PTS Update 22 - Feedback Thread for Class Balance

Rex-Umbra · April 2019

Magicka DK overly buffed. Magicka NB overly nerfed.

casparian · April 2019

Increased the initial hit damage of this ability and the Radiant Ward morph by 150% to put it on par with our PBAoE standards. Blazing Shield's damage remains untouched since it is already above that standard, since it has an additional requirement in order to gain the damage.

Nearly every player in the game regards Blazing Shield as drastically subpar, and yet it exceeds ZOS' standard for adequate ability balance. What does that say about the difference between in-game standards and ZOS' standard?

Rhaegar75 · April 2019

Dare I ask about an hypothetical guess on class rank in pvp? Who are the new kings?

Minno · April 2019

casparian wrote: »

Increased the initial hit damage of this ability and the Radiant Ward morph by 150% to put it on par with our PBAoE standards. Blazing Shield's damage remains untouched since it is already above that standard, since it has an additional requirement in order to gain the damage.

Nearly every player in the game regards Blazing Shield as drastically subpar, and yet it exceeds ZOS' standard for adequate ability balance. What does that say about the difference between in-game standards and ZOS' standard?

WTB Wrobel Builds

Thraben · April 2019

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for current class balance and the class ability audit in this update. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
[1] Are there any changes you feel are against the spirit of the class? [2] Are you able to weave abilities better or worse in this Update? [3] Do you feel your class is stronger, weaker, or relatively the same with the standardization pass on class abilities? [4] Do you feel we addressed abilities that in the past year have been over or under performing? [5] Do you have any other general feedback?

1) Overload hasn´t been fixed. Both MagSorc healers and StamSorc tanks still suffer from the loss of the third bar. Right now I can´t even use the Ulti because the Heavy Attack won´t react at all 50% of the time. StamSorcs have been in a horrible state since last August, lacking any usable Stam class skills (like a Stam frag, or a Stam curse) wouthout being able to compensate this by using their third bar creatively.

2) Can´t judge.

3) StamWarden feels stronger. MagSorc STILL needs REAL standardization, i.e. pets working like the the Nighblade´s shade (one bar). StamSorc is so standardized that you can´t even recognize it´s a class.

4) Yes.

5) The standardization/ balance attempts of the previous year have created "more fairness" fighting a dps dummy at the cost of interesting playstyle choices. The game feels just boring and bland from a class design PoV. How about a directional light attack as in Morrowind (Cursor up + LA = stab, Curser left + LA = slash; zooming and real targetting for archers etc.), or more reactive and conditional skills? At the moment everyone uses exactly the same skills in the exactly same way at exactly the same time. It´s time to break things up for those who appreciate having more than a 1-2-3-4-5- rotation.

Strider__Roshin · April 2019

Okay, I understand the removal of Surprise Attack in respect to the redundancy that it created with Mark Target, but I have two issues with the change.

1) It's a weak amount. 5% armor reduction against a target with 20k physical resistance equates to 1k penetration which is kinda meh honestly.

2) It only supports one style of combat which is the cowardly attack from the shadows that I'm sure a lot of people enjoy, but not all of us want to play that way. Some of us enjoy the class for its aggressiveness, and this change does nothing for that play style. It's bad enough as it is that the assassination passive supports gankers; now you're making the main spammable do this too?

Suggestion:

Simple. Give the ability Minor Fracture. It's slightly more powerful than the 5% and its applicable to all play styles.

MashmalloMan · April 2019

So after a year of class rep meetings, discussions, discords, feedback, and forum post, as well as multiple confirmations that stam class idenity is lacking, especially for classes like sorc and dk has amounted to you providing a new ability for stam blade and nothing interesting for every other class.

I usually remain optimistic, but I feel like this has become increasingly hard to keep up. Patch after patch it's been a waiting game and each time it's nothing, as if stam sorc doesn't exist, yet you gave the strongest and most well designed stam race another skill to use that properly scales with their stats.

Lets add to the fact that you practically gloated about how good it feels to play the stam necro on stream because of all the stam morphs usable to them. This completely shows you are aware of this huge issue in the base game.

