So ever since ZOS decided it needed to do a skill "audit", skills have gone all over the place- since scalebreaker PTS started, individual skills have been buffed and nerfed by over 100% multiple times. It makes a player feel sick to see these changes happening every week on the PTS. They typically calm down towards the end, but this cycle of whiplash 180 degree random dart-board-chosen balance changes hasn't stopped on their end since they started teasing about it with Elsweyr, and I have no clue if it'll stop within the year. I sure hope to god it does, but my hopes aren't super optimistic.
My plea for mercy to ZOS is to please, please, PLEASE not touch set pieces - at LEAST until you calm down with the skill "audit". they said they had planned a set item "audit" for next year [i think the spring patch?], and if that one is going to be ANYTHING like this one, that means the sets everyone knows and love will be buffed and nerfed by the triple digits back and forth haphazardly for the rest of 2020. Mother's sorrow will probably eat dirt, stuff like releq and siroria may just flat out be deleted, the set piece meta is probably going to be insane next year, and just thinking about it makes me uneasy. As things stand right now I do not trust ZOS to competently go near set item balance, and I hope they avoid doing so at all costs. Set balance isn't perfect right now by a long shot, but compared to what it will likely be next year, we'll look back fondly at the relequen/lokk meta and miss what options we used to have.
I hope ZOS has some kind of roadmap plan for when they will stop doing skill changes like this, and when they will start doing set changes, and then when they'll stop those. Being transparent to the community is great, but as it stands it feels more like we're watching someone throw paint at a canvas in a frenzy while they talk about what they're doing in that moment to fix the painting. I'd rather it be more like an actual plan; when they plan to stop, what their actual end goal is, and when they're going to start working on the next thing, and when that's going to stop. I would appreciate that so much and it would put my concerns for the game at ease for sure.
We've already seen a fraction of a droplet of the ocean waiting for the set "audit" with this random change to sentinel that makes it go from restoring 500 stam to 100something of both magicka and stam, which nobody asked for, wanted, or needed. This is a bad omen to me, but maybe i'm off my rocker. Anyone else have similar or contrasting/hopeful thoughts?
GH / 3/04/2021 / Elemental Catalyst Necromancer