U35 what is wrong?

JiubLeRepenti · January 3

SilverBride wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why it was supposed to be so bad either. It baffles me that it's still referred to today.

People have explained it very clearly. What part are you finding so confusing?

The reaction. I don't see anything that ruined the game or made it unplayable.

People have explained ad nauseam why THEY found the game unplayable with the changes. You can say that you don't agree with it, but if you can't even understand what they were saying, then you just don't want to hear it. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I said I didn't understand the reaction. And I especially don't understand why it's still being brought up today over 2 years later.

Because we have no evidence ZOS way of working has changed since.

I was speaking earlier about the stupidly huge nerf on oakensoul:

Another problem was the nerf of Oakensoul. Don't get me wrong: the ring was actually way too powerful, and it is still very (too?) powerful today. But it's just the way it was done that is problematic.

As always, ZOS releases a crazy item, everybody rushes to get it, and sometimes even destroys their previous builds to create a new one based on that mythic, and then ZOS comes with an axe-made nerf that cuts off 20% of its power.

They do it all the time, and most of the time it's OK for most players. But here, so many people were using it and made it the basis of their build that it logically drove them crazy. It shows how poorly the beta-test phases are handled at ZOS. You can't design the initial Oakensoul ring, test it for several hours on various builds, and not consider that it's completely broken. The ring should never have been released in its initial form.

And yet, ZOS continues to behave the same way. The latest example I can think of is the Merciless Charge nerf from Update 44. Why nerf a set that’s nearly a decade old? Just because a few players were doing 4% extra damage? What’s the point? It’s the same story with Azureblight. While the nerf wasn’t as extreme as people feared, it still weakened one of the few counters to ball groups in Cyro. To me, it doesn’t make any sense.

So to answer your question: I think people keep bringing this up because ZOS hasn’t changed its approach—it’s the same behavior we saw with Update 35.

Estin · January 3

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

And yet, ZOS continues to behave the same way. The latest example I can think of is the Merciless Charge nerf from Update 44. Why nerf a set that’s nearly a decade old? Just because a few players were doing 4% extra damage? What’s the point? It’s the same story with Azureblight. While the nerf wasn’t as extreme as people feared, it still weakened one of the few counters to ball groups in Cyro. To me, it doesn’t make any sense

The reason they gave was because it made jabs too powerful I think, but it was really due to the shared pain set that came with U44. Merciless charge combined with a draugrkin caused shared pain to do way too much damage. They may have been trying to avoid more heat between pvp and pve players if they stated the nerf was due to pvp because azureblight was already getting nerfed due to pvp, and that's understandable, but shared pain should've been changed instead.

BasP · January 3

As a relatively casual player I definitely felt the impact of U35. I haven't saved any parses from back then, but this post from another player described my situation too. I even tried GW2 for a bit during the U35 PTS cycle, even though I generally play ESO as a single player game, because the patch was pretty demoralizing for me.

I mean, what's to like about a patch that nerfs your main character - a Stamina Warden - like this (alongside all of the other nerfs that were in U35)?

Advanced Species: This passive now increases your Armor Penetration by 495/990 per Animal Companion skill slotted, rather than damage done by 1/2%.
Scorch: These abilities now hit with 2 unique damage sources – the first hit deals approximately 20% less damage. The second hit does 38% more damage when compared to the new base value.
Subterranean Assault: ... the second hit does not gain the extra damage.
Swarm: Decreased the damage per tick by approximately 23%.
Wild Guardian: Reduced the damage of the bear's passive attacks by approximately 19%.
Winter's Revenge: Decreased the damage per tick of this morph by approximately 55%. This morph now deals 30% more damage if you cast it with a Destruction Staff equipped.

On the upside, the changes that were made in U35 and U36 did make me play with my Frostden more, and I think that some changes that have been made to classes since then have been good.

alpha_synuclein · January 3

sarahthes wrote: »

The power gap hasn't been reduced though. It just looks different now. There's a big damage output difference between a good arcanist and a bad arcanist, for example.

That's what you get when you're trying to fix skill gap without actually addressing players skill level. There will always be a difference.

Also, for me personally one of the most disturbing part of U35 is how ZOS seem to treat balance like a zero sum game. Introducing viable HA builds (or other alternative playstyles) did not require nerfing LAs. It's not like we can't have both in the same game... And reducing the power creep went to trash when they introduce arcanist anyways.

