PTS changes aimed at PvP will indirectly hurt PvE tanking and queue times

Sangwyne · February 2021

While the CP and base stat changes on the PTS seem promising, with top DPS parses taking a small hit but lower end bumped up, proc sets getting a much-deserved nerf with the increase to base stats, and DPS now having the option to run sustain/max stat food without ending up sitting at 11k HP, the changes signal some issues on the horizon for PvE tanks. Let's face it, tanking (in PvE at least) is the least popular role in the game, and I am aware most people will pass right over this as it doesn't pertain to them, but I would like to remind those people that these changes will affect their already long dungeon queue timers and the overall health and long-term stability of the game going forward as tanks quit/change roles. Namely, I would like to focus on three key issues, the reduction in overall mitigation for tanks, the removal/nerf of sustain options for PvE tanks (who run Bewitched/Longfin), and the nerfs to heavy armor, which combined result in tanking being drastically harder and less rewarding in the upcoming patch, and many like myself feeling disincentivized to bother anymore.

1. Less Overall Mitigation

On live, Ironclad/Thick Skinned combined give up to 25% reduction to all forms of damage, removed and replaced with 15% less damage taken nerfed further to 10% less damage taken with PTS patch 6.3.2.
On live, Blessed gives up to 15% increased healing done, reduced to 5% increased healing done nerfed further to 4% healing done with PTS patch 6.3.2.
On live, Quick Recovery gives up to 15% increased healing taken, reduced to 5% increased healing taken nerfed further to 4% healing taken with PTS patch 6.3.2
On live, Hardy/Elemental Defender combined give up to 15% reduction to physical and arcane damage, lowered to 5% reduction to both forms of damage nerfed further to 4% damage reduction with PTS patch 6.3.2.
On live, Nord, the preferred tanking race, gives 3960 resistances, nerfed to 2600 resistances, over 2% loss, and due to the way resistances work, going from capped 33000 resistances to 31640 resistances means going from taking 50% of damage to 52.061%, a 4.12% increase. Also lost Chilled Immunity. No, some Frost resistance does not make up for this.
On live, Heavy Armor Focus/Spell Shield grant up to 5280 physical/spell resistance, replaced with Ironclad which grants only 1730 and requires a socket.
On live, Bulwark gives 1500 resistances passively for wearing sword/shield or frost staff, changed to 1900 but requires a socket instead of being granted for free, net nerf.

Now, there are some upsides, namely Duelist's Buff, Enduring Resolve, and Unassailable, which combined grant 10% reduction to single target, DOT, and AOE damage taken, but require a socket, and taking these three plus Bulwark precludes all other options in Warfare, the largest CP tree, and doesn't even make up for the removal of Ironclad/Thick Skinned, let alone the other nerfs. Preparation, granting 15% reduced damage taken from "non-player characters" over 5 stages, has been nerfed to 12% reduced damage over 4 stages with PTS patch 6.3.2, and I am still not quite sure that this even applies to most enemies in PvE or whether it's limited to Justice-Neutral NPCs. DPS/healer characters will not feel the brunt of these changes as their base health has been bumped from 8744 to 16000, plus the ability to take Hero's Vigor (no slot required) for another 1400 health and Boundless Vitality (slotted) for another 1400, giving them an impressive 18800 health with absolutely zero investment in health on armor and running sustain instead of double stat food, but tanks lost the 20% increased health from CP points, meaning their net health will be much the same next patch as they tend to take much more flat health, which the 20% increase scaled better. These nerfs alone would sound the death knell for newer players looking to learn how to tank in dungeons and trials, but as you will soon see, it would appear this new batch of changes was not content with just closing off the role to newer players, but also rendering it much more difficult to tank for established veterans.

2. Reduction in Tank Sustain Options

On live, Shadow Ward gives up to 25% reduced cost of blocking, reduced to 100 flat block cost reduction from Tireless Guardian nerfed further to 80 flat block cost reduction over 4 stages with PTS patch 6.3.2. Keep in mind blocking costs 1760 stamina at base, per tick, up to 4 ticks a second, and you will see why this is such a massive nerf to tank sustain.
On live, Bashing Focus gives up to 35% reduced cost of bashing, reduced to 225 flat bash cost reduction from Savage Defense nerfed further to 135 flat bash cost reduction over (3?) stages with PTS patch 6.3.2. Tanks are disproportionately assigned the task of bashing and interrupting enemies, especially bosses, and this nerf makes it much more difficult to do that and still have stamina for their other expected tasks, like blocking/rolling/using skills to help the group.
On live, Tumbling gives up to 25% reduced cost of roll dodging, reduced to 480 flat roll dodge cost reduction from Tumbling (finally, they kept the name!) nerfed further to 360 flat roll dodge cost reduction over 3 stages with PTS patch 6.3.2. This is debatable, but I still feel as though tanks are required to roll dodge in trials much more than other roles, such as the last 3 ticks of the dragons' breath attacks in nSS/vSS, especially when marked for death.
On live, Tenacity gives up to 15% increased stamina/magicka recovery from heavy attacks, removed entirely.
On live, Mooncalf/Arcanist give up to 15% increased stamina/magicka recovery, removed entirely.
On live, Major Endurance/Intellect give 40% increased stamina/magicka recovery, reduced to 30% increased recovery with PTS patch 6.3.2.
On live, Minor Endurance/Intellect give 20% increased stamina/magicka recovery, reduced to 15% increased recovery with PTS patch 6.3.2.

