good as well

What's good in there? redguards got exactly the same stamina and recovery, but on top of that 8% stamina cost decrease.
Bosmers will be bow-rolling rofling jokers now, nothing more.

With these regen modifiers for pve stambalde (7 med (.28) .15 nb passive .15 cp .1 relentless .2 potion) a bosmer's 258 regen becomes 485 regen. Redguard gets only 380 from adrenline rush while still having the same stam modifiers, having poison resists, and movement speed bonuses

In a pvp perspective, we will assume nb with vampire, 5 medium, and 13% from cp. This will give you the same numbers. You can also add stealth detection too and movement speed is more prominent

Seems like passive regen is better than active regen.

Wow, minus 4% to stamina and health for extra 8% to stamrecovery. And you forgot about new 8% cost reduce on redguard. Well, overall bosmer was slightly improved, but redguard was directly buffed. Ok redguard will lose some maxstamina but with such cost reduction and sustain they can spam spammables even more to compensate.

tpanisiakb16_ESO wrote: »

I'm overall okay with it, but tanking Argonians can expect to lose 1.5-2k health. Hoping ZOS can meet us in the middle over that. 1000 is not a good compensation for losing 9% max health especially if we're losing healing received.

Read devs comment, in their opinion argonians were clearly overperforming so they quite severely nerfed them while buffing others

Aliyavana wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Wood Elf

[*]Stealthy: Reduces detection Radius by 3m and Increases Damage Done in Stealth by 10% → Hunter’s Eye: Increases your Stealth detection radius by 3m. After you use Roll Dodge you gain 20% Movement Speed for 3 seconds.

Can we please get something useful instead?
Reduced cost for roll dodge for example. Even just +10 health would be better than this.

no, 20 percent speed buff is amazing

You do realize that this is a weaker version of a passive that already exists in the Bow skill line -- which most Bosmer are probably already going to have due to their other passive? The +3m stealth detection bonus is a huge nothing since nearly 0.0% of PvE enemies use stealth. So, really, Bosmer completely lose a racial passive.

it will be useful if you do not run bow for mobility and its likely going to stack with other speed buffs since it seems to be a unique one, so ya it is useful

It won't help much if you are snared.. if this bonus also (or) removed all snares this will nice buff to overall survivability and unique one. Now it's just useful for niche pvp builds for 0.1% of players.

The 8% cost reduction is only for weapon skills.
What hp bonus?
Also bosmer and redguard in this situation have the same stam bonuses 2k stam.

KingKobra · January 2019

Guys heads up! ! ! BIG NEWS! ! ! The race change in the crown store is now 2500 crowns instead of 3000 for like 10 more hours! What a steal !! !

)))

zyk · January 2019

I don't like the perception that exists that hybrid builds are intrinsically a good thing and that changes made to better enable them are good. This ignores the fact that the fundamental design of the combat system means that specialization will always be more important.

Sure, Dunmer may make better hybrids than before but that doesn't change the fact that the rules of ESO make most hybrid builds a bad idea.

ShinWow · January 2019

Well, this pretty much nerfs all of my toons in multiple ways...

Why? I don't understand the over-arching purpose of converting % stacking to flat values, bringing everything down to the same generic sameness? Why not just let us create 1 toon, 1 race, 1 class and 1 skill so we can all get gold stars?

I mean honestly, I laughed out loud when I read you were taking away the Dark Elf flame damage buff and giving it the same 258 damage increase as you're giving High Elf... what is the point in race skills at all if you're going to dumb it down this hard?

Couldn't be more disappointed with these changes.

Tonturri · January 2019

zyk wrote: »

Tonturri wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

Basically, ZOS has made it less bad for casual pug raiders with sub-optimal builds.

Competitive PVE raids will still require optimal race selection.

PVP racial balance will worse or the same -- except different races will be OP.

ZOS should fine tune the current system. This new system is too disruptive.

Raiders will require what is most optimal meta as long as there are numbers to number crunch to figure out what is most optimal. Nothing has changed there.

Same for PvP - this or that race, as long as there are numbers to crunch...*shrug*

Uhm, that's the point. The system doesn't actually fix anything. It just waters things down a bit.

