Im feeling like I wont even wait for the Writhing wall to take a break.

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

No exciting new sets? No mythics?

There's a new Mythic item, and several new sets.

We used to get an appetizer (2 dungeons), main course (chapter), side (2 dungeons), and dessert (zone). Every other visit, we got a free drink with our meal (arena). The chef was gracious enough to give us a table with a great view and live entertainment (new companions, tales of tribute decks, infinite archive zones). We could tell the restaurant was doing well because it was constantly improving (group finder, bg 2.0).

This year, we got an appetizer and a main course, except 1/3 of our steak was reserved for dessert. We got a side again after being told removing it would allow the chef to experiment with fresh ideas. They're completely out of drinks, our table is by the restroom, we can't hear the live entertainment from the sound of flushing toilets.

The restaurant is really excited about new kids place mats with riddles all over them, once the entire restaurant solves them we get access to the 1/3 of our steak we already paid for. I'm not interested in riddles if there's no real reward, I'll just let everyone else solve them. Problem is, my steak is cold, dry, and I'm still hungry.

Guess I'll check back with the restaurant in 2026.

I know they said that there would be very few adjustments but I'm still genuinely shocked that the only change of relevance is adding an execute component to Whirling Blades' base skill and it's other morph.

Cool I guess, but a random one, seriously did anyone ask for that change like ever? They could have slightly increased the damage of some of the skills that get literally zero usage in Subclassing for the same amount of effort and it would have actually been meaningful. If you wanted to adjust an execute skill you could have buffed Mages' Fury for example which is totally garbage.

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

No exciting new sets? No mythics?

There's a new Mythic item, and several new sets.

I said "exciting" new sets. Well... I guess that's relative

I'm pretty excited for the Shared Burden set. That's an idea I've pitched before and it's actually being added to the game!

And naturally I'm going to be getting that Huntsman's Warmask Mythic, regardless of whether it's all that useful in PvP or PvE.

If you’re disappointed then don’t check the devs teams recent post on Reddit.

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

I understand... times are tough. But as a long-time player, it's genuinely disheartening to see patch notes this sparse. It feels like waking up on Christmas morning, tearing into Santa's gift, and finding only socks inside. And the thought that this is what's meant to carry us through the entire holiday season makes it even harder to swallow.

Really? No exciting new sets? No mythics? Not even a small treat to tide us over?

Socks that are the wrong size even though you’d previously told them what size you are.

I knew they said "light on combat changes" (which itself is certainly a choice), but even I was expecting more Class line changes than two (2) bugfixes, one of which is visual.

I really want to know: does the Combat team really think that balance is in a good enough place that they can afford to let it stay as-is until March? Do they honestly think that a 'test' (which is clearly no longer a test to make Cyrodiil more performant and instead is going to be a new mode which will definitely replace one or more Cyro campaigns) that we have active for a single week every three months is more important than how the game feels year-round?



I also want to point out that we actually didn't get any major "new" thing this entire year. No new skill lines, no new Grimoires, no new Class... the biggest thing was "hey, just put skills from one Class onto another!" Even the zone of Solstice is a lot of reused themes between Argonian, Altmer, and Coldharbour, so besides some furniture pieces there's really not much brand new there.

There's only so long players can keep hearing "we have new stuff, but for right now it's just reheated leftovers" before they walk. ZOS needs to start showing their hand, because if this is the pace we're going to see in the future... That's not going to go well.
I know they're making the new Heart's Day event an annual thing, but that won't mean much if the game is shut down before 2027 due to lack of players...

Also, I really have to point out that I grew up with military speak, so when I hear "we're transitioning," I definitely read that in one way: "we're transitioning from open to closed."

@ZOS_Kevin If they need more time for subclassing fixes, atleast hit the main simple painpoints that are common sense and easy changes. Most of these are simple integer balances that'd take less than a day.

