Racial balance patch revisited - DD meta as strict as ever

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

ZOS went into the racial rebalance with the goal is making races more balanced. Instead, all they did was reshuffle the meta. Let's look at where the meta is now that things have had time to settle.

Orc is the clear-cut BiS race for stamina DD now. They parse 2-3k higher than Redguard/Bosmer/Khajiit.

Magicka DD started out fairly balanced, but the nerf to gold food in Elsweyr pushed Breton into the clear-cut BiS role.

All they did was force a meta shift from Redguard/Dunmer to Orc/Breton.

Healer/tank are more forgiving roles so the meta is more flexible there. But as far as DD balance goes, it's not any better than it was before the patch, just different. So my question is, what was the point of the racial rebalancing patch?

bigelle.x3_ESO · August 2019

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

Jaimeh · August 2019

There's always going to be some races coming slightly ahead for certain things, and that's only relevant for a small percentage of the content anyway, so it means for everything else, people can pick what they like without make-or-break consequences, and that's a good thing.

Stebarnz · August 2019

They had to give motivation to sell all those sweet, sweet racial change tokens!

This is $$$ZOS$$$ we are talking about.

darthgummibear_ESO · August 2019

Stebarnz wrote: »

They had to give motivation to sell all those sweet, sweet racial change tokens!

This is $$$ZOS$$$ we are talking about.

Except they gave everyone 3 free race change tokens when the racials were adjusted.

ATomiX69 · August 2019

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

Stebarnz wrote: »

They had to give motivation to sell all those sweet, sweet racial change tokens!

This is $$$ZOS$$$ we are talking about.

Except they gave everyone 3 free race change tokens when the racials were adjusted.

Except that there are people out there who have 16+ characters, so they still made decent cash.

Runefang · August 2019

pretty sure Altmer are BiS for Magicka dps not Breton.

Jeremy · August 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

ZOS went into the racial rebalance with the goal is making races more balanced. Instead, all they did was reshuffle the meta. Let's look at where the meta is now that things have had time to settle.

Orc is the clear-cut BiS race for stamina DD now. They parse 2-3k higher than Redguard/Bosmer/Khajiit.

Magicka DD started out fairly balanced, but the nerf to gold food in Elsweyr pushed Breton into the clear-cut BiS role.

All they did was force a meta shift from Redguard/Dunmer to Orc/Breton.

Healer/tank are more forgiving roles so the meta is more flexible there. But as far as DD balance goes, it's not any better than it was before the patch, just different. So my question is, what was the point of the racial rebalancing patch?

If I remember correctly, they changed the racial bonuses in order to make them more versatile so each race would have at least one bonus that contributes to any style of play. As to whether they accomplished that or not, I can't really say. But I believe that was the goal.

AcadianPaladin · August 2019

I dislike racial stats as much as I dislike gender stats in an rpg and wish racials had no more impact than gender (cosmetic). The racials were restrictive and poorly crafted before the rework. As OP said, the deck has been reshuffled but the racials remain just as restrictive and poorly crafted after the rework.

My Bosmer has played 4k hours in Oblivion, 4k hours in Skyrim and 6.5k hours in ESO. Only in ESO does her race actually restrict/limit her.

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

bigelle.x3_ESO wrote: »

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

My point is that the balance isn't any better than it was before the patch. It was a complete waste of resources.

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

Runefang wrote: »

pretty sure Altmer are BiS for Magicka dps not Breton.

Sustain is more important than damage for magicka in the current meta. Altmer has to build for sustain and health, which shaves off quite a bit of DPS.

Tannus15 · August 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Runefang wrote: »

pretty sure Altmer are BiS for Magicka dps not Breton.

Sustain is more important than damage for magicka in the current meta. Altmer has to build for sustain and health, which shaves off quite a bit of DPS.

Yeah, but perfected false god changed things quite a bit.

max_only · August 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

bigelle.x3_ESO wrote: »

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

My point is that the balance isn't any better than it was before the patch. It was a complete waste of resources.

They made changes just to say a change was made in some cases. Argonians and Bosmer. I know “no one” cares because they’ve never been top tier. That just means that those players that picked them cared more about the story/looks than the numbers.

bigelle.x3_ESO wrote: »

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

Not really. Why should any race have a passive that is only beneficial in some pvp? It’s distasteful and illogical. They didn’t balance snip.

