RIP HA builds?

Khrogo · July 2023

BasP wrote: »

Khrogo wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

After doing veteran Vateshran Hollows on the PTS with a Heavy Attack build to test the proposed changes, I wouldn't really say Heavy Attack builds are unusable. Maybe trash packs went down a bit slower, but it stil felt like I was doing the Arena on easy mode (while this morning I died a few times during vVH with a Stamina Nightblade build I was testing on the PTS).

Now I haven't played with a HA build on my Warden on the live servers in a while, but I believe I last got a comparable score. I was a wee bit slower this time around because I forgot to rebind my Dodge key and change some settings though.

That said, I definitely agree that it would be nice if the bonusses from gear sets as well as the weapon passives were reworked so that a viable HA build could be made with every weapon type, even if it meant that Lightning Staffs would be changed some more in the process.

Do you mind me asking what your skill bar setup is for a score like that? I must be doing something wrong. Lol

Sure! I used Unstable Wall of Elements, Deep Fissure, Arctic Blast, Growing Swarm, Winter's Revenge and Wild Guardian. The fifth skill is a flex spot for me. I switched Winter's Revenge to Elemental Susceptibility for the fight with the Minotaur in the Green Zone as it's a more mobile fight, and used Lotus Blossom during the last part of the Red Zone to get some passive healing in (though that wasn't really necessary in hindsight). In the past I've also used Deceptive Predator for the speed buff, Inner Beast for the 10% extra damage and Screaming Cliff Racer for the extra Weapon and Spell Damage.

To get a higher score you have to kill all the adds too, including the adds in the portals in the Blue Zone and that giant fire colossus (the Brimstone Caretaker) in the Red Zone. I've never had a 300K+ score though, so I don't know if I just have to be faster to get that or if there is something in the Green Zone I'm missing.

Thanks for this. Very helpful. For some reason, I assumed you were using a sorc. My bad. I think I'll give this setup a try on my warden. I tend to skip the adds, so next time I'll make sure I kill them. Thanks again

BasP · July 2023

Khrogo wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

Khrogo wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

After doing veteran Vateshran Hollows on the PTS with a Heavy Attack build to test the proposed changes, I wouldn't really say Heavy Attack builds are unusable. Maybe trash packs went down a bit slower, but it stil felt like I was doing the Arena on easy mode (while this morning I died a few times during vVH with a Stamina Nightblade build I was testing on the PTS).

Now I haven't played with a HA build on my Warden on the live servers in a while, but I believe I last got a comparable score. I was a wee bit slower this time around because I forgot to rebind my Dodge key and change some settings though.

That said, I definitely agree that it would be nice if the bonusses from gear sets as well as the weapon passives were reworked so that a viable HA build could be made with every weapon type, even if it meant that Lightning Staffs would be changed some more in the process.

Do you mind me asking what your skill bar setup is for a score like that? I must be doing something wrong. Lol

Sure! I used Unstable Wall of Elements, Deep Fissure, Arctic Blast, Growing Swarm, Winter's Revenge and Wild Guardian. The fifth skill is a flex spot for me. I switched Winter's Revenge to Elemental Susceptibility for the fight with the Minotaur in the Green Zone as it's a more mobile fight, and used Lotus Blossom during the last part of the Red Zone to get some passive healing in (though that wasn't really necessary in hindsight). In the past I've also used Deceptive Predator for the speed buff, Inner Beast for the 10% extra damage and Screaming Cliff Racer for the extra Weapon and Spell Damage.

To get a higher score you have to kill all the adds too, including the adds in the portals in the Blue Zone and that giant fire colossus (the Brimstone Caretaker) in the Red Zone. I've never had a 300K+ score though, so I don't know if I just have to be faster to get that or if there is something in the Green Zone I'm missing.

Thanks for this. Very helpful. For some reason, I assumed you were using a sorc. My bad. I think I'll give this setup a try on my warden. I tend to skip the adds, so next time I'll make sure I kill them. Thanks again

You're welcome! When I did vVH a handful of times on the live servers I used Fetcher Infection instead of Growing Swarm by the way. If you intend to do vVH before the new patch drops, I'd recommend also using FI due to the increased single target damage versus bosses. I only went with GS this time because it does a bit of AOE damage as well (to make up for the nerfed splash damage from Tri Focus on the PTS).

StackonClown · August 2023

This is a very cynical move by moneymax.. I will *never* buy necrom, and soon cancel eso+ I will continue to play for free since i have invested thousands of dollars and hours into eso.

Even a reduced value of splash damage may have been palatable, but not a complete hammer.

TybaltKaine · August 2023

Oh no, now I'll have to heavy attack twice and actually cast skills.

