U35 what is wrong?

Parasaurolophus · January 3

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

Beilin_Balreis_Colcan · January 3

It added Account Wide Achievements (aka 'AWA'), which for many players ruined achievements for multiple characters.

Solariken · January 3

vsrs_au wrote: »

It added Account Wide Achievements (aka 'AWA'), which for many players ruined achievements for multiple characters.

I think most people did want account-wide achievements, the problem is ZOS implemented it in a really disappointing way.

Solariken · January 3

But to OP's question, U35 had sweeping combat changes to light/heavy attacks, DOT mechanics, Empower, and basically nuked Templar mains with with the disgusting Jabs changes.

Basically a patch full of things everyone hated.

PrinceShroob · January 3

Account-wide achievements was Update 33.

In brief, Update 35 made a lot of changes that resulted in a loss of DPS across the board. This pushed a lot of people out of endgame, and it wasn't really revitalized until the Arcanist class was released.

I'm sure someone else can give a more detailed overview; I merely wanted to intervene before this became railing against account-wide achievements.

Stamicka · January 3

So to start with, before Update 35 released, we were given a combat preview for it:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/610438/update-35-combat-preview/p1

A lot of people did not like the language in that post and the overall justification for these changes. It felt like Zenimax was essentially saying “the high end is too far ahead of everyone else, so we will be nerfing everyone in order to bring their damage down.” Before the patch notes were even released, people were rightfully not happy with the combat preview.

When the first iteration of the patch notes came out, things were really bad. People lost a lot of DPS. Rotations didn’t become easier necessarily, but they definitely became more bland. Light attacks did the same amount of damage for everyone regardless of stats in order to make the DPS loss from not being able to weave less drastic. They also targeted DoT durations, making most DoTs 20 seconds which led to very spam heavy and low effort rotations.

Some tweaks were made here and there, but the final released version of update 35 was still horrible. Light attack weaving stayed nerfed and “sticky” DoT durations remained at 20 seconds. Thankfully AoE DoT abilities retained their original durations.

By the time this released, many raid teams felt set back because they lost damage and the game felt much more homogenized and boring. Trust in ZOS’ ability to make good changes was also shattered. Many high end raid groups disbanded for various reasons, whether it was not feeling supported or listened to by the developers or losing their progress in a raid progression team.

Essentially nothing good came out of update 35. It didn’t make PvE more accessible, it homogenized classes and made rotations boring, many players lost large amounts of DPS, and it led to a mass exodus of many endgame PvErs. The game still hasn’t recovered from this patch.

Soarora · January 3

Stamicka wrote: »

So to start with, before Update 35 released, we were given a combat preview for it:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/610438/update-35-combat-preview/p1

A lot of people did not like the language in that post and the overall justification for these changes. It felt like Zenimax was essentially saying “the high end is too far ahead of everyone else, so we will be nerfing everyone in order to bring their damage down.” Before the patch notes were even released, people were rightfully not happy with the combat preview.

When the first iteration of the patch notes came out, things were really bad. People lost a lot of DPS. Rotations didn’t become easier necessarily, but they definitely became more bland. Light attacks did the same amount of damage for everyone regardless of stats in order to make the DPS loss from not being able to weave less drastic. They also targeted DoT durations, making most DoTs 20 seconds which led to very spam heavy and low effort rotations.

Some tweaks were made here and there, but the final released version of update 35 was still horrible. Light attack weaving stayed nerfed and “sticky” DoT durations remained at 20 seconds. Thankfully AoE DoT abilities retained their original durations.

By the time this released, many raid teams felt set back because they lost damage and the game felt much more homogenized and boring. Trust in ZOS’ ability to make good changes was also shattered. Many high end raid groups disbanded for various reasons, whether it was not feeling supported or listened to by the developers or losing their progress in a raid progression team.

Essentially nothing good came out of update 35. It didn’t make PvE more accessible, it homogenized classes and made rotations boring, many players lost large amounts of DPS, and it led to a mass exodus of many endgame PvErs. The game still hasn’t recovered from this patch.

