Biggest PvP balance issues on live and PTS that need to be addressed

VarisVaris · February 2022

The balance in PvP currently isn't really optimal on the live servers right now, some abilities, set and mechanics are clearly overperforming and should be addressed before making things even worse with the upcoming changes.
In this post I'll point out which things are overperforming/game breaking and in which way they could be brought back in line.

The majority of skills I'll list will be related to high survivability as this is currently the biggest issue in PvP causing fights to take ages or be stalemates that can possibly only end with coordinated ultimate drops.

Skills

Intensive Mender

This skill offers healing way beyond other HoTs while being really cheap and also allows for insane crosshealing capabilities. The easy way out is simply reducing the heal because right now it's simply too strong, this should be done by reducing the overall heal by 25% but increase the duration to 12 seconds this keeps the skill rather cheap but prevents it from basically being a burst heal every time it heals you

Living Dark

This skill has been indirectly buffed to mindbogglingly high healing numbers with the changes to how people can stack spelldamage, but even a build that doesn't fully builds into stacking damage gets more healing out of this ability than other Hots can provide, additionally the way it works makes this heal even better as it always heals you when you take damage and therefore acts as a direct reduction to the damage you take. Depending on who you fight (read this as anything that isn't a full damage build) this ability will keep you alive infinitely with no chance for the enemy to ever kill you, it might even outheal the damage from the skills you're eating.
This ability should retain it's function but have it's healing potential against single targets reduced significantly. Having 5k hps in duels vs another templar from a single skill is just laughable.
Therefore the heal should still have a 500ms cooldown but can only be procced by each target every 2 seconds.
This makes it a great option when fighting outnumbered but prevents it from turning templars into unkillable damage absorbing blobs of doom

Bombard

This skill provides way too much bang for its buck, not only does it deal great damage while being undodgeable, it also comes with a root that you can refresh over and over again on targets who can't break the root in the first place, no other skill offers this much utility by chewing through the enemy's stamina while also helping ball groups to kite and keep people locked in places to nuke them afterwards.
This skill should lose its root and rather gain something else and AoE Root with high damage simply isn't balanced and it won't ever be even if you remove the snare it also offers like you did in Patch v7.3.0

Radiating Regen

This is the biggest offenders when it comes to high survivability of ballgroups and groups in general, this skill is so powerful that the viability of a certain spec instantly increases when it can slot this ability, this goes so far that stamsorc in smallscale runs bow+resto now
This ability has to have it's crosshealing capabilities nerfed significantly, make it so that you can only have 2 Radiating regen active on you (like vigor before it was changed to a single target heal) at any given moment, this way it won't hurt PvE but it will help PvP significantly

Sets
Caluurion's Legacy

This set offers too much burst especially when using it on NB which guarantees a hit in conjunction with cloak, with it being able to crit it's damage numbers went through the roof and now once again allows people to have oneshot gank builds with little to no counterplay depending on how good or bad performance is and if you break-free button is responsive.
The amount of burst this set offers is simply too much and should be split into a direct damage and dot portion to make this set less bursty but keeps it's damage consistent overall.

Draurgkin

This set allows people to achieve burst and pressure numbers that simply shouldn't be reachable with how many different damage instances one can squeeze into those 6 seconds it provides way too much damage compared to other sets.
This set only working against a single target doesn't work as enough of a drawback as you can use this set to obliterate this target, in a situation where you only face a single opponent there is no set that comes even close to the power Draugrkin offers.

