PTS Update 47 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities Changes

MincMincMinc · July 14

GloatingSwine wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

That's already happened though. Herald of the Tome and Assassination are taken more than twice as often as any other skill line (among people who are actually trying to optimise the system).

At least if every class' DPS line had a reasonably similar amount of accessible power in it then there would be more viable combinations of three than "Herald/Assassination/Your choice of spice (but usually Dawn's Wrath).

What you fear is already upon us, and the toothpaste cannot be put back into the tube whilst Fatecarver exists because as a 4s exclusive channel all of the power of Herald has to be bound up in it.

(I don't think the changes to grim focus will change this, the passives on Assassination are just too good to skip it even without that 300/400WS)

Yeah my point exactly, they already put this system in place so we are up the creek without a paddle.

Like I said originally, even if they go and make the tanky skill lines tankier and the healing ones heal more it wont matter because nothing is stopping us from running 3/3 damage lines. PvE and PvP have this issue. PvP in particular just jumped up about 20-30% more output damage just from the change to have 3/3 damage lines.

Cellithor · July 14

I get why they wanted to change Merciless Resolve. It is supposed to be an active skill and it is not being used as it was designed to be used. That indicates a design issue that needs to be corrected.

Instead of just deleting the weapon and spell damage increase, firing the skill should result in a weapon and spell damage increase for 30 seconds, incentivizing active use of the skill without sacrificing the buff it provides to our subclass builds or Nightblade pure class builds.

Seriously, that's all that's needed. Encourage active use of the skill by applying the buffs after its fired. There was no need to go full send in the other direction!

CAB_Life · July 14

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

I agree. And I've said this before in other threads, but if they're gonna follow through with this kind of consolidation ideology, then they need to limit us to one tank, one healer, one DPS, for cross-class pics, meaning you cannot take three DPS skill lines, you can only take one doesn't matter from what class.So the only break or leeway from this stringent rulewould be skills of your base class, from which can select as many of those lines as you want. This would actually give an advantage to pure classes— something we see many people lamenting since the changes—in that they would have a complete and balance kit, all thematically aligned. I think the devs will get there or somewhere similar, because they simply have no choice but to limit the options with this system, or it will continue to power creep and trivialize the game.

madmufffin · July 14

CAB_Life wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

I agree. And I've said this before in other threads, but if they're gonna follow through with this kind of consolidation ideology, then they need to limit us to one tank, one healer, one DPS, for cross-class pics, meaning you cannot take three DPS skill lines, you can only take one doesn't matter from what class.So the only break or leeway from this stringent rulewould be skills of your base class, from which can select as many of those lines as you want. This would actually give an advantage to pure classes— something we see many people lamenting since the changes—in that they would have a complete and balance kit, all thematically aligned. I think the devs will get there or somewhere similar, because they simply have no choice but to limit the options with this system, or it will continue to power creep and trivialize the game.

I don't think this really fixes the issue though, because there's lines that inherently do a good amount of damage. Technically I'd argue that Aedric spear is Templar's tank line, which is already a top picked dps line as is without those constraints. Daedric Summoning and Winter's Embrace both have pretty high dps potential relatively speaking as well. The heal lines are pretty segmented, but Dark Magic definitely stands out as the dps source from a healing line. I think ultimately it would dial back a bit of power creep but would create an even more horrifically stale meta.

tomofhyrule · July 14

.

CAB_Life wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

I agree. And I've said this before in other threads, but if they're gonna follow through with this kind of consolidation ideology, then they need to limit us to one tank, one healer, one DPS, for cross-class pics, meaning you cannot take three DPS skill lines, you can only take one doesn't matter from what class.So the only break or leeway from this stringent rulewould be skills of your base class, from which can select as many of those lines as you want. This would actually give an advantage to pure classes— something we see many people lamenting since the changes—in that they would have a complete and balance kit, all thematically aligned. I think the deva will get there or somewhere similar, because they simply have no choice but to limit the options with this system, or it will continue to power creep and trivialize the game.

The problem with that strategy is that only the DLC Classes are strictly defined, and even that's not entirely true considering the number of people trying their hardest to turn Warden's tank line into a DPS line.

