A Balance Concern

starkerealm · January 2023

One thing in the patch notes worries me, a couple of abilities have had secondary buffs stripped off of them with the developer rationale that the buff was already accessible the class via another ability.

So, Empowering Chains no longer grants empower (and has been renamed), and Empowering Sweep has been renamed and lost empower. I'm not saying these are bad changes. Empowering Chains switched from granting empower to granting Major Berserk. Empowering Sweep is an ultimate, so that was never going to be a consistent source of empower for the player.

My concern is the explanation on Empowering Chains:

This morph now grants Major Berserk for 10 seconds after casting, rather than Empower, as Molten Armaments already grants it in a much more effect[sic] way.

I'm worried about the prospect of stripping buffs off of abilities because the class already has another source for that buff. Currently, if you're running a DK, you have a meaningful build choice on getting empower. Chains (with various considerations) or MA. After this, chains are going to have a taunt attached to them, and if you want empower on a DK, you'll need to run MA, or get it spilled over from a party member.

Again, this specific case isn't a problem. However, the consolidation of buffs does worry me. The reason is that it does reflect fewer viable player choices in setting up their builds.

Because of the non-stacking nature of buffs in ESO, there's a lot of potential for classes to have buffs that will trigger from multiple places on their class, without meaningfully altering their ceiling. It can even encourage diverse group composition, as some classes may be semi-dependent on others to provide them with the buffs they want. There's a lot of design potential here, but stripping buffs because the class can already obtain them somewhere else is a little worrying. Not because these changes are bad, but because, if this becomes a trend, it will result in less build variety, as we start being funneled towards needing a specific set of abilities at all times. (And, yeah, ESO has already suffered from years of auto-include abilities. This doesn't fight that trend.)

Zezin · January 2023

starkerealm wrote: »

One thing in the patch notes worries me, a couple of abilities have had secondary buffs stripped off of them with the developer rationale that the buff was already accessible the class via another ability.

So, Empowering Chains no longer grants empower (and has been renamed), and Empowering Sweep has been renamed and lost empower. I'm not saying these are bad changes. Empowering Chains switched from granting empower to granting Major Berserk. Empowering Sweep is an ultimate, so that was never going to be a consistent source of empower for the player.

My concern is the explanation on Empowering Chains:

This morph now grants Major Berserk for 10 seconds after casting, rather than Empower, as Molten Armaments already grants it in a much more effect[sic] way.

I'm worried about the prospect of stripping buffs off of abilities because the class already has another source for that buff. Currently, if you're running a DK, you have a meaningful build choice on getting empower. Chains (with various considerations) or MA. After this, chains are going to have a taunt attached to them, and if you want empower on a DK, you'll need to run MA, or get it spilled over from a party member.

Again, this specific case isn't a problem. However, the consolidation of buffs does worry me. The reason is that it does reflect fewer viable player choices in setting up their builds.

Because of the non-stacking nature of buffs in ESO, there's a lot of potential for classes to have buffs that will trigger from multiple places on their class, without meaningfully altering their ceiling. It can even encourage diverse group composition, as some classes may be semi-dependent on others to provide them with the buffs they want. There's a lot of design potential here, but stripping buffs because the class can already obtain them somewhere else is a little worrying. Not because these changes are bad, but because, if this becomes a trend, it will result in less build variety, as we start being funneled towards needing a specific set of abilities at all times. (And, yeah, ESO has already suffered from years of auto-include abilities. This doesn't fight that trend.)

that ship has sailed a long time ago... menber when you needed cros for major vuln? I menber...

WrathOfInnos · January 2023

Fair point, and I'll add another example. I dislike the change a few months ago to remove Major Savagery from Biting Jabs and give it Major Brutality instead. The reason was that Major Savagery could be obtained by Vampire's Bane.

This doesn't work for several reasons. First being that Vamp Bane is one of the worst DoTs in the game, only contributing around 2% of my DPS. Second I'm not looking to add more Magicka skills to my Stamplar, which already has to use Mag + Stam potions and struggles to sustain beam in execute. By not using crit potions (does not exist in bi or tri pots) I'm forced to double bar Camo Hunter.

The Major Brutality on the other hand is entirely useless to me. A DK in group already provides 100% uptime on this buff with Igneous Weapons. Jabs should certainly be reverted to Savagery, even if that means it shares a buff with Vamp Bane.

Vamp Bane should honestly be reworked entirely. Compare it to the damage from a generic weapon skill like Carve (both 32s long), and the fact that Carve is multi-target and the power imbalance is obvious.