WrathOfInnos · August 2019

Runefang wrote: »

pretty sure Altmer are BiS for Magicka dps not Breton.

Altmer can't sustain a full damage build, even with Worm, Ele Drain, and orbs on cooldown. They need to do one of the following:

- Use Clockwork Citrus instead of Bloody Mara, resulting in a loss of 2217 Magicka (2.0 standard set bonuses) and 2526 Health (2.09 standard set bonuses), and about the same sustain as Breton. This massive amount of stat loss is not worth the 258 Spell Damage (2.0 set bonuses).
- Replace 2 spell damage jewelry glyphs with magicka recovery glyphs, resulting in a loss of 348 spell damage to achieve the same sustain as Breton. Clearly it is not worth losing 348 to gain 258 from the Altmer passive.
- Replace the Shadow Mundus with Atronach Mundus. Without diving too deep into the numbers here, this results in a significant DPS loss. The Shadow Mundus adds about 8% DPS to most builds, and giving that up for the roughly 4% DPS from Altmer's 258 Spell Damage is not worth it.
- Wear False God's Devotion instead of Siroria. This one is a little tricky, since it depends on several factors. To achieve the same sustain as Breton, you'd need to be killing enemies pretty often in FGD, so it doesn't work well on some boss fights. On the other hand Siroria is not really viable for some boss fights either, so you may be comparing to a different damage set entirely. The main thing that kills this option for me is that there are several fights where I need Breton passives + FGD to sustain, in which case Altmer has to resort to one of the other poor options listed.

On top of all that, I find Breton's spell resistance to be far more useful than the off-stat resource return Altmer has. It really is a shame the way these races landed, since the first cycle of the race rebalance PTS had excellent balance across the board. Altmer had a little more sustain than it does now, and was nearly perfectly balanced with Breton. Khajiit was also performing very similar to those 2 races (before the crit chance was taken away and replaced with crit damage). Only Dunmer was a little behind, but it was subsequently buffed to be more in line, and has the benefit of swapping between stamina and magicka builds easily.

Ratzkifal · August 2019

I don't think I've seen new charts since the food changes from Elsweyr hit. Races reliant on sustain food got an indirect dps nerf there if I remember correctly, so Orcs and Dunmer should be closer to Redguard and Woodelf who use blue food now.

But regardless of the charts, I know of enough things that need changing on the racial passive side of things.

Argonians are still mathematically underpowered, despite having one of the most forgiving passives in the game. They lack poison resistance, which they are established to have in lore and have no niche that is truly theirs that another race doesn't do better (apart from being very forgiving to beginners, which is less than ideal for being their only unique strength). Imperials sustain better, have more offensive potential and bring group utility in the form of 3% reduced ultimate cost.

Bosmer still have a weirdly specific passive that is only decent in PvP and 99% useless in PvE as well as no connection to stealth, which used to be their core strength after Archery in every Elder Scrolls game including ESO until the Wrathstone patch. Detection is a useless stat, even in PvP (otherwise people would actually use the way of the air set) so I'd trade that for 3m of stealth just like Khajiit have and Bosmer have had before.

Altmer shouldn't be getting stamina boni at all, because there is just no precedent for that and the in-lore explanation given by ZOS is more than flawed. If Alteration magic is the reason, then anyone able to cast Alteration magic should get this bonus. It's not exclusive to Altmer despite starting with "Alt".
Also they do look kind of pathetic when compared side by side to Orc, who are supposedly their equivalent on the stamina side of things.

Altmer
1. 2000 magicka
2. Off-stat resource restore (marginally useful because the values are too low)
3. 258 spell damage
Orsimer (Orcs)
2. 2000 stamina
3. 1000 health + 600 health restore on weapon hit (appreciated in PvE, useful in PvP)
4. 258 weapon damage + 12% reduced sprint cost + 10% increased sprint speed (incredible potential power in PvP, persists through WW transformation too, appreciated in PvE)

There are more issues but they are minor in comparison to these three biggest offenders.