This sums it up pretty well. There was also a lot of salt throwing from both ZOS and casuals here on the forums and on twitter that made the burn even worse even though mid DPS builds also got hurt. Oh, ZOS also buffed the target dummy at the same time too. We weren't actually able to see how much damage we lost. I think this was the patch I briefly switched from frostden to magdk because even my off-meta build got bonked so badly I had to turn to meta. I was lucky in that frostden was later buffed, though now with arc I don't really run my warden anyways but that's a whole other thing.

Edit: Oh, and healing. DoTs were changed to be once every 2 seconds instead of once every second. So was healing. There was a big thing about not being able to heal through DoTs like Falg HM because the GAME was still hitting more than once every two seconds. So, HoTs could not keep up with the damage given out by the game, and of course spammables are limited to the GCD.

And this was also the patch I think where boss HP got nerfed across the board by a flat % (people tested this and found it to be true mathematically) even though ZOS said they changed HP across encounters based on the encounter.

wilykcat · January 3

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

I dont understand why either.

CatoUnchained · January 3

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

well, let's start with the changes they made to templar skills, most notably the jabs animation and power of light (templars two main skills). They replaced a jabbing spear of light that matches all the other templar spear animations to a night hollow stave that twists around the waist instead of jabbing. ZOS went full proc madness with their sets with U35, practically eliminating the use of every set in the game. Now end game players wear maybe 12 different sets total out of nearly 700 available. U35 was the update ZOS effectively eliminated the end game community and look how much the player base has declined in the 2 years since. ESO is a shadow of what it once was, beginning with u35.

Turtle_Bot · January 3

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

TL//DR:

Massive sweeping changes to core combat designs that were very poorly planned/implemented. These changes all but destroyed the middle tier players, including majority of prog groups and those looking to get into end-game content, while doing nothing that was promised (raising the floor and lowering the ceiling). As a result, the end-game community closed their ranks since it was no longer feasible to try and prog middle tier players through content, while the floor (typically casual questers) remained mostly the same as before, sometimes significantly weaker due to things like light attacks being nerfed hard which is common way to play among casual questing players who play ESO like its skyrim.

ZOS was warned about the effects of these changes when they patch notes were first shown and again repeatedly during the entire PTS cycle, but no changes were made to address those concerns raised by the community.

Community concerns about these changes that were raised back then have largely come to fruition with a huge drop off in the end-game section of the community due to the loss of many of those middle tier players, which the game/community still hasn't recovered from, even to this day (arcanist helped, but even still).

These concerns still have yet to be addressed by the devs (despite the promise of communicating with the community and providing answers to the questions surrounding this patch).

There's still a lot more nuance than outlined here, but this is the short of what happened and why that patch is so derided within the community.

Soarora · January 3

wilykcat wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

I dont understand why either.

U35 really decimated the endgame trial community. Gigantic groups shutting down and guilds seeing a cut from several runs a day simultaneously to not even being able to fill runs. It's still not like how it once was, though runs are filling again, and groups are playing. But of the leads who stayed, U35 and the oakensoul craze seems to have killed off a portion of leads willing to teach players who are new. Its more possible for the game to heal from U35 than it can heal from AWA, but its most definitely not there yet.

Also, people's faith in ZOS got shot down further as well. It's harder to find people in endgame who are happy with ZOS than it is to find people who are unhappy with ZOS. This also influenced testing, as less people are willing to test in-depth for ZOS because people have felt that they won't be listened to for their work.

Stamicka · January 3

wilykcat wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

I dont understand why people are still complaining about an old update either...

Updates don’t happen in a vacuum, the game builds on itself. Lots of changes from update 35 are still impacting the game.

[snip]

Personally speaking, I stopped being a PvP main in 2018 because it made no sense for me to put effort into something that the developers didn’t support or put effort in themselves. I became a PvE main instead. Update 35 gave me the same feeling I had about PvP in 2018. It was clear to me that I was wasting my time with PvE too, because the developers will just nerf the way I like to play. Improving your skill at a game feels meaningless when the developers try to nerf you and bring you back down if you do.

Ultimately, I quit PvE after update 35. Now with both PvP and PvE being ruined, I play ESO less than ever.

