For anyone questioning what is happening here;

Empower is supposed to only increase your damage done to monsters by 80%, however the Trifocus passive is not correctly respecting that condition and is applying 100% of the empower boosted-against-monsters-only damage to players.

Edit: Even more egregiously I've been informed that Battle Spirit isn't mitigating the splash damage from triffocus even though it absolutely should. This makes the bug abuse even more clear.

People are now actively abusing this bug in PVP to gank unsuspecting players by targeting nearby NPCs. This is unambiguously an exploit @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin. This needs to be addressed urgently, and the offending players that have been abusing this exploit need to face ToS.

Unknown_Redemption wrote: »

Its not an exploit, as I was advised.

Well, we've heard that the devs "are aware" of it, so I suppose we'll find out soon if they consider it working as intended. They certainly don't intend Empowered damage to be passed on to players, and they're changing Storm Master so the extra damage there doesn't apply to players either. Personally I find it hard to understand how they make those changes while intending Trifocus to pass on Empower in situations where it otherwise is specifically exempt.

Unknown_Redemption wrote: »

Its not an exploit, as I was advised.

Then you were advised incorrectly. Because using a PVE only "damage against monsters" buff to boost "damage against players" while simultaneously taking advantage of the (apparent) fact that this damage is seemingly not being properly reduced by battlespirit even though it is damage that a player is doing is just unambiguously an exploit.

You cant 1 shot a dungeon with Tri-focus.

It was an unintended change, thats all

If I'm legit farming bosses in Imperial City and you get too close to it and eat a trifocus why should I face ToS?

Not denying the splash damage is stupid, but this is not on the players

The issue is that it is a problem, and that it will be fixed sooner or later, probably the passive damage will only work on monsters...

As a lightning staff Oakensoul player who had no idea this existed, I'm just going to not bring those characters into PVP. Which sucks, because my primary PVPVE character is a lightning themed sorc (who doesn't use any of that weird one bar HA meta stuff, I run Innate Axiom, Shadowrend and Thundercaller).

This needs to be fixed so that people aren't unintentionally abusing it because it is part of their normal playstyle. I had zero idea I was doing unintended damage in IC.

I think the issue is how it is used.

If a player is simply playing the game as they normally would (for example, HA a boss on an Oaken build) they are not exploiting an unintended outcome of a change. If they are specifically using this to apply the ramped damage to a player (for example targeting a Daedrat in amidst a group of player enemies) they are exploiting that unintended change.

Obviously, depending on what the behavior is, intent can be hard to determine. In this case, as hitting NPCs is not uncommon, to err on the side of the attacking player (except in cases that a grossly obvious) makes sense.

What we really need is for the team to advise whether this is intended behavior or not. I suspect not, but with this game you never know...

Nydarisa wrote: »

I think the issue is how it is used.

If a player is simply playing the game as they normally would (for example, HA a boss on an Oaken build) they are not exploiting an unintended outcome of a change. If they are specifically using this to apply the ramped damage to a player (for example targeting a Daedrat in amidst a group of player enemies) they are exploiting that unintended change.

Obviously, depending on what the behavior is, intent can be hard to determine. In this case, as hitting NPCs is not uncommon, to err on the side of the attacking player (except in cases that a grossly obvious) makes sense.

What we really need is for the team to advise whether this is intended behavior or not. I suspect not, but with this game you never know...

When I initially brought this issue forward, it was involving another player actually setting traps to tri focus; solely for the purpose of ganking people running by. From my interpretation of what I was told, you can deliberately hit players using tri-focus. There are no dividing lines here.

haelgaan wrote: »

It's a PVP zone, this is using the environment to your advantage, same as kiting around a tree when being pursued. this is not an exploit of any sort, this is how the game works.

you want to lobby for a change in how the game works, fine, but baiting people by calling it an exploit is over the top.

You probably unaware, but the passive was changed not long ago precisely because PvP. Same as empower. Now it supposed to hit only "monsters", but splash portion wasn't adjusted which is an issue and wasn't intentional whilst being combined with buffed through the roof empower. It is an exploit by definition.

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

The number of people who are vigorously defending abusing this exploit in zone chat is baffling to me.

^ Strong agree.

If it’s a completely imbalanced, “cheap” exploit, why would you defend it? Don’t you realize this kind of problem/oversite ruins the quality of the game?