React wrote: »

DrNukenstein wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

One weird takeaway to me is that since LA weaving is still providing mid 20% range of OP's dps, even if its nerfed state there will still be a massive power gap in PvP between players who are good at weaving and those who aren't....

The LA/HA nerfs are cutting down everyone's burst damage by a lot. With weak dots and nerfed weaving, it will also be much harder to pressure HP bars down into burst range. It will be hard to get through burst heal spam.

I think thats the exact reason why we have a damage meta incoming. You won't build utility you don't need, you won't build defense you don't need. You'll get comfortable defense and utility and put everything else into damage unless you want to do stuff that isn't damage. We're going to see a lot more people making it work with ~20k health It will work because the 30k+ health builds won't have the kill potential they have on live. While the ~20k health builds still hit just hard enough to dunk their fellow squishies out of nowhere, and bag a K on a tankier target if they +1. The good builds of today get comfortable damage and then push defenses, but the builds of tomorrow... the builds of tomorrow are going to push damage, they're gonna push ALL the damage and then pick up just enough defenses to be viable. If they don't, they're going to be very bored by the pvp as the OP mentioned.

Have you tested the changes on the pts? If you haven't, I don't know how you could make a prediction such as this one about the balance in the upcoming patch.

What you're saying here is just flat out wrong. The loss of damage on your light, medium, and heavy attacks is a far greater per-global cooldown reduction of damage than you could possibly make up for with any increase of base stats boosting your ability damage.

Nukenstein's prediction as it relates to how players build is backed up by history: in years with a longer TTK the average HP and Resistances were lower. As damage has increased over the last 3 years, so have HP Pools, so have Resistances. There have been outlier patches but I think that's been the general historical trend.

But yes the non-scaling of Light and Heavy Attacks throws a monkey wrench in historical trends, as does Oakensoul's deprivation of defensive backbars in the current patch.

Regardless I won't be surprised if we see a return to post-Dragonhold's longer TTK but lower average HP Pools / Resistances.

My view of ideal balance with HP Pools / Resistances is something like: DK and Necro are best played at 30k, Warden and Templar are best played at 25k, NB and Sorc are best played at 20k.

Ideals are almost necessarily contrary to reality yes, that was just a simplification of my view that we shouldn't have a universally meta HP or Armor, there should be a spectrum across the tanky classes and the evasive classes. Warden just happens to fit somewhere in between the two, it has Minor Toughness sure but in terms of Tankiness vs. Evasiveness it falls in between DK/Necro and Sorc/NB.

You are definitely right that the available build elements encourage higher HP Pools now than before, but wouldn't you agree, across the history of the game for the average PvPer, Long TTK patches have typically permitted lower HP / Resistances than Short TTK patches? Players tank up over a patch in response to high damage, and lessen up on the defense in response to low damage, doesn't that sound right?

But yes I've had an issue with 1 piece Trainee for a while, we need some more 1 pieces. Besides how it inflates HP Pools, it's odd that end-game meta builds use a set called "Trainee".

About Mag and Stam having a lower scaling factor, you mean the Armor Passives*? The general co-efficient ratio has not changed correct? Besides the loss of the CP modifiers like you say also the additional 1k Weapon Damage made them less rewarding of an investment perhaps, which seems somewhat related to my point, the 1k additional Weapon Damage made investment into HP over Stam/Mag more of a reward. Losing Mag/Stam had a weaker effect on the overall result of the co-efficient, at the same time more HP was required to endure the increased damage.

Anyhow yes, all Tri-Glyphs and Bear Haunch on a bursty spec was unthinkable once upon a time, but maybe it remains to be determined whether this build element issue and the non-scaling of LAs/HAs are enough to entirely undermine the broad historic trend that Short TTKs encourage players to tank up and vice-versa.

* - also the race passives, noteworthy I guess that probably the longest TTK era of all time came not long after the first major racial revision, when nobody was hitting 50k Mag anymore, or whatever (but also the 70k HP Argonian DKs entirely disappeared from the landscape).

The fact that there is so much disagreement with Nocturnal Ploy means it should be needed, but generally across the board to all classes. Buff removal is a must.

Firstmep wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

I think everyone who PVPs at all at any level agreed that HOTs needed to be nerfed. But what they did isn't how. The general consensus in the PVP community was around HOTs stacking with each other. Not how they ticked or how long they lasted. Feedback we've been giving them forever feedback which they consistently ignore.

Oakensoul finally ushered in a meta with an actual, honest to god low TTK. Now admittedly the ult spam was more than a little stupidly overpowered. I'm glad that got nerfed (if maybe a little too hard for PVE). But actually being able to kill your opponents occasionally through actual skill is what makes for fun PVP.

But I don't think anyone wants to go back to an ultratank meta.

Gutting damage the way they have, gutting classes that finally got the good burst they're supposed to have (looking at how Sorcerer was STILL dumpstered in 8.1.2), putting in sets that fundamentally break game systems, is just going to push us back to the dead PVP roaming unkillable tank meta that was slowly driving us all away. Good job ZOS, you're finally getting what you've wanted, a mass exodus of your remaining PVPers.