[edited for trolling]

moderatelyfatman · January 3

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

The biggest thing for me was:
Class skills got nerfed but Weapons skills, Guild skills and proc sets did not.
So instead of a templar using jabs as their main spammable for damage, they switched over to Wrecking Blow, Sliver Shards or Rapid Strikes for maximum dps.
In content, one of my largest source of damage comes from Whorl of the Depths gear set and not my skills.
Something similar also happened with DoTs where your largest DoT damage became either Wall of Elements with MA Staff or Stampede with MA 2hander.
It was meant to make it easier to balance damage between classes but totally stripped away the class identity.

There was overall nerf to damage and healing in order to balance end game players which had the reverse effect: a 20% reduction to damage and healing won't stop the very best players from completing the hardest content, but it killed off the prog groups who could no longer get completions.

No surprise then that so many players left.

Marto · January 3

I think people too often forget or ignore what Update 35 actually was, or how it was really needed for the health of the game. Heck, a lot of the current issues with balance can be tracked back to U35 not going as far enough as the devs originally wanted to.

To give OP and other users more clarity, here's what Update 35 did, in broad terms. There's really no point going over specifics since so many of those have been tweaked over the years.

- Light attacks used to scale with your stats in a more straightforward way, and made up a massive portion of DPS. With U35 and a couple other patches, they were changed to deal a flat amount amount of damage that increases (to a certain point) with your stats. This resulted in a 10-30% reduction to light attack damage in parses, but an increase in damage for people with suboptimal setups or weaving skills.
(IMO, this successfully raised the floor and lowered the ceiling, but no one in the community acknowledged it because youtubers and build-makers never test sub-optimal setups with sub-optimal skill.)

- Buffs used to last 10s. They were changed to last 20s.
- Powerful and rarer buffs used to last 3-5s. They were changed to last 7-15s.

- Single-Target DoT skills used to last 10s. They were changed to last 20s.
- Ground-AoE DoT skills were mostly unchanged
- The cost of abilities was mostly unchanged or reduced, and because you needed to cast them less often, this meant recovery and resource management became a LOT easier

- DoTs were nerfed to deal about 10-20% less DPS.
(Before U35, ESO had gone through years of a DoT meta, to the point of people not even slotting spammables, and just putting as many DoTs as possible on a target. With rotations that were literally twice as fast as what we have today)
- Direct damage abilities were mostly unchanged.

- Reduced Healing over Time by ~20%
- Reduced direct Healing by ~10%

To anyone who still thinks U35 ruined the game, I ask you:

Do you want tanks in PVP to have 20% stronger heals than they do right now? Do you want gankers to deal double the damage they do right now with their opening attack?

Do you want DoT skills to deal 10-20% more damage than they do right now? Imagine that sort of buff on the Arcanist beam, or being hit with 2-3 skills in PVP and dying before you can cleanse.

Do you want healers to just click 1 heal and no one ever dies? Do you want healers in trials to not exist because 10 DD can just cast Vigor and survive?

Do you want 1 of your PVE item sets to be recovery only because otherwise you run dry and need to heavy attack? Or do you want to put so much into recovery you are ridiculously squishy?

Do you want the game to return to Major Brutality lasting 10s? Do you want rotations that require you to swap your bar every 5-6 seconds?

Do you want 50% of your DPS to be light attacks only?

ESO before U35 was a mess. An even bigger mess than we have right now.

Stamicka · January 3

Marto wrote: »

I think people too often forget or ignore what Update 35 actually was, or how it was really needed for the health of the game. Heck, a lot of the current issues with balance can be tracked back to U35 not going as far enough as the devs originally wanted to.

To give OP and other users more clarity, here's what Update 35 did, in broad terms. There's really no point going over specifics since so many of those have been tweaked over the years.

- Light attacks used to scale with your stats in a more straightforward way, and made up a massive portion of DPS. With U35 and a couple other patches, they were changed to deal a flat amount amount of damage that increases (to a certain point) with your stats. This resulted in a 10-30% reduction to light attack damage in parses, but an increase in damage for people with suboptimal setups or weaving skills.
(IMO, this successfully raised the floor and lowered the ceiling, but no one in the community acknowledged it because youtubers and build-makers never test sub-optimal setups with sub-optimal skill.)