Tonturri wrote: »

Obviously there should - and likely will - be some fine tuning. But c'mon. People whine 'n complain that ZOS nerfs/buffs with a sledgehammer. Now they get this - nerfing/buffing not with a sledge hammer - and...just, goodness.[/qipt

I'm curious as to further elaboration on your 'too disruptive' comment. To what? How?

ZOS has taken a sledgehammer to the current system and that is disruptive. Just ask a Khajiit Stamblade or Dunmer MagDK.

Disruptive...to what? And how is it a bad thing? Meta shake-ups happen all the time, relatively speaking. How is it both 'just watering down a bit' and a sledgehammer at the same time?

LiquidPony · January 2019

John_Falstaff wrote: »

So khajiits are left jack of all trades, masters of none. Thank you, ZOS. Thank you a lot; that's the most lousy balancing job so far.

As for redguards, then they got a buff:

At base 750 regen, they lost 9%, so loss of 67.5 regen.
Rending slashes present in any rotation, 2160 stamina. With 12-second rotation, gain of 28.8 regen.
New Adrenaline Rush - gain of 63.2 regen.

So, they got a small, but still a buff in sustain.

Redguards also lost ~1,000 max stamina.

And as far as Khajiit go ... the interesting possibility is that the new +750 health/stamina bonus means you can run something like Artaeum Takeaway Broth and have close to the same max stats (roughly +4500 health and +4200 stamina) as you would on a Khajiit in the current patch using bi-stat food (+4936/+4936).

Sarousse · January 2019

Most of my chars are nords because of the HP recovery and you removed it.

Bad news

Konstant_Tel_Necris · January 2019

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Dark Elf
Increases Experience gain in Dual Wield Skill Line by 15%, reduces damage taken from Lava by 50% → No changes

Dynamic: 6% Max Stamina and Magicka → Increases your Max Stamina and Magicka by 1250.

Resist Flame: 3% Max Magicka and 2079 Flame Resistance → Increases your Max Health by 600 and your Flame Resistance by 2310. You are immune to the Burning status effect.

Destructive Ancestry: 7% Flame damage and 2% Frost/Shock Damage → Ruination: Increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 258.

Developer Comment
Dark Elves are a sophisticated race that can thrive in the harshest conditions. Intelligent and quick, they are well versed in blade or magic, giving them a keen advantage in juggling between the two. By giving them a balanced bonus of Weapon and Spell Damage, as well as Magicka and Stamina, their natural cunning and versatility will be demonstrated as they can fulfil any role.

This changes too harsh for Dark Elfs, can they have something more useful like Ultimate generation when doing damage it's will be much more useful for all roles than small HP bonus and suits hybrids well.

Cundu_Ertur · January 2019

Left4Daud wrote: »

Wood elves losing disease immunity and stealth bonuses for a worthless detection bonus?

I just don’t get why you guys are trying to reinvent the wheel with these changes. You didn’t need to take anything away from our beloved characters, small tweaks to the numbers over a series of monitored updates would have more than sufficed.

Now wood elves will have these unexciting passives for the next two years until you decide to smash everything and change it again.

I’m just not enthused about this and I know nothing I say will have any influence over the balance direction so I won’t even bother making suggestions. All I can say is that if I wasn’t so attached to my wood elves I’d delete them after seeing this news, that’s how much of a let down it is.

First time since Morrowind that Bosmer get no bonus to sneaking. That's what chaps my hiney.

Epicasballs · January 2019

RIP Dark elves.... I literally just race changed my sorc, dk and magblade into dark elves from high elves. There is no reason to be dark elf anymore. High elf is the clear BiS mag dps race. Glad I waited on the magplar. Can we get refunds on recently changed characters. 1 token is borderline offensive.... it's honestly the very least you could do. I don't mean that nicely.

That said I actually like the other changes. I don't see why you did dark elves dirty though. Better stam races and better mag races represented in these changes make dark elves useless.

My dk was a high elf for so long. I finally pull the trigger on a race change last week and boom... not even magdk wants to be a dark elf anymore. Why? The flavor of being a dark elf is gone. Flame damage. We bought into that race for the flame damage. Not to be a hybrid master of none... we were masters of flame.

@ZOS_GinaBruno y'all need to issue refunds on tokens for ALL previously race changed characters. This 1 token BS is BS!

