I'll be honest I think the main balance pass they need to do is to increase each skill line's passive buffs based on the # of skills slotted rather than sometimes buffing the character without the skill line even needing to be used. Do that and suddenly there's real choices to be made.

sarahthes wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

absolute requirement

Are you not capable of killing a boss if you only have 17k of pen?

It'll be slower. And slower kill time = more opportunities to fail.

There are a lot of soft DPS checks throughout the game. Skipping a mechanic by pushing to the next phase can make or break a progression team.

On a 5 minute boss fight it is 6 seconds difference - or to put it another way a slightly above average string of non-crits. It's nothing.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

absolute requirement

Are you not capable of killing a boss if you only have 17k of pen?

It'll be slower. And slower kill time = more opportunities to fail.

There are a lot of soft DPS checks throughout the game. Skipping a mechanic by pushing to the next phase can make or break a progression team.

On a 5 minute boss fight it is 6 seconds difference - or to put it another way a slightly above average string of non-crits. It's nothing.

Or, it's the difference between another Xalvakka shell phase, being able to skip the last meteor on Bahsei, skipping last poison on Oax, skipping another round of meteors on Nahvi, skipping matrons on Taleria, comfortably killing minis in Cloudrest to skip a portal.

Sure, you can clear without making those checks. But clearing becomes easier, safer, and more reliable if you can. And who knows, maybe that 1-2% that you're not contributing by going off meta is the difference between making those checks or not.

Ph1p wrote: »

I think it's odd to define "overpowered" in relation to the absolute top of the top. Looking at logs, it seems indeed that Arcanists are in fact not the #1 DPS in many trial rankings. Necros, DKs, and Templars often take that spot. But concluding that Arcs are therefore not overpowered is like allowing the use of a mediocre chess computer in a tournament because "it can't beat Magnus Carlsen".

I'd prefer to compare against how the same person would perform with an alternative setup. For example, Oakensoul builds obviously never beat the best LA setups, but they could double or triple a player's DPS immediately. I think that's where much of the perception of being overpowered came from, even though they were never "meta".

Same with Arcanists. If 95% of all players do significantly better with an Arcanist build after trying it out for a few hours than with their previous main they've played for a year, then I'd call that overpowered.

All those examples are NOT overpowered! You yourself are describing these are not overpowered, and then call them overpowered still. Both for oakensoul and arcanist beam.

This is asking for things that are not at the top, to be nerfed. You can't re-define overpowered to your own definition of it.

PS: Beam is simply easier to create a build around, so players who have spend a year on a main and do more damage on their 'new' arcanist, is just a convenience thing. To me that points out that ZOS needs to do away from the 2-bar/weaving meta and 2-bar/weaving gameplay. Both the original oakensoul and arcanist beam proves this.

PPS: Isn't this funny... before subclassing released, players were doing fine in the highest content. And now players themselves want to force the new highest meta to be the bottom for players to invite. Meta builds is a selfcreated problem, not a game issue. A game should be primarily fun! If more players can do endgame, that is better for the game itself as well.

Sarannah wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

I think it's odd to define "overpowered" in relation to the absolute top of the top. Looking at logs, it seems indeed that Arcanists are in fact not the #1 DPS in many trial rankings. Necros, DKs, and Templars often take that spot. But concluding that Arcs are therefore not overpowered is like allowing the use of a mediocre chess computer in a tournament because "it can't beat Magnus Carlsen".

I'd prefer to compare against how the same person would perform with an alternative setup. For example, Oakensoul builds obviously never beat the best LA setups, but they could double or triple a player's DPS immediately. I think that's where much of the perception of being overpowered came from, even though they were never "meta".

Same with Arcanists. If 95% of all players do significantly better with an Arcanist build after trying it out for a few hours than with their previous main they've played for a year, then I'd call that overpowered.

All those examples are NOT overpowered! You yourself are describing these are not overpowered, and then call them overpowered still. Both for oakensoul and arcanist beam.

This is asking for things that are not at the top, to be nerfed. You can't re-define overpowered to your own definition of it.

PS: Beam is simply easier to create a build around, so players who have spend a year on a main and do more damage on their 'new' arcanist, is just a convenience thing. To me that points out that ZOS needs to do away from the 2-bar/weaving meta and 2-bar/weaving gameplay. Both the original oakensoul and arcanist beam proves this.

PPS: Isn't this funny... before subclassing released, players were doing fine in the highest content. And now players themselves want to force the new highest meta to be the bottom for players to invite. Meta builds is a selfcreated problem, not a game issue. A game should be primarily fun! If more players can do endgame, that is better for the game itself as well.

