Perhaps ZOS' best option here is to test class reworks on the PTS but not release them to live until they're all done. The next reworked class PTS would have both DK and that class, and so on until they're all on PTS at once.

React wrote: »

I'd rather see it go live in a strong state than a weak one. The post-rework classes should all be significantly stronger than the pre-rework ones.

Btw, why though? How is that even a good thing? I don't see any reason to move further away from established power levels. At best it causes no issues, in the worst case we will see a slew of other build components (Mundus, Generic Skills, Gear, Food) fall off even steeper. If any direction makes sense it is down.

Markytous wrote: »

Dragonknight absolutely NEEDED some kind of reasonable way to regenerate resources outside of recovery. Combustion got nerfed quite hard and hinging on Battle Roar shouldn't be the only way to play your class. Like other classes do, finally Dragonknights will have access to an Ability to slot to fix their sustain ails. I don't see why every other class in the game (save for perhaps Necromancer) should be allowed a "fix my sustain issues" button and DK isn't. On that thought, I can't wait for the Necromancer class pass, as the sustain options on that class are laughable.

Quite so.

I'm not even a Dragonknight main but can definitely sense the jealousy of some of the other OP classes/specs trying to keep DK down.

My class comes almost at the very end of this process but if these are the sorts of changes that we have to look forward to, changes that will raise up the derelict husks of dead classes back to viability, then sign me up.

Lord_Hev wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

There is a truth to both sides of this debate. GCD efficiency aside, DD being an interruptible cast and SS costing health under battle spirit are much more pronounced drawbacks. Of course the ability should ship in a competitive state, but trivializing sustain will bite them in the back down the line.
Since there is no execute range for resource bars per se, other than being resource checked on the next action, this ability will actually benefit most from high pools and low recovery, since you can just stay at a %-resource sweet spot. This frees up capacities for damage on one hand, but also reduces the effective penalty from block based recovery downtimes quite a bit.
This matter will best be resolved by either adjusting the % returned to a flat+%, capping it or by adding another drawback layer as it is the case for DD and SS.
I think a hard cap would be most sensible in the grand scheme of balancing.

That is precisely the problem I am talking about. Most builds on the live server require Orzoga or Misrule sustain food, which means they lose access to Sugar Skulls or other max stat foods that can give ~400-450 wd/sd equivalent. The only spec that can afford to run Sugar Skulls is stamsorc because of Dark Deal, but they too are limited by Dark Deal's drawbacks.

PTS DK simply does not have this issue because Inhale is instant cast, restores both stam & mag, and is beneficial to your offensive rotation. I have actually tested the sustain of this skill on PTS and found that the lower my resources are, the better my sustain gets lol...This allows DKs to run max stat food which adds even more damage to their already buffed kit, which means they can run 3 tank sets and practically never die unless they mess up really bad. Not something you want next update.

Every build is dependent on running orzoga sustain food, but DK with new inhale brings back life into needing to build actual resource pools as bad is a wild take in itself. I see it as a fresh air that dks can actually consider playing with more than 18k mag and stam.

And yes, I'd rather deal with more "tanky dk builds" because it protests this current abusive proc subclass 1 gcd gank meta where the abusers are also equally tanky with seemingly infinite resources and mobility. Doesn't matter how infinitely sustain the dk has it, they are still going to be stunned through block and bombed/bursted down like everything else.

Yea it is fresh air indeed.. Until you realize you either have to play DK, subclass Earthern Heart line, or run a pure subclass build with Onslaught if you want to compete. That novelty dies pretty quickly after a couple months when people realize it’s just the same problem but reskinned.

For this to work, ALL classes have to be buffed and released at the same time. That ain’t happening, so enjoy 8 months of DK domination until the next class gets buffed lol (WW doesn’t count)

I 100% agree the refreshes should have been done at once. But maybe this is like a form of content for zos. So this is going to be season of the dragonknight and then it will be season of the warden lol, etc etc

You can look at it this way. We can either have another 2 years of the subclass meta with at most minor balance changes that won't do much because utility is better than raw output, or we can have a steady release that gradually undoes it. Releasing them all at once would also be a complete logistical nightmare for any game studio that would attempt to do so. Just look at how many threads there are for the DK changes alone, and how many pages each thread has. Now imagine how many threads and pages there would be if all classes were reworked at once. There would be hundreds of threads of players pointing out bugs, requesting changes, complaining about x class is too OP, complaining about their class being too weak, and an endless amount of nitpicking. ZOS wouldn't be able to handle that in a 4 week PTS cycle, nor even an 8 or 12 week cycle, and there will be even more complaints once the update went live because not enough time would be put into addressing everyone's feedback for every single class. Doing them one at a time ensures that each class gets the time it needs to be properly tuned.

