With such a large nerf to light attack damage (78%!), I'm glad that you made sure to buff vMA destro staves in another way to compensate--given that their sole function was to buff light (and heavy attack) damage.

<Checks patch notes>

Wait...why was there no mention of vMA destro staves?...in a PTS about light attack nerfing and rebalancing?

Also--what about skills and classes that depend heavily on light attack damage? Like Elemental Weapon and Night Blades, respectively. I saw no mention of either in the patch notes.

IF heavy attacks become more powerful, all staves should behave the same. Either all of them as channels, or none of them.
There is no inherent reason why they behave differently, and while it could be mostly ignored when heavy attacks aren't used widely, the channel is a huge advantage of lightning over the other destro ones. Especially in how the attack "feels", so to speak.

Interesting change. I don't mind it. I was never in love with weaving. Will need to test more to see how it feels.

mpicklesster wrote: »

Wait...why was there no mention of vMA destro staves?...in a PTS about light attack nerfing and rebalancing?

The vMA staff gives a flat, fixed bonus to both LA's and HA's. Not a percentage, so there is literally no need to adjust it. It should work with similar effectiveness before and after these changes. Ele Weapon, same. The bonus damage it gives is flat, not a percentage of the LA. Should remain just as effective. I'm not up to date with current mechanics on NB/Grim Focus, so not sure about that one.

Solar Barrage, however, is a skill that really is disproportionately affected due to the change to Empower. This one needs a look.

Ya know.... I love this game. I love the combat. I love the PVP. Like you have said, it is set apart from other games because of its unique combat, and how it allows for a higher skill ceiling. Hell, this game inspired me to become a content creator. But that skill ceiling has been lowered over time, and yet I have stayed since your open beta, despite constant skill changes, because the core mechanics have mostly stayed the same.

This change. This change will finally kill that skill ceiling, and will totally destroy those core mechanics that have kept me coming back. You are finally killing the one thing that has kept so many people in this game. Despite your near constant skill changes, decreased performance, and total lack of support to the pvp community, so many have stayed for the unique combat this game has to offer. You will have finally succeeded putting us out of our misery when you go through with this.

Because ultimately, you will. No matter our feedback, you will go through with this change. You’ve shown time and again that you’ll do what you damn well please despite the community giving you your “feedback” Well done, and goodbye.

So why are people flaming before testing again … or am i miss understanding the text. "High APM play is still rewarded as the absolute highest DPS and requires a mix of both Light and Heavy attacks."
All i'm getting out of this is that rotations will get more complex and not all this one fits all. So the gameplay should actually get more dynamic and faster as you have to react to stuff and not just play the same rotation over and over again.

PS: sry for my english ^^

The PTS Patch notes say this: Unarmed Heavy Attacks now deal approximately 24% more damage.

What is a Unarmed Heavy Attack?

majulook wrote: »

The PTS Patch notes say this: Unarmed Heavy Attacks now deal approximately 24% more damage.

What is a Unarmed Heavy Attack?

A Fist Heavy Hit....its still funny to play without weapon, and it can proc Bound Arnaments Stacks too...

Schattenfluegel wrote: »

majulook wrote: »

The PTS Patch notes say this: Unarmed Heavy Attacks now deal approximately 24% more damage.

What is a Unarmed Heavy Attack?

A Fist Heavy Hit....its still funny to play without weapon, and it can proc Bound Arnaments Stacks too...

LOL Did not even know that was in the game, and been playing since beta.

So is the goal to also buff all weapon/class skills damage as well to match the removal of weaving light attacks and keep the fast pace combat. I remember when it was originally HA did more then LA which it was reverted to LA do more damage then HA because the combat felt so slow and lame. I feel like we are just going backwards unless you buff all the skill damage to match the remove of LA damage.

Royaji wrote: »

mpicklesster wrote: »

Also--what about skills and classes that depend heavily on light attack damage? Like Elemental Weapon and Night Blades, respectively. I saw no mention of either in the patch notes.

We should probably argue objectively regardless how we feel about the change. I don't see how anything about this change specifically affects NB or Elemental Weapon. The incentive to weave a LA every skill and get your Grim Focus stacks is still there. 200 stam/mag every second is nothing to scoff at. For the same reason nothing changes for Elemental Weapon and its damage is completely unrelated to LA damage itself.

1) I agree that the LA changes won't change the motivation to weave for NBs. Grim Focus is too large of a chunk of their DPS. The LA nerf, however, will disproportionately affect their DPS because LAs make up a larger portion of their DPS than it does on other classes. (Except for maybe magplars?).
I wish ZOS had buffed NB's spammable to compensate for the inevitable DPS loss to LAs.

2) I understand that Ele Weapon adds a flat value, so its DPS in isolation won't change. However, with the substantial nerf to LA damage, it seems like there's little incentive to run Ele Weapon any more. Wouldn't another spammable be more powerful? So my qualm is essentially that Ele Weapon could likely become a dead skill. Which is a real shame for those of us that took the time to learn how to properly weave it.

Ok lets first state, that our game is awesome and unique, because its fast paced and people love it like that. Then lets nerf the fast paced combat and make it slow, because people love fast pace....does this make any sense.

Ok a bit more in detail:

ESO is amazing and loved as a fast paced combat game, it feels like you really can achieve something to learn this fast pace. It is rewarding a lot to get used to light attack weaving, it is skillful to do so. On the other hand heavy attacks are slow and boring. Many people left back in the heavy attack meta, because it was boring to tuck down your left mouse button. It is not skillful to press one button down all the time and try to get one skill out right after the heavy attack finishes (because you automatically queue the skill right after and you dont have to time it). Basically players, who spent time learning and improving, get nerfed, meanwhile the boring mechanic, who pretty much everybody can learn very easely gets buffed. This discourages people to learn your game, it discourages old and new players, because either they get punished for being good or they have nothing to strive for after learning an easy game play.

In addition, light attacks restoring resources is not necessary: sustain is fine, good players can sustain in PvE without heavy attacks, because they know how to do it. If you want to see heavy attacks a bit more used, just reduce its channel time a bit and you would improve the game quite a bit.

Please leave heavy attacks and light attacks as they are for the sake of your game. Nobody wants a slow game, nobody wants their effort crushed, nobody wants easy game to be effective, because you lose the reason to improve.

DPS on the trial dummies at the moment peak around 95k dps and 13-17k of it is damage from light attacks. The nerf will make that go to 3-6k dps. This would be a joke for everybody, who actually put time into the game to learn it. It is just a big "*** you" to the people caring most for the game, loving the game the most. If you want to raise the floor, then please buff heavy attacks slightly and do a decent job at teaching the new players the game, so they dont get smashed in PvP and never try it again, so they dont get kicked from groups because their dps is low or they die all the time.

And please, before you do any big chances to the game, improve performance in PvP and fix your game.

I think it's fairly safe to assume these changes will go live exactly as they are written. Typically, when ZOS puts something out there to get "feedback", they've already made up their minds.

Her's my feedback for ZOS to ignore:

It makes sense for heavy attacks to do more damage from a risk versus reward standpoint. However, changing a core mechanic so drastically throws the entire game off balance. Why not leave light attacks alone and implement a sliding scale for heavy attack damage and resource restore based on charge time?

Not that it matters since the game is broken beyond repair anyway.

Please stop these radical combat changes ZOS. It has gotten so old and lots of people have been driven away by it, and I am starting to see why. Nobody wants unpredictable changes. We want stability and balance.

I really dont understand why every year there is some sort of attempt to completely overhaul gameplay.