SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Let us go over long back reported and never really addressed issues that combat has that introduce skill gap between end dame players who are aware and learned to work around them and new players who do not know how to pay around those issues:

1. Templar Jabs One of the most beginner friendly class is Stamplar. A class that is designed to be easy. Its main source of damage Jabs has Animation and Sound effect last longer than actual cast time. So if a new player is using in game visual or sound queue to cast Jabs - they are loosing a lot of damage. Skilled players either trained or use GCD tacker addons to activate Jabs as soon as cast of it is over and are able to output more damage. This issue has been reported so many times, I personally submitted multiple in game feedback tickets about it, never has been fixed.
2. Smart targeting on healing skills with a buff component does not exist. So things like Combat Prayer or Enchanted Growth tend to hit same people no matter how much you cast it, forcing you to over-cast it as much as you possibly can in order to achieve good uptime on the buff component of the skill. Reported by multiple people form healer communities and ignored.
3. Circular Ground AOEs double casting or not casting. If you rapidly double-click a single target spammable - it will queue just one cast, resulting in fluid experience. If you double-click skills like Fire Rune, Boneyard, Impaling shards, it will queue 2 casts and double cast them, consuming a GCD, ignoring a light attack in between and resulting in loss of damage. This means a DD needs to practice to a robotic rotation where they never accidentally click same key twice in order to maximize their damage.
4. Channeled Heavy Attacks started to have issues connecting, disconnecting or getting a person stack in channeled heavy animation after one of the "behind the scenes" optimization re-hauls and never was addressed. It was reported with video evidence and explanation on how to reproduce the bug, it usually occurs in dynamic combat when targets and caster are moving. Never resolved.
5. Smart targeting on buff sets like Spaulder does not exist. So if you use 2 Spaulders - you will may be hit 8 people out of 12 because some will get buff from both and therefore waste a proc.
6. Necromancer class skills was broken since release, got multiple fixes, yet still does not fully work. For example, Shock Siphon refuses to connect when the body is clearly there, or connects to body behind you, when there is clearly a body in front of you. Blastbones behavior is unpredictable sometimes, for example you cast him at a terminal in vHOF, it takes 180 turn and launches itself at AG instead.
7. Tab targeting never works. You tab target Llothis - hit Olms instead. Tab target 1 mob in the pack, taunt another instead.
8. General targeting and trial boss hit boxes. You need to know exactly how big hit box is, where it is, and what kind of weird behaviors are associated with the hit boxes in order to maximize damage. For example you need to aim ground AOEs at Olms feet, yet you need to raise your camera up to get Destro Reach or Clench to cast, resulting in the need to constantly move your camera FOV in addition to all the casts you do. Another example Tidebor Taleria hitbox is so weird that only way for warden to hit it with Shalks is to stand at the very edge of her water AOE and aim exactly center of her body. Considering how much mechanics the fight has there in no way to be able to land shalks consistently making warden DD a very bad choice for vDSR.
9. DOTs and HOTs durations are all over the place. You have anywhere between 3 and 30s DOTs with increments of 1s meaning to perfect your DOTs uptime you need to play whack-a-mole. People do not look at their skill bars because DOTs are too short, 10s DOTs is perfectly fine duration. People looks at their skill bars because DOTs are all over the place, so you cant go static rotation and have to constantly track which DOTs is expiring next. Same for Supports and HOTs/Buff Uptimes. There used to be a perfectly simple Magplar static rotation built around 10s DOTs that was very accessible and used by my friend who has autism. Ha was able to be very effective DD. Then developers introduced one meta flip after another starting with Elsweyr, my friend could not catch up and quit the game. Currently that simple static rotation Magplar build does very low damage and can't compete against Necromancers or a DKs with dynamic rotations.
10. Range taunt does not work. Patch notes claim it was fixed, but its still a dice whether taunt will go off or not. Very cool way to incentivize all tanks to quit because they can not reliable perform the most basic mechanic tanks are responsible for - keeping stuff taunted.