Sure, we can all look at Arcanist and say "Hey, the Herald of the Tome line has 5 damaging skills, a damaging ult, and 4 damaging passives, so this must be the damage line!" and the same with the other two. It's crystal clear.
But let's try Earthen Heart from the Dragonknight: 3 damaging skills, two of which can morph to a heal. One of them is a CC. One of them morphs to give a unique damage taken debuff. Two support skills, one of which has a self-damage buff. An ultimate that is clearly tank focused due to damage reduction, but can morph to do damage as well. Two passives are personal sustain, one is a group buff and also helps sustain, and the last is a passive that specifically lengthens durations for that line of skills only. And yet, that's the "healer" line for DK, if for no other reason that the "DPS" line is pretty defined (despite having skills important to both other roles) and the "tank" line has the selfish armor buffs (but again has skills for the other roles and is honestly outclassed by other tank lines like Warden's)

I wonder if a 'penalty' system would also help, like what they did with armor. If you stack 3xDPS lines, your character should absolutely be a glass cannon with 20 HP and armor made out of wet toilet paper, but even Fatecarver has the infinite damage shield for players with quick fingers. But then if you choose all three of your base class lines, those penalties all cancel so you are just like you were before.

I do think a global "buff by X%" or "nerf by X%" based on Subclassing or not is inelegant, but adjusting the passives would be better. I really like the idea of making the passives three-level (where level three is basically the pre-U46 unnerfed one) where you can only buy the number of passives corresponding to the number of Class lines that match - so a full DK can get the 3rd level of all three passives, but an Arcbladeplar can only get the first level for each line. Another idea is to make all of the passives depend on active use of the skills so you can't just take passives for the sake of taking passives.

Erickson9610 · July 14

I think the Balorgh changes from v11.1.0 should've stayed. Why were they reverted in v11.1.1?

madmufffin · July 14

LMAO it's actually just a joke at this point

WreckfulAbandon · July 14

No mention in PTS notes today; I don't think Hurricane is going to get bailed out by public sentiment this time. Even though it's only ever happened once or twice in this game, I still had a small amount of hope 😑

Hurricane is officially ESOver, time to schedule the funeral 😔

L_Nici · July 14

Its just week 2. They never do big changes in it. You still have week 3 for that and they reverted Balorgh, so they seem to listen to something we say.

MincMincMinc · July 14

madmufffin wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

I agree. And I've said this before in other threads, but if they're gonna follow through with this kind of consolidation ideology, then they need to limit us to one tank, one healer, one DPS, for cross-class pics, meaning you cannot take three DPS skill lines, you can only take one doesn't matter from what class.So the only break or leeway from this stringent rulewould be skills of your base class, from which can select as many of those lines as you want. This would actually give an advantage to pure classes— something we see many people lamenting since the changes—in that they would have a complete and balance kit, all thematically aligned. I think the devs will get there or somewhere similar, because they simply have no choice but to limit the options with this system, or it will continue to power creep and trivialize the game.

I don't think this really fixes the issue though, because there's lines that inherently do a good amount of damage. Technically I'd argue that Aedric spear is Templar's tank line, which is already a top picked dps line as is without those constraints. Daedric Summoning and Winter's Embrace both have pretty high dps potential relatively speaking as well. The heal lines are pretty segmented, but Dark Magic definitely stands out as the dps source from a healing line. I think ultimately it would dial back a bit of power creep but would create an even more horrifically stale meta.

Again, up the creek without a paddle. No thought was put in to implementing subclassing. The various classes were designed with completely different standards and layouts. Either the diehard OG classes have to be gutted and completely remade from scratch. Or the newer dlc classes have to be dispersed.

PeacefulAnarchy · July 14

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I think the Balorgh changes from v11.1.0 should've stayed. Why were they reverted in v11.1.1?

Ostensibly, the other sets that have in combat restrictions have them because people could otherwise proc them and then unequip to use a different set. The reason they don't remove this ability by having effects die when unequipped is the way one barring a set works with bar swapping. They apparently can't make the game see the difference between the two. This is not an issue with a monster helm since it can't be bar swapped away, so they can code it so the effect simply disappears if the set is removed. So it doesn't have an exploit case.