It's a bit different with the duration of DoTs and buffs, but even here I would rather have some variability. Making every DoT the same makes every class the same.

MincMincMinc · January 3

I'm still angry about the elsweyr weapon changes that ruined the oldschool dizzy and reverb playstyles.

virtus753 · January 3

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

If I'm plotting the data points on a graph, it seems like ZOS would like to finally remove the glitch-that-stuck that enabled weaving in the first place from the game entirely. If they do it all at once, then half of everyone will leave immediately. In another couple of years, I suspect changes will be made to make it worthless to do (weave), and then they can finally just remove it. When your DPS meta relies on a mythic that nullifies all LA attack damage, and people running Drake's Rush and imbibing heroism pots makes ultimate generation much less dependent on basic attacks, where else is this headed?

If they are trying to remove light attack weaving completely, there were other things they should have done (or avoided doing) long ago and a lot, lot more yet to do, which doesn't seem to be able to be drawn out over time.

In the first place, if they wanted to remove weaving (at the speed that takes advantage of animation cancelling), they should have started by not adding a loading screen tooltip that literally instructs players to do it and how. It's one thing to say "this use was never intended and we never officially endorsed it" - that ship sailed with this loading screen, if not before. The game has shown this tip for many years. Why take the time to teach that as a mechanic if they had any thought they might want to remove it? And while they are entitled to change their minds, if they removed LA weaving-with-AC now, it would not be as a glitch or a bug but as an officially endorsed and officially taught feature of combat.

They reiterated that support for LA weaving by redesigning Bound Armaments to rely on building LAs like Grim Focus. Get rid of LA weaving, and everything that relies on that stacking needs another drastic overhaul to remain viable.

On a similar note, they'd have to overhaul or design viable alternatives for Rele, Depths, and many other sets that are designed around LA weaving. (This is a big part of why Velothi doesn't actually nullify LA damage. It reduces it by 99% instead of 100% so it can keep proccing these sets. And also LAs still fully benefit from Stagger, which is unaffected by Velothi, since they technically still do damage.) Now Rele might be functional when light attacking once every 4-5 seconds, but you'll only get up to the tooltip damage that way. The set does further damage in direct proportion to off-the-GCD AC weaving: it ticks every LA in addition to its once-per-second DoT, so you can end up with ~1.4 ticks per second, ~40% more than the tooltip promises. Without that, the set is not nearly as competitive. A set like Depths only requires one LA at much longer intervals, but Depths specifically provides a much-needed alternative to Coral for a variety of players, specs, and situations. It would not be as viable an alternative if we had to sacrifice a GCD to proc it, which is not something we have to do with Coral. Even if LA proc sets were rebudgeted (where possible) to account for losing a GCD, putting LAs on the GCD system while continuing to have proc sets rely on them would add a component to the game where we would have to monitor even more proc cooldowns and deliberately choose whether and when to use an LA in place of a skill. That would significantly increase the difficulty and complexity of combat, which is directly contradictory to their stated goals. They have said they do not want to encourage watching timers that tell us what to hit on which GCD. Putting LAs on the GCD would do that.

They’d also likely have to reconfigure weapon glyphs if we have to give up a GCD to proc them (or consider a suboptimal skill setup). Even running cloak on the front bar doesn't proc glyphs as consistently as light attack weaving, since cloak ticks every 2 seconds. This is another part of why Velothi doesn't actually nullify LA damage.

Personally I don't see that 3/s-for-9-seconds ult regen as superfluous, since most other sources of ult stack with that. (While they technically constitute alternatives to light attacking for this purpose, blocking damage and healing - not overhealing - group members are not nearly as universally reliable.) Heroism, Pillager's, etc., aren't going to be a replacement for this ult gen when they stack with it. It's hard to envision a scenario in which we're getting so much ult that we should disregard easily accessible additional sources of it. For the recent HMs especially impairing an important source of ultimate like this would make them harder than they were designed to be. We already saw the pushback from the encounter team when U35 was on PTS and we were initially told that no changes would be made to content to mitigate the loss of damage and healing on our end. Absent help from the encounter team, what would the combat team provide to make up for what we'd lose with the loss of everything dependent on weaving, and would all that work be worth it just to remove a mechanic they've already endorsed? It seems to me that lessening reliance on weaving provides the accessibility they want without undermining the many elements of the system specifically designed for it.

