Offbalance is a terrible mechanic

MincMincMinc · January 9

In a vacuum it sounds great. Apply a debuff on the enemy that lets you do a follow up effect.

However in practice this falls apart on so many levels. Seeing the new dragon Knight reveal tells me that zos intends to keep reusing offbalance for some reason.
Explanation:

Offbalance can trigger off medium attack weaves - Now because of animation canceling this allows you to trigger the offbalance stun WITHOUT ANY telegraph. If you hold light attack for a split second longer it will still trigger offbalance. This leaves the defender with having to either block or roll dodge or go immune using potion for the entire duration of offbalance to counterplay it.
Stemming off the first issue is that any enemy can trigger offbalance. Lets say we are not in a duel environment like 90% of pvp. If the defender is offbalanced that means any person in the pvp moshpit can accidentally hit a medium-heavy attack unintentionally causing offbalance to trigger. Stuns from an unintentional sources are not condusive to having skilled counterplay.
Animation wise - the only indicator is a thin gray swirl over your head. Why is a core very important CC mechanic so subtle, yet we have generic spammable skills shooting giant tentacles across multiple meters in an aoe? The visual priority here is completely opposite to what it should be. I understand there are addons, but at some point zos should not lean on addons to design the game for them. We should also not have to play fighter pilot staring at *** ui instead of paying attention to what is happening on the ground.
What does offbalance do still? Last I checked the ingame encyclopedia doesn't have a great description and is unclear what offbalance even does. You can go trust the 10x out of date wiki pages from livestreamers over the years. ( I checked and it kinda states what offbalance does, but gives no specifics to the mechanics like cooldown, timer, actual bonus damage, resource return, etc.)
Dizzy swing - since this interacts with offbalance I might aswell mention it. Originally dizzy was a long telegraphed cast animation that did a knockup. However this was removed along with about 36% dizzy damage because zos didnt want the burst damage to be paired with a stun while also they viewed it as hard to see and counter..............Ok so now we have a stun triggered off NO animation and also NOT tied to a gcd, meaning instead of pairing a stun with a damage hit like old easy to dodge dizzy ~1.5coefficient I can now pair it with merciless resolve's 2.1476 coefficient or any other BIS burst damage any meta.....Yeah makes no sense.
Originally offbalance got 70% bonus heavy attack damage to make up for the dizzy swing loss in tooltip. However this seems to have been removed? Again pointing that zos probably intended only fully charged heavy attacks to trigger offbalance originally. >>insert my rant about dizzy swing being ruined wahh wahh

Really at the very least to avoid the headaches just make offbalance only stun from fully charged heavy attacks. This will atleast link it to a telegraphed animation and make its activation actually intentional. Keep in mind this is all coming from a 10 year dizzy stamsorc player. I am literally asking to technically nerf my gameplay in the name of fairness, gameplay skill, and having a consistent feeling combat system.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 9

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] What does offbalance do still? Last I checked the ingame encyclopedia doesn't have a great description and is unclear what offbalance even does. You can go trust the 10x out of date wiki pages from livestreamers over the years. ( I can check on this later and edit to be sure, but i doubt it changed the last year)

Just to clear this point up, Off Balance is pretty straightforward in terms of what it does. If an enemy is off balance, the next heavy attack they take will stun them and will deal 70% more damage. (The damage was not removed as you speculated). If that heavy attack is fully charged, it will restore 70% more resources than normal. Off balance is then consumed and put on a cooldown for that target.

I believe this is all in the in-game help menu, as I double checked this when the Rakkhat's Overload Ganks were going around (Off Balance is how they were stacking such obscene damage - Rakkhats was stacking with Off Balance and both were working with Overload Heavies). I remember it actually being pretty thorough in describing Off-Balance for once (unlike the status effects or any other number of things).

