Update 33 Combat Preview

CleymenZero · February 2022

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We’ve been closely monitoring the feedback and discussion surrounding the Update 33 combat preview and have taken note of a few reoccurring bits that we’d like to take some time to address, particularly regarding the hybridization work we’ve been working on for the past year and a half and the next big step of making most abilities scale dynamically (when applicable) with offensive stats.

To reiterate our goal, these passes have been done to help reduce the number of restrictions when engaging with an ability in your class kit or other skill line, helping you create a build that resonates with you based on what a skill offers, rather than the stats you’ve picked. However, we do still believe stats should always play an important role in determining effectiveness of skills and how your build comes to life in the game. With the sheer number of them in game, we’ve found that the previous system of Weapon versus Spell Damage, Critical Chance, and Penetration were severely impeding on one of the core mantras of the game: play the way you want. With other stats, such as Health, Magicka, and Stamina and the recovery of those stats, we feel we have a large area to enforce limits of how often you can utilize skills as a defining factor of identity and build definition, rather than the potency of those skills as well.

One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Another area we’ve seen quite a bit of feedback on is morph diversity and how the changes to hybridization impact which morph you want to pick. In previous updates, there were pretty clear options; if your ability morphed into a change in cost it likely also changed in its scaling, leading to relatively binary morph options of just picking whichever ability met your primary resource. Now, the ability’s potency is far less impacted by your stats and instead focuses on what it costs and adds in functionality. This will be a vast improvement compared to many of the binary picks of before where you didn’t really have two options if you were a specialized build, but we do still know there are many morph options that don’t hold a candle to one another. On that note, depending on specialization and the type of play you’re focusing on, many morphs will remain rather contextual in nature. Comparing more damage for a specific attack versus gaining an Area of Effect form of a Major Debuff may seem like a simple option for a high-end damage dealer, but outside of that context, a compelling choice is still seen.

While this update will conclude much of our hybridization work (aside from the work-in-progress consumable adjustments we mentioned in the original post) we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up and evolve along with the game. Thanks for your time and we hope this helped give some insight into where our focus has been!

I am very happy with the changes and agree with the direction the game is taking.

I had said when the patch notes landed that this could make it that there no longer would be your typical magick [class] or stamina [class] but more like melee and range [class]. It might have been obvious for many like me who saw this right away but it's good to see that we understand the direction the game is taking.

One thing that needs some appreciable amount of work and has been mentioned by some content creators is the bow weaving. There is an issue when weaving the bow such that it is absolutely not fluid and weaving with an inferno staff is absolutely superior to weaving with a bow. Could that be worked on? With hybridization, there's a chance that bow builds will just never compete because, as a stam, I would probably use an inferno staff.

Also, is 6% crit chance from bow passives competitive with 10% single target damage from inferno staff passives? There was a pass done on destro staff passives when daggers became bis when fight is favorable to a melee situation, I think it should also be done for the bow.

Thanks!

VixxVexx · February 2022

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

... we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up ...

Following through? Looking at you guys' track record, I'd say it's the opposite of following through. It's just a bunch of wide-swing changes and empty promises with no end in sight.

CP5 · February 2022

There are a lot of morphs, and skills in general, that just never see use or won't see use after these changes. Just, putting it out there that I hope they get looked into beyond spreadsheet balance.

runa_gate · February 2022

Weirdly, before we knew how anything worked (and stats were all 100 times smaller values at launch) this is how we played. I had a stam nightblade (back when all stamina was horrific, and stam morphs weren't a think - stam toons used weapon skills). We'd use class skills that cost magicka and were hard to spam we just didn't realize at the time how bad a choice it was. Now it'll be viable especially for niche contextual uses. Very, very cool

VaranisArano · February 2022

@ZOS_Gilliam
Question: Since you know that morph choices aren't going to be quite as obvious or binary, and you seem to be shifting towards a range/melee playstyle choice, are there any plans to update the Skills Advisor builds once this is all complete?

