Heyo gang!

We wanted to quickly provide some additional context for many of the combat changes in this update so that everyone has a better idea of our goals.

In Update 23 our main focus was to ensure there was an ultimate point of reference for abilities to properly match up against one another in their respective categories. This provides us with a solid baseline, where all abilities fit within a set of standards/power levels and allows future balancing passes to be much easier and timely.

We're aware that some content has been designed around old functionality of abilities that existed beyond our standards and might need some sort of compromise in regards to how you engage with it and/or how we balance it. This is something we will be watching closely, however we are not averse to the idea that players might need to adjust their current builds such as running more defensive Ultimates rather than offensive ones, or running more survival enhancing sets, rather than pure damage or buff oriented ones. Please also remember that we've introduced some new abilities to help offset the loss of things such as Healing Springs stacking, with abilities like Ring of Preservation, or the large increase to Cleansing Ritual.

As always, we will be monitoring feedback about all the balance changes during this PTS cycle, however we wanted to let everyone know that in a future PTS patch, the synergy from Orbs will not cause the Orb to vanish and can be activated multiple times by anyone not on synergy cool down.

This was the additional context post Brian Wheeler put on the PTS section, and I have a issue with it. Specifically that middle paragraph.



ZOS's design philosophy has been hands off for a long long time. They radically changed the game, left PVE to it's own devices, then just let us keep the meta we built once PVE became a focus again. In order to maintain that, we need the control that ZOS isn't going to give us.

People like Code have already made it clear in endgame settings clensing ritual or ring of preservation are worth absolute bupkis. Is this supposed to be a roll MMO or not? Are we supposed to follow -your vision-, or improvise?

You dont get to have it both ways, Wheeler. Either give us the control necessary to meet the challenges you set up for us, stop tampering with our tools, or nerf the content to suit the new changes and gameplay style. You either have to relinquish the control and let us use the mechanics as we see fit, or change the entire game and stop doing half measures. You dont get it both ways. Let us deal with the problem with the tools provided, or re-design the entire game, trial mobs, resistances, so on, for this new style of play. Take responsibility for the changes you made, or relinquish it.



Lets dissect this at it's most basic level.

Play a Magsorc, Mr Wheeler, in the upcoming dungeon. Tell me the AOE change is a good idea. Play a class entirely reliant on AOE dots for it's damage, then get back to me. And as people have stated, the single target dot changes -still- result in a loss, and even less functionality due to trouble with trash packs.





Edit: IF some kind soul has a bee in their bonnet like I do about this, please post the above criticism on their forums in response to that point as I cannot.