There was a time in this game when lining up your burst was show you got kills, or putting out so much pressure that your opponent would run out of resources on the defense.
Nowadays? Most burst combos have been nerfed, people dont run out of resources etc.
Healing is so high you can push someone to 10% and they can be back to full hp in a second.

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Ideals are almost necessarily contrary to reality yes, that was just a simplification of my view that we shouldn't have a universally meta HP or Armor, there should be a spectrum across the tanky classes and the evasive classes. Warden just happens to fit somewhere in between the two, it has Minor Toughness sure but in terms of Tankiness vs. Evasiveness it falls in between DK/Necro and Sorc/NB.

You are definitely right that the available build elements encourage higher HP Pools now than before, but wouldn't you agree, across the history of the game for the average PvPer, Long TTK patches have typically permitted lower HP / Resistances than Short TTK patches? Players tank up over a patch in response to high damage, and lessen up on the defense in response to low damage, doesn't that sound right?

But yes I've had an issue with 1 piece Trainee for a while, we need some more 1 pieces. Besides how it inflates HP Pools, it's odd that end-game meta builds use a set called "Trainee".

About Mag and Stam having a lower scaling factor, you mean the Armor Passives? The general co-efficient ratio has not changed correct? Besides the loss of the CP modifiers like you say also the additional 1k Weapon Damage made them less rewarding of an investment perhaps, which seems somewhat related to my point, the 1k additional Weapon Damage made investment into HP over Stam/Mag more of a reward. Losing Mag/Stam had a weaker effect on the overall result of the co-efficient, at the same time more HP was required to endure the increased damage.

Anyhow yes, all Tri-Glyphs and Bear Haunch on a bursty spec was unthinkable once upon a time, but maybe it remains to be determined whether this build element issue and the non-scaling of LAs/HAs are enough to entirely undermine the broad historic trend that Short TTKs encourage players to tank up and vice-versa.

It's not just about the scaling.
It's generally easier nowadays to reach high wpd/spd values.
For one backbar frontbar setups heavily favor dmg over stat, most max stat sets have to be double barred.
There are also way more sets now increasing weapon and spell damage.
Also worth noting, that evasive classes cant get away with building low hp, unless it's some gank build.
Dots can pressure you no matter how fast you run away, and most classes can dish out 15 20k dmg combos without much issue.
Then theres the open world factor, even in bgs you can never be sure that you are fighting even numbers.
With lower hp you can be deleted in a second these days, and while dmg is going down, I highly doubt people will build for 20k hp.
We might see fewer builds running defensive sets, but we will have too see.

Well I've thought one of the things encouraging High Resistances for the last year or so was that the additional 1k Weapon Damage meant Weapon/Spell Damage sets now had a weaker result on your overall stats than Armor sets. I.e. you might get 5% more Damage from a set but can get 15% more Mitigation, before the additional 1k these returns were more equivalent. Somewhat like the broad historic difference between running Divines and Impen in PvP, generally Impen always gave more Mitigation than Divines could give Damage. For sure that's a good point that there aren't backbarrable Max Resource sets.

But of course I agree, I expect hardly anybody will drop down to 20k HP, but maybe more will drop down to 20k Resists. The nerf to damage might not be enough to cause this change though - assuming the aforementioned issues haven't entirely upended this idea.

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Right, so non-rhetorical question

It's all over the place and changes every 3 months, but the concept of stat density has not changed. I would argue that there has been a higher power ceiling for defense than offense for a while, especially as groups get larger.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Right, so non-rhetorical question

It's all over the place and changes every 3 months, but the concept of stat density has not changed. I would argue that there has been a higher power ceiling for defense than offense for a while, especially as groups get larger.

I agree, but even if changes in the differential between the Defense and Offense Power Ceilings are a deterministic result of modification of the build element variables, is it true that so too is a players motivation whether and how to build towards reaching either ceiling? In other words, is it true that the TTK we experience is simply and entirely the predictable product of an equation? Surely not entirely?

Didgerion wrote: »

cschwingeb14_ESO wrote: »

Nocturnal...makes Oaken mandatory for PvP? We'll see. At the very least, it's a hard counter. Werewolf has a ton of "while slotted" buffs, so there's that

Does Pierce armor and abilities like it with 2 debuffs remove both a major and minor every 2 secs?

Yep,

Or Crushing Weapon spammable. I assume most bow specs will use that skill now (especially Stamsorcs, now that Crystal Weapon is being nerfed)
Snipe + Crushing Weapon = one minor and major buff gone every 2 seconds, at range, easy!

In other words if you are not part of a big group forget about pvp-ing!

Unless... you have oakensoul, it still has some juice left in it which will make it very powerful again in the next meta.
Fighting someone unbuffed while you preserve all the basic major buffs and some of the minor ones shouldn't be too hard.

Crushing weapon is a delayed skill, so it won't proc Nocturnal's Ploy from my understanding due to the latest change.

However, it's a moot point since every class has access to Elemental Drain which is a free, ranged skill that applies both a minor and major debuff.

Max stat stacking has been very unworth it for years now only class that really had a benefit todo it was mag sorc in pvp stacking weapon/spell damage is far more efficient and easier to build into