Ironblood

This set offers too much survivability while the drawback isn't anywhere near enough to keep this set in check, additionally the potential uptime of the set is really high (66%)
The cooldown of this set should be increased to 25 seconds up from 15 seconds in order to give people a slight chance of killing someone using this set

Other issues
Undeath and CPs

Please read this post as it describes the issue more detailed.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7510100#Comment_7510100

Harmony

This jewelry trait allows people to generate incredible burst that's not tied to the global cooldown. These synergies often provide more damage than ultimates while only having a 20 seconds cooldown per person. Due to Synergies being able to be stacked this gives groups way more power than they should have access to.
This Trait should be reworked completely. Synergies are fine the way they are without anything buffing them

Crossheals in general

Although I have touched on this a little bit above already by mentioning Intensive mender and radiating regen, I want to emphasize once more that crosshealing in its current iteration is too powerful and often results in fights being endless stalemates that can only be ended by dropping multiple ultimates on a single person because otherwise they'll never die.
This also means that the time between ult drops won't help you make any progress which makes PvP feel very frustrating. It's a cycle of tanking each other's damage and then praying that your ult drop every 2 minutes gets you a kill.
There is no perfect fix for this issue as crossheals scale with the amounts of players involved in a fight.

This is why I propose a new healing reduction added to battle spirit that directly targets crossheals. "Any healing you receive from other players is reduced by X%" in a first iteration it should be tested with a 15% reduction as this change could have big impact on how PvP plays

The upcoming changes that we can currently test on the PTS will further worsen balance.
Hybridization of almost any skills will result in an unhealthy meta where only a single build for each Class will be viable, many skills will become worthless as they won't find their way onto bars as the competition just became way harder.
The potential for gamebreaking combinations has increased significantly, especially when it comes to healing and survivability.
Those changes will have such a strong impact on the meta that it is insanity to push this in one go.
All healing abilities should retain the old scaling in order to prevent Specs to merge completely and also to prevent the survivability to go through the roof.

Two more issues on the PTS:
Burning Embers being changed into a HoT is laughably broken, there is no way this should ever make it to the live server. Magdk has always been built around being forced to fight for their heals, they had to stay in a fight to get their powerlash heals, to recast their burning embers to get the heal early or to heal themselves by using Draw Essence. The addition of Cauterize and Coagulating blood are more than enough to allow magdks to have healing even when they don't face an opponent atm.

Power Bash and morphs counting as Bash damage. I totally get where the idea came from but it is unbalanced as heck. You can easily stack bash damage via bash glyphs, deadlands demolisher and other bash sets. This is totally fine on the live server, however the new interaction with a skill that has the regular meele spammable TT is too much, on non optimised build you can easily reach Power Slam tooltips of 15k without even having the 33% extra damage.
This interaction with additional bash damage for Power Bash should be removed, Power Bash and it's morphs should retain the function of bash to interrupt targets channeling a skill.

I'm confident that tackling all these issues will significantly improve PvP balance and saves us from another unbalanced patch.

VarisVaris · February 2022

Added "Draugrkin" and "Crossheals in general" as I forgot to mention those initially.

Ragnaroek93 · February 2022

Pretty good points, I honestly don't understand the patch notes at all. It looks like that they're not learning out of the past and buffs to power bash make that really obvious. They refuse to give most classes good stam spammables (just think of stonefist on Dk), dw, 2h and bow have a spammable with a cast time which isn't fun to use but now they're giving the DEFENSIVE skill line a spammable which grossly outperforms most class spammables (it has already a higher tooltip on live server than surprise attack). Didn't they say that they want class abilities to be stronger than weapon abilities? It's like they simply forgot why they nerfed sword and board in the first part.

Same goes for harmony builds. They add a cast time to ultimates which screws over classes like Nb with the reasoning that they don't want people to hit several attacks at the same time (which wasn't even possible on Nb) but keybinding synergies to mousewheel and oneshotting people by "scrolling" through 3-4 synergies is totally fine.

Or that new set which gives dmg and crit res, I'm pretty sure that we're heading into another Malacath meta. They did already forget that crit res was broken pre nerfs.

LordeGian · February 2022

I play PVP daily so I will express my opinion regarding what I have seen.

Since the last changes in the Dragonknight class, the number of MagDK users has increased a lot, the other day I fought a group that contained 6 MagDK and 1 Magplar, extremely strong group, absurd heals, terrifying damage explosion. Yesterday I also found 2 MagDK fighting together in imperial city, both were simply impossible to kill gods, with a very strong burst, they recovered all their health instantly, many times it took a zerg to take them down. For this and many others I believe that the buff created to the MagDK in the last patch was very exaggerated.

