Asikoo wrote: »

@Koshka

Okay, but let me ask you this:
If I build a 1bar setup with Velothi on any other class besides Arcanist will I get the same DPS results?

Because that’s the point.

This discussion isn’t about 2bar builds, and it’s not about mythic item flexibility or trial optimization with buffs. None of that changes the fact that 1bar Arcanists are in a completely different league compared to every other 1bar build. They get insane results with minimal effort, while other classes on a 1bar build, whether using Oakensoul, Velothi, or no mythic at all are consistently underperforming by comparison.

So yes, we can all swap mythics or build around different buffs. But the core issue remains:
No other 1bar class comes close to what a 1bar Arcanist can do. And that’s what creates imbalance and gatekeeping.

It’s not about whether Oakensoul is good or bad. It’s about the gap between 1bar Arcanist performance and every other 1bar option, and how that gap shapes community perception and treatment of non-Arcanist HA players.

...I actually linked a video where Hyperioxes did 138k with a one bar heavy attack sorc. So yes, you can definitely compare it to a 1 bar arcanist. He used the voidmantle I believe.
Generally, there are definitely problems with class line balance and fatecarver builds being too prevalent. But out of all builds, HA sorc is still in a very good place compared to most other classes/playstyles.

Asikoo wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

should oakensoul be behind 1-bar arcabeams setups? Hard to tell. Both are very easy. i'd say arcabeam should be slightly ahead, since you have to source your buffs.

No. If we're talking about a 5~10k difference… well, okay, I truly understand it's hard to make both builds do exactly the same DPS. But when one parses 130k on a boss and the other only 100k, then if we look at trash, we're talking about a 300k difference. No. That's NOT FAIR!

I concur. that's why I said slightly behind. Not like it is now.
I was indeed thinking 5k ... 10 at really most.

Asikoo wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

doabhi wrote: »

kevkj wrote: »

doabhi wrote: »

Oakensoul used to be an accessibility item that meant people who for example had some form of disability, lack of ability or otherwise were just not that adept at playing the game (compared to some people who's entire personality it is to exist entirely on the game - You know who you/they are) could therefore participate in some of the games more challenging content. I was one such player. When Oakensoul first got nerfed, I felt it.

Some people in this community really forgot to do the growing up part of getting older and think it's their divine duty to sit and gate-keep how other people play and enjoy the game because it isn't how they choose to do so. And so forum posts get made, complaints get shrieked like it's 2004 Xbox Live Lobby again and the people who needed the support of such things suffer and get pushed to the side to appease the squeakers and loudest and more toxic members of the community.

@doabhi I want to address this because I'm getting the impression that you think OP is on your side, somehow a champion of accessibility. They've spent multiple threads complaining that there are setups that are both easier/as easy as Oakensoul heavy attack used to be and hitting higher numbers and calling for those to be nerfed. OP is a gatekeeper as well, just of a different flavour. No playstyle can be allowed to perform better than their own. All their posts are basically fatecarver nerf threads, disguised as a plea for accessibility.

Neither agreeing or disagreeing with OP, just saying what Oakensoul is/was all about as a reminder that it's there to help take the strain of buff management so a player can focus more on the task at hand without the need to become the furious sweaty key tapping guy meme.

I just wanted to take a second to comment on a couple of your posts. Something I tried to explain to op in his last thread that was exactly like this one. While I don't need the ring myself, my wife uses it as an accessibility item, and enjoys the more damage she does using it though she is only a quester. I think it's a cool thing. I take a little bit of an issue though when people portray some huge hate keeping conspiracy by every raider to stop people in their tracks from joining in the raindeer games if they have this thing. While I've been criticized by the op for telling him to keep looking if he hasn't found the right group yet, I think this is the best advice. I know for a fact that they're out there. I'm a member of one such guild. We're teaching our members vet trials, no build or dps requirements. We have heavy attack oaken sorcs. Now that's not to say that it'll be easy or it'll happen on the first time. I can only raid at specific weeknight times. It took joining and leaving quite a few guilds until I found 2 that worked. You may have trouble getting into a score pushing or hm progression group if your max DPS is 100k but no one has to invite you anyway. If you look you'll find your people. Also the comments about people who enjoy endgame content? Really? Is your argument so bad you gotta turn to insults?

