When will the remaining hybridization issues be addressed?

IonicKai · September 2022

As the title says what is the plan for fixing, glyphs, potions, and possibly class passives to support hybridization. Right now there is a lot of need for the group to coordinate to account for some of the unfinished changes. As of right now this is patch number two after it was stated that at least glyphs and potions would be addressed. It would help greatly to at cover glyphs and potions as that makes the choice more of a player decision of do I need stam or mag more as opposed to the current pick of needed to account for which type of crit your potions proc relative to group comp or trying to find room for a skill that sources both like camo hunter.

I recognize class passives are more difficult but my suggestion there is to pick one of the two crit classes to bring both sources of minor crit and give the other a unique buff such and the same with minor sorcery and minor brutality. As an example sorc could provide both minor crit buffs and nightblade could get something else like group pen gain or group crit damage or just some other useful buff. Templar could get both damage buffs and dk could bring something like a raw damage buff or something defensive. These are just ideas and obviously values would need to be worked out but would be nice to have a reason to bring all 4 base classes while making getting buffs less complicated.

UnassumingNoob · September 2022

Agree. Too many half finished ideas. Last patch broke a lot of skills that are now abandoned by the wayside (dark flare/empowering sweep)

MashmalloMan · September 2022

This is patch 3, we're approaching 1 year/ 4 updates before they finished what they started and there is still no guarantee they will by U37.

Just gonna copy/paste my comment from the combat preview with a few edits:

What ever happened to your first combat overhauls in regards to hybridization we're all still waiting on?

U33 combat preview:

We’ll also be dual sourcing buffs on abilities and item sets like Major Prophecy with Major Savagery, with the same thing applying to Brutality and Sorcery. In the long term, we plan on simply merging these bonuses so there are fewer names and effects you need to worry about, but there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that will result from that; as such, it may take quite some time before we’re able to do that.

U33 Patch Notes:

Note that player passives and consumables that grant the Minor versions of these have not been adjusted at this time, in order to preserve class unique power contribution for coordinated groups.

The changes you implemented half way have created a situation where DKs go all Weapon Damage and Templars go all Spell Damage, NB and Sorc do not have this luxary for their minor crit buffs. There is literally no unique difference between the 2, other than potions, poisons, jewelry enchants and mundus stones.. so it's a win/win for those 2 classes.

The game feels disjointed. Imagine being a new player and trying to understand the differences between these stats and buffs.

Finish what you started. Combine crit and damage like you did for resistance into armor and the resolve vs ward buffs.

At least 1 year by the time U37 comes around and 4 major updates is too long to expect your playerbase to wait for changes you promised.

To top it off, you for some reason decided it was a great decision to create new combat overhauls with U35 which drove your playerbase away, instead of finishing what you started.

It feels like you don't know what your doing, like there is no long term goal, the constant changes every 3 months that we're stuck with, the lack of follow through on what you tell us you plan is never completed in a timely manner.

Firstmep · September 2022

What boggles my mind, is that they thought that the changes in u35 were higher priority than this.

wolfie1.0. · September 2022

IonicKai wrote: »

As the title says what is the plan for fixing, glyphs, potions, and possibly class passives to support hybridization. Right now there is a lot of need for the group to coordinate to account for some of the unfinished changes. As of right now this is patch number two after it was stated that at least glyphs and potions would be addressed. It would help greatly to at cover glyphs and potions as that makes the choice more of a player decision of do I need stam or mag more as opposed to the current pick of needed to account for which type of crit your potions proc relative to group comp or trying to find room for a skill that sources both like camo hunter.

I recognize class passives are more difficult but my suggestion there is to pick one of the two crit classes to bring both sources of minor crit and give the other a unique buff such and the same with minor sorcery and minor brutality. As an example sorc could provide both minor crit buffs and nightblade could get something else like group pen gain or group crit damage or just some other useful buff. Templar could get both damage buffs and dk could bring something like a raw damage buff or something defensive. These are just ideas and obviously values would need to be worked out but would be nice to have a reason to bring all 4 base classes while making getting buffs less complicated.

