Cinbri wrote: »

1. Jabs:
So, multiplying of glow based on amount of hitted enemies was removed, this is good, less useless animations that waste performance.
a. "Updated the visual effects of this ability to better sync up with its attacks"
Animation is actually desynced from non-caster pov. It especially visible coz snare apply, just check in slow-motion when snare applied and damage ticked and when does animation of hit proced:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdYwIOKBL1c
Idk how to decrease video speed in settings tho .You just need to cut animations without those swings parts.

b. "Jabs switched to be direct damage attack"
As already said after overhaul it has exact same bug that Solar Barrage had after its own overhaul. So it scale of DoT CP which however don't increase tooltip and cant be buffed by Direct Damage CP which does increase tooltip; yet for Red CP it works okey and being affected by Direct Damage CP.
Also numerous of old direct damage sets don't proc on this attack (hello Bloodthorn again..), while some perform weirdly like Scathing Mage that count only first tick as direct damage and thus has 20% to proc only on first tick.
Also while Living Dark does work against Jabs properly, Unstable Core still not count Jabs as direct attack and don't proc on any of ticks:


c. Reduce duration of Jabs to 0.8s with needed damage reduction so skill rotation (jab+light attack) perform within 1.0s just like rest of spammable. Current 1.0 is decreasing effectiveness of Infused and Charged traits (check templar feedback thread with more info: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6300113/#Comment_6300113 )


2. Cleansing Ritual:
Its performance bug that making it multiply based on amount of healed enemies wasn't fixed. It should be top one priority to fix because just every 2sec of this skill it drain more resources than removed particles of javelin+jabs+sweep+sun shield in combine.


3. Sun Fire:
Its major prophecy proc finally changed to work wise to tooltip yet it has problem told:

^^ due to travel time that can take up to 2sec duration of buff will be lower than duration of dot and thus each next cast will decrease uptime of it because when dot ends - its buff will be gone 1/2sec already. So increase duration of buff for 2sec.


4. Unstable Core:
a. While Jabs and Flurry does work with Living Dark properly, yet nor Jabs nor Flurry don't proc Core despite being spammable direct attacks:


b. Unstable core (unlike other morph) bugged and don't work with Enduring Rays passive anymore. Additional duration does showing but upon 1.9 remaining time it just disappear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvPtdJ9BeHI

c. Damage portion still don't proc if enemy immune to cc effect of sphere stage. Till you fix it this skill will be terrible in pvp and useless in pve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s98gr6nF6P0

d. New thing that unclear to be bug or attempt to make morph viable after rudiculous damage nerf is that sphere no longer have cooldown on activation while stage effect still can occur once per second and thus against enemy with lot of fast attacks it proc 1st stage couple times then when 1sec cooldown passed it comes to 2nd stage and proc several times with increased damage, then again go to 3rd stage. Look impressive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dSjIoYka1E
^^That exactly how such skill should work: the more aggressive enemy - the more punishment he gets. And Living Dark should be update to work same - less heal (~-15% after last nerf but without cooldown). However it making problem of damage not dealing if target immune even more obvious coz all next activations are also not trigger damage (you can see it on video above where 3rd stage damage wasn't activated several times because target is CC Immune).
If this is intended - it will make morph bit more usable (it useless right now), but if it just a bug after you messed with part where: "Fixed an issue where reapplying this ability or the Unstable Core morph to a target before the original expired could cause issues with the cooldown of the effects."
then it becoming unfair balance-wise because skill mechanic is exact of Spiked Armor which is also return damage to enemies but don't have nor cap on amount of targets nor internal cooldown on proc and thus can be proced several times against enemy with lot of fast attacks. Punishing Core damage with 1sec cooldown on damage proc when it limited to 1 enemy and small aoe around him while morph already have 1sec cooldown on status effect is double punishment.
If it indeed bug that should be fixed how about go easier way - remove 1s cooldown from status effect so along with damage it will proc CCs fast enough within couple seconds and then stop working because bug that rooted and CCed after 1s cast enemy will be immune to damage procs on stages going again.

e. It still doesn't work against weapon enchants and direct damage proc sets.