FeedbackOnly · February 2022

What about tank and healer identities. It's always DPS DPS ...this is why we got fake tanks and healer problems

Chips_Ahoy · February 2022

Each update is a contradiction with the previous one, they created a problem with CP points and now they don't know how to fix it.

I just read the pts patch notes and... really?

Imbue Weapon: This ability and its morphs now all cost 2700, rather than 2715 for their Stamina versions and 3122 for its Magicka morph.

Developer Comment: These abilities originally met these values on their launch, but due to the overwhelming amount of use they saw at the time, they were increased to reach the same relative cost of other spammables. Now that many spammables in the game have received some tweaks since then to further incentivize their use, we're comfortable moving these back to a cheaper cost for those players who want a lower cost spammable at the expense of class or weapon skill line synergy.

Since the ability was used by everyone, they decided to make adjustments so that no one could use it and now that no one uses it, they want people to use it again.

Incredible.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2022

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We’ve been closely monitoring the feedback and discussion surrounding the Update 33 combat preview and have taken note of a few reoccurring bits that we’d like to take some time to address, particularly regarding the hybridization work we’ve been working on for the past year and a half and the next big step of making most abilities scale dynamically (when applicable) with offensive stats.

To reiterate our goal, these passes have been done to help reduce the number of restrictions when engaging with an ability in your class kit or other skill line, helping you create a build that resonates with you based on what a skill offers, rather than the stats you’ve picked. However, we do still believe stats should always play an important role in determining effectiveness of skills and how your build comes to life in the game. With the sheer number of them in game, we’ve found that the previous system of Weapon versus Spell Damage, Critical Chance, and Penetration were severely impeding on one of the core mantras of the game: play the way you want. With other stats, such as Health, Magicka, and Stamina and the recovery of those stats, we feel we have a large area to enforce limits of how often you can utilize skills as a defining factor of identity and build definition, rather than the potency of those skills as well.

One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Another area we’ve seen quite a bit of feedback on is morph diversity and how the changes to hybridization impact which morph you want to pick. In previous updates, there were pretty clear options; if your ability morphed into a change in cost it likely also changed in its scaling, leading to relatively binary morph options of just picking whichever ability met your primary resource. Now, the ability’s potency is far less impacted by your stats and instead focuses on what it costs and adds in functionality. This will be a vast improvement compared to many of the binary picks of before where you didn’t really have two options if you were a specialized build, but we do still know there are many morph options that don’t hold a candle to one another. On that note, depending on specialization and the type of play you’re focusing on, many morphs will remain rather contextual in nature. Comparing more damage for a specific attack versus gaining an Area of Effect form of a Major Debuff may seem like a simple option for a high-end damage dealer, but outside of that context, a compelling choice is still seen.

While this update will conclude much of our hybridization work (aside from the work-in-progress consumable adjustments we mentioned in the original post) we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up and evolve along with the game. Thanks for your time and we hope this helped give some insight into where our focus has been!

I understand what the goal was @ZOS_Gilliam , but for magicka warden we already had badly eroded identities beforehand. We can't make meaningful build choices when it comes to class skills anymore. Not like sorcerer can, for example. Because we've always had so few damage skills to work with. One of the few meaningful choices we had, at least in my opinion was the short time when deep fissure and sub assault were unique to their respective roles. Deep Fissure modifies your rotation by making you recast it every 3 seconds. This was interesting and in my opinion, more fun than the current 6 second rotation offered by the vastly superior sub assault. The thing that stops me from using deep fissure is that sub assault is just so much better damage and far easier as a choice than deep fissure, major breach doesn't even come close to competing with a better damage type in poison, recast and off-stat cost. An now with the hybridisation changes, more than ever magicka wardens have felt like their identity doesn't exist anymore.
Warden's issues need to be looked at.
Not just that it's self healing was entirely crippled by a lack of a solid burst heal since blackwood, or that one of or only few stun options in pvp was not only delayed but also an iritating hp based heal that only ever synergised defensively or if they were a stamden in melee range.

