Update 48 Combat/Balancing Changes

Spearblade · September 12

Ngl, my heart sunk when I heard that there were few combat/balance changes (again) in Update 48 in the Sneak Peek. Even more so when ya'll showed the list and said that was more or less it...

You don't have to redesign the wheel on every skill, every time. Some skills admittedly DO need that, but to do NOTHING when you could simply adjust numeric values (damage, healing, duration, whatever) feels really bad, especially when so many classes have dead skills, or even skill lines.

Surely you guys have the data on underperforming and unused skills? Why not move the slider on a damage skill up by 5-10% and see how it's received? You have Week 1 of 4 of PTS cycles coming up. It might be a band aid on a bullet wound in some cases, but for me, that shows effort. Or at least acknowledgement that something can be improved there. If I chop a finger off, I'd appreciate efforts to stop the bleeding before you try to reattach it.

SkaiFaith · September 12

We now know from the Reddit AUA that in 2026 we'll likely see Overland Difficulty implemented - why balance now?
Few months from now everything will need to be looked at anyway.
Let them work on what they think is the priority right now... We'll have needed balances down the road; game isn't in an unplayable state right now, we can wait a bit IMO.

tomofhyrule · September 12

SkaiFaith wrote: »

We now know from the Reddit AUA that in 2026 we'll likely see Overland Difficulty implemented - why balance now?
Few months from now everything will need to be looked at anyway.
Let them work on what they think is the priority right now... We'll have needed balances down the road; game isn't in an unplayable state right now, we can wait a bit IMO.

Let's not pretend balance is anywhere near a good state right now.

I'm not going to go too crazy until we see the patch notes, but I'm really disappointed that it seems like they're still on the "we need to wait and see" phase for how Subclassing affected balance. Spoiler alert: it affected balance exactly as the players from the U46 PTS warned them about.

We should not have to go through 9+ months of balance being in shambles before they deign to address it. After all, look at the "how did you enjoy Subclassing and U46?" thread in General - it's not universally positive, and the longer they don't address it, the more of a chance that those players who are frustrated are going to find a new home... if they haven't already.

If I were Game Director, I would have made Post-Subclassing Balance be an all-hands-on-deck thing as soon as I saw the frustration when U46's PTS was going... and I'd also be trying to rush a really nice (paid!) feature like a new Class for U50 to get people back and spending money.

StihlReign · September 12

Watched the U 48 Sneak peak twice.

Each Vengeance test is now beginning to feel more useless than the next. It's unimaginable how massive the failure of the lead dev to listen to the simplest and most common feedback from YEARS of posting and move forward.

The next Vengeance test may as well be skipped.

Then there's the pre-made loadout test coming. For 2 weeks.

10 years of free data and the devs still have less of an idea of how to fix Cyrodiil than the most experienced PVP players and guilds who have asked for literally the same thing ad-nauseum.

...but yeah, more meetings. He spoke about tuning abilities while adding a minor 33% execute buff. What tuning and how is this much damage minor?!!

#epicfail

Solariken · September 12

Agreed, but this is par for the course. There just isn't anyone that cares enough to take the time.

StihlReign · September 12

The best/worst part of the video is the tiptoeing around Stuck in Combat.

#minorpanic ensues...

If they continue to fear discussing the issue and the steps they've taken we're getting nowhere.

StihlReign · September 12

It took literally ONE HOUR of testing using Highland Sentinel in Cyrodiil on the first day the set was released to ascertain resto staffs were placing players in combat and keeping them there.

The test was simple. Equip the set, sit near a wayshrine, wait for inexperienced healers to come off the shrine from a battle and hit heal before running out of the door. I chose Alessia and BRK. Stuck in Combat. Worked every time, which sucked. HS has a visual indicator and builds stacks.

Radiating Regen ftw...or not if you need to mount, change gear, etc etc

Spearblade · September 12

SkaiFaith wrote: »

We now know from the Reddit AUA that in 2026 we'll likely see Overland Difficulty implemented - why balance now?
Few months from now everything will need to be looked at anyway.
Let them work on what they think is the priority right now... We'll have needed balances down the road; game isn't in an unplayable state right now, we can wait a bit IMO.

I'm asking for a bare minimum of looking at numeric values of abilities, moving a slider left or right basically. This is not a time consuming task, nor a huge investment of ZOS' resources.

What happens if you add 5% more damage to Twisting Path/Refreshing Path in Shadow? Or increase their durations? Or to Shattering Spines? Or any number of virtually unused skills? In all likelihood, nothing that would come close to changing the meta. But it could make them slightly more competitive to where somebody might consider it an option, even if it still doesn't stack up with Assassination for pure damage, or Herald of the Tome, etc.