This is a very overblown thread full of a lot of doom and gloom. I love my HA builds, actually lets me invest a significant amount of time into playing the game. This isn't going to change that. It will just make high end content take a little bit longer to finish.

For 90% of the player base, that's a non-issue. For the 10% of the score pushers and trifecta chasers, they will adjust and keep being ridiculous and overblowing the numbers on what the rest of the player base is using so that it too gets nerfed into submission for the score pushers but still remains a viable and useful style for literally everyone else.

This is the cycle that is seen time and time again for almost 3 years now. Adjust fire and move on, it's not the end of the world.

SCP343 · August 2023

Tested it and still doing good. Aoe dmg is fine, dot dmg from channel is fine and last hit of HA is fine. You can still play it

Gendizer · August 2023

SCP343 wrote: »

Tested it and still doing good. Aoe dmg is fine, dot dmg from channel is fine and last hit of HA is fine. You can still play it

Blatant lie, or you simply have no understanding of the game. AoE damage has been reduced by half, I confirmed this. Damage to single targets has not changed! An unjustified nerf without any rationale. Meanwhile, Arcanists continue to dominate both single targets and AoE, just as before.

StackonClown · August 2023

TybaltKaine wrote: »

Oh no, now I'll have to heavy attack twice and actually cast skills.
<snip>

well not if you have a mob of 15 npcs.
Secondly for oaken HA builds, we have limited options on the 1 bar!!

Mannjdyr · August 2023

Gendizer wrote: »

SCP343 wrote: »

Tested it and still doing good. Aoe dmg is fine, dot dmg from channel is fine and last hit of HA is fine. You can still play it

Blatant lie, or you simply have no understanding of the game. AoE damage has been reduced by half, I confirmed this. Damage to single targets has not changed! An unjustified nerf without any rationale. Meanwhile, Arcanists continue to dominate both single targets and AoE, just as before.

You have to sell the extension ^^

Bushido2513 · August 2023

Gendizer wrote: »

SCP343 wrote: »

Tested it and still doing good. Aoe dmg is fine, dot dmg from channel is fine and last hit of HA is fine. You can still play it

Blatant lie, or you simply have no understanding of the game. AoE damage has been reduced by half, I confirmed this. Damage to single targets has not changed! An unjustified nerf without any rationale. Meanwhile, Arcanists continue to dominate both single targets and AoE, just as before.

There was no lie told here. The person used language to indicate their feelings about what the test looked like for them. To them it's fine and that's their feeling and a fact about their feelings on the matter. If you disagree then you disagree but when it comes to feelings there aren't any lies or truths, just well feelings lol.

As the other person said, justification is sales lol. But I mean really I'm pretty sure it's still playable and the thing about this game is that generally speaking, nobody gets to stay on top. Just take the L, kill mobs a little slower, and hope you get back on top with the next item ZOS needs to sell or random change they make. We all take the hit at one time or another.

Mr_Jord_Joe · August 2023

This is my opinion, if you don't like it, that's fine, HA builds, made people lazy, and they still complain that x class is doing more damage... that's why I hate competitions, people enter trial to compete who has the most greater damage? really? the other day I saw a guy complaining that the arcanist was cleaning trash mobs too fast... isn't that good? you will reach the boss faster... I can't understand the selfishness of few in PvE... There was a time when nobody cared much for HA... and today that's it... if I'm talking nonsense, someone please explain to me the heart of the problem! Because I honestly don't care about my class having high damage if that's not a basic requirement in the group... for me it's just an ego thing...

Braffin · August 2023

So, the end of the world is delayed once again then?

[snip]
[edited for baiting]

Gendizer · August 2023

Mr_Jord_Joe wrote: »

This is my opinion, if you don't like it, that's fine, HA builds, made people lazy, and they still complain that x class is doing more damage... that's why I hate competitions, people enter trial to compete who has the most greater damage? really? the other day I saw a guy complaining that the arcanist was cleaning trash mobs too fast... isn't that good? you will reach the boss faster... I can't understand the selfishness of few in PvE... There was a time when nobody cared much for HA... and today that's it... if I'm talking nonsense, someone please explain to me the heart of the problem! Because I honestly don't care about my class having high damage if that's not a basic requirement in the group... for me it's just an ego thing...

HA builds have never been top damage builds. If you do not care about damage, you can run with any other weapon, or even fight with your fists. And I've been playing the HA build for a very long time, and I really don't like that it gets nerfed and nerfed in every patch. And at the same time, they add an arcanist’s imba to the game, which has extra high damage both on a solo target and on a crowd. This is outright arrogance on the part of the developers.