I never said I have a hard time finding groups for hard mode content. I can join them just fine. I can run 2bar setups, I can pull good DPS, and as a healer, there's usually a spot for me, okay, maybe not 100% of the time, but pretty close. All good on that front!
But this isn't about me. It’s not about whether I can find a spot in serious content. That completely misses the point.

The real issue here is the massive DPS gap between any 1bar builds and 1bar Arcanist, especially with the release of Scribing. Even players running 2bar builds with "okay" weaving often parse lower than a 1bar Arcanist spamming Beam. That’s a serious design imbalance. And no, it’s not fair.

It’s also not fair when people get kicked from veteran runs just because they’re using Oakensoul, regardless of whether their performance is actually a problem. You mentioned your wife uses Oakensoul and enjoys it as an accessibility aid, great! That’s exactly what the ring was meant to support. But tell me honestly: has she never seen “No HA builds” in the Group Finder? Has she never been kicked because of it? Because I see it happen literally every day.

That’s the core issue: not that nobody can ever find a group, but that a huge chunk of the community instantly labels and excludes players based on a single gear choice, without even giving them a chance. It creates stigma, and that stigma trickles down to casual and mid-tier content, not just top-end score pushing.

And no, I don’t only play with HA builds. Sure, HA is my favorite and the one I’m most comfortable with, but I play multiple classes, with both 1bar and 2bar setups. I’m not arguing this because I’m “locked out” of content. I’m arguing this because I’ve seen how players (and me) are treated, and it’s wrong.

This isn’t some imagined conspiracy. It’s a real culture issue, and it’s being reinforced by mechanical imbalance in the game. That’s what needs to be looked at.

From reading your points, I think everyone is in agreement with you. It’s just you’re latching onto Oakensoul as if it’s the only think in the fame that has balance issues, when Subclassing has actually brought a wrecking ball to balance as a whole.

Compared to the standard “1-bar Arcanist, now with crux-generating banner, backbarred Merciless Resolve for free weapon damage, and infinite free shields from Pragmatic,” everything is in the gutter. It’s not just Oakensoul - even players who prefer pure classes are under pressure to take that one build because it’s absurdly overpowered.

And worse, since that specific build tosses the resolve and passive evasion from Cruxweaver, that means tanks and healers are forced to run specific skills to give it back to them.

It’s not just people saying “ew Oakensoul.” It’s “ew everything but Arcbladeplar,” and that is definitely a balance thing. I think people are just getting hung up on arguing about Oakensoul since you are implying that that’s the only balance problem we have now.

I don't play with oakensoul much so this doesn't really impact me, but I know my gals would appreciate more acheivements based on group diversity as right now everything is so samey-samey and raid leads expect you to play how they want and be good which is boooooring.

Koshka wrote: »

Technically, 1 bar builds can produce enough damage to beat everything except a few trial trifectas (and even then you can just transition to a 1.5 bar build with Voidmantle or Velothi), the main issue is that players assume that they don't have to learn and practice once they have acquired the gear. How many Oaken players absolutely refuse to play as a part of the group, ignore mechanics, stand in the opposite corners of the room while heavy attacking, stand behind healers, etc? This is what holds Oakensoul players back, not the lack of power.
You can absolutely make an oakensoul-only group. It's not a new idea. But you'll still have to learn mechanics and communicate with other people like the rest of us. It's not like 2 bar arcanists get instant invites to prog groups as soon as they hit 100k+ - it still requires a bit of networking and a bit of luck, and sometimes you have to take the initiative and organize a group yourself. And you still have to keep learning and improving.
Here's an example of a non-AS trifecta done by 1 bar dds. Hope you'll find that inspiring.
https://youtu.be/Lnb9XrQa3q0?feature=shared

