Champion Points update 34 (Major Nerfs)

Reslin · April 2022

I didn't see where else to post this so I decided to post it here. I don't have a problem with many changes but I do feel the nerf to Thaumaturge, Biting Aura, Deadly Aim, and Master At Arms is too much. I understand that the team wants people to try out different champion points and has determined that these are "overused" but my concern is with the problem that most dps (the average dps) is already under performing. A common complaint is that in pugs the average dps doesn't pull their own weight in veteran dungeons and a common dilemma people have is that putting in enough dps.

A 4%-8% damage nerf is going to take someone who can barely pull his own weight to no longer being able to pull their own weight. People with more casual gear sets are going to be hit the hardest. This loss in character power is going to push people to better sets and is going to reduce the amount of viable gear sets because players are going to need to make up their power elsewhere. This means less fun sets and a greater push towards more meta sets. This harms gear variety rather than aids in it. So I propose the following:

I am not saying they shouldn't be nerfed but I feel reducing it to 4% per stage is better if it's going to max out in two stages. So instead of maxing at 6% it will max at 8%. I feel this matches up better with changes made to say Fighting Finesse which also went from 10% down to 8%. This will still lower player power but not as severely as it currently is on patch test server. Most players who post here have guilds, participate in trials, and do vet hard mode. I'm more concerned about the average player, the person who participates solely in pugs, and isn't going to get involved in bleeding edge min/maxing.

If others disagree feel free to voice and if I'm missing something very obvious sure I'd be glad to hear it.

francesinhalover · April 2022

I agree, i dont see a reason for the nerfs.

If dps is too high is that really a problem?

Reslin · April 2022

francesinhalover wrote: »

I agree, i dont see a reason for the nerfs.

If dps is too high is that really a problem?

Honestly same here. In the big update preview they gave they stated

"In addition, expect to see a small pass on some of the Champion Point’s Warfare constellations."

A 4% reduction to the most popular warfare constellations is hardly what I would consider a small pass especially when they max out at 10% each. A 4% reduction is a 40% nerf to the points. This is definitely not what I'd consider a "Small pass." and it's pretty sizeable. Unfortunately I don't think I can convince them to undo this change but I'm hoping that they'd be willing to compromise to a smaller adjustment. At least to see how it interacts in practice but as of now the dps loss in the PTS is very noticeable to many.

I'm surprised this is getting less traction/isn't really being discussed. It also, again, has me worried about the biggest complaint regarding pugs.

"Pugs do terrible dps. Dps in pugs don't carry their own weight." and this really isn't helping. It also makes me nervous for players who worked their butt off (casuals) who just broke into Vet Dungeon dps just to be locked back out of it in guilds because now they'll fall below the acceptable threshold. It.. just doesn't really help anyone.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about is this..

The most common constellation slottables for dps are..

Biting Aura, Thaumaturge, Master at Arms, Deadly Aim, Fighting Finesse, and Backstabber.

Thaumaturge, Master At Arms, and Deadly Aim, and Biting Aura used to max at 10%. They now max at 6%. Fighting Finesse maxed at 10% and now 8%.

Backstabber maxed at 15%. Now it's been reduced to 10%.

Hitting all of these at once is a huge net power loss and mid tier and low tier dps are going to be effected the most.

Also.. I am wondering if I should have posted it in the PTS Update 34 - Bug Reports for Combat Balance & Abilities thread but I initially thought that was entirely for bug reports.. and I don't want to spam. Oh well.

kojou · April 2022

Its not going to have that much impact on overall DPS, but I do wonder why. It seemed like these were supposed to be the obvious choice for DPS by design and lowering the values won't change that very much. They will still be the obvious choice...

Adding more choices that are BiS for a class or type of damage (flame/frost/poison/etc) would have been my preferred direction, but I wasn't asked.

Arthtur · April 2022

Well they either have to nerf our damage or scale older content so we dont have power creep. If they wont do it then well... Lets just nuke everything!

Why they nerf CP tho? I have no idea. CP is already overnerfed to the point that its barerly worth anything. They should just buff weaker stars and that's it. CP needs buffs not nerfs.
Red tree still lacks good stars. But they just add new stars here, weaker than existing ones.
Green tree still is just a pain and they keep ignoring it.

And here im, waiting for CP stars that increase time of our dots and better ones for sustain... At least i can have dreams...

So in short: They pushed hybrisation, DPS went through the roof, CP got nerfed again.

I guess that new star with penetration will be the best one. Ppl will run more medium pieces to hit crit cap and this star will take care of missing pen. But that's just a guess...

Reslin · April 2022

kojou wrote: »

Its not going to have that much impact on overall DPS, but I do wonder why. It seemed like these were supposed to be the obvious choice for DPS by design and lowering the values won't change that very much. They will still be the obvious choice...