Desiato · July 14

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

It's because Fatecarver is more than an ability. It is also a distinct play style. It was surely engineered to be such. It fits between heavy attack builds and LA weaving.

LA weaving is still optimal for a players who can do it well. Not only can it result in better performance, but LA weavers can be much more responsive without committing to a channel.

Beam gameplay isn't going anywhere. It is too popular among mid-tier end game players. So I accepted it because what's worse than Fatecarver is every class having an ability converted to a themed Fatecarver, resulting in even less diversity.

thepandalore · July 14

This change is interesting. The synergistic behavior of Rakkhat's Voidmantle with the only ult described as a heavy-attack seemed so obvious that I assumed it was an intended pairing. Since it wasn't intended, I'm wondering how fine a pass at existing facets of the game, if any, is involved in the creation of new sets and mythics. Does ZOS keep an internal "intended use case" or "optimal output use case" reference document for new items?

When player use cases are rugpulled like this, we understand that our use of the set has been wrong for the purposes of developer intentions, wrong enough to be deleted, but these patch notes don't answer the lingering question left by the change: if not this, then what? Does an answer to that question exist, or are we meant to understand that new sets and mythics introduced with fewer thoughts and more vibes?

MincMincMinc · July 14

thepandalore wrote: »

This change is interesting. The synergistic behavior of Rakkhat's Voidmantle with the only ult described as a heavy-attack seemed so obvious that I assumed it was an intended pairing. Since it wasn't intended, I'm wondering how fine a pass at existing facets of the game, if any, is involved in the creation of new sets and mythics. Does ZOS keep an internal "intended use case" or "optimal output use case" reference document for new items?

When player use cases are rugpulled like this, we understand that our use of the set has been wrong for the purposes of developer intentions, wrong enough to be deleted, but these patch notes don't answer the lingering question left by the change: if not this, then what? Does an answer to that question exist, or are we meant to understand that new sets and mythics introduced with fewer thoughts and more vibes?

Overload is a barely functioning skill. Riddled with issues and exploited plenty of times over the years. I am sure they are just trying to avoid another game breaking issue as best they can. There's a reason why I don't use the skill anymore, not worth being banned randomly in the future.

Joy_Division · July 14

Desiato wrote: »

The change to Rush of Agony is going to completely ruin it for PVE.

When tanking normal dungeons, I use Rush of Agony for trash pulls and it's great.

There is some skill to it. If one just uses a gap gloser and stands where it hits, the enemies it pulls in are only loosely stacked. However, if they keep moving, perhaps towards another group that wasn't pulled, they all get stacked tight.

Shouldn't skillful play be encouraged? With the u47 change, I don't foresee using it anymore.

On the other hand, this set is nearly universally hated by PVP players. In the lag of Cyrodiil, holding block doesn't always work, but more than that it's extremely disruptive to frontline melee combatants who have other things to worry about and don't need a set playing the game for a player. It's not conducive to fun gameplay.

I understand the set can be exploited, but instead of ruining it in PVE, please consider giving it the azureblight treatment and just make the pull affect monsters.

It will be win/win for ZOS. The PVP playerbase will celebrate and the PVE players who currently use it won't be resentful.

I have a longtime friend who loves this set for PVE (while hating it for PvP). I agree that would've been the best solution.

diamondo · July 14

I’ve asked this a few times but not getting any answers so far

But what’s the plans for players who love PVP but don’t want to subclass, it’s been made clear that they are at a disadvantage and while vengeance testing allows me to actually do some PVP this is not a permanent thing.

Any ideas or insight would be great as to plans to support players who don’t want to subclass

Zyaneth_Bal · July 14

Decided to put some of my feedback into a separate discussion for visibility. Then expanded to cover all sorcerer skills and present possible solutions.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/680585/sorcerer-review-and-update-47#latest

universal_wrath · July 14

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

This is excatly what is happening right now, players spec for 3 damage skill lines, result? Higher time to kill in PvE and PvP, but the cost of doing it is less sustain and support whuch makes the user easier kill. Only problem is players already had predetermined subclassing skill lines to use along with their OG skills.