MincMincMinc · January 9

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] What does offbalance do still? Last I checked the ingame encyclopedia doesn't have a great description and is unclear what offbalance even does. You can go trust the 10x out of date wiki pages from livestreamers over the years. ( I can check on this later and edit to be sure, but i doubt it changed the last year)

Just to clear this point up, Off Balance is pretty straightforward in terms of what it does. If an enemy is off balance, the next heavy attack they take will stun them and will deal 70% more damage. If that heavy attack is fully charged, it will restore 70% more resources. Off balance is then consumed and put on a cooldown for that target.

I believe this is all in the in-game help menu, as I double checked this when the Rakkhat's Overload Ganks were going around. I remember it actually pretty thorough in describing Off-Balance for once (unlike the status effects or any other number of things).

Yeah i'm gonna grab a screenshot of this later tonight once I get home. I just remember it being lacking in info. Doesn't help you look at the various wikis and nobody seems to be on the same page. Fairly certain they made it not work with overload at some point.

For instance alcast doesnt list the bonus damage of offbalance anymore.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 9

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] What does offbalance do still? Last I checked the ingame encyclopedia doesn't have a great description and is unclear what offbalance even does. You can go trust the 10x out of date wiki pages from livestreamers over the years. ( I can check on this later and edit to be sure, but i doubt it changed the last year)

Just to clear this point up, Off Balance is pretty straightforward in terms of what it does. If an enemy is off balance, the next heavy attack they take will stun them and will deal 70% more damage. If that heavy attack is fully charged, it will restore 70% more resources. Off balance is then consumed and put on a cooldown for that target.

I believe this is all in the in-game help menu, as I double checked this when the Rakkhat's Overload Ganks were going around. I remember it actually pretty thorough in describing Off-Balance for once (unlike the status effects or any other number of things).

Yeah i'm gonna grab a screenshot of this later tonight once I get home. I just remember it being lacking in info. Doesn't help you look at the various wikis and nobody seems to be on the same page. Fairly certain they made it not work with overload at some point.

It was working with Overload as of the release of Rakkhat's Void Mantle last year. They later blacklisted Overload Heavies from working with Rakkhat's and may have also done the same with off balance at the same time, but as of then I can confirm that Off Balance was increasing Overload Heavy damage from my testing, as that was how those builds were hitting so hard (Off Balance Knife Throw from stealth into Overload Heavy attack with Rakkhat's equipped was giving +120% heavy attack damage to the tick of Overload)

CameraBeardThePirate · January 9

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] What does offbalance do still? Last I checked the ingame encyclopedia doesn't have a great description and is unclear what offbalance even does. You can go trust the 10x out of date wiki pages from livestreamers over the years. ( I can check on this later and edit to be sure, but i doubt it changed the last year)

Just to clear this point up, Off Balance is pretty straightforward in terms of what it does. If an enemy is off balance, the next heavy attack they take will stun them and will deal 70% more damage. If that heavy attack is fully charged, it will restore 70% more resources. Off balance is then consumed and put on a cooldown for that target.

I believe this is all in the in-game help menu, as I double checked this when the Rakkhat's Overload Ganks were going around. I remember it actually pretty thorough in describing Off-Balance for once (unlike the status effects or any other number of things).

For instance alcast doesnt list the bonus damage of offbalance anymore.

Yah Alcast's site tends to not be the best for mechanical things like this. UESP tends to be the best for information, and is up to date (the Off-Balance page was last edited October of 2025).

MincMincMinc · January 9

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*] What does offbalance do still? Last I checked the ingame encyclopedia doesn't have a great description and is unclear what offbalance even does. You can go trust the 10x out of date wiki pages from livestreamers over the years. ( I can check on this later and edit to be sure, but i doubt it changed the last year)

Just to clear this point up, Off Balance is pretty straightforward in terms of what it does. If an enemy is off balance, the next heavy attack they take will stun them and will deal 70% more damage. If that heavy attack is fully charged, it will restore 70% more resources. Off balance is then consumed and put on a cooldown for that target.

