Just to understand more clearly what would be great to be achieved with Warden as an example.

Feral Guardian:

Rouse a loyal grizzly to fight at your side. The grizzly's swipes at an enemy, dealing 277 Magic Physical Damage, and something swipes all enemies in front of it, dealing 1121 Magic Physical Damage and stunning them for 2 seconds.
Once summoned, you can activate Guardian's Wrath for 75 Ultimate, causing the grizzle to maul an enemy for 1345 Magic Physical Damage Deals 100% more damage to enemies below 25% Health.

Morph 1 (Wild Guardian):

Increases the damage and converts it into Physical Damage.

Morph 2 (Eternal Guardian):

The grizzly respawns when killed.
Converts it into Frost Damage. After causing Guardian's Wrath, grizzly deals X Frost damage to all enemies around him for Y seconds.

See? Do you see that?
People could have choice not only between additional damage and its absence. They could have choice between stronger solo damage and frost morph with aoe damage. So they could balance their build, e.g. wearing Frostbite to equalize damage and focus on Brittle or take full meta setup with fire staves/daggers and Yokeda/Kinras.

And we're also keeping the logic that the grizzly is after all, first of all, an animal, and must inflict physical damage, with changing that in one of the morphs.

Or another example:

Scorch:

Stir a group of Shalk that attacks after 3 seconds, dealing 1275 Magic Poison Damage to enemies in front of you.

Morph 1 (Subterranean Assault):

Converts to a Stamina ability and deals Poison Damage. The shalk burrow after attacking, and attack again after a delay.

Morph 2 (Deep Fissure):

Applies Major Breach to enemies hit, reducing their Physical and Spell Resistance.
Converts it into Magica ability and deals Frost Damage. The shalk inflict enemies chilling poison, reducing their movement speed by 40% and dealing X frozen damage for 6 seconds.

Morph 1 still has better damage in general, but Morph 2 allows us to keep 100% Brittle uptime with Reach + Master Staff in semistatic rotation:


Also, Morph 2 could still be relatable in PvP, even much more than now.

It's just only one of many variations how could magica morphs be maded more competitive without making them too op to overcome stamina "more damage" morphs.

My question to the people against this is what is your angle? What do you hope to achieve for being against hybridization. It's going to happen, so provide solutions to the issues you think are there instead of just saying this is bad. Do you hope they revert it because all signs show thats not happening.

The direction of the combat system whether we've been aware or not has been decided months if not a year in advance as thats just how game studio pipelines usualyl work. I'd understand if everyone was clearly against it, but it doesn't appear that way.

To me. These changes highlight that morphs need to be more competitive than just stam vs mag and I'm sure they're aware of that, but much more work needs to be done. This patch only touched the tip of the iceberg, but again, they eluded to that in their combat preview so I can't really blame them. They need actual improvements that effect combat in signifigant ways, 1 morph can no longer just be flat out better than the other anymore. Before you'd be limited completely by the resource type as the crappier morph would still perform better if you were mag or stam.

Example being Scorch as some have put it. Double hit on the stamina morph was a fantastic idea, but it's now overshadowed the mag morph almost completely. This really applies to all skills, but named buffs/debuffs as a morph effect should never be the only difference in morph type, they can be obtained by different means pretty easily, making 1 choice more obviously the winner. In regards to Scorch, both morphs should have the double hit mechanic as skill management on warden's being forced into casting Scorch every 3 seconds has always been 1 of the most annoying things about the class.

My biggest issue with people agaisnt this is they always use endgame pve dps as their main arguement.. This shouldn't be a surprise, but pve dps (at an end game level) has always purely been about numbers and what the meta is (although, unless you're score pushing, it really shouldn't be a problem). If classes and builds couldn't bring anything unique to the table, the optimal raid composition would be 12 players all using the exact same class, skills and stam or mag. Etc. No matter what you do, there will always be a meta in an mmo for pve dps because you can easily quantify it for a situation where only dps matters.

This games end game scene has never been the focus anyway. It's the most casual friendly mmo I can think of besides maybe the CP system requiring a bit of grind, but it only applies once. You only need to look at the fact that the level cap has never raised past cp 160 to understand that. If their intent was based on most mmo's, we'd have a new level cap every year forcing us to grind the same gear again and agian. We wouldn't have transmute crystals. Items in the cash shop would provide stat advantages. Gear obtained from crafting/guild traders would be significantly weaker than gear obtained through trials, yet they're pretty competitive and in some cases outright better depending on the content. We wouldn't have the sticker book. We wouldn't have account wide achievements.