Vaqual wrote: »

React wrote: »

I'd rather see it go live in a strong state than a weak one. The post-rework classes should all be significantly stronger than the pre-rework ones.

Btw, why though? How is that even a good thing? I don't see any reason to move further away from established power levels. At best it causes no issues, in the worst case we will see a slew of other build components (Mundus, Generic Skills, Gear, Food) fall off even steeper. If any direction makes sense it is down.

The game is more fun when every class is strong. Strong classes are fun to play.

The goals of these reworks should be to make every class strongest when played as a pure class. Given the nature of power creep introduced by subclassing, in order to achieve this goal they're going to have to significantly buff the "pure classes", as they've done with DK.

Once they've applied this same logic to every class, including the "in class dependencies" which cannot be taken fully advantage of without pure classing, we should land in a place where pure classes are the strongest way to create a balanced setup - with subclassing available for specialized roles or to fill holes in toolkits. The way it always should have been, instead of this zero-consequence/no limitations version of subclassing we have now.

This wouldn't be necessary if subclassing wasn't introduced so haphazardly, with such little regard for the overall balance of the game. But pandora's box is open, and it is highly unlikely that they'll be making any fundamental changes to the way subclassing works at this point. After what I'm seeing with this rework, I think the best possible outcome is for them to stay the course and make every class feel as strong and good to play as the PTS DK. If they're able to do this successfully alongside the other QOL & PVP updates they've promised (and crossplay!), I think the PVP side of the game could make a real comeback in 2027.

Estin wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

There is a truth to both sides of this debate. GCD efficiency aside, DD being an interruptible cast and SS costing health under battle spirit are much more pronounced drawbacks. Of course the ability should ship in a competitive state, but trivializing sustain will bite them in the back down the line.
Since there is no execute range for resource bars per se, other than being resource checked on the next action, this ability will actually benefit most from high pools and low recovery, since you can just stay at a %-resource sweet spot. This frees up capacities for damage on one hand, but also reduces the effective penalty from block based recovery downtimes quite a bit.
This matter will best be resolved by either adjusting the % returned to a flat+%, capping it or by adding another drawback layer as it is the case for DD and SS.
I think a hard cap would be most sensible in the grand scheme of balancing.

That is precisely the problem I am talking about. Most builds on the live server require Orzoga or Misrule sustain food, which means they lose access to Sugar Skulls or other max stat foods that can give ~400-450 wd/sd equivalent. The only spec that can afford to run Sugar Skulls is stamsorc because of Dark Deal, but they too are limited by Dark Deal's drawbacks.

PTS DK simply does not have this issue because Inhale is instant cast, restores both stam & mag, and is beneficial to your offensive rotation. I have actually tested the sustain of this skill on PTS and found that the lower my resources are, the better my sustain gets lol...This allows DKs to run max stat food which adds even more damage to their already buffed kit, which means they can run 3 tank sets and practically never die unless they mess up really bad. Not something you want next update.

Every build is dependent on running orzoga sustain food, but DK with new inhale brings back life into needing to build actual resource pools as bad is a wild take in itself. I see it as a fresh air that dks can actually consider playing with more than 18k mag and stam.

And yes, I'd rather deal with more "tanky dk builds" because it protests this current abusive proc subclass 1 gcd gank meta where the abusers are also equally tanky with seemingly infinite resources and mobility. Doesn't matter how infinitely sustain the dk has it, they are still going to be stunned through block and bombed/bursted down like everything else.

Yea it is fresh air indeed.. Until you realize you either have to play DK, subclass Earthern Heart line, or run a pure subclass build with Onslaught if you want to compete. That novelty dies pretty quickly after a couple months when people realize it’s just the same problem but reskinned.