• impen is still about half of what it should be....... make it 264(4%) or 330(5%) so it is inline with modern crit damage builds
• Healing soul should be a single target aimed not a smart cast massive aoe
• Healing soul should not have major vitality and should have minor vitality
• Warden charm simply should not be a class script. Throw it on the unused green balance ult as a group support toolkit. Make the warden class script a heal or cleanse or something else.
• Assassination's merciless and relentless tooltip is way too much. These should tooltip the same as other timed or delayed skills like deep fissure or blastbones as 1.6x scaling skills instead of the merciless 2.15x scaling.......Note dawnbreaker is 1.6x scaling and on a 30s+ ult gen cooldown whereas merciless is every 5s for 2.15x

MincMincMinc wrote: »

• impen is still about half of what it should be....... make it 264(4%) or 330(5%) so it is inline with modern crit damage builds

Let's try and math this out using their own standards.

5 piece static sets share a multiplier of about x2.325 from a 1-4 piece bonus, where standards start from, I won't get super into it as most people are aware, but everything is based on these values from Racial passives, to Mundus stones, to enchants, to 5 piece sets. You can find this ratio on Hundings Rage, Fortified Brass, etc, but most importantly in this scenario; Impregnable which adds 1650 Critical Resistance.

• 1650/2.325 = 709.67... rounded up to 710.
• 1-4 piece set bonus = 424
• 424/710 = 0.597... aka, it's 60% of what it should be.

2 conclusions can be made from this data, either way, something is incorrect.

1. Impregnable is over budget, the base 424 crit resist is the standard so the 5 piece bonus should be 424 x 2.325 = 986. Obviously, I don't agree with this one.
2. 1-4 piece bonuses are under budget, 1650/2.325 = 710. This makes more logical sense.

So does Impen stack up? Lets first see what type of ratio we should expect from Armor Traits, again this is assuming ZOS has PERFECTLY balanced everything with their spreadsheets. Nirnhoned would be the easiest seeing as flat armor can be compared 1:1.

• 253/1487 = 0.17
• So, we can assume that an armor trait is roughly 17% of a 1-4 piece bonus.
• 17% of 710 = 120
• Impen = 132
• 132/120 = 1.1

These are fairly close, it shows Impen is actually 10% stronger than it should be. Now obviously, as you put it, Impen FEELS under budget, but their math shows it's not. Comment is getting a bit long, so I'll simplify an example of how they can mathematically adjust things across the board for a new standard that I think would make more sense.

First few rules:

1. Critical Damage : Critical Chance == 2:1 (No change)
2. Critical Damage : Critical Resistance == 1:2 instead of 1:1
3. 5 piece armor bonus == x2.325 (No change)
4. Armor trait == 25% instead of 17%

So how would this look?

• Minor Enervation buffed from -10% to -20% (2x Minor Force).
• 1-4 piece bonuses buffed from 424 (6.42%) to 792 (12%) (4x Critical Chance).
• Impreg 5 piece bonus buffed from 1650 (25%) to 1842 (27.9%).
• Impen armor traits buffed from 132 (2%) to 198 (3%).

This is exactly why ZOS's comments on rebalancing consumables resulting in nerfs makes no sense. THEY decide what the standards are.

First of all, their standards are not perfect, the ratio's should be revisited as the context of the game changes, 2019 was a long time ago.

Secondly, they don't really follow their own standards on the majority of access points to begin with. You think of any meta option people use today, and I guarantee they're all over budget from similar conditions they've created elsewhere in the game. Rallying Cry and Wretched Vitality as quick examples have about 5-6x the value of 1-4 piece bonuses, when the majority of forgotten sets fall between 3-5x. The difference is, both of these meta sets get 100% uptime whereas the others usually have massive drawbacks.

My favourite example is their decision to buff the Serpent mundus stone from 258 to 310, for seemingly no reason at all one patch, probably because no one was using it. This puts it at 2.4x stronger than a 1-4 piece bonus, whereas Warrior (and most of the Mundus stones) are still 2x stronger. Either the 1-4 piece bonus for recovery should be 155 or Warrior needs to be 310 as well.

