ZoS made CP caps long ago and the benefits they gave were not so big (CP 200 or 300 for example) . Now that we are reaching CP 1000, ZoS has decided to make massive nerfs to skills, passives and racials, so actually there have been no real progression, just the illusion of it.

I posted this in another thread on the general forums, but feel it should be here also for consideration.

The issue is not the CP in this game. It never has been. The issue has been the fact that ZOS removed the CAPS on all our stats in this game (except resistances), and they need to bring those back.


There are 5 different Tiers of players in this game.

*Tier 1: New, Casual RP only players who don't really care about getting Vet Dungeons or Trials done, or don't have enough experience with the game yet. Can't breach 10k DPS self buffed.

*Tier 2: Your Average Player. Can do most Vet Dungeons and Normal Trials. May have limited ability to do Vet Trials, but Not Vet Hard Mode. Typically can't breach 20k DPS self buffed.

*Tier3: Middle Tier Players. Can do Vet HM Dungeons, Normal content is far too easy. Most Vet Trials are doable, but not all Hard Modes. Unable to take advantage of Animation Cancelling for various reasons. Tech, Lag, Disability. Typically can't reach 30k DPS self buffed.
Most of these players get set back to Tier 2 with each major nerf to resources, skills, playstyle and have to struggle to climb back up, but eventually do with the help of CP.

*Tier 4: Upper Middle Tier Players. Same as Tier 3, BUT can more reliably Animation Cancel. Can reach 35-45k self buffed. They also get their DPS reduced, but are more readily able to adjust for this disadvantage.

*Tier 5: Elite End Game: Can achieve over 45k dps self buffed very easily; some achieving upwards to 70k parses and blows through Vet Trials Hard Mode content, bypassing mechanics. Often the cause of resource nerfs across the board by ZOS.




Over the last 2 years, a lot of the resource nerfs and other nerfs have been a combination of trying to (Unsuccessfully) bring the DPS ceiling down because of the 50-70k dps numbers, and trying to balance PVP. They nerfed resources due to Tier 5 stack and burn in Hard Mode trials.

The problem though, without CAPs having been added to CP... ZOS is unable to lower that ceiling without gutting out the Tier 3 players. The Tier 4 players don't feel it as bad, since their dps won't drop as much as they can effectively make up that difference with animation cancelling, but they still get nerfed too.

Bringing CAPs on Stats back into this game will:

- This will open up build diversity. It will reduce the necessity for 2 or 3 sets of BiS gear per character roll, instead opening it up to using armour that supports your playstyle, and not just what Alcast tells you, you need to wear.

- It will allow Hybrid Builds to be viable once again and allow players to once again play how they want.

- With the new Racial Passives being announced, bringing in caps will help to mitigate any racials, allowing those players who want to play a Khajit mage to do so effectively.




Then I feel they need to put an actual CAP on MAX achievable DPS. A 45k cap at this point in time I feel would be good to get a feel for how things would play out and determine if this;

- Effectively "Lowers the Ceiling" without gutting out the Middle Tiers 2-4 players in this game.

- This would be the one thing that makes up for Animation Cancelling. A BUG that ZOS has outright admitted they are unable to fix, and therefore have stated it's not a cheat and so an allowable mechanic, despite the majority of players being unable to reliably take advantage of that mechanic. (Not to be confused with attack weaving).
- This prevents the power creep from getting too high. It gives other players, from Tier 1 to Tier 4 a goal to achieve DPS wise and allows them to make decisons within the CP tree to help them achieve that, based on their play style.
- This will force Tier 5 players to continuously play within the designed mechanics of a Trials Dungeon without so easily bypassing them.
- This number can be increased in the future if ZOS decides to release harder content.
- It will continue to allow a small points of vertical progression (power creep) without being overwhelming, and with an end point to that power, which will only be achievable by a very small percentage of the game as it stands now.
- It will open up more end game content to more players over time as they progress, especially those being held back due to continued nerfs, lag, disability and being unable to animation cancel.