Summon Shade:

This ability now scales with the caster's Max Magicka and Spell Damage, or Stamina and Weapon Damage.
The shades will now attack every 2 seconds, rather than every 1.5 seconds.
Renamed the attacks the shades deal with each morph to help improve clarity.
Fixed an issue where these abilities did not increase in damage as they ranked up.

Dark Shade (morph): This ability now deals 50% more damage as a part of its morph functionality. The AoE attack it casts can happen 5% more frequently than before, and deals 20% more damage than the default attack.

...BUT wait, I forgot they changed the scaling of bolt escape! Now stam sorc's really have some identity. /s

Bolt Escape: Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs could stun targets behind walls.
Streak (morph): This ability will now scale with your highest offensive stats, and increased the stun duration to 3 seconds from 1.8 seconds.

So lets review some major changes regarding stam sorc this past year.

Overload rework, lost 3rd bar, chance to provide stam morph, but nope.
Dark Deal rework, less upfront resource, little more over time, still not good for a rotation like other instant cast sustain tools with a cast time and not enough resources return total to justify its use.
Bound Armor rework, removed heavy passive heavy attack bonus and added light attack bonus, quite nice, but you missed an opportunity again by changing the active comonent to be used as a tank ability for no apparent reason. It was always used for dps.
Hurricane cost reduction, I'll take it, only actual good change this year, and it's just a sustain change.

Tasear · April 2019

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Magicka DK overly buffed. Magicka NB overly buffed.

But now leaves room for other tank classes.

JazzyNova · April 2019

Magden was barely even changed... I really wanted arctic blast to be reverted to the way it was before Murkmire, but by the look of things, a pure ice mage dps in this game is probably never going to happen & it'll remain a meme. Also, animal companions doing frost dmg would've been nice.

Solariken · April 2019

Why are we buffing the gap closer snare again? It's totally fine the way it is on Live. If somebody wants to try to Take Flight from 28 meters away or spam Crit Rush at a mounted player, that should come with a strong likelihood of missing. And we all remember how abusive it was to be able to lock people down with unavoidable gap closer snares!

Arctic Blast still needs some damage.

Sun Shield/Radiant Ward would be more awesomer with the highest-stat scaling mechanic (a la Flames of Oblivion).

Eclipse and morphs - you could reduce the damage/healing by another 25% and remove the lame CC interaction entirely. Just make it a nice conditional DOT+HOT that doesn't monkey with CC opportunity.

Incapacitating Strike only applies Minor Mangle as long as the stun lasts? That's basically useless. Break-free is instant.

I could be wrong but the Uppercut and Dark Flare damage nerfs seem a little heavy-handed based on only a fractional animation adjustment...

Strider__Roshin · April 2019

The change to Incap makes it completely useless. Healing is so overtuned that the healing debuff was required in order to prevent opponents going form almost dead to full health immediately, and minor mangle is the compensation? Please.

Soul Harvest kept its major defile eh? Guess stamblades are going to be using that now. Way to kill the only stam ult stamblades had.

Do me a favor. Remove the stun from Incap entirely, and give Major Defile back to Incap. Want Incap to do something unique from Soul Harvest? Then give it a snare, a root, minor life steal, or heck how about minor mangle as well? I don't care. It would just be nice to have an ultimate that I can use that deals physical/disease damage.

Pevey · April 2019

After reading through, i'm pretty happy about the changes. Can't wait to try them out when the PTS goes live. It looks like the goal was to make the changes as small as possible while gently bringing things in line with the overall vision, which is awesome. I definitely like the concept of smaller changes to see how things play out rather than big yoyo changes. Just a few things are head-scratchers for now (like panacea, it really wasn't used very much to begin with), but I will need some more time to think about it.

Dashmatt · April 2019

Werewolf changes:

“Previously, a big portion of Werewolf's burst damage came from the fact that their bleed applied from their Light Attacks dealt damage immediately, and could be spammed in quick succession. This made up for the fact that immediately Light Attacking would refresh the bleed. Now with the delay, we wanted to ensure you couldn't miss the damage, so we’re making sure these bleeds couldn't refresh if they were already active. ”

So I see the part acknowledging that the initial bleed tick is a big portion of Werewolf damage. I don’t see the part that justifies removing it?

This seems like a significant nerf.