If zos change the skill lines into tank, healer, dps, ut could either limit the subclassing into each role. For example, you don't like you class's tank skill line, you can subclass to another tank line only instead of healer or dps lines, horrible I idea, but it is one way to go about it. Another way is that you can not have more 2 lines of the same role, so you cannot spec into 3 lines of dps
, tank or healer.

WreckfulAbandon · July 14

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Overload is a barely functioning skill. Riddled with issues and exploited plenty of times over the years. I am sure they are just trying to avoid another game breaking issue as best they can. There's a reason why I don't use the skill anymore, not worth being banned randomly in the future.

RIP sorc third bar. Who would have thought we would still be paying for it in 2025 😂😭

Freelancer_ESO · July 14

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

I agree. And I've said this before in other threads, but if they're gonna follow through with this kind of consolidation ideology, then they need to limit us to one tank, one healer, one DPS, for cross-class pics, meaning you cannot take three DPS skill lines, you can only take one doesn't matter from what class.So the only break or leeway from this stringent rulewould be skills of your base class, from which can select as many of those lines as you want. This would actually give an advantage to pure classes— something we see many people lamenting since the changes—in that they would have a complete and balance kit, all thematically aligned. I think the devs will get there or somewhere similar, because they simply have no choice but to limit the options with this system, or it will continue to power creep and trivialize the game.

I don't think this really fixes the issue though, because there's lines that inherently do a good amount of damage. Technically I'd argue that Aedric spear is Templar's tank line, which is already a top picked dps line as is without those constraints. Daedric Summoning and Winter's Embrace both have pretty high dps potential relatively speaking as well. The heal lines are pretty segmented, but Dark Magic definitely stands out as the dps source from a healing line. I think ultimately it would dial back a bit of power creep but would create an even more horrifically stale meta.

Again, up the creek without a paddle. No thought was put in to implementing subclassing. The various classes were designed with completely different standards and layouts. Either the diehard OG classes have to be gutted and completely remade from scratch. Or the newer dlc classes have to be dispersed.

I think you've got a degree of levers available to make the purer class builds more competitive.

First, you could shift some of the class passives to scale with the number of class abilities on both bars rather than the number of abilities from a specific line on a specific bar or just for having the line. This would make it so that someone that's running eight abilities from a class is going to get significantly more from the passives than someone that is just running one or two.

Second, you could alter the class sets so that the set bonuses scale based on the number of that class's skill lines you are running. (This might also enable class sets to be used by anyone with lines from the class)

Third, you could try to ensure the overall power of the lines and the items in them are relatively even in an overall sense to reduce the incentives for players to swap.

Fourth, you could alter the abilities themselves to perform differently based on the lines/class skill numbers you are running.

However, I am not sure that making pure builds more competitive is actually a significant priority.

Further, I think you'd also hit the issue that many of the "pure" builds aren't actually using that many more class skills than the non-pure which would potentially put a damper on the effectiveness of much of this.

ioResult · July 15

Putting Major Savagery on Grim Focus and its morphs - the same ability that everyone is now already using during subclassing for the Spectral Bow proc - has to be the most ridiculous thing you've ever done, ZOS.

Can you explain why you're basically robbing stealthy Nightblades of an extra 12% crit chance while giving every other base class in the game that subclasses into Assassination a permanent 12% crit chance bonus?

The entire theory and lore behind Shadowy Disguise was of course you get more crit chance because you're sneaking around in the shadows so you can set up your attacks carefully.

But now, everyone in game gets it simply by having it on either bar?

You break the game more & more each patch.

No one wanted cloak to be a toggle and now no one wants everyone in game to get a spec bow plus now also permanent Major Savagery simply for slotting Grim Focus on either bar.

Put down the compiler, you're drunk, ZOS.

Tannus15 · July 15

thepandalore wrote: »

This change is interesting. The synergistic behavior of Rakkhat's Voidmantle with the only ult described as a heavy-attack seemed so obvious that I assumed it was an intended pairing. Since it wasn't intended, I'm wondering how fine a pass at existing facets of the game, if any, is involved in the creation of new sets and mythics. Does ZOS keep an internal "intended use case" or "optimal output use case" reference document for new items?

