Will the requirements for Rapid Maneuver be lowered so that it can be used by all the characters that had it previous to Stonethorn?

RE: Stamina Warden Shalks (Subterranean Assault)

Having parsed a few times now;

• This change feels completely uninspired from top to bottom. It fails to address the biggest pains of Stamina Warden in any meaningful way. This feels like a PVP change exclusively to take away fracture, with no earthly idea how to add anything meaningful back to PVE.
  
• This takes an already clunky as hell rotation thanks to the awful birds change some patches ago, and adds 200% more clunk. Now you have to remember, after god knows how many patches, that your sub isn't every 3 skills, it's every 6. No one asked for this. Yes, we gain a global. It also wrecks sustain even harder, as Shalks is our cheapest "spammable" and birds is overpriced for what it does outside of Off-Balance.
  
• This change fails to address the lack of group utility Stamden has. It's their central pain. We bring nothing to a group outside of *** poor damage, and this change fails to resolve either of those issues. It won't be a meaningful DPS gain, as it's simply gaining a global every 3s at the cost of sustain.
  
• I continue to feel as though no one in the actual dev/balance team has any idea how Stamden works, what makes them interesting/compelling to the player, and why they are such a meme in PVE. We finally get a change, and this...this is it? This is what we waited so long for? It's heartbreaking, disappointing and just pitiful.
  
• A much, much more meaningful change would have been to cap bird bleed stacks and unchain them from Off-Balance. It would have provided consistent, reliable damage for Stamden that doesn't crack our sustain in the skull even more, and give us a reason to slot birds again over Wrecking Blow.

I don't mean to be an ass, but unless you're willing to listen to people that actually play the class in PVE, just delete it.

I'm a little disappointed by the Minor Magicsteal change. Will it even be worth applying anymore?

I get that 168 per second is effectively 336 magicka recovery which is the same as 2.6 set bonuses... but it's also not. Every Magicka character should have at least 20% from LA Passive, 14% from CP, and an assortment of possible things from Class, Mage Guild, and Support Passives/abilities. So as a baseline, every magicka character should have a 34% bonus minimum which applies to all magicka recovery but not magicsteal. This sets the base recovery from a set bonus to 173 with most characters getting even more out of it. A sorcerer with 7 LA and Meteor slotted would have at least a 54% bonus for a single set bonus being equal to 199 recovery.

I know its a difficult balancing act... but none of the other named buffs or debuffs are as effected by so many static passive bonuses on characters, and they complement eachother when stacked. Major and Minor Intellect don't effect magicsteal at all.

I also notice that lifesteal is missing from the rebalance list. Possibly because they realize that bringing it down to the same level would trivialize it.

Lifesteal and Magicsteal are unique buffs/debuffs in that they don't effect player or monster stats in the same way other buffs/debuffs do and maybe they should both just be left alone for this balance cycle. Neither of them are overtuned right now in my opinion.

Anyone able to post what PotL looks like now since Minor Fracture is gone and Minor Breach, unlike Major Breach, doesn't say it applies to both physical and spell in the patch notes?

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

And players who don't use the unintentional unintuitive exploiting-your-programming of animation cancelling in light attack weaving get penalized by this change.

@Dusk_Coven Actually, i'd say LA weaving is probably one of the most intuitive aspects of ESO's combat when the servers aren't dying. Having come from a litany of games, including 15+ years in MMOs like WoW and EQ that had no animation cancelling, I had to sit in front of a dummy for days to figure out how the combat worked. Now, I love it. Properly LA weaving feels really good and is extremely rewarding.

But that doesn't mean it's not unintuitive. There's absolutely nothing while playing or leveling that reinforces its behavior. It's an entirely foreign experience until you sit down and parse on a dummy. But it's a polarizing issue and one they clearly have no way of changing.

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

And players who don't use the unintentional unintuitive exploiting-your-programming of animation cancelling in light attack weaving get penalized by this change.

@Dusk_Coven Actually, i'd say LA weaving is probably one of the most intuitive aspects of ESO's combat when the servers aren't dying. Having come from a litany of games, including 15+ years in MMOs like WoW and EQ that had no animation cancelling, I had to sit in front of a dummy for days to figure out how the combat worked. Now, I love it. Properly LA weaving feels really good and is extremely rewarding.

Well... Servers are more often dying than not.

Necromancer /

Frozen Colossus:

-Removed this Ultimate and the morph's Major Vulnerability invulnerability.
-Increased the duration of Major Vulnerability applied from these to 12 seconds per hit, up from 8. This will increase the total duration to 15 seconds per cast.

So.. Necro meta again ? Or Am I missing something ?

Loving the frost staff changes. Shields for everyone on blockade and a shield for myself on heavy attack? Yes, please Also, the frost safeguard shield animation might be the best thing in this entire DLC.

Umm, please keep the blockade shields as "allies" instead of "group members" only. Awesome, thanks

What's going on with DPS?

I'm seeing a huge dps loss from live. granted my atro isn't working, but even with that aside everyone in my guild is showing large dps losses.

I've gone from 90k to 80k. That's more than I would think 4.5% crit and 10% light attack damage should account for...

Anyone else seeing this?

Live parse (pre precise nerf)
pts parse

Maim changes and Heroic Slash:

It appears that boss damage will effectively be going up 10% without using currently unused sets to apply major maim (or Shadowrend with it's unique 5% debuff). This is because Heroic Slash used to maim for 15% but now will only maim 5%. Obviously this is 10% more damage on the tank - usually not a problem.

In fights where group deaths from burst damage is a real problem (e.g. 1st boss vMoL shield phase), this would require some mitigation. Tanks could forgo a damage set for a maim set (I believe only Banis will give almost full maim uptime, and it must be on whoever is taunting the boss). I'm not sure that shield sets would be that effective (Combat physician would be very RNG on when it has proc'd, and Prayer Shawl isn't useful in large groups). Healers could use Mending (if they can be close to boss).

It feels OP that necromancers spirit guardian pet has the same dmg reduction as major protection, but also stacks with major protection..

Atherakhia wrote: »

Aznarb wrote: »

Necromancer /

Frozen Colossus:

-Removed this Ultimate and the morph's Major Vulnerability invulnerability.
-Increased the duration of Major Vulnerability applied from these to 12 seconds per hit, up from 8. This will increase the total duration to 15 seconds per cast.

So.. Necro meta again ? Or Am I missing something ?

Hard to tell. Major Vulnerability was nerfed heavily so the question now becomes is it worth stacking Necros, who themselves aren't top tier DPS, just to boost the group's DPS by 10% for 15 seconds per Necro? On the flip side, if Stam comes back in style, Stam Necros are top tier damage so an all Necro stam raid is in the cards.

But for Mag Necros, this is bad news and one of many nerfs the class has gotten and couldn't afford any of them.

We're now 8 months into Stalking Blast Bones being worthless, which is the primary burst skill available to Mag Necromancers. We saw Harmony nerfed last patch, the only other means of burst available to the class, with nothing done to improve Mag Necromancers. Now we're seeing Minor Maim, Major Vuln and Major Protection, 2 rather important skills for PvP for Mag Necros, also nerfed. All for a class that is undeniably the worst Mag in the game by a considerable margin. And still no word from ZOS with even a hint as to the direction they're trying to take the class or how much longer Mag Necromancers will need to put up with mediocrity.

Would have to disagree since Magcros are averaging 90-95k DPS on a static trial dummy parse and well over 100k in raids.

Can you buff Nightblades Mark? Now that you removed its dual resistance debuff and for Reaper’s Mark nerfed Major berserk significantly. Maybe finally add a synergy to a Nightblade skill?