loveeso wrote: »

Recap of Anti-HA Rhetoric

After carefully perusing various forum posts, I have collated a summary of arguments put forth by players who employ LA DD builds as to why players who utilize Heavy Attack (HA) play style ought to be weakened. Here are the arguments:

1.
Argument: “HA is so OP that it is best in end-game content - for example look at vAS+2!” (Yes, they always use vAS+2 as an “example” )

Reality: The vAS+2 trial is an outlier (see below) so this argument is insincere but even in vAS+2 LA teams are performing better than HA teams. The best HA team took approximately 32% longer than the best LA team to complete the trial.

What the anti-HA players conveniently fail to mention is that HA teams are completely destroyed by LA teams in all the other trials (see the DPS tables below) which means that for the sake of honesty this anti-HA argument should be rewritten as follows: “While LA builds reign supreme in 91% of end-game content, in the remaining 9% HA builds perform only 32% worse. Nerf them even more!”


Figure 1: Top DPS tables in all the other (10!) trials. It's just the first page and it's followed by pages and pages completely dominated by LA DDs. Just go to the logs website and check it out yourself - you will see how much LA meta outclasses HA. The difference is so huge that it looks ridiculous But yeah, let's nerf HA


2.
Argument: “HA builds are much tankier than my LA build! Too tanky! It’s not fair! Nerf their DPS!”

Reality: I have already shown why this excuse to nerf HA builds does not make sense in this post ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7857529/#Comment_7857529 ) but I have some additional comments, please continue reading.

First of all, it is not true, as it’s not related to HA but to the Oakensoul ring. Not all HA builds use Oakensoul, and not all Oakensoul peeps use HA, some of them are LA players… and guess what, the nerf tested on the PTS targets HA players, not Oakensoul players.

Any LA can be made as tanky as an Oakensoul build. Here are simple examples how:

• Stop using parse food and get food which increases your health - you will lose a tiny bit of your DPS but you will have more health.
• Slap prismatic defence on your armour and get more health and magicka or stamina: you will lose just a few % of your super high LA DPS.
• In any group content you should already get Major Resolve from your Warden healer or tank so you get the same 6000 armour as Oakensoul players.
• Still salty about not having that 5% damage mitigation from Minor Aegis? You have more bar space than 1bar builds, slap Flare on your bar, you will get 10% damage mitigation (or you can swap one of your sets to a set that provides Minor Aegis… or do both and get 10% + 5% damage mitigation)..

The above will make you as tanky as any Oakensoul player. Yes, you will have lower DPS than on your glass-cannon LA build but, guess what, Oakensoul builds pay for their tankiness with their DPS. Good news, if you know how to play, your tanky two-bar LA build will still have higher DPS output than those pesky HA builds.

3.
Argument: “My LA build has problems with sustain and HA builds don’t have any problems with sustain! It’s not fair! Nerf their DPS!”

Reality: If you know what you are doing on a well-designed LA build in a well-composed group (we are talking about end-game content here, aren’t we), you should not have any problems with sustain (especially nowadays, when sustain is so much easier with hybrid builds). If you are still envious of those pesky HA players with their annoying sustain, here are some simple examples of what you can do to have better sustain:

• Stop using Increase Magical/Physical Harm on all your jewellery pieces and get regeneration or decrease cost glyphs - you will sustain without any problem and you will lose just a few percent of your DPS
• Use a heavy attack every now and then to get resources - you will lose a tiny bit of your DPS but it will still be higher than HA DPS (unless you haven’t got skilled yet). Can’t get Magicka with your greatsword and daggers? Well, it was your choice to equip Stamina weapons on both bars - equip a staff on your back bar.
• Modify your build even more, e.g. you can choose a different race, or change your weapons and skills and get better sustain at the cost of DPS (your DPS will still be higher than that of HA builds unless you don’t know what you are doing but in that case either “get good” or… switch to a heavy attack build)

***

As you can see from the above, the "arguments" most commonly employed by HA haters are either insincere or nonsensical. Moreover, the anti-HA rhetoric suffers from another, more significant flaw. The HA critics often fixate on just one HA build, the Oakensoul Sorcerer with a Lightning staff (and often, two pets), to argue for nerfing the whole HA play style. However, when questioned about the need to nerf all the other HA builds that use different classes, weapons, or lack Oakensoul, they either ignore the question or provide weak “justifications” such as "it's not a significant nerf." Such responses fail to address the central issue: why nerf HA builds at all? As has been demonstrated in this thread and in many, many other places, their DPS output is already much lower than that of the two-bar LA meta. This holds true even for Oakensoul lightning sorcerers with their two pets.