Increasing the duration of DoT’s is ok. Reducing their damage per tick is not. It’s a net loss of DPS. The total damage increase doesn’t mean anything. If you had a DoT that dealt a million damage but over a million seconds, would you slot it? Hell no.

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Let us go over long back reported and never really addressed issues that combat has that introduce skill gap between end dame players who are aware and learned to work around them and new players who do not know how to pay around those issues:

1. Templar Jabs One of the most beginner friendly class is Stamplar. A class that is designed to be easy. Its main source of damage Jabs has Animation and Sound effect last longer than actual cast time. So if a new player is using in game visual or sound queue to cast Jabs - they are loosing a lot of damage. Skilled players either trained or use GCD tacker addons to activate Jabs as soon as cast of it is over and are able to output more damage. This issue has been reported so many times, I personally submitted multiple in game feedback tickets about it, never has been fixed.
2. Smart targeting on healing skills with a buff component does not exist. So things like Combat Prayer or Enchanted Growth tend to hit same people no matter how much you cast it, forcing you to over-cast it as much as you possibly can in order to achieve good uptime on the buff component of the skill. Reported by multiple people form healer communities and ignored.
3. Circular Ground AOEs double casting or not casting. If you rapidly double-click a single target spammable - it will queue just one cast, resulting in fluid experience. If you double-click skills like Fire Rune, Boneyard, Impaling shards, it will queue 2 casts and double cast them, consuming a GCD, ignoring a light attack in between and resulting in loss of damage. This means a DD needs to practice to a robotic rotation where they never accidentally click same key twice in order to maximize their damage.
4. Channeled Heavy Attacks started to have issues connecting, disconnecting or getting a person stack in channeled heavy animation after one of the "behind the scenes" optimization re-hauls and never was addressed. It was reported with video evidence and explanation on how to reproduce the bug, it usually occurs in dynamic combat when targets and caster are moving. Never resolved.
5. Smart targeting on buff sets like Spaulder does not exist. So if you use 2 Spaulders - you will may be hit 8 people out of 12 because some will get buff from both and therefore waste a proc.
6. Necromancer class skills was broken since release, got multiple fixes, yet still does not fully work. For example, Shock Siphon refuses to connect when the body is clearly there, or connects to body behind you, when there is clearly a body in front of you. Blastbones behavior is unpredictable sometimes, for example you cast him at a terminal in vHOF, it takes 180 turn and launches itself at AG instead.
7. Tab targeting never works. You tab target Llothis - hit Olms instead. Tab target 1 mob in the pack, taunt another instead.
8. General targeting and trial boss hit boxes. You need to know exactly how big hit box is, where it is, and what kind of weird behaviors are associated with the hit boxes in order to maximize damage. For example you need to aim ground AOEs at Olms feet, yet you need to raise your camera up to get Destro Reach or Clench to cast, resulting in the need to constantly move your camera FOV in addition to all the casts you do. Another example Tidebor Taleria hitbox is so weird that only way for warden to hit it with Shalks is to stand at the very edge of her water AOE and aim exactly center of her body. Considering how much mechanics the fight has there in no way to be able to land shalks consistently making warden DD a very bad choice for vDSR.
9. DOTs and HOTs durations are all over the place. You have anywhere between 3 and 30s DOTs with increments of 1s meaning to perfect your DOTs uptime you need to play whack-a-mole. People do not look at their skill bars because DOTs are too short, 10s DOTs is perfectly fine duration. People looks at their skill bars because DOTs are all over the place, so you cant go static rotation and have to constantly track which DOTs is expiring next. Same for Supports and HOTs/Buff Uptimes. There used to be a perfectly simple Magplar static rotation built around 10s DOTs that was very accessible and used by my friend who has autism. Ha was able to be very effective DD. Then developers introduced one meta flip after another starting with Elsweyr, my friend could not catch up and quit the game. Currently that simple static rotation Magplar build does very low damage and can't compete against Necromancers or a DKs with dynamic rotations.
10. Range taunt does not work. Patch notes claim it was fixed, but its still a dice whether taunt will go off or not. Very cool way to incentivize all tanks to quit because they can not reliable perform the most basic mechanic tanks are responsible for - keeping stuff taunted.