A lot people who are not used to weaving also lost damage during update 35. Most of the feedback from all types of players was negative, even the people this update was for.

Marto wrote: »

To anyone who still thinks U35 ruined the game, I ask you:

Do you want tanks in PVP to have 20% stronger heals than they do right now? Do you want gankers to deal double the damage they do right now with their opening attack?

Do you want healers to just click 1 heal and no one ever dies? Do you want healers in trials to not exist because 10 DD can just cast Vigor and survive?

Do you want 1 of your PVE item sets to be recovery only because otherwise you run dry and need to heavy attack? Or do you want to put so much into recovery you are ridiculously squishy?

Do you want the game to return to Major Brutality lasting 10s? Do you want rotations that require you to swap your bar every 5-6 seconds?

Do you want 50% of your DPS to be light attacks only?

ESO before U35 was a mess. An even bigger mess than we have right now.

I’m not really sure what this is about. Why would ganker damage be doubled? Why has the healing situation in PvP gotten worse since update 35? When was 1 PvE set a full recovery set? I mean there was a false god meta, but that wasn’t a full recovery set.

There were many long duration buffs in the game before update 35. I also don’t recall my light attacks ever being 50% of my DPS.

A lot of what you mentioned was never a thing. ESO was better before update 35.

Marto · January 3

Stamicka wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

I think people too often forget or ignore what Update 35 actually was, or how it was really needed for the health of the game. Heck, a lot of the current issues with balance can be tracked back to U35 not going as far enough as the devs originally wanted to.

To give OP and other users more clarity, here's what Update 35 did, in broad terms. There's really no point going over specifics since so many of those have been tweaked over the years.

- Light attacks used to scale with your stats in a more straightforward way, and made up a massive portion of DPS. With U35 and a couple other patches, they were changed to deal a flat amount amount of damage that increases (to a certain point) with your stats. This resulted in a 10-30% reduction to light attack damage in parses, but an increase in damage for people with suboptimal setups or weaving skills.
(IMO, this successfully raised the floor and lowered the ceiling, but no one in the community acknowledged it because youtubers and build-makers never test sub-optimal setups with sub-optimal skill.)

A lot people who are not used to weaving also lost damage during update 35. Most of the feedback from all types of players was negative, even the people this update was for.

Marto wrote: »

To anyone who still thinks U35 ruined the game, I ask you:

Do you want tanks in PVP to have 20% stronger heals than they do right now? Do you want gankers to deal double the damage they do right now with their opening attack?

Do you want healers to just click 1 heal and no one ever dies? Do you want healers in trials to not exist because 10 DD can just cast Vigor and survive?

Do you want 1 of your PVE item sets to be recovery only because otherwise you run dry and need to heavy attack? Or do you want to put so much into recovery you are ridiculously squishy?

Do you want the game to return to Major Brutality lasting 10s? Do you want rotations that require you to swap your bar every 5-6 seconds?

Do you want 50% of your DPS to be light attacks only?

ESO before U35 was a mess. An even bigger mess than we have right now.

I’m not really sure what this is about. Why would ganker damage be doubled? Why has the healing situation in PvP gotten worse since update 35? When was 1 PvE set a full recovery set? I mean there was a false god meta, but that wasn’t a full recovery set.

There were many long duration buffs in the game before update 35. I also don’t recall my light attacks ever being 50% of my DPS.

A lot of what you mentioned was never a thing. ESO was better before update 35.

Read the patch notes for U35, and put them in reverse. Imagine every "Reduced damage by 13%" is instead a "Increased damage by 13%"

Now imagine applying those changes to the current version of ESO. Essentially reverting Update 35.

There is no way such a massive increase in player power could be healthy for the game. Specially not when players are already plenty powerful, and the most common complaints from everything except the very top content is that the game is too easy.

Soarora · January 3

Stamicka wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

I think people too often forget or ignore what Update 35 actually was, or how it was really needed for the health of the game. Heck, a lot of the current issues with balance can be tracked back to U35 not going as far enough as the devs originally wanted to.

To give OP and other users more clarity, here's what Update 35 did, in broad terms. There's really no point going over specifics since so many of those have been tweaked over the years.