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

The power gap hasn't been reduced though. It just looks different now. There's a big damage output difference between a good arcanist and a bad arcanist, for example.

That's what you get when you're trying to fix skill gap without actually addressing players skill level. There will always be a difference.

Also, for me personally one of the most disturbing part of U35 is how ZOS seem to treat balance like a zero sum game. Introducing viable HA builds (or other alternative playstyles) did not require nerfing LAs. It's not like we can't have both in the same game... And reducing the power creep went to trash when they introduce arcanist anyways.

It's a bit different with the duration of DoTs and buffs, but even here I would rather have some variability. Making every DoT the same makes every class the same.

They compressed LAs. They gave a decent buff to LA scaling in order to raise the floor, and they capped the base damage of LAs in order to lower the ceiling. It wasn't a one-sided nerf. A better example of nerfing something in an apparent attempt to make the New Shiny more viable would probably be Iceheart upon the introduction of Mother Ciannait?

As for every DoT being the same, Ritual of Retribution (especially the changes made to it with U35) is a good case study in why variability is not always in our interests...

Vonnegut2506 · January 3

What's even worse is they didn't standardize the DoT lengths in an update focused on doing that. DoT length is still all over the place for some classes, especially DK. They have DoT's that last 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 16 seconds, and 20 seconds. The 10s DoT lengths on most of them actually made rotations feel more natural. Now you have to pay attention to various timers for DoT's and the rotations feel a lot more janky. That, to me, was the big failing of U35. Even the goals they claimed to be trying to meet never got met as was pointed out to them on the PTS forum repeatedly. They ignored all of the feedback and dumped that excrement on people anyway. Templar jabs animation, flurry animation, and the massive dps hit for all classes was just more spectacular frosting on a crap cake of an update that some classes still haven't recovered from.

LPapirius · January 3

Stamicka wrote: »

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]

wilykcat wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

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

I dont understand why either.

The casual quester who doesn't engage in any end game content didn't notice anything wrong with U35 because they don't participate in any of the content that U35 borked. The people who noticed how bad U35 was are the people who play daily for hours and know the combat system well. The people who just do overland questing didn't notice because they aren't running any challenging content.

Trier_Sero · 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.)

- 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.

I started playing during U37 so don't know much about how it was but all these seem like really good changes. Honestly combat is too spam heavy even now. They should increase duration of DoTs, buffs/debuffs to 1min+ to make me even consider using 2 bars so I guess combat pre U35 was just miserable.

LPapirius · January 3

SilverBride wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why it was supposed to be so bad either. It baffles me that it's still referred to today.

People have explained it very clearly. What part are you finding so confusing?

The reaction. I don't see anything that ruined the game or made it unplayable.

People have explained ad nauseam why THEY found the game unplayable with the changes. You can say that you don't agree with it, but if you can't even understand what they were saying, then you just don't want to hear it. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I said I didn't understand the reaction. And I especially don't understand why it's still being brought up today over 2 years later.

Because the problems created by U35 still exist and heavily impact combat negatively to this day....as has been explained at least 100 times before since U35 went live.

MidniteOwl1913 · 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.)

- 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.

I don't LA at all (HA build) but I lost 22% of my damage with U35. *Everybody* was hurt. There was nothing good about U35.

MidniteOwl1913 · January 3

spartaxoxo wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why it was supposed to be so bad either. It baffles me that it's still referred to today.

People have explained it very clearly. What part are you finding so confusing?

The reaction. I don't see anything that ruined the game or made it unplayable.

I think that the power gap needed to be lowered and la weaving made less important but they targeted an entire playstyle for huge nerfs. And these huge nerfs were also directed mostly at endgame. So, it is not difficult for me to empathize with a playstyle being gutted having a negative impact on those who used it, even if one agrees that something needed to change.

The power gap hasn't been reduced though. It just looks different now. There's a big damage output difference between a good arcanist and a bad arcanist, for example.