Increasing the duration of DoT’s is ok. Reducing their damage per tick is not. It’s a net loss of DPS. The total damage increase doesn’t mean anything. If you had a DoT that dealt a million damage but over a million seconds, would you slot it? Hell no.

That net loss of DPS is speculation.
We will have to see actual numbers, to decide if that is so. ☝️

Longer DoTs mean we have more time to spamm our main spammable and will have more DPS in execute range.

So, depending on the class, we might be having higher overall DPS. 🤷‍♂️

Those are mostly just bugs that only affect the top 1% of players that do endgame content. If we're objectively talking about the real reason, I honestly don't think it comes down to individual player performance. The "skill" gap in PVE and PVP is mostly down to knowledge of stacking stats/buffs/burst/mitigation etc which are not covered by any content creators except the Nefas raid composition videos for PVE. For PVP, I'm not aware of any small scalers or ball groups that teach or reveal their entire setup.

But in all honesty, there are various reasons why the skill gap exists. Including those you've listed. Light attack weaving is one of the reasons for the gap, but it's a misconception on a lot of players who think it's about spamming left click while pressing your ability key; it's not, CPM measures actual casts and is the important statistic to take away from this. The more you attempt to spam buttons, the less CPM you're actually likely to get as inputs will take priority over each other.

I'm not explaining this bit for the topic starter. SeaUnicorn already knows this stuff. Rather it's for others who have this misconception of what light attack weaving is.

Because of the basic queue system, if you left click at 250ms from the end of the current GCD, then press an ability button within 0-50ms, then another light attack or ability, all before the current GCD has ended, chances are only the light attack will get queued up.

Spamming buttons is usually the worst and least effective way to do weaving. It's no wonder people think you'll get carpal tunnel from it. It's a fundamental misunderstanding. Light attack weaving takes a little bit of precision and some discipline. Not wild spamming of keys.

When I attempt to teach people about weaving, the first thing I do is say "forget everything you think you know about it." Cliché, I know. But more often than not, it's needed. The second thing is "slow it down, right now you're learning. What you want to do is make sure your light attacks are actually going off. Do a light attack... ... now do a skill. Now repeat that. Do it a couple times. Now speed it up. Light attack... ... ... skill. Light attack... ... skill. Light attack, skill. Light attack, skill. Light attack, skill." It's not some mystical art that only the top 1% can do.

More often than not, it doesn't come down to age or reflexes or even disability (as even amputees have worked around this). It comes down to a mental block in most cases. You think, therefore...

Well, in this case, someone else has said "it's a bug" or "it's cheating" or "it's really hard, only the top players can do it" or some other contrivance, when in reality it does only take an afternoon to "master." I don't even necessarily think the game should teach it specifically.

Most other MMOs have some form of weaving, but they don't teach it. It's a skill gap in those games and it's a skill gap here. In FFXIV, for example, weaving -- or even double weaving -- isn't something shown in tutorials. People will often say on these forums that light attack weaving is unique to ESO. Weaving isn't unique at all, and even light attack weaving can be compared to other MMOs' versions of weaving -- which is usually mixing those oGDC (off Global Cooldown, instant cast) abilities with GCDs (Global Cooldowns, those with longer and shared cooldowns). Light attacks are oGCD abilities while main abilities are GCD.

The second thing outside of a mental block is... not caring or not feeling a need. This part in particular applies to everything and not just light attack weaving. A lot of people who play casually simply don't see the need to weave, and, thus, don't care. After all, as long as DPS is sufficient to get through content, why care about doing more? There isn't a good reason to care when you're doing overland quest content solo. This largely only applies to people in group content, or wanting to get into group content. Even some people at end game level on healers and tanks, for example; "I'm a healer, I don't need to weave," sure, but why wouldn't you? You have a Berserker, Magicka Absorb, etc. enchantment on your restoration staff, but you're not proccing that by using Combat Prayer, none of the restoration skills proc your weapon enchantment, so you should be light attacking just for that.