Have you seen the logs for that? the supports were hard carrying the dd's.
But to be fair RG is extremely support intense (ie dd's job is not fall asleep) maybe only on last Xalvaka floor dd's have little mechanics to play, but up until then dd's are afk through the entire trial.
But with the current sub classing I know for sure HA builds can clear all trifectas (dunno about OC as I haven't played that trial yet). But like you said some kid holding his left clicker doing 0 mechs playing like a dungeon rnd LA bow spammer from across the room, now they want to do 150-200k dps by holding 1 button and having 2 skills on their bar, the amount of entitlements is wild.
Like I can get the whole lack of co-ordination for perfect LA's whether it be from disability/injury or just lack of rhythm but like legit what's the apm on an arc now? like 30? ie 1 skill every 2 sec on average? Realistically you only need to do 1 la every 10 sec, there is no way people cannot do it, you know what? *** the la, don't la at all on an arc sure you will lose a bit of ult gen which will hurt your parse, but still even non la simple skill mashing arc can do so much damage there like 0 excuse besides of course not wanting to adept to meta.
Now you can be HA/1 Bar/1 Bar HA and still do fine damage, sure most won't take you to trifecta runs but up until sweaty trifectas (rg and beyond), ha or 1 bar (or both) can do just fine in sub RG trial trifectas.
In harder ones, ideally to skip progress as the trials can take 6-12 months to get trifecta so RL's opt for high dmg dd's like sure let's take Swash for example back then people did like 110k on dummy, now they doing 160k so will a 130k HA get accepted? probably not even tho the trifecta was done years ago with much less dps the trial is still hard, and imagine if you play 7 normal dd's and 1 ha dd, the HA dd does 70-80% of the normal dd's how will the normal dds feel? Unless everyone plays ha and then there is 0 guilt.
But yeah HA life style is just lazy dd's wanting to skip through content with 0 effort, this isn't 2020 where you need to have 130 apm, legit doing 1 la every 10 sec is more than enough but meh not here to preach for the choir

Asikoo wrote: »

@tomofhyrule

The issue isn’t Oakensoul. It’s that ESO introduced tools meant to support 1bar and accessible builds, but then only made one class (Arcanist) actually competitive in that space. The balance needs to be adjusted to make 1bar play viable across the board.

Right now, the power gap is so wide that players aren’t being judged on performance, they’re being judged on gear and class, before they even get a chance. That’s not a community issue, it’s a design issue. And it’s discouraging for anyone who wants to play differently, especially now that Scribing has made Arcanist even more dominant.

We don’t need every 1bar build to be meta. But we do need every class to have a fair shot at being viable on 1bar. That’s not unreasonable, that’s just good game health.


edit:
"Even players who prefer pure classes are under pressure", yes, 100% true. And honestly, that’s exactly what makes me even more angry and frustrated about all of this. Like I’ve said in other threads: “I can’t even look at my favorite character anymore."
If I don’t use Scribing, I get penalized in every possible way. Penalized for sticking with Oakensorc, and penalized again for parsing lower than a 1bar Arcanist just spamming Beam.
That’s the heart of why I’m so upset. I’m not asking for nerfs. I’m not asking to be top of the meter. I’m asking for balance, for all 1bar builds, across all classes.

And I believe every player who enjoys this game deserves that. We should speak up and push for that kind of fairness. We should fight for better balance. This isn't balanced DPS, it's nothing. It doesn't make sense at all, it's [snip].

I have been Playing ESO for 10 years. I have seen many many many combat changes over that time. In that time, i have never ever seen ZOS strike a perfect balance in such a way that would result in everything be balanced. Something is always BIS, some class (or class skills) are always on top and players will always lean towards that. I remember when templars, Sorcs, Nightblades, were always top of the DPS charts. When DPS tanks rulled PVP. When Werewolves and Vamps were just OP. I also remember when things got nuked hard, and the meta shifted.