Zacuel · January 2019

Well as a dark elf vamp... Being immune to burning is kinda neat. I can live with that

MartiniDaniels · January 2019

JobooAGS wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

grannas211 wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

The only racial that matters for bosmer is being bis for cuteness

The passives look very good as well

What's good in there? redguards got exactly the same stamina and recovery, but on top of that 8% stamina cost decrease.
Bosmers will be bow-rolling rofling jokers now, nothing more.

With these regen modifiers for pve stambalde (7 med (.28) .15 nb passive .15 cp .1 relentless .2 potion) a bosmer's 258 regen becomes 485 regen. Redguard gets only 380 from adrenline rush while still having the same stam modifiers, having poison resists, and movement speed bonuses

In a pvp perspective, we will assume nb with vampire, 5 medium, and 13% from cp. This will give you the same numbers. You can also add stealth detection too and movement speed is more prominent

Seems like passive regen is better than active regen.

Wow, minus 4% to stamina and health for extra 8% to stamrecovery. And you forgot about new 8% cost reduce on redguard. Well, overall bosmer was slightly improved, but redguard was directly buffed. Ok redguard will lose some maxstamina but with such cost reduction and sustain they can spam spammables even more to compensate.

tpanisiakb16_ESO wrote: »

I'm overall okay with it, but tanking Argonians can expect to lose 1.5-2k health. Hoping ZOS can meet us in the middle over that. 1000 is not a good compensation for losing 9% max health especially if we're losing healing received.

Read devs comment, in their opinion argonians were clearly overperforming so they quite severely nerfed them while buffing others

Aliyavana wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

Edaphon wrote: »

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Wood Elf

[*]Stealthy: Reduces detection Radius by 3m and Increases Damage Done in Stealth by 10% → Hunter’s Eye: Increases your Stealth detection radius by 3m. After you use Roll Dodge you gain 20% Movement Speed for 3 seconds.

Can we please get something useful instead?
Reduced cost for roll dodge for example. Even just +10 health would be better than this.

no, 20 percent speed buff is amazing

You do realize that this is a weaker version of a passive that already exists in the Bow skill line -- which most Bosmer are probably already going to have due to their other passive? The +3m stealth detection bonus is a huge nothing since nearly 0.0% of PvE enemies use stealth. So, really, Bosmer completely lose a racial passive.

it will be useful if you do not run bow for mobility and its likely going to stack with other speed buffs since it seems to be a unique one, so ya it is useful

It won't help much if you are snared.. if this bonus also (or) removed all snares this will nice buff to overall survivability and unique one. Now it's just useful for niche pvp builds for 0.1% of players.

The 8% cost reduction is only for weapon skills.
What hp bonus?
Also bosmer and redguard in this situation have the same stam bonuses 2k stam.

% bonus to HP, stamina and magicka from undaunted passive, don't tell me you run 7 medium pieces.. and what means weapon skills? Reduced cost of hail, poison arrow, twin slashes, spin-to-win etc is nothing?

Matrix117 · January 2019

What's worse about the Race change token besides only getting 1 rip me and my 8 max level toons.(ik some people have even more than that)

Race change tokens only change your race within your alliance unless you have the any race any alliance. which means even if ZOS is giving us 1 toon change, you might not be able to change to the BiS race

dogman · January 2019

gilliam is worse at balancing stuff than wrobel thats an accomplishment

John_Falstaff · January 2019

@LiquidPony , that's only one side of the coin. The other side is - if you run bi-stat food, then there's no way you can trade extra health you got for stamina, even if you're already comfortable at 16k. It just won't get any lower, so there's no option of exchanging those extra magicka and health for max stamina - khajiit loses in flexibility.

Lab3360 · January 2019

What is the point in these changes. These are nerfs across the board on every style of game play. This is a back door nerf.

None of these changes create an enviorment where any race can do any role or class.

This is ludacris. You just destroyed most builds in the game only so you can give the illusion you did something to add to the game.

Ridiculous.

Shinshadow · January 2019

Imperials were mediocre at best in tanking, healing, and stam / mag DPS. but to have them be a purchased race for just mediocrity is useless. I was hoping for some type of magic or stam sustain, but didn't hold my breath. Khajiit getting sustain buffs on top of crit buffs will clearly make them pretty OP as well.

Alaztor91 · January 2019

I like the Breton changes. While it won't beat Altmer in damage, the cost reduction increase looks really nice for PvP or Healing.