You’re nerfing the wrong thing.

sonofabelll · August 2022

This will be a 4-part post.

1. Who am I?
2. Learning the Game
3. Buffs and De-buffs
4. Summary

Who am I?

I joined ESO back in 2012, and have the little pet monkey for joining during the Beta. When I joined, I remember having fun with the game, but ultimately thought the combat was boring. I was used to more responsive gameplay with clearly labelled off GCD abilities (we’ll get into this later) and things to do between your 1 second skills. The 2nd time I came back to the game was when I learned about the animation cancelling that had been in the game since launch, what we call today, weaving.

Before ESO launched, I was playing MMOs, and since ESO’s launch, I’ve played other MMOs. When I play a game, I like to push content, really master my character, and drive home solid solo effort. I want to see if I can clear content with fewer people, and stronger mastery of my skills.

Since returning to ESO about 4 months ago, I’ve cleared both vet arena’s multiple times. I’ve cleared normal dungeons solo, and some vet dungeons solo. I’m interested in attempting to clear some Cloudrest bosses solo, but haven’t stepped into that ring just yet. I would expect the lessons I’ve learned doing solo content at a high level to give me an advantage in group content.

Learning the Game (long section)

I like to dig into the numbers behind the scenes. I want to know what is in my build, what tools are available, and why they are available. I’m an engineer, and I like to see how things work. Guides are great, but having been in a high level raiding scene before, I don’t inherently trust them. So I set about my work, reviewing things like esocalc, alcasthq, and whatever else I could find. After hitting a non-trial dummy and digging into my own numbers, here’s what I figured to be true (more on this later):

Penetration is the highest damage-yielding number until you hit cap.
Spell Power / Weapon Power vastly out-perform crit (you’ll see).
Magicka / Stamina out-perform crit.
Crit doesn’t seem to be very good.

Quick maths & stealing esocalc’s coefficients (lvl 50, drop all skillpoints, champ points, gear, and use
mundus stone. Craft cp160 white inferno staff that will deal 1037 tooltip dmg) hitting skeleton dummy (18200 resistance):

Spell Dmg = 2037; Mag = 12000; Pen = 0
Resistance = 1-(18200/50000) = 0.636
Coefficient of Spell dmg = 0.425525; Coefficient of Mag = 0.0405

( [SD * CoSD] + [Mag * CoMag] ) = ~1353 * .636 = ~860

Now let’s tackle crit. Base crit chance is 10% and base crit dmg is 50%. 219 Crit is needed for 1% crit chance increase. Going back to our base setup, 860 is our base dmg.

(860 * chance not to crit ) + ( 860 * chance to crit *1.5 )
(860*0.9)+(860*0.1*1.5) = 903.4

Total Dmg Calc:
( [Spell Damage * CoSD ] + [ Mag * CoMag ] ) * ( 1 – ( [ 18200 – Pen ] / 50000 ) ) = Base Dmg Output

( [ Base Dmg Output * Chance not to Crit ] + [ Base Dmg Output * Chance to Crit * Crit Damage ] ) = Total Average Dmg

Now lets play around with adding each kind of dmg.

Put Fighters guild ability circle of protection on bar with Fighter’s guild passive increase spell dmg by 6%. Spell Dmg is 2098, Mag 12000, Pen 0, Crit 10%, Crit Dmg 1.5x dmg output is: 876 base and 1315 crit. 920.7 average hit.

Equilibrium on bar with Mage guild 2% Mag. Spell Dmg is 2037, Mag 12240, Pen 0, Crit 10%, Crit Dmg 1.5x, dmg output is: 866 base and 1300 crit. 909.9 average hit.

Equip sharpened cp160 white inferno staff. Spell Dmg is 2037, Mag 12000, Pen 2856, Pen 0, Crit 10%, Crit Dmg 1.5x, dmg output is: 937 base and 1406 crit. 984.5 average hit.