Some of these skills may be in skill lines more "intended" (for those classes that DO have defined skill lines) for tanks or healers, sure, but is a tank doing slightly more damage going to hurt anybody? It's much more likely a dps takes something like Shadow and now has a little bit more hp from passives and a now serviceable skill for doing some damage.

Why not implement small, easy changes on skills that we KNOW aren't commonly used?

Rkindaleft · September 14

SkaiFaith wrote: »

We now know from the Reddit AUA that in 2026 we'll likely see Overland Difficulty implemented - why balance now?
Few months from now everything will need to be looked at anyway.
Let them work on what they think is the priority right now... We'll have needed balances down the road; game isn't in an unplayable state right now, we can wait a bit IMO.

Why not balance now? Not sure what Overland difficulty has to do with not making balance changes. The people who want to stay at the current difficulty (assuming it's a slider) probably won't make any changes to their builds/skills and will just keep playing the way they're playing now and the ones who do care will just make a proper build/learn how combat actually works, like people do now when they want to progress to more challenging content.

If you actually care about the content in this game above normal difficulty, the current combat balance is probably the poorest it's ever been. When this next update goes live, we will have already had 6+ months of poorer than ever. That's definitely enough time for them to no longer have to say "we need more time to see how things are affected and we need more data." People told them exactly how this was this was going to go back in April during the first week of the U46 PTS.

If nothing changes in this update we will be looking at 9+ months of poor with no changes, perhaps longer if then they decide to skip over it again during the Q1 update next year.

To be honest, at this point I've completely stopped caring which route they take. Either buff the weakest skills/skill lines to give everyone more options to be competitive or just tone down the strongest skill lines to make the skill lines more even of a playing field. I just don't think it should stay the way it is now with zero changes.

Daoin · September 14

eso's combat and balance changes must have become a joke in general over the last ten years simply because they keep doing it not because the changes are good or bad, if eso could have a comedy sketch, that would be it, but even the same lines in a joke get old which must be plain to see by now

Gabriel_H · September 14

This is the price paid for the way they implemented sub-classing. There will be constant changes for the next two years, followed by periodic tweaks, all on top of the typical re-balancing that happens from time to time.

Sub-classing made the power creep worse, and the min/maxing to the point that it is killing end-game for tanks and healers who now have to bring additional buffs, on top of what they already were, beacause the DDs have no survivability skills or passives - because it's been decided that an extra 5s on a 30m run is too much.

That is an absolute tiny fraction of the player base's idea of fun. ZOS continue down the road of Harder = More boss health. There are fewer and fewer mechanics in each new trial. It's all about damage soaks, rather than having to actually deal with a set of mechs.

The saving grace has been the dungeon team, who continue to put out solid content. Yet even that cannot escape the power creep - even the newest dungeons. For experienced players veteran is little different to normal, with a big jump up to hardmode, but once a group understand the patterns they can focus on burn burn burn and it loses all challenge and meaning.

tomofhyrule · September 14

Gabriel_H wrote: »

This is the price paid for the way they implemented sub-classing. There will be constant changes for the next two years, followed by periodic tweaks, all on top of the typical re-balancing that happens from time to time.

And my biggest fear is actually that this will be their excuse to not add anything new. No new Skill Lines, no new Grimoires, and definitely no new Class.

I understand that U47 wouldn't be able to have many rebalances from Subclassing since it was only live for a month at that point (let's ignore the fact that the U46 PTS had players listing every problem with data evidence, all of which was completely ignored, and they were proven right the second it went live). But at this point it's been live for 3 months while they got U48 ready. That's enough time to at least see where the major issues are, and... "no major combat changes?!?!"

It really seems like the Combat team has been hard focusing Vengeance to make it a new mode, and allowing PvP/PvE balance to exist as is because... Vengeance automatically fixes balance, I guess?

God I want a new Class so bad. I want to see the world through new eyes, not just take a bunch of my existing characters and mash them together. But if the balance is this bad and they can't even bother to fix it, then what hope do we have of getting anything new?

StihlReign · September 14

Add player based crit resist to every NPC in the game. Overland difficulty done.

Can we tune skills, drop battle spirit and fix the subclass mess now?

silky_soft · September 15

Let's go, 5-10% buff/debuff to cost and power of skills. Return cost increase poisons back to original. Do the same with defile.