For this to work, ALL classes have to be buffed and released at the same time. That ain’t happening, so enjoy 8 months of DK domination until the next class gets buffed lol (WW doesn’t count)

I 100% agree the refreshes should have been done at once. But maybe this is like a form of content for zos. So this is going to be season of the dragonknight and then it will be season of the warden lol, etc etc

You can look at it this way. We can either have another 2 years of the subclass meta with at most minor balance changes that won't do much because utility is better than raw output, or we can have a steady release that gradually undoes it.

Two years of subclassing meta is preferrable to the torment that is launching off. Also, why do you assume that two years of subclassing meta would only come with minor balance changes? We are about to have two years of subclassing meta and Dragonknight is getting changed in all kinds of stinky ways - and DK wasn't even a great class to start with!

Yeah I don’t subscribe to the idea that Subclassed builds should be weaker by default.

In a post-refresh world, each skill line combination should be within the same realm of capability, not skewed to favor Base Classes or Player Classes.

If all they accomplish is flipping these, then the Reworks would be a colossal waste of time.

xylena wrote: »

Here's resource return during basic rotations on PvP builds against a target dummy.

Sorc Dark Deal


NB Siphoning Attacks


DK Heart of Flame


Not comprehensive, but they seem comparable. The differences in use case have been discussed. If the plan for the future of build PvP is to make every class and line the same amount of "overpowered" then that's still better than another year of animal assassins.

Yea very comparable lmao...

So the question is, if a DK with sub 1k recovery can sustain off 1 skill without needing tri pots or sustain sets, then what do you think the consequences are? I could just as easily run double armor potions for 5k extra resistances, heroism pots, lingering pots, etc. to boost my stats even higher. Can anyone answer this question?

First up, I am not a DK main (although I do have a lot of experience with the class), so no bias of "DK main just wants OP class" here.

I understand the concern with this ability, but I'm going to have to disagree that it needs immediate and drastic changes. Especially since we are only at the very first step in regards to the class refreshes and how absurd sub-classing builds are (they also don't need to run sustain food or mundus and as such get to invest freely into full tank sets and still have even stronger burst than PTS DK).
I would like to see at least 1 more class reworked alongside DK before judging if this ability is going to be too strong post refresh or if it's just the new base level power for classes moving forward and quite frankly I would love to see DK back in the meta and NB/Assassination builds knocked down a few pegs.

Imo, for now ZOS should simply make a note in the patch notes that this ability's sustain values will be closely monitored for future adjustments, depending on future class reworks done. That way ZOS can keep an eye on this ability, compare it to future class reworks and balance it as needed.

Also to note, the persistence passive (dark magic line) is putting in MAJOR work in your video, effectively being a massive 18% cost reduction to everything since you are perma-blocking all of your friends attacks, constantly keeping it's cost reduction active for every GCD. It cannot be overstated just how insane that 18% cost reduction is and the main thing keeping that passive balanced is being locked behind such a mediocre skill line on a base class who's whole playstyle revolves around avoiding damage via speed or damage shields, not blocking it. That passive would have been giga-nerfed years ago if it had been on ANY other class's skill line.

hoangdz wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Also to note, the persistence passive (dark magic line) is putting in MAJOR work in your video, effectively being a massive 18% cost reduction to everything since you are perma-blocking all of your friends attacks, constantly keeping it's cost reduction active for every GCD. It cannot be overstated just how insane that 18% cost reduction is and the main thing keeping that passive balanced is being locked behind such a mediocre skill line on a base class who's whole playstyle revolves around avoiding damage via speed or damage shields, not blocking it. That passive would have been giga-nerfed years ago if it had been on ANY other class's skill line.

I mentioned the Dark Magic sustain passives. Look for my next post when strictly comparing sustain between Dark Deal and Inhale vs a target dummy

I'm not seeing where you mentioned Persistence (you covered dark deal, not the passives), but I might have missed it. Looking back over your CMX images and your own numbers, it seems that if Persistence is removed, you will gain ~36% stamina back over the 4 seconds, while your mag restore will be more like 1-2% rather than nearly 20% gained over that timeframe. Compare that to 1 cast of Dark Deal (~+15% stam and +11% health for +26% total resources based on your numbers) and the numbers now look much more comparable, since we are comparing post rework to pre-rework which is not a fair comparison to make.