Equip precise cp160 white inferno staff (3.2% = 219*3.2 = ~701 Spell Crit) Spell Dmg is 2037, Mag 12000, Pen 0, Pen 0, Crit 13.2% (~701 Spell Crit), Crit Dmg 1.5x, dmg output is: 860 base and 903 crit. 917.2 average hit.

Now let’s calculate the value of each *point before pen cap: (Dmg Output – Base Dmg Output) / Amount gained

*IMPORTANT NOTE: these are only relevant numbers in comparison to the other stats*

SD = (920.7-903.4)/61 = ~0.284
Mag = (909.9-903.4)/240 = ~0.027
Pen = (984.5-903.4)/2856 = ~0.028
Crit = (917.2-903.4)/701 = ~0.02

Now let’s compare this to armor sets at gold tier level:

Pen 1487 ~40.1 dmg increase before pen cap
Mag 1096 ~27.4 dmg increase before pen cap
SD 129 ~33.8 dmg increase before pen cap
Crit 657 ~13.14 dmg increase before pen cap

Crit does just underperform here, it massively underperforms. Every adding the minor force available during solo play, crit is still awful at 1.6x crit damage. So for several months, I was wondering why anyone would bother with any sort of crit build and I ran in the opposite direction, pushing spell power as high as I could go. The first trial I went to at Cloudrest, I did ~25% of the damage of the group. But I had just barely made the parsing limit to be able to go in the first place, only getting about 60k on a trial dummy.

So what’s the difference? Why does everyone push crit builds and crit damage? Because of the one thing none of the above calculations takes into account and the biggest core problem that’s causing a gap between elite players and noobs like myself.

Buffs and De-buffs

There are 2 insanely important kinds of buffs in ESO. They’re hinted at above but you’d be forgiven for missing it. Resistance de-buffs and Critical Damage Buffs are massively important in ESO.

Popping over to the top leaderboard kill for Dreadsail Reef, the tank is wearing Saxhleel’s (Major Force), and a dedicated support healer was wearing Roaring Opportunist (Major Slayer) and Jorvulds (Increases Buff duration). The tank had Pestilent Colossus slotted to provide Major Vulnerability to AOE, and the support healer was using Aggressive Horn to help maintain Major force and provide 10% extra magicka and stamina to the group. Another DPS player was using the Elemental Catalyst set to keep up the crit de-buff (15%) while using Avid Boneyard, Stalking Blastbones, and mystic siphon as the different elemental damage sources.

With all that and harpooner’s taken into account, our base crit damage goes from 1.5x to the capped 2.75x very quickly. In fact, that’s what the entire group is built around. Let’s see how valuable crit is at a baseline of 2.75x.

Base = 1010 average hit
SD = 1030 average hit - 1010 / 61 = ~0.328
Mag = 1018 average hit - 1010 / 240 = ~0.033
Pen = 1101 average hit - 1010 / 2856 = ~0.032
Crit = 1059 average hit - 1010 / 701 = ~0.071

Pen 1487 ~47.3 dmg increase before pen cap
Mag 1096 ~36.2 dmg increase before pen cap
SD 129 ~42.3 dmg increase before pen cap
Crit 657 ~46.6 dmg increase before pen cap

There are more factors at play, but the dramatic difference between having crit buffs/debuffs is absolutely highlighted here. Without all the buffs and keeping a consistent uptime, crit is the worst stat to invest in. With the buffs and consistent uptime, crit is the most valuable stat after pen cap (which is very easy to attain, but if you aren’t maintaining major and minor breach, things go downhill very quickly).

Even at 2.56x crit damage (less than a Major Force from cap), Spell Damage is a better investment option. It is *only* when the right buffs are in place, that crit exceeds Spell Damage in terms of a valuable investment.

Summary

You’re nerfing the wrong thing. Going after rotations and weaving won’t change the significant damage differences that a coordinated buffing team will have over a PUG. The buffs and de-buffs in the game are far far far too powerful. Everyone chasing the elite players is chasing the wrong thing. You’re personal DPS rotation on the dummies is giving you the wrong information. Unless you have a tank and healer actively working on their rotations to keep uptime on the buffs, crit is not your friend.