So with a skill-level which seems to only be dedicated to end game, why should people care? There are plenty of reasons why one should do it, but there isn't much of a reason to care about it outside of end game.

The problem with the current changes in the Preview: it won't convince those people to do play "better." In the same way that changing timings on DoTs or changing damage to light attacks won't stop someone from only applying their Blockade once every minute, doing a couple spammable attacks, and doing a few light attacks, with a grand total of 30 CPM for an entire fight. These changes are meaningless and won't really positively or negatively affect such players. ZOS isn't really raising the floor here by any real degree with the numbers we currently have (which isn't much).

There will always be a skill gap but the scale of it bad (from the point of view of not having a vast range of DPS) because ESO is very linear in everything. If they want to fix it then they need to make "getting good" rather less linear. If "getting good" instead of each chunk of effort taking you to 10K, 20K , 30K, 40K,50K takes you 10K, 20K, 29K, 37K, 45K,... the best DPS are still getting the biggest numbers and the highest score but the whole range is compressed more which makes the content work better. They've done some of that with CP but they've failed to address the rest of the game. Very few similar games are so linear in scaling.

Eso is the same and I really don't understand why a developer team wants so hard to let unskilled guitarists to play with Guns'n Roses.

It's an Elder Scrolls game. The basic story plot is nobody prisoner becomes great hero and saves world. That's why a lot of people play it. Not because they want to spend 3 months training to complete veteran hard mode sunspire. The whole game plot is basically the fantasy version of newb with guitar hero stick becomes rock star.

Don't get me wrong - the people who want to spend 3 months beating veteran sunspire hard mode no death etc are important too, but they are the tail not the dog.

etchedpixels wrote: »

There will always be a skill gap but the scale of it bad (from the point of view of not having a vast range of DPS) because ESO is very linear in everything.

The issue is, the proposed changes to DoTs and light attacks won't make getting good easier. People are looking at a symptom rather than a cause. The skill gap is enormous, magnitudes higher than most other games. I don't think anyone could debate that point. But this is because of misunderstandings of game systems, which are, while very in-depth, very basic and you do not need to be a mathematics professor to understand. This isn't such a huge issue in other games with class or role restricted gear, for example, or where combos are displayed to show the basics of a rotation, have level synced content, or games which don't have live readouts for DPS.

A DD right now with full heavy armour, health enchantments, health regen enchantments, full loadout of defensive CP, and doing maybe 60 CPM will not do considerably more after the update. Compared to someone who understands that heavy armour will not really help contribute to DPS and instead opts for light or medium, that higher CPM generally means better uptimes and higher overall damage, the changes will not bridge this gap in any way, because the wrong thing is being focused. The symptom of low DPS is the focus rather than the cause, which is the understanding of core gameplay mechanics. For such a DPS focused game, it doesn't really give any details on how to do DPS.

The concept that punishing people for spending time to get better will somehow bridge the skill gap is flawed. It possibly will have that effect, in the same way that amputating an arm fixes a broken finger... in that the finger is no longer an issue. But what happens when that same person breaks a finger on the other hand because the cause wasn't addressed?

Every time you create a new character you should be put into a class specific, interactive, multi-level tutorial that you can go back to do over whenever you want.

ninjagank wrote: »

Every time you create a new character you should be put into a class specific, interactive, multi-level tutorial that you can go back to do over whenever you want.

Or: There is a NPC that can start Tutorials. You know, could be a scholar, one in every alliance capital/main city. Maybe use the shrine of Julianos. I mean, he teaches us to be smart, right?

It's also busted in dungeons. All the stop DPS mechanics like in VoM are Moongrave are potentially going to need changing.

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Increasing the duration of DoT’s is ok. Reducing their damage per tick is not. It’s a net loss of DPS. The total damage increase doesn’t mean anything. If you had a DoT that dealt a million damage but over a million seconds, would you slot it? Hell no.

