Buffs that have to be frequently re-cast annoy me. The new(ish) philosophy that an ability shouldn't do very many things, plus having to slot buffs, plus very few ability slots in the first place because console, means lots of repetition and extremely simplified rotations. The design goal that not only should every class be able to heal and tank, but in exactly the same way as every other class, has destroyed a lot of the point and fun of choosing any particular class. In general the more they homogenize and simplify the more boring (PVE) and gear-dependent (PVP) combat gets.

Since you ask.

I don't usually have any issues concerning our characters in combat. But the enemy AI so irritating sometimes when it comes to "being in combat" state.

Enemies can chase you across the map for kilometers and stay in combat state with you, but the moment you turn back and attack them, they exit combat and start jogging back to their original posts. And this is not consistent (not even consistent across your group members, some members get stuck in combat, some don't)

• sometimes they give up correctly on their own and stop chasing and exit combat state
• sometimes they chase you forever until you hit them once and only then exit combat state
• sometimes they stand still but stay in combat with you even if you are REALLY far away (most noticeable in dungeons), only way to get out of combat state is either enter sneak mode and wait for a minute (this forces your character out of combat state) or go all the way back and kill that enemy or have your character die.

This is frustrating because while your character is in combat state; you regain resources slower, you cannot change equipment or quickslot items, you cannot change skills, you cannot summon your mount, you cannot teleport to somewhere else (but the new "leave instance" option in group content helps here) and you cannot interact with doors/levers or other world items in older content.

I can only assume the inconsistent nature of this being "in combat" state is due to buggy code.

Edit : Also the fact that enemies sometimes ignore collision detection doesn't help either because they get stuck inside walls and it becomes impossible to damage them. I've seen entire packs of enemies casually go through walls in wayrest sewers 1/2 because they want to attack my teammates who are still in the previous room.

Imho PvE combat is way more fun than the single player games. PvP combat on the other hand is an unbalanced trash fire of ZOS' own making rip.

Personally I have huge issues with light attacks and barswapping. My reasons are quite simple.

On light attacks: We are strong characters, who level up to get stronger. But between our powerful skills we spam our weakest attack, light attacks. The order in which light attacks weave in with skills is backwards as well. Instead of using a powerful skill and light attack while recovering from using that skill, we light attack and then immediately use a powerful skill. That just feels off. Another reason is lag, you can't light attack weave (well) when lagging. Lowering DPS in an online game based on player ping, is bad. My final reason to be against using light attacks at all is that it just looks stupid and silly, and should only be used when out of resources.

On barswapping: There are several reason for why I am against barswapping. As mentioned above, lag/ping shouldn't be a deciding factor in MMO's. And it is hard/impossible for players to barswap while lagging or having high ping. Meaning those with low lag/ping have access to 5 more skills over other players. Besides that, there is skill level. Not everyone wants to use 10 skills like that, or can use 10 skills like that. If there was a way to auto barswap(maybe with a small delay) it would be ok, as that would straighten out the skill level between those who can and those who can't barswap for whatever reason. Atleast somewhat, and still give an edge to those who barswap manually.

Overall I feel light attacks don't make that much of an impact, and could stay the way they are without much harm to the game itself. As long as ZOS removed the skill after skill delay which is caused by the light attack weaving delay. As that makes using skill after skill feel absolutely clunky and off. (with the current weaving bug this was fixed somehow, atleast for a little while) This is what most new players experience, since they don't light attack weave when starting the game! ( I don't either )
Barswapping does have a huge impact on the game, but at the same time it is game-defining. As barswapping belongs in ESO. So my solution would be to lower the entry level to barswapping, by showing all 10 skills on the screen and implementing auto-barswap. Where the auto-barswap has a small delay, so those who barswap manually will still have the advantage. But so that it won't be a 50% advantage anymore(5 skills vs 10 skill), but rather a 90% skilluse vs 100% skilluse advantage.

Anyways, those are just my thoughts on the subject. Other than that, I love ESO's combat!

Biggest gripe I have is lag and failure of skills to fire off. It makes light attacks the most viable/reliable method of attack because it seems to not be as susceptible to lag and becomes a trigger mash. As a result it influences how you play what skills you slot etc. Waiting for an ulti to go off on a target to simply watch them vanish into cloak or retreat out of range is very frustrating.

Those who live by the lag, die by the lag.

Edit. The heavy attack bow mechanic of auto release instead off holding the shot until intended release, is lame. wasnt always like' this.

Outgoing damage feels like a garden hose you have to pump by hand.
PVE combat is mostly avoid the projectiles and don't stand in the circles of death. Advanced PVE mechanics are boring and tedious.
Killing trash mobs is like picking up coins in Super Mario.
Harder content just means it's takes 10x longer to drain the enemies health.
Everything is very predictable after you've played it once.