To address the elephant in the room, here is an example of a heavy-attack build that is not a sorcerer, does not utilize pets, and relies on weapons other than the lightning staff:


Figure 2: A non-sorcerer non-lightning equivalent to the one-button HA build and the one-skill LA build that we discussed earlier in this thread.

DPS on the trial dummy: 35k (i.e. only 25% of LA meta - but why stop here, let's nerf HA even more! )

As you can see, such HA builds have atrociously low DPS, yet the anti-HA camp calls for nerfs to all HA builds, including those that differ significantly from the Oakensoul lightning sorcerer with pets. This demand is entirely irrational. Instead, a rational approach would be to leave the lightning sorcerer builds (which are already weaker than the LA meta) as they are and bring all other HA builds up to their level.

jaws343 wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

loveeso wrote: »

I just found out from a kind stranger (thank you!) that our small forum thread has gained popularity on YouTube! It's exciting to see that our discussion has reached a wider audience and is sparking interest in the topic. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtyKqfiEoaA

If you are still interested in this discussion, don’t miss the latest update here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7867705/#Comment_7867705

i really dont think light or heavy attacks should be nerfed, i think people should learn to focus on themselves and stop worrying what other people do.

Firstly, if you watched the actual video, the title and the intro were tongue in cheek and the video was actually advocating for more heavy attack options.

Secondly, no. Game balance cannot be done by ignoring what others are doing. This is an MMO. The damage your build does, the damage my build does, and how those two builds interact with content, absolutely matter to one another and to the health of the game. This is NOT skyrim. By this game's very nature, what other people do is absolutely an important aspect of game balance.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

I wrote a big post above talking about the problems having the top end dps being extremely high (while nerfing the middle and low end).

From what I understand, the average dps in this game is roughly somewhere between 15-25k (before this nerf). This was hinted at with the introduction of companions, when the developers stated they did not want the companion dps to be higher than the average player’s.

So just think about what that means. The top dps, doing five to six times the average players dps.

Not twice or three times the average, but five to six times the average.

And in eso, where gear is kind of accessible, it means a lot of this difference falls upon the combat system itself.

Does that sound healthy for any game? If I was developing content for this game, I would not know where to begin.
How do I balance something “difficult”, twice the average dps? But the high end will destroy it.
80% of high end dps? Still too easy for them but how many people are going to see it anyway.

You have to create an accessible vet level, then a full throttle hard mode? Do we need to add layers in between now? That’s crazy.

I mean you don’t even need that because the majority of us playing these builds aren’t even doing the hard end game content.

The hardest for us is DLC dungeons on normal or vet non dlc. But after this nerf forget dlc dungeons I won’t be able to do those anymore at least not as a dps. So it’s just forcing me into changing my build up or making a new character and go as a healer.

If you aren't doing vet trials, and even if you are, the nerf won't stop you from being able to do them. Again, this is one of the smallest nerfs ZOS has ever put out (the nerf to empower) and changing gear sets is standard practice for every single player who does end game content (regarding the nerf to storm master). If you do anything less demanding than that content, it comes down to your mentality holding you back, not this nerf, dungeons depend a lot more on paying attention to things, and while high dps is needed from time to time, ultimates exist for a reason. Nothing is forcing you to play a healer, and if you want to participate in the highest tier of content, changing your build from patch to patch is the norm that everyone else deals with every patch, but for everything under that top tier of content, the damage loss won't kill you, this doom and gloom will.

There is no “doom and gloom” and I don’t want to be in the “highest tier” in already a very low dps player. I was hitting 15-18 k dps before using ha builds. Sucking wind. I have hand issues.

This build allows me to hit 30k and get though dlc dungeons I wasn’t able to before. The loss of dps has a major affect on the low end. Yes if your dps is 100k of course a small loss won’t matter. But when your dps is 27-30 k max of course any loss is going to set you back especially when you spent so much time upgrading gear for it a month later to be nerfed.

And once again there is no “doom and gloom” it’s being realistic. I can’t dps a normal build due to hand issues it’s not possible. This build is not something people want it’s clear the direction the combat is going and soon I will not be viable anymore with this build and people resent it. Why would I want to continue to play with others so resent how I play?

I’d rather switch roles and play the way I want (heavy attack ) solo … but with the dps loss it may not even be worth it solo.