But in terms of meaningful class options. We need a new frost damage skill to help with the frost damage dealer archetype, we need a reason to use deep fissure over sub assault in pve, we need our useless morphs to see some type of help to fit them into a niche.

The lotus flower changes were a step in the right direction. Why did it stop there?

maxjapank · February 2022

@ZOS_Gilliam Why don't you fix the "stuck in combat" in Cyrodiil before you go making such big changes? It's just one simple thing, but it's probably the biggest pain area for many of us.

WrathOfInnos · February 2022

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We’ve been closely monitoring the feedback and discussion surrounding the Update 33 combat preview and have taken note of a few reoccurring bits that we’d like to take some time to address, particularly regarding the hybridization work we’ve been working on for the past year and a half and the next big step of making most abilities scale dynamically (when applicable) with offensive stats.

To reiterate our goal, these passes have been done to help reduce the number of restrictions when engaging with an ability in your class kit or other skill line, helping you create a build that resonates with you based on what a skill offers, rather than the stats you’ve picked. However, we do still believe stats should always play an important role in determining effectiveness of skills and how your build comes to life in the game. With the sheer number of them in game, we’ve found that the previous system of Weapon versus Spell Damage, Critical Chance, and Penetration were severely impeding on one of the core mantras of the game: play the way you want. With other stats, such as Health, Magicka, and Stamina and the recovery of those stats, we feel we have a large area to enforce limits of how often you can utilize skills as a defining factor of identity and build definition, rather than the potency of those skills as well.

One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Another area we’ve seen quite a bit of feedback on is morph diversity and how the changes to hybridization impact which morph you want to pick. In previous updates, there were pretty clear options; if your ability morphed into a change in cost it likely also changed in its scaling, leading to relatively binary morph options of just picking whichever ability met your primary resource. Now, the ability’s potency is far less impacted by your stats and instead focuses on what it costs and adds in functionality. This will be a vast improvement compared to many of the binary picks of before where you didn’t really have two options if you were a specialized build, but we do still know there are many morph options that don’t hold a candle to one another. On that note, depending on specialization and the type of play you’re focusing on, many morphs will remain rather contextual in nature. Comparing more damage for a specific attack versus gaining an Area of Effect form of a Major Debuff may seem like a simple option for a high-end damage dealer, but outside of that context, a compelling choice is still seen.

While this update will conclude much of our hybridization work (aside from the work-in-progress consumable adjustments we mentioned in the original post) we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up and evolve along with the game. Thanks for your time and we hope this helped give some insight into where our focus has been!

I understand what the goal was @ZOS_Gilliam , but for magicka warden we already had badly eroded identities beforehand. We can't make meaningful build choices when it comes to class skills anymore. Not like sorcerer can, for example. Because we've always had so few damage skills to work with. One of the few meaningful choices we had, at least in my opinion was the short time when deep fissure and sub assault were unique to their respective roles. Deep Fissure modifies your rotation by making you recast it every 3 seconds. This was interesting and in my opinion, more fun than the current 6 second rotation offered by the vastly superior sub assault. The thing that stops me from using deep fissure is that sub assault is just so much better damage and far easier as a choice than deep fissure, major breach doesn't even come close to competing with a better damage type in poison, recast and off-stat cost. An now with the hybridisation changes, more than ever magicka wardens have felt like their identity doesn't exist anymore.
Warden's issues need to be looked at.
Not just that it's self healing was entirely crippled by a lack of a solid burst heal since blackwood, or that one of or only few stun options in pvp was not only delayed but also an iritating hp based heal that only ever synergised defensively or if they were a stamden in melee range.

But in terms of meaningful class options. We need a new frost damage skill to help with the frost damage dealer archetype, we need a reason to use deep fissure over sub assault in pve, we need our useless morphs to see some type of help to fit them into a niche.