In all of the years i have been on the forums and in the game itself, no change in gear, no buff in stats, no change in core mechanics, will change the fact that some people will gatekeep some players out of their groups and how they complete the content. All that happens is that the players who do the gatekeeping change, and the metrics change. Sometimes you will make it through, sometimes you won't but it will happen.

Do the class lines need to be balanced? most definitely, that has been apparent for a long time, its more so now, and it was mentioned in the PTS which ones were OP and which ones arn't. But ZOS works slow regarding those types of changes.

Also, there have always been, and always will be, players that refuse to group with others because it doesn't match how they want to do content or because they jsut dont like how certain builds work. changing builds won't change that it just changes who those people are, and if your orginal proposed change goes live it will be people that DONT use Oakensoul that will be gatekept out of content.

About Oakensoul players not learning combat:

I don't have problems with my hands or my gaming brains. I use Oakensoul because of lag (my ping is at 70-90 on the screen at all times, except when it jumps to 999+). About 20-35% of my key presses and mouse clicks don't go through to the game, and I never know which ones don't. It makes HA, for example, way too much of a gamble. I could grow a beard waiting for the bar swap to happen. Or I could not! I wouldn't know! The game doesn't tell me.

For comparison: In another MMO I use 20+ skills on a regular basis, all on a "one bar" environment. I've done and lead mythic raids successfully, learned tactics, and helped others learn them. Took on responsive roles and carried people just for fun. Things I could never do in ESO. The only thing keeping me from the current end-game content in that other game is the amount of time I want to put into the gear grind. Not my physical capabilities, or my capabilities as a gamer, or as a person who learns new things and adapts. It's just that that game responds when I ask and need it to, so the process of learning things in it is actually about learning them, and not about gambling key presses and hoping for the best like in ESO.

Koshka wrote: »

KekwLord3000 wrote: »

Koshka wrote: »

Technically, 1 bar builds can produce enough damage to beat everything except a few trial trifectas (and even then you can just transition to a 1.5 bar build with Voidmantle or Velothi), the main issue is that players assume that they don't have to learn and practice once they have acquired the gear. How many Oaken players absolutely refuse to play as a part of the group, ignore mechanics, stand in the opposite corners of the room while heavy attacking, stand behind healers, etc? This is what holds Oakensoul players back, not the lack of power.
You can absolutely make an oakensoul-only group. It's not a new idea. But you'll still have to learn mechanics and communicate with other people like the rest of us. It's not like 2 bar arcanists get instant invites to prog groups as soon as they hit 100k+ - it still requires a bit of networking and a bit of luck, and sometimes you have to take the initiative and organize a group yourself. And you still have to keep learning and improving.
Here's an example of a non-AS trifecta done by 1 bar dds. Hope you'll find that inspiring.
https://youtu.be/Lnb9XrQa3q0?feature=shared

Have you seen the logs for that? the supports were hard carrying the dd's.
But to be fair RG is extremely support intense (ie dd's job is not fall asleep) maybe only on last Xalvaka floor dd's have little mechanics to play, but up until then dd's are afk through the entire trial.

They probably did it as a challenge. My point was just that many things are possible when people cooperate and work towards a goal.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

and if your orginal proposed change goes live it will be people that DONT use Oakensoul that will be gatekept out of content.

That was already happening during glory days of Oakensoul. People were looking exclusively for Oakensorcs for things like vBRP, vAS poly farms, etc. And this build wasn't even as strong as what OP is proposing.
I kinda feel like the fact that you could (and probably still can) cheese vAS trifecta made some people think that accessibility=ability to cheese everything with overwhelming damage while ignoring mechanics.

Exactly the point i was trying to make. I would love more accessibility options. I for one would LOVE more color blind friendly options. Like the ability to change enemy named text away from red as an example.

To me this discussion isnt about accessibility. Its more about insisting that 1 accessibility option be so powerful that it will become so powerful that it will become the core requirement for gameplay. As in completely broken.

And Oakensoul is paywalled on top of that. A 1 bar non Oakensoul sorc would be a better option to buff. Like allowing deadric summonings buffs and skills to work with all pets instead of those within its skill lines.