I believe the buffs and de-buffs need to have hard nerfs. Nerf them by up to 75% and provide that 75% dmg to base numbers. ESO is extremely dependent on well-coordinating buffs in groups, and all the lessons learned doing solo play, do not help the group achieve high damage. In many cases, a personal damage loss to pick up an extra buff is far more valuable to group DPS numbers than higher personal damage. This is true even for your highest damage DPS.

Until the buffs and de-buffs in the game are thoroughly reviewed, reduced, consolidated, and even removed, the gap between your average player wanting to do damage, and the elite high end is going to stay consistently

dmnqwk · August 2022

This is all well and good, except:

1. The disparency between players in 4 person randoms is still prevalent, none of which are achieved solely through the appropriate buffs being in place.
2. If you look at parses there is a huge gap between people who can parse 40k and those hitting 140k.
3. They idea is not to eliminate the gap, but reduce it from being 10 times damage to being something more reasonable (I don't think they go far enough towards a goal of 3 times I think they'll be happy if they get it down to 5 times, sadly.)
4. Having reasons to increase teamwork allows people to work towards a goal more effectively than simply having 12 people go in with no cordination.

I appreciate your intent in showing us the numbers, numbers are always good, but it's also important to remember balance.
Suggesting X is better than Y without showing a breaking point leads to inaccurate information.

Pen Cap is pretty much number one priority followed by balancing crit, crit dmg and spell or weapon damage. How they need to be balanced is something that doesn't get shown too often in this game (in previous MMOs I played the theorycrafting had better comparative graphs or spreadsheets to help determine where to focus) but, ultimately, it's not something done in much detail in ESO)

Ultimately, I don't think I fully agree that the 'buffs are to blame' when 4 player content can have 1000 CP players pulling 15k while other times the same CP can pull 115k.

MidniteOwl1913 · August 2022

sonofabelll wrote: »

This will be a 4-part post.

1. Who am I?
2. Learning the Game
3. Buffs and De-buffs
4. Summary

Who am I?

I joined ESO back in 2012, and have the little pet monkey for joining during the Beta. When I joined, I remember having fun with the game, but ultimately thought the combat was boring. I was used to more responsive gameplay with clearly labelled off GCD abilities (we’ll get into this later) and things to do between your 1 second skills. The 2nd time I came back to the game was when I learned about the animation cancelling that had been in the game since launch, what we call today, weaving.

Before ESO launched, I was playing MMOs, and since ESO’s launch, I’ve played other MMOs. When I play a game, I like to push content, really master my character, and drive home solid solo effort. I want to see if I can clear content with fewer people, and stronger mastery of my skills.

Since returning to ESO about 4 months ago, I’ve cleared both vet arena’s multiple times. I’ve cleared normal dungeons solo, and some vet dungeons solo. I’m interested in attempting to clear some Cloudrest bosses solo, but haven’t stepped into that ring just yet. I would expect the lessons I’ve learned doing solo content at a high level to give me an advantage in group content.

Learning the Game (long section)

I like to dig into the numbers behind the scenes. I want to know what is in my build, what tools are available, and why they are available. I’m an engineer, and I like to see how things work. Guides are great, but having been in a high level raiding scene before, I don’t inherently trust them. So I set about my work, reviewing things like esocalc, alcasthq, and whatever else I could find. After hitting a non-trial dummy and digging into my own numbers, here’s what I figured to be true (more on this later):

Penetration is the highest damage-yielding number until you hit cap.
Spell Power / Weapon Power vastly out-perform crit (you’ll see).
Magicka / Stamina out-perform crit.
Crit doesn’t seem to be very good.