As before, there are some welcome changes, such as characters' base stamina/magicka going from 7958 to 12000, which helps tanks much more than DPS as DPS classes lost 20% increased stamina/magicka from CP points, but this doesn't actually affect tanks' ability to sustain/recover their stamina/magicka pools, it just gives an extra second or two of breathing room before their resources run out. Also, whereas DPS can reach similar sustain to live by simply running max stat+main stat sustain foods while retaining the buff to their base HP, tanks do not have the option of running sustain food as they take Bewitched Sugar Skulls/Longfin Pasty and must utilize BOTH their pools in order to block, taunt, and cast skills to help their group. As a direct result, DPS and healers will once again weather the changes mostly unscathed, apart from maybe some targeted nerfs at high-end DPS parses and well-optimized trial groups, while the brunt of the nerfs are foisted directly onto the shoulders of the already-dwindling tank population, especially those in PUG groups or without a well-coordinated team to offer them sustain and synergies as soon as they come off cooldown.

3. Heavy Armor Nerfs

Heavy Armor on the PTS has the most penalties AND fewest upsides of any armor type, with 4 penalties and a mere 4 bonuses to Light Armor's 3 penalties, 5 bonuses and Medium Armor's ZERO penalties and 5 bonuses.
On PTS, Heavy armor INCREASES damage taken from arcane attacks by 1% per piece. This is absolutely absurd, that wearing more armor would cause you to take more damage, and was clearly made to cater to complaints around PvP with no thought in mind to how it would affect tanks in PvE.
On live, Rapid Mending increases healing taken by 8% with 5+ heavy, reduced to 5% increased healing taken with 5/1/1 heavy. Even with all 7 pieces of heavy armor, this is a nerf, and wearing 7 heavy would mean a loss of resource sustain that tanks simply cannot afford after the changes.
On live, Revitalize grants 25% increased resource gain from Heavy Attacks, reduced to 4% per heavy piece and 20% with 5/1/1 heavy, still a nerf even with 6 pieces of heavy but technically a buff if wearing 7 heavy. Net nerf and leads to tanks feeling like they are forced into 7 heavy to compensate, especially given the removal of Tenacity and nerfs to other sustain options which compound already-existing impediments to tanks having the resources to perform their role in PvE.
On live, Resolve grants 363 armor per piece, nerfed to 343 armor per piece of heavy armor. (...why?)
On PTS, Heavy armor increases the cost of roll dodging by 3% per piece. I actually agree wholeheartedly with this change, as it makes sense from both a mechanical and thematic perspective and serves to balance heavy armor better against the other types both in PvE and PvP, along with making the Well-Fitted trait a more viable choice compared to Sturdy. Still a nerf.
On PTS, Heavy armor reduces movement speed of Sprint by 1% per piece and increases detection radius while sneaking by 10% per piece. Thematic and not a concern, although it really does feel like adding insult to injury at this point.

Much like the previous areas I have mentioned, the changes in this regard possess few upsides for tanks in PvE. While some on the forums have noticed that heavy armor now grants 2% damage reduction while immune to CC per piece, this is strictly a change designed to soften the blow for heavy armor users in PvP and possesses little to no value to tanks in PvE, where enemies do not apply CC anywhere close to as much as other players do, and thus gaining this benefit after Breaking Free is a helpful but ultimately extremely rare circumstance under normal conditions. Heavy armor also now grants 1% reduced martial damage per piece, but the vulnerability to magic damage that tanks have gained is more of a detriment than this physical damage reduction is an upside, leading to disparities between incoming damage types that tanks and healers must dynamically take into account and leading to a higher possible difficulty threshold for certain dungeons compared to others. The other changes, 1% increased damage blocked and Bash damage done per piece, are nice gestures but do little to change the fact that tanks will take much more damage next patch. These changes reek of an attempt by ZOS to appease the PvP crowd at the expense of perhaps the smallest population in the game, PvE tanks, and make sense given that context and from a purely utilitarian perspective, but place an increasing burden on the backs of tanks who, like myself, are likely already frustrated with the difficulty, expectations, and lack of appreciation regarding the role.

Now, a caveat: I recognize that tanks in PvP have taken over the meta with proc sets allowing them to do competitive damage while retaining an absurd level of survivability due to their base stats. I volunteer the idea that the PvP scene would be better served with direct, targeted nerfs to said proc sets, Vateshran Wrath of Elements, Crimson Twilight, and others among them, along with tweaks to Malacath and other universal sources of damage increases allowing people to output these levels of damage without compromising on other areas. I enjoy the diversity and range of options that the new CP system has afforded and am quite looking forward to trying out some of the new slotted stars, but would appreciate tweaks to allow PvE tanks specifically to weather more damage, sustain more easily, and have a more enjoyable game experience without affecting other areas of the game. To that end, I would like to suggest several options, and appreciate anyone coming forward with ideas of their own.

