Hey all, I've taken some time to watch/review a lot of content about this upcoming patch, before I decided to put out my own thoughts into a video.

I'd like to thank a myriad of you forum goers and other content creators that I've had the opportunity to see and absorb your thoughts on the situation. While I don't get super heavy into all the numerical deals, here's the thoughts of a beta player, PCNA guildmaster, and average joe.

TRANSCRIPT WILL BE AVAILABLE BELOW THE LINK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF4DgcVjmt0

TRANSCRIPT BEGINS Excluding Personal Intro/Outros.

Today, I wanted to go over the recent PTS patch notes for Update 35. I've put off making this video for a little while because I wanted to take the time to both research the topic, listen to a lot of creators and players go over the subject before I released any substantial thoughts..

For those of you who might not be already aware, Update 35 is so far scheduled to bring a massive amount of combat and mechanical changes to The Elder Scrolls Online; and a large amount of the negative feedback is both based on player experience with the changes on the PTS, and a unhealthy amount of change fatigue. First, I would like to cover the topic of change fatigue for anyone unfamiliar with the topic. Players in ESO may experience change fatigue due to the amount of combat-updates that turn gameplay on it's head once, or even multiple times a year. Keep in mind, this problem has grown more out of hand since Brian Wheeler took over the combat team. This is an 8 year old game that still does not have it's combat balanced within reason ( leaving room for minor adjustments as need be ) and can't seem to pick an appropriate direction to go with it.

Now, you might be asking: what do those combat changes have to do with me?
1. You need to change your CP due to adjustments or solely because ZOS will automatically unslot it upon changing those values
2. You need to re-grind gear and improve it every single update because the combat changes will shift what's in the meta, or even higher tier of sets.
3. You may need to readjust your playstyle and usually your rotations due to swings in the meta. (Remember Elsweyr Dot Meta!)

Now: where do those things get to be a hassle? They're moderately annoying for die-hard players who both have the time and in game ability to grab these new sets on the get-go. They are however further antagonistic for the larger casual audience of the game to handle. Some might take the few months between patches grabbing all their gear, learning a rotation, practicing it, and started to get good before the carpet sweeps out from under them, and they have to do another few months of work to even be where they were just at again!

This is well summarized by SawmanUK, who did an excellent video on the topic of change fatigue and how it affects content creators in particular. The link will be in the description for that. (edited)

Now if you weren't already irritated by having to change your gear and rotation and cp every three months because ZOS has somehow been unable to provide any sort of stable combat balance, they're finally deciding to bury the hatchet in the conversation of balance and making another series of wanton changes nobody asked for. In the description of this video, I'm going to link the official post of patch notes, a few other creators who've reviewed the patch notes referring to combat in a ton of detail, and a few videos I think are excellent on this topic.

I want to give a quick shout out and thank you to those creators : Nefas, SkinnyCheeks, Deltia, The Real Godzilla, SawmanUK to name a few for making that content and putting that sort of time into the community to help everyone not only understand what's going on, but to make the information available in multiple formats that everyone can understand. I want to further preface this video by saying I'm not going to go over all the patch notes, but I wanted to give my thoughts and opinions on what we know so far

So, the big question here is do I support or disagree with the upcoming changes that are on the PTS thus far? The answer is No. I do not support these changes.

I admire that ZOS is still trying to work towards actively balancing their game; but I do not think they know what their priorities should be. The previous times ZOS has tried to change light/heavy attacks has always started a *** of upset players, and I can agree that nerfing the damage of them so heavily is not going to close any gaps between the skill ceiling and skill floor. Since ZOS does not inheritantly teach weaving light attacks into their combat, players who do so successfully and well are still going to easily out-perform those who don't do it well or at all. Retrospectively, taking so much power away from light and heavy attacks kills off heavy attack builds almost entirely.

Another reason I can't agree with the light and heavy attack changes is because ESO is advertised as a game you can play as you like. That means heavy attack builds should be viable. Mind you - not overpowered broken garbage, but viable. For instance, as a DK main; you can very easily put together a set combo right now and add oakensoul and one shot players in PVP with heavy attacks. It is extremely hilarious, but admittedly overpowered.

The DOT and HOT changes are both just irritating and awful. I don't know WHO came up with this idea, but I have my doubts that they even play the game. Dots extending past 20 seconds, ticking every 2 seconds, HOT single targets getting a huge reduction, I mean.. Who's in charge of these changes? do they play the game? My biggest complaint is how bipolar changes with the combat are. You're never nerfing a skill 5% to make it stronger or weaker, it's always some overblown value that makes something useless or overpowered

Now, Another thing I want to address is the class nerfs. To my sorcerer friends out there? Well, you folks got [REDACTED]. I mean, your class got absolutely pulverized by the combat team, and I would hate to main a sorc right now. Everything has been nerfed really, there's a few nice or minor changes here or there, but for the overall this is just a tidal wave of nerfs.

Overall with this patch we're looking at just an insane amount of nerfs coming into play, and even more idiotic sets being released, primarily I'm looking at Nocturnals Ploy, which is so far listed to give the following:

(2 items) Adds 1487 Offensive Penetration
(3 items) Adds 424 Critical Resistance
(4 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery
(5 items) When you apply a Major Debuff to an enemy, remove a Major Buff with a duration from the target. When you apply a Minor Debuff to an enemy, remove a Minor Buff with a duration from the target. These effects can both occur once every 2 seconds.

I seriously, seriously can not understand what is going on in the minds of the developers right now; and I'm not honestly sure that I want to. Now, I'm going to be honest here. There's still room for ZOS to turn things around as the PTS has time in it's cycle yet to go through. I am not hopeful that they are going to make positive changes, and I know there's plenty of discussion out there currently about which changes are the correct ones, which are awful, what should be done and etc.

ZOS has come forward a considerable ways with their attempts of communication, despite Rich posting what can be seen as a very off-putting tweet about the topic. I want to acknowledge that he definitely has a point under his perspective; but that it's just an awful idea to post this before the PTS went live, I can definitely understand his frustrations and I think we can all acknowledge there are those people out there who are going to attack the devs personally for these changes; those people are [REDACTED] and that's all there is to say about it.

I do not agree with the changes, but I do not endorse personally flaming the devs over providing any sort of useful commentary and or feedback based on the patch notes we were given.

Outro Begins Here, TRANSCRIPT ENDS.