The power gap has been reduced enough that I'm starting to see more pickup groups again, after they cratered after the Oakensoul nerfs. The big thing about the gap, to me, wasn't about the numbers difference. But rather how hard it was to get decent enough numbers to start dipping your toe into the actually challenging vet content (and not just people pretending mid game/early endgame was in a good spot because you could always do vet Craglorn).

Which is honestly why I think they could have handled the ceiling nerfs better and put more emphasis instead on offering up more alternatives to getting there like they did with Oakensoul and Arcanist. Someone asked why there was so few sets dedicated to helping people who can't weave rather than such sledge hammers to those who can, and I think that's an absolutely fair question.

Yes I was just beginning to do vet content and thinking about trials, then boom! What really got me though was the idea that it wasn't my game. That nothing I had was really stable. All the thought I might put into a build or playstyle could be ripped apart on a whim by ZOS and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I still feel that way. Any trust I have is gone. I don't see that changing.

o_Primate_o · January 3

You

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

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

You should be asking the thousands of players who quit because of it. I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

Elowen_Starveil · January 3

SilverBride wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why it was supposed to be so bad either. It baffles me that it's still referred to today.

People have explained it very clearly. What part are you finding so confusing?

The reaction. I don't see anything that ruined the game or made it unplayable.

People have explained ad nauseam why THEY found the game unplayable with the changes. You can say that you don't agree with it, but if you can't even understand what they were saying, then you just don't want to hear it. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I said I didn't understand the reaction. And I especially don't understand why it's still being brought up today over 2 years later.

Because the trend that people were complaining about which started then not only hasn’t been rolled back, but worsened? If people didn’t like the changes then, why would they like it any more now?

It’s like the 100+ page thread on lag and disconnects. Eight months on now. Are we supposed to just stop being upset about when nothing has changed? In fact, when it feels worse after the outage?

tomofhyrule · January 3

code65536 wrote: »

[snip]

This is it right here. If there's one person here who knows every bit of minutia about the game and its mechanics, it's code.

Simply, U35 was hated because it was a DPS nerf. People don't generally like to have their damage taken away, so that's why there was such a backlash to it. And we now see that people are able to output numbers even higher than it was, so in theory people should get over it.

However, there was a more problematic part of U35, and it was more about what it meant for the playerbase. It was intended to raise the DPS floor and lower the ceiling, but it ended up accomplishing a global lowering of DPS. The issue was that the high-skill players were easily able to recover, whereas the mid-skill players were not, so it essentially furthered the skill gap. This meant that many mid-tier progs ended up severely backsliding, while the top-tier trifectas were being more focused towards the 1% of the 1% (which therefore put it only more out of reach of many players, since now fewer players we part of that elite set). Because of that, many raid leads were less interested in brining others along, others left the game in frustration, and that left the endgame PvE population in shambles with very few people to try to help bring others into the fold.

The way it was done also raised hackles. Every update had sweeping combat changes which made "keeping up with the meta" into a massive rollercoaster. And then this was yet another massive overhaul which required players to regear again. The changes to class skills and DoTs also meant that many needed to redo their entire rotations this time, not just gear, and many just got off the rollercoaster instead of adapting once again to a volatile meta. This was also one of the biggest recent times where the feedback on PTS was completely ignored, and then the negative predictions veteran players had all came true exactly as they said it would.

In short, U35, while it was designed to reduce the skill gap between low- mid- and high-tier players, ended up only increasing the gap between the mid- and high-tier by completely kneecapping the mid-tier. Low-tier players were mostly unaffected and high-tier players recovered easily, but mid-tier players needed a lot of work to get back to where they were.

There was also the healing changes, which were honestly a bigger issue but was completely drowned out in the noise of the DPS loss since most players DPS. Reducing the healing tick rate to once every 1 or 2 seconds was a massive problem in places where a global DoT ticked every 0.5 seconds, meaning healers' jobs ended up getting much harder since the incoming damage ticked much faster than they could outheal it. And when the point was made that some PvE encounters would end up almost unbeatable because of this, the answer was to simply nerf the health of the bosses by 10%. This of course didn't affect the incoming damage, and indeed shortening the encounter TTK essentially was a cookie for the DDs to try to assuage their concerns about lost DPS, while leaving healers feeling like the forgotten stepchildren again.

