I’ve been saying this too, but people like the extra button presses I think and think it makes the game more skill based. There’s no other explanation.

That and reduce the duration of all animations to max .7 seconds.

I wouldn't ever want light/heavy attacks to be automatic, I enjoy weaving them as do others, the concern should just be to make more build variety, as well as lowering the necessity of light attack rotations. This obsession with completely overhauling core gameplay mechanics should be abandoned.

Right now, light attack weaving can count for 10-20% of an end game dps parse. Nerfing light attack damage to make it less of a requirement at say 5-10% of a parse is an excellent start. ("20%" being mag dps with vma staff).

ZOS needs to offer better competitive set alternatives, Ele Weapon only works with light attacks and not heavy attacks, VMA staff buffs light/heavy attacks (there is no back bar magicka alternative for people who don't want to weave at all), Bound Armaments, Grim Focus and Relequen don't give 2 stacks for a heavy attack, etc. If there was better alternatives, players shouldn't feel so shoehorned into that playstyle to be competitive and both sides of this argument can play the way they want.

Buffing heavy attack builds is an excellent direction as well, however I question if the PTS changes are balanced from a skill to ability ratio. Something really urkes me when a free cost 2H Heavy attack does basically the same damage as Dizzy/Wrecking Blow which are already some of the strongest spammables in the game, what does that say about other spammables that aren't as strong as Dizzy?

Educate players, can't stress how awful this game is at explaining core gameplay mechanics to new players.

Crit Chance/Crit Resist should always be shown as percentage instead of a value, get the game to calculate it for us. Update the Character Sheet to include more information.

Make rotations easier to manage, console players have to deal with an awful buff tracker, add action duration reminder to the base game. Press an ability, that abilties duration shows on the action bar. Simple and intuitive.

Iskiab wrote: »

That and reduce the duration of all animations to max .7 seconds.

THIS. You have 3 categories on your skill types. Instant, Cast Time, and Channel.

Flurry with a 0.6second channel is easier to weave vs instant cast abilities because it has a predefined start and end point. Instant cast abilities have varying animation times, if every animation was streamlined to the same duration as flurry, you would no longer have any issues with abilities feeling clunky to use without animation cancelling. If you go back to the early pts stream about Morrowind and the Warden reveal, the developeres intentionally designed some of their animations to be much longer to fit the classes playstyle. However, this has always felt clunky and over time, abilities like Cliff Racer have lost the parts that accounted for long animation times like being undodgeable.

ku5h wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I’ve been saying this too, but people like the extra button presses I think and think it makes the game more skill based. There’s no other explanation.

That and reduce the duration of all animations to max .7 seconds.

Then what would be the point of having LAs anyway? If anyone has them automatically, then we might as well not have them at all and make it a bit easier on the servers.
What do you mean its not skill based? Performing LA-Skill-Bash perfectly in a dynamic combat situation is not skill? But yea, lets have auto-attacks while we sip tea and press 1 button here and there. Ofc having high APM and sharp muscle memory is a form of skill in all e sports.

How do you figure lag and its random effects into your muscle memory?

Lol

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I wouldn't ever want light/heavy attacks to be automatic, I enjoy weaving them as do others, the concern should just be to make more build variety, as well as lowering the necessity of light attack rotations. This obsession with completely overhauling core gameplay mechanics should be abandoned.

Right now, light attack weaving can count for 10-20% of an end game dps parse. Nerfing light attack damage to make it less of a requirement at say 5-10% of a parse is an excellent start. ("20%" being mag dps with vma staff).

ZOS needs to offer better competitive set alternatives, Ele Weapon only works with light attacks and not heavy attacks, VMA staff buffs light/heavy attacks (there is no back bar magicka alternative for people who don't want to weave at all), Bound Armaments, Grim Focus and Relequen don't give 2 stacks for a heavy attack, etc. If there was better alternatives, players shouldn't feel so shoehorned into that playstyle to be competitive and both sides of this argument can play the way they want.

Buffing heavy attack builds is an excellent direction as well, however I question if the PTS changes are balanced from a skill to ability ratio. Something really urkes me when a free cost 2H Heavy attack does basically the same damage as Dizzy/Wrecking Blow which are already some of the strongest spammables in the game, what does that say about other spammables that aren't as strong as Dizzy?

Educate players, can't stress how awful this game is at explaining core gameplay mechanics to new players.

Crit Chance/Crit Resist should always be shown as percentage instead of a value, get the game to calculate it for us. Update the Character Sheet to include more information.

