Thank you for reading. My opinion will most likely be very unpopular with my PvE endgame colleagues as of now concerning the v5.1.0 patch notes https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483597/pts-patch-notes-v5-1-0#latest

..but within the context of the notes themselves, I see no actual detriment/horrid thing in the majority of the update that many people seem to be overreacting to; some are even calling the entirety of the patch notes worse than the notorious Morrowind/"Nerfmire" patches which imo is mostly inaccurate. There are definitely things to be outraged over or even quit the game over which I will go over later in this post but it is disappointing to me that a large number of people suddenly lost an objective view or their civil manners simply because "change".

To clarify I am not defending all of the patch notes (hence the "but"), just like a lot of people I am frustrated by the ambitious business strategy ZOS announced back in 2017 to release 2 DLCs, 1 Expansion/Trial and 1 major gameplay update every year. Nor am I satisfied with how much changes in the game with little to no fixes. The quarterly push of content in particular has introduced/reintroduced an outstanding amount of bugs and performance issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later. The constant duct-taping that happens every incremental patch for the entire game for absolutely no reason at times also needs to have a long-term solution thought out.

One must forgive me if I am especially skeptical of the v5.1.0 patch notes' fixes for various things including the desync issue that affected overland, PvE and PvP areas of the game. It is disappointing to me that this issue that kept occurring and pushed a lot of people to the edge for 4-5 weeks in a significant PR patch like Elsweyr will not be 'fixed' until next patch.

I understand that a major shakeup is also not appealing to a lot of players. Yes, after a while indeed it's tiring to keep up with the sweeping changes implemented by ZOS. However I am not writing this post to argue here or there as the fact remains: ZOS is intent on going through with this major gameplay update and the best things we can do as the playerbase is to voice our opinions fervently and hope they see the validity in our feedback.

The most ridiculous issues in my opinion, some of which have already been touched on by others from our community, in regards to the PTS Week 1 notes that needs everyone's attention are as follows:





The above healing changes make no sense especially for PvE. For whatever reason, the reasoning behind why the combat team updated Entropy was applied to Grand Healing/Healing Springs/Illustrious Healing:

Redesigned this ability [Entropy] and its morphs to operate as a DoT, rather than the strange HoT/DoT/Buff hybrid it previously was.

While the reasoning is sound for Entropy as it literally was a HoT/DoT/Buff hybrid, the same cannot be said for Grand Healing. It is not a buff nor DoT, it is strictly just healing. I don't know why something you can spam is suddenly considered a "hybrid", we might as well apply this logic to every other spammable skill in the game but that wouldn't make sense. The biggest problem in regards to the Grand Healing update is that you can only have this one AoE heal active at a time. Just one. You do not have to be a Trials-only raider to realize the implications this will have for PvE or even, yes, the PvP'ers who have to do PvE. In a dungeon alone, you have 3 others to heal as a healer. Imagine due to mechanics or the nature of the fight that your group is scattered. Two on one side and one on another. Who do you choose to heal with this skill? This goes even further when you apply this to Trials, particularly progression groups that struggle to stay coordinated.

The longer duration of the Grand Healing in addition to the cap of 1 heal AoE also dumbs down the healer role significantly, we now leave even less room for error in terms of overhealing for healers and this starts restricting class options. You will now want to bring a Templar/Warden more than you would a Sorc/other class healer as the two former classes have additional healing AoEs.

Even more puzzling is the sudden cost increase to Regeneration when it's already capped at 1 person. For the most part, this will affect vAS raids somewhat on part of the Group Healer but we will probably see negative consequences for vCR HM on part of the Kite Healer at times. Other than those scenarios it wasn't used by a lot of experienced healers. All in all, it's not the end of the world for Regeneration but why the skill was even touched is beyond me.



As explained why this is arguably the worst thing about the patch notes and protested by many of the game's finest healers here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483893/scalebreaker-pts-patch-notes-5-1-0-an-end-game-healer-opinion-on-the-matter

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483659/you-can-only-have-1-orb-active-at-a-time-why-this-should-not-go-live/p1

https://www.change.org/p/zenimax-pve-players-against-1-orb-orb-helmets-protests?recruited_by_id=98876ff0-a0ad-11e9-a374-516eb4085c0c&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

this change is something I would be incredibly surprised to see on the Week 2 PTS Patch Notes as it's objectively so ridiculous and mind-boggling that I have no idea why anyone would think it's a good idea to even put on the Week 1 PTS Patch Notes. I suspect that whoever thought of this for Week 1 is either so disconnected from the actual game or wishes to draw so much outrage to this one thing that people don't pay attention to the rest of the patch notes thereby letting other damaging things through to Live.

To summarize: limiting one Necrotic/Energy Orb per caster significantly removes the rewarding group play prevalent in ESO's PvE content. You now have 2 healers trying to supply at least 10 other people in a raid with just one orb each. The very idea of it is hilarious as this one change will pretty much be a mirror of Morrowind's unpleasant heavy attacking meta and shoehorn people into specific builds. No one likes heavy attacking. No healer likes it, no tank likes it and ESPECIALLY no DPS likes it. No one likes holding down their left mouse click button just because they can't sustain a light attack rotation. There is a reason why so many people, not just in the endgame community, left the PvE scene/the game back in Morrowind. Progression guilds literally died and no one could fill raids.

This 'drought' of players would last until roughly 2 patches later (Clockwork City).

Sustain is already being nerfed with the increase in cost to most of the abilities across the board, we should not make the same mistake by hitting sustain too hard just as we did in Morrowind. Was the removal of stam cost/mag cost reduction CP necessary? Absolutely. Was hitting all the armor passives/removing a synergy/raising skill cost necessary? No, not at all.

But I digress, going back to the healing aspect, we are now left with 1 orb, 1 healing AoE and 1 regeneration. With this orb change in particular, healers are no longer rewarded for buffing/debuffing or doing other things for their group while their orbs go out. There is no more rewarding the healers for pre-emptively healing the group or making good decisions on pumping out orbs at the correct time. There is no more rewarding healers who do very well at layering their heals. All this does is dumb down the role and strip healers of their unique combat identity. Why someone at ZOS would be fine with taking good elements of combat away from the game is beyond me but instead their "compensation" for capping one orb per caster is:

Decreased the speed to 2 meters per second from 3 meters per second to help it deal damage or heal targets more reliably as the orb passes them.

These changes do not, in any way, make the healer role any more difficult nor enjoyable as it simply forces artificial difficulty onto the rest of the group in a lot of PvE scenarios.

Healers will now be forced to run as many different HoTs as possible if these horrid changes go through as you must remember that the healing done was also nearly halved for Grand Healing. There are many situations where groups need intensive healing (vHoF execute, vCR execute, vMoL execute, vSO execute, just to name a few) and the changes don't really take that into account either.

"So why not run more healers?"

I've seen this question posted here and elsewhere but the short answer is: running more healers would lengthen the fights, generally the faster a fight is with better DPS the easier it is on the group. Having more healers does not necessarily equate to "safer". Running more healers would put achievement runs at risk such as hard mode/speed run/no death. No DPS is going to be like "hey I want to heal instead of doing fun DPS!" so you're going to have roster issues in many raid guilds/groups.