Small groups of Magplar are extremely strong compared to groups of other classes, their healing is exaggeratedly high and when they crit they return to 100% health in an instant. Most Magplar users I face tend to have a very similar and simple combo, but with a burst of damage that simply melts you after a short delay.

I also suggest paying special attention to Magblade (not gank) and Magwarden, classes that are well erased.

divnyi · February 2022

Nerfing heavy attacks bruisers just to see the surge of bash bruisers 👌

React · February 2022

LordeGian wrote: »

I play PVP daily so I will express my opinion regarding what I have seen.

Since the last changes in the Dragonknight class, the number of MagDK users has increased a lot, the other day I fought a group that contained 6 MagDK and 1 Magplar, extremely strong group, absurd heals, terrifying damage explosion. Yesterday I also found 2 MagDK fighting together in imperial city, both were simply impossible to kill gods, with a very strong burst, they recovered all their health instantly, many times it took a zerg to take them down. For this and many others I believe that the buff created to the MagDK in the last patch was very exaggerated.

Small groups of Magplar are extremely strong compared to groups of other classes, their healing is exaggeratedly high and when they crit they return to 100% health in an instant. Most Magplar users I face tend to have a very similar and simple combo, but with a burst of damage that simply melts you after a short delay.

I also suggest paying special attention to Magblade (not gank) and Magwarden, classes that are well erased.

Good fights in IC yesterday brother.

-One of the two magDKs your zerg was fighting

MentalxHammer · February 2022

Yes, valuable data.

LordeGian · February 2022

Liam12548 wrote: »

LordeGian wrote: »

I play PVP daily so I will express my opinion regarding what I have seen.

Since the last changes in the Dragonknight class, the number of MagDK users has increased a lot, the other day I fought a group that contained 6 MagDK and 1 Magplar, extremely strong group, absurd heals, terrifying damage explosion. Yesterday I also found 2 MagDK fighting together in imperial city, both were simply impossible to kill gods, with a very strong burst, they recovered all their health instantly, many times it took a zerg to take them down. For this and many others I believe that the buff created to the MagDK in the last patch was very exaggerated.

Small groups of Magplar are extremely strong compared to groups of other classes, their healing is exaggeratedly high and when they crit they return to 100% health in an instant. Most Magplar users I face tend to have a very similar and simple combo, but with a burst of damage that simply melts you after a short delay.

I also suggest paying special attention to Magblade (not gank) and Magwarden, classes that are well erased.

Good fights in IC yesterday brother.

-One of the two magDKs your zerg was fighting

I'm laughing a lot here... We meet again. At least in this post we now have proof that I really didn't tell any lies.

Survival monster in your MagDK, for sure in a 2v2 combat others wouldn't have a chance.

Ezorus · February 2022

Healing overall in PvP is too strong on live. DKs and Templars are immortal with little ease. One healer in a BG is enough to carry their team.

Wouldn't mind cross healing staying the same as long as self heals are dramatically reduced

xylena_lazarow · February 2022

The power ceiling for defense remains much higher than that for offense, mostly thanks to massive heal stacking. The floor/ceiling power gap grows wider as well. Expect the majority of fights to be either a stomp or a stalemate.

francesinhalover · February 2022

I mean, if everything is op, than nothing is op :.D

Jokes aside you should copy* past what you wrote on pts feedback.

olsborg · February 2022

Living dark is pretty busted, agreed. Id also like to add the sustain passive for dks when they apply burning and dks corrosive ultimate, way too strong there imo.

francesinhalover · February 2022

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

Pretty good points, I honestly don't understand the patch notes at all. It looks like that they're not learning out of the past and buffs to power bash make that really obvious. They refuse to give most classes good stam spammables (just think of stonefist on Dk), dw, 2h and bow have a spammable with a cast time which isn't fun to use but now they're giving the DEFENSIVE skill line a spammable which grossly outperforms most class spammables (it has already a higher tooltip on live server than surprise attack). Didn't they say that they want class abilities to be stronger than weapon abilities? It's like they simply forgot why they nerfed sword and board in the first part.

