Can we get a class unpruning like in Shadowlands?

Ragnaroek93 · May 2020

Can we please get a statement about the current class design and balance? Since Blizzard is doing a big unpruning in the upcoming xpac it would be nice to have something similar in this game as well. I don't want to sound rude but you did repeat the exact same mistakes which WoW did regarding class design.

The recent patch is a complete disappointment for me because there have been almost no balance changes. All you did was nerfing healing across the board and buffing impen. Did that help? Not at all, I'd even say it's worse than before. Buffing impen is a direct nerf to every burst class and nerfing healing is an indirect nerf for the classes which already had weak healing. Like how was healing on a (stam) sorc or nightblade even an issue? It wasn't, it's stamden and stamcro which have absurd overhealing and they still have overhealing.

This leads me to the next point. It feels outrageous and disgusting how you take away working and cool toolkits from the vanilla classes (nightblade literally lost everything) or refuse to put any work into them (stamsorc for example is extremely lackluster, stamdk got stonefist which is far too expensive and ranged while they're asking for stamwhip since years, Mark Target is too weak and no good Nightblade uses Ambush, why add vuln to this awful skill?) while giving the paywall classes everything. Just looks at all the buffs which Warden has for example, they took them away from other classes on purpose. Or Necro. Both of the new classes have a purge mechanic in their kit which was templars identity. Stamden is overloaded with mending and minor buffs and stamcro has the strongest major buffs in the game (permauptime on defile on an undodgeable AoE which hits harder than Dizzy when you took defile away from everyone) and major protection on demand. Stamden is already overperforming and stamcro is even on top of stamden, I've never seen such an overpowered class in the game.

I don't know, I have all classes in the game but I only enjoy playing the vanilla classes. The moment when you started pruning my main class and decided to leave it in the dust for over a year was the moment at which the game died for me. Give us a statement please because the current class design is further away from being fine than it was years ago.

Deathlord92 · May 2020

I just want nb fixed I’m really frustrated that the surprise attack stun went live some may like it but to others like myself that’s a nerf. Either way I don’t care about the other classes I only like playing nb so I hope it gets fixed I won’t except anything else.

MashmalloMan · May 2020

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

stamdk got stonefist which is far too expensive and ranged while they're asking for stamwhip since years

While I agree with 99% of your post, why do people keep acting like Stone Giant is too expensive? It literally costs the same as every other spammable in its class.

Spammable cost standards start at 2700 cost.

Stamina and melee magicka skills like Eviscerate, Whip and Concealed Weapon have -15% cost. When it isn't accomplished directly through a weapon passive, it's applied directly to the base cost. Final cost should be 2295, Stone Giant is this cost.

But yeah, back on topic, Update 25 and Update 26 had next to nothing in terms of class identity updates which is funny considering they released a long post about Class identity and their commitment to it when working on Update 24.

When they started talking about performance improvement plans, they forgot to mention they were completely abandoning their promises made throughout ALL of 2019 in regards to class identity and their continued skill audit. The sacrifice being performance has been way worse due to whatever the hell they changed with Blocking calculations in U25.

As a result of their decisions, Stone Giant is a mess of an ability that doesn't know what it wants to be, Stam Sorc has a lame NB copy/paste skill that functions worse seeing as heavy attacks don't grant 2 stacks and the skill is even more telegraphed by being spread out over 4 projectiles each with built in delays and finally NB is a shell of what it use to be, once the poster child for Stamina Class identity gutted because their power on class skills was considered "redundant".

Look how long it took them to give NBs the stun back on Incap and it was added back during a HOTFIX for which the reason was not because of it making more sense or that the community requested it, but because there was a bug they couldn't fix for the silence variant.

Or how about the fact that they removed Major Defile because it was apparently too powerful for an ult, yet they released it on a semi spammable burst skill for Necromancer. Doesn't make any sense.

Here is an article from ZOS posted in September 2019 just before the release of Update 24 in October, the last time they "tried" to tackle class identity:

https://elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57025

You know the funny part about this? I will go on record as previously defending ZOS because people wanted them to focus on performance improvements over their combat overhaul. I and many others mentioned how the developers in charge of making sure the game runs smoothly are most likely NOT the same developers in charge of class balance or the crown store for that matter. They can be completely different fields and jobs, not everyone is trained for technical programming. Yet.. here we are, 2 updates later and nothing. So whats the deal?

At what point are they going to mention that their performance "improvements" have haulted the skill audit, class identity improvements or CP update? We're only left to assume this is what happened.. If U27 doesn't touch back on the awful 1.5x damage of a spammable dot standard or the crappy class improvements we got in U24, I've lost most of my interest in the game for the next year.