Increasing DOT duration helps no one except trial runners. A very small portion of the game. I guarantee people are quitting due to terrible dungeon and boss design rather than not being able to hit 100K in a trial. They are absolutely delusional if they think new players are quitting because vets are outdpsing them. They are quitting because the content is bad. There is a reason people want separate queues for DLC garbage, and High Isle is already empty.

It does not help trial runners either.

I am a trial runner, and I don't want longer DOTs cuz that is punitive for mobile fights, and all the recent trials are emphasizing mobility more and more. Zmaja ports every ~20s. 2 sets of 10s DOTs. Olms gets protected in about 18s, Bahsei HM - continual movement, Xalvakka moves around.

Give me a competitive class with consistent duration on DOTs that is divisible be same number so I can make myself a static rotation and forget about it. Don't give me random durations on long DOTs like 15 16 17 18 19 20 30. I don't want to have to move DOTs before they expire, thats a waste of resources and I don't want to play whack-a-mole or have DOTs that are useless in mobile fights.

Again there a some people that enjoy whack-a-mole and there is a perfect class for them, blade. But wait, blade does no damage because ZOS introduced crit cap and never bothered to balance blade that was heavily relying on crit damage to output viable DPS.

I just can't even. There are so many class balance issues and actual annoying bugs in the game that all contribute to people not being able to catch up. Instead of fixing it developers keep flipping the meta. Meta flips as absolute opposite of accessibility and some of those flips go against past changes. Such a waste of resources! Malding.

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Increasing the duration of DoT’s is ok. Reducing their damage per tick is not. It’s a net loss of DPS. The total damage increase doesn’t mean anything. If you had a DoT that dealt a million damage but over a million seconds, would you slot it? Hell no.

Increasing DOT duration helps no one except trial runners. A very small portion of the game. I guarantee people are quitting due to terrible dungeon and boss design rather than not being able to hit 100K in a trial. They are absolutely delusional if they think new players are quitting because vets are outdpsing them. They are quitting because the content is bad. There is a reason people want separate queues for DLC garbage, and High Isle is already empty.

It does not help trial runners either.

I am a trial runner, and I don't want longer DOTs cuz that is punitive for mobile fights, and all the recent trials are emphasizing mobility more and more. Zmaja ports every ~20s. 2 sets of 10s DOTs. Olms gets protected in about 18s, Bahsei HM - continual movement, Xalvakka moves around.

Give me a competitive class with consistent duration on DOTs that is divisible be same number so I can make myself a static rotation and forget about it. Don't give me random durations on long DOTs like 15 16 17 18 19 20 30. I don't want to have to move DOTs before they expire, thats a waste of resources and I don't want to play whack-a-mole or have DOTs that are useless in mobile fights.

Again there a some people that enjoy whack-a-mole and there is a perfect class for them, blade. But wait, blade does no damage because ZOS introduced crit cap and never bothered to balance blade that was heavily relying on crit damage to output viable DPS.

I just can't even. There are so many class balance issues and actual annoying bugs in the game that all contribute to people not being able to catch up. Instead of fixing it developers keep flipping the meta. Meta flips as absolute opposite of accessibility and some of those flips go against past changes. Such a waste of resources! Malding.

Does it sound like you're actually proposing a viable idea of spellcrafting we'll never get? Adjusting spells' duration to your rotation comfort level (20sec, 19sec, 18 sec etc)? Genius, broski.

Still doesn't solve the issue about low-tier DPS when they could just give every class an AoE spammable self-healing spammable loaded with damage and then everyone could be hitting 65k+ no sweat DPS with Oakensoul and one ability....

Reference:
Templar: Hitting 34k base damage with one ability (Templar Jabs + Burning Light Proc).

Nightblade: Sap Essence would be hitting about 15k base damage with same spell damage as Templar example above (8100+ spell damage) and then the hardest hitting Nightblade ability Assassin's Will hitting around 30k (after a 7 second minimum buildup window).

Dang, imagine Sap Essence was hitting for 34k base damage every cast and healing you for 20% damage. If every class had a go to class ability with similarities to Templar Jabs, there would be no complaints on PVE DPS (I'd feel real bad for anyone in PVP fromm Nightblades though haha) from anyone.