This is the problem with claiming you use standards for objective truths, we can easily find where someone clearly just felt like buffing or nerfing something because they break the standards that they claim to use, but don't.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

• impen is still about half of what it should be....... make it 264(4%) or 330(5%) so it is inline with modern crit damage builds

Let's try and math this out using their own standards.

5 piece static sets share a multiplier of about x2.325 from a 1-4 piece bonus, where standards start from, I won't get super into it as most people are aware, but everything is based on these values from Racial passives, to Mundus stones, to enchants, to 5 piece sets. You can find this ratio on Hundings Rage, Fortified Brass, etc, but most importantly in this scenario; Impregnable which adds 1650 Critical Resistance.

• 1650/2.325 = 709.67... rounded up to 710.
• 1-4 piece set bonus = 424
• 424/710 = 0.597... aka, it's 60% of what it should be.

2 conclusions can be made from this data, either way, something is incorrect.

1. Impregnable is over budget, the base 424 crit resist is the standard so the 5 piece bonus should be 424 x 2.325 = 986. Obviously, I don't agree with this one.
2. 1-4 piece bonuses are under budget, 1650/2.325 = 710. This makes more logical sense.

So does Impen stack up? Lets first see what type of ratio we should expect from Armor Traits, again this is assuming ZOS has PERFECTLY balanced everything with their spreadsheets. Nirnhoned would be the easiest seeing as flat armor can be compared 1:1.

• 253/1487 = 0.17
• So, we can assume that an armor trait is roughly 17% of a 1-4 piece bonus.
• 17% of 710 = 120
• Impen = 132
• 132/120 = 1.1

These are fairly close, it shows Impen is actually 10% stronger than it should be. Now obviously, as you put it, Impen FEELS under budget, but their math shows it's not. Comment is getting a bit long, so I'll simplify an example of how they can mathematically adjust things across the board for a new standard that I think would make more sense.

First few rules:

1. Critical Damage : Critical Chance == 2:1 (No change)
2. Critical Damage : Critical Resistance == 1:2 instead of 1:1
3. 5 piece armor bonus == x2.325 (No change)
4. Armor trait == 25% instead of 17%

So how would this look?

• Minor Enervation buffed from -10% to -20% (2x Minor Force).
• 1-4 piece bonuses buffed from 424 (6.42%) to 792 (12%) (4x Critical Chance).
• Impreg 5 piece bonus buffed from 1650 (25%) to 1842 (27.9%).
• Impen armor traits buffed from 132 (2%) to 198 (3%).

This is exactly why ZOS's comments on rebalancing consumables resulting in nerfs makes no sense. THEY decide what the standards are.

First of all, their standards are not perfect, the ratio's should be revisited as the context of the game changes, 2019 was a long time ago.

Secondly, they don't really follow their own standards on the majority of access points to begin with. You think of any meta option people use today, and I guarantee they're all over budget from similar conditions they've created elsewhere in the game. Rallying Cry and Wretched Vitality as quick examples have about 5-6x the value of 1-4 piece bonuses, when the majority of forgotten sets fall between 3-5x. The difference is, both of these meta sets get 100% uptime whereas the others usually have massive drawbacks.

My favourite example is their decision to buff the Serpent mundus stone from 258 to 310, for seemingly no reason at all one patch, probably because no one was using it. This puts it at 2.4x stronger than a 1-4 piece bonus, whereas Warrior (and most of the Mundus stones) are still 2x stronger. Either the 1-4 piece bonus for recovery should be 155 or Warrior needs to be 310 as well.

This is the problem with claiming you use standards for objective truths, we can easily find where someone clearly just felt like buffing or nerfing something because they break the standards that they claim to use, but don't.

Oh let me just clarify. Impen is what it should be when compared to the other traits. The problem is that it is not what it should be when compared to the amount of crit damage available which is exceedingly more important for combat. Ideally impen would temporarily be boosted to combat crit damage, and then over longterm you would introduce more crit resist sources into the game through 2-4 pieces, mundus, cp changes, etc. As more sources get added in you would taper off the impen back to the correct 1:1 standard.