4. Suggestions

Add to, buff, and diversify the range of CP stars catered toward tanking in dungeons and trials. The proposed system on PTS feels as though it was generated with DPS and healing at the forefront of people's minds, with rather bland/weak stars geared around tanking thrown in as an afterthought. This is purposefully very generic to allow for a range of implementations, but is placed first as I believe it will be the most important in making tanking in PvE more accessible, nuanced, and enjoyable, without requiring tanks to follow the same exact stars for every class, every race, and every variety of build (i.e. damage shield tanking, evasive tanking, healing through damage, %mitigation through Spirit Guardian/Mist Form/Major Protection, etc.).
Some specifics: Bulwark worked perfectly fine as a passive CP star before; granting 1900 resistances only when slotted and when wielding a frost staff/sword and shield pales in comparison to Ironclad granting 1730 resistances all the time while slotted, for every build. Preparation could use a buff, even if that requires making it a slottable/splitting it into two stars, instead of a nerf to 12% reduced damage, and confirmation that it works on all enemies in PvE would be nice, the current definition is a little unclear. Please buff Fortification back from 6% block mitigation to 20%, or at least somewhere reasonable, even if that would require making it need a slot. Major Aegis grants 10% reduction to PvE sources of damage, adding a star that granted it or a similar buff would go a long way towards closing the gap between tanks in PvE and PvP.
There are stars granting damage reduction while immune to CC, why not stars granting damage reduction when you haven't been CCed for 14 seconds or so? This would open up options for PvE tanks without impacting PvP nearly as much. Similarly, a star that imparts ramping damage reduction from stationary targets, or reduces incoming damage from a particular direction (45 degree angle?) would be much easier to benefit from in PvE than in PvP, where constant movement is a must.
Expanding the options for sustain in a fight against a boss would help tanks dramatically, as they lost quite a bit of sustain and do not have other options to swap to like sustain food for DPS classes. Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch might be an option if it didn't require Perfect Roe, making it all but inaccessible to newer tanks looking to learn the role (or anyone, really). Adding stars to help in this regard would also be appreciated, the only real option is Rejuvenation and it requires a slot. Templar Holy Shards synergy should work the same way as Orbs and be accessible to every player rather than limited to one per cast (as I've had DPS grab synergies meant for me as the tank multiple times, rendering me without resources to do my job).
Holy S*** buff Dragonknight, the class suffers from the worst healing and DPS in the game in exchange for its tanking capabilities and outside of PvP feels miserable to play. Please revert Stone Giant nerfs/remove cast time or extend duration on Stagger since it requires absurd amounts of stamina and is not sustainable with the new changes.
Group sets for tanking such as Brands of the Imperium/Lord Warden could use a larger radius and a player cap to impart their benefits more easily to dungeon groups without affecting their viability in PvP (where large groups hug together and zerg everything anyhow).
Least important: Highest Priority: gimme red floaty orbs on tank sets other than just ebon pls, I wanna look cool but I don't wanna have to wear ebon

TLDR: Tanks in PvE lose mitigation and sustain in the upcoming patch. These changes were likely made to assuage concerns in PvP but will indirectly hurt tanks in PvE. Tanking will be harder and less enjoyable, leading many to change roles or quit the game altogether. This will have long-reaching ramifications for the game, including extending dungeon queue timers and making trials all but inaccessible to more casual/PUG players with optimized trial groups gobbling up the few tanks remaining. I don't want to see this game go the same sad route many other MMORPGS have gone, with certain roles relegated to a slave caste at the behest of the almighty DPS and PvP overlords.

Alright. That about sums up my thoughts on the current state of tanking in PvE and how these changes will affect it. I realize this is a wordy post and hope it doesn't put anyone off from commenting; feel free to disagree with any/all of the points I've made here or bring up some suggestions of your own, I welcome new ideas on how we can turn this situation around without impacting the overall health of other parts of the game. I don't play PvP much and I prefer playing my tank character over DPS/healing builds so my experience regarding those areas is limited, and perhaps some of the changes I've suggested would put other roles at risk, I don't know, but anyone that has ideas in that regard is welcome to post them here. Thoughts? Suggestions?

zvavi · February 2021

preparation is 8% on the pts, it was originally 2% per stage but they typo'ed. also u forgot the most amazing passive for tanks in cp1.0. Spell Absorption.

Dracane · February 2021

I as well am worried. I am a light armor pve tank and I will lose a lot of armor and % mitigation. I am fine to be weaker, but there is plenty of defense nerfs in all aspects coming with the new CP system.

I wonder if it will even work at all outside of base game vet dungeons. Bastion is 10% weaker too, hence shields will be weaker. I am interested to see how it will play out. The new CP system has few redeeming qualities. There is no aspect where I will be stronger or equal than before.

Except of course in the role play aspect... green CP.

BlueRaven · February 2021

/sarcasm

The nerfs almost seem unsurprising.
The combat team seems to really hate tanks, and is constantly trying to lower their dps and general make their QOL lower, and lessen the tank population.
Maybe they think dungeon queue times are too quick or their are not enough “fake” tanks?

/sarcasm off

Let’s face it, once again pve suffers to accommodate pvp. It feels like every patch they do this, and every patch tanks become rarer and rarer.

Kurat · February 2021

I'm sure the top end groups will manage as always but these changes will mostly hurt the average and new players. There are already alot of guilds out there who trying to prog harder vet trials and struggle, these changes will make endgame content unavailable for alot of players.

BattleAxe · February 2021

I propose a simple change to heavy armor penalties to effectively satisfy both sides of this game pve and pvp leave the roll dodge cost increase and reduced sprint speed removing the other negatives but adding one where reduces damage done by say 10% per piece so running 5 or more heavy pieces reduces your damage insanely as a tank shouldn’t be dishing out dps level damage.

tomofhyrule · February 2021

Thank you for this, this is a lot of information and it's really helpful. At least in the way that I can prepare for what's coming...