A lot of people also disliked the homogenization of classes, as many class skills ended up underperforming compared to general skill lines. After all, why bother using your Templar, or DK, or whatever for a run if they all fight the same way anyway?

I'll also offer that the cosmetic changes of U35 to change the Flurry and Jabs animations (and the unnecessary and lazy replacement of the light spear model with an in-game staff model used by vampires that has a lorebook explicitly saying "this is generally not used for stabbing") which were extremely poorly received - yes, the animations did need to change as the attack cadence did, but the quality of the new animations did not at all match what players wanted - and the cosmetic issue was completely ignored by the developers.

Marto · January 4

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

And yet, ZOS continues to behave the same way. The latest example I can think of is the Merciless Charge nerf from Update 44. Why nerf a set that’s nearly a decade old? Just because a few players were doing 4% extra damage? What’s the point?

Because it wasn't a 4% difference. It was a 20-40% difference.

For only two specific skills.

The set was designed to increase the damage of direct damage abilities by ~8%. And it did. Except for two skills (Flurry and Templar Jabs), which saw a 20-40% increase in damage from that set.

20-40% increase. For equipping 1 two-piece set.

And this is what I think is emblematic of how the community reacted to U35, and of the issues ZOS has balancing the game. It's not that they can't or they don't know how to. It's that the ESO community refuses to acknowledge that power needs to go down. They refuse to acknowledge that sometimes the way to improve balance is to nerf things.

You all claim you want balance. But a lot of you only want power and numbers to go up, up, and up. And the problems with difficulty the game faces now are the result of years of unchecked power creep. ZOS is scared to do something about power creep because the ESO community has shown time and time again that they aren't willing to accept it.

ZOS has not reverted U35 because people losing 10-20% DPS wasn't a problem. It was the intended result. It was the solution to the problem of power creep.

ESO would be a beter game if everyone dealt less damage. It would be more engaging, with a better combat pace, with choices in sets and builds that are more impactful, with more variety and easier balance.

Vonnegut2506 · January 4

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

SilverBride · January 4

o_Primate_o wrote: »

I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

There is no way for us to know how many came back and how many didn't. Or how many even left.

CatoUnchained · January 4

tomofhyrule wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

[snip]

This is it right here. If there's one person here who knows every bit of minutia about the game and its mechanics, it's code.

Simply, U35 was hated because it was a DPS nerf. People don't generally like to have their damage taken away, so that's why there was such a backlash to it. And we now see that people are able to output numbers even higher than it was, so in theory people should get over it.

However, there was a more problematic part of U35, and it was more about what it meant for the playerbase. It was intended to raise the DPS floor and lower the ceiling, but it ended up accomplishing a global lowering of DPS. The issue was that the high-skill players were easily able to recover, whereas the mid-skill players were not, so it essentially furthered the skill gap. This meant that many mid-tier progs ended up severely backsliding, while the top-tier trifectas were being more focused towards the 1% of the 1% (which therefore put it only more out of reach of many players, since now fewer players we part of that elite set). Because of that, many raid leads were less interested in brining others along, others left the game in frustration, and that left the endgame PvE population in shambles with very few people to try to help bring others into the fold.

The way it was done also raised hackles. Every update had sweeping combat changes which made "keeping up with the meta" into a massive rollercoaster. And then this was yet another massive overhaul which required players to regear again. The changes to class skills and DoTs also meant that many needed to redo their entire rotations this time, not just gear, and many just got off the rollercoaster instead of adapting once again to a volatile meta. This was also one of the biggest recent times where the feedback on PTS was completely ignored, and then the negative predictions veteran players had all came true exactly as they said it would.

In short, U35, while it was designed to reduce the skill gap between low- mid- and high-tier players, ended up only increasing the gap between the mid- and high-tier by completely kneecapping the mid-tier. Low-tier players were mostly unaffected and high-tier players recovered easily, but mid-tier players needed a lot of work to get back to where they were.

There was also the healing changes, which were honestly a bigger issue but was completely drowned out in the noise of the DPS loss since most players DPS. Reducing the healing tick rate to once every 1 or 2 seconds was a massive problem in places where a global DoT ticked every 0.5 seconds, meaning healers' jobs ended up getting much harder since the incoming damage ticked much faster than they could outheal it. And when the point was made that some PvE encounters would end up almost unbeatable because of this, the answer was to simply nerf the health of the bosses by 10%. This of course didn't affect the incoming damage, and indeed shortening the encounter TTK essentially was a cookie for the DDs to try to assuage their concerns about lost DPS, while leaving healers feeling like the forgotten stepchildren again.

