I wholly approve the aim of raising the floor, but deplore the methods that u35 has enacted. The issue as laid out by Zenimax is they want to reign in the top groups in order to balance content so that more of it is accessible to the rest of the player base. This is reasonable. It's hard to build a dungeon that will be challenging to the 1% and still manageable by the 99%. [I am choosing to ignore the argument that there's no point in even factoring in what the 1% does when balancing a game (there will always be outliers), in order to move forward.]

There are several factors that make an endgame raid team able to do what it does. Knowledge, organisation, sets.

- Players that know the content, know their class, know how to react to mechanics, where to stand to optimise cleave and survivability, recognise danger and opportunity.
- An organised raid team will have optimised team composition, top dps class/race, all applicable passives, set teams dropping ultimates in order, at the right time, will communicate and coordinate.
- Everyone in the group will have fully golded out optimised combinations of sets to bring the most damage possible.

You can't code knowledge into the game, that's on the players. People talk about introducting a tutorial, but how could a company that advertises play how you want dictate to players which sets to wear, what skills to use, and then update this every patch? Also the current tutorial teaches people how to bash, and yet every day I see players ignoring the obvious cues on when to bash. The simplest damn mechanic doesn't get learned and you want the devs to put the effort into making a tutorial that players will ignore.

Players again need to be willing to engage fully to what is required to achieve the level of organisation to complete endgame content. Devs can't force players to engage. They could provide greater rewards for engaging in endgame content. Current rewards are immensely weak, body markings and mounts that are significantly worse than those that can be bought. Goofy titles like Hurricane Herald and Swashbuckler Supreme that sound on par with overland achievements. Account wide achievements removed a lot of motivation for many players to step back into the challenging content once they've achieved it, what do you get for doing Godslayer again? And then again? A warm feeling?

Sets. Zenimax have total control over sets, and patch after patch after patch they have introduced more and more powerful sets that knowledgeable players have leapt on and used to full advantage. Elemental Catalyst, Martial Knowlege, Zens, Alkosh, Nazaray, Turning Tide, Roaring Opportunist, Saxhleel Champion, Bahsei, Coral, Powerful Assault, Pillager, etc, etc, etc. Some of these have challenging uptime that only top tier teams capitalise on. Some of them have even been buffed over the years to bring even more damage. All of these in certain combinations create insane damage spikes that are almost necessary at the moment for the latest trial perfectas.

You know if they wanted to they could—instead of nerfing individual player damage, which affects literally everyone, even the kid doing 12k dps—nerf some of these sets, or make them easier to use so that top teams are doing what they're doing but everyone else is lifted up. Reduce Martial Knowledge to 5% damage done, but increase uptime, reduce elemental catalyst to 10% but make it only two of three elements required at a time. Just a couple examples to open up sets to easier use but lower output overall. Make Powerful Assault and Roaring Opportunist affect 12 people, which will reduce the challenge of moderate groups maintaining these buffs. Making buff sets easier to use will increase accessibility.

Some of these changes can reduce the ceiling, but more importantly that dude who is progging Vateshran Spirit Slayer is still in a good position to do so, he hasn't had all his damage nerfed, the people stalled at Extinguisher of Flames aren't dealing with all of their individual dps being nerfed, and getting set back. Because nerfing light attacks and pushing player damage back down is not it. Making every one weaker on their own isn't.

And extending dots because you don't want people to stare at their timers... well can i tell you, that if you practice the game you don't even have to look at the timers, you can develop muscle memory. Now that some of us have been playing for several years with certain timers implicitly known we now have to learn longer dot uptimes, if people struggle with a 10 second timer, 20 seconds isn't any easier. [Tell me you don't play the game, without telling me you don't play the game.]


Another way of improving accessibility: smoother combat.

I see two constant complaints about combat from players of all walks of life in this game.

Cast times and quick cast ground aoes are a nuisance that should be cast into the pit. They turn players away from using certain skills, and make combat a chore.

Some of these skills are kind of necessary to do top dps, so endgame raiders will persist and overcome, but it honestly never stops being a nuisance. Being necro and having to time your roto so that you leave enough time for graveyard to cast, or fire rune (or blast bones to work it's *** out for that matter, but that's a different thing)... it never feels good. Stonefist having a cast time makes it a gateway skill, if you have a tank/dps who can manage it, you have more damage for the group.

When cast times were added to ultimates in PvP people hated it, people still hate it but we cope, like every other nuisance change the devs introduce. There is an argument that it introduces a dynamic of skill to PvP, but cast times is one tiny element of skilled combat in PvP. I imagine people will push back against this because they've adapted well to it, but then those same people will adapt to no cast times.

If you want to improve accessibility and bridge the skill gap, make every skill instant cast, smooth rotations all round. This would've far less messy than what u35 tried to do. You do that, then rebalance the cast time skills as necessary (for example, templar jesus beam could be a toggle that drains mag, jabs could be one single conal sweep (they've already changed the animation once). The quick cast ground aoes don't need any balancing, they just need to work as intended. Remove the option in the menu, and code them so they act like nightblade path, or wall of elements. There's a reason nightblade rotations are smooth as better and it's because they have no cast time abilities or quick cast ground aoes.

If we're going to make fundamental changes to combat mechanics, may as well actually make ones that improve combat quality of life. Will some of these changes make the game easier? Probably, but current meta this new patch looks like stalemates in PvP and proc sets doing damage for you in PvE, so how much skill is needed?