I’ll definitely come back with results after it goes live I’ll make some records to show the loss. From tests I’ve seen it’s a massive hit to the low end.

Being realistic: If 100% of your damage comes form heavy attacks, and Empower is your only percentage buff to heavy attack damage, you are looking at a just under a 6% damage nerf. If you are wearing Oakensoul, using the weapons expert champion point node, those things dilute that nerf quite heavily, and if you use any abilities, like sorc pets or ground aoe's, and if you have enchantments doing damage on top of that, that 6% becomes even smaller. So, fact of the matter is, the empower nerf is barely on the table, if that nerf breaks your ability to do content, you have plenty of room to grow beyond what you were doing before.

Now Storm Master did get nerfed as well, but there are so many sets in the game to pick as alternatives, many from base zones, or are craftable, or are otherwise available from dungeons which means that, with the sticker book, you'll eventually get any piece you need no matter what. So let's spin the wheel over the hundreds of sets in ESO to find some alternatives that can work in most pieces of content aside from endgame trials.

You can use sets like Redmountain or Unfathomable Darkness, sets that drop form overland and just 'deal damage when you deal damage,' if you wanted to craft something you could use something like Torug's Pact, Oblivion's Foe, Red Eagle's Fury, New Moon Acolyte, Morkuldin, Coldharbour's Favorite, for just some sets that easily do damage or buff your damage output. Note that Red Eagle and New Moon Acolyte add bonus damage stats at the cost of making your skills cost more, but remember, heavy attack builds don't have sustain issues, you're heavy attacking all the time so the increased skill cost are nothing for those builds to deal with. Because, if you are at the 'low end,' you don't have as big of a need for raw damage, and there are so many more options open to you because of that, and if you are trying to push into higher end content, it is common for everyone there to have to swap gear between patches, and changing one base game dungeon set for another is very minor compared to what is normally required.

I’m wearing weapons expert I think it’s called
Which adds additional power to heavy attacks.
Sure I can swap gear but it will just get complained about once I switch and also nerfed. I’d rather just change roles and avoid all this non-sense all together at this point.

Even switching roles won't avoid it. Welcome to ESOs endgame. Zos changes combat every 3 to 6 months. It's been happening since the beginning and will likely continue. If you have a favorite endgame build, then anticipate changes...always anticipate changes. Especially if you want to clear harder content.

If your just playing easier content like most players do then you can honestly (and many do) ignore all of the changes made by zos to combat in the last 3 years.

It's only those that strive for harder content that really notice the difference.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

isadoraisacat wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

I wrote a big post above talking about the problems having the top end dps being extremely high (while nerfing the middle and low end).

From what I understand, the average dps in this game is roughly somewhere between 15-25k (before this nerf). This was hinted at with the introduction of companions, when the developers stated they did not want the companion dps to be higher than the average player’s.

So just think about what that means. The top dps, doing five to six times the average players dps.

Not twice or three times the average, but five to six times the average.

And in eso, where gear is kind of accessible, it means a lot of this difference falls upon the combat system itself.

Does that sound healthy for any game? If I was developing content for this game, I would not know where to begin.
How do I balance something “difficult”, twice the average dps? But the high end will destroy it.
80% of high end dps? Still too easy for them but how many people are going to see it anyway.

You have to create an accessible vet level, then a full throttle hard mode? Do we need to add layers in between now? That’s crazy.

I mean you don’t even need that because the majority of us playing these builds aren’t even doing the hard end game content.

The hardest for us is DLC dungeons on normal or vet non dlc. But after this nerf forget dlc dungeons I won’t be able to do those anymore at least not as a dps. So it’s just forcing me into changing my build up or making a new character and go as a healer.

If you aren't doing vet trials, and even if you are, the nerf won't stop you from being able to do them. Again, this is one of the smallest nerfs ZOS has ever put out (the nerf to empower) and changing gear sets is standard practice for every single player who does end game content (regarding the nerf to storm master). If you do anything less demanding than that content, it comes down to your mentality holding you back, not this nerf, dungeons depend a lot more on paying attention to things, and while high dps is needed from time to time, ultimates exist for a reason. Nothing is forcing you to play a healer, and if you want to participate in the highest tier of content, changing your build from patch to patch is the norm that everyone else deals with every patch, but for everything under that top tier of content, the damage loss won't kill you, this doom and gloom will.

There is no “doom and gloom” and I don’t want to be in the “highest tier” in already a very low dps player. I was hitting 15-18 k dps before using ha builds. Sucking wind. I have hand issues.