The short answer is that it probably won't happen. This like several other initiatives has the appearance of being abandoned like several other initiatives that have been dropped before they fini

Marto · September 2022

Sadly, players said they are tired of "sweeping" changes. So even though Update 36 would be the perfect time to adjust things like class passives that change ability durations, or consolidate Brutality/Sorcery and Savagery/Prophecy into the same buff... It will not happen yet.

I don't think ZOS has forgotten, or that they are lazy and want to leave things unfinished. I wouldn't be surprised if the changes people in this thread are asking for are already finished, but ZOS is willingly delaying them to not make the community angry.

Any update that makes gameplay mechanics more cohesive will unavoidably result in changes to damage numbers. Some intended, some incidental. Some skills will deal 10% more damage than before, some skills with scale too little or too much. And that's fine. That can be fixed, it's not a big deal. But with a playerbase that is so needlesly strict and obsessive about damage numbers, any update will result in outrage. Doesn't matter if it's a good change or a bad change. Doesn't matter if it's well thought out or a quick bandaid. Doesn't matter if it was suggested by the players themselves.

ESO's combat is awful. It sucks. It's in dire need of a rework.

But the endgame community is so used to ESO being a bad game, any change that tries to turn ESO into a better game will be seen as a bad change made by "out of touch developers that don't even play their game". Even if that's far from the truth.

Players need to step back, and look at ESO as a whole, without getting caught in the specifics.

BahometZ · September 2022

Abandoning the hybridisation process to tilt at another windmill is peak ESO.

It is such a hassle right now to calculate crit/pen caps for different content with different teams who have different compositions and requirements. There are so many iterations and combinations of gear, passives, glyphs, CP, etc, a new player would be completely at sea. To go further nothing about how this game is arranged is noob friendly. Not a thing. Which zone to begin, which quest order to undertake for the narrative to make any sense, crafting is pure chaos—from the enchanting glyphs being in no order at all, to motifs being in not quite release order (as if people should know this implicitly), to jewelry stations having rings and necklaces in randomly different order for no reason—daily reset times are at different times of the day and on different cooldown lengths, skill timers are everywhere from 6 seconds to 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 32, to a full minute, CP changes from fight to fight, as opposed to trial to trial like it used to be. To get the most out of the green tree, you have to change active slots between crafting, farming, fishing, stealing, parsing. People who like ESO have to really like ESO because as it is, we persevere through poor design at every turn.

Chatting with others in game we discuss dev decisions with pure scorn, as it becomes clearer and clearer that they don't play their own game at any appreciable length. It is obvious looking through the forums that many are dismayed and chagrined by the constant flow of poor decisions from the developers. And that is from players who are still here. Many quietly leave in disgust. And I guarantee you that any player who only has positive things to say is not engaged with the game at a sufficiently deep level. They could facilitate a better relationship with the community if they made better decisions about gameplay, that reflect how we experience it, rather than by a spreadsheet.

Ph1p · September 2022

Marto wrote: »

Sadly, players said they are tired of "sweeping" changes. So even though Update 36 would be the perfect time to adjust things like class passives that change ability durations, or consolidate Brutality/Sorcery and Savagery/Prophecy into the same buff... It will not happen yet.

So wouldn't Update 35 actually have been the perfect time to adjust things like unfinished hybridization elements? With the actual changes we got, isn't it harder now to balance additional hybridization adjustments? They could have completed hybridization first, which you even claim they might have ready to go anyway, then move on to address the other combat issues in the game.

In hindsight, I think not fleshing out hybridization actually caused a good chunk of the recent power creep. The meta shifts towards daggers and later two-handers for magicka DDs resulted from hybrid stats giving more damage than the previous inferno staff standard. Was that intentional? Given all the talk about DPS creep I assume not, but it was never really addressed and now we have magicka sorcerers armed like a hybrid of rogues and barbarians

.

Marto wrote: »

Sadly, players said they are tired of "sweeping" changes. [...] But with a playerbase that is so needlesly strict and obsessive about damage numbers, any update will result in outrage. [...] But the endgame community is so used to ESO being a bad game, any change that tries to turn ESO into a better game will be seen as a bad change [...]