All those all hurt the "end game" scene, but it makes for a more fun game people want to come back to, that is the type of game ZOS is trying to make for better or for worse.

As much flack as I'd like to give ZOS, this is not one of them. I've played a ton of MMO's that know how to manipulate people to earn their dollar and time by enforcing MMO tropes. Play as you want will never be a thing if you're at the very tip of end game. Most people understand that because that is what you're signing up for when you reach that point.

So yeah, absolutely more work to be done for morphs, but thats the only problem I see. Testing on the PTS has showed me I will still have a main focus on stam or mag. I don't feel like adding 1-2 off resource skills has changed that at all for me. My mag toons still feel like mag and my stam toons still feel like stam.

Plus lets be real, stam end game dps comps haven't been meta for years, it's already been "6" builds instead of "12".

lQrukl wrote: »

The whole conversation is just about endgame. And there are no changes, we still forced use daggers or fire staff (if you cannot use daggers), just because it is way more effective then anything else.

You are not forced, you follow the meta. The essence of the meta is to find the best possible combination out of all options. If tomorrow 2H Axes or Forst Staffs would have 0.1% more DPS than the current used weapons you would use them instead. Build diversity is nearly impossible for meta builds because it would require that builds are exactly equal, not just nearly.

Stx wrote: »

These homogenization changes were never going to increase build diversity. Anyone who thought that didn't know how to properly build previously, or just lacks sense.

You will get build diversity for off meta builds. Builds that are 5-15% less effective but still good enough to do content. However these builds are not used because they are not meta and not the most effective.

lQrukl wrote: »

You are not forced, you follow the meta. The essence of the meta is to find the best possible combination out of all options. If tomorrow 2H Axes or Forst Staffs would have 0.1% more DPS than the current used weapons you would use them instead. Build diversity is nearly impossible for meta builds because it would require that builds are exactly equal, not just nearly.

Answered here

Ill quote that post below so its clear what my reply is referencing to.

lQrukl wrote: »

It's clear some people can't stop themselves from chasing a meta like addicts. As long as something is competitive, there is nothing from stoping you playing a magicka DK with a Fire Staff and using only Magicka abilities. There is a ton of great skills. I still want changes too, way more, but I don't understand this mentality of do or die. Adapt or quit. Who is forcing that on you?

Again, as long as it's competitive (I'd argue I also hate the idea's behind Fire vs Shock staves). Idealy there is risk/reward in your choices. Daggers are nice, but now you're 100% melee. Your dummy parse is based on a non moving target. What is that extra 5% dps mean in a real fight when you spend 10% less time damaging your target while also putting yourself in greater danger by tunnel visioning a dps rotation?

I get the idea of FEELING shoehorned into a certain playstyle, but I've never felt that with ESO and I won't feel it with the changes because the floor/ceiling is really not that far a part when it comes to BIS vs not BIS. Usually it's like 5-15% at most.

Does anyone consider playstyle and whats fun anymore? These are probably the same people that hop class to class each update to get that juicy 2% more dps after some buffs/nerfs.

The conversation isn't about that you're forced to use meta by your oddity. It's about endgame content, only about endgame content. Where you have to reach maximum effectiveness. While 11 people hard try near you, you have no right to play as you want, at least for now, with this balance of skills and weapon lines.

Amount of quality progressive groups, that closing trial HMs and trifecta, much less than the amount of dds, who want to close it. And you can't compensate your poor build by yourself skill to still be competitive, because this game has 1s GCD for each skill, and you will never overcome it.

So, being the best of the best, it's all about gear and skills. It's not about 500 dps difference between daggers and fire staff, it's 5-15k depending on class in real content, not dummy. Don't forget also, that daggers buff not only single target skills, but also AoE damage. Same with skill morphs.

Take off your rose colored glasses, its not a single-play chapter, its MMO. If you "have never felt shoehorned into a certain playstyle" it doesn't mean that it's point of view problem.
It only means that you don't have that experience YET. Not about "game fatigue", but the conditions in which people are REALLY forced to play every day to achieve a result.

And again, there is nothing to stop you playing as you want in normal randoms or open world. You don't need massive gameplay hybrid changes for that. It's only affected endgame, and it's killing endgame every patch. One good change like templar buff or adding frost spammable crossed out by a dozen changes that make at least the slightest acting out of any archetype with the exception of the hybrid clown.