Quick maths & stealing esocalc’s coefficients (lvl 50, drop all skillpoints, champ points, gear, and use
mundus stone. Craft cp160 white inferno staff that will deal 1037 tooltip dmg) hitting skeleton dummy (18200 resistance):

Spell Dmg = 2037; Mag = 12000; Pen = 0
Resistance = 1-(18200/50000) = 0.636
Coefficient of Spell dmg = 0.425525; Coefficient of Mag = 0.0405

( [SD * CoSD] + [Mag * CoMag] ) = ~1353 * .636 = ~860

Now let’s tackle crit. Base crit chance is 10% and base crit dmg is 50%. 219 Crit is needed for 1% crit chance increase. Going back to our base setup, 860 is our base dmg.

(860 * chance not to crit ) + ( 860 * chance to crit *1.5 )
(860*0.9)+(860*0.1*1.5) = 903.4

Total Dmg Calc:
( [Spell Damage * CoSD ] + [ Mag * CoMag ] ) * ( 1 – ( [ 18200 – Pen ] / 50000 ) ) = Base Dmg Output

( [ Base Dmg Output * Chance not to Crit ] + [ Base Dmg Output * Chance to Crit * Crit Damage ] ) = Total Average Dmg

Now lets play around with adding each kind of dmg.

Put Fighters guild ability circle of protection on bar with Fighter’s guild passive increase spell dmg by 6%. Spell Dmg is 2098, Mag 12000, Pen 0, Crit 10%, Crit Dmg 1.5x dmg output is: 876 base and 1315 crit. 920.7 average hit.

Equilibrium on bar with Mage guild 2% Mag. Spell Dmg is 2037, Mag 12240, Pen 0, Crit 10%, Crit Dmg 1.5x, dmg output is: 866 base and 1300 crit. 909.9 average hit.

Equip sharpened cp160 white inferno staff. Spell Dmg is 2037, Mag 12000, Pen 2856, Pen 0, Crit 10%, Crit Dmg 1.5x, dmg output is: 937 base and 1406 crit. 984.5 average hit.

Equip precise cp160 white inferno staff (3.2% = 219*3.2 = ~701 Spell Crit) Spell Dmg is 2037, Mag 12000, Pen 0, Pen 0, Crit 13.2% (~701 Spell Crit), Crit Dmg 1.5x, dmg output is: 860 base and 903 crit. 917.2 average hit.

Now let’s calculate the value of each *point before pen cap: (Dmg Output – Base Dmg Output) / Amount gained

*IMPORTANT NOTE: these are only relevant numbers in comparison to the other stats*

SD = (920.7-903.4)/61 = ~0.284
Mag = (909.9-903.4)/240 = ~0.027
Pen = (984.5-903.4)/2856 = ~0.028
Crit = (917.2-903.4)/701 = ~0.02

Now let’s compare this to armor sets at gold tier level:

Pen 1487 ~40.1 dmg increase before pen cap
Mag 1096 ~27.4 dmg increase before pen cap
SD 129 ~33.8 dmg increase before pen cap
Crit 657 ~13.14 dmg increase before pen cap

Crit does just underperform here, it massively underperforms. Every adding the minor force available during solo play, crit is still awful at 1.6x crit damage. So for several months, I was wondering why anyone would bother with any sort of crit build and I ran in the opposite direction, pushing spell power as high as I could go. The first trial I went to at Cloudrest, I did ~25% of the damage of the group. But I had just barely made the parsing limit to be able to go in the first place, only getting about 60k on a trial dummy.

So what’s the difference? Why does everyone push crit builds and crit damage? Because of the one thing none of the above calculations takes into account and the biggest core problem that’s causing a gap between elite players and noobs like myself.

Buffs and De-buffs

There are 2 insanely important kinds of buffs in ESO. They’re hinted at above but you’d be forgiven for missing it. Resistance de-buffs and Critical Damage Buffs are massively important in ESO.

