Yo. Empower got trashed. Couldn't you just make a new buff for heavy? Or have it buff light 40% and buff heavy 60%? Something. It actually looks like light weaving is being punished? Like any opportunity to recover lost dos is being hammered. Just why.

Nope, this is exactly the right move to "lower the ceiling".

remove buffs that great groups have good uptimes on. stop nerfing characters and classes, start nerfing group buffs.

The Devs want to reduce the percentage of light attack damage in parses this patch. They made that clear.

Never you mind that sets like Relequen and Kinras ensure that there is a consistent gap between weavers and non-weavers regardless of actual LA damage.

VaranisArano wrote: »

The Devs want to reduce the percentage of light attack damage in parses this patch. They made that clear.

Never you mind that sets like Relequen and Kinras ensure that there is a consistent gap between weavers and non-weavers regardless of actual LA damage.

I guess those sets make sure LA Weaving is and always will be meta for scoring, but it won't make or break a non-scoring players ability to complete content. Right?

Lalothen wrote: »

From my testing thus far comparing LA + spammable & HA + spammable no, it shouldn't get it back. I'll post optimised parses tomorrow.

Not everything in this game revolves around parsing on a target dummy.

Give it back to LA as they're currently on the PTS, its still a 20% loss from live

Make battlespirit halve both bonus as to not make WW and some skill become completely irrelevent in PVP

Yes. But they probably won't. They've wanted to make HA's a competing meta (even if it won't be top) for a couple years now (since LA/HA tests two years ago) and will probably force this through. Let's take any reason to actually make use of the dynamic combat by creating a meta of longer dots and "hold down button forever" to channel an attack. Makes a lot of sets and skills useless to run now if you don't use this one niche build now. And more importantly, makes the gameplay a lot more boring.

Need to test, but my understanding is that light attacks were buffed significantly (relative to 8.1.2) when empower was removed. Essentially shifting power from the empower buff to simply weaving without maintaining any buffs. This is probably a good move, since unbuffed weaving was too weak last week and the empower buff was too strong.

I don't see any reason to add light attacks back to the empower buff. If empower worked on light attacks I bet we'd just see light attacks nerfed further to compensate. In the new form, empower can actually be impactful for heavy attacks.

This change does open up the possibility of a future named major/minor buff for just light attacks. I'd love to see something like this for Necromancer's empowering grasp (so Necro healers don't lose their unique group buff and become instantly irrelevant). Making it a separate buff allows independent balancing, and maybe the light attack buff has a modifier of 40% and 20% for Major and Minor. It does not have to match empower's strength for heavy attacks.

Yes, there are some skills and sets that need to be looked at. That can be done in the next patch as well, though.

They probably want to tweak some values here and there so people don't post meme-y resto staff parses.

But generally, this is a move in the right direction.

Other option.

Empower should also buff light attacks by at least 5% so the passive isn't 100% useless for people that weave light attacks

HatchetHaro wrote: »

People need to stop thinking "oh no my damage got gutted this is bad" especially when ZOS has specified that they are going to adjust content to match so the actual difficulty remains pretty much the same.

Look, I know this may look bad, but the fact of the matter is that ZOS has never adjusted content to match their combat changes because prior to all this U35 nonsense, the combat team and the encounter team never communicated to each other (which by itself is stupid but I'm not opening that can of worms). Them deciding to work together for once is absolutely fantastic, however underwhelming it may be, and at this point the community needs to take any wins they can get.

I have a few quibbles here, namely that ZOS isn't entirely adjusting content to match so that actual difficulty remains the same. They are reducing Vet Boss and bannerman health to compensate, but there's a lot of concern still around the other areas of difficulty that just boss health. Player healing is still getting nerfed. Incoming damage is not.

Additionally, the change to Vet boss/bannerman health is coming next week, so its not been tested by players who are pushing that content. Hey, it might be exactly the balance change that we need. It also might not be, and if its not, then there's no more time on the PTS to test it. How fair is it to ask players to wait around for a couple months for another update before content gets adjusted properly?

I'm looking forward to that final PTS patch and seeing what trials teams have to say about the difficulty in combination with the final round of changes. Hopefully, its good news!

But I will be honest and say that I am not particularly optimistic about it. We have seen ZOS adjust individual encounters in trials and vet dungeons to improve their completion rates before, which seems to be what the team is aiming for with accessibility. When that happens, its a comprehensive change as boss abilities and mechanics get tweaked to target areas that are causing problems. That's not at all what's happening here, which makes the health reduction feel more like a bandaid fix meant to assure the players that ZOS is listening rather than a comprehensive fix for accessibility that should have rolled out with the Combat changes.

I don't think its a win if we're looking at an example of "Doing it fast, not doing it right." We'll find out next Monday.