MincMincMinc · September 15

Even if they did a pre-subclassing skill reorganization, lets be honest it probably would have been a shitshow still. They did say on the livestream the following PTS cycle we will see more balancing for live combat. TBH with vengeance going on it feels like a waste in a way. Why do a large pass on a game system that you may find out needs to be overhauled or replaced down the line? Could just be that subclassing released so messily that they need to patch it in the meantime.

Just seems like in the meantime itd make more sense to complete hybridization and iron out what stats should even be in the game to begin with. Why do we still distinguish between Weapon and spell anything? Crits? Damage? Resists? Why not get rid of the convoluted duplicates and then you could simplify tons of calculations to not compare to figure out which one is more or less.

ArctosCethlenn · September 15

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Even if they did a pre-subclassing skill reorganization, lets be honest it probably would have been a shitshow still. They did say on the livestream the following PTS cycle we will see more balancing for live combat. TBH with vengeance going on it feels like a waste in a way. Why do a large pass on a game system that you may find out needs to be overhauled or replaced down the line? Could just be that subclassing released so messily that they need to patch it in the meantime.

Just seems like in the meantime itd make more sense to complete hybridization and iron out what stats should even be in the game to begin with. Why do we still distinguish between Weapon and spell anything? Crits? Damage? Resists? Why not get rid of the convoluted duplicates and then you could simplify tons of calculations to not compare to figure out which one is more or less.

Combat balance isn't really something that should only happen during a PTS cycle, though. When balance is as bad as it is now, telling players "oh we'll get to that in a few months" is just going to make the players go "oh then I won't waste my time playing this game for a few months."

tomofhyrule · September 15

Yeah, balance is something that really needs to come out on a more frequent basis. It even seems like “we’ll balance every PTS cycle” isn’t even happening.

U46’s cycle was nothing short of insulting. Despite so many (experienced!) players making points about how much this would screw the game over (including data!), we got nothing besides “well this is what we want for the game so 😜”
I can clearly see the devs did not even conceive of players not wanting to Subclass, and they were thrown off guard by the power afforded by Subclassed builds. Which… really? The raid Discords called the new meta as soon as it leaked, before the PTS notes went up! The official feedback thread was full of players pointing these very obvious facts out!

I can understand that U47 was on the lighter side - we did only have Subclassing live for a month by then (let’s ignore that the U46 PTS thread had those points 6 weeks before that). But there is no excuse for U48 to still be light and in the ‘data collection’ phase. Players should not have to suffer with an unbalanced mess until March at the earliest.

I’m interested to see these patch notes, but after the ESOLive saying “light on combat changes,” I don’t have much hope. It’s really feeling like the combat team’s plan for balance is to throw up their hands and funnel everyone into Vengeance, letting PvE be whatever mess it is.

coop500 · September 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

We now know from the Reddit AUA that in 2026 we'll likely see Overland Difficulty implemented - why balance now?
Few months from now everything will need to be looked at anyway.
Let them work on what they think is the priority right now... We'll have needed balances down the road; game isn't in an unplayable state right now, we can wait a bit IMO.

Let's not pretend balance is anywhere near a good state right now.

I'm not going to go too crazy until we see the patch notes, but I'm really disappointed that it seems like they're still on the "we need to wait and see" phase for how Subclassing affected balance. Spoiler alert: it affected balance exactly as the players from the U46 PTS warned them about.

We should not have to go through 9+ months of balance being in shambles before they deign to address it. After all, look at the "how did you enjoy Subclassing and U46?" thread in General - it's not universally positive, and the longer they don't address it, the more of a chance that those players who are frustrated are going to find a new home... if they haven't already.

If I were Game Director, I would have made Post-Subclassing Balance be an all-hands-on-deck thing as soon as I saw the frustration when U46's PTS was going... and I'd also be trying to rush a really nice (paid!) feature like a new Class for U50 to get people back and spending money.

Me, I found a new home in GW2 until the devs of ESO decide to balance their stuff here.

I am not gonna invest in what resources I have to keep working on builds only for them to be destroyed whenever the devs finally decide to bring out the nerf hammer and destroy the china shop, because that's the only way they know how to balance.

I've done it for 7,000+ hours and I'm sick of it.

Freelancer_ESO · September 15

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Even if they did a pre-subclassing skill reorganization, lets be honest it probably would have been a shitshow still. They did say on the livestream the following PTS cycle we will see more balancing for live combat. TBH with vengeance going on it feels like a waste in a way. Why do a large pass on a game system that you may find out needs to be overhauled or replaced down the line? Could just be that subclassing released so messily that they need to patch it in the meantime.

Just seems like in the meantime itd make more sense to complete hybridization and iron out what stats should even be in the game to begin with. Why do we still distinguish between Weapon and spell anything? Crits? Damage? Resists? Why not get rid of the convoluted duplicates and then you could simplify tons of calculations to not compare to figure out which one is more or less.