I'm really disappointed with the new heavy armor penalties because of this. I have pretty well one main character that I run things on, and he's a tank. I consider myself decent, but I know I still have a ways to go to get really good. But after all of this, it's really disheartening and I'm scared I won't even be able to clear the content I currently can.

I get the idea of having armor penalties, and I completely agree that they could be fun to play with. I just don't agree with the specific ones they chose. It really is going to hurt in a lot of trials/dungeons if tanks are taking increased damage just because it's magical (and there's a lot of incoming magical damage), when the point of a tank role - as stated by ZOS - is "Absorbs damage from enemies and prevents allies from being attacked." It's hard to absorb damage when out mitigation is gutted this way and we end up taking bonus damage from half of boss attacks! Especially when you look at some trials like Cloudrest where the incoming damage is basically all magic.

I also think that the changes as made won't do much for the PvP tank meta. Granted, I'm not a PvPer, but I did see a bit in MYM and I have some guildies who do a lot. From what I understand, the current meta is SnB/2H and heavy armor with proc sets and Malacath to basically make an unkillable build. Let's face it — this MYM I threw on a few of my proc sets and Malacath, and I noticed PvP was so much easier than it had been before. If that's the meta they're trying to break, I can't see how this setup will do it effectively:

Most enemy players in PvP have stamina weapons, so heavy armor granting increased resistance to physical attacks and poison arrows will make people more likely to use heavy armor.
Staff damage is still linked to light armor due to the light armor/spell damage passives. That means anyone with light armor and a staff would have high damage on a PvP tanky build, but also would be very vulnerable to it as well. A heavy/staff user would also then not really benefit from any damage bonuses.
CC immunity is very common in PvP, so that's practically a blanket resistance that heavy users will have.

I'd much prefer that the mag resist penalty be moved to medium instead, to have light and medium oppose each other on resists (or better yet, since armor resist penalties don't make much sense from a if-you're-naked-you-take-less-damage? standpoint, just keep the resist buffs as light +mag resist, medium +phys resist, heavy +both resist). Heavy could be discouraged in PvP by giving it a damage nerf instead of a resistance nerf — even a massive 3% per piece would only take a typical tank build from ~3500 DPS to ~2700 DPS, but if that affected PvP and the proc sets that could really make it so PvP tanks aren't able to do anything except survive. I'd also toss the CC immunity thing, maybe make heavy more prone to CC to try to balance that out as well or make jumping cost stamina - again, CC and bunny hopping are very useful in PvP, but there aren't many people who try to hop around Nahviintas' arena.

I think the nerf to movement should stay so if you want a heavy scroll runner, they may be able to outlast a handful of attackers until a full zerg comes for them, but they'll also need almost an hour to run across Cyrodiil. Another way to try to balance that would be to give light/medium a crit resist bonus and give heavy a crit penalty. That would mean the heavy/Malacath builds can't do bonus damage to people wearing lighter armor (and then they'd have to barswap to staff against medium or stam against light), but the light/med builds that go for high crit will also be able to be competitive against tanky builds.

It also seems like there are mixed messages on what the dev team wants us to do as well. This resistance loss and the whole "you can mix up 4/3 armor sets!" seem to imply that they don't want us to feel tied down to an armor weight, but 90% of the ingame sets drop in a specific weight. I can't exactly wear my light Yolnahkriin. And if I do go for jewelry/weapons, that precludes other sets as well. And yet, we're also being told that specific sets are for specific people — Roar of Alkosh has been nerfed every PTS cycle lately since they're not seeing it used 'properly,' even the Dev notes on this one lament that StamDPS isn't getting as much use out of it as they wanted, and the proc now scales off of weapon damage (which tanks don't have much of) so a tank who wants to use it would need to build for it. So do you want tanks in medium or not, now that you're nerfing one of the few medium sets that tanks wear?

I just feel a lot of these changes are treating the symptoms of a tanky PvP meta rather than the cause (that tanky builds don't have much crit rate, so the no-crits of Malacath isn't really a problem, and that Malacath also affects procs). In this case, it's barely doing anything on the PvP side, but making life so much more miserable for PvE tanks, especially those who are below the vertical progression CP (which they said was 1200, but some people on PTS have been reporting vertical progression goes as far as 2800).

Halcyon_Kismet · February 2021

The changes to tanks are just terrible. The goal should be to make the role more enjoyable, not a miserable experience.

A perfect example of this is the move speed. Why on earth is the tank who is supposed to lead the group now the slowest character? ls it for a realistic experience? Who is playing ESO for a realistic experience? One could also argue that the characters have trained extensively in heavy armor to be able to move around normally.

From a gameplay perspective, the tank should lead the group and now they are the slowest role. So this will wither A) slow everybody down while the tank tries to catch up, or

the group will engage first and likely get killed before the tank can taunt.

Then there are the plethora of probably more serious problems that others have talked about. But I will say that among talking with guildmates about these changes, moral is low. Here's hoping somebody at ZOS reviews all of the good information being posted here and actually makes changes to make the role enjoyable.

sjean73 · February 2021

BlueRaven wrote: »

/sarcasm

The nerfs almost seem unsurprising.
The combat team seems to really hate tanks, and is constantly trying to lower their dps and general make their QOL lower, and lessen the tank population.
Maybe they think dungeon queue times are too quick or their are not enough “fake” tanks?