Ratzkifal · August 2019

bigelle.x3_ESO wrote: »

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

@bigelle.x3_ESO There can be several "best set ups" if each of them has their own niche. Redguards lose most of their sustain when they can't hit something while Bosmer don't. Altmer can have a higher damage output than Bretons is shorter fights. It's all a matter of creating niches for each race to shine. Take single target vs AOE damage as an example. A set might be BiS for single target, but suck at AoE damage. Or Relequen is bad if you can't keep hitting your enemy with light attacks.

We should see things less for what they are and more for what they could be.

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I don't think I've seen new charts since the food changes from Elsweyr hit. Races reliant on sustain food got an indirect dps nerf there if I remember correctly, so Orcs and Dunmer should be closer to Redguard and Woodelf who use blue food now.

But regardless of the charts, I know of enough things that need changing on the racial passive side of things.

Argonians are still mathematically underpowered, despite having one of the most forgiving passives in the game. They lack poison resistance, which they are established to have in lore and have no niche that is truly theirs that another race doesn't do better (apart from being very forgiving to beginners, which is less than ideal for being their only unique strength). Imperials sustain better, have more offensive potential and bring group utility in the form of 3% reduced ultimate cost.

Bosmer still have a weirdly specific passive that is only decent in PvP and 99% useless in PvE as well as no connection to stealth, which used to be their core strength after Archery in every Elder Scrolls game including ESO until the Wrathstone patch. Detection is a useless stat, even in PvP (otherwise people would actually use the way of the air set) so I'd trade that for 3m of stealth just like Khajiit have and Bosmer have had before.

Altmer shouldn't be getting stamina boni at all, because there is just no precedent for that and the in-lore explanation given by ZOS is more than flawed. If Alteration magic is the reason, then anyone able to cast Alteration magic should get this bonus. It's not exclusive to Altmer despite starting with "Alt".
Also they do look kind of pathetic when compared side by side to Orc, who are supposedly their equivalent on the stamina side of things.

Altmer
2000 magicka

Off-stat resource restore (marginally useful because the values are too low)

258 spell damage

Orsimer (Orcs)

2000 stamina

1000 health + 600 health restore on weapon hit (appreciated in PvE, useful in PvP)

258 weapon damage + 12% reduced sprint cost + 10% increased sprint speed (incredible potential power in PvP, persists through WW transformation too, appreciated in PvE)

There are more issues but they are minor in comparison to these three biggest offenders.

The +1000 base health orcs get largely negated the nerfs to sustain food. The nerf hit Altmer/Dunmer much harder than Orc. Their DPS took a slight hit due to the reduced stamina, but they're still comfortably ahead of any other race.

I agree with your other points.

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

Ratzkifal wrote: »

bigelle.x3_ESO wrote: »

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

@bigelle.x3_ESO There can be several "best set ups" if each of them has their own niche. Redguards lose most of their sustain when they can't hit something while Bosmer don't. Altmer can have a higher damage output than Bretons is shorter fights. It's all a matter of creating niches for each race to shine. Take single target vs AOE damage as an example. A set might be BiS for single target, but suck at AoE damage. Or Relequen is bad if you can't keep hitting your enemy with light attacks.

We should see things less for what they are and more for what they could be.

There needs to be more varied content where those niches shine then, but there isn't. In the magicka example, all endgame content is an exercise in how well you can sustain. There is no content that favours burst damage.

MartiniDaniels · August 2019

Tbh, appearance of False God solved all problems with sustain in real conditions for dunmer and altmer. And now Mara is nerfed and everybody will have consistent orb every 20 seconds.. also breton received a small nerf due to change how cost reductions are calculated.
Also barbed trap is too good to pass by, with exceptions of few encounters. So stamina bonuses of altmer and dunmer makes them more preferable then Breton imo. Breton on the other hand is best for PVP in majority of builds... so this 3 races look overall balanced.

In stamina it's pretty clear that orc needs slight nerf in ~500-600 stamina.

Argonian direly needs buff, at least in terms of healing done. Set bonus was doubled, but race which was balanced in healing done set bonuses still not buffed.

Remove god damned useless stealth detection from bosmer and give permanent 700-900 penetration instead of penetration on roll-dodge (keep speed on roll-dodge as it is).

corpseblade · August 2019

Breaking lore is really irritating to those of us who played the Elder Scroll series and/or rp. Poor Bosmer and Argonians.