Warden is an interesting example to discuss. I've always found the morph choices for Wardens to be completely lacking, since they simply had a magicka morph and a stamina morph of each skill, no decisions were required after you chose your main resource. I actually liked when Subterranean Assault became viable on Magicka Warden simply because it allowed another option. However it quickly became clear that Deep Fissure is an underpowered morph, and does not compare to similar delayed damage skills. Deep Fissure deals:

50% the damage per cast of Subterranean Assault
53% the damage per cast of Haunting Curse
60% to 90% the damage per cast of Stalking Blastbones
Significantly less than Purifying or Power of the Light (scaling depends on build)
77% the damage per cast of Shadow Silk (with nobody using the synergy)

I agree that Fissure will see little to no use after these changes, it's already a questionable morph choice. The morph that gives double the value per cast is always going to be preferable, and for a PVE magden Sub Assault's stamina cost makes it essentially a free cast every 6s, which is necessary given Warden's poor sustain. The solution here is to buff Deep Fissure's damage, sustain and/or utility, and maybe change its damage type to frost. This shouldn't be an obstacle to opening hybridization across all ESO builds.

On the point of identity, I believe it should exist for builds, but I see no reason to restrict identity based on the main resource (stam or mag). For example, a Frost Warden should be a build, or a Poison Warden, not necessarily a Frost Magden and Poison Stamden. Maybe the absolute meta frost build does end up more magicka focused and should invest their 64 attribute points into that resource, but this is far from the current "you put points into stamina so you must use poison/bleed and never frost". The main resource does not need to be tied to damage types, and I appreciate that the game is moving away from this (with the new CP system moving in the right direction).

francesinhalover · February 2022

buff rapid strikes and shrouded dagger plz.

StarOfElyon · February 2022

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We’ve been closely monitoring the feedback and discussion surrounding the Update 33 combat preview and have taken note of a few reoccurring bits that we’d like to take some time to address, particularly regarding the hybridization work we’ve been working on for the past year and a half and the next big step of making most abilities scale dynamically (when applicable) with offensive stats.

To reiterate our goal, these passes have been done to help reduce the number of restrictions when engaging with an ability in your class kit or other skill line, helping you create a build that resonates with you based on what a skill offers, rather than the stats you’ve picked. However, we do still believe stats should always play an important role in determining effectiveness of skills and how your build comes to life in the game. With the sheer number of them in game, we’ve found that the previous system of Weapon versus Spell Damage, Critical Chance, and Penetration were severely impeding on one of the core mantras of the game: play the way you want. With other stats, such as Health, Magicka, and Stamina and the recovery of those stats, we feel we have a large area to enforce limits of how often you can utilize skills as a defining factor of identity and build definition, rather than the potency of those skills as well.

One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Another area we’ve seen quite a bit of feedback on is morph diversity and how the changes to hybridization impact which morph you want to pick. In previous updates, there were pretty clear options; if your ability morphed into a change in cost it likely also changed in its scaling, leading to relatively binary morph options of just picking whichever ability met your primary resource. Now, the ability’s potency is far less impacted by your stats and instead focuses on what it costs and adds in functionality. This will be a vast improvement compared to many of the binary picks of before where you didn’t really have two options if you were a specialized build, but we do still know there are many morph options that don’t hold a candle to one another. On that note, depending on specialization and the type of play you’re focusing on, many morphs will remain rather contextual in nature. Comparing more damage for a specific attack versus gaining an Area of Effect form of a Major Debuff may seem like a simple option for a high-end damage dealer, but outside of that context, a compelling choice is still seen.

While this update will conclude much of our hybridization work (aside from the work-in-progress consumable adjustments we mentioned in the original post) we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up and evolve along with the game. Thanks for your time and we hope this helped give some insight into where our focus has been!

Thanks for the update @Gilliamtherogue . I can tell you as someone who plays traditional, split stat, hybrids that sustain is usually an issue. Probably always will be. You can have a stamina spammable but run out of magic from having to spam a heal under pressure. Pure builds will always be superior to hybrids but I do appreciate your efforts to make the way I play less impaired.

StarOfElyon · February 2022

maxjapank wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam Why don't you fix the "stuck in combat" in Cyrodiil before you go making such big changes? It's just one simple thing, but it's probably the biggest pain area for many of us.