I believe this is all in the in-game help menu, as I double checked this when the Rakkhat's Overload Ganks were going around. I remember it actually pretty thorough in describing Off-Balance for once (unlike the status effects or any other number of things).

Yeah i'm gonna grab a screenshot of this later tonight once I get home. I just remember it being lacking in info. Doesn't help you look at the various wikis and nobody seems to be on the same page. Fairly certain they made it not work with overload at some point.

It was working with Overload as of the release of Rakkhat's Void Mantle last year. They later blacklisted Overload Heavies from working with Rakkhat's and may have also done the same with off balance at the same time, but as of then I can confirm that Off Balance was increasing Overload Heavy damage from my testing, as that was how those builds were hitting so hard (Off Balance Knife Throw from stealth into Overload Heavy attack with Rakkhat's equipped was giving +120% heavy attack damage to the tick of Overload)

Interesting because for a time there was that overload exploit where you would be able to hit 2x heavy and 1x light overload tick with the offbalance bonus 70% damage. Which as of a few months ago still worked in the game since before summerset.

I got another thing to verify once I get home I guess.

MincMincMinc · January 9

@CameraBeardThePirate What are your thoughts on making the stun require the telegraphed "fully charged" heavy attack? Which is more of my main issue with offbalance.

No telegraph, practically no counterplay other than waiting 7s in block, not having the stun tied to a gcd, and not having clear animations are all major red flags in my mind.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 9

MincMincMinc wrote: »

@CameraBeardThePirate What are your thoughts on making the stun require the telegraphed "fully charged" heavy attack? Which is more of my main issue with offbalance.

No telegraph, practically no counterplay other than waiting 7s in block, not having the stun tied to a gcd, and not having clear animations are all major red flags in my mind.

Oh I agree 100%; however, I think if they do that then they also need to fix DW heavies (as they're still bugged and do less damage than a DW light attack).

BixenteN7Akantor · January 9

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*]Yah Alcast's site tends to not be the best for mechanical things like this. UESP tends to be the best for information, and is up to date (the Off-Balance page was last edited October of 2025).

I WONDER who last edited Off Balance in October (:
More seriously, the 70% damage increase is quite headscratching. Sometimes it feels like it is removed if you have Empower, but I have not tested this theory yet.

MincMincMinc · January 9

BixenteN7Akantor wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

[*]Yah Alcast's site tends to not be the best for mechanical things like this. UESP tends to be the best for information, and is up to date (the Off-Balance page was last edited October of 2025).

I WONDER who last edited Off Balance in October (:
More seriously, the 70% damage increase is quite headscratching. Sometimes it feels like it is removed if you have Empower, but I have not tested this theory yet.

Yeah and who knows how all the light/heavy bonuses stack. I doubt they are all additive/multiplicative consistently.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

@CameraBeardThePirate What are your thoughts on making the stun require the telegraphed "fully charged" heavy attack? Which is more of my main issue with offbalance.

No telegraph, practically no counterplay other than waiting 7s in block, not having the stun tied to a gcd, and not having clear animations are all major red flags in my mind.

Oh I agree 100%; however, I think if they do that then they also need to fix DW heavies (as they're still bugged and do less damage than a DW light attack).

Light and heavies across the board need to be recoded. For instance you can still trigger health desyncs on your enemies if you do a light/medium. Based on an old summerset 100% mitigation desync issue I believe light and medium are getting screwed up between the client/server. My bet is that my input client and server side is being timed differently and initiates the desync. By the time the server catches up and overrides the calculations it already decides to kill the enemy regardless of healing in that time period. Seems to be amplified if you have other triggers in this time period like weapon glyphs or item procs trigger too.

Avran_Sylt · January 9

Yeah, for PvE at least it'd be nice if off-balance on enemies was player specific, something you could control/source yourself and plan into your rotation (over just another DoT).