Same goes for harmony builds. They add a cast time to ultimates which screws over classes like Nb with the reasoning that they don't want people to hit several attacks at the same time (which wasn't even possible on Nb) but keybinding synergies to mousewheel and oneshotting people by "scrolling" through 3-4 synergies is totally fine.

Or that new set which gives dmg and crit res, I'm pretty sure that we're heading into another Malacath meta. They did already forget that crit res was broken pre nerfs.

"Didn't they say that they want class abilities to be stronger than weapon abilities?"

Thats such a bad idea, the reason ppl even use weapon skill line spammables is because they just dislike thr class spammable.
Not everyone has the luck to be a templar, nightblade, necromancer,

Sorce , dk spammables are bad, and warden ppl just find it boring.

I understand wep spammables shouldnt be must have in their eyes, but tbh at least in dw case the spammables suck

VarisVaris · February 2022

francesinhalover wrote: »

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

Pretty good points, I honestly don't understand the patch notes at all. It looks like that they're not learning out of the past and buffs to power bash make that really obvious. They refuse to give most classes good stam spammables (just think of stonefist on Dk), dw, 2h and bow have a spammable with a cast time which isn't fun to use but now they're giving the DEFENSIVE skill line a spammable which grossly outperforms most class spammables (it has already a higher tooltip on live server than surprise attack). Didn't they say that they want class abilities to be stronger than weapon abilities? It's like they simply forgot why they nerfed sword and board in the first part.

Same goes for harmony builds. They add a cast time to ultimates which screws over classes like Nb with the reasoning that they don't want people to hit several attacks at the same time (which wasn't even possible on Nb) but keybinding synergies to mousewheel and oneshotting people by "scrolling" through 3-4 synergies is totally fine.

Or that new set which gives dmg and crit res, I'm pretty sure that we're heading into another Malacath meta. They did already forget that crit res was broken pre nerfs.

"Didn't they say that they want class abilities to be stronger than weapon abilities?"

Thats such a bad idea, the reason ppl even use weapon skill line spammables is because they just dislike thr class spammable.
Not everyone has the luck to be a templar, nightblade, necromancer,

Sorce , dk spammables are bad, and warden ppl just find it boring.

I understand wep spammables shouldnt be must have in their eyes, but tbh at least in dw case the spammables suck

At what point did Necromancers start using poison skulls, which is like the most trash Spammable in the game?

Brrrofski · February 2022

Ezorus wrote: »

Healing overall in PvP is too strong on live. DKs and Templars are immortal with little ease. One healer in a BG is enough to carry their team.

Wouldn't mind cross healing staying the same as long as self heals are dramatically reduced

See, this is dangerous right here.

Healing overall isn't too strong.

Certain skills, classes and combos of those with sets CAN make healing too strong.

But on a mag sorc using just surge and rapid regen, it's woeful. Rapid regen ticks for like 1.8k. It's bad. Plus, that's if it decides to even go to me.

And yes, they can use a shield, but if you can't get your health up, it's a dangerous place to be, even with shields. Matriarch takes up two slots and isn't reliable, unless I spend half my time keeping that healed, which isn't ideal.

Stam sorc, stam warden and mag warden all have bad healing too. Stam warden might be fine next patch with vines scaling better though

Stam NB doesn't have great healing either, but it's less of an issue due to cloak.

Mag NB is ok, if you combine dark cloak, offering and radiating regen.

Stamplar has to use 3 healing skills just to get good healing. Which is very intensive on magica. Forcing less flexibility in your build.

This is what always happens. Some classes have great healing, and ZOS come along and blanket nerf all healing.

Cross healing is still a big issues. Regen stacking needs to be looked at for sure.

Also, I think rapid regen should be moved to a self heal. Nobody uses it in group pve anyway, and unless solo, people use radiating in groups in PvP. Resto doesn't have a self heal, and rapid regen and healing ward go out of their way to heal anyone but you.