The tension has to be made between opposing stats first. Crit damage vs Crit resist. The next part is you need to remember these are all adding/multiplying up in your stat sheet. So:
CritDmg*sources VS CritRes*sources.

This is a density equation of two materials on a scale. If there are a million sources of crit damage that does X.......Having a handful of crit resist sources that also do X will never be balanced. Either increase the potency of the handful of tooltips or you need widespread changes to add more sources to the game.

---

Yes a standard is a great concept......but in reality the standard means nothing if all stats do not have equal amounts of sources. Lets just say all pen sources are 1:1 with all armor sources. Well if there are 10 choices of armor available, but only 2 choices of pen what do we think is going to happen?

MincMincMinc wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

• impen is still about half of what it should be....... make it 264(4%) or 330(5%) so it is inline with modern crit damage builds

Let's try and math this out using their own standards.

5 piece static sets share a multiplier of about x2.325 from a 1-4 piece bonus, where standards start from, I won't get super into it as most people are aware, but everything is based on these values from Racial passives, to Mundus stones, to enchants, to 5 piece sets. You can find this ratio on Hundings Rage, Fortified Brass, etc, but most importantly in this scenario; Impregnable which adds 1650 Critical Resistance.

• 1650/2.325 = 709.67... rounded up to 710.
• 1-4 piece set bonus = 424
• 424/710 = 0.597... aka, it's 60% of what it should be.

2 conclusions can be made from this data, either way, something is incorrect.

1. Impregnable is over budget, the base 424 crit resist is the standard so the 5 piece bonus should be 424 x 2.325 = 986. Obviously, I don't agree with this one.
2. 1-4 piece bonuses are under budget, 1650/2.325 = 710. This makes more logical sense.

So does Impen stack up? Lets first see what type of ratio we should expect from Armor Traits, again this is assuming ZOS has PERFECTLY balanced everything with their spreadsheets. Nirnhoned would be the easiest seeing as flat armor can be compared 1:1.

• 253/1487 = 0.17
• So, we can assume that an armor trait is roughly 17% of a 1-4 piece bonus.
• 17% of 710 = 120
• Impen = 132
• 132/120 = 1.1

These are fairly close, it shows Impen is actually 10% stronger than it should be. Now obviously, as you put it, Impen FEELS under budget, but their math shows it's not. Comment is getting a bit long, so I'll simplify an example of how they can mathematically adjust things across the board for a new standard that I think would make more sense.

First few rules:

1. Critical Damage : Critical Chance == 2:1 (No change)
2. Critical Damage : Critical Resistance == 1:2 instead of 1:1
3. 5 piece armor bonus == x2.325 (No change)
4. Armor trait == 25% instead of 17%

So how would this look?

• Minor Enervation buffed from -10% to -20% (2x Minor Force).
• 1-4 piece bonuses buffed from 424 (6.42%) to 792 (12%) (4x Critical Chance).
• Impreg 5 piece bonus buffed from 1650 (25%) to 1842 (27.9%).
• Impen armor traits buffed from 132 (2%) to 198 (3%).

This is exactly why ZOS's comments on rebalancing consumables resulting in nerfs makes no sense. THEY decide what the standards are.

First of all, their standards are not perfect, the ratio's should be revisited as the context of the game changes, 2019 was a long time ago.

Secondly, they don't really follow their own standards on the majority of access points to begin with. You think of any meta option people use today, and I guarantee they're all over budget from similar conditions they've created elsewhere in the game. Rallying Cry and Wretched Vitality as quick examples have about 5-6x the value of 1-4 piece bonuses, when the majority of forgotten sets fall between 3-5x. The difference is, both of these meta sets get 100% uptime whereas the others usually have massive drawbacks.

