Change is scary [AoE CD consideration]

tinythinker · July 2020

There is understandably a good bit of "this will ruin the trademark flowing style of ESO combat" and "is this just for PvP?" remarks.

Not judging those sentiments, but gonna move past that to the "If this is needed and is adopted" scenario, what then?

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Test 1... For example, as a Templar, if I cast Ritual of Retribution, I wouldn’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep for 3 seconds...

Test 2... For example – as a Templar, if I cast Puncturing Sweep, I wouldn’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep again for 3 seconds.

Test 3... Similar to how streak or roll dodge works, where when you cast an AOE you receive a debuff for 5 seconds, each stack of the debuff increases the cost of any AOE cast.

...

After we complete the above tests, we may try other combinations of cooldown, cost, and regen values on AOE abilities... please be aware that if these tests confirm our hypothesis, then chain-casting AOE abilities will no longer form the core of the ESO PvP experience in the way it has for the last few years. We would then go through each class and ensure that there are viable builds for each and make adjustments as necessary.

As a mostly Templar main, I can see why losing free acess to so many of our best abilities to cool-downs would be a nightmare, especially Puncturing Strikes and its morphs which are meant to be spammable. It would take a BIG rework for Templars alone if insta-chaining goes away, and other classes would be effected in many ways. Every class is AoE heavy.

To keep things simple, if these GCDs on AOE go through let's take the cited example and some options to make it less painful (with similar approaches available for other AoE in the game):

1. Make Puncturing Strikes + morphs a single target skill that fires off an AoE every three seconds. This way, you can still spam it, but the AoE component still remains in a different way. The area check would still be limited to every 3 seconds and the single-target part would work the same as spamming Lava Whip.

If possible, add a DoT to Puncturing Strikes when it does its AoE check every 3 seconds. Effectively, this DoT would mimic the damage done currently to the targets (and compensate with similar heals for the Puncturing Sweeps morph). So basically activate and immediately hit for AoE that leaves DoTs on targets, then single target damage for three seconds, then another AoE burst with DoTs.

2. Make Puncturing Strikes + morphs an AoE skill that fires off an AoE every three seconds. If the repeating of the animation as well as the constant area checks are a problem, then the bulleted idea immediately above could be applied when the ability is activated (add DoTs) and then go into the 3 second CD without spam. In terms of damage (and possibly healing), this would keep thing as they are now, but it also raises another issue: no real Templar spammable.

On the one hand, this means Templars would have time and opportunity to use other abilities while Puncturing Strikes is on CD (meaning the DoTs applied would be lower than for Option #1). But on the other hand, the few options for spammables that make sense in the current skill lines are also AoE, have AoE morphs, or are don't operate in a spammable way. Plus the whole change to Burning Light (hitting a target four times in rapid succession) would make even less sense than it does now, as the only Aedric Spear ability people spam that fast is... Puncturing Strikes + morphs. So it would need to be redefined.

In a broader sense beyond one class or one skill:

Ground AoEs for damage will be largely unaffected; same for healing AoEs except your more likely to want to move it. Like above you could apply a HoT for those passing through.
DoTs applied directly to targets at a distance (such as reflective light) will be mostly unaffected unless you want to switch targets within 3 seconds
Cleave AoEs based on the caster are most affected, which is why I led with one as an example

If the AoE CDs do come in, they may be different. Some with the recast cost increased, some with a flat 3 second delay. But there are ways to make up the lost damage and healing, a few of which are described above. Such changes to AoE would still cause a difference in some aspects of game play, but many can be minimized, so it won't be as if the game becomes unrecognizable. ZOS could even spice some of them up to make them more interesting to use.

We won't know how they will make the changes, and I have no interest in trying to "sell" or "defend" the idea of AoE CDs, but when I considered how ZOS could get around some of the limitations it didn't sound as bad as when I first read about the idea. Games evolve, and if they do AoE changes cleverly we could still see the same damage and healing with better performance.

nk125x · July 2020

I think you are missing the point

The majority of skills have an aoe component, 2H & Lighting staffs Light attacks have an aoe component

What are we supposed to use in the 3 seconds - Harsh Language!

red_emu · July 2020

The biggest problem with spammable that is aoe is that we only have 2 skill bars.

Eso is very heavy on buff management, which leaves us with little room for any extra damage abilities that we could use during cool down.

I still have hope that ZOS will wake up like they did with the heavy and light attack change ideas but this seems serious and if there is even the slightest positive effect on performance, this thing goes live!

It is indeed scary. This could potentially kill the game for most players.

Making the product unappealing in order to fix it ain't gonna make any money.

tinythinker · July 2020

nk125x wrote: »

I think you are missing the point

The majority of skills have an aoe component, 2H & Lighting staffs Light attacks have an aoe component

What are we supposed to use in the 3 seconds!

red_emu wrote: »

The biggest problem with spammable that is aoe is that we only have 2 skill bars.

Eso is very heavy on buff management, which leaves us with little room for any extra damage abilities that we could use during cool down.

So basically when you lay down a Wall of Elements you do nothing else while it is up?

(<- humor) They haven't said if weapon attack AoEs would be affected, just abilities that are cast.

They are testing different modes. One would be a 3 second cooldown on repeating the same AoE. Another is a cooldown on using any AoE. They have two other options involving a cost increase debuff for spam. These can be mix and match (some solutions for one type of AoE, different solutions for another. Or one might be blanket applied. We don't know.