/sarcasm off

Let’s face it, once again pve suffers to accommodate pvp. It feels like every patch they do this, and every patch tanks become rarer and rarer.

try to grind your cp as a tank

SshadowSscale · February 2021

Funny how you had to make 2 posts.... in anycase as I stated in your first post I got home very late today but will do a detailed write up tomorrow showing zenimax train of thought and how most of last year's changes was done with pve in mind and not pvp but it's always easier for you all to blame pvp because of the myth that zos caters to pvp players.... trust me they really don't they barely care at all about pvp players and then for what ever reason the pve players are hella toxic towards the pvp players..... seriously I do not think I have ever seen pve players be as toxic as they are in eso in any other mmo..... anyways you will get the notification after I post it good night

BlueRaven · February 2021

sjean73 wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

/sarcasm

The nerfs almost seem unsurprising.
The combat team seems to really hate tanks, and is constantly trying to lower their dps and general make their QOL lower, and lessen the tank population.
Maybe they think dungeon queue times are too quick or their are not enough “fake” tanks?

/sarcasm off

Let’s face it, once again pve suffers to accommodate pvp. It feels like every patch they do this, and every patch tanks become rarer and rarer.

try to grind your cp as a tank

Yup. It’s horrible.
Luckily I leveled my two tanks back in the vet level days, when I could actually do quests on them. Now I only log onto them by “request” from my friends.
I tried leveling a third, but deleted the character before I hit level 20. Running around with a sword and shield is painful.

honey_badger82 · February 2021

My favorite character I play is a tank and with the loss I see to damage mitigation I forsee he will not be so fun to play anymore. Each game update has hurt my playstyle a little bit more each time. This one has been the most disheartening of all. They have gotten money from me for 3 years and since my son plays too I pay for his ESO+ as well. When I quit playing he will too as he typically does what I do.
Usually by this point I would have pre ordered the chapter for both of us but as of right now I dont think so. If there is no longer any joy in playing once these horrid changes go live I will be done with the game so I wont waste the money if that's the route it goes.
Really the saddest part is they give us this forum and the actual players here scream out against many of the things they do and it just falls on deaf ears. The only part they listen to are the official threads they start to find the bugs and glitches in their programming. As far as I can see these forums exist not to hear their players voices but as a source of free testing labor.

ArcVelarian · February 2021

These heavy armor changes will just make tanking a living hell and not even really address the issues with PvP. I could understand these changes if Tanking oriented Classes were having their damage mitigation oriented abilities and passives buffed.

Hotdog_23 · February 2021

True story, ZOS hates PVE tanks.

Really wish they would come up with a clear picture of what they want to be.

Give them all the credit in the world for balancing PVE and PVP together but it's killing PVE tanks.

Sure great groups will be fine. The game is so much easier with awesome healers and God like dps. Just not everyone is like that.

18 characters and 5 are tanks now. Some are getting switched out for sure. Probably go down to 3.

Love my light armor tanks that can be good dps but with the new slotted tree and no multiple layout bars to quickly change from dps to tank at least for consoles. Sure add-on makers will fix this for PC as ZOS totally screws console with half implement features.

With multiple layout bars I could switch out quickly between trask pulls and Boss fights and still use my light armor tank but not with the next update.

Stay safe🙂

Stamicka · February 2021

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well, and it’s becoming a problem everywhere in the game. I don’t think mitigation values were changed because of PVP because there’s a lot of scenarios in PVE where mit has proven to be out of control.

The most glaring example of how overkill current mitigation values are was seen during the Thrassian meta. Not even a 40% increase in damage taken and a 40% decrease in healing received stopped people from completing the hardest of vet content without death.

If you’ve been around long enough in the PVE community, you would see a gradual increase in what you can survive, especially in older content. Doing the craglorns 4 years ago vs doing the craglorns now, of course I see a huge different in the amount of damage I do, but over time I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in damage I take. What would’ve killed me 4 years ago will barely hurt me now.

The majority of the PVE content in the game is like this. In base game vet dungeons, even a fully specced DPS can survive a blocked heavy attack from most bosses. Now imagine just how little that heavy attack hurts once you’re in heavy armor with high health and sword and shield block mitigation. In the current state of the game, tank mitigation is just absolute overkill in most content. In fact, lots of endgame trials can be solo tanked. That means that mitigation is so strong in its current state that a tank can hold what used to require a 2nd tank and survive perfectly fine.

Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

phantasmalD · February 2021

tomofhyrule wrote: »

armor resist penalties don't make much sense from a if-you're-naked-you-take-less-damage? standpoint

This actually only holds true to sashes and gloves. Those are the only armor pieces where this penalty results in slightly more damage* taken because the base armor value of the piece is less than or barely equal to the penalty (gold Ancestor Silk Sash being 0.8% armor, gloves being 1.05%).
For every other piece you still take less damage while wearing it.

I think this penalty system basically tries to emulate every armor piece having a separate Spell and Physical resist, instead of a unified Armor value. So instead of a gold Rubedite Cuirass having 2772 armor value, it gives 2109 spell and 3435 physical resist, more or less.
I assume they didn't want to split Armor value up considering they pretty much just consolidated them for set bonuses.
Plus a vulnerability penalty cannot be circumvented by equipping more armor/activating more buffs until you reach the cap.

* I do mean slightly.
Used Alit's basic chomp attack as a quick base for my test.
Naked: 1867; with only sash: 1875 (+8), with only gloves: 1870 (+3), with only breeches: 1855 (-12).
So with sash you end up taking .43%, with gloves .16% more damage and with breeches you take .64% less than naked.