If you go with endgame you have not to reach maximum effectiveness. You just try to reach it because the content becomes easier this way. Even for vet trials you can see this happen where you by no means need full meta builds.
Many mechanics become easier with more DPS and the devs have to keep in mind that meta is a thing and have to build content so it incorporates this, otherwise you would complain that things are to easy.
In the end you are sitting in a hole you have dug yourself, you dislike the meta but still follow it and expect that content is still hard while you do it. Then whenever the devs shake it up to complain that you are "forced" into changing your setups while in reality you basically chose to have things working that way. This choice also bleeds in other parts of the game like vet overland where you try to establish the exact same functionality that you hate so much.
You should start saying what you realy want, you can not stay in the corner and cheer whenever something gets added thats hard enought for meta builds and then complain when the meta changes.

The main issue of the meta and end game is that players expect everyone to use meta builds and with this killing build diversity while ignoring that some players might get a better performance with some less effective off meta builds because they are better in executing them.

lQrukl wrote: »

If you go with endgame you have not to reach maximum effectiveness. You just try to reach it because the content becomes easier this way. Even for vet trials you can see this happen where you by no means need full meta builds.

Vet trials is not an endgame. I already told about this, you quoted it yourself. Endgame is vet trial HMs, trifecta and than - scor pushes. And you max your damage not because game "becomes easier this way", but only because your time limited. And I'm talking not only about speedruns, but raid time too. Faster try -> more tries you can do -> more practice and more chances to close trifecta.
Why are you so selfish that you cannot accept the fact that people are trying not only for themselves, but for the whole group?
And they are forced to play in the conditions in which they were driven by ZoS. For now these conditions makes suffering, killing last fun from gameplay.
Noone obliges you to play the way you want in your casual swamp. No need to equate your gaming experience and the gaming experience of people who have to go through this every day.

You created a circular dependancy without even realizing it. Meta builds are made in almost every build if possible for the sake of playing as efficiently as possible.
You say ZOS forces you into playing this way. You use meta builds because they are the most efficient to do the content and you complaint that meta shifts. If ZOS would decide tomorrow to reduce the requirement so off meta builds could be compfortably used there would be complaints about content not being hard enough. Because even if off meta builds where widely viable ppl would still stick to meta builds because they are more efficient. Thats the core essence of meta. So you either stick to them because you are somewhat forced to or because they are the most efficient and easiest way and as such you eitehr complain about being forced into them or because content is to easy.

Overland is a great example for this problem. You can use any build you want, yet we see players complaining its to easy because they shred through it with their meta builds and rather complain about to easy content than using the freedom to try something off meta.

lQrukl wrote: »

The main issue of the meta and end game is that players expect everyone to use meta builds and with this killing build diversity while ignoring that some players might get a better performance with some less effective off meta builds because they are better in executing them.

No, they might not. I also already told about this:

And you can't compensate your poor build by yourself skill to still be competitive, because this game has 1s GCD for each skill, and you will never overcome it.

If i give a player a complicated meta build with buffs and uptimes the execution decides how good a player is, not the build itself. Its not unlikely that a player getting medium or bad results there would do much better with an easier to use off meta set because it fits his current capabilities more. Thats one of the issues we have when it comes to player quality because ppl think that meta builds are the big deal without thinking about if players understand them and are able to execute them correctly.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

My question to the people against this is what is your angle? What do you hope to achieve for being against hybridization. It's going to happen, so provide solutions to the issues you think are there instead of just saying this is bad.

I am against it because whenever you dumb down, simplify, or water down a stat and buff system in the name of making things easier or more flexible, what you are also doing is killing the fun part of buildcraft. It's fun to make a build work by finding a combination of skills, sets, passives etc that work together and synergize.

By making everything scale with everything and basically making it so there is no possible way to make a bad build, you are effectively removing the accomplishment of making a good build, and taking away the fun of inventing a good build that works. Take for example the old pelinals dk pvp build stacking weapon damage to hit with massive lava whip tooltips that magicka builds couldn't achieve... that was such a cool and creative build and things like that won't exist anymore.

I am also against these changes because I don't think most players really understand what a hybrid is. A hybrid in any RPG is a jack of all trades, Master of none. What a lot of players in this game have been advocating for is that they want hybrid builds to be optimal, meaning they would be Jack of all trades, master of everything. That would never be balanced and defeats the entire purpose of a hybrid. What zos is doing is effectively making everyone a hybrid in order to appease the vocal hybrid crowd.