5. Living Dark:
a. Morph still not proc on direct damage proc sets. Also morph still don't work on mobs special attacks, making this morph terrible as tanking tool in pve.

b. Both morphs' CC effects are not prolonging by Enduring Rays passive, that goes against rules of how Enduring Rays perform with rest of affected skill or Dark Veil improving CC effects like duration of Fear or Searing Heat fully improving corresponded skills or how old Persistence was fully affected tree-skills.

c. Its intended mechanic is to be templar version of Scales or Crystal shield (as it was said in Crystal Shield patchnote), i.e. defensive scaling mechanics however it is far below those mechanics standards for couple reasons:
1. Cost of Living Dark wasn't standardized to coast of Scales and Crystal shield which is 3780 while cost of Living Dark is 4320 and even after accounting its passive of Restoring Spirit it is above standards - 4104. Cost should be reduced to standards as part of morph effect.
2. Its only skill of similar ones that has punishment in form of double cooldown and after root was removed it no longer balanced. Scales don't have internal cooldown on damage reduce of projectiles, only on fireballs, Crystal shield don't have cooldown on absorbing projectiles, it only has cooldown now on damage dealt that also tied to magicka return.
However Living Dark does have cooldown on heal proc upon being hitted while also getting cooldown on snare apply.
There is couple ways to deal with it:
1. Just as suggested above in Unstable Core section - remove cooldown on heal proc and reduce its heal so it actually have scaling mechanism.
2. Remove cooldown from Snare proc and keep cooldown on heal - so snare wont be one of double-penalty part. While it was root it was validated because strength of effect but as snare (those were nerfed in addition) it not validated to have cooldown. Reflective Plate for example purge and give immunity to uncapped amount of snares and roots.
3. Follow Reflective Plate option and make skill instead of snare grant major speedbuff to caster for 4sec. Same kiting mechanic just reverted in reliability.
4. Follow Crystal Shield rule and add another effect to snare that will proc along with it with 0.5s cooldown. Since morph is survivability based and zos reintroduce old mechanics - such effect could be minor maim debuff on enemy for same duration as snare. Because originally this skill was applied moderate buff of reducing enemy damage after bubble was broken, which in nowdays analogy of maim debuff.

d. Another stuff with Living Dark is that unlike other similar skills is unable to effectively work for stamina build. Scales and Crystal either don't have scaling mechanic for defense or scale off max hp and thus good for magicka and mana dump for stamina while same not work for Dark. So how bout to deal with its inconsistence and since scaling on max resource working good for this skill - make it scale on highest resources (stam+wpd/mana+spd)?


6. Eclipse visuals:
If short - Living Dark is even worse while Unstable Core actually changed to be nice.
a. Living Dark new effect of how it was described "golden bubble":

^^ It is even uglier now and contradict theme of skill and reason of change overall:
1. It contradict morph description that you protected by darkness, not by some sphere that shine like a Christmas tree. Dark theme of it should be core effect. In addition it has problem with seam of sphere halves.
2. It contradict plans of improving performance by getting rid of useless particles and new visual if just taking 3rd layer of glowing light/light reflections and multiply amount of effects on it to be shiner in addition to adding right side autorotating effect of glow. Bubble already had problem of being several layers effect and thus problem of rendering effect in battle making people questioning about if it is up or not. (also in templar feedback thread I posted several videos where running without bubble and that coz this rendering problem of multiple effects)
3. Healing proc is even less noticeable because more intensified glow and there is no longer visual effect of backlash explosion showing root proc.
4. It not fixing at all problem of determining in combat of which morph applied to you - Living Dark or Unstable Core or NPC Eclipse:
a. Living Dark and NPC Eclipse layers meshing with each other while having same core black bubble and thus in actually fight it hard to determine if your Dark still on you when NPC one on you or does NPC one on you while your Dark on you:

b. It hard to determine if Living Dark on you or on enemy when Unstable Core is on same target because new visual of Core is intensified shadows that hiding your layer of glowing sphere.