- Light attacks used to scale with your stats in a more straightforward way, and made up a massive portion of DPS. With U35 and a couple other patches, they were changed to deal a flat amount amount of damage that increases (to a certain point) with your stats. This resulted in a 10-30% reduction to light attack damage in parses, but an increase in damage for people with suboptimal setups or weaving skills.
(IMO, this successfully raised the floor and lowered the ceiling, but no one in the community acknowledged it because youtubers and build-makers never test sub-optimal setups with sub-optimal skill.)

A lot people who are not used to weaving also lost damage during update 35. Most of the feedback from all types of players was negative, even the people this update was for.

True that. I recall people on the forums talking about their personalized builds that work around their disabilities were getting nerfed. Then we got oakensoul, which is just one build option when disabilities aren’t one size fits all.
Of course, there were also people saying they didn’t feel much of a difference, but those people were citing overland which, well, you know, overland. Bad builds still kill things fairly quickly.

Marto wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

I think people too often forget or ignore what Update 35 actually was, or how it was really needed for the health of the game. Heck, a lot of the current issues with balance can be tracked back to U35 not going as far enough as the devs originally wanted to.

To give OP and other users more clarity, here's what Update 35 did, in broad terms. There's really no point going over specifics since so many of those have been tweaked over the years.

- Light attacks used to scale with your stats in a more straightforward way, and made up a massive portion of DPS. With U35 and a couple other patches, they were changed to deal a flat amount amount of damage that increases (to a certain point) with your stats. This resulted in a 10-30% reduction to light attack damage in parses, but an increase in damage for people with suboptimal setups or weaving skills.
(IMO, this successfully raised the floor and lowered the ceiling, but no one in the community acknowledged it because youtubers and build-makers never test sub-optimal setups with sub-optimal skill.)

A lot people who are not used to weaving also lost damage during update 35. Most of the feedback from all types of players was negative, even the people this update was for.

Marto wrote: »

To anyone who still thinks U35 ruined the game, I ask you:

Do you want tanks in PVP to have 20% stronger heals than they do right now? Do you want gankers to deal double the damage they do right now with their opening attack?

Do you want healers to just click 1 heal and no one ever dies? Do you want healers in trials to not exist because 10 DD can just cast Vigor and survive?

Do you want 1 of your PVE item sets to be recovery only because otherwise you run dry and need to heavy attack? Or do you want to put so much into recovery you are ridiculously squishy?

Do you want the game to return to Major Brutality lasting 10s? Do you want rotations that require you to swap your bar every 5-6 seconds?

Do you want 50% of your DPS to be light attacks only?

ESO before U35 was a mess. An even bigger mess than we have right now.

I’m not really sure what this is about. Why would ganker damage be doubled? Why has the healing situation in PvP gotten worse since update 35? When was 1 PvE set a full recovery set? I mean there was a false god meta, but that wasn’t a full recovery set.

There were many long duration buffs in the game before update 35. I also don’t recall my light attacks ever being 50% of my DPS.

A lot of what you mentioned was never a thing. ESO was better before update 35.

Read the patch notes for U35, and put them in reverse. Imagine every "Reduced damage by 13%" is instead a "Increased damage by 13%"

Now imagine applying those changes to the current version of ESO. Essentially reverting Update 35.

There is no way such a massive increase in player power could be healthy for the game. Specially not when players are already plenty powerful, and the most common complaints from everything except the very top content is that the game is too easy.

Ive heard claims that the top damage is actually higher now than it was with U35, though I don’t know if thats in content or dummy adjusted for the buffs it was given with U35. I don’t think 0 portal cloudrest was as common then as it is now though… (not like it is particularly common now, but I hear and see it talked about more. Could be my bias.)

spartaxoxo · January 3

One of the problems with U35 imo was they then didn't continue to build on it to replace the people they were pushing out by lowering the ceiling. They later hard nerfed Oakensoul. Until Arcanist, they did not make endgame more accessible either. Many of the people U35 was supposed to help, it did not. Because it was moreso focused on making true endgame builds less variable than it was on making early endgame/mid builds better.

They also didn't adjust encounters.

Grega · January 3

I mean they “fixed” U35 with Arcanist.