I am also against these changes because I'm an old school player, I like defined RPG archetypes. I want there to be mages in game, i want there to be warriors, and thieves. I want them to make sense. When you tell me that I can train in two handed weapons, putting zero effort into learning magic abilities, but then I am suddenly a master level wizard because all my two hand passives and skills scale with spell damage and magicka, and that there is literally no difference between me and a mage, that kills the immersion and feel for the game.

I love hybrid builds by the way. Battlemages, druids, spellswords, monks, etc. I love having flexible and versatile characters in any game. But I also know that in order to be good at multiple things, you shouldn't be as good at any one thing as a specialist. And that's what these hybridized changes are doing, making everyone great at everything, which is boring as kitten in the end.

Xebov wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

I am also against these changes because I don't think most players really understand what a hybrid is. A hybrid in any RPG is a jack of all trades, Master of none. What a lot of players in this game have been advocating for is that they want hybrid builds to be optimal, meaning they would be Jack of all trades, master of everything. That would never be balanced and defeats the entire purpose of a hybrid. What zos is doing is effectively making everyone a hybrid in order to appease the vocal hybrid crowd.

You should put this into a Elderscrolls context. Unlike many RPGs that go with classes and define specific fields of expertise that you follow more or less, Elderscrolls was always about freedom, allowing you to efficiently combine everything with everything and get it to work. The hybridization is moving the game into that direction. So far ESO is a game that combines the look and feel of Elderscrolls but deep down uses RPG systems like classes and fields of specialization that stem from other RPGs and typical MMOs. As an Elderscrolls player my biggest suprise when seeing this game for the first time was the fact that it had classes.

I disagree.

If you look at morrowind or oblivion that use stats like strength, agility, intelligence, willpower, etc. The hybrid classes like battlemage aren't as strong in any one area as a pure warrior or mage. They combine the strengths of both to be good at both but not as good at either discipline individually. This is reinforced by you being able to only allocate a certain number of stats, so where a warrior would be able to maximize strength and endurance, a battle mage would maximize strength but would have to sacrifice endurance to put points into intelligence to boost his spells.

Obviously in the single player games, if you choose to you can eventually maximize all skills and become sort of a God mode character but I don't think that should be looked at as an example of character balance for an MMO or even used as a general explanation of how the single player games were meant to be played.

Stx wrote: »

SNIP

Hybrid in a single player and in an MMO game mean different things too though. Using your example of Oblivion; Fighter, Sorcerer, Thief are your base archetypes and so hybridizing between them looses efficiency compared to a pure class but gives you additional utility. This makes sense. But in ESO, your base archetypes are DPS, Healer, Tank. When you hybridize within ESO you loose efficiency compared to a pure class but gain utility and still will with this change.

Magicka and Stamina aren't really different archetypes, they are just different flavors within the three base archetypes.

Their changes are being made so that you can change the "flavor" of your archetype without lessoning the effectiveness of it. Before the change, if you wanted to play a "hybrid magica/stamina dps" you would be punished for it. You wouldn't be gaining any extra utility from your choice since you weren't hybridizing your role, just your flavor of that role, but you were punished all the same. Now you won't be. Hybridization of flavor within a single archetype doesn't need to be and shouldn't be punished with a loss of efficiency.

lQrukl wrote: »

Now you won't be.

Now you would be punished for not being a hybrid, lol. It's the same, but before you had 2 "flavors" in one role that was effective, and for now you have only 1 that is not overboard.
Because those "flavors" were pretty different before hybridization, and before hybridization it sould be balanced to gain you true variativity after.

Not really. If you are a casual player, then pure magicka, pure stamina, or a combination of the two will all be perfectly viable and all within a decent margin of effectiveness.

If you are a hardcore endgame player, then either the magicka or the stamina build was already better than the other. Now it is the mix that is better immediately after the patch. This may change again in another patch. You aren't loosing variety since that variety was never really there before; there is only one best build.

lQrukl wrote: »

Just to understand more clearly what would be great to be achieved with Warden as an example.

Feral Guardian:

Rouse a loyal grizzly to fight at your side. The grizzly's swipes at an enemy, dealing 277 Magic Physical Damage, and something swipes all enemies in front of it, dealing 1121 Magic Physical Damage and stunning them for 2 seconds.
Once summoned, you can activate Guardian's Wrath for 75 Ultimate, causing the grizzle to maul an enemy for 1345 Magic Physical Damage Deals 100% more damage to enemies below 25% Health.

Morph 1 (Wild Guardian):

Increases the damage and converts it into Physical Damage.