IARTOI · April 2019

I would say that "Molten Whip" rework is OK. but why no stamina cost for it? I mean "Poison whip" would be awesome for spamable class skill.

One other thing Warden Animal Companion ultimate. I suggested that before all big patchs released. This ultimate is useless in PvP. Bear is so slow cannot chase the enemy and wasting ulti cost when they move faster. This ulti occupying both bar for nothing. Its only good in 1v1. You can bring a rework for bear too. At least a leap or jump animation on enemy and stun them instead of pet's heavy attack. Consider this please.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

OtarTheMad · April 2019

JazzyNapkin wrote: »

Magden was barely even changed... I really wanted arctic blast to be reverted to the way it was before Murkmire, but by the look of things, a pure ice mage dps in this game is probably never going to happen & it'll remain a meme. Also, animal companions doing frost dmg would've been nice.

Funny thing is you might be better off going necro for ice damage builds. But that is before testing and based on videos I have seen so who knows.

Minno · April 2019

Solariken wrote: »

Why are we buffing the gap closer snare again? It's totally fine the way it is on Live. If somebody wants to try to Take Flight from 28 meters away or spam Crit Rush at a mounted player, that should come with a strong likelihood of missing. And we all remember how abusive it was to be able to lock people down with unavoidable gap closer snares!

Arctic Blast still needs some damage.

Sun Shield/Radiant Ward would be more awesomer with the highest-stat scaling mechanic (a la Flames of Oblivion).

Eclipse and morphs - you could reduce the damage/healing by another 25% and remove the lame CC interaction entirely. Just make it a nice conditional DOT+HOT that doesn't monkey with CC opportunity.

Incapacitating Strike only applies Minor Mangle as long as the stun lasts? That's basically useless. Break-free is instant.

I could be wrong but the Uppercut and Dark Flare damage nerfs seem a little heavy-handed based on only a fractional animation adjustment...

templar gutted. Invest in warden/DK/necro OP now.

Strider__Roshin · April 2019

Dark Shade (morph)

I love that you're trying to make this ability viable, but it's just a bad ability and the reason is simple: it's stationary.

Honestly if you want this ability to be a viable option then I'd recommend that this shade follows your character, and intermittently does AoE attacks. That would make this ability a powerful, and desirable option.

StarOfElyon · April 2019

Minno wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

Why are we buffing the gap closer snare again? It's totally fine the way it is on Live. If somebody wants to try to Take Flight from 28 meters away or spam Crit Rush at a mounted player, that should come with a strong likelihood of missing. And we all remember how abusive it was to be able to lock people down with unavoidable gap closer snares!

Arctic Blast still needs some damage.

Sun Shield/Radiant Ward would be more awesomer with the highest-stat scaling mechanic (a la Flames of Oblivion).

Eclipse and morphs - you could reduce the damage/healing by another 25% and remove the lame CC interaction entirely. Just make it a nice conditional DOT+HOT that doesn't monkey with CC opportunity.

Incapacitating Strike only applies Minor Mangle as long as the stun lasts? That's basically useless. Break-free is instant.

I could be wrong but the Uppercut and Dark Flare damage nerfs seem a little heavy-handed based on only a fractional animation adjustment...

templar gutted. Invest in warden/DK/necro OP now.

I'm going to be hard headed and stick with Templar still. But I did create a character that I plan to change to a Necromancer.

I just wish my Templar could get the small, simple fixes I've asked for. It's a well rounded class. Like the Ryu of ESO. Only it's C tier instead of B or A tier.

Minno · April 2019

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Solariken wrote: »

Why are we buffing the gap closer snare again? It's totally fine the way it is on Live. If somebody wants to try to Take Flight from 28 meters away or spam Crit Rush at a mounted player, that should come with a strong likelihood of missing. And we all remember how abusive it was to be able to lock people down with unavoidable gap closer snares!

Arctic Blast still needs some damage.

Sun Shield/Radiant Ward would be more awesomer with the highest-stat scaling mechanic (a la Flames of Oblivion).

Eclipse and morphs - you could reduce the damage/healing by another 25% and remove the lame CC interaction entirely. Just make it a nice conditional DOT+HOT that doesn't monkey with CC opportunity.

