Please stop skills uniformization !

GodlikeC · September 2020

With the last PTS patch note 6.2 comes another kill of skill specificity.

Power Extraction (morph):
This morph now applies Minor Cowardice to enemies hit, rather than reducing their Weapon and Spell Damage by a unique amount. This will result in a larger decrease in Weapon and Spell Damage, but one that cannot be stacked with other sources.

This is so bad in so many ways :

modifying skills to give a generic buff/debuff instead of a skill specific effect is just basicly killing every class specificity even more (classes already all have toolkits to tank/dps/heal but now they start to all get generic buff/debuff without proper ones).
why in a MMO where we are supposed to play together would you prevent stacking of effect when it's so easy to get generic buffs/debuffs ? What's the point of removing the specific benefits of a class against another in group when it stricly bring nothing in solo ?

Everytime I see this kind of change I just realize that classes are getting even closer to just visual differences.

Just rollback this change and let us get our pros and cons when it comes to select our classes !

Ladislao · September 2020

The uniformization/homogenization/standartization/whatever path started a couple of years ago when Wrobel left due to a huge wave of criticism for his "poor game balancing".
So unfortunately it is too late to ask to stop now. It is time to reap the benefits.

Aznarb · September 2020

No, it's good, they should have do that years ago.
Uniformise > Balance > be sur all option are viable.

Difference from class should be from gameplay not from viability.

Jodynn · September 2020

For balance, and enjoyment of players to feel like they bring something only they can bring and also feel like they're providing something no one else can, but also feeling powerful..

There should be a standardization among all skills, classes, and passives.

Each class should have a unique skill to themself whether that is a buff or debuff that makes them stand out, feel special and desired.

Currently most do but some do not, like Warden as a DPS, Minor Toughness isn't super amazing or desired, meanwhile Engulfing is only desired by Magicka trial setups for DK.

Class abilities should be stronger than generic skills, so your abilities stand out and not because a passive makes it so, passives should increase all of you, not just extending a duration or damage of a skill; this should be innate to the skill itself.

When all come together they should all roughly do the same amount of DPS with each others debuffs and buffs.

An entire skill line should not be ignored for PvE because it's used only in PvP, this is a poor design; as balancing the two hardly ever makes one side or the other happy, and when someone who plays both sides like me, gets annoyed even further. That being said it is incredibly commendable and brave to try; however, in many cases it doesn't work and ends up dissatisfying one side for the other, which may be fixed by offering specific morphs to only work in PvP or PvE, or both morphs to both and just have ones efficacies clear one way or the other. The final case is wanting to have both morphs, I'm not sure why it's not allowed but it is annoying.

However, currently there hasn't been a full pass so some skills are heavily outdated like filling a soul gem with increased resurrection speed ( templar ), or increased block amount on a Magicka class ( DK ), or health and stamina recovery for a Magicka class ( Sorc ).

The thing is you can't really balance everything using SBE, or whatever system, then not balance the core that uses those things ( classes and their passives )

Also, while I'm talking balance, races are not balanced, I do not feel as if I can play Khajiit and feel strong and capable, it feels like using my whip is like using a wet noodle.

Atherakhia · September 2020

I disagree. Doing this makes balance much easier and will hopefully result in a better game in the long run. They should expand it to be completely honest with you. Take Heal Over Times for example. One of the most overpowered things in this game is the ability to stack heal over times. Especially in PvP. If heal over times were normalized across all classes to fit into 2 general buckets of 'major vigor' and 'minor vigor', it would be much easier to balance healing across the board.

It's also worth mentioning that this approach to have all buffs and such fit into these minor and major categories is much more flexible than it seems. Take my above suggestion about making HOTs fit into major and minor categories. While an across the board change like this isn't possible as many classes have access to these skills, adjusting those skills to also apply minor/major mending and such along with the heal would give a fair amount of class diversity and retain much of the original power of the skill.

So I disagree. I think all buffs should ultimately fall into these categories and the 'scrunching' of stats should continue. Hopefully they'll merge weapon and spell damage next.

Xebov · September 2020

Uniformization or standarization is important for balance.

If new content is created it always has to be checked against the best case. Which means a group with all buffs/debuffs active. The more there are the more specific the best case composition becomes and the harder it gets for players that are not grouping like this. Keeping the number of buffs/debuffs in check and getting them to values where they are usefull upgrades instead of being mandatory must haves creates more flexibility for groups.

Little fun fact: Blizzard did the exact same thing with buff potions many years ago for the exact same reason to improve their raid balancing.

Scion_of_Yggdrasil · September 2020

Im actually for this change, but understand where you're coming from. This is not affecting class identity though imo, its universally bringing balance and order to what was previously a messy collection of various effects with no semblance of uniformity.

Its most common to have a set list of buffs/debuffs (constant), and at that point distribute that set list among skills and other combat effects (variable). Class identity would then be determined by what classes have access to what buffs/debuffs.

I've also hated the buff/debuff game. Cycling through various debuffs instead of just attacking your opponent just seems unintuitive to me. Buffs/debuffs should compliment combat, but combat should never be dependent on them. They should give you an edge, not turn the tide.

Chilly-McFreeze · September 2020

Aznarb wrote: »

No, it's good, they should have do that years ago.
Uniformise > Balance > be sur all option are viable.

Difference from class should be from gameplay not from viability.

Which our devs apparently understand as making every class the same with different animations. No thanks, then I rather have classes that lack a bit (!) in one department compared to others than to have completetly uniformed skills.

YandereGirlfriend · September 2020

Skillful game developers that play their own games extensively at a reasonably high level are often able to achieve balance without resorting to the cookie-cutter standardization approach.

Alternatively, condensing game building blocks (be that sets, skills, racial bonuses, etc.) into equal-sized units without any thought given as to the context that those blocks are actually used in belies a designer out of touch with how their own game is played.

I suppose that the latter is better than randomly assigning power to things but balance in this game could be handled much, much, much better.

Zeromaz · September 2020

This game has, over a long time, been slowing making all classes relatively the same. Real class identity has been stripped away. Except warden and necro of course, because they cost cash monies

Skjaldbjorn · September 2020

Zeromaz wrote: »

This game has, over a long time, been slowing making all classes relatively the same. Real class identity has been stripped away. Except warden and necro of course, because they cost cash monies

Uh...Warden has very little class identity to start with. Wut?