Lalothen · August 2023

Having had a week to test Oakensoul HA builds in scenarios that I had limited or no access to on the PTS - vet dungeons, arenas & trials with my usual gaming groups - the issue of mobs dying before trifocus actually procs occurs far more frequently than anticipated.

I did the Craglorn HMs last night with my regular Friday group, and even on the large trash pulls with numerous vet mobs to target things were dying before Trifocus went off, leaving my AoE dps lagging well behind. During the horn trash pull in vHRC group dps peaked well over a million, yet I didn't even break 100k in spite of that being one of the best scenarios to take advantage of Trifocus because of the gargoyles and their large health pools.

vSS was somewhat better than this thanks to the large cat mobs, though once again the impact of Trifocus on AoE dps was far more limited because many smaller mobs were dying in cleave before the proc.

vRG was much the same as vSS.

In four-man content things have been relatively similar to before U39 - obviously with Trifocus accounting for less AoE dps than before. The easier the dungeon, the weaker the mobs, the lower the amount of dps attributable to Trifocus - so in base game dungeons I typically got less use out of the passive than DLCs.

In terms of ST dps the new lightning staff Ancient Knowledge passive is a boon, with my ST dps up across the spectrum of my HA builds. I have even found myself experimenting with ST dd abilities like whip on DK, Frags on Sorc, etc, because the boost increases their viability as filler abilities between HAs.

My main takeaways for the Oakensoul HA build is as follows:

1) It is no longer all that viable to run on large trash pulls in a good trial group - particularly if you want to contribute your best, and especially in scenarios where rapidly eliminating trash pulls is necessary for a speedrun achievement. In trial pugs it depends how good your fellow DPS are at cleave; the worse your teammates in that respect, the more dps you will get out of Trifocus in large trash pulls.

2) In mainly ST boss scenarios it performs a little better than before, however the more frequently add cleave is required, the less performant it is overall.

3) There is less overall impact of the change in four-man and solo content - though in four-man if depends what class your fellow DD is. If it's Arcanist or Templar then you might as well sit back and watch, because they melt add groups faster than you can complete a fully-charged HA (Templar a little slower than Arcanist, of course). If you're paired with any class that has less AoE burst then you'll see more Trifocus dps, however the instances of Trifocus failing to proc or yield much AoE dps are still fairly frequent.

4) Trying to put myself in the shoes of other players with less experience, I believe that this iteration of the Trifocus nerf will have a longer term negative impact on their ability to get into groups. It is also going to be a much more frustrating experience, and whilst folk can say "Well they should git gud and switch to a two-bar HA build, or git gudder and switch to an LA build", this ignores all of the nuance associated with why Oakensoul HA builds are so popular.

My next testing avenue is my two-bar HA builds which, I assume, will suffer less negative impact because more AoE skills are included in their active toolkits. However based on my live testing with Oakensoul HA builds, whilst I remain supportive of lightning Trifocus output potential being reined in, I am no longer supportive of the current iteration of the nerf as the instances of it failing to proc or yield appreciable AoE dps are far more frequent than anticipated based on limited PTS testing. It would be far better for everyone if this change were to be reverted, and instead the Trifocus percentages cut from 50/100% to around 30/60%, as this would yield a similar reduction whilst also dealing with the frequent fact that the Trifocus proc is either reduced to redundancy because surrounding mobs are dying quickly, or fails completely because the target mob dies.

Turtle_Bot · August 2023

Lalothen wrote: »

It would be far better for everyone if this change were to be reverted, and instead the Trifocus percentages cut from 50/100% to around 30/60%, as this would yield a similar reduction whilst also dealing with the frequent fact that the Trifocus proc is either reduced to redundancy because surrounding mobs are dying quickly, or fails completely because the target mob dies.

This is similar to what majority of reasonable people talking about adjusting tri-focus suggested and what those who were against this nerf to the passive said was going to happen.
The more common solution suggested was a scaling AoE from 25% of damage up to the full 100% of damage based on which tick of the HA it was at, but it was the same idea. Reduce, not eliminate the AoE of tri-focus.

Unfortunately the constant crying on the forums got the passive gutted instead of toned down.

Lalothen · August 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

This is similar to what majority of reasonable people talking about adjusting tri-focus suggested and what those who were against this nerf to the passive said was going to happen.

Yet there was a dearth of testing experience or data provided supporting that, and the limited data that was provided - mostly parses, solo or 4-man content - showed it to be less impactful. My own PTS testing showed it to be less of an issue than it is proving to be on the live servers. People who failed to provide anything tangible during PTS testing, ought to be testing and offering feedback now based on live server scenarios, doing something to show that the impact is more negative than ostensibly intended, and conveying how QoL is actually being impacted.