And we're back to pinning the blame on the "endgame community". Taking a step back and looking at ESO as a whole, maybe we would indeed be better off without it:

No more outrage about trial HMs being impossible after an update - who cares about the few people who play those?
No more complaints about damage nerfs, because only hardcore elitists care about DPS
Fewer people blowing up the PTS forum, because no one tests there any more
Less power creep because there are fewer guides to help people improve their builds
Less specifics in player feedback - who needs input with thought-through details backed by hard data?

Sarcasm aside, this community would be better off if it stopped artificially dividing itself into "noobs" vs. "gatekeeping elitists", "toxic casuals" vs. "endgame try-hards", and so forth. At the very least, we all like some of this game enough to keep playing it. There are some players who are more experienced than others, some who have played more than others. All their feedback is valuable to improve the game.

Stop attributing the idiocies of individuals who harass and insult developers to an entire community, just to invalidate feedback and criticism you disagree with.

Firstmep · September 2022

Ph1p wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Sadly, players said they are tired of "sweeping" changes. So even though Update 36 would be the perfect time to adjust things like class passives that change ability durations, or consolidate Brutality/Sorcery and Savagery/Prophecy into the same buff... It will not happen yet.

So wouldn't Update 35 actually have been the perfect time to adjust things like unfinished hybridization elements? With the actual changes we got, isn't it harder now to balance additional hybridization adjustments? They could have completed hybridization first, which you even claim they might have ready to go anyway, then move on to address the other combat issues in the game.

In hindsight, I think not fleshing out hybridization actually caused a good chunk of the recent power creep. The meta shifts towards daggers and later two-handers for magicka DDs resulted from hybrid stats giving more damage than the previous inferno staff standard. Was that intentional? Given all the talk about DPS creep I assume not, but it was never really addressed and now we have magicka sorcerers armed like a hybrid of rogues and barbarians .

Marto wrote: »

Sadly, players said they are tired of "sweeping" changes. [...] But with a playerbase that is so needlesly strict and obsessive about damage numbers, any update will result in outrage. [...] But the endgame community is so used to ESO being a bad game, any change that tries to turn ESO into a better game will be seen as a bad change [...]

And we're back to pinning the blame on the "endgame community". Taking a step back and looking at ESO as a whole, maybe we would indeed be better off without it:
No more outrage about trial HMs being impossible after an update - who cares about the few people who play those?

No more complaints about damage nerfs, because only hardcore elitists care about DPS

Fewer people blowing up the PTS forum, because no one tests there any more

Less power creep because there are fewer guides to help people improve their builds

Less specifics in player feedback - who needs input with thought-through details backed by hard data?

Sarcasm aside, this community would be better off if it stopped artificially dividing itself into "noobs" vs. "gatekeeping elitists", "toxic casuals" vs. "endgame try-hards", and so forth. At the very least, we all like some of this game enough to keep playing it. There are some players who are more experienced than others, some who have played more than others. All their feedback is valuable to improve the game.

Stop attributing the idiocies of individuals who harass and insult developers to an entire community, just to invalidate feedback and criticism you disagree with.

It's just and endless blame game, people cant help themselves.
Casual players complained about u 35 making content more difficult every but as endgame players, but apparently only 1 side is to blame, not even sure for what at this point xD.

Marto · September 2022

Ph1p wrote: »

And we're back to pinning the blame on the "endgame community". Taking a step back and looking at ESO as a whole, maybe we would indeed be better off without it:
No more outrage about trial HMs being impossible after an update - who cares about the few people who play those?

No more complaints about damage nerfs, because only hardcore elitists care about DPS

Fewer people blowing up the PTS forum, because no one tests there any more

Less power creep because there are fewer guides to help people improve their builds

Less specifics in player feedback - who needs input with thought-through details backed by hard data?

Sarcasm aside, this community would be better off if it stopped artificially dividing itself into "noobs" vs. "gatekeeping elitists", "toxic casuals" vs. "endgame try-hards", and so forth. At the very least, we all like some of this game enough to keep playing it. There are some players who are more experienced than others, some who have played more than others. All their feedback is valuable to improve the game.

Stop attributing the idiocies of individuals who harass and insult developers to an entire community, just to invalidate feedback and criticism you disagree with.