Popping over to the top leaderboard kill for Dreadsail Reef, the tank is wearing Saxhleel’s (Major Force), and a dedicated support healer was wearing Roaring Opportunist (Major Slayer) and Jorvulds (Increases Buff duration). The tank had Pestilent Colossus slotted to provide Major Vulnerability to AOE, and the support healer was using Aggressive Horn to help maintain Major force and provide 10% extra magicka and stamina to the group. Another DPS player was using the Elemental Catalyst set to keep up the crit de-buff (15%) while using Avid Boneyard, Stalking Blastbones, and mystic siphon as the different elemental damage sources.

With all that and harpooner’s taken into account, our base crit damage goes from 1.5x to the capped 2.75x very quickly. In fact, that’s what the entire group is built around. Let’s see how valuable crit is at a baseline of 2.75x.

Base = 1010 average hit
SD = 1030 average hit - 1010 / 61 = ~0.328
Mag = 1018 average hit - 1010 / 240 = ~0.033
Pen = 1101 average hit - 1010 / 2856 = ~0.032
Crit = 1059 average hit - 1010 / 701 = ~0.071

Pen 1487 ~47.3 dmg increase before pen cap
Mag 1096 ~36.2 dmg increase before pen cap
SD 129 ~42.3 dmg increase before pen cap
Crit 657 ~46.6 dmg increase before pen cap

There are more factors at play, but the dramatic difference between having crit buffs/debuffs is absolutely highlighted here. Without all the buffs and keeping a consistent uptime, crit is the worst stat to invest in. With the buffs and consistent uptime, crit is the most valuable stat after pen cap (which is very easy to attain, but if you aren’t maintaining major and minor breach, things go downhill very quickly).

Even at 2.56x crit damage (less than a Major Force from cap), Spell Damage is a better investment option. It is *only* when the right buffs are in place, that crit exceeds Spell Damage in terms of a valuable investment.

Summary

You’re nerfing the wrong thing. Going after rotations and weaving won’t change the significant damage differences that a coordinated buffing team will have over a PUG. The buffs and de-buffs in the game are far far far too powerful. Everyone chasing the elite players is chasing the wrong thing. You’re personal DPS rotation on the dummies is giving you the wrong information. Unless you have a tank and healer actively working on their rotations to keep uptime on the buffs, crit is not your friend.

I believe the buffs and de-buffs need to have hard nerfs. Nerf them by up to 75% and provide that 75% dmg to base numbers. ESO is extremely dependent on well-coordinating buffs in groups, and all the lessons learned doing solo play, do not help the group achieve high damage. In many cases, a personal damage loss to pick up an extra buff is far more valuable to group DPS numbers than higher personal damage. This is true even for your highest damage DPS.

Until the buffs and de-buffs in the game are thoroughly reviewed, reduced, consolidated, and even removed, the gap between your average player wanting to do damage, and the elite high end is going to stay consistently

Excellent work! But I'm not sure I agree entirely with your conclusion. The use of the buff and de-buffs that make for the large difference is an effect, not the cause. The people you are talking about are knowledgeable, coordinated, and practiced. They make good use of the buffs/debuffs, but those tools are available to everyone. But everyone just doesn't get as much out of them.

I think that practice, skill, and knowledge *should* have some reward. It doesn't bother me that there are people pulling down 140k in Tamriel (Zos seems to care, but I don't know why). As a lower-tier player, yes I would like to be able to get into some vet content. Maybe even a normal trial. (As a healer main I'd really like to get Roaring) But nerfing the top players won't help me to do that.

Personally, I'm almost 70 ADHD and my hands hurt after a long fight, so I think I understand my vet block. ANd honestly, Oakensoul has helped me a lot (but sigh, we know where that is going...) But I don't know what would help most mid/lower-tier players to reach harder content. I don't think that anyone has asked them either... I guess that would be something to try.

Pelanora · August 2022

Its an inflationary damage economy.

Providing new damage-dependent challenges to keep players playing is inflationary. Challenge in the harder fights, challenge in the new more powerful gear to aquire.