If sash and glove base armor value was increased slightly than this would stop happening.

Rungar · February 2021

Numbers aside it doesnt sound so bad when you use the armor numbers as opposed to the percent reduction. Zos should of done that instead.

Gundug · February 2021

Stamicka wrote: »

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well...

...Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

Your post seems to suggest you are a DPS player. Have you tried tanking any of the newer veteran DLC dungeons or trials? There are trash mobs that one shot kill through block. The amount of damage a tank is required to survive or dodge is considerable, and puts a heavy drain on resources to manage. If you have tanked current veteran content and found it trivial, I accept your statements, if not, please don’t attempt to speak for players who perform a role you know little about.

Canned_Apples · February 2021

BlueRaven wrote: »

/sarcasm

The nerfs almost seem unsurprising.
The combat team seems to really hate tanks, and is constantly trying to lower their dps and general make their QOL lower, and lessen the tank population.
Maybe they think dungeon queue times are too quick or their are not enough “fake” tanks?

/sarcasm off

Let’s face it, once again pve suffers to accommodate pvp. It feels like every patch they do this, and every patch tanks become rarer and rarer.

You’re forgetting about the dot and now proc meta that were meant to close the pve skill gap. And the light attack nerfs.

BattleAxe · February 2021

Stamicka wrote: »

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well, and it’s becoming a problem everywhere in the game. I don’t think mitigation values were changed because of PVP because there’s a lot of scenarios in PVE where mit has proven to be out of control.

The most glaring example of how overkill current mitigation values are was seen during the Thrassian meta. Not even a 40% increase in damage taken and a 40% decrease in healing received stopped people from completing the hardest of vet content without death.

If you’ve been around long enough in the PVE community, you would see a gradual increase in what you can survive, especially in older content. Doing the craglorns 4 years ago vs doing the craglorns now, of course I see a huge different in the amount of damage I do, but over time I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in damage I take. What would’ve killed me 4 years ago will barely hurt me now.

The majority of the PVE content in the game is like this. In base game vet dungeons, even a fully specced DPS can survive a blocked heavy attack from most bosses. Now imagine just how little that heavy attack hurts once you’re in heavy armor with high health and sword and shield block mitigation. In the current state of the game, tank mitigation is just absolute overkill in most content. In fact, lots of endgame trials can be solo tanked. That means that mitigation is so strong in its current state that a tank can hold what used to require a 2nd tank and survive perfectly fine.

Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

Tell this to new players. It’s not the mitigation is gotten better it’s player experience and overall scaling of content. Name a trial besides craglorn trials that are being consistently done with a solo tank? Sure some very elite players may manage to run most if not all trials with a solo tank but for majority of players this is simply not the case. However what’s not being taken into account is now certain cps that helped make regular dps so tanky will now be locked behind making a choice either use cp for higher damage or higher mitigation. As a tank main am I happy about the changes effecting tanks absolutely not. Will these make me change from being a tank no because I welcome the challenge it’s the only way to improve.

ThorianB · February 2021

Vet player base complains game is not hard enough...
Devs make game harder...
Vet player base complains game to hard...
Devs confused, devs make more housing stuff, housing community complaints always the same " MORE SLOTS!!!!", not confusing.

Seriously though, the in house team was able to do all in game content without needing CP, i think we can manage with CP. And HA builds were greatly overperforming.

Stamicka · February 2021

Gundug wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well...

...Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

Your post seems to suggest you are a DPS player. Have you tried tanking any of the newer veteran DLC dungeons or trials? There are trash mobs that one shot kill through block. The amount of damage a tank is required to survive or dodge is considerable, and puts a heavy drain on resources to manage. If you have tanked current veteran content and found it trivial, I accept your statements, if not, please don’t attempt to speak for players who perform a role you know little about.

I have tanked all of the new dungeons on hard mode before. The newer hardmodes are a bit on the tank intensive side, especially stone garden. However, everything else in the new dungeons outside of the hardmodes are not difficult to tank. I don’t recall taking very much damage from add pulls. You have to remember that if something hits you hard even through block, you can usually roll the attack and take 0 damage. Anything that hits that hard is usually heavily telegraphed anyway. I do not main a tank, but I’ve tanked every piece of vet content.

Stamicka · February 2021

BattleAxe wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well, and it’s becoming a problem everywhere in the game. I don’t think mitigation values were changed because of PVP because there’s a lot of scenarios in PVE where mit has proven to be out of control.

The most glaring example of how overkill current mitigation values are was seen during the Thrassian meta. Not even a 40% increase in damage taken and a 40% decrease in healing received stopped people from completing the hardest of vet content without death.

If you’ve been around long enough in the PVE community, you would see a gradual increase in what you can survive, especially in older content. Doing the craglorns 4 years ago vs doing the craglorns now, of course I see a huge different in the amount of damage I do, but over time I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in damage I take. What would’ve killed me 4 years ago will barely hurt me now.

The majority of the PVE content in the game is like this. In base game vet dungeons, even a fully specced DPS can survive a blocked heavy attack from most bosses. Now imagine just how little that heavy attack hurts once you’re in heavy armor with high health and sword and shield block mitigation. In the current state of the game, tank mitigation is just absolute overkill in most content. In fact, lots of endgame trials can be solo tanked. That means that mitigation is so strong in its current state that a tank can hold what used to require a 2nd tank and survive perfectly fine.

Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

Tell this to new players. It’s not the mitigation is gotten better it’s player experience and overall scaling of content. Name a trial besides craglorn trials that are being consistently done with a solo tank? Sure some very elite players may manage to run most if not all trials with a solo tank but for majority of players this is simply not the case. However what’s not being taken into account is now certain cps that helped make regular dps so tanky will now be locked behind making a choice either use cp for higher damage or higher mitigation. As a tank main am I happy about the changes effecting tanks absolutely not. Will these make me change from being a tank no because I welcome the challenge it’s the only way to improve.

Player experience doesn’t explain why the same exact attacks from a few years ago will hit for like 1/4 of the damage that it used to. Look at vDSA and VMA. There were quite a few things that could one shot someone and now at Max CP that’s no longer a concern.

Right now you can basically survive just from blocking the heavy attacks of almost any enemy in the entire game as long as you have 40k health and sword and shield. At most, rolling may become more important but that’s a tank skill that’s good to learn anyway. The changes are certainly not drastic enough to make ANY content untankable, even for inexperienced players. Like I said, outside of some of the newer vet trials or dungeon hardmodes, tanks don’t take that much damage anyway.

tomofhyrule · February 2021

Stamicka wrote: »

Gundug wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well...

...Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

Your post seems to suggest you are a DPS player. Have you tried tanking any of the newer veteran DLC dungeons or trials? There are trash mobs that one shot kill through block. The amount of damage a tank is required to survive or dodge is considerable, and puts a heavy drain on resources to manage. If you have tanked current veteran content and found it trivial, I accept your statements, if not, please don’t attempt to speak for players who perform a role you know little about.

I have tanked all of the new dungeons on hard mode before. The newer hardmodes are a bit on the tank intensive side, especially stone garden. However, everything else in the new dungeons outside of the hardmodes are not difficult to tank. I don’t recall taking very much damage from add pulls. You have to remember that if something hits you hard even through block, you can usually roll the attack and take 0 damage. Anything that hits that hard is usually heavily telegraphed anyway. I do not main a tank, but I’ve tanked every piece of vet content.

This is true, but this part here is one of the major complaints about why this is going to be harder since heavy armor is getting a roll dodge cost increase. So yes, it's easy to roll out of the attack and dodge it, until you run out of stamina... which is gonna happen a lot faster with the update.

I'm sure vet tanks will have few problems with these changes. I'm not concerned about how the top 0.5% of players will be able to handle, I'm sure the major theorycrafters have already come up with their "use this for BiS gear!" builds, and I'm sure that the new dungeons have already been trifecta'd by the elite players. Guess what - that's not the majority of people in this game.

The issue will be the tanks who are still learning, who haven't been playing since day one, who are more casual, who are maybe trying to get into getting good, who aren't at the endgame CP level yet, but now there's a much higher barrier to entry. We can also talk about how the vertical progression is now making it more intimidating as well - before your stats were maxed at around CP300 when vet DLCs opened. Now, ZOS says 1200 is the vertical bar, but I've seen people say you need as high as 2700 CP to get all the vertical progression, so it'll be a lot more of a grind to get to the mitigation you need. I can't say much about that though since I need to really sit down and study the new CP system before this update comes.

We already saw that the Ring of Pale Order and the Cyrodiil changes basically made healers irrelevant and that made a barrier to a lot of people who wanted to learn healing (at least Cyro is being reverted). Now these changes are putting a huge barrier in the way of learning tanks. As such, there will be even fewer support roles in the group finder, which will lead to more fake roles, etc. It's almost like ZOS's "play as you want!" means "play a DPS or suffer!"

We're all familiar with the power creep that's been in the game, as evidenced by the number of "omg overworld is so easy!" threads. Sure, when the average DPS of the high-level players goes from 30k to 100k, these high level players are going to find trash mobs designed for characters with 5k DPS too easy. Basegame dungeons, and even the early DLCs like the IC ones are pretty easy now. My first time in vAA, I solo tanked it. And I just started a year and a half ago and I have just over 700 CP. Heck, I even remember when I was just getting to CP ranks and I got wrecked by the first boss in nMoS, and by a few months later I got the Challenger achievement from vMoS. Nobody is saying it'll be impossible, but these changes will make it harder and therefore less accessible for the non-elite players.

robpr · February 2021

Really hard to tell if there is gonna be any difference.
My tank on live:
Screenshot_20210210_065240.png?width=1214&height=683

The same tank on PTS with reduce damage taken and cost reduction nodes:
Screenshot_20210210_072150.png?width=1214&height=683

Magicka recovery is as it is because I use Lord mundus. Ignore the HP recovery, I have nothing slotted on PTS, normally I have 2 draconic abilities on that bar (5% per ability, from passive)
I didn't have time to test on anything else so I made quick test on Short-Tusk and it seems the PTS version mitigates more damage and is able to block for longer, even if the block cost is highier - due to increased stats. A lot of CP requires to be CC immune and I think it pushes to use Immovable more, but from what I observed the damage reduction applies after all reductions so in case of Short-Tusk's blocked 1300dmg strikes it reduced the damage by further 50 or so. Not worth it imo, block mitigation is maxed without Defensive Stance.
Live maxed Tenacity gives me 2900 stamina, PTS 2460 per heavy attack. That's one hit worth of stamina.
So in my opinion only blocking multiple things at once will give you any more trouble than it's on live.