The endgame community is why changes like this are being postponed. Hybridization changes like the ones we received in U34 are meant to be pretty much invisible to the majority of players. Existing builds performed and behaved pretty much the same as they did before.

That is, unless you're engaging in the hardest veteran content, which is the only content in the game that's balanced on a knives edge, and where minor number adjustments can be considered "sweeping" changes.

I'm not saying this because I have a personal vendetta against endgame players, or because I hate the content they engage in. I don't.

I'm saying this because, in my opinion, it is not wise for ZOS to balance and adjust the game from the top up.

For years now, ZOS has been listening to community, and raising the floor. Which was a tremendously bad idea for the long-term health of the game. Now you have a game that is laughably easy, and that makes the insane levels of difficulty of endgame content even daunting.

It's better to create a combat system that well-tuned for the majority of the content (overworld, delves, world bosses, normal dungeons, etc), and only after that is done, work on adjusting the difficulty of the minority of content that is left overtuned.

Fix the core first. Worry about balance later.

Arthtur · September 2022

I didnt know that 40%+ nerfs to skills are "minior adjustments". I didnt know 20-30% nerf across the board is "minor adjustment". That rly opened my eyes. /s

If ZOS would listen to that "endgame community that is at fault at everything" the game would be in a better state. We would have good tutorials in game, broken sets wouldnt make it to live, skills wouldn't be overnerfed into oblivion, hybrisation would be already finished (there is many ppl complaining that instead of finishing it they start changing diffrent things), we would have some veteran overland and story mode for dungeons and many diffrent things that community wants.

The thing is, its easier to blame "endgame players" instead of going into pts, testing stuff and giving good feedback.
Another thing is 95% of players blaming endgame players for all bad changes NEVER touch PTS. Never give feedback on changes. They just blame endgame players or PvP players when bad changes goes to live.

Im so tired of this. No matter what ZOS does the blame is always on players who actually try to help the entire community.

K9002 · September 2022

The unifished hybridization is completely indefensible. Every other MMO I played in the past 15 years, including many failed Korean games, carried out such system overhauls in one massive patch instead of drip-feeding seemingly random and disjointed changes. Even if the overhauls turned out catastrophic for the playerbase, at the very least developers took their time to put together all of their ideas and ship them as a complete package. When you look over various private servers, post-mortem videos and comments, people can plainly name different versions of respective games. Like pre-CU and post-CU Star Wars Galaxies. What can we say about ESO? One Tamriel was the last coherent makeover but what we're playing right now is not the same One Tamriel as it was in 2017.

BahometZ · September 2022

CP 2.0 is another pretty clear delineation fwiw

IonicKai · September 2022

Marto wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

And we're back to pinning the blame on the "endgame community". Taking a step back and looking at ESO as a whole, maybe we would indeed be better off without it:
No more outrage about trial HMs being impossible after an update - who cares about the few people who play those?

No more complaints about damage nerfs, because only hardcore elitists care about DPS

Fewer people blowing up the PTS forum, because no one tests there any more

Less power creep because there are fewer guides to help people improve their builds

Less specifics in player feedback - who needs input with thought-through details backed by hard data?

Sarcasm aside, this community would be better off if it stopped artificially dividing itself into "noobs" vs. "gatekeeping elitists", "toxic casuals" vs. "endgame try-hards", and so forth. At the very least, we all like some of this game enough to keep playing it. There are some players who are more experienced than others, some who have played more than others. All their feedback is valuable to improve the game.

Stop attributing the idiocies of individuals who harass and insult developers to an entire community, just to invalidate feedback and criticism you disagree with.

The endgame community is why changes like this are being postponed. Hybridization changes like the ones we received in U34 are meant to be pretty much invisible to the majority of players. Existing builds performed and behaved pretty much the same as they did before.

That is, unless you're engaging in the hardest veteran content, which is the only content in the game that's balanced on a knives edge, and where minor number adjustments can be considered "sweeping" changes.

I'm not saying this because I have a personal vendetta against endgame players, or because I hate the content they engage in. I don't.

I'm saying this because, in my opinion, it is not wise for ZOS to balance and adjust the game from the top up.

For years now, ZOS has been listening to community, and raising the floor. Which was a tremendously bad idea for the long-term health of the game. Now you have a game that is laughably easy, and that makes the insane levels of difficulty of endgame content even daunting.