Adding more choices that are BiS for a class or type of damage (flame/frost/poison/etc) would have been my preferred direction, but I wasn't asked.

Curious question: What's your trial dummy dps Live and PTS? I have some of my own data I'm compiling to my backend but it would be nice if people can post here their differences.

Also I agree with you. That would have been pretty neat. Truth is even with the changes they made to other skills people are still going to use the heavily nerfed ones. It isn't really going to tempt people to try out different constellations. They're still going to be BIS a few may fall out entirely but then center around the most common 4 even more.

Arthtur wrote: »

And here im, waiting for CP stars that increase time of our dots and better ones for sustain... At least i can have dreams...

This is the kind of creativity I would absolutely love.

merpins · April 2022

What they should do:
1. Buff the bad stars that no one uses until they become relevant, or change them to make them relevant.
2. Make more unique stars that do weird or fun things. For example, a Warfare star that causes a bolt of energy or a crow from misrule or something to leap out and attack an enemy with a % chance proc dealing x damage, or a Craft star that causes an enemy that dies to dance in place before dying. Purely fun with the Craft star, since they can't give mechanical benefits for some reason.
3. Make the stars that give flat bonuses passive while leaving them nerfed. We know they claimed that the reason for them being slotted was because it effected the server stability, but that's complete garbage for a reason. If they're going to be such low %s, make them passive and give us new interesting stars rather than ones that are just the old CP system but worse.
4. Make it so when you bar swap, you also bar swap your CP stars. I mean they way they are designed is similar to our skills, and if they want us to experiment, the best way to do that is to give us the option to bar swap our cp stars. This obviously only works when they do 1-3, and add a bunch new fun stars.
5. This is optional, but why not combine the trees a bit? They are skill trees, so a branch could reach and share the Warfare+Craft or Warfare+Fitness. This could open up some really unique abilities that are somewhat shared between the trees.

Maythor · April 2022

I had a post prepared, but actually I am just tired of this .. I've stopped caring to be honest.

Let them do what they will, nothing we say will change anything.

merpins · April 2022

Maythor wrote: »

I had a post prepared, but actually I am just tired of this .. I've stopped caring to be honest.

Let them do what they will, nothing we say will change anything.

Agreed. They don't really listen to us anyway when it comes to the CP system or balancing in general. I mean they still try to balance PVP and PVE together instead of separately for gods sake. It's annoying to be sure, and there are plenty of really good ideas from the community, but they continue to dig in their heels, plug their ears, and shout "nanananana can't hear you" at the top of their lungs.

karthrag_inak · April 2022

If khajiit ever quits this game, it will be caused by the constant changes to the core combat system, with a total disregard for player input.

Djennku · April 2022

I've gone in on my main character who has a few of these slotted. In a couple dungeon runs, things were dying faster than what I'd do on live right now. I also did a couple dummy tests and noticed I hit harder than what I do on live. (BTW, addons like Combat Meteics, bandits, etc., are not accurate in measuring damage. The game showed I hit about 10k more than what CM registered in one test.) So from experience, I can say that the adjustments are far from a nerf.

Djennku · April 2022

(Forgot to add the screenshot)

VaxtinTheWolf · April 2022

Wait, that's a thing they did, really? God almighty; This whole 'Champion' point system basically has turned into a crumby "i guess i'll pick this because there is nothing better but barely matters' system. There's hardly any heft or weight behind the choices anymore that feels like it provides a meaningful benefit. Just give us 5-6 slots in each or 15 total and let us put whatever we want in them. These nodes used to give us upwards of 24%- or something bonuses.

I guess they crammed all the power into the characters and gear themselves and left this system an unrewarding pile of leftovers. If they dont like bare number increases, make them more conditional. When you crit with a single target ability, deal an extra amount of damage in AOE or something. You people are considering ripping Necromancer Tanks stamina sustain from their class apparently?, why not cram another node in the system for tanks in general; While you have a 1h&S or Frost staff equipped allow 25% of your recovery to remain active while blocking. If someone happened to have 3000 recovery, that's like 750 every two seconds, which at that point just let them have it. Stuff like that.

LesserCircle · April 2022

Just.. bring back cp1.0 No annoying slottables just bliss

Treeshka · April 2022

I think instead of nerfing these maybe other options can be buffed.

UntilValhalla13 · April 2022

Treeshka wrote: »

I think instead of nerfing these maybe other options can be buffed.

We're not allowed to have nice things though.

"SpReAdShEeTs SaY tHeSe ArE oVeRpErFoRmInG"

It's happened year after year after year, and like the above person, I'm just tired of it. Nothing that we say matters because they're just going to railroad the changes through anyways. I still miss cost reduction cp... Pepperidge farm remembers.