When player use cases are rugpulled like this, we understand that our use of the set has been wrong for the purposes of developer intentions, wrong enough to be deleted, but these patch notes don't answer the lingering question left by the change: if not this, then what? Does an answer to that question exist, or are we meant to understand that new sets and mythics introduced with fewer thoughts and more vibes?

This change was missing the dev comment:

"We needed to find another way to *** on sorc this update. this will do for now. we'll continue to monitor any good sorc skills or abilities and make sure we nerf that too."

This is getting crazy now.

epic-buttkkr · July 15

This is from week one, but I do not like how the cascading effects of the change to bound armor affects not only dark deal, but also hurricane.

I play stamsorc all the time and this just messes up the flow of how my builds operate.
When subclassing came out, It was said in the patch notes that if you do not want to play a pet focused build, you can subclass out the daedric summoning skill line. And also that Adjustments to balance would be more skill line specific.

So now I am punished for playing the way I want, because I do not have the same utility that sorc has had for literal years and this now requires me, in order to make the build work, dramatically change where my sorcerer builds get their power from, with overall much less effectiveness.

if bound armor was the problem, then change bound armor. Dark deal and Hurricane did not need to pay a price for this, especially with the introduction of subclassing. Please Walk this change back. 👉👈

Also bound amour's main appeal was the max stat stacking capability. why did that need to go away?
Confusion.

ArctosCethlenn · July 15

ioResult wrote: »

Can you explain why you're basically robbing stealthy Nightblades of an extra 12% crit chance while giving every other base class in the game that subclasses into Assassination a permanent 12% crit chance bonus?

Nothing changes for the stealthy nightblade re crit, they were all already slotting merciless and cloak both? No nb is losing crit because of this change.

warm_blanket · July 15

Grim focus has been heavily powercrept recently for some reason, so getting rid of the free wd/sd was good to see, but adding a major crit chance buff onto it merely for slotting is still a bit much.

The skill would feel better if the crit chance buff came online at 5 stacks of grim focus and not by default, which preserves the original minigame of trading a stat boost for a bow proc, with some generous leeway allowed since we can build to 10 stacks now.

In a similar vein removing the major crit chance from just slotting shadowy disguise was a good call, but straight replacing it with free minor protection is strange.

Would rather see more use of the born from shadow buff, where a defensive/offensive buff can be tied to born from shadow uptime. Minor evasion could be interesting since it fits that skill lines elusive fantasy better than minor prot. Or even better you could remove the freebie minor expedition from concealed weapon and tie that buff to born from shadow instead. Assassination is overtuned anyway.

As for the catalyst passive, yeah you did this one dirty. For all the other ult-gen passives across skill lines that got converted, it'd be way better to just revert them and have them share a universal cooldown so they can't stack.

randconfig · July 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

randconfig wrote: »

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Still waiting.

"player choice remains at the forefront of ESO's design philosophy" . . .

Unless you're an Arcanist, as now ZOS has gutted the class mastery script, so you cannot generate crux to have access to the class passives or to use crux consumption abilities when you want to use nonclass abilities, scribed abilities, or subclassed abilities. You will use runeblades and beam and you will like it.

As has been mentioned in the other two threads complaining about Arcanist Class Mastery:

Only Banner Bearer was changed. The Arcanist Class Mastery to create Crux still works on all other Scribed skills exactly as it did before. I went on PTS and tested it - I cast Torchbearer with the Class Mastery and got a Crux. I cast it again and got a second. I cast it again and got a third.

You are still perfectly able to use all Scribed skills except one as spammables to generate Crux. The only Scribed skill that has a different action with the Arcanist Class Mastery is Banner Bearer, and it's specifically to prevent Crux from infinitely generating passively.

Apologies, I gave up on reading replies on my other thread given people were not engaging with anything I was saying. That makes it slightly better that I can at least have some choice with scribing abilities for Arcanist. However . . .

Suppose as an Arcanist, I want to subclass Grave Lord and use Flaming Skull, or I want to use Snipe from the Bow skill line:
Neither ability generates crux.

Arcanist class passives like Hideous Clarity only work when I generate or consume crux.

I cannot consume crux that I have not generated, so Tentacular Dread and Fatecarver are useless abilities in this scenario and I do not benefit from class passives like Hideous Clarity.