And possibly something with other players you could coordinate to chain stun problematic CC-able enemies (In PvE).

MincMincMinc · January 9

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Yeah, for PvE at least it'd be nice if off-balance on enemies was player specific, something you could control/source yourself and plan into your rotation (over just another DoT).

And possibly something with other players you could coordinate to chain stun problematic CC-able enemies (In PvE).

I'm mostly pvp focused because of the back and forth frustration of having your character randomly flop over with no telegraph. I could also see situations where as a tank where DPS are randomly stunning mobs by accident because offbalance makes the unintentional activations all the time with medium attack weaves.

YandereGirlfriend · January 9

Off Balance definitely feels like a mechanic that has outlived whatever usefulness or niche it used to have.

MincMincMinc · January 9

OK for reference, here is the help menu which does state it does bonus heavy attack damage. Not for nothing but this is a terrible description. " yeah offbalance is a thing that can be triggered by other things and can maybe lead to other things." How about the cooldown value?
How about the timer?
How about the resource boost?
Damage boost?
What exactly in the game triggers the stun?

CMX shows I did 4680 fully charged heavy attack damage and then 8504 after offbalance. Overload also got the bonus damage applied 7162 -> 11374. Medium attacks also seem to be getting the damage buff So the damage buff is still active.

Funny enough the medium attacks are hitting for 2620 but my light attacks are hitting for 3332 lol oh boy.

Also you have to search "Off balance" and not "Offbalance"

CameraBeardThePirate · January 10

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Funny enough the medium attacks are hitting for 2620 but my light attacks are hitting for 3332 lol oh boy.

With DW I'm assuming? If so that's what I mentioned earlier - DW heavies currently do half the damage they're supposed to, including mediums.

ZhuJiuyin · January 10

Off Balance lasts for a fixed 7 seconds with a 15-second cooldown. In PvE, Off Balance is a crucial debuff because Exploiter CP grant players an additional 10% global damage to Off Balance targets. Therefore, in endgame PvE, DPS (usually Sorc) are sometimes assigned to use Lightning Staves with Wall of Elements + Elemental Susceptibility to provide a stable source of Off Balance.

So, removing Off Balance would require adjusting CP, which might take some time. However, I agree that the current Off Balance mechanic isn't very fun; the animations aren't prominent enough, and without Exploiter CP, almost no one cares about Off Balance in PvE.

I think the ideal scenario would be to remove Off Balance and integrate some of its effects into Stun. For example, when a target is Stunned, the character would kneel. Prematurely removing or becoming immune to Stun would inflict a 7-second debuff with a 15-second cooldown, increasing the target's damage taken by 6% and restoring more resources when using heavy attacks on the target.

React · January 10

MincMincMinc wrote: »

@CameraBeardThePirate What are your thoughts on making the stun require the telegraphed "fully charged" heavy attack? Which is more of my main issue with offbalance.

No telegraph, practically no counterplay other than waiting 7s in block, not having the stun tied to a gcd, and not having clear animations are all major red flags in my mind.

Honestly, I think this would kill the OB stun and I would not be a fan of this change. OB is one of the best stuns in the game in terms of high skill cap gameplay; being able to use it to "roll catch people" by landing a perfectly timed medium weave as they exit a roll is one of the best feelings of skill expression the game has to offer. Just being off the global cooldown creates a lot of cool use cases that I think adds a lot of depth to combat.

So many things in the game that require "fully charged heavy attacks" are just dead content in any real fast paced pvp, I'd hate to see them ruin off balance in this same manner.

xylena · January 10

I agree with React that it's worth preserving the skill shot, but I also agree with Minc that the mechanic needs a functional telegraph. 2h kill combos used to be nicknamed "macro slice" because of how you could (without 3rd party software) queue attacks underneath the animation for Uppercut or a 2h heavy, landing an invisible stun alongside the Reverse Slice finisher.