Those of us that built our characters around those racials got screwed. And race tokens don't help b/c most rpers grow fond of their characters. It's not utilitarian builds for us. So now those characters sit there.

Ratzkifal · August 2019

corpseblade wrote: »

Breaking lore is really irritating to those of us who played the Elder Scroll series and/or rp. Poor Bosmer and Argonians.

Those of us that built our characters around those racials got screwed. And race tokens don't help b/c most rpers grow fond of their characters. It's not utilitarian builds for us. So now those characters sit there.

Well said.

jircris11 · August 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

ZOS went into the racial rebalance with the goal is making races more balanced. Instead, all they did was reshuffle the meta. Let's look at where the meta is now that things have had time to settle.

Orc is the clear-cut BiS race for stamina DD now. They parse 2-3k higher than Redguard/Bosmer/Khajiit.

Magicka DD started out fairly balanced, but the nerf to gold food in Elsweyr pushed Breton into the clear-cut BiS role.

All they did was force a meta shift from Redguard/Dunmer to Orc/Breton.

Healer/tank are more forgiving roles so the meta is more flexible there. But as far as DD balance goes, it's not any better than it was before the patch, just different. So my question is, what was the point of the racial rebalancing patch?

Honestly I avoid the meta, people who rely on the cookie cutter builds are the ones affected most. I avoid them knowing full well they will be nerfed.

Darkenarlol · August 2019

untill you can parse solo at least 50+k in 6m dummy

and really need to squeeze that extra 1-1.5% dps

for your raiding uber-nolife-all-leaderboards-first-place premade

you do not care abour races...at all

cargo cult wannabe meta chasers are another story ofc

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

Darkenarlol wrote: »

untill you can parse solo at least 50+k in 6m dummy

and really need to squeeze that extra 1-1.5% dps

for your raiding uber-nolife-all-leaderboards-first-place premade

you do not care abour races...at all

cargo cult wannabe meta chasers are another story ofc

Or, you know, you could be someone who sets personal goals and wants to maximise their own output.

idk · August 2019

The racial passives are closer than ever for DDs, but they will never be equal and as such there will always be favorite/preferred classes. It does not take a PhD to figure that out as simple elementary math explains it all.

ezio45 · August 2019

Im an altmer on most of my characters. Im not happy with the racials. For a lot of races, not just altmer. Honestly though i dont trust zos to edit racials again without them making it worse.

Casterial · August 2019

Orc may be better than redguard, but orc is ugly. So, thus Redguard is better.

LightMaster7 · August 2019

*** still no love for Redguard MagSorcs.... stupid game.

Lord_Eomer · August 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

ZOS went into the racial rebalance with the goal is making races more balanced. Instead, all they did was reshuffle the meta. Let's look at where the meta is now that things have had time to settle.

Orc is the clear-cut BiS race for stamina DD now. They parse 2-3k higher than Redguard/Bosmer/Khajiit.

Magicka DD started out fairly balanced, but the nerf to gold food in Elsweyr pushed Breton into the clear-cut BiS role.

All they did was force a meta shift from Redguard/Dunmer to Orc/Breton.

Healer/tank are more forgiving roles so the meta is more flexible there. But as far as DD balance goes, it's not any better than it was before the patch, just different. So my question is, what was the point of the racial rebalancing patch?

In patch notes, ZOS mentioned they have changed way Reduction Passive stacks.

The more you stack the less effective they become, so still need to see how Breton will perform with Passive Reduction sets.

Orc may be BIS but i have one from 18 characters and still its level 20. Min/Max have not stopped me having army of Nords and Imperials

SoLooney · August 2019

Breton is not the best magicka dps race even with the nerf to recovery food.
High and dark elves will out parse them on gold food than bretons on bi stat

I'll admit orc is extremely good compared to redguard, wood elf or khajiit. Heck, they beat dark elves cause they have more stam, more health, and they run faster which helps immensely for speed runs

At least magicka, high elf, dark elf, and bretons are pretty well balanced. You either pick damage or sustain. With false god, bretons are pretty much obsolete

Browiseth · August 2019

bigelle.x3_ESO wrote: »

There can only be one best setup and that's what the high end pve players will run. The races are more or less in a good spot in terms of balance.

i really liked all those reasons you gave for why you think the meta is fine rather than a blanket statement with no evidence to back it up