My main point is that people have different definitions of "overpowered". I respect whatever yours is, it just helps to clarify it beforehand. Again, I personally think the definition shouldn't only allow something that is better than everything else. For example, a 500 PS Range Rover would be a massively overpowered car for my life in an European city. It would be nonsensical to claim it isn't, just because my neighbor has a 600 PS Jeep and the US Army has a 1500 PS tank.

Regarding your PPS about players "forcing" the new meta onto their groups: It was one reason people asked ZOS to put more effort into balancing and limit the amount of power creep, which in excess acts just like inflation. Shower everyone with money and prices go up in lockstep. Give every player 20% more DPS and requirements go up, because no progression-oriented group wants to gimp themselves.

As someone who has led learning runs for 3 years, I don't want to see rising requirements either, because it increases the gap between new and veteran players. Power creep also trivializes older trials and incentivizes developers to raise the difficulty of future content. However, blaming this on players instead of ZOS is utterly ridiculous and borders on gaslighting. If a teacher allows the use of calculators in a 2nd grade arithmetic test, the resulting grade inflation isn't the students' fault...

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Arcanist beam is NOT overpowered, it is just easy to use and build around.

Every class should have it's own channeled AOE to build around, with visuals themed for that specific class.

Hu? If you check any raid log, then beam will always provide almost 50% of your total damage. One.Single.Skill.

Tell me just one skill, that does the same. And we are not talking about 20k dps here.

They had to replace LA weaving damage somehow.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

absolute requirement

Are you not capable of killing a boss if you only have 17k of pen?

It'll be slower. And slower kill time = more opportunities to fail.

There are a lot of soft DPS checks throughout the game. Skipping a mechanic by pushing to the next phase can make or break a progression team.

On a 5 minute boss fight it is 6 seconds difference - or to put it another way a slightly above average string of non-crits. It's nothing.

Or, it's the difference between another Xalvakka shell phase, being able to skip the last meteor on Bahsei, skipping last poison on Oax, skipping another round of meteors on Nahvi, skipping matrons on Taleria, comfortably killing minis in Cloudrest to skip a portal.

Sure, you can clear without making those checks. But clearing becomes easier, safer, and more reliable if you can. And who knows, maybe that 1-2% that you're not contributing by going off meta is the difference between making those checks or not.

It's not necessary to skip mechs to complete it. And if you can't handle an extra instance of mech that you've seen a dozen times /shrug

As I noted: you can get the same delay by having a slightly higher rate of non-crits. It's inconsequential if you know the mechanics.

Why would I want to deal with an extra mechanic when the risk of death is higher though?

You sound like someone who's never lost a run due to someone having been snared by a matron just as wave hits during yellow dome.

Beam isn't going anywhere and I doubt it's going to be everywhere either, in terms of adding a similar ability to each class.

Fatecarver was implemented for the same reason ZOS embraced heavy attack builds. They make ESO end game content more accessible to the playerbase. Especially pragmatic which helps players survive being squirrelly.

I'm an older gamer, and though I don't like beam gameplay and wouldn't miss it if it were removed, I have to admit that it enables me to play more end game content than I can playing with a full LA rotation.

I think the nerfs were sufficient in that players can't run health/max resource food and chain 3 crux exhausting fatecarvers as easily before. That was a big point of contention for me in u45... it was so boring and so easy, even if I wasn't playing well.

We've seen a lot of beamers struggle with recovery adapting to u46 and we're seeing players having to either compromise damage or survivability for recovery compared to their u45 builds.

I think sarahthes makes some excellent points about pen. It's not beam that is OP at this point, but Herald.

Renato90085 wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

Beam isn't going anywhere and I doubt it's going to be everywhere either, in terms of adding a similar ability to each class.

Fatecarver was implemented for the same reason ZOS embraced heavy attack builds. They make ESO end game content more accessible to the playerbase. Especially pragmatic which helps players survive being squirrelly.

I'm an older gamer, and though I don't like beam gameplay and wouldn't miss it if it were removed, I have to admit that it enables me to play more end game content than I can playing with a full LA rotation.

I think the nerfs were sufficient in that players can't run health/max resource food and chain 3 crux exhausting fatecarvers as easily before. That was a big point of contention for me in u45... it was so boring and so easy, even if I wasn't playing well.

We've seen a lot of beamers struggle with recovery adapting to u46 and we're seeing players having to either compromise damage or survivability for recovery compared to their u45 builds.

I think sarahthes makes some excellent points about pen. It's not beam that is OP at this point, but Herald.

yes,necro /arc can easy have full pen,it killed alk,and no Alk mean in pveendgame your no meta class need lost you many dps swap many pen set or lost 16% dps and no ec/lc happen in Crit dmg too ,it why now meta is arc/nb/necro or temp

The highest damage I've seen in content has been arc/blade with ardent flame actually. You can look at public cloudrest and DSR logs to see what I mean.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Arcanist beam is NOT overpowered, it is just easy to use and build around.