This build allows me to hit 30k and get though dlc dungeons I wasn’t able to before. The loss of dps has a major affect on the low end. Yes if your dps is 100k of course a small loss won’t matter. But when your dps is 27-30 k max of course any loss is going to set you back especially when you spent so much time upgrading gear for it a month later to be nerfed.

And once again there is no “doom and gloom” it’s being realistic. I can’t dps a normal build due to hand issues it’s not possible. This build is not something people want it’s clear the direction the combat is going and soon I will not be viable anymore with this build and people resent it. Why would I want to continue to play with others so resent how I play?

I’d rather switch roles and play the way I want (heavy attack ) solo … but with the dps loss it may not even be worth it solo.

I’ll definitely come back with results after it goes live I’ll make some records to show the loss. From tests I’ve seen it’s a massive hit to the low end.

Being realistic: If 100% of your damage comes form heavy attacks, and Empower is your only percentage buff to heavy attack damage, you are looking at a just under a 6% damage nerf. If you are wearing Oakensoul, using the weapons expert champion point node, those things dilute that nerf quite heavily, and if you use any abilities, like sorc pets or ground aoe's, and if you have enchantments doing damage on top of that, that 6% becomes even smaller. So, fact of the matter is, the empower nerf is barely on the table, if that nerf breaks your ability to do content, you have plenty of room to grow beyond what you were doing before.

Now Storm Master did get nerfed as well, but there are so many sets in the game to pick as alternatives, many from base zones, or are craftable, or are otherwise available from dungeons which means that, with the sticker book, you'll eventually get any piece you need no matter what. So let's spin the wheel over the hundreds of sets in ESO to find some alternatives that can work in most pieces of content aside from endgame trials.

You can use sets like Redmountain or Unfathomable Darkness, sets that drop form overland and just 'deal damage when you deal damage,' if you wanted to craft something you could use something like Torug's Pact, Oblivion's Foe, Red Eagle's Fury, New Moon Acolyte, Morkuldin, Coldharbour's Favorite, for just some sets that easily do damage or buff your damage output. Note that Red Eagle and New Moon Acolyte add bonus damage stats at the cost of making your skills cost more, but remember, heavy attack builds don't have sustain issues, you're heavy attacking all the time so the increased skill cost are nothing for those builds to deal with. Because, if you are at the 'low end,' you don't have as big of a need for raw damage, and there are so many more options open to you because of that, and if you are trying to push into higher end content, it is common for everyone there to have to swap gear between patches, and changing one base game dungeon set for another is very minor compared to what is normally required.

I’m wearing weapons expert I think it’s called
Which adds additional power to heavy attacks.
Sure I can swap gear but it will just get complained about once I switch and also nerfed. I’d rather just change roles and avoid all this non-sense all together at this point.

Even switching roles won't avoid it. Welcome to ESOs endgame. Zos changes combat every 3 to 6 months. It's been happening since the beginning and will likely continue. If you have a favorite endgame build, then anticipate changes...always anticipate changes. Especially if you want to clear harder content.

If your just playing easier content like most players do then you can honestly (and many do) ignore all of the changes made by zos to combat in the last 3 years.

It's only those that strive for harder content that really notice the difference.

sure but i will never know unless i change roles.
its the technique and how its performed i may enjoy more and be able to work with easier.
ive only ever done dps so i will never know unless i try.

I suggest healing then, I find it relaxing sometimes compared to dps.

joergino wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

I haven't been playing much ESO lately. Instead, I've just been logging on to collect the daily reward, do crafting writs and daily endeavours, then I logout again, and continue playing my current alternative game (an offline one).

All these anti-HA and anti-Oakensoul threads have been killing my motivation to play,

Absolutely the same here. I only do my daily routine stuff these days because I finally realized that absolutely everything you have or might even enjoy using will be destroyed very soon by the "community" and all the nerf-cryers in it. I don't know why there are people who say that the ESO community is so great. There seem to be verbal battles to the death for the pettiest of reasons and envy seems to be the only constant that is available in abundance.
Thinking that I very briefly felt happy last year because I (wrongly, of course) thought I could some more of my characters actually playable.
Ah well, no point in talking about this anymore. Or anything else, for that matter. It is all shouted down by the elite folk.

Eliran wrote: »

I understand you have disability but it doesn't justify the fact that I have to work 10 times harder than you and we both get the same achievement for it.