Sneakers · February 2022

Lol I almost wish they release the patch as it is, just to see the world burn.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · February 2022

I really am struggling to figure out why this patch notes looks the way it does. Has zos just given up on pvp? Is this purely a pve update with dire consequences for pvp that they just don't care about? I can't think of any other explanation for this and I really don't think my theory is that deep into the crazy territory. At least a couple great games are coming out soon so we can wait out yet another disgusting patch on another game.

chrisoh971eb17_ESO · February 2022

What comes to crosshealing, good healer heals more than bad dd does damage. Otherwise healers are only for slow things. The oldest strategy in MMO history is to kill healers first.

xylena_lazarow · February 2022

chrisoh971eb17_ESO wrote: »

The oldest strategy in MMO history is to kill healers first.

Good luck doing that when healers are also tanks, and they make up half the comp. If they don't address the stalemates and unkillable groups, there won't be anyone left by the time they fix the performance.

J18696 · February 2022

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

chrisoh971eb17_ESO wrote: »

The oldest strategy in MMO history is to kill healers first.

Good luck doing that when healers are also tanks, and they make up half the comp. If they don't address the stalemates and unkillable groups, there won't be anyone left by the time they fix the performance.

Yeah xylena is right but groups having nearly half their comp healer tanks I feel like is more of a call to nerf crosshealing more than nerf healing in general

VarisVaris · February 2022

Looks like PvP is in for a rough, to avoid saying terribly unbalanced, patch.

None of the issues that are currently plaguing the game or that have been added with patch 7.3.2 habe been tackled.

LiteEmUp · February 2022

i think people are looking at healing balance in the wrong direction... rather than nerfing it, likely due to pvper's complaints, why not buff the counter to it(defile) so that pver's can enjoy the healing buff and sets that do defile gets an indirect buff...

my suggestion for a major defile buff change would be:

Reduces target's healing taken by 25%, up from 16%
Any current heal over time effects automatically gets cancelled. Only instant heals don't get cancelled..

with this buff to defile, your healing gets reduced by 1/4th you do regularly, and that you have to instead rely on instant heals like dragon blood/dark exchange/fungus growth/render flesh..
you can still use hot(like cauterize/rapid regen/vigor/living vines/intensive mender) while in combat, but runs the risk of it losing it when needed the most if against multiple enemies..

VarisVaris · February 2022

LiteEmUp wrote: »

i think people are looking at healing balance in the wrong direction... rather than nerfing it, likely due to pvper's complaints, why not buff the counter to it(defile) so that pver's can enjoy the healing buff and sets that do defile gets an indirect buff...

my suggestion for a major defile buff change would be:
Reduces target's healing taken by 25%, up from 16%

Any current heal over time effects automatically gets cancelled. Only instant heals don't get cancelled..

with this buff to defile, your healing gets reduced by 1/4th you do regularly, and that you have to instead rely on instant heals like dragon blood/dark exchange/fungus growth/render flesh..
you can still use hot(like cauterize/rapid regen/vigor/living vines/intensive mender) while in combat, but runs the risk of it losing it when needed the most if against multiple enemies..

Yeah let's not do this, defiles have always been a bad way of balancing overperforming heals because they punished everyone who didn't have op heals to begin with way more.

kookster · February 2022

I agree with everything on that list. Only thing I would say is that molten whip and corrosive needs to be added to that list.
I would also like sets with pulls to get a toning down. Personally I think pulls should give CC immunity as you cannot react while being pulled.

React · February 2022

kookster wrote: »

I agree with everything on that list. Only thing I would say is that molten whip and corrosive needs to be added to that list.
I would also like sets with pulls to get a toning down. Personally I think pulls should give CC immunity as you cannot react while being pulled.

Pulls shouldn't exist in pvp to being with. You shouldn't be able to just change someone's location at will like that, outside of knockbacks which are far less controlled.