In strides the Central Bank Zos to slash the level of inflation, every few years, and ouch everyone invested in the damage economy suffers.

This cycle can never end, so long as players need to be challenged, and the challenge is harder content, rather than trickier content, or novel engaging content.

ZOS should hire themselves an economist.

p00tx · August 2022

You're actually kind of on the right track I think. My personal take is that this is an MMO, meaning it's a social game that requires people to coordinate groups for best results. Instead of putting these crucial buffs in sets and general skill lines, they should be embedded into classes, to encourage players to bring a variety of classes to content. They got it right with Warden and to a lesser degree DK, who have great group oriented toolkits. Wardens have Major Resolve, Major and Minor Breach, Minor Vulnerability, Minor Maim and Minor Brittle (secondary effects, but most easily gained with Warden skills), Major Protection (not really used, but it's there), Minor Prophecy/Endurance, Minor Toughness and easy access to Minor Mending. All of these skills benefit the group and make Warden a super valuable spec for any team pushing content, from 4 man to 12 man, to PvP. Most other classes have 1, maaaaaybe 2 group oriented skills which can generally be supplemented by using item sets that provide those same buffs, making those classes less stable in roster changes during patch transitions.

More classes need that social treatment to make them less often relegated to solo play. Adding minor endurance/prophecy to Healing Path was a great move in that direction for Nightblade, and we're seeing a resurgence of Nightblade healers now.

Pelanora · August 2022

It's interesting the consistency here that pen is the priority and crit needs buffs to make it really useful, and then posts like this, about orders wrath, which enhances crit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/v9x72y/the_best_craftable_set_in_eso_orders_wrath/

So why isn't pen more of a focus in sets? Why is everyone all about crit? I'm genuinely asking not challenging what you've said.

Troodon80 · August 2022

Pelanora wrote: »

It's interesting the consistency here that pen is the priority and crit needs buffs to make it really useful, and then posts like this, about orders wrath, which enhances crit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/v9x72y/the_best_craftable_set_in_eso_orders_wrath/

So why isn't pen more of a focus in sets? Why is everyone all about crit? I'm genuinely asking not challenging what you've said.

"Everyone" goes for crit because they see a content creator making a guide for group content, seeing that it's "meta" without fully understanding the mathematics behind it or why/where such a build might be used (also, people don't read most guides thoroughly enough).

In group content, penetration is most often taken care of by tanks running Tremorscale with Crimson if needed and/or potentially a DD running Alkosh. In cases where penetration is still low, most mid-tier and above groups would optimise by using one piece penetration such as Skoria rather than one piece Slimecraw, or potentially use a set like Tzogvin which has a penetration bonus.

You also need to contextualise certain buffs in solo play and group play rather than a one-for-all "this is how it works." Different classes bring different things and this is why class-based optimisation gets heavily leaned into for high-end group play. For example, necromancer gains extra critical strike on enemies under 25%, so it would make sense to lean into this class buff. Templars gain natural spell damage via passive. Dragonknight gains weapon damage (only counting Minor Brutality there). Just to name a few.

Doing various tests, you can see the difference on a 3m dummy swapping out just a one-piece monster set bonus: Slimecraw (Critical Strike), Skoria (Penetration), Balorgh (Weapon and Spell Damage). Typically, if you compare parses between these, Skoria would do the best. Followed by Balorgh, then Slimecraw. Indeed, just from this, crit would be the worst. However, when you add in just a few buffs and debuffs, such as Minor/Major Breach and Minor/Major Force (reiterating what that Reddit post says: Order's Wrath stacks with Major and Minor Force), this changes to Skoria, Slimecraw, Balorgh. When testing on the trial dummy, Slimecraw is a very clear and distinct winner by anything up to 8k~10k DPS over Balorgh, especially when you add in raw damage modifiers (e.g. Bahsei) or traits which scale your damage or stats up based on health percentage (e.g. Bloodthirsty), which improves the numbers for your crit damage as well as your base damage.