Maybe I could rely on Tome Bearer's Inspiration or the changed class mastery script with bannerbearer to generate a single crux when I have none with a 5 second cooldown. So I would generate a single crux that doesn't expire until after 30 seconds, so passives like Hideous Clarity would proc once every 30-35 seconds.

Before the U47 proposed changes to bannerbearer crux generation, I would proc the passive every 5 seconds, and I would be able to run a consumption ability like Tentacular Dread or Fatecarver as I would be able to get full crux after 15 seconds, and I would be able to run Flaming Skull or Snipe, as I'm still benefiting from my class passives and able to make use of my base class abilities.

With the U47 proposed changes, I'm forced to run only runeblade or wield soul, instead of subclassing to use Flaming Skull or using Snipe, as that is the only way I would be able to benefit from my passives and be able to use my other class abilities. This is the opposite of "player choice remains at the forefront of ESO's design philosophy".

So my argument then becomes why are you removing the only solution Arcanist has to enable using subclassing and weapon skills without giving us an alternative solution to replace it?

But this is precisely the problem that it's trying to address - not elegantly, but that's the issue. Crux should not be able to passively generate, under any circumstance, without you actively casting something to build it.

Which means you would need to slot a Crux builder. It can be any Scribed ability or an Arcanist skill, but the entire idea of the Class is that you should not be able to generate Crux without actively pushing some skill in order to do so.
(and in fact, that's one of the issues people have with Subclassing in general, in that just stacking passives to get buffs without having to actively use any skills is abysmal balance)

So no, it's not "removing the only solution Arcanist has to enable using subclassing and weapon skills." It's just asking you to use a Scribed weapon skill, or to slot one extra Class skill in order to generate Crux.

"So no, it's not "removing the only solution Arcanist has to enable using subclassing and weapon skills." It's just asking you to use a Scribed weapon skill, or to slot one extra Class skill in order to generate Crux. "

There's no alternative to banner crux generation that allows Arcanists to use weapon skills like Snipe or subclassed abilities like Flaming Skull. So once again, you are missing the point, and this change is indeed removing the only solution Arcanist has to enable using these skills.

Add an alternative before you take away banner Crux, or don't take away banner crux, it's really that simple.

Surgam · July 15

I've been on and off (mostly on) since Beta, day 1, and I've never seen them much paying attention to players' feedback, but I'll give it a try. I had a 2-year break, came back a few months before u46 and not sure if this does not get fixed, I'll be returning... as many others I see already with one step out the door.

You built a hype with sub-classing, but the irony is, this is probably THE most unbalanced update ever.... the very same one that was expected to give us so many build combinations. Yes, those combos are available, but like you don't understand that the majority of people are looking for the best setups and builds... So from DPS perspective, we ended up having AK/NB mixed with templar or DK... beam-mania.

I do like some nerfs, and I can understand it is easier to nerf than to approach it from the other side, and that would be what? Well, imho... that would require you guys to address all other skill lines and make them somewhat playable for each role. That would also require content balancing because now most of the PVE runs are a cakewalk. Even healers are running hybrid build's DPSing in the runs, of course using THE beam.

So funny, ironic tbh, from all those combos we never had more narrower meta. On top of that, you KILLED class identity which in long run will hurt the game imho, and your player base.... why not introduce some penalties to sub-class skill lines to make people care about their base class, to make them even keep 2 lines where it makes sense and augment the build with some other class skill line... anything to make base class mean something as it was for the last decade. The only reason now for a base-class was scribing class mastery, and you killed that now for Arc with one of the most hilarious nerfs ever... bringing down Arc banner to do very same thing that Tome-Bearer already does...

I'm afraid this will get even worse, because with a lack of care for base classes, you are trying to adjust some skills so they work for all classes, killing the uniqueness they had for years, like NB crit, stealth etc., trying to flatten things you are breaking some skill lines instead of addressing under performing ones... class skills and passives are tightly bound which makes thing harder to balance and make some lines make sense to use... You never thought of introducing morphs for sub-classed skill lines and in that way preserving original morphs for base class NB or Sorc or Templar.... making people still feel they have a class, they play some role...