I doubt I would ever use off balance in PvP again, one 7sec window every 22sec is too much downtime in a fight leaving you just waiting and stalling, and if any decent opponent realizes you need off balance to close out kills, they'll hard turtle during said 7sec window. Mechanics that lend themselves primarily to waiting and stalling are bad for game health.

ViggyBoi · January 10

off balance is terrible only because its virtually impossible to tell when it is active. The in game effects are subtle and virtually invisible with everything else going on on the screen. The uptime and cooldown also dont line up well with any timer. Otherwise I dont hate it.

YandereGirlfriend · January 10

Off-Balance is simply #DoinTooMuch (a common issue in the game...) in addition to being, as others have mentioned, not visually communicated to players during combat.

Like, why is it interacting with Heavy Attack resource restore? Why is it interacting with Heavy Attack damage? Why is it interacting with CP stars?

Just pick ONE of these things, at most, in addition to the Stun mechanic (which undoubtedly IS the most unique and interesting feature). Or perhaps NONE and simply have it be an optional Off-GCD Stun with significantly higher uptime and with some better availability for sourcing the debuff (ideally limited to melee abilities, though).

IMO, scaling it back into basically a PvP mechanic that provides the Stun window and additional resources for Heavy Attacks, balanced by a 5-seconds up and 5-seconds down cadence, would be much more engaging to work with in small-scale PvP.

In the meantime, it reduces PvE power-creep to a tiny degree but tweaks to the meta would undoubtedly allow them to survive with a virtually imperceptible loss of damage. In other words, they would survive and adapt. As they always do.

MincMincMinc · January 12

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Funny enough the medium attacks are hitting for 2620 but my light attacks are hitting for 3332 lol oh boy.

With DW I'm assuming? If so that's what I mentioned earlier - DW heavies currently do half the damage they're supposed to, including mediums.

No this test was with 2h light, medium and heavy attacks. So it is probably all charged medium/heavy attacks from weapons are not working properly. We'd have to look at channeled like lightning or resto to see if they are acting weird too.

React wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

@CameraBeardThePirate What are your thoughts on making the stun require the telegraphed "fully charged" heavy attack? Which is more of my main issue with offbalance.

No telegraph, practically no counterplay other than waiting 7s in block, not having the stun tied to a gcd, and not having clear animations are all major red flags in my mind.

Honestly, I think this would kill the OB stun and I would not be a fan of this change. OB is one of the best stuns in the game in terms of high skill cap gameplay; being able to use it to "roll catch people" by landing a perfectly timed medium weave as they exit a roll is one of the best feelings of skill expression the game has to offer. Just being off the global cooldown creates a lot of cool use cases that I think adds a lot of depth to combat.

So many things in the game that require "fully charged heavy attacks" are just dead content in any real fast paced pvp, I'd hate to see them ruin off balance in this same manner.

Again as someone who has used dizzy since IC and offbalance(stuhns) on every build I agree with you here. I can also realize how dysfunctional, abusable,and unfair/gamebreaking this current mechanic is......it is literally all I have been doing since elsweyr ruined most weapon playstyles.

Maybe zos can set it to be off only heavy attacks+fully charged heavy attacks and not medium attacks (light attacks+0.001s hold) However right now there is no way to distinguish timing wise when you will medium or heavy attack other than practicing timing. If anything requiring the fully charged heavy attack puts more emphasis on the specialized stun triggers. Like how dizzy's second hit triggers the offbalance.

Personally I wish dizzy got its damage back considering it lost like 36-40% in the sake of "you will get it back through offbalance heavy attacks" but in reality GCD wise extending your weave with charging you do not get the damage back nor is it exclusive to dizzy. Since it is not exclusive this means anyone else or other playstyles like surprise attack now benefit from dizzy losing its damage. Maybe before U35 changes it made more sense to use medium and heavy attacks, but in pvp there is hardly a reason to waste the time on medium or heavies.