Everyone and their mother now plays arcanist. You just mash 3 buttons - 1 of them just twice a min even - (scholarship + 2x flail and beam) and have top 80% dps possible in the game.

Essentially like Stamicka said - the game was modified to [snip] dps where living in a fantasy world became a reward, and not learning rotations and progging super challenging content.

People who didn’t start playing this game to look at the fantasy world and ingest the lore … well. They are the unhappy ones.

And people who do play this game for the lore and fantasy world, well - they feel nothing was wrong with U35. Just like mostly nothing was wrong with any update to date for that clientele.

Maybe when the inventory was broken and we had to do middle school level math to count our UI movement in inventory when selling to merchants for like months before that was fixed - I think that was the one time where everyone was unanimously unhappy 🙃

[edited for baiting]

Soarora · January 3

Grega wrote: »

I mean they “fixed” U35 with Arcanist.

Everyone and their mother now plays arcanist. You just mash 3 buttons - 1 of them just twice a min even - (scholarship + 2x flail and beam) and have top 80% dps possible in the game.

Essentially like Stamicka said - the game was modified to [snip] dps where living in a fantasy world became a reward, and not learning rotations and progging super challenging content.

People who didn’t start playing this game to look at the fantasy world and ingest the lore … well. They are the unhappy ones.

And people who do play this game for the lore and fantasy world, well - they feel nothing was wrong with U35. Just like mostly nothing was wrong with any update to date for that clientele.

Maybe when the inventory was broken and we had to do middle school level math to count our UI movement in inventory when selling to merchants for like months before that was fixed - I think that was the one time where everyone was unanimously unhappy 🙃

Playing for the MMO content and playing for the lore are not mutually exclusive (see: my signature). AWA hurt overland and group PvE alike, so did the cut in content. And while group PvE gets easier, the writing also gets worse.

[edited to remove quote]

munster1404 · January 3

U35 affected me less than most because I only play with Oakensoul HA builds since its inception. Was a bit pissed about HoTs as I was keen to play as a healer but glad it was eventually reverted.

And finally I play mostly for the solo questing. I'm mostly immune to most updates unless they start tweaking with my favorite Argonian potion racial passives.

Grega · January 3

Soarora wrote: »

Grega wrote: »

I mean they “fixed” U35 with Arcanist.

Everyone and their mother now plays arcanist. You just mash 3 buttons - 1 of them just twice a min even - (scholarship + 2x flail and beam) and have top 80% dps possible in the game.

Essentially like Stamicka said - the game was modified to [snip] dps where living in a fantasy world became a reward, and not learning rotations and progging super challenging content.

People who didn’t start playing this game to look at the fantasy world and ingest the lore … well. They are the unhappy ones.

And people who do play this game for the lore and fantasy world, well - they feel nothing was wrong with U35. Just like mostly nothing was wrong with any update to date for that clientele.

Maybe when the inventory was broken and we had to do middle school level math to count our UI movement in inventory when selling to merchants for like months before that was fixed - I think that was the one time where everyone was unanimously unhappy 🙃

Playing for the MMO content and playing for the lore are not mutually exclusive (see: my signature). AWA hurt overland and group PvE alike, so did the cut in content. And while group PvE gets easier, the writing also gets worse.

You and me both 🙂. However peeps like us are very few. Very very few. Like not enough to keep the light on few.

And yea, I agree. Scribing quests were pretty meh and high isle story was as predictable as a bowel movement after eating Taco Bell.

[edited to remove quote]

BahometZ · January 3

The funniest part for me was in response to the outcry over the u35 combat changes they blanket nerfed every dungeon/trial instance boss and flag boss in the game by 10%. All that effort by the encounter team over many years to craft boss health encounter by encounter, taking mechanical complexity into account, [snip]

Just about what everyone said above is true to various degrees. More important than the in-game results was the community results. People felt like devs were out of touch, player feedback wasn't being heeded, so what was the point in testing things for them or really engaging at all if it didn't amount to anything.

The game lost a lot of savvy players and leaders who wanted to go where their time was respected.

[edited for trolling]

BahometZ · January 3

wilykcat wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

I dont understand why either.

Several people had already explained why before you posted this?