WORST CASE SCENARIO

The "worst case scenario" in terms of being restrictive would be a total global - you can't recast *any* AoE for three seconds. That gives more time to do weapon attacks and single target abilities. This would affect spammable cleave AoE the most, like Puncturing Strikes (Templar, Aedric Spear line), Cleave (Two Handed line), Death Scythe (Necromancer), etc.

Which is one of the reason why I led with that in giving an example of a creative workaround by making such skills a single target ability that becomes an AoE every three seconds. Hence you do really high single-target damage constantly, get an AoE pulse to make up for lack of AoE spam every three seconds that takes the place of the single target damage, and still limit the area check needed to every three seconds to reduce strain on the servers. Yet you also still get to be doing something the whole time with your favorite cleave skills if spamming them is your thing.

The biggest limit for the most restrictive mode of AoE CDs (no new AoE cast of any kind for three seconds) is trying to add in non-cleave DoTs. But you can still keep attacking in other ways. Ground AoE or ranged mutli-target AoE -> heavy attack -> Cleave spam, for one example.

Hopefully if they go forward with any of the tested changes they don't resort to the most restrictive option but there are workarounds available.

Preferably, *if* ZOS add AoE CDs, they could still get performance increases with thoughtful changes but I cannot say which combinations are best (nor can they until the test data is reviewed). But not repeating the same AoE back to back would be good for variety as you can still add in multiple AoEs with ease in a fight.

DAMAGE VS. NON-DAMAGE AOE

Another issue is damage AoE vs. non-damage AoE. There are a few ways to divide up AoE as per my OP.

Ground AoEs for damage will be largely unaffected; same for healing AoEs except your more likely to want to move it. Like above you could apply a HoT for those passing through.
DoTs applied directly to targets at a distance (such as reflective light) will be mostly unaffected unless you want to switch targets within 3 seconds
Cleave AoEs based on the caster are most affected, which is why I led with one as an example

The same exists for non-damage AoEs that do healing and/or buffing. Hence similar issues exist. So for Cleave damage AoEs there is the single-target coversion with periodic burst option, the apply a DoT every three seconds to all affected targets option, the stacks of increasing cost option (like what happened to Streak), etc. These solutions would be fine if you can still swap to a different AoE right away, but in the "worst case scenario" option of absolute CDs on casting any AoE for three seconds, this is could be a major disaster as people might need a cleanse or another big burst heal.

On the one hand, this could be a solution to over-healing issues in some parts of the game (in which case ZOS can revert the added healing debuff for Battle Spirit), but it could be an issue for doing current trials on hardmode. In which case extending the duration of some non-damage effects might be in order.

IMAGINATION AND THOUGHTFULESS OVER REACTIVITY AND PANIC

Again, I'm not defending or selling anything ZOS is proposing but I do have a very high degree of confidence that they will find significant performance increases with AoE casting restrictions and end the typical forms of current AoE spamming.

That said, I'm looking at creative and thoughtful ways to reimagine AoEs in ESO that preserve some aspects of existing gameplay as well as ways to picture new and exciting elements to gameplay. It's very easy to doom and gloom and rage against the devs, and also redundant and tiring. There are many threads for that and by all means, anyone reading this who wants to do that please do so... in those threads. I'd like to see some theory crafters and ESO armchair devs bring their creativity and innovation to the AoE crisis in this thread.

I will post what I can what I can but work has been super busy so it will be slow going.

Take care, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Vanagrand · July 2020

As long it affects streak im ok.

josiahva · July 2020

In my view...you have a combat system based around no cooldowns....if you want to put everything on cooldowns and become a WOW/FFXIV clone, then do away with ability costs entirely. A hybrid system of ANY type is pure garbage

Myrddin1357 · July 2020

josiahva wrote: »

In my view...you have a combat system based around no cooldowns....if you want to put everything on cooldowns and become a WOW/FFXIV clone, then do away with ability costs entirely. A hybrid system of ANY type is pure garbage

There are cooldowns now - 1 sec for abilities and 0.7 seconds for LAs. They are talking about adjusting the cooldowns for some aoe abilities only for pvp in order to collect data. No change is actually being proposed right now. We need to wait and see what they actually come up with as a proposed solution for cyro pvp performance before we can judge how good/bad it will be.

mairwen85 · July 2020

Myrddin1357 wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

In my view...you have a combat system based around no cooldowns....if you want to put everything on cooldowns and become a WOW/FFXIV clone, then do away with ability costs entirely. A hybrid system of ANY type is pure garbage

There are cooldowns now - 1 sec for abilities and 0.7 seconds for LAs. They are talking about adjusting the cooldowns for some aoe abilities only for pvp in order to collect data. No change is actually being proposed right now. We need to wait and see what they actually come up with as a proposed solution for cyro pvp performance before we can judge how good/bad it will be.

The entire design choice behind ability cost and sustain is to enforce we play within certain constraints on which abilities we use and when--if they're altering individual cooldowns, or (as per pass 1) putting all abilities of a certain type on a shared cooldown (3s for aoes), they should also address cost of those abilities accordingly--the final testing pass is ramping cost of aoes (5s cost increase period) + individual cooldowns (3s per aoe) which is ultimately yet another band aid rather than actual fix.