In terms of penetration sets within the context of craftable sets (i.e. the context of what you've linked) there aren't many craftable penetration sets and those that there are tend to give Major Breach (e.g. Night Mother's Gaze), which isn't good in group play and has limited use in solo play as it tends to be a fairly easy to apply debuff with most classes; Noxious Breath (Dragonknight), Mark (Nightblade), Boneyard (Necromancer), Shalks (Warden), Razor Caltrops, Elemental Drain, etc. Further, in most overland activities enemies outside of bosses tend to only have around 9k resistances, so if you run light armour you'll be almost hitting that anyway, and, if not, you can run a Major Breach ability. There's no real point wasting a full five-piece set just to get Major Breach. With this in mind, the core sets people tend to turn to are Hunding's Rage, Julianos, Order's Wrath, and New Moon Acolyte. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that three out of these four sets are weapon/spell damage.

Pelanora · August 2022

Thank you for this reply. Comprehensive and kindly written. I learnt a lot!

BahometZ · August 2022

I mean, I gotta agree with the thrust of OP's post. It's power inflation through trial sets. Each patch for years has introduced a new trial set that exponentially increases the damage possibilities.

Organised groups at the end game are designed to reach pen cap, crit damage cap, and bring as many damage inflation support sets as possible. Ults, buffs, and debuffs are all maintained and timed to meet the challenges of hard mode content. All of which is designed and created by ZOS. They make the tools, we use the tools.

The difference between a happy casual who pays no attention to vet content and someone who has just stepped into vet content is as far as that vet person is from an avid endgame raider, who has farmed all the gear with their trial team, discusses niche approaches, parses on the regular, watches streams and vids, and understands their class and the content they engage implicitly. Knowledgeable people are bouncing ideas off each other and this coalesces into the high ceiling.

Instead of addressing the real cause of high ceiling, group coordination, they have nerfed individual damage. All individuals. Even that happy casual, who did nothing to deserve this.

It's the same problem as PvP. What is the main complaint in PvP (besides performance)? Unkillable ball groups. Every every every time that ZOS try to combat them by introducing a ball group killer set, the ball group uses it better than anyone else. It's actually hilarious.

So now in PvE, because the threshold is too high, they're nerfing everyone to counter it. Everyone is paying the price for ZOS introducing set after set of exponential power explosion that the best players are taking advantage of. Again, actually hilarious.

Sussuris · August 2022

There were many posts during PTS about how they were targetting the wrong thing if they wanted to narrow the gap.

Make the buffs more accessible - longer durations, easier uptimes + an actual tutorial - and suddenly, once you get into groups where you have access to these (playing together being the point of an MMO) your damage skyrockets.

But no. Just decrease everyones damage

rauyran · August 2022

This is a fantastic analysis. Most of my dungeon clears are 2 DPS players plus 2 companions. The companions can hold a taunt and heal but they don't provide any significant buffs so I am going to look again at our builds which are quite crit heavy at the moment.

Zodiarkslayer · August 2022

I think the principle everyone should understand here is opportunity cost.
Basically we all have to see a group by the ressources they bring along and thus what alternatives for choices they represent.
Lets look at a 12 player trial group budget.
We have at least (there are more, I do not want to "listemall"):

24 5-piece-sets
12 player classes
12 player races
144 ability slots
12 monster set or mythic + 1-piece
12 times player skill

These are the most important. We also have a priority of goals, that in order to achieve them, groups have to use these ressources (in order of logical priority): guarantee Survival (taunts, heals, resistances, mechanics, etc.) and then maximize Damage (group pen 18200, group crit damage 125%, individual damage, etc..)

An easy to understand example of optimisation would be:
A group could use 12 5-piece-sets to reach 3460 of the group pen goal (everyone wears Spriggan's Thorns or Spinner's Garments), or they could use one ability slot to get almost 9k group pen (pierce armor ability).
The first option represents a very high cost of opportunity and a low yield, the second a low cost and a high yield. The second is the more efficient choice. And if you can exclude all other options to be higher costing, the second becomes the most efficient choice.