Rkindaleft · January 3

BahometZ wrote: »

wilykcat wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I see a lot of complaints about this patch. What's wrong with it?

I dont understand why either.

Several people had already explained why before you posted this?

Because they edited the comment. If you’ve been even remotely active on the forums at any point during or since mid-2022 you should know why everyone hated U35 and why people still reference it (because it’s a large part as to why endgame went on life support and the effects of that still remain today.)

alpha_synuclein · January 3

Marto wrote: »

I think people too often forget or ignore what Update 35 actually was, or how it was really needed for the health of the game. Heck, a lot of the current issues with balance can be tracked back to U35 not going as far enough as the devs originally wanted to.

To give OP and other users more clarity, here's what Update 35 did, in broad terms. There's really no point going over specifics since so many of those have been tweaked over the years.

- Light attacks used to scale with your stats in a more straightforward way, and made up a massive portion of DPS. With U35 and a couple other patches, they were changed to deal a flat amount amount of damage that increases (to a certain point) with your stats. This resulted in a 10-30% reduction to light attack damage in parses, but an increase in damage for people with suboptimal setups or weaving skills.
(IMO, this successfully raised the floor and lowered the ceiling, but no one in the community acknowledged it because youtubers and build-makers never test sub-optimal setups with sub-optimal skill.)

The thing is raising the floor could easily be achieved with buffs instead of nerfs. If you look at the path they took after U35, we got HA builds, velothi builds and arcanist. All of those are powerful tools that allow players who don't weave get enough power to clear harder content. So why nerf LAs? They could just as easily take a gear pathway. Out of the enormous amount of sets that we have, why so few are dedicated to non-weaving playstyles? It's not like they don't have enough unused sets to rework... The nerf to LAs was so badly received, because it felt like the main point of it was to temper the ceiling rather than helping the floor.

Marto wrote: »

- DoTs were nerfed to deal about 10-20% less DPS.
(Before U35, ESO had gone through years of a DoT meta, to the point of people not even slotting spammables, and just putting as many DoTs as possible on a target. With rotations that were literally twice as fast as what we have today)
- Direct damage abilities were mostly unchanged.

The DoT meta did not come from thin air. It came from "adjustments" to class spammables that made DoTs stand out damagewise. And again, if they wanted more spammable oriented rotations, why not just buff spammables? And how does jabs nerf fits into this? Nerfing the class with nice and easy cleave to prepare grounds for arcanist?

Marto wrote: »

To anyone who still thinks U35 ruined the game, I ask you:

Do you want DoT skills to deal 10-20% more damage than they do right now?

Yes. I'd rather use my class DoTs than spam rapids at nauseam.

Marto wrote: »

Do you want healers to just click 1 heal and no one ever dies? Do you want healers in trials to not exist because 10 DD can just cast Vigor and survive?

Solo healing is common in endgame, but the 10 DDs was never much of a thing. Except for a brief moment when we got quite silly pale order vampire meta. Yes, the same pale order that was meant to be another tool to help casual players xd.

Also, I'm not sure if you remember, the initial nerf to healing that was proposed with U35 would make ground based HoTs tick every 2 seconds. That would make healing harder content much more difficult for less experienced players. Mainly because it would force high apm, spammable-based playstyle much earlier than in endgame. Very helpful indeed...

Marto wrote: »

Do you want 1 of your PVE item sets to be recovery only because otherwise you run dry and need to heavy attack? Or do you want to put so much into recovery you are ridiculously squishy?

I wouldn't mind. Now it's just heals and damage buffs. Sustain being a thing one need to consider was adding an extra layer to the game.

Marto wrote: »

Do you want the game to return to Major Brutality lasting 10s? Do you want rotations that require you to swap your bar every 5-6 seconds?

Have you heard of potions?

And what's wrong with using both your weapons actively?

Marto wrote: »

Do you want 50% of your DPS to be light attacks only?

Now 50% are proc sets.
I'd rather see my damage coming from my casts than from my gear. It felt much more impactful and I enjoyed that a lot. I never liked games when all you need is to equip op gear and it will do big cabooms for you. ESO was much more enjoyable when it wasn't like this.