To me, the issue with inhale is the specific interaction between inhale restore over time and persistence cost reduction that is significantly reducing the intended cost of inhale when permanently blocking attacks and this specific interaction is going to be directly solved by the end of the year no matter what happens to inhale, since Sorcs reworks are late this year and it's likely Persistence will be adjusted (if not outright removed) during those reworks.

I'm still of the opinion to just let ZOS know to keep an eye on this interaction between inhale and persistence as they refresh more classes, but let players have some fun with the new abilities and not remove their viability for their intended use-cases in the meantime, since there's already a guaranteed adjustment coming up for this interaction and fairly soon too since it is guaranteed to be before the end of the year.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Also to note, the persistence passive (dark magic line) is putting in MAJOR work in your video, effectively being a massive 18% cost reduction to everything since you are perma-blocking all of your friends attacks, constantly keeping it's cost reduction active for every GCD. It cannot be overstated just how insane that 18% cost reduction is and the main thing keeping that passive balanced is being locked behind such a mediocre skill line on a base class who's whole playstyle revolves around avoiding damage via speed or damage shields, not blocking it. That passive would have been giga-nerfed years ago if it had been on ANY other class's skill line.

I mentioned the Dark Magic sustain passives. Look for my next post when strictly comparing sustain between Dark Deal and Inhale vs a target dummy

I'm not seeing where you mentioned Persistence (you covered dark deal, not the passives), but I might have missed it. Looking back over your CMX images and your own numbers, it seems that if Persistence is removed, you will gain ~36% stamina back over the 4 seconds, while your mag restore will be more like 1-2% rather than nearly 20% gained over that timeframe. Compare that to 1 cast of Dark Deal (~+15% stam and +11% health for +26% total resources based on your numbers) and the numbers now look much more comparable, since we are comparing post rework to pre-rework which is not a fair comparison to make.

To me, the issue with inhale is the specific interaction between inhale restore over time and persistence cost reduction that is significantly reducing the intended cost of inhale when permanently blocking attacks and this specific interaction is going to be directly solved by the end of the year no matter what happens to inhale, since Sorcs reworks are late this year and it's likely Persistence will be adjusted (if not outright removed) during those reworks.

I'm still of the opinion to just let ZOS know to keep an eye on this interaction between inhale and persistence as they refresh more classes, but let players have some fun with the new abilities and not remove their viability for their intended use-cases in the meantime, since there's already a guaranteed adjustment coming up for this interaction and fairly soon too since it is guaranteed to be before the end of the year.

In the post with the video clip, I mentioned “some cost reduction passives from Dark Magic”.

Regardless, PTS DKs are not heavy attacking. Sustain is actually too good lol

MXVIIDREAM wrote: »

Calling this “too much sustain” ignores how the skill actually works. It costs 3370 Magicka, has 4s uptime, and restores 15% of missing resources, not flat recovery. That means it only looks strong when you’re already nearly empty, and the return drops sharply the moment you block, dodge, or break free. This is not equivalent to permanent 3k recovery, which is passive, unconditional, and always ticking.

Other classes already get equal or better sustain with lower opportunity cost (Dark Deal, Bull Netch, Leeching Strikes) while maintaining pressure. This skill doesn’t let DK ignore recovery; it gives DK a short stabilisation window in a class that otherwise has no passive sustain and some of the highest-cost abilities in PvP.

I’d bet you main another class haven’t played PvP long and got killed by someone using this skill and now you want it nerfed forgetting half the reason the games in the state it is because people cry nerf every single chance they get

You are ignoring alot of the nuances that come with this ability, which I have already explained several comments above. I’m not going to repeat them again here.

I main another class yes, and I’m also one of the best at that class in this game. You can try to bait all you want but the majority of good players testing with me on PTS agree that the sustain from this skill is unnecessary.