Cyrodiil is jacked up. It needs a complete overhaul. I don't think it's as simple as you say.

rexagamemnon · February 2022

An idea for the devs, give the players a choice…
Option #1: select current system with dynamic damage, regardless of stat choices
Option #2: Keep current damage system, but make resource management scale with highest max stat

Jabassa · February 2022

@ZOS_Gilliam Thank you for the update. This is a step in the right direction in terms of communication, and hopefully the start of rebuilding player faith in the dev team. KEEP IT UP!

Jabassa · February 2022

maxjapank wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam Why don't you fix the "stuck in combat" in Cyrodiil before you go making such big changes? It's just one simple thing, but it's probably the biggest pain area for many of us.

@maxjapank
They’re working on that by rewriting all the game’s code. That however, is a daunting task and is likely going to take 1-2 years to complete. I’m an end game PvPer myself, so I feel your pain, but we have to understand reality. And yes, it’s true that if the devs had listened from the start, we wouldn’t be here right now, but an old mentor of mine gave me good advice that applies here: “How we got here doesn’t matter, it’s in the past. What matters is how we move forward”

ESO_Nightingale · February 2022

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We’ve been closely monitoring the feedback and discussion surrounding the Update 33 combat preview and have taken note of a few reoccurring bits that we’d like to take some time to address, particularly regarding the hybridization work we’ve been working on for the past year and a half and the next big step of making most abilities scale dynamically (when applicable) with offensive stats.

To reiterate our goal, these passes have been done to help reduce the number of restrictions when engaging with an ability in your class kit or other skill line, helping you create a build that resonates with you based on what a skill offers, rather than the stats you’ve picked. However, we do still believe stats should always play an important role in determining effectiveness of skills and how your build comes to life in the game. With the sheer number of them in game, we’ve found that the previous system of Weapon versus Spell Damage, Critical Chance, and Penetration were severely impeding on one of the core mantras of the game: play the way you want. With other stats, such as Health, Magicka, and Stamina and the recovery of those stats, we feel we have a large area to enforce limits of how often you can utilize skills as a defining factor of identity and build definition, rather than the potency of those skills as well.

One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Another area we’ve seen quite a bit of feedback on is morph diversity and how the changes to hybridization impact which morph you want to pick. In previous updates, there were pretty clear options; if your ability morphed into a change in cost it likely also changed in its scaling, leading to relatively binary morph options of just picking whichever ability met your primary resource. Now, the ability’s potency is far less impacted by your stats and instead focuses on what it costs and adds in functionality. This will be a vast improvement compared to many of the binary picks of before where you didn’t really have two options if you were a specialized build, but we do still know there are many morph options that don’t hold a candle to one another. On that note, depending on specialization and the type of play you’re focusing on, many morphs will remain rather contextual in nature. Comparing more damage for a specific attack versus gaining an Area of Effect form of a Major Debuff may seem like a simple option for a high-end damage dealer, but outside of that context, a compelling choice is still seen.

While this update will conclude much of our hybridization work (aside from the work-in-progress consumable adjustments we mentioned in the original post) we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up and evolve along with the game. Thanks for your time and we hope this helped give some insight into where our focus has been!

I understand what the goal was @ZOS_Gilliam , but for magicka warden we already had badly eroded identities beforehand. We can't make meaningful build choices when it comes to class skills anymore. Not like sorcerer can, for example. Because we've always had so few damage skills to work with. One of the few meaningful choices we had, at least in my opinion was the short time when deep fissure and sub assault were unique to their respective roles. Deep Fissure modifies your rotation by making you recast it every 3 seconds. This was interesting and in my opinion, more fun than the current 6 second rotation offered by the vastly superior sub assault. The thing that stops me from using deep fissure is that sub assault is just so much better damage and far easier as a choice than deep fissure, major breach doesn't even come close to competing with a better damage type in poison, recast and off-stat cost. An now with the hybridisation changes, more than ever magicka wardens have felt like their identity doesn't exist anymore.
Warden's issues need to be looked at.
Not just that it's self healing was entirely crippled by a lack of a solid burst heal since blackwood, or that one of or only few stun options in pvp was not only delayed but also an iritating hp based heal that only ever synergised defensively or if they were a stamden in melee range.

