alpha_synuclein wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

There has always been one skill line that is preferred over the others.
I remember when players were crying over Nightblades. Another time it was the Dragon Knight. Templars were complained about being too powerful. Now it's Arcanist.
None of the skills are overpowered really. I have tried them all and have always gone back to the one I play most because of the aesthetic.

What content are we talking about?

shadoza wrote: »

I think the dungeon gear is what needs to be nerffed.

Why?

When I play arcanist, it does not feel over-powered. I find it a bit underwhelming. In my mind, I see the variance as the gear. We all have the same arcanist skills but the weapons, pots, and amor is different. So if some seen a skill line as over powered I think it is because of the gear and pots rather than the actual skills. And, the settings of the CP.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

It boggles the mind how the combat team (you know, the people for whom ESO combat is literally their job!) didn’t foresee any of this - or at least they didn’t think it was at all concerning. All they could think about was “oh boy, we can be a full elementalist wizard, or spawn a bunch of pets until our Necro skills stop working because of the pet replacement bug!”

This is what I find so utterly baffling.

There are people who do this for a living. Eight hours a day, five days a week. (Or something similar.)

HOW?!?!?

BananaBender wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

There has always been one skill line that is preferred over the others.
I remember when players were crying over Nightblades. Another time it was the Dragon Knight. Templars were complained about being too powerful. Now it's Arcanist.
None of the skills are overpowered really. I have tried them all and have always gone back to the one I play most because of the aesthetic.

What content are we talking about?

shadoza wrote: »

I think the dungeon gear is what needs to be nerffed.

Why?

When I play arcanist, it does not feel over-powered. I find it a bit underwhelming. In my mind, I see the variance as the gear. We all have the same arcanist skills but the weapons, pots, and amor is different. So if some seen a skill line as over powered I think it is because of the gear and pots rather than the actual skills. And, the settings of the CP.

Gear is not the issue, simply because ZoS has effectively removed every situational set from the game, so now all classes and builds use the same gear.
What content did you test the builds on? If you are fighting wolves in overland, of course builds with higher upfront burst will feel better because it takes just about 2 skills to kill everything. Potion play no role in class in balancing as they only provide named buffs which are easily obtainable anyway. CP doesn't matter either, as all of the damage CPs give the same 6% buff, so I don't really see how that has anything to do with arcanist being op?

I would love to be proven wrong though, so if you have some actual tests/statistics I would love to see them

I play all content with the same build. Overland quests, WB, DA, delves, public dungeons, solo trials, even an Oblivion port and a couple of group dungeons ran with a couple friends. The causal build with one subclass works well for me. The only issue I have is boss hitting over my health max and stamina recovery not happening fast enough. This is why I say the pots and gear make the difference; they can enhance crit, recovery, max attributes, pen . . . in short, they enhance defense, offence, and maintenance.

I think CP does make a difference as one can enhance their defense, offense, and recovery there as well. They can also choose to mitigate certain issues by increasing speed, lower cost for defense even improving maintenance a bit.

The biggest issue now is that ZOS has to do something to balance this, and literally every direction they go is going to turn off players. They just need to decide which group of players they could smack with a nerfhammer that won't completely abandon the game, and hope that doing that would bring some lapsed players back.

We all like to say that ESO has a casual vs. sweaty base, or PvP vs PvE, or anything like that. But it's a bit more complicated. If I were to break it down as simple as possible, I'd end up with 6 major groups, and even those are not strictly defined and have a fair amount of overlap:

1. The ultra-casuals. They just play ESO to have fun, and will go out of their way to avoid grouping at all. They mostly stick to overland and questing. They love Subclassing for letting them make their themed build.
2. The sweaty solo players. They are more into doing higher-level content, but still favor soloing if possible. They get most of their fun from soloing dungeons or WBs. They love that Subclassing allows them to do higher-level content without grouping.
3. The casual PvErs. They have a build that they like and stick with it regardless of the meta. They favor dungeons and normal trials, but have really hit a wall with HMs or vet trials after U46 shifted the meta out from under them.
4. The sweaty PvErs. They chase meta to clear HMs and trifectas. Subclassing allowed them to increase their damage by like 50% so they can get more achieves faster, and they are therefore more selective with their group members.
5. The casual PvPers. Like group 3, they stick with their build and don't have the time or desire to optimize for PvP. As such, they're getting smoked in PvP now and are kinda hoping for Vengeance to give them a chance again.
6. The sweaty PvPers. Like group 4, but the PvP version. If they want to have a chance to win, they need to play the same thing that everyone else is.

So what could ZOS do that won't further reduce the playerbase? Well, they could try nerfing individual skills or skill lines, but that would negatively affect pretty well everyone in some way. Adding bonuses to staying pure would be great for groups 3 and 5, but bad for the others. And doing nothing also is good for groups 1 and 2, but groups 4 and 6 stay mad and 3 and 5 keep leaving the game.