Then, I feel to make up for the DPS cap, ZOS could add in a 4th CP Tree which players can dump points in too. This tree would have perks for Quality of Life things only. Example:
- Top Perk would maybe be an extra drops in Trials and Dungeons, or even an Extra 10k sellable item, or better drops from making Leaderboard in Trials.
- More Bank Space
- Increase the number of Collectables you can put in your Home.
- Increased Inventory space
- Increase chance of finding paintings in chests in DLC content.

These perks would also be available to all other players, but depending on what you do as a player, you would be making a choice between your character's power progression or your quality of life items.

I have to wonder how many of the cries for nerfs on the forums were the result of Tier 2 or 3 players going up against Tier 4 or 5 players in PVP, where skill and attack weaving can make a huge difference where if done right everything hits you at once.

Many realize combat in this game is a Math game. But the problem is, ZOS is nerfing due to the potential achieved from that Math, which only the Tier 5 Players can readily take advantage of, while everyone else in this game struggles to achieve it. That's not how this game should be balanced. It should be balanced around the Upper Tier 3 and Lower Tier 4 players. Those who work their asses off to continually achieve those numbers after every nerf.

Seriously, ZOS needs to take a hard look at the DPS numbers from those Parsing on skeletons and being pulled in ALL Trials runs and look closely to see what the lower and middle ground players are running and what is making up that gap.

In PVP, they should be able to make it so that only 50% of your CP will work in PVP on top of the other caps they already have. Therefore, making players closer in ablity without completely removing the CP away.


In closing... CP is not the issue and never really has been. The lack of Caps has been the main issue. ZOS needs to stop nerfing the majority of players to try to bring the Elite end game players into line. It's not working. It never has because there has always been a way to bypass what ZOS has done. Putting caps on stats and on DPS effectively cuts of that bypass without hurting the progress of the majority of players.

Nestor wrote: »

A cap on DPS is probably the best thing ZOS could do to the game for Balance, if that is their goal. Then they can for the most part leave sets and skills alone. Also, it is the only way to efficiently add new classes, which is the progression I really want to see.

The progression I want to see is more morph branches. So you level up your morphed skill to rank 4 and get to morph it again at rank "5." That way if they're at least going to have a stamina morph and a magicka morph it won't eliminate options entirely.

I also don't see of a way a DPS cap would work as it just defeats the purpose of progression entirely...and progression is already meaningless enough in ESO

Just in general id like to see stuff changed so that the cap for damage is a lot lower (like 30 - 40k) without massively effecting the lower damage builds that already exist.

There are some really fun builds out there that pull maybe 30-35k dps and so kinda just get thrown in the ditch for PVE

I also think removal of levels in general would be nice as the only real game exists past gear cap where you start to make your build.

I think the real question is do we NEED a system that scales so much? Is there anything wrong with maybe piling more interesting progression into 0-50 and cutting all progression past that (Besides leveling skill trees)

I feel like they will just do the same to CP that they did with Racial passives

I think maybe soft capping some things and grouping together of some cp perks while adding in some non combat perks would just be crazy enough to work.

Imo they can keep the CP system as a general idea
However reduce the trees from 9 down to 3 class specific trees
This way they can buff certain CPs for a certain class ...like stronger possible thaumaturge tooltip for a dk, but lower master at arm.....and on stuff like a NB they can make master at arms stronger but thaumaturge weaker

Ofc just an example, numbers would have to bee calculated

With this every class either as magicka or as stamina could be brought on the same lvl

Valrien wrote: »

I would personally just get rid of it and bring the level cap back down to 50, and make all 50+ gear level 50 as well.

CP is just a massive beast that is nearly impossible to tame and I think that if you just went back to balancing the raw values of stats and classes within the rest of the game then things would end up being much healthier.

Of course, you could also compensate players somehow since people will be very upset that their CP are suddenly meaningless

The level cap was never 50. It was VR10 at launch, so they would be bringing it "back" down.