Faulgor · January 3

Lowering LA/HA damage to make weaving less important and the fundamentals thus more accessible was a reasonable move IMO.
Problem was they didn't move that damage somewhere else but just cut it, and although I believe we've since moved past the max DPS back then, at the time it sucked to lose DPS (overall the loss wasn't as dramatic as it might seem, but that depended on the build).

My other main issue was the lower tick rate on sticky DoTs with a 20 second duration. Lower tick rates negatively impacted many proc conditions (e.g. Critical Surge), and most encounters in the game don't even last 20 seconds, so those skills became virtually useless (especially considering the overall dmg also got nerfed).

Personally, there were worse patches. Many that completely removed my main builds. But U35's nerfs effected more people.

liliub17_ESO · January 3

Soarora wrote: »

True that. I recall people on the forums talking about their personalized builds that work around their disabilities were getting nerfed. Then we got oakensoul, which is just one build option when disabilities aren’t one size fits all.
Of course, there were also people saying they didn’t feel much of a difference, but those people were citing overland which, well, you know, overland. Bad builds still kill things fairly quickly.

Since I'm one of those who had a personalized build, etc., this was a large part of the trouble. Suddenly the skills used for quite a while simply either did not work well together or were not effective even for overland, least of all anything else. I went from having a relatively good character to nearly non-viable. Oakensoul? Still don't have it

. It seemed to have simultaneously been a cash grab (attainable only with the new-at-the-time content) and a peace offering to those who use a single bar.

Like any or all updates, U35 was a mixed bag. Personally, I think it was mostly a large bag of dusty coal with a few rough diamond chips. But, as many have already stated, many of the changes implemented by ZOS were detrimental to the game and community. Honestly, the whole thing reminded me of the time right before original launch when the testers were doing their best to tell the devs what worked/didn't work ... and were largely ignored. I can speculate as to why we were ignored, but at least in the end Tamriel One was born from the ashes.

dinokstrunz · January 3

U35 had some of the worst combat changes this game has ever pushed iirc. Overwhelmingly negative reaction but Zeni ignored majority of the feedback at the time and went ahead with it anyway.

The issue went even more volatile when the games lead director lashed out at the reaction of the player base. Further increasing the toxic relations between Zeni devs and the player base.

Ph1p · January 3

I think a major issue wasn't just the changes, but the way they were communicated and implemented. For example, despite a massive amount of combat adjustments, ZOS buffed the trial dummy at the same time. At best it made comparisons much more difficult and at worst it seemed like a sneaky way to disguise some of the impact of the patch.

In addition, ZOS clearly stated that the main reason for the changes was "improving accessibility" by increasing the duration of DoTs and reducing high-end damage, especially by limiting the impact of light attack weaving. Worthy goals, but done with a sledgehammer approach that broke many builds and threw back the progression of many PVE groups. And keep in mind that U35 wasn't a major new chapter. It was the fall dungeon update.

Looking back, I think all this was mostly to improve performance: The tick frequency of DoTs and Templar jabs was decreased. Oakensoul builds have fewer concurrently active skills. Less weaving means fewer actions per second for the server to handle. This probably helped with the addition of new features like the Arcanist or spellcrafting, especially on older consoles. But why not state such a great goal more openly? I think a different approach in the communication and a slower introduction of more refined changes could have made it successful. Oh well, hindsight and all that...

Oceanchanter · January 3

TBH I like AWA, because if I had to repeat achievments on every of my 11 characters just to get a reward (skin, memento etc) I'd get aunerism and the game would feel like a chore more than anything else.

It's inconvinient enough that you need ESO+ for the character-wide material bag you can access from every character.
I wish gold could be character wide as well, cause relogging just to throw my earnings into the bank so other character can use it.

As for the rest of U35, idk. Havent felt it myself.
Maybe a little.
DoTs last longer, that includes Mage's Guild Lingering Torment, which heals every tick.
And I use it on my Sorc for Power Surge crit heals.
Kinda fire and forget for 20 seconds and with high crit rate I pulse an AoE heal almost every 3 seconds.

As for the "ZOS doesn't listen to the players" aspect of the drama around U35 - I wasn't part of that crowd, I do'nt know what was exactly being said, so I'll hold my judgement.