Incapacitating Strike only applies Minor Mangle as long as the stun lasts? That's basically useless. Break-free is instant.

I could be wrong but the Uppercut and Dark Flare damage nerfs seem a little heavy-handed based on only a fractional animation adjustment...

templar gutted. Invest in warden/DK/necro OP now.

I'm going to be hard headed and stick with Templar still. But I did create a character that I plan to change to a Necromancer.

I just wish my Templar could get the small, simple fixes I've asked for. It's a well rounded class. Like the Ryu of ESO. Only it's C tier instead of B or A tier.

they need more work now. The class no longer will function at a competitive level compared to the buffs sorcs/dks have.

Izaki · April 2019

I don't get why they took this direction when nerfing Surprise Attack.

I would have thought it more logical to move it to the Assassination skill line instead of Mirage. With that you do 2 things: you take away the Major Resistance buffs on the spammable and you take away 3% Max Health. Boom. Now you just have a spammable with a debuff and none of the Shadow skill line passives. Right now, we're talking about an almost 20% damage nerf in total in solo content (about 12% from Major Fracture and 8% from Berserk). In raids, nothing changes, which is good. But in PvP and vMA its a massive damage nerf. Doesn't it seem more logical to remove the tanky component of Surprise Attack rather than its offensive potential?

The skill that needs to get buffed and completely changed (IMO) is Mark, not Surprise Attack. Instead of having Major Fracture and Major Breach (and by the way, its much better to use Elemental Drain for the debuff since its free and gives you tons of recovery), give this skill something else, something that would actually be useful.

Why put Minor Vulnerability on Ambush? Its too much of a buff on a skill that can be spammed. And the thing is that people don't use gap closers because of the inability to block which leaves you open to being burst down. So you've essentially just buffed the dudes who play in big groups and spam Ambush on the guy they are chasing. Basically a buff for zerglings.

The Relentless Focus buff is also quite weird. Sure its a great buff, but what about the Magicka morph? Magblades already have plenty of healing, they don't need another one. Instead, they'd need some extra functionality on this skill. If it were up to me, remove the Heal on Damage from the skill entirely, keep the Minor Endurance on Relentless and keep the extra damage on Merciless and put them both at 30 seconds. 10 seconds on the base skill would be a good compensation for the loss of Berserk. The heal is pointless.

I guess most of this is just wishful thinking, but I hope that these changes will get seriously adjusted.

Galarthor · April 2019

There is so much deadweight in the 3 sorc trees, it would have been nice if ZOS at least tried to make more skills / morphs viable like they are doing for other classes.

As for the sorc changes, I like them, but I am also a underwhelmed by amount and direction of the changes. These are mainly bug fixes and some number tweaking. Nothing really changes though and that is disappointing for a promised "complete overhaul of the class". The only thing that is new and exciting is that pets now focus the target affected by Daedric Prey. But most sorcs don't want to play Zoo Keepers, so that change is not really all that great overall since it is further pushing sorcs to be Zoo Keepers.

Btw, ZOS if you make sorcs into Zoo Keepers, at least let them enter that Zoo building in Summerset so that we can get the Lorebooks inside of it even after we have completed the quest - i.e. give Zoo Keepers keys to the Zoo

CurvedSwords123 · April 2019

Do you people intend on ignoring Stamsorcs indefinitely? Surely after all these years you intend on giving us some identity this patch. I legitimately feel we are just a blind spot on your radar.

devildog13_93 · April 2019

Sooo why is gold food getting Nerfed??, powdered mother of pearl and perfect roe are a grind. Isn't that the point to making the food much different than other foods?

Olupajmibanan · April 2019

Since duo inferno petsorcs now vastly surpass heavy attack petsorcs in terms of single target damage output, reduced cost on Daedric Prey is a welcomed addition along with the added taunt function. If you wanted to make the ability consistent in damage buff, so be it. It will be definitely a nerf but not horribly significant.
- Not a bad change.

Dk wings, won't go deeper into that. But what really confuses me is the Reflective Plate morph. Why it provides only 2 seconds of immunity when Forward Momentum and new Race Against time offer 4 seconds of the very same buff?
- As I praised your hunt for consistency in Daedric Prey change, I take my words back. Reflective Plate immunity duration is inconsisten with other similar abilities.