Estin wrote: »

There's no point in trying to compare reworked dk to all classes that haven't been reworked yet. Those classes will eventually be at the same level as reworked dk. I'm a pure NB brawler main, and I am perfectly fine with living through 1 year of patches until my class comes up to par with the reworked ones. If ZOS tries to balance reworked classes to be in line with the non reworked classes, this entire project will end up fumbling causing these 2 years to be a waste. Could they use some minor adjustments? Yeah, some minor number tweaks could be added. I'm hearing through the grapevine that you can perma block indefinitely with soul of flame. That can recieve a minor tweak so it wont be as strong. Should the skills be gimped to complete uselessness because it's deemed over powered against a class that hasn't been reworked? No, it shouldn't, and will defeat the entire purpose of the reworks, and the same people who cried for these heavy handed nerfs will eventually complain that the reworked classes are too weak and ineffective against subclassing.

It doesn't matter if everyone is going to be playing dk as soon as u49 drops. We've lived through a year of mag sorcs that can insta kill you from 28 meters away while also being incredibly tanky. We're living through the terrible assassination/storm calling/animal companions/restoring light meta that everyone and their mother is currently running for whats going to be almost a year. A new class rework is going to happen every 3 months (Dk in march, WW in june, Warden in september, and Sorc in december). The options are quickly going to expand compared to what we had to live through before. We will be perfectly fine.

Any class can perma block BUT you have to sacrifice all damage and invest to do it, that’s exactly how the game should be you invest to do something and you can do it this skills really quite well balanced and it would be a shame to see it nerfed and effectively the pure class just to keep sub classing so much higher in power the whole idea of this is to make the pure classes more competitive and now people are saying the refresh for this will make it better than it is 😂 crazy as you said if we adopt this mindset all the way through these refreshes then classes are going to get weaker which goes to show you can’t please most of the player base on this game, i have a feeling op is part of the assassination/storm calling/animal companions/restoring light meta and got beat on pts by a dk and is looking for any excuse available he couldn’t win using the most broken set up we have seen on eso

hoangdz wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

hoangdz wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Also to note, the persistence passive (dark magic line) is putting in MAJOR work in your video, effectively being a massive 18% cost reduction to everything since you are perma-blocking all of your friends attacks, constantly keeping it's cost reduction active for every GCD. It cannot be overstated just how insane that 18% cost reduction is and the main thing keeping that passive balanced is being locked behind such a mediocre skill line on a base class who's whole playstyle revolves around avoiding damage via speed or damage shields, not blocking it. That passive would have been giga-nerfed years ago if it had been on ANY other class's skill line.

I mentioned the Dark Magic sustain passives. Look for my next post when strictly comparing sustain between Dark Deal and Inhale vs a target dummy

I'm not seeing where you mentioned Persistence (you covered dark deal, not the passives), but I might have missed it. Looking back over your CMX images and your own numbers, it seems that if Persistence is removed, you will gain ~36% stamina back over the 4 seconds, while your mag restore will be more like 1-2% rather than nearly 20% gained over that timeframe. Compare that to 1 cast of Dark Deal (~+15% stam and +11% health for +26% total resources based on your numbers) and the numbers now look much more comparable, since we are comparing post rework to pre-rework which is not a fair comparison to make.

To me, the issue with inhale is the specific interaction between inhale restore over time and persistence cost reduction that is significantly reducing the intended cost of inhale when permanently blocking attacks and this specific interaction is going to be directly solved by the end of the year no matter what happens to inhale, since Sorcs reworks are late this year and it's likely Persistence will be adjusted (if not outright removed) during those reworks.

I'm still of the opinion to just let ZOS know to keep an eye on this interaction between inhale and persistence as they refresh more classes, but let players have some fun with the new abilities and not remove their viability for their intended use-cases in the meantime, since there's already a guaranteed adjustment coming up for this interaction and fairly soon too since it is guaranteed to be before the end of the year.

In the post with the video clip, I mentioned “some cost reduction passives from Dark Magic”.

Regardless, PTS DKs are not heavy attacking. Sustain is actually too good lol

Might want to double check that clip. I went back and re-watched the clip as I figured I missed it with the sound off the first time I watched it, but I think your mic was muted or something went wrong with the recording/editing, because the only sounds I could hear were the in-game sounds (I also double checked the in-game chat in that clip and nothing mentioned there about passives that I could see).

Either way:
Is it strong? yes.
Does it have an interaction worth looking into adjusting when combined with the Persistence passive? Also yes.
Do I think it needs completely reverting? No, maybe just some smaller changes or adjusting of values to grant current values when pure DK and less when sub-classed to prevent it being widely abused on sub-classed builds.