Every class should have it's own channeled AOE to build around, with visuals themed for that specific class.

Hu? If you check any raid log, then beam will always provide almost 50% of your total damage. One.Single.Skill.

Tell me just one skill, that does the same. And we are not talking about 20k dps here.

It makes it easier to play, but that alone does not make it the best. The differential between the pre-U46 classes was marginal - in content.

Tell me another skill that does around 50% of your damage.

Missed the point I see.

One skill doing 50% makes it easier to play it does not mean that the overall damage is higher. The stats from ESOlogs suggest that Arcanist is by no means the highest damage class.

TLDR; 50% of nothing is nothing - as the saying goes.

Great point... and people wondering why ZOS hasn't 'nerfed' Arcanist- this would be why. They can SEE the data, and they can clearly see that Arcanist is not the top in anything. Just because people CHOOSE to play it because it's 'easier' doesn't justify it being nerfed... because clearly, easier isn't 'better'. Yet, people SEE Arcanist everywhere and assume it's the best because 'everyone is using it' and then you get people making guides revolving around the 'easier builds' because these people have discovered that their easier builds are more popular.

What I see are people complaining about content being too easy, then spending their time investing in builds to make it that way. I mean, we have posts in this thread talking about how you have to have a high DPS build so you can skip mechanics... so in other words, making the content easier and faster... to which then will complain about content being too easy. It's a no win for ZOS and the exact reason why they don't seem to be playing that balance game anymore.

Ph1p wrote: »

I think it's odd to define "overpowered" in relation to the absolute top of the top. Looking at logs, it seems indeed that Arcanists are in fact not the #1 DPS in many trial rankings. Necros, DKs, and Templars often take that spot. But concluding that Arcs are therefore not overpowered is like allowing the use of a mediocre chess computer in a tournament because "it can't beat Magnus Carlsen".

I'd prefer to compare against how the same person would perform with an alternative setup. For example, Oakensoul builds obviously never beat the best LA setups, but they could double or triple a player's DPS immediately. I think that's where much of the perception of being overpowered came from, even though they were never "meta".

Same with Arcanists. If 95% of all players do significantly better with an Arcanist build after trying it out for a few hours than with their previous main they've played for a year, then I'd call that overpowered.

This is what happened to one of my raid teams a couple of years ago. We went from some rough progs of godslayer to getting the trifecta within a week after arcanist came out. The class really had everything and simplified both the damage and survivability equations once you figured out the timing.

My magplar did higher DPS at the time but was much more dependent on weaving and managing several dots and with some trial mechanics it was easy to miss part of a rotation and lose out on a chunk of damage. Then there was the LA weaving which could get janky at times.

Arcanist solved all of this and only gets stronger through subclassing.

Jotiqua wrote: »

Arcanists still, almost 2 years after release, are disgustingly OP in PvE, If you check any Leaderboards its 90% Arcanists. Other Classes either need a Strong push to compete or that ugly ass Laserskill needs a serious Nerf.
Subclassing promised such a diversity in Builds, but it only ended up beeing Arcanists evreywhere.

I wonder why some players despise a class that anyone can have, and hate skills anyone can use simply adding an arcanist character or subclassing.

Why complain against a PVE (PVE!!!) SKILL you have nothing to do and suffer no consequences when other players use it??? ASK FOR OTHER CLASSES BUFF not arcanist nerfing!

LEAVE. ARCANIST. ALONE.

What a bunch of malcontent loonies.

Well, I don't think that they are that OP.
In vTrials I see (PUGS, mainly), arcanists performs well, sure, but they do not seem to overperform.

I think the dominance of Herald is more problematic than the dominance of Assassination *because* it changes up the gameplay loop so much. I can swap in Assassination for a dps boost without my DK no longer feeling like a DK, but anything with beam just feels like an arcanist. Niche single-target tentacular dread builds aside, if you take Herald your entire rotation revolves around building crux and beaming. I have fun with that playstyle; I have an arcanist toon I bring to a lot of vet content. However, I find the rhythm of a traditional LA weaving build more fun- I spend a lot of time parsing and thinking about the rotation, etc. (e.g. I am actively trying to "git gud"). I parse better on my DK than my Arc, though my top parse is decent but not incredible (143k dps on live). And yet, in content I struggle to keep up with the beamers or am straight up getting obliterated by them. On my DK I think about multiple different builds, and have different sets and setups for AOE trash, AOE boss, single target. On my arcanist I slap on ansuul/deadly and obliterate everything.

I don't want beam to be taken away or nerfed into obsolescence. But it shouldn't take a player in the upper echelon of skill to outperform it on a LA weaving build in a single-target fight. Beam being the only viable endgame dps build until you reach the top 0.01% where min-maxing finally favors non-beam builds in some fights is straight up unhealthy for the game.