The fact that rushing agony specifically does not grant CC immunity is a joke, and to make that worse certain combinations like convergence and the necro armor pull will still double pull you straight through immunity. Something really needs to be done about that.

Extinct_Solo_Player · February 2022

VarisVaris wrote: »

Looks like PvP is in for a rough, to avoid saying terribly unbalanced, patch.

None of the issues that are currently plaguing the game or that have been added with patch 7.3.2 habe been tackled.

That's the usual experience, shouldn't expect anything more.

Abyssmol · February 2022

LiteEmUp wrote: »

i think people are looking at healing balance in the wrong direction... rather than nerfing it, likely due to pvper's complaints, why not buff the counter to it(defile) so that pver's can enjoy the healing buff and sets that do defile gets an indirect buff...

my suggestion for a major defile buff change would be:
Reduces target's healing taken by 25%, up from 16%

Any current heal over time effects automatically gets cancelled. Only instant heals don't get cancelled..

with this buff to defile, your healing gets reduced by 1/4th you do regularly, and that you have to instead rely on instant heals like dragon blood/dark exchange/fungus growth/render flesh..
you can still use hot(like cauterize/rapid regen/vigor/living vines/intensive mender) while in combat, but runs the risk of it losing it when needed the most if against multiple enemies..

Yes, let's do this and make Stamcro Gods in PVP -100% uptime on Defile. Everyone should have a burst skill with defile!

VarisVaris · February 2022

Extinct_Solo_Player wrote: »

VarisVaris wrote: »

Looks like PvP is in for a rough, to avoid saying terribly unbalanced, patch.

None of the issues that are currently plaguing the game or that have been added with patch 7.3.2 habe been tackled.

That's the usual experience, shouldn't expect anything more.

Usually I expect about 1-2 new broken changes coupled with a nerf to an equal amount of existing problems.

This patch we got like 5 different unbalanced changes with one of them being so severe that it changes the whole game and opens up balance issues on basically any spec.

Brrrofski · February 2022

LiteEmUp wrote: »

i think people are looking at healing balance in the wrong direction... rather than nerfing it, likely due to pvper's complaints, why not buff the counter to it(defile) so that pver's can enjoy the healing buff and sets that do defile gets an indirect buff...

my suggestion for a major defile buff change would be:
Reduces target's healing taken by 25%, up from 16%

Any current heal over time effects automatically gets cancelled. Only instant heals don't get cancelled..

with this buff to defile, your healing gets reduced by 1/4th you do regularly, and that you have to instead rely on instant heals like dragon blood/dark exchange/fungus growth/render flesh..
you can still use hot(like cauterize/rapid regen/vigor/living vines/intensive mender) while in combat, but runs the risk of it losing it when needed the most if against multiple enemies..

Again, it'll just further punish classes that have weaker healing.

And one of the classes with strongest heals already will just laugh as they cleanse it off.

Blanket changes aren't the way forward. Individual heals need to be looked at.

LordeGian · February 2022

In the aspect of PVP, in this patch now live I had to praise the variety of builds that appeared, many sets that were practically unused began to appear and more and more different styles of combat were seen, and that I found incredible!

However, the imbalance when it comes to classes is glaring, this is a little discouraging.

Every patch note that appears is a new disappointment, I'm still hopeful that there will be new changes to what is actually discussed here on the forum.

xDeusEJRx · February 2022

Liam12548 wrote: »

Pulls shouldn't exist in pvp to being with. You shouldn't be able to just change someone's location at will like that, outside of knockbacks which are far less controlled.

Dragonknight chains, Magic templar javelin, Fighters guild Silver leash pull, Necromancer beckoning armor, Warden frozen gate, destructive clench would like to have a word with you.
Jokes aside, abilities that force a position change on your target have existed for a long time, I know you're referring to sets specifically. But I think it's funny how people only think now position changing effects are now problematic even though people have abused them forever and used them as spammables open world. Which I'd argue might be worse than a set because if you spam it you can keep doing that off cool-down unlike a proc set that requires extra steps.