After EU maintenance I guess I can check on Olms in Asylum.
I get that less CP players can be in pinch.

Firstmep · February 2021

Funnily enough, the heavy armor tanky builds are getting stronger next patch in pvp, with further nerfs to crit, ridiculous light armor penalty etc.
I'll be frank, I don't think pve tanking is going to be as problematic, I agree that the 5-7% increased magic dmg taken is bad, heavy armor needed a different penalty or, honestly bonuses and penalties should be removed until Zos can come up with better ideas.
I think tanking will be fine, ZoS should fix things like difficulty pacing for endgame content for example, rather than adjusting our power lvl to the content.
It's okay to struggle with some content, that's how ppl learn.

BattleAxe · February 2021

Stamicka wrote: »

BattleAxe wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Sorry, but no. I think this post is a bit out of touch. Mitigation in this game stacks extremely well, and it’s becoming a problem everywhere in the game. I don’t think mitigation values were changed because of PVP because there’s a lot of scenarios in PVE where mit has proven to be out of control.

The most glaring example of how overkill current mitigation values are was seen during the Thrassian meta. Not even a 40% increase in damage taken and a 40% decrease in healing received stopped people from completing the hardest of vet content without death.

If you’ve been around long enough in the PVE community, you would see a gradual increase in what you can survive, especially in older content. Doing the craglorns 4 years ago vs doing the craglorns now, of course I see a huge different in the amount of damage I do, but over time I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in damage I take. What would’ve killed me 4 years ago will barely hurt me now.

The majority of the PVE content in the game is like this. In base game vet dungeons, even a fully specced DPS can survive a blocked heavy attack from most bosses. Now imagine just how little that heavy attack hurts once you’re in heavy armor with high health and sword and shield block mitigation. In the current state of the game, tank mitigation is just absolute overkill in most content. In fact, lots of endgame trials can be solo tanked. That means that mitigation is so strong in its current state that a tank can hold what used to require a 2nd tank and survive perfectly fine.

Long story short, tank mitigation is so overkill in its current state that tanks will still be more than fine with these changes.

Tell this to new players. It’s not the mitigation is gotten better it’s player experience and overall scaling of content. Name a trial besides craglorn trials that are being consistently done with a solo tank? Sure some very elite players may manage to run most if not all trials with a solo tank but for majority of players this is simply not the case. However what’s not being taken into account is now certain cps that helped make regular dps so tanky will now be locked behind making a choice either use cp for higher damage or higher mitigation. As a tank main am I happy about the changes effecting tanks absolutely not. Will these make me change from being a tank no because I welcome the challenge it’s the only way to improve.

Player experience doesn’t explain why the same exact attacks from a few years ago will hit for like 1/4 of the damage that it used to. Look at vDSA and VMA. There were quite a few things that could one shot someone and now at Max CP that’s no longer a concern.

Right now you can basically survive just from blocking the heavy attacks of almost any enemy in the entire game as long as you have 40k health and sword and shield. At most, rolling may become more important but that’s a tank skill that’s good to learn anyway. The changes are certainly not drastic enough to make ANY content untankable, even for inexperienced players. Like I said, outside of some of the newer vet trials or dungeon hardmodes, tanks don’t take that much damage anyway.

Yes player experience plays a role a brand new tank won’t know to dodge roll. Also remember all the cp skills towards damage mitigation tht goes a long way in why damage received seems so low currently just fyi.

munster1404 · February 2021

I don't understand the removal of Tenacity either. On Live I reconstructed several jewelry to infused+potion cooldown glyphs. And I'm also considering another "selfish" tank set Senchal Defender to make up for the nerf to sustain. I bought a whole set from guild traders just in case and transmuted them to Sturdy.

Grimhallow · February 2021

BlueRaven wrote: »

/sarcasm

The nerfs almost seem unsurprising.
The combat team seems to really hate tanks, and is constantly trying to lower their DPS and general make their QOL lower, and lessen the tank population.
Maybe they think dungeon queue times are too quick or their are not enough “fake” tanks?

/sarcasm off

Let’s face it, once again pve suffers to accommodate pvp. It feels like every patch they do this, and every patch tanks become rarer and rarer.

You have it backwards. Tanking is so easy that I can tank just about any vet dungeon on my DPS. Maybe if they make tanking harder or more interesting I would play a tank again.

The main reason for fake tanks is because 1. Tanking is easy 2. The queue is most full of "fake" DPS players, so somebody has to be the DPS in the group. Tanking for "fake" DPS players is just way too painful.

dhoward5b14_ESO · February 2021

I tank lot of PVE including DLC vet HM and trials. Regarding armor changes (ignoring CP changes) PVE tanking will be harder, but not by a great deal. It appears that the best balance will be 5 heavy and 2 light, with the 2 light being monster set because you can't get non-crafted tank gear in anything except heavy. The significant net changes from live will be (ignoring CP changes):

- 9% more roll cost
- 6% more block cost
- +1.5% martial damage, +4.3% magical damage (takes into account lower armor value going light)

Slotting the free roll perk should overcome the 9% higher cost, and block cost can be offset using another piece of sturdy.

I currently use 7 heavy so will notice the missing recovery from Constitution, but anyone currently running 5-1-1 will see no difference.

Tannus15 · February 2021

On week 1 of PTS i spent some time playing with Olms to get a feel for it and it seemed fine.

Keep in mind that this was before the latest CP changes so the stats will be slightly different now.

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