Something like surprise attack, if they still wanted the best do everything spammable in the game to have a stun, they should just make it trigger offbalance stun if they hit the offbalance target from behind or invis with surprise attack which would function as the telegraph so to speak. I still think surprise should be in the shadow skill line and trigger its stun only when invisible for its telegraph, but we will see how assassination shakes up when they rework nightblade. The guaranteed crit of surprise is unnecessary and again should have been left up to getting a guaranteed crit from cloak. Anyone surprised we dont see cloak nightblades anymore.....Im not, because 90% of nightblades kit has been crunched into surprise attack and merciless resolve. Its a no brainer why assassination is so prominent in pvp subclassing. Two skills alone do your entire dps. (not to rant too hard into subclassing woes)

MincMincMinc · January 12

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Off-Balance is simply #DoinTooMuch (a common issue in the game...) in addition to being, as others have mentioned, not visually communicated to players during combat.

Like, why is it interacting with Heavy Attack resource restore? Why is it interacting with Heavy Attack damage? Why is it interacting with CP stars?

Just pick ONE of these things, at most, in addition to the Stun mechanic (which undoubtedly IS the most unique and interesting feature). Or perhaps NONE and simply have it be an optional Off-GCD Stun with significantly higher uptime and with some better availability for sourcing the debuff (ideally limited to melee abilities, though).

IMO, scaling it back into basically a PvP mechanic that provides the Stun window and additional resources for Heavy Attacks, balanced by a 5-seconds up and 5-seconds down cadence, would be much more engaging to work with in small-scale PvP.

In the meantime, it reduces PvE power-creep to a tiny degree but tweaks to the meta would undoubtedly allow them to survive with a virtually imperceptible loss of damage. In other words, they would survive and adapt. As they always do.

Yeah I think this is just remnants of the bad era where zos was really willy nilly ballooning the game with overly complicated mechanics and procs. I'm not sure who convinced zos that complicated 5 paragraph effects was good gameplay. Probably the same person that convinced them that light attack proc stacking mechanics were fun.....leading to all nightblades to only use merciless as 80% of their damage burst. Or stamsorcs getting a terrible copy of merciless with bound arms. >>> rant rant rant

Meanwhile you had things like the old dizzy swing which birthed a classic playstyle and all it ever was, was a slow easy to see and dodge charge knockup. It took one time being hit to understand what happened. For new players they tended to learn its mechanic within the starter zone questing because mobs did the exact same easily telegraphed skill. So before ever entering pvp players who Pve'd even knew how to counter it. Now adays to understand dizzy you need to review several online forum posts and wikis to make a list of things to test ingame as the offender and defender against it just so you have a basic understanding.........Then you need to realize it doesnt matter if you know how it works because the stun can be triggered by no animation.

The game as a whole was so much more put together and cohesive.

The_Meathead · January 16

I don't have anything useful to add but wanted to say thank you for the tremendously informative discussion.

I often wondered why Exploiter is so seldom on PvP Builds I see, since the sources are plentiful(ish) and it's such a large % increase. I honestly had no idea the downtime was as much as it is, among other things I've learned today.

Thanks, folks!

tsaescishoeshiner · January 17

Off balance made more sense in the old system, when heavy attacks cost stamina/magicka and did a lot of damage, so blocking them and putting the enemy into a vulnerable state was pretty satisfying counterplay. But not in PvP anymore, where it's a poor source for stuns, combat is too fast-paced to get a heavy attack off, and lots of other limitations.

If they added more Off Balance interactions into skills, like Flame Lash and Dizzying Swing, that would be a better use for it in PvP. In fact, I would say the only time I've used Off Balance in PvP was for those two skills, or to use sets like Stuhn's. If more classes had that it would feel like a general state of vulnerability, whereas now it's only a factor against certain Ardent Flame builds.

In PvE, it's fine as a resource return, but can feel iffy for heavy attack builds in content with a lot of interruptions and mechanics.