I think the best thing they could do is disallow Subclassing in PvP or vet content. Basically, if Grasharog can't come out, you can't Subclass.

• This solution would really only be detrimental for group 2. Group 1 doesn't even approach vet content, so they couldn't care less about that. Groups 4 and 6 are meta-chasers, and they already know that the meta is OP so they'd grumble a bit and then go back to a pure build that does what they need. Groups 3 and 5 would then be able to be competitive in higher-level content again and would likely start coming back after a lot left because of this year.
• I'd also free Subclassing a bit to give the group 1 people (and the people who end up dropping from group 2 to 1) a bone - make Subclassing require only one skill point instead of two, allow dropping all three parent Class lines, and allow accepting more than one line from the same parent Class. Just take those restrictions off and really go wild with it.
• Then they could relook at the nerfs they did so far (aka DK sustain) and start easing those back off. Some skills or lines (Herald) are still a little overtuned, but then they can still be adjusted as a Class and not as a sledgehammer.

It'll be a lot of work to get back to some semblance of balance. And even then, the lack of any new stuff really hurt this year, so eventually they're going to have to add more fuel to this fire, and the longer they wait to do that, the worse. If ZOS can't try to do something early next year (by U50 at the absolute latest), then Microsoft is probably going to want their servers freed up.

shadoza wrote: »

I play all content with the same build. Overland quests, WB, DA, delves, public dungeons, solo trials, even an Oblivion port and a couple of group dungeons ran with a couple friends. The causal build with one subclass works well for me. The only issue I have is boss hitting over my health max and stamina recovery not happening fast enough. This is why I say the pots and gear make the difference; they can enhance crit, recovery, max attributes, pen . . . in short, they enhance defense, offence, and maintenance.

I think CP does make a difference as one can enhance their defense, offense, and recovery there as well. They can also choose to mitigate certain issues by increasing speed, lower cost for defense even improving maintenance a bit.

Then it's either your playstyle or way of building explains why are you not feeling the difference. But it's not a good argument regarding power balance. It's like if I was saying that tools for precision placing of furniture are not making any difference, cause I only have a dummy in my house. Not exactly helpful.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

SCP343 wrote: »

I'm not taking that two-hour test. At this point, class identity is nonexistent. While you can roleplay during quests, in PvE and PvP. I'd like to see one of you stream using only one class skills. I'm curious if you can find any identity and enjoyment there by dying 20 times per battlegrounds.

Watching Zos try to pvp in their own game (not vengeance) would be very entertaining.

They had a whole stream of that last year when they dropped the BG changes. The Combat Lead himself was streaming with a big-time Fortnite streamer to hype up PvP.

I’m sure the fact that the VOD was removed very soon after the stream will tell you all you need to know. I wouldn’t use the word “entertaining,” but it was definitely enlightening.

FYI - Sypher was an ESO streamer before Fortnite, left just like the rest of the streamers.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

. They had a whole stream of that last year when they dropped the BG changes. The Combat Lead himself was streaming with a big-time Fortnite streamer to hype up PvP.

I’m sure the fact that the VOD was removed very soon after the stream will tell you all you need to know. I wouldn’t use the word “entertaining,” but it was definitely enlightening.

Presumably SypherPK, the OG ESO PvP streamer who went to a bigger game to make a better living. He was a ton of fun to watch, his old ESO videos are still on YouTube.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

If ZOS can't try to do something early next year (by U50 at the absolute latest), then Microsoft is probably going to want their servers freed up.

Hopefully they decide to free up some of the poor game and combat design that's been implemented. Look at the current PvE event. NA PC lags behind everyone...the gap will be 10% soon at this rate. https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/writhingwall

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

SCP343 wrote: »

I'm not taking that two-hour test. At this point, class identity is nonexistent. While you can roleplay during quests, in PvE and PvP. I'd like to see one of you stream using only one class skills. I'm curious if you can find any identity and enjoyment there by dying 20 times per battlegrounds.

Watching Zos try to pvp in their own game (not vengeance) would be very entertaining.

They had a whole stream of that last year when they dropped the BG changes. The Combat Lead himself was streaming with a big-time Fortnite streamer to hype up PvP.

I’m sure the fact that the VOD was removed very soon after the stream will tell you all you need to know. I wouldn’t use the word “entertaining,” but it was definitely enlightening.

Ugh this explains a lot about why Zos doesn't understand pvp in their own game.

To be fair, this streamer used to be one of the bigger/biggest ESO PvP streamers back in the day (probably why they were picked), but quit the game long ago for fortnite since it was much more financially viable than streaming ESO was (don't blame them for wanting to make a living/pay the bills).

Sypher had nothing to do with Brian running in with zero stamina and getting nuked time and time again. It was a gross display of the lack of knowledge of ESO.