Make rotations easier to manage, console players have to deal with an awful buff tracker, add action duration reminder to the base game. Press an ability, that abilties duration shows on the action bar. Simple and intuitive.

Iskiab wrote: »

That and reduce the duration of all animations to max .7 seconds.

THIS. You have 3 categories on your skill types. Instant, Cast Time, and Channel.

Flurry with a 0.6second channel is easier to weave vs instant cast abilities because it has a predefined start and end point. Instant cast abilities have varying animation times, if every animation was streamlined to the same duration as flurry, you would no longer have any issues with abilities feeling clunky to use without animation cancelling. If you go back to the early pts stream about Morrowind and the Warden reveal, the developeres intentionally designed some of their animations to be much longer to fit the classes playstyle. However, this has always felt clunky and over time, abilities like Cliff Racer have lost the parts that accounted for long animation times like being undodgeable.

I think that this is a reasonable, well thought-through clump of suggestions.

I would still prefer a smaller nerf to Light Attack damage but I could live with that nerf in exchange for additional sustain. Heavy Attacks can only be buffed so far though, otherwise they become quite problematic for PvP.

Rather, I think that the balance of that stolen damage be invested back into abilities themselves, especially some of the weakest spammables as well as DoTs.

Your thoughts on better itemization for sets is also well-taken. Why do we have SO many PvP-specialized Arena weapons, especially bad ones that nobody ever uses? Those could be put to such better use. Same goes for any of the innumerable regular sets that are seldom, if ever, used. Some creativity (which seems very difficult to summon from ZOS item designers) would really go a long way here toward enabling alternative playstyles (and simply making the game more interesting for alts, etc.).

And indeed, simplify the character sheet. Who thought that the 833 Critical Chance rather than ~3.5% was a GOOD decision?! Give players more and better information and also streamline counter-intuitive and/or redundant stats such as Penetration into one single value such as they did with Armor. You could probably do similarly with Critical Chance itself (indeed, Critical Damage is already a streamlined stat) which would further assist hybrid-type of builds that newbie players seem to gravitate toward.

I didn't play around the time of Morrrowind so I don't know exactly what it was like.

It's not an issue on not knowing how to do it.
I could follow all the guides in the world try and look and follow on and practice my heart out, but if skills and light attacks literally desync, delay or don't happen for whatever reason it just doesn't work.
The other issue retaining to weaving is I don't know if there is something, but nobody really talks about how fast combat should be going or how fast things are pressed. I look at what everyone says their LA/s ratio is and try and figure out why mine is so different. I'd really like to see someones hands to really truly understand it as opposed as to what's just happening on the screen.

My ping is anywhere from 230ms - 300ms, which isn't a big difference on paper, but if its fluctuating like that constantly it causes issues.

There is times where I literally have to pause and look at whats happening because my rapid strikes or aoe abilities desynced, didn't visibly show up and I have to recast it to be sure.The timer on the skill goes off but I don't see any form of damage tick or visual effect of the ability being active. And then there's other times where I'll be weaving light attacks and rapid strikes and it will literally stop doing anything, no animation and then the damage of rapid strikes goes off 3 seconds later.

I don't want auto attacks, but I don't want to feel like I'm needlessly wasting things because the game literally inhibits it because things don't proc or cause desync.

You
A: Make it so all forms of attacks restore resources; so it doesn't matter if I hold a button .2 seconds too long its still going to benefit me without overly slowing combat.
B: All left click attacks restore nothing and up resource generation base; this way animation cancelling is still a thing but I don't have to worry about it being the thing warranting how much I can attack.

I light attack weave and am average at best, probably 50% to 60% success rate with good ping, probably around half that when ping is getting higher. That's a guess though, as when I am parsing ping is generally not much of an issue, though it can get a little weird with ground based dots that don't fire. I get it, it's kinda fun, but it's not the greatest thing since indoor plumbing or anything. The big issue to me is any negative effects that lag have on it make it less skill based and more good connectivity based, and that isn't right. Too many people are negatively impacted by latency and a combat system that does not take that into effect just isn't very fair to those individuals.

Adding LA to the skills themselves does not hurt those that are good at it at all, hell you will start having 100% success with LA, but so will Joe Blow with high ping. Joe Blow still won't hit all of his attacks as smoothly as you will, or run his rotation as well and still won't have the same dps, but it will be closer. About 5k closer. Is that so terrible?