frozzzen101 wrote: »

Let me preface that I believe that in its current form, this patch will be the single worst thing that happened to this game. Worse than Morrowind sustain nerfs, worse than infamous Nerfmire and worse than anything devs have thrown at us in recent years. I'm talking from a perspective of Dungeon-Trial-Arena person, as I’m not knowledgeable enough on pvp matters and on the surface level pvp changes look sensible for the most part. However, pve has been hit by multifaceted nerfs all across the board, and hardest hit will be on uncoordinated dungeon groups as well as any sort of progression teams that are still struggling with content they are progressing. So, which portion of your playerbase is the combat team actually attempting to nerf?

First let’s focus on dps nerfs because these are the simplest to explain. ZoS has been talking a lot about re-standardization and new standards for dots and aoe dots, however these new standards are absolute garbage.
If we compare parses from your average Joe and from Liko, arguably one of best dds in game at the moment, you will notice that Joe’s parses will be much more affected by reduction of efficiency of damage over time abilities. That’s because the very best dds can weave their direct damage skills and light attacks much more efficiently than the average dd, they know how to mitigate damage getting even more weaves, while your average dds, coupled with average support will have to spend time shielding, dodging and surviving making LA/spamable portion of their parse much less pronounced. The most consistent way of dealing damage in low-mid end of dps spectrum is trough dots. More specifically, strong ground aoe dots that are placed on the ground without the need to aim specific target priority targets and then you can do whatever. This difference is felt much more in actual content rather than dummy parses. I won’t bother clogging this thread with ESO combat log of peak, high, mid and low tier parses because anyone with IQ higher than their shoe size can deduce the effect of lowering damage over time abilities and its effect on players in certain dps thresholds, you know, the very obvious thing that our beloved combat team is so incredibly oblivious to. If for some reason you wanted to nerf peak dps, proper way of doing it was to nerf LA/spamable portion of parses and/or alter damage formula slightly. Difference would be felt across the spectrum for sure, however higher end players would feel it more than average/low tier players, and no one would feel singled out because of nerfs to their class abilities, but I digress. Make no mistake, it’s far too late to change this mindset of our developers. Even if their methods of lowering the dps ceiling are mathematically proven flawed, nothing will change because all of these changes are already programmed in PTS and it’s far too late to change it because of programming dollars.

Healing/Support changes are far worse and more far reaching than changes to dots. Healing in ESO at the moment is based on healing over time abilities, and with changes to orbs and springs everything is pushed in direction of reactive healing. While it might not look inherently bad on first glance because it might allow for higher healer skill ceiling, it will be massive nerf for everyone who’s not close to that ceiling and mid/low tier player suffers once again. Add in the fact that for years ESO was balanced around hot based healing and unless entire game and many encounters are rewamped, many low/mid tier groups will be forever stuck at content X without any chances of progressing in game. If we compare new Grand Healing that is 56% of its former strength without capability to stack with current iteration of this skill, the peak of having 4 stacks of Illustrious Healing is 7 times more healing than what is achievable in upcoming U23 trough this skill. Is that efficient healing? No, it’s overhealing but it’s also safety net for new players who cannot predict amount of incoming damage.

Let this sink in. At its peak performance as a hot, new Grand Healing will have 14% effectiveness from U22. Just as a sidenote, vCR+3 first clears have been done with 3 tanks using non-nerfed Earthgore, two healers with Bogdan for increased healing, and as many magblades as possible because at the time they had highest offhealing potential. Yeah, when you argue about healing being overpowered just think of this little factoid, would you? There are people still progressing that content. Even after vCR, recent content has also been balanced by having huge defiles on maintank in both BRP and something like Frostvault hardmode as well as its sister dungeon of Malatar. Not to mention, having to heal multiple people on multiple places, offtanks, maintanks, stacked dds and all that. Just think of AS+2 healer roles for example.
And finally massive, truly uncalled nerf to Orbs and sustain/hot coming from that. Unless you missed history lesson from Morrowind sustain nerfs, this affects low/medium tier groups the hardest. Top groups will manage somehow. They will fit in 4 orbs from their support and 4 Symphony/Sentinel while majority of groups not as good or coordinated or experienced will remain gutted and have to invest into sustain making performance gap more and more apparent. Good groups will stack adds more efficiently to allow higher dps/resource spent, their support will walk the razor’s edge just to make sure they empower their dds, where learning/progressing or straight up weaker groups will never be able to afford such things. So I will ask once again, ZoS, who are you nerfing?

Ultimately this travesty of a patch cannot be reverted completely because programming costs and developer pride was often placed as a priority over wishes and protests of community. However I do hope that there is sensible person in charge who can see past pride and attempt to alleviate some of major painpoints introduced with this update. The ever growing gap between peak, high, medium and trench tier players is one of major issues this game is facing and is fracturing the community. This patch will make it worse than ever before. Power creep introduced by various means isn’t your primary concern. Power difference however is. Rethink where you will take damage from dds because it will have huge ramifications on your playerbase and its average performance.
I really don’t want to badmouth the combat team. I know they have their vision of the game and want to see it through. But if I were in charge, and got submitted this PTS notes as a draft for balance changes, you’d be straight up fired on the spot, because shortsightedness of combat team regarding far reaching consequences of this arbitrary standardization is equivalent of corporate CEO bankrupting a company.

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Agree with OP. ZOS changed their combat team and this is the result. Less & less option every patch. What I would like to know is: What is their goal ? Because it cant be balance. You don't achieve balance by making huge, revolutionary changes EVERY update, because you change the whole ecosystem too drastically. So it is even hard to predict the outcome.

I have to admit, ever since Gilliamtherogue joined combat team, thing are going downhill. I am sure I am not the only one who is disappointed. The guy's knowledge about the game seemed that if he joins combat team things will be better. But no...