A lot of people also disliked the homogenization of classes, as many class skills ended up underperforming compared to general skill lines. After all, why bother using your Templar, or DK, or whatever for a run if they all fight the same way anyway?

I'll also offer that the cosmetic changes of U35 to change the Flurry and Jabs animations (and the unnecessary and lazy replacement of the light spear model with an in-game staff model used by vampires that has a lorebook explicitly saying "this is generally not used for stabbing") which were extremely poorly received - yes, the animations did need to change as the attack cadence did, but the quality of the new animations did not at all match what players wanted - and the cosmetic issue was completely ignored by the developers.

So, not sure what they wrote because [snip], but @code65536 is who took over for Nefas.....now look what's happening. Scary stuff I guess.

Oceanchanter · January 4

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why it was supposed to be so bad either. It baffles me that it's still referred to today.

People have explained it very clearly. What part are you finding so confusing?

The reaction. I don't see anything that ruined the game or made it unplayable.

People have explained ad nauseam why THEY found the game unplayable with the changes. You can say that you don't agree with it, but if you can't even understand what they were saying, then you just don't want to hear it. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

With all due respect, but it's kinda unfair to @SilverBride
Just like Silver, I don't understand why is it still being brought back from the past as well.
To what end? ZOS won't roll back U35 because over 2 years woth of patches were already released.
If they did, we'd have another wave of complaints but in the other direction.

Apologies for being so blunt, but it's been over 2 years.
We'll have third anniversary this year in June.
Over two years of the topic being brought up.

I do understand why it hit so many people, I really do, but it's time to let go.

From what I personally gathered, it is the endgame dps part of the community that is complaints about the changes.
There's also the part that ZOS didn't listen and ignored "hey, this is a bad idea" feedback, but I'm not touching it with a 5 foot pole, cause I wasn't active on the forum nor I had the priviledge of testing it on PTS.

Maybe because I'm a dedicated healer I barely noticed the update.
I wont deny that. Nothing much have changed in the ways I run Veteran Trials/Dungeons and other types od endgame content, other than me experimenting with builds.

That, or because I played enought games to accept that balancing changes to online games that heavily focus on combat are in "it is what it is" folder.
Sometimes devs listen, sometimes they don't.
Sometimes your main skills/characters are changed in ways you can't recognize and you need to adapt and overcome.

sarahthes · January 4

SilverBride wrote: »

o_Primate_o wrote: »

I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

There is no way for us to know how many came back and how many didn't. Or how many even left.

I don't play with any of the people I used to play with back then, and I was in 4 or 5 different cores. Most of them no longer play, I think only maybe 6 out of those 50-60 players still play. I myself quit for almost a full year, although I left before U35 came out.

CatoUnchained · January 4

SilverBride wrote: »

o_Primate_o wrote: »

I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

There is no way for us to know how many came back and how many didn't. Or how many even left.

We don't know exact numbers, but we do know it was many. Of course, the players who never engage in PvP or end game PvE won't notice this because the casual quester isn't grouping and running the harder content. They won't notice the massive player loss just as they don't notice how detrimental U35 was for the same reasons; they don't participate in the competitive content in the game.

Pepegrillos · January 4

https://www.twitch.tv/deltiasgaming/clip/SpineyFuriousLardSSSsss-TU6f5Y4T7ZMx2e1o

Was the destruction of jabs part of U35?

CatoUnchained · January 4

sarahthes wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

o_Primate_o wrote: »

I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

There is no way for us to know how many came back and how many didn't. Or how many even left.

I don't play with any of the people I used to play with back then, and I was in 4 or 5 different cores. Most of them no longer play, I think only maybe 6 out of those 50-60 players still play. I myself quit for almost a full year, although I left before U35 came out.

Same. Less than 10% of my pre U35 friends list and guilds are still playing.

SilverBride · January 4

CatoUnchained wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

o_Primate_o wrote: »

I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

There is no way for us to know how many came back and how many didn't. Or how many even left.