So here is several ways to deal with it taking in mind that Living Dark effect should be simple just like red transparent glow of Scales or just 3 white floating shield of Crystal Shield:
1. Core on zero stage has new super cool effect of darkness grow and essence float:

but it goes bit against skill description that says that you envelop target in dark sphere, so take away this effect and keep black bubble without glow layer on zero stage, i.e. same to 1st stage since there is no 0 stage anyway. Also having bubble is not problematic because it not interfere with NPC Eclipse as its not self-buff.
Use this new effect for Living Dark instead of dark cloak texture it currently apply (rune focus armor buff visual is overwriting this effect anyway and this skill is on every templar bar). And change tooltip of skill to "protective darkness", remove black bubble and keep floating shadows. In the end it will look like anti-transmutation:

where it has glow on char and floating light strings while Dark will have this growing darkness from inside of character and floating dark strings, combination of:

Its bright yellow essence float can either being passive effect right now so skill will be visible even in dark areas, see above (where old glow layer on bubble was working for this role). Thus effect will be fully RP-wise of darkness on char is healing him and floating darkness is debuffing enemies. Also it will loose black bubble that will allow easily to figure what type of skill on you because rest of types will have black bubble.
2. Again remove this inside darkness from Core and add it to Dark but use new dark bubble took from 1st or 2nd stage of Core (2nd one is super intensified darkness) that is without glow layer, while making essence to proc only when heal to be visual effect showing its proc. Will look like this:


Core stages are passing too fast so you will still will be able to determine if skill on you while it will take less resources to render. Skill also will be as transparent as scales or nb mirage.
While 2nd stage is more visible coz intense shadows and you will see it through NPC Eclipse, however more problematic to see with Unstable Core on you:


3. If you want more differentional look change tooltip of Living Dark and swap to one of the effects of truly golden bubbles that already ingame I showed in feedback post :https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6300113/#Comment_6300113

7. Enduring Rays passive: need update. Long ago it was affected most of skills but not anymore and thus it going outside of powerlevel of similar passives: there is 2 types of passive - 1: Dark Veil, old Persistence - passives that affect entire skill tree and prolonging duration of every skill and ult while prolong duration of some additional effects of those skills for 2sec. 2: Searing Heat, Enduring Rays - those that affect only several skills (mostly half of tree) and prolong not just duration but also all skills effects for 2+sec.
And thus we should compare Rays to Heat: because it not affect entire skill tree Heat has stronger bonus than Veil - in form of 4sec increase of skills and additional bonus (10% damage increase). And Enduring Rays not follow this because while it affect just 1 skill more than Heat its powerlevel equal to Veil - 2sec of skills while not prolong effects of some skills (Eclipse).
So to get it on the level of comparable passives it should get either of treatments:
a. Increase duration prolongation to 4sec from 2s, allow all skill effects to be working with passive.
b. Keep 2sec duration but grant new small bonus to passive. It is harder because unlike Heat that affect damage skills and thus its effect easy to implement, Rays affect different skills. Small cost decrease?


8. Backlash: so "bug" of double mitigation of final explosion wasn't fixed that goes against mechanic of skill and in addition it also can crit now that mean it double dip by crit.. So, zos just throw original concept of skill into trash can for vague reasons. It just wont make this skill more healthier to play because it will be still either weak(solo) or just to strong in Xv1.
Skill by itself is worse than other comparable skills because to deal damage by it require caster to be fully offensive for entire duration of skill. It was benefiting coz Xv1 part dots that were allowing to stack dots and be more defensive and yet allowed backlash to deal nice damage buy with dots nerf it will be much worse and this problem of skill will be more visible.
How bout just make it back to pure pve skill like before by increasing cap and reducing amount of storing damage while allow it to crit and reintroduce Dark Flare as our proper burst ability:
1. Either as delayed boom baby skill like sub assault - you instantcast Dark Flare, it charging on you for 3sec and then launch into enemy you casted it on and deal nice 5m aoe damage with major defile.
2. You cast it and gain Empowered for 8sec. Every 2 sec it launch corrupted energy into closest enemy that deal damage and apply major defile.
2. Or, since same was done for sorcs I will repeat again, make it like Assassin Will/Bound Weapons - cast on your self for Xsec and gain Empowered for the duration. Every light attack gain you 1 orb of dark energy that floating behind your back and after reaching 4 balls - they fly into enemy either like 4 separate ball or likes 1 big ball (like psijic passive) or into beam (bigger beam than bound weapons) and explosion apply aoe major defile.
Smth like those balls from Cradle of Shadows:

Make its damage scale of highest stat like Soul Trap to be usable on both specs.

Or just redesign Backlash again.

P.S.: And you ruined Entropy for templars, so after solving pain point of class not having class-based major sorcery you reintroduced this pain point right in the following update...
@ZOS_Gilliam