But in terms of meaningful class options. We need a new frost damage skill to help with the frost damage dealer archetype, we need a reason to use deep fissure over sub assault in pve, we need our useless morphs to see some type of help to fit them into a niche.

Warden is an interesting example to discuss. I've always found the morph choices for Wardens to be completely lacking, since they simply had a magicka morph and a stamina morph of each skill, no decisions were required after you chose your main resource. I actually liked when Subterranean Assault became viable on Magicka Warden simply because it allowed another option. However it quickly became clear that Deep Fissure is an underpowered morph, and does not compare to similar delayed damage skills. Deep Fissure deals:
50% the damage per cast of Subterranean Assault

53% the damage per cast of Haunting Curse

60% to 90% the damage per cast of Stalking Blastbones

Significantly less than Purifying or Power of the Light (scaling depends on build)

77% the damage per cast of Shadow Silk (with nobody using the synergy)

I agree that Fissure will see little to no use after these changes, it's already a questionable morph choice. The morph that gives double the value per cast is always going to be preferable, and for a PVE magden Sub Assault's stamina cost makes it essentially a free cast every 6s, which is necessary given Warden's poor sustain. The solution here is to buff Deep Fissure's damage, sustain and/or utility, and maybe change its damage type to frost. This shouldn't be an obstacle to opening hybridization across all ESO builds.

On the point of identity, I believe it should exist for builds, but I see no reason to restrict identity based on the main resource (stam or mag). For example, a Frost Warden should be a build, or a Poison Warden, not necessarily a Frost Magden and Poison Stamden. Maybe the absolute meta frost build does end up more magicka focused and should invest their 64 attribute points into that resource, but this is far from the current "you put points into stamina so you must use poison/bleed and never frost". The main resource does not need to be tied to damage types, and I appreciate that the game is moving away from this (with the new CP system moving in the right direction).

Absolutely. I completely agree. Fissure vs Sub Assault should be a meaningful choice. but it's just not. nothing on warden is. there's so few options and none of them change up the builds.

Hotdog_23 · February 2022

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,

We’ve been closely monitoring the feedback and discussion surrounding the Update 33 combat preview and have taken note of a few reoccurring bits that we’d like to take some time to address, particularly regarding the hybridization work we’ve been working on for the past year and a half and the next big step of making most abilities scale dynamically (when applicable) with offensive stats.

To reiterate our goal, these passes have been done to help reduce the number of restrictions when engaging with an ability in your class kit or other skill line, helping you create a build that resonates with you based on what a skill offers, rather than the stats you’ve picked. However, we do still believe stats should always play an important role in determining effectiveness of skills and how your build comes to life in the game. With the sheer number of them in game, we’ve found that the previous system of Weapon versus Spell Damage, Critical Chance, and Penetration were severely impeding on one of the core mantras of the game: play the way you want. With other stats, such as Health, Magicka, and Stamina and the recovery of those stats, we feel we have a large area to enforce limits of how often you can utilize skills as a defining factor of identity and build definition, rather than the potency of those skills as well.

One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Another area we’ve seen quite a bit of feedback on is morph diversity and how the changes to hybridization impact which morph you want to pick. In previous updates, there were pretty clear options; if your ability morphed into a change in cost it likely also changed in its scaling, leading to relatively binary morph options of just picking whichever ability met your primary resource. Now, the ability’s potency is far less impacted by your stats and instead focuses on what it costs and adds in functionality. This will be a vast improvement compared to many of the binary picks of before where you didn’t really have two options if you were a specialized build, but we do still know there are many morph options that don’t hold a candle to one another. On that note, depending on specialization and the type of play you’re focusing on, many morphs will remain rather contextual in nature. Comparing more damage for a specific attack versus gaining an Area of Effect form of a Major Debuff may seem like a simple option for a high-end damage dealer, but outside of that context, a compelling choice is still seen.