More weight in your attacks would be cool. That's just a visual thing but it adds to the feeling of combat. It makes everything feel more powerful. Some skills are already doing that well but your light attacks don't.

Animation cancelling shouldn't be a thing. It looks ugly 90% of the time and the gap between players who do and players who don't makes balancing endgame a nightmare. Balance it around players who don't and you'll lose players who do because endgame is too easy. Balance it around players who do and 90% of players will never set foot in a veteran trial. Long and clunky animations need to be made shorter and smoother so the reason for animation cancelling goes away with them. After that is done, new more intentional avenues to reward high skill players must be created so they aren't alienated by the game becoming "too casual". This should be done in the same update. It absolutely cannot wait 3 months or the game will lose a huge chunk of its endgame playerbase... again.

Overland quest content needs to be a bit more difficult. Quest boss fights should more often be like the final fight in Markarth where you cannot blaze through it but need to do mechanics without making it unfair to new players who aren't even using sets and run unoptimized hybrid builds. It should be a nontrivial matter and should introduce a lot of the mechanics required in dungeons and trials sooner, more frequently and one at a time - things like blocking, interrupting, synergies and dodgerolling.

eso has the best combat of any traditional mmo on the market.
i hate traditional mmo combat. wow is atrocious.

Iccotak wrote: »

I really like the action combat in ESO
I’d ask for general combat is for enemies to do more

i strongly agree with this.

Iccotak wrote: »

- Classes don’t have dedicated roles
- Don’t like Rotations
- Not enough skills on a bar

i strongly disagree with this.

The actual combat and speed of combat is decent.

I have issues with tab targetting and passive miss chance bcz it removes a good amount of "personal skill" from positioning and aiming.

I have issues with the lack of hard counters and varying degree of power in soft counters. Its almost like a 1 size fits all approach.

I have a problem with ZoS's damage design. Typically the strength of a skill (damage per cost) starts off strongest the closer you get to a target and the further away and more things you add to it causes that skill to lose damage value. While this is done somewhat it was done in a way that was too broad and alot of skills fell by the wayside.

Finding a good balance soo that ball groups are powerful but not end all be all.

in a nutshell - its too twitchy and too fast for me.

to expand on that. in order to be even be decent at that, it requires a certain amount of manual precision. everything is manual, targeting is entirely manual (so if you are off even a little, your attacks are not hitting anymore, and since mobs tend to move around, missing my target entirely with my attacks is extremely common for me)

I feel like I'm playing a shooter, except in a shooter, I just have lets call them light attacks and I switch between weapons as needed, but ESO combines shooter mechanics with rpg mechanics of having all these different skills (10+2 of them) that need to interact with each other a certain way for best performance, and those skills are on 2 bars, so I have to switch between those two bars as well WHILE maintaining aim and weaving attacks between my skills AND avoiding bad on the ground etc?

its too much for me. so I simplify it and that results in terrible performance out of me.

I like that I can actively roll and dodge out of stuff on the ground and interrupt at will on any class as many times as I need to as long as i'm watching my resources. I dislike everything else.

the reason why skill gap is so huge is because if this complexity of combat. and I understand why some people love it. they likely love it for the very same reasons I don't. and if it were a single player game? amazing. but its not a single player game, and combat that allows for such a wide range of performance becasue of how its structured is why we have such a disparity in content and overall game experience.

Dying...

Cancelling light attacks is honestly a corny game mechanic. Nobody designing a combat system would be like oh yeah, this is how fighting goes.

In PvE, the differences between DPS classes are almost cosmetic. Babysit your DOTs and spam a filler when you're not doing that. Class skills have almost no built-in interaction except for a few things like Frag Shield > GDB; combos are only relevant in pvp.

There are a multitude of small things that just feel weird.

5m range on stam looks bizarre, you're just doing rapid strikes in the air most of the time.

Objects that look identical but have inconsistent collision detection, terrain getting your character stuck in random crap you can barely see.

Odd behaviour when jumping, characters take weirdly long to land, struggling to jump onto ledges.

If you get *any* amount of air when sprinting (this can happen off tiny sand dunes if you have speed buffs), your character stops sprinting when you land on the ground and only resumes after 1000ms. When this happens to me I retrace my steps and try to get air again and I can never manage it again which means players can't predict what will be considered a ledge.

Dodging out of an AOE leaves your character in it until the dodge is completed so you can be visually out and yet inside as far as the server is concerned. If this happens to you inside that Elden Hollow AOE where skeletal hands pull you into a void you get CC'd outside the AOE with hands pulling on you, it looks so bad lol.