SquawkTheMajestic wrote: »

Well, their vision clearly wasn't a summoner type, because they've flip flopped drastically on pets (from patch to patch, we have gotten the feeling they wanted to eliminate them entirely, then had us feel like we need 4 bar slots dedicated to pets and a 5th one that enhances pet damage).

If the devs get nothing else from the forums, hopefully they get how frustrated and tired we are of complete changes in direction. I've played many games that went through nerfs and directional changes. I'm not as bothered by that stuff as other people. I'm not super pissed that I need to change my build up from time to time. I hated the DoT meta, but i'm still here.
What I find concerning is that the changes from patch to patch do not signify adequate testing or a goal in mind. "Let's make dots huge", "Let's wreck pets so nobody uses them except noobs", "class identity means nerfing dots into the ground", "lets only nerf dots slightly instead", "pets are back!". Other class players feel this to an extent as well. I don't even need a thematic consistency with sorcs (I dont care if they're lightning, fire, or all the elements). I won't even bother telling you where I stand on pets. What I care about is that someone at your company has an idea of what they want done. We're spinning around in circles, with the full expectation that you're just going to keep taking two steps in one direction then two steps back.

Get it together, guys. Look at other successful games and how they've approached patch changes and testing periods. I DO like that you bothered to adjust the patch notes multiple times this phase. That was a good move. i think "lets nerf dots into the ground and see what happens" was unnecessarily harsh. I don't think you need to be that extreme just to get data. You could have done a 20% nerf, and the you'd basically be where you're at now, except with players optimizing builds, and congratulating you on toning things down. When you make drastic shifts like you're doing, you severely erode our trust in your ability to steer this ship.

Very well said. Thank you. I hope someone at ZOS with any kind of authority takes note.

EDIT: It's hard to identify what their vision is for anything, really. At this point, unless I get something a bit more concrete from them, "class identity" and "power fantasy" are only marketing buzzwords to keep us placated.

I don't disagree with you about the pets but, honestly, my main issue is the neglect of lightning.

in the last 4 years playing a MagSorc as my main. My over all identity is DEPRESSION. Oh no, Im not trying to be funny... Its very much painful, and frustrating to keep up to others with every patch. And with the last one, I swear to Sithis, I did NOT leave my toon parked on the edge of a cliff... But yet there he was...

Depression.. Sad and depressed.

IMO, they need to bring back significant race- and class-specific buffs to specific damage types.

Give classes like a 10-15% boost for their class damage type and give races like another 5-10%. Something high enough so that stacking a specific race and class makes sense AND so that it can outweigh other (IMO, flawed) design decisions such as the primacy of Fire Damage in the Destruction Staff passives.

They have already taken a nice step toward this with the stealth magWarden buff of Magic and Frost damage to +10%.

They should continue this with:

Nightblade - Magic and Disease
Dragonknight - Fire and Poison
Templar - Magic and Physical
Sorcerer - Lightning and Physical
Necromancer - Frost and Bleed

That way any damage type can be viable in end-game content if you choose the appropriate race/class combination AND you have nice class diversity and identity.

Additional improvements would be to make more class abilities and morphs actually DO the type of damage that the class buffs as well as re-purposing some of the many dead gear sets to give damage-specific buffs at levels high enough such that certain classes would consider them viable in their end-game builds.

Extra awesome would be more creative itemization in general so that there wouldn't just be the existing "Damage Type Sets" (Ysgrammor's, Netch's, War Maiden's, Silks of the Sun, etc.) but that you could spinkle in things like "Adds 1487 Spell Penetration for Frost Damage Abilities" or "Adds 2 seconds to Shock DoT Abilities" or "Adds 10% Critical Damage for Poison Abilities" or "Adds 300 Max Magicka for each Fire Ability Slotted" or "Increase Weapon Critical by 1750 (8.0%) Against Diseased Enemies" including adding them in at levels BELOW the 5-piece bonus.

Overall, it would be wise to "lower the floor" of the mundane itemization bonuses (Weapon Damage, Spell Damage, Max Stamina, Max Magicka, etc.) while simultaneously greatly increasing the ceiling of the various damage-type specific buffs so that players could really mix-and-match their race/class/armor/abilities in a powerful and unique way.

TLDR; ZOS, send me a contract to re-do your itemization. It's amazing how much life and intellectual satisfaction you can add to the game by giving players more creative building blocks with which to build their characters.