We don't know exact numbers, but we do know it was many. Of course, the players who never engage in PvP or end game PvE won't notice this because the casual quester isn't grouping and running the harder content. They won't notice the massive player loss just as they don't notice how detrimental U35 was for the same reasons; they don't participate in the competitive content in the game.

I've mentioned more than once that I do spend some time doing group content.

CatoUnchained · January 4

Pepegrillos wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/deltiasgaming/clip/SpineyFuriousLardSSSsss-TU6f5Y4T7ZMx2e1o

Was the destruction of jabs part of U35?

yep, as well they changed flurry animation to a weird flailing motion same time

spartaxoxo · January 4

SilverBride wrote: »

CatoUnchained wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

o_Primate_o wrote: »

I quit for four months but came back, but most didn't.

There is no way for us to know how many came back and how many didn't. Or how many even left.

We don't know exact numbers, but we do know it was many. Of course, the players who never engage in PvP or end game PvE won't notice this because the casual quester isn't grouping and running the harder content. They won't notice the massive player loss just as they don't notice how detrimental U35 was for the same reasons; they don't participate in the competitive content in the game.

I've mentioned more than once that I do spend some time doing group content.

Not all group content is endgame content. Vet trials got hit the hardest, for example.

Normal, regular vet, and endgame versions (dlc achievements) exist for most group content.

Soarora · January 4

Marto wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

And yet, ZOS continues to behave the same way. The latest example I can think of is the Merciless Charge nerf from Update 44. Why nerf a set that’s nearly a decade old? Just because a few players were doing 4% extra damage? What’s the point?

Because it wasn't a 4% difference. It was a 20-40% difference.

For only two specific skills.

The set was designed to increase the damage of direct damage abilities by ~8%. And it did. Except for two skills (Flurry and Templar Jabs), which saw a 20-40% increase in damage from that set.

20-40% increase. For equipping 1 two-piece set.

And this is what I think is emblematic of how the community reacted to U35, and of the issues ZOS has balancing the game. It's not that they can't or they don't know how to. It's that the ESO community refuses to acknowledge that power needs to go down. They refuse to acknowledge that sometimes the way to improve balance is to nerf things.

You all claim you want balance. But a lot of you only want power and numbers to go up, up, and up. And the problems with difficulty the game faces now are the result of years of unchecked power creep. ZOS is scared to do something about power creep because the ESO community has shown time and time again that they aren't willing to accept it.

ZOS has not reverted U35 because people losing 10-20% DPS wasn't a problem. It was the intended result. It was the solution to the problem of power creep.

ESO would be a beter game if everyone dealt less damage. It would be more engaging, with a better combat pace, with choices in sets and builds that are more impactful, with more variety and easier balance.

But people don't do less damage. My tri core was able to SKIP EXECUTE COMPLETELY in coral aerie HM last boss quite often without even trying aside from saving our ults for it. No special builds, no specific class distribution for it. People are doing 0 portal cloudrest like it's a normal strat. Similar thing with asylum sanctorium, used to have to focus the minis at specific times to single target them down, not so much anymore unless they're about to enrage if they didn't die from cleave.

U35 didn't bring down the damage and make the game more engaging, it brought down the damage so that midgame was left in ruins, build diversity decreased because the viable range narrowed, and made the community feel unwanted and unlistened to. All for damage to INCREASE in later patches anyways!

Marto · January 4

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

How did the animation changes to jabs and flurry help power creep? How did lowering light attack damage fix power creep when, as people have mentioned, the higher end players are doing more damage now? How did adding a 3-button mass cleave class fix power creep. Much like ZOS, some people seem to think they have all the answers when they just want to justify any change that gets made.

You mean jabs, the AoE spammable with higher damage coefficients than anything else in the game at the time? The skill that has one morph that heals you? The AoE spammable that deals nearly full damage to secondary target?

One of the most overloaded and potentially most overpowered skills in the game? The spammable that is, outside of numbers, the objectively best attack in the game?

The skill that could delete you instantly in PVP? That trivialized PVE fights against multiple targets? That was so strong it made every other Templar kit and skill irrelevant?

That jabs?

This is what I mean when I say the ESO community is unwilling to accept when something is overtuned.

Hurbster · January 4

sig says it all, really. Plus, the devs came across as a wee bit arrogant about the whole thing.