Hey there everyone! I'm very pleased with the recent updates regarding the road forward with feedback/PTS, changes slated for our enjoyment in the near future from the ESO Live, and the overall philosophy starting with Season 0. Great job, you guys!

Now, onto the more on-topic stuff. With a new update process/PTS cadence, I wanted to get a few things on the radar of the developers ASAP. I'm excited about the way things are sounding with PTS so it feels exciting to see if this will end up working out for everyone. As of right now, Mark Target from the Assassination Skill Line is in a strange spot. Its role in combat as of right now is an extremely passive one. The heal component is really neat but in reality during fights this skill competes with others such as Weakness to Elements (and the dreaded Elemental Susceptibility) which costs nothing compared to Mark Target's 2700 Magicka. Now!! This is not a nerf Ele Sus post and this is definitely not a buff Assassination post either (definitely doesn't need a buff!), however there was a time where Mark Target (Specifically Piercing Mark) filled a niche use to counter hostile Nightblades in a PVP setting (at that time the Shadow Skill Line was not offering users of Shadowy Disguise much Major Resolve uptime and didn't even have Minor Protection!).

Here comes the scary part! My proposal is that we find a way to justify the 2700 Magicka cost of Mark Target, as the heal portion does not assist the caster until essentially the combat has ended. Out of respect for the development that went into making the healing mechanic on "Target Slain", we could potentially keep the heal available to one of the morphs available to Mark Target and make the base skill cost free. Weakness to Elements is a Weapon Skill that applies Major Breach to a target at no cost. As a user of the Assassination Skill Line, I feel that this should display mastery over finding weak spots in an enemy target. As Elemental Susceptibility offers Concussion, Burn and Chill status effects on cast at no cost, I feel that there would be no issue that Piercing Mark (and the base skill) have the healing portion removed, and perhaps gain a % increase to damage to the specific target (or named debuff?) as well as a increase to the detection duration on the marked target (Shadow and Vampire offer damage mitigation to Invisibility users now that was not previously available at the time of Piercing Mark's rework to what it is now). Functionally, Mark Target is a Weakness to Elements cast that costs 2700 Magicka and cannot be cast on more than one target at a time. This is painful, especially if said target has access to ways to cleanse off the mark. This brings us to another solution! To potentially justify the cost (if removing the cost is not feasible), Mark Target could be made to be the only source of Major Fracture than cannot be cleansed.

There are so many skills that feel fun and rewarding to use in ESO! I hope that through opening this topic we can see this happen to Mark Target as well. Just because Grim Focus is eating super good, it doesn't mean skills like Mark Target must suffer, right?

Also . . . Can we get some CAPES in ESO? Capes and Wings? Some kind of cosmetics or bits to armor that are really neat. WoW, LOTRO and GW2 have these. We don't need any real cloth physics for these. Old tech is just fine. Now that the philosophy and leadership has shifted over there at ZOS I would love to see some old "nevers" become a "maybe"! I know there are so many skilled designers and animators over there at ZOS. I'd like to see the Breton Hero depicted in-game as awesome as he is as designed. (If I need to make a new post about this please inform me!)

Thanks, everybody! Here's to great feedback. Fellow PTS readers/testers feel free to add ideas.