Morph 2 (Eternal Guardian):

The grizzly respawns when killed.
Converts it into Frost Damage. After causing Guardian's Wrath, grizzly deals X Frost damage to all enemies around him for Y seconds.

See? Do you see that?
People could have choice not only between additional damage and its absence. They could have choice between stronger solo damage and frost morph with aoe damage. So they could balance their build, e.g. wearing Frostbite to equalize damage and focus on Brittle or take full meta setup with fire staves/daggers and Yokeda/Kinras.

And we're also keeping the logic that the grizzly is after all, first of all, an animal, and must inflict physical damage, with changing that in one of the morphs.

Or another example:

Scorch:

Stir a group of Shalk that attacks after 3 seconds, dealing 1275 Magic Poison Damage to enemies in front of you.

Morph 1 (Subterranean Assault):

Converts to a Stamina ability and deals Poison Damage. The shalk burrow after attacking, and attack again after a delay.

Morph 2 (Deep Fissure):

Applies Major Breach to enemies hit, reducing their Physical and Spell Resistance.
Converts it into Magica ability and deals Frost Damage. The shalk inflict enemies chilling poison, reducing their movement speed by 40% and dealing X frozen damage for 6 seconds.

Morph 1 still has better damage in general, but Morph 2 allows us to keep 100% Brittle uptime with Reach + Master Staff in semistatic rotation:


Also, Morph 2 could still be relatable in PvP, even much more than now.

It's just only one of many variations how could magica morphs be maded more competitive without making them too op to overcome stamina "more damage" morphs.

This isn't really desirable. Frost damage shalks is, but keeping with the burst. I personally like the 3 second rotation but removing the major breach which is good for pvp and converting the damage into a DoT isn't. I think it'd be interesting if deep fissure left a 3 second DoT on the enemies it hit/at the ground where they came up for 3 seconds. As it would help to close the gap.

ZeroDPS wrote: »

hybrid idea is the worst idea I have ever heard.... so why dont we make 1 resource instead of mag/stam???
more diversity will only be when we have 3 sets available to wear. thats it

Because now instead of "Your resources determine the relative power of your abilities, so using a stamina ability on a magicka character is less effective and always a bad choice" the situation becomes "Your resources determine how often you can use an ability, so using a stamina ability on a magicka character will be more costly and have a much greater opportunity cost, but may provide special utility that makes it worth the bar slot and occasional use"

And since they will still scale to a resource maximum you will still need to build into Stamina or Magicka exclusively in order to be effective. This means that you will still always have a primary ability pool that synergizes better with your character. The change is that now instead of the other half of the abilities in the game being completely useless to you, they all become potentially useful niche abilities. If you want to make heavy use of abilities from your secondary pool, you will need to specifically build for it to make up for the lower maximum and lower regen.

Being a Magicka or Stamina character will still be the crux of your build and largely determine your characters build, you just now get access to some more toys to play around with.

Zenimax changes how the related mechanics worked lightning staves were replaced with fire staves in raid groups as they provided the best results.

Not just best. Way, way, way better then anything else. You cannot make viable PvE build with lightining staff, that could be competitive against daggers, or even fire staff, just because its stats. It is always huge gap, huge peak at meta point.

But before, you could see 2 peaks on this chart at least: best stamina and best magica builds. With U33 there will be only 1.

All i ask: ZoS should smooth graph as possible as they can before this changes. I accept that I could lost 2-4k from meta point, if i will choose only magica based morphs, weapons, sets, its pretty ok.

But not -5k for each compromise, or even more.

washbern wrote: »

If devs really cared about variety we would have a much better combat system than each class having a choice of 2 *** spammables, same exact dots as all other classes and 1 or 2 unique skills which (whether they suck or not) class can't do without. I'm looking at you grim focus, shalks, sorc pets, whip, blastbones.

We need better class skills. Freaking stam tools end up using like 3 or 4 class abilities.

I agree with a lot of that. A big thing holding them back is their decision to not have any cooldowns. This makes it a lot harder to have situationally powerful and limited use abilities.

Maybe something that would be cool is if execute skills had some sort of "Combo Finisher" mechanic on them and spammables had a "Primer" effect. This way you would alternate between a Primer and a Finisher during your spammable phase for a little variety. Maybe using more than one Primer before a Finisher would make the finisher stronger and encourage people to build their own combos out of available spammables and a finisher (in addition to adding a new skill to each class tree, two spammables and a new execute to ensure that every class has access to ranged and melee spammables and finishers). Just a thought.