On Templars, it's almost detrimental to lowering your DPS if you cast any DoT lolz - only DoT that does just under 34k damage (single target, not AoE) is Trap Beast and Dawnbreaker.

They need to buff the damage to literally every other skill so using a skill for damage actually feels like there's impact. Dizzying Swing literally was tooltipped at 14k dmg while Jabs hits for 34k....

Add this as a slotted CP star next to the resource nodes on the blue tree:

Cost: Make it cheap for disabled players. Say about 30 CP. Not sure what it would be called. Maybe, Master of Decay or something.

“Increases the damage of your ground damage over time effects by 75% and your single target damage over time effects by 20% and increase their duration by 10 seconds, but reduce the damage of all Direct Damage by 75%. This star does not affect Ultimate abilities, status effects or Heavy Attacks.”


No stages, an all in star designed to make the game easier for slower players or those with disabilities, negating the need for weaving or repeatedly clicking, while allowing them to get good parses without it being meta due to the huge direct damage loss.

With such a star, this entire combat change that is planned is no longer necessary and everyone wins. If super high damage is still a concern, then nerf Light Attacks but not to the degree you have done. Maybe a 25% nerf. Also, it might be wise to reduce base Critical Damage to 25% instead of 50%.


What would this CP do?

Ultimate and Heavy Attacks would be unaffected for two reasons, The first is to prevent certain Ultimates like Elemental Rage from being overpowered, while allowing other direct damage Ultimates still having use.

Heavy Attacks would maintain their power so that the player has one source of burst to use while their Dot's are ticking.

This CP would not affect Status Effects also, due to Burning becoming OP, while other direct damage CP effects deal low damage anyway.

Also, YES it would affect process sets. This is important as certain sets like Sergeant's would be OP on a Lightning Staff when slotting this CP. This means that a set like Sergeant's or Undaunted Infiltrator would deal 75% less damage on their added bonus. This would in effect make most process sets that deal damage not worth it when taking the CP star.

The CP would also negatively affect damage Enchantments, thus making Infused undesirable when running something like a Frost Enchant. However, Alchemical Poison's being single target DoT's would receive the 20% buff.

Effects that have mix of DoT and burst would be affected proportionately. Unstable Wall for example would gain 75% more damage per tick but 75% LESS damage on its burst. A set like Plaguebreak would deal 20% more DoT damage but 75% less on explosion etc.

Since Light Attacks would deal 75% less damage, players who have difficulty weaving would no longer need to do so.

Yes, such a star would limit what skills would be effective on your bar, but this is besides the point. The whole point of this CP suggestion is to bridge the gap between slower players and pros with fast APM. It would also, dramatically increase accessibility for players that have disabilities, allowing them to feel useful in all content.

What about PvP?

It wouldn't be too bad. Yes, the ground DoT's would become very scary, but the whole point of ground DoT's in PvP is that they act as zone control. Something, they currently fail to do as people can simply heal through it. Also, most players simply step out of them anyway. However, players running this node would have REAL utility in BG and Cyrodiil, giving them a support zone control role. As for single target dot's, 20% of what is live right now is no biggie.

The numbers are a bit extreme?

Only on the ground DoT's, but that is why there is such a heavy price on Direct Damage to compensate. If the number's were smaller, weaving would remain very relevant. The only way to make it so weaving does not matter for casuals is to make LA not worth using, but that has to be counter balanced with power injection into something else. This can't be direct damage due to burst being too strong and it can't be single target DoT's either due to them sticking to targets. Ground DoT's are the logical choice.

Why I feel strongly?

With the proposed changes to bring down damage and bridge the gap between top end players and casuals, the combat update will in fact do the opposite. Making weaving even more important.

Secondly, I have a couple of friends who can’t play ESO well due to arthritis in the hands despite them saying they would if high APM wasn’t so mandatory. My suggested change would allow for a play style that requires a much lower APM while still remaining relevant in trials and vet content.