Reslin · April 2022

Djennku wrote: »

I've gone in on my main character who has a few of these slotted. In a couple dungeon runs, things were dying faster than what I'd do on live right now. I also did a couple dummy tests and noticed I hit harder than what I do on live. (BTW, addons like Combat Meteics, bandits, etc., are not accurate in measuring damage. The game showed I hit about 10k more than what CM registered in one test.) So from experience, I can say that the adjustments are far from a nerf.

This is actually incorrect. Your combat metrics is accurate. The dummy isn't registering correctly because it is over inflating the dummies HP. There's already a thread on this. So you are doing 62k. Not 72k. So it's the other way around. How much do you do on live?

fiender66 · April 2022

I stopped following this micromanagement of % values a long time ago.

I've made a stamplar with deadly/Hexos/lover and she pulverises almost everything she meets using the most common stars. That is enough for me.

As an aside, Isobel is a rather good "hybrid" tank/healer.

MiguZ · April 2022

If they are going to nerf the combat CPs they should just remove the whole combat CP tree all together. That would bring the new players and the old players to the same line as they always wanted. Whats the point of having the blue cp if they are almost useless. #Stop nerfing the already nerfed system.

karekiz · April 2022

ZoS
1.0 CP - "Its too hard to balance these so lets remove them and add slottable with a limit on how many you take!"
2.0 CP - What? Why is our "Free 10% extra dot dmg" vs "A whole 1K more mana" not working out like we thought!

merpins · April 2022

karekiz wrote: »

ZoS
1.0 CP - "Its too hard to balance these so lets remove them and add slottable with a limit on how many you take!"
2.0 CP - What? Why is our "Free 10% extra dot dmg" vs "A whole 1K more mana" not working out like we thought!

For real though. They should just make the damage boosts 5% bonuses, but make them passive, then give more options that are fun rather than just flat damage bonuses. If they don't want us to only use the damage bonuses, then they need to be passive so we can't pick them.

Reslin · April 2022

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

karekiz wrote: »

ZoS
1.0 CP - "Its too hard to balance these so lets remove them and add slottable with a limit on how many you take!"
2.0 CP - What? Why is our "Free 10% extra dot dmg" vs "A whole 1K more mana" not working out like we thought!

For real though. They should just make the damage boosts 5% bonuses, but make them passive, then give more options that are fun rather than just flat damage bonuses. If they don't want us to only use the damage bonuses, then they need to be passive so we can't pick them.

Absolutely agreed. There is a ton of really great ideas in this thread alone if they're interested in mining it for ideas. I don't know what more can be said. Damage bonuses shouldn't be slottable but be passive instead as you mentioned with only fun utility options slottable. This would be much better than the current system.

LukosCreyden · April 2022

Nobody is going to choose "mediocre gimmick star" over flat dps increase stars. They could nerf them even harder and this would still not change. To solve this problem, they can make the go-to dps stars passive effects that do not require slotting. THEN, people will branch out to the more gimmicky ones.

Reslin · April 2022

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Nobody is going to choose "mediocre gimmick star" over flat dps increase stars. They could nerf them even harder and this would still not change. To solve this problem, they can make the go-to dps stars passive effects that do not require slotting. THEN, people will branch out to the more gimmicky ones.

Honestly yeah this would be the best approach. Assuming they don't want to take the suggestions here and put more effort into the system this would be the simplest solution.

Jaraal · April 2022

francesinhalover wrote: »

I agree, i dont see a reason for the nerfs.

If dps is too high is that really a problem?

People have been complaining about healing overperforming in PvP, so what does ZOS do? Lower overall damage.

kojou · April 2022

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

karekiz wrote: »

ZoS
1.0 CP - "Its too hard to balance these so lets remove them and add slottable with a limit on how many you take!"
2.0 CP - What? Why is our "Free 10% extra dot dmg" vs "A whole 1K more mana" not working out like we thought!

For real though. They should just make the damage boosts 5% bonuses, but make them passive, then give more options that are fun rather than just flat damage bonuses. If they don't want us to only use the damage bonuses, then they need to be passive so we can't pick them.

I agree with this take. Make the static buffs passive, and make the cute flavor ones slottable.

Necrotech_Master · April 2022

Djennku wrote: »

(Forgot to add the screenshot)

the main thing i notice from this is the huge discrepency between what combat metrics is reporting versus what the dummy reported lol

your dummy did the system message 72646.6 dps
your combat metrics said 62526 dps

that is a reading difference of almost 10k

Reslin · April 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Djennku wrote: »

(Forgot to add the screenshot)

the main thing i notice from this is the huge discrepency between what combat metrics is reporting versus what the dummy reported lol

your dummy did the system message 72646.6 dps
your combat metrics said 62526 dps

that is a reading difference of almost 10k

Yeah, there was a thread on this. The dummy is reporting inflated values the combat metrics is what is accurate from that thread. The dummy isn't.