While this update will conclude much of our hybridization work (aside from the work-in-progress consumable adjustments we mentioned in the original post) we know it will have knock on effects to the game, and we’re dedicated to following through as they pop up and evolve along with the game. Thanks for your time and we hope this helped give some insight into where our focus has been!

First, thanks for the taking the time to give extra feedback. As this area has been lacking lately.

Second, I like this change as I see it opens more builds and options or at least what it looks like on paper (or screen) due to no PTS on console sadly.

Third I can see many skills and morphs getting retooled eventually to help differentiate among them more than one mainly used by stamina-based characters or magical based characters. Especially the DOT type skills. Even can see you going as far as to make some morphs change from using stamina to magic or vs. verse.

Exciting times for sure. Stay safe

James-Wayne · February 2022

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings everyone,
One of the main concerns we’ve seen is how classes will retain their identity moving forward with the new system of dynamic scaling. In our efforts to reduce penalties and restrictions, there always comes an air of homogenization with these changes, where more things feel similar in nature. Our goal is never to intentionally hurt strong identities and we try to avoid it as much as possible while still improving your freedom in creation and expression. We believe that ability costs and how they play into your build will still be a large factor in terms of how frequently you can use abilities. For example, it will be harder for a fully specialized Stamina build to run a “spammable” ability like Puncturing Sweeps or Impale as frequently as a Magicka build, unless they start to make decisions that detract from their specialization of Stamina based actions, thus beginning to change their identity. However, reducing the number of builds in the world that focus on specialization is not as problematic, and in fact, something we would like to see more of. Moving the concept away of identifying only as Magicka or Stamina and instead focusing on playstyle - such as Melee or Range - and using skills of varying costs to realize those goals is something we are actively looking forward to. That said, we are aware of the reality that when trying to squeeze out every possible amount of efficiency in a build, there will always be choices that come out ahead, and we accept this reality as long as those choices aren’t coming out ahead in almost every situation.

Its funny you mention this because I did this exact change on PTS when it opened up and came up with very good results. My Stamplar changed from Biting Jabs to Puncturing Sweeps and as I dont need the large stamina pool anymore or I did was change my blue food Health/Stamina to blue Health/Mag Recovery and voila I can sustain Puncturing Sweeps through my rotation.

Update 33 is going to be so great for builds!

Hescrow · February 2022

2 suggestions:
- as we see hybridation growing up, make weapon hybrid for ressource sustain is the next step

- rollback imbue weapon mechanism with crystal weapon otherwise make crystal weapon as a 20 seconds buff

goldenarcher1 · February 2022

Couple of things about combat changes:

*Nice to see a source of major brutality/sorcery in bow skills now.

*Will skills in general be more or less powerful than before?

eg.if i have a tooltip of 10k for dizzying swing in the current patch,will it be buffed or nerfed in update 33.

Vetixio · February 2022

Stopped playing a while ago. But damn they are hybridising everything, way to kill diversity! This update looks like it will continue the Elder Stamina Online. That along with Cyrodiil still being a lagfest, vampire still being awful, armor weight imbalances and crazy constant ‘balance’ changes and proc sets, looks like I won’t be returning any time soon 🙃
This game would be great if they fixed performance and just thought about the impacts their crazy changes would make before they implement them!

Hescrow · February 2022

What about hybridization of HA sustain ?

marius_buys · March 2022

@ZOS_Gilliam have you considered that the cannot mount in combat rule is causing continious computation checks/issues that may be contributing to the lag.

Iselin · March 2022

Now all we need is hybridization of skill cost. Having the effect scale off your higher offensive stat is good but builds and morph choices will still push you in the direction of which resource it uses to do its thing.

I'm an old heretic who proposed back in 2014 using stamina for only things like sprint, dodge, block, bash, renaming magicka to "power" (or something similar that sounds less magey) and using that as the one skill resource.

Having abilities cost whichever resource is higher would be a step in that direction.