Perspective is a funny thing, and we all like to see things using ours, but sometimes we do need to step outside the box... so from DPS role perspective, no matter what I wanna try with other combos, I like aiming for most effective combo and that narrows it down to 4 skill lines, no more no less for me.... and I'm not talking about 1-2% difference, gap is huge... if other skill lines would be within some margin, many people would have fun building more combos.

I hope you put way more effort in u47 fixing this imbalance... hype will soon be over, and you will end up with narrow meta builds PVE and PVP running around while bleeding player base... no amount of new content can fix this fundamental flaw you introduced in u46... and ripped apart class identities.

ceruulean · July 15

Arcanist is the top class for both single target and aoe! The class that has 4 damage passives in one skill line, and a unique damage debuff! While other classes are hurting for even 2-3 damage passives! Wow, so much balance and diversity!

https://youtu.be/abT0kVItrak?si=M5MvFcdWuGmTX3Nw

BTW no banner on that build!

GloatingSwine · July 15

ioResult wrote: »

Putting Major Savagery on Grim Focus and its morphs - the same ability that everyone is now already using during subclassing for the Spectral Bow proc - has to be the most ridiculous thing you've ever done, ZOS.

People aren't using it for the bow proc, they're using it for the passive 400 weapon/spell damage whilst they beam.

MincMincMinc · July 15

Freelancer_ESO wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

madmufffin wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It was inevitable they would have to nerf things after raising the power level so high. The reasonable amongst us—or those that have been here since the beginning—knew this would happen. I’m not sure why they started with Sorc instead of Arcanist beam though—that one is a head-scratcher. Why are they still pretending as if they don’t know what the outliers are? Also, probably controversial, but I like the consolidation and clean up of OG class lines and buffs. They need to apply that methodology across the board, though. Rip off the bandaid at once and let the community heal instead of these piecemeal patches and changes that are consistently disruptive and annoying.

Consolidating the OG skill lines to conform to the tank line, heal line, and damage line has horrible implications for power creep though. People effectively went from 1/3 of their skill lines being damage to 3/3 of their skill lines.

Either all 21 skill lines need to be balanced with tank/heal/dps on their own or there needs to be a restriction in place preventing you from picking all damage skill lines. Otherwise nothing is stopping you from running the top 3 damage skill lines each patch. Considering how many people cry over no build choice template pvp, it wont be healthy to go from 7 classes with 21 skill lines to choose from down to 1 BiS dps setup.

Currently we are in limbo with a half thought through system.

I agree. And I've said this before in other threads, but if they're gonna follow through with this kind of consolidation ideology, then they need to limit us to one tank, one healer, one DPS, for cross-class pics, meaning you cannot take three DPS skill lines, you can only take one doesn't matter from what class.So the only break or leeway from this stringent rulewould be skills of your base class, from which can select as many of those lines as you want. This would actually give an advantage to pure classes— something we see many people lamenting since the changes—in that they would have a complete and balance kit, all thematically aligned. I think the devs will get there or somewhere similar, because they simply have no choice but to limit the options with this system, or it will continue to power creep and trivialize the game.

I don't think this really fixes the issue though, because there's lines that inherently do a good amount of damage. Technically I'd argue that Aedric spear is Templar's tank line, which is already a top picked dps line as is without those constraints. Daedric Summoning and Winter's Embrace both have pretty high dps potential relatively speaking as well. The heal lines are pretty segmented, but Dark Magic definitely stands out as the dps source from a healing line. I think ultimately it would dial back a bit of power creep but would create an even more horrifically stale meta.

Again, up the creek without a paddle. No thought was put in to implementing subclassing. The various classes were designed with completely different standards and layouts. Either the diehard OG classes have to be gutted and completely remade from scratch. Or the newer dlc classes have to be dispersed.

However, I am not sure that making pure builds more competitive is actually a significant priority.

Further, I think you'd also hit the issue that many of the "pure" builds aren't actually using that many more class skills than the non-pure which would potentially put a damper on the effectiveness of much of this.

It used to be that class skills were generally stronger than the out of class skills. Some would be more unique like inclass dots may tick faster than the standard or last longer. Granted skills in general were far more unique and interesting back then. The skill system took a boring "standard" nosedive during elsweyr. Probably the worst era of the game. No wonder people think pokemon procs are fun and unique.