I would just like to see the non-combat passives earlier in the tree. Put them all at 30 points in a tree. They are the main reason why I want the cap to keep going up.

I never had an issue with vet ranks and I have no issue with CP. Seems counterproductive to get rid of CP globally when they can just remove them from all PvP.

But I have over 1200 points I want to place one day...

They could just simplify it and make it buff general character stats directly which would make it easier to control power creep and balance how powerful they want us to be for a given patch.

1 point = X Max Magicka, Spell Damage, Spell Crit, Spell Penetration, or Spell Resistance etc in Blue Tree, and Stamina equivalent in green tree, and in the red tree have Max Health, Shield Increase, Healing Increase, Crit Resistance etc. This would also to some degree make it easier to spec from magicka to stamina if desired.

By putting relevant defense/resistance stats in the green and blue tree players would have to trade damage for being more tanky and couldn't just stack both.

What would also be fun IMO is if you could have a way to morph your damage with CP and make all of your magic damage fire, shock, or frost; or physical damage into poison, disease, or bleed. So if you wanted to make a character do one type of damage (e.g. poison knight or frost mage) it would actually be possible with any class.

My biggest problem with CP the way it is right now is they way the damage modifiers stack, so the more you get the higher you can stack your modifiers which increase damage and resistance to OP levels which gives us powerful tanks that do high levels of damage in PvP.

Obviously there would be some various points and details that have to be thought out, but I think something like this could work conceptually.

That resource bonus curve that peaks at 300 CP (100 per tree)...

If that curve kept on going (down after 100, reaching 0% at max CP), that'd turn the forward progression of high CP into a sideways progression. People will need to factor that into their optimization, whether they want to spend 100% of their points.

Maybe it could be paired with a small non-combat bonus for unspent points, like additional XP or better loot quality.

I like the CP passives its a fun system.

I want some end-game progression myself.

As someone that primarily tanks at end-game I'm already bored that I haven't had to care about any gear but ebon and alkosh for how many years now? So now will be even less change with my characters each patch. yay?

BUT, I do think the power creep and power differences is a bit much with CP as it is.

Personally I'd love to see the flat buffs it gives out taken away and built back into the base character (since they already nerfed base characters to address these additions in the past several years - I do not want to see it just flat removed and a blanket nerf across the game occur where zos does what they too often do and never revisit their old changes that need redone).

And I'd like to see more flavor passives and skills added. Stuff like the wind riding bonus, or harvesting, or treasure hunter. Bonuses like give someone 10% extra regen after rez for 5 seconds. Those types of little bonuses and interesting and do not really change the overall power level of a particular fight in pvp or end game pve, but can be fun and cool for players to earn. They don't create the power difference of earning a huge crit bonus at a given level all the sudden does or stacking up pen or damage to twice what another player could. And it would eliminate the need to have CP/non-CP campaigns in PvP and lower the needed in combat calculations by a ton without having twenty different bonuses to apply to everything anyone casts.

Another thing they could do is have a specific tree in CP or whatever they call it for each specific race. Perhaps once you achieve a certain level it lets you pick up racials that give you more options with a race. Not in addition to your existing ones, but offer a change so the power level stays they same, it just offers variety. For example in the upcoming changes one of the bonuses Argonians get is 1k Magicka, perhaps there would be an option to convert that to 500 mag/stam or 1K stam. So the racial passives still make a difference in the lore of the character and each having a cultural difference in their evolution, but as in all ES achieving higher power levels let's you push the boundries and expand your options.

It would also offer up build diversity players are looking for without just adding to power. I think making them shift the existing power of a racial instead of just adding to it with more is a decent option.

The easiest solution would be to keep the current system but shrink all of the star pool values to 10%. So Mighty for example would offer a maximum of 10% damage instead of 25%.

Then also reduce the passive resource gains from 20% to 10%.

If any of you have ever played AC Odyssey, theres this enchantment system there where you can collect and use these legendary enchantments. Instead of the cp system you could collect and use something in the lines of that in eso. Just an idea at the top of my head.