Some choices can come in various ways. For example a higly skilled Tank player and an equally skilled Healer player might provide 100% uptime of Major Force. Other Players might be less skilled and the group needs three ability slots to guarantee 100% uptime, constituting a ressource loss and an inefficiency.

Now if we, or the group, apply that principle until all goals are met and all ressources are spent, we have ourselves a highly or maybe even most efficient group setup.

@sonofabelll Your analysis is not incorrect, but incomplete. You are not considering all factors and mechanics, that are relevant. Just looking at stats, doesn't make sense. Ignoring factors and variables, that still are impacting your results is unrecommended. Only considering stats, abilities and player skill as a whole, can yield a quality analysis. But that is a really complex, not difficult, but complex (partially non-) linear optimisation problem.

For example, you inherently assume that every point of spell or weapon damage has the same cost of opportunity. That is wrong in two regards. First they do not yield linear improvements. The damage calculation formula will dynamically scale down the effect of SD/WD the higher it gets. And second, at some point you cannot just keep scaling upwards, because of limited ressources to do so. You will have to take away from your other build stats and that would again be additional opportunity costs to factor in. Do you take away roughly 1k Max Magicka or 2% crit chance to get your SP up from 10k to 10.1k? Is that better? It's a constructed example, but I think you get the point.

However, your conclusion is still on the spot! It is coordination of group play, that is the majority of the gap between casual SOLO players and endgame Trial groups. And the most important factor is the ability to source so many group buffs, with such ease. As in: with such low cost of opportunity.
Progression to endgame in ESO is not towards higher damage. Even though that this is constantly propagated. It is just a side effect. It is improvements in efficiency that make an endgame group.

Following that theme of complexity, one can understand that nerfing damage isn't as easy for the devs as most would think. And reducing it to just one stat like spell/weapon damage is a little too narrow view on the topic, in my humble opinion.

Amottica · October 2022

dmnqwk wrote: »

This is all well and good, except:

1. The disparency between players in 4 person randoms is still prevalent, none of which are achieved solely through the appropriate buffs being in place.
2. If you look at parses there is a huge gap between people who can parse 40k and those hitting 140k.
3. They idea is not to eliminate the gap, but reduce it from being 10 times damage to being something more reasonable (I don't think they go far enough towards a goal of 3 times I think they'll be happy if they get it down to 5 times, sadly.)
4. Having reasons to increase teamwork allows people to work towards a goal more effectively than simply having 12 people go in with no cordination.

I appreciate your intent in showing us the numbers, numbers are always good, but it's also important to remember balance.
Suggesting X is better than Y without showing a breaking point leads to inaccurate information.

Pen Cap is pretty much number one priority followed by balancing crit, crit dmg and spell or weapon damage. How they need to be balanced is something that doesn't get shown too often in this game (in previous MMOs I played the theorycrafting had better comparative graphs or spreadsheets to help determine where to focus) but, ultimately, it's not something done in much detail in ESO)

Ultimately, I don't think I fully agree that the 'buffs are to blame' when 4 player content can have 1000 CP players pulling 15k while other times the same CP can pull 115k.

While this thread is now ancient since being almost two months old, and the update is already live, I agree with every point you made.

Personally, I think the main issue is the sheer amount of choices we have in making out builds. There are players that cannot even hit the 40k DPS mark. Much of the low end of DPS is due to bad builds in both gear and skill choices and a little bit of CP choices.

There is not much that can be done with that considering there is guidance in-game that is halfway decent for gear choices, plenty of information online for complete builds, and a half-decent guild can help a player with at least a half-decent build. One can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink.

dsalter · October 2022

so basically having the soft cap removed and hard cap increased is creating this power creep that zeni seems to be unable to avoid... am i getting this right?
and by doing said changes they made the game MORE power creepy and less hybrid friendly because no caps.