Resto ult change is lame. I'd rather see Life Giver current functionality removed entirely and gained Major Protection only. Lights Champion for Major Force, Life Giver for Major Protection. That is how I imagine ZoS explanation "one for offense, one for defense".
- Not a good change. Enjoy billions of rage post from casuals dying more frequently in Battlegrounds.

Scorch being blockable is a needed change but inconsistent with standard block/dodge functions. Whatever, the only thing I hope is that the Major Fracture/Breach will be applied to target even if he blocked Scorch.
- was needed, good change.

Steel Tornado is gone. Ah thank you very much.
- a much needed change

likecats · April 2019

With the removal of minor berserk, why is grim focus still an active skill?
Make it a passive skill, that counts light attacks while you are in combat.

The activation of this skill always made this skill super clunky compared to say, crystal frags, but the sweet 8% buff justified the clunkiness of this skill. But now the buff is gone, but the clunkiness stays. There is no real reason to retain it, removing it will not make nightblade OP, especially with all nerfs it got this patch, but it will improve the QOL for nightblades so so much.

Additionally, since the bow proc now costs resources, meaning in order to fire a bow you are now double dipping in resources, once to activate the skill to count the procs, and another to actually fire the bow.

In spirit of this patch, please remove this redundancy of this skill.

Mr_Nobody · April 2019

Dark Flare nerfs

All my 1shot vids, maaaaaaaan.

I guess we will be back on holding block and spamming shards again!

Ragnarock41 · April 2019

As a stamDk I am very happy for the weapon spammable buffs. Now if the vision for this class is to use weapon abilities, then please remember that when reworking class passives. This whole "poison knight" theme never truly worked and I would honestly prefer class passives that enchant on weapon skills rather than poison ones. I'm sure you guys can do something more creative than %25 poison cost reduction, which lost its meaning due to claw spammable not being a thing anymore.

So far I'm happy with the direction of this patch. If this sounds like I'm complaining , I'm not. This might be the best patch since one tamriel.

CurvedSwords123 · April 2019

Stamsorc ignored again. *Shocked

xaraan · April 2019

Still looking over stuff. Some interesting changes that didn't freak me out.

Some of what I've seen in the thread I'm interested to get to and look over myself though.

I was a bit bummed to see that Templars would not get a decent health based self heal - so still not gonna be useful as a hardcore end game tank vs. DK, Warden and now Necromancers. (Neither did NB get enough changes to help in the tanking dept.)

Edit: Looked at the change to NB dark cloak heal == it sucks now. (Also, please tell me you changed the animation finally instead of leaving the version that makes it look like your going into stealth). For real tanking it's trash, a healers rapid regen will hit harder and it doesn't offer the burst you can get from the real tanking classes.

Nightblade and Templar are nothing more than tanking challenges to players where you give yourself less to work with for the fun and challenge of it. They don't have the basic tools they deserve. They both need health based self heals to even be in the same room as the other classes for tanking, much less several other abilities they lack that still would leave them off the field.

Any fight where you would have to use Dragons Blood, Clanny heal, Wind Heal or whatever the Necro has as a burst heal means Templars and NBs have nothing. (Correction - You can have a weak breath of life heal that costs as much as those other classes self heals that might go to random team mate instead of you for Templar - so yea - not a dependable option really).

DarkerDreams · April 2019

*Big sigh* It's not the individual nerfs that bother me, it's the overall nerfs to entire play styles. It seems with every patch you just want to push people into only one viable brawler play style for PvP. It's bad enough you nerfed the damage from stealth on the racial passive update, now your nerfing the rest of the skills that make playing a stealthy assassin possible. Not even mentioning the previous nerfs to shields and countless other abilities that have killed other play styles in the past. And as a final straw just to ensure it goes that way, you made it so people could just slot race against time and not evwn have to consider wearing medium armor. What happened to diversity? Your making it so the only build people will use are tanky heavy armor builds. We can all stand in the middle of a BG now and just bash away at each other until someone misses a button press and dies.

Oh yeah, and the nerf to consumables was just surprising. Really can't remember anyone complaing that the food buff was too strong