My favourite example is their decision to buff the Serpent mundus stone from 258 to 310, for seemingly no reason at all one patch, probably because no one was using it. This puts it at 2.4x stronger than a 1-4 piece bonus, whereas Warrior (and most of the Mundus stones) are still 2x stronger. Either the 1-4 piece bonus for recovery should be 155 or Warrior needs to be 310 as well.

This is the problem with claiming you use standards for objective truths, we can easily find where someone clearly just felt like buffing or nerfing something because they break the standards that they claim to use, but don't.

Oh let me just clarify. Impen is what it should be when compared to the other traits. The problem is that it is not what it should be when compared to the amount of crit damage available which is exceedingly more important for combat. Ideally impen would temporarily be boosted to combat crit damage, and then over longterm you would introduce more crit resist sources into the game through 2-4 pieces, mundus, cp changes, etc. As more sources get added in you would taper off the impen back to the correct 1:1 standard.

The tension has to be made between opposing stats first. Crit damage vs Crit resist. The next part is you need to remember these are all adding/multiplying up in your stat sheet. So:
CritDmg*sources VS CritRes*sources.

This is a density equation of two materials on a scale. If there are a million sources of crit damage that does X.......Having a handful of crit resist sources that also do X will never be balanced. Either increase the potency of the handful of tooltips or you need widespread changes to add more sources to the game.

---

Yes a standard is a great concept......but in reality the standard means nothing if all stats do not have equal amounts of sources. Lets just say all pen sources are 1:1 with all armor sources. Well if there are 10 choices of armor available, but only 2 choices of pen what do we think is going to happen?

I think there's nothing wrong with the standard concept if it's actually followed (which they don't) and adjusted given the context of the game's landscape (which they haven't). Although your initial proposal of over buffing impen would temporarily solve the problem, I can't realistically see ZOS doing this because they claim to follow their standards like a religion (even though we all know they don't).

I don't think sources needs to be equal either, it just needs equal opportunity. By that I mean, you could make 100 pen sets, but the player base will gravitate to 2-3 like they're already doing, same could be said about Crit Resist with Rallying Cry. For that reason, I'd look at where there is 0 access in addition to buffing the existing values as I covered previously.

Mundus Stones: Warrior is going to disappear when ws damage combines, how great would it be to introduce Crit Resist in its place. Super flexible, this would be helpful for theory crafting and work in no cp environments.

Food: They're eventually going to rework these any way, but imagine you could trade some resources for Crit Resist. Maybe gold foods could give that instead of HP recovery which is useless in PvE and PvP now anyway. Although the fact that gold foods offer a pretty substantial difference from purple is probably something I think ZOS will avoid with the redesign, but just a thought.

Potions: There is still seperate physical and spell resist bonuses, combine this into Armor at a lower value, then redo 1 of the effects into Critical Resistance for 45s. Again, they want to redesign pots, so I have no idea what the end goal is, but if we can get 100% uptime of major buffs like Prophecy and Intellect, I see no reason why we can't have other effects added like Crit Resist to help with build flexibility.

Named buffs: There is Minor Enervation for Minor Force, but there is no counterpart for Minor Brittle. That would be like having no Minor Protection for Minor Vulnerability.

I'd also tackle the root of the issue introduced in u46, I didn't really find Crit Damage to be a problem before subclassing. Really.. it's Monomyth and access to 3 damage skill lines. 4/7 classes have Critical Damage passives, that seems like too much and could easily be reworked into Pen (also a capped stat) or something else entirely.

NB is noticeably too heavy on Crit Damage and Crit Chance making it super optimal in a line with already strong skills, and although Herald isn't super popular in PvP, it is in PvE, and is the only line with 4/4 equally strong damage passives. Most classes have a 3/4 split, with the 1 remaining passive for utility. In the case of Templar, named buffs which may or may not be redundant.

I'm on the other side of the fence, glad there's no major changes. Still tweaking builds and getting things fine tuned with subclassing. As someone that plays tank, healer, dps PVE and PVP there has been an ennormous amount of swapping and changing....