ESO has around four significant updates per year and has an absolutely massive amount of sets and items.

It is highly unlikely that they can rebalance everything in a good way in a small number of updates.

As a result, even if you plan on making significant changes in the long run you will probably want to have shorter term changes to get you into a better position for the long term changes.

Additionally, part of game development is about appearances.

Pretty much any amount of balance changes is going to leave to some level of frustration as people don't necessarily love change but, when people don't feel the game is in a great place and you seem to be doing very little when it comes to balance and you aren't making many updates per year it can look really bad.

tomofhyrule · September 15

coop500 wrote: »

Me, I found a new home in GW2 until the devs of ESO decide to balance their stuff here.

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

Heck, a lot of the ESO StreamTeam is maining GW2 at this point. Definitely not the best look when a large faction of a game’s streamer community all jumps ship to the same competitor game.

propertyOfUndefined · September 15

No combat changes this quarter would be extremely disappointing

Gabriel_H · September 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

There's just as much noise in the GW2 forums about combat balance and PvP vs PvE priority as there is in the ESO forums.

MincMincMinc · September 15

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

There's just as much noise in the GW2 forums about combat balance and PvP vs PvE priority as there is in the ESO forums.

Is it really still surprising to people that a 300 employee company suffocated for years by corporate quotas struggles to satisfy 10k player opinions? People are always going to complain of course, its just the nature of it all.

ESO is in the position where we went for years and years of just ballooning the game up with releases to meet quotas. Where they should have double backed to flatten out the roadbumps.

loosej · September 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Me, I found a new home in GW2 until the devs of ESO decide to balance their stuff here.

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

Heck, a lot of the ESO StreamTeam is maining GW2 at this point. Definitely not the best look when a large faction of a game’s streamer community all jumps ship to the same competitor game.

I moved over to GW2 a while ago as well. Still checking the forums for a reason to come back, but so far only getting confirmation that it was the right call.

I just compared the steam charts for both, and while correlation doesn't equate causation, the increase in numbers for GW2 while the numbers for ESO went down makes me think there's a lot of players who made this change.

Gabriel_H · September 15

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

There's just as much noise in the GW2 forums about combat balance and PvP vs PvE priority as there is in the ESO forums.

Is it really still surprising to people that a 300 employee company suffocated for years by corporate quotas struggles to satisfy 10k player opinions? People are always going to complain of course, its just the nature of it all.

ESO is in the position where we went for years and years of just ballooning the game up with releases to meet quotas. Where they should have double backed to flatten out the roadbumps.

And? Both games have around the same number of employees, both games have the same complaints, and GW2 also introduced what is in effect a season pass. The difference is that GW2 base game is free. The grass is always greener.

Auldwulfe · September 15

Thing is, I see so much blame tossed at subclassing for things that openly existed prior to subclassing.... this is NOT to say that it is perfect, or doesn't need work... but the issue was ALWAYS there. Before every PTS cycle is even complete, streamers were posting the new meta... some even making pay pages, so that you can BUY the meta from them.

And there are people that are ALWAYS trying to squeeze every point of damage they can possibly get.... and those people will find that way, no matter what is in the game. And the only way to stop it would be to make every set the same, every skill the same, and the ONLY thing being different is the color your class happens to be ......

That said, subclassing does open ideas and possibilities... and it doesn't have to be a super meta.... I have a character I made that is an elementalist - does it do huge damage... no, I get, maybe, 80 to 90K on a trial dummy.... and run about 30 to 35k in actual trials, where I am not always behind a target, getting every possible bonus or point of damage with perfect 100% uptime of every possible buff......however, the character works well, and it is FUN to play.....and I do enough to pull my weight in a trial. I even scribed a burst heal with AOE to help support my healers, if they are busy elsewhere.... swapping in that, or a ranged interrupt from a staff, if that is needed.

Subclassing can be a big help in creating a character idea you had kicking around, and make it work... I am a fan of Shadow and Bone from Netflix... I wanted to make a "Squaller" which is an air mage - before Subclassing, I was sort of able to make it work, but had to rely HEAVILY on sets to form the idea I wanted... So, I ran around with Kargaeda's and Relequin - and had to use Oakensoul to get buffs without the visuals that would have ruined my character concept.
Now, I can subclass out and build the character, using those sets, because the visuals are great, Hurricane from Sorc, and the ultimate from Warden Ice, which is a big tornado, plus the one skill where the winds whirl around you.... and since I do NOT need to rely on Oakensoul, I can go with a 2 bar, and build a VERY thematic character WITHOUT having to short myself of a second 5 piece set, so I can have the tornados from the monster set to make my build work... last time, I had to use Willpower as my off set, with a training piece, and run one bar......., because that was the ONLY way to get what I wanted, and still have the mythic that made it work.