It's better to create a combat system that well-tuned for the majority of the content (overworld, delves, world bosses, normal dungeons, etc), and only after that is done, work on adjusting the difficulty of the minority of content that is left overtuned.

Fix the core first. Worry about balance later.

Actually ZOS stated that hybridization was meant to make it so that players weren't as penalized for making a morph choice like hurricane on a mag sorc so that choosing what endgamers would consider the wrong morph for your spec wouldn't be such a penalty. Also I disagree regarding ZOS raising the floor. They haven't been IMO at least not with U35. Oakensoul was the single best buff they gave to the floor and they nerded it while also taking power away from players by reducing the power of skills. Prior to that too much of power has been in the hands of coordinated groups with kiss curse sets like bahsei and coral riptide that are designed for more skilled players. These do nothing for the floor and are examples of strictly helping the ceiling.

Trundik · September 2022

Potions should be changed in favor to hybridization.

I have DK. She use spells and stamskills in same time. I can't solve my crit and sorc|brutality buffs with one potion. I must slot Hunter to gain crit for erruption at one bar and still if i want to use brutality potion for my stam skills, i don't get sorcery for erruption and FoO.

This is ridiculous, because i loose evertything that alchemy could give me.

Finedaible · September 2022

Postponing or changing their 'greater vision for combat' without ever clearly stating what it is or without following through with it just makes me want to believe it's another PR lie to string people along. They can't just keep telling players and themselves every year that there is a greater plan without ever fully implementing it. At this rate they will never complete anything in their generation and the game will probably have died off by the time they do, assuming this plan takes another 7 years or so. The constant state of flux and uncertainty is more frustrating than a sweeping change because everyone will try to adapt only to have all their hard work nullified by the next patch. Nobody asked for the Empower rework for example and it seems like it wasn't even planned by the devs initially, but it was thrown into the mess of combat changes regardless. Now we will likely have to wait till next year sometime for a CHANCE they may fix the issues the Empower rework caused - like Ambush being totally useless in pvp now. I am happy that classes finally got some class flavor back this patch but most of everything else that has happened this year has been misguided or too slow to implement. The sweeping changes do hurt, but they probably would hurt less if they didn't ship them out on top of an unstable foundation of unfinished reworks over the course of a year and a half.

IonicKai · September 2022

Trundik wrote: »

Potions should be changed in favor to hybridization.

I have DK. She use spells and stamskills in same time. I can't solve my crit and sorc|brutality buffs with one potion. I must slot Hunter to gain crit for erruption at one bar and still if i want to use brutality potion for my stam skills, i don't get sorcery for erruption and FoO.

This is ridiculous, because i loose evertything that alchemy could give me.

Actually you get both major crits prophecy and savagery from having flames of oblivion slotted. The issues a dk faces in my opinion have more to do with the fact that you almost have to run potions that give back mag and stam because of both resources being used constantly especially with the primary spamable whip. For this I think my favored solutions would be two fold.

1) There should be a tri-potion available from the alliance vendors that matches crown tripots. They did this with weapon and spell power pots and I think it was a healthy change in curbing the cost of using potions constantly.

2) There should be a way to craft a potion or purchase one that gives major sorcery and brutality along with mag and stam. Basically an ulti potion that grants major sorcery/brutality instead of minor heroism. This would just be another option obviously as organized group play will have a dk running igneous weapons but having choices for where to source buffs is preferred to being stuck with limited options for essential buffs like this.

Trundik · September 2022

IonicKai wrote: »

Actually you get both major crits prophecy and savagery from having flames of oblivion slotted. The issues a dk faces in my opinion have more to do with the fact that you almost have to run potions that give back mag and stam because of both resources being used constantly especially with the primary spamable whip. For this I think my favored solutions would be two fold.

I slot Flames at second bar. Frontbaring it could be good if you use whip ass spammable, because slotting FoO will make it better and you have space for rest ardent skills there. But i use rapid strike and rest of my skills organized by cd's. carve+2x24+2x15. And 2x20,1x18 at main. Less switches is gold, because its always kind of laggy. Could freeze or doesn't work at first attempt.