Too simple?

GlorphNoldorin · March 2022

StarOfElyon wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

@ZOS_Gilliam Why don't you fix the "stuck in combat" in Cyrodiil before you go making such big changes? It's just one simple thing, but it's probably the biggest pain area for many of us.

Cyrodiil is jacked up. It needs a complete overhaul. I don't think it's as simple as you say.

The in combat bug has never been simple to fix. Originally it came before Summerset, disappeared during the Summerset patch then returned in the next patch and now is part of the game. The devs for a long time were silent then said it was too difficult to remove.

Hoping a complete rebuild may fix it but not holding much hope.

CP5 · March 2022

Iselin wrote: »

Now all we need is hybridization of skill cost. Having the effect scale off your higher offensive stat is good but builds and morph choices will still push you in the direction of which resource it uses to do its thing.

I'm an old heretic who proposed back in 2014 using stamina for only things like sprint, dodge, block, bash, renaming magicka to "power" (or something similar that sounds less magey) and using that as the one skill resource.

Having abilities cost whichever resource is higher would be a step in that direction.

Too simple?

Issue from that to me would be, "what would a stamina based player look like here?" By the feel of it they would just be able to roll a lot and magicka builds transitioning into that system would have the stats needed to cast many skills and sustain it. Dragons Dogma is a game with only health and stamina, but stamina is used for everything including spell casting, so while you could spam skills like mad you wouldn't be able to get out of the way of an incoming attack or potentially just exhausting yourself (a self stun when stamina is fully drained). Something like that could work, perhaps better, but with the direction ZOS is taking it just feels more and more like there are fewer and fewer options to actually play differently, with these changes making everyone do more of the same for more of the same results.

Hescrow · March 2022

Iselin wrote: »

Now all we need is hybridization of skill cost. Having the effect scale off your higher offensive stat is good but builds and morph choices will still push you in the direction of which resource it uses to do its thing.

I'm an old heretic who proposed back in 2014 using stamina for only things like sprint, dodge, block, bash, renaming magicka to "power" (or something similar that sounds less magey) and using that as the one skill resource.

Having abilities cost whichever resource is higher would be a step in that direction.

Too simple?

No it is against Elder Scrolls spirit.
Health Magicka Stamina

If you want spam magicka skills and Stamina skills, you have to adapt yourself and find Gear and build good enough for doing that.

Ex: shacklebreaker and twice born star

Iselin · March 2022

Hescrow wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Now all we need is hybridization of skill cost. Having the effect scale off your higher offensive stat is good but builds and morph choices will still push you in the direction of which resource it uses to do its thing.

I'm an old heretic who proposed back in 2014 using stamina for only things like sprint, dodge, block, bash, renaming magicka to "power" (or something similar that sounds less magey) and using that as the one skill resource.

Having abilities cost whichever resource is higher would be a step in that direction.

Too simple?

No it is against Elder Scrolls spirit.
Health Magicka Stamina

If you want spam magicka skills and Stamina skills, you have to adapt yourself and find Gear and build good enough for doing that.

Ex: shacklebreaker and twice born star

Against the Elder scroll spirit?

I see you're pretty new here so you're probably not aware of how the game was at launch when stamina abilities made more sense instead of being what they are today which are magical skills powered by stamina.

There were very few stamina morphs for anything that is magicky. Stamina was used almost exclusively for things that in real life would use physical prowess: swinging weapons etc.

However that created a 2-tier system where stamina builds were much more limited than magicka builds since the vast majority of class skills and morphs were magicka based. The ZOS solution to that imbalance (unfairness is what all stamina build players called it) was to add stamina-powered morphs to many magicky things that previously had 2 magicka morphs instead.

What we have today is a more balanced but arbitrary system where stamina powers all kinds of magic skills.

And yes I'm aware of all the hybrid sets but I'm not talking about hybridization. What I'm talking about is making morphs of skills give you two distinct choices without needing to be concerned about whether stamina or magicka power it. Concerned more for sustain than power reasons.