Back to my Squaller, it is not a meta build, but it is a LOT of fun to tear things apart with the winds... AND I can use it in a trial and do well enough, that I am not a weak link. That is what Subclassing was built for..... and what I think was the actual goal for introducing it....
The issue is that we all give so much credence to the min/maxers, that we don't actually try and go our own way and build what we would play, as fun..... is there a place for the arcanist beam? Yes... but a LOT of people are only taking it because they have been told that it is necessary.... it is not. We need to push FUN play, not OPTIMAL play, as the standard.....

Auldwulfe

P.S. I am now working on a Heartrender... watch the series, you will understand.

MashmalloMan · September 15

ZOS constantly moving the goal posts. Their comments always boil down to:

"Be patient, we're working on it"
"We want to watch how things play out first"
"We don't want to rock the boat too much outside of major updates"
"We don't want to rock the boat too much outside of minor updates"
"This is a minor update, most of our big changes are for the next big update the team is hard at work on"
"We focussed on bug fixing, so don't expect any large changes to combat" - Proceeds to have the same number of minor fixes, and nothing of substantial issue like Overload Ult dsync or Corpse limit.

Can you imagine they were actually honest about update 47 and 48 in April?

"Please buy our 2025 content pass to get access to a chapter you normally would have had access to all at once, this time, we've spread it out over months to hold your invested money and time hostage. Don't expect any major updates in Q3/Q4, we're working on selling you the content pass for 2026."

Here's some examples of the goal posts moving:

Hybridization - Implemented aprox. 4 years ago, in the recent AMA, they commented on consumable reworks being scrapped because it would result in nerfs. Uhhh no one cares about consumables, give us major prophecy/savagery and brutality/sorcery on pots, we can wait on the rest.
Update 35 (13 updates ago, aprox. 3 years 3 months), do I need to even explain this?
Grave Lord Sacrifice - Update 41 - 0 meaningful changes since, despite claiming it was a work in progress. In fact, it's been relatively nerfed via Flame Skull corpse gen moving to the base skill.
Update 46 - Subclassing... very obvious buffs required for underwhelming skill lines, 2 updates later, nothing of substance, only nerfs to outliers like Banner/Grim Focus.

My favourite new one they're working on:

"Vengence campaign is just a test, we've spent years developing brand new skills with unique mechanics that vastly differ from the original counterparts in some ways. We've also invested time in a new UI to accomidate call of duty style loadouts that give access to performant, super engaging passives like "+3% max HP". We're totally not wasting developement time and resources that could be better spent on improving the core base game experience or ignoring subclassing and set balance for 500+ sets. The mode is popular any time it's available, not because it's treated like an event with a golden pursuit, no way. It's just a test, don't worry about BG 2.0 and the 1 sided matches it introduced or the terrible MMR system we implemented. 4v4v4 definitely wouldn't fix that. It's just a test."

StihlReign · September 15

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

There's just as much noise in the GW2 forums about combat balance and PvP vs PvE priority as there is in the ESO forums.

Is it really still surprising to people that a 300 employee company suffocated for years by corporate quotas struggles to satisfy 10k player opinions? People are always going to complain of course, its just the nature of it all.

ESO is in the position where we went for years and years of just ballooning the game up with releases to meet quotas. Where they should have double backed to flatten out the roadbumps.

What's surprising was the lead dev for ESO running another 200 employees on another project while this game suffers.

LukosCreyden · September 15

I can't wait for the promised adustments ro gravelord sacrifice

I am sure they have "gathered enough data" and "let it bake" long enough now for them to make logical, positive changes

coop500 · September 15

tomofhyrule wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

Me, I found a new home in GW2 until the devs of ESO decide to balance their stuff here.

I hear a lot of noise about GW2. It’s probably not for me because I’m in ESO because of the TES part, and I’ve been spending my time back in Skyrim and BG3, but I do find it interesting at the number of ESO players jumping to GW2.

Heck, a lot of the ESO StreamTeam is maining GW2 at this point. Definitely not the best look when a large faction of a game’s streamer community all jumps ship to the same competitor game.

That's actually kind of hilarious, in a 'laugh because you can't cry' sort of way.

These days I play Skyrim or Oblivion for the TES stuff, but I 100% get you too. That was why and is still why I'm attached to ESO at all.