Since the Dev's are working on adjusting class skills and attributes to bring more of an identity to non-subclassed builds and/or address some abilities that have shown to perform outside of scope (mainly because of subclassing); I wanted to toss out some suggestions on possible core combat enhancements that aren't class or build specific.

Rather than going over which abilities should have a nerf or a buff or which class needs which passive, etc; I wanted to look at some of the base PvP combat mechanics and take this time to open the forum to ideas on these aspects because, IMO, they get overlooked a lot and when people talk about wanted changes to specific in-game elements they often don't bring up some of the core mechanics.

These are items which might not be included with the Devs updates to class but none the less they're things I've observed in playing and testing PvP in ESO.

THSE SUGGESTIONS PERTAIN TO PVP ONLY - NOT PVE. These could be applied via the Battle Spirit effect that exists in all PvP environments. This way players can still have some of the harder hitting mechanical elements in PvE content (where it's often needed) but not carry those aspects over into PvP.

1) Global Cooldown: This is a legacy element that I agree with; the idea that combat needs some aspect of pacing as well as macro prevention. In it's current state and with the slew of mechanics that currently exist across the game, a full one second GCD seems excessive. When we have mechanics and elements that are structured at 0.3 or 0.5 increments a full one second is an eternity and really works to hold combat back. Personally I think a CGD of 0.5 would better served here. This would allow the game to process more rapidly and enable the combat to feel more responsive across a greater degree of elements while still providing a mechanic to prevent macros. And just to clarify, this is not directed at the concept of weaving / AC; that's a totally separate mechanical aspect. A reduced CGD should result in more accurate window for proper timing on the part of players as well as an overall better response from the game itself.

2) Critical Damage Scaling: I'm sure this one goes without saying, but, crit damage modifiers need to be subject to a hard cap. Currently they operate like resistances whereby the player can exceed the softcap. This creates a problem because the counterplay mechanics (at their maximum) cannot offset the potential ceiling; meaning that a player can still operate with maximum critical damage and chance, even when their opponent assigns significant resources to the proper counterplay. Traditionally, in any RPG critical damage output is an "incidental" occurrence. Players can (and should be able to) enhance base critical, BUT, only up to very real limits. Enabling consistent critical output turns "critical" into "usual". Installing a hard cap for critical modifiers means that existing in game counter play becomes reasonably effective; players can still achieve critical strikes but the idea that any build should be operating in a near persistent state of crit is problematic. This is compounded by the fact that self healing can critically strike. This enables not only excessive damage output but the ability to self heal to a degree that's counter-intuitive to the "Battle Spirit" logic. Battle Spirit reduces healing, however, if critical self healing can be near persistent then the player is effectively negating that balance.

3) Crowd Control Immunity: Even crowd control immunity to the same duration for both hard & soft CC abilities; including pulls & knockbacks/ knockdowns, and change the trigger mechanic to function based on application (similar to how the Nibenay Bay set proc functions), rather than referencing the "break free" mechanic. The application of immunity should be dependent upon CC being used on a player, not whether or not they break free. If a player is stunned and receives, say, a full 3 second duration, that player shouldn't be prone to anther hard CC simply because they didn't or weren't able to break free. In the past this wasn't as much of an issue. If one player exhausted the stamina of their opponent they earned a combat advantage, however, in the current state with subclassing, more sources of CC mechanics are available to more players and with more combinations of CC follow up than ever before. If we're going to expand access to CC for more players and give them access to more mechanics then we need to expand the immunity in proportion. Crowd control should require skill and proper timing to provide a combat advantage, this will encourage more strategy in combat rather than rewarding spams. Players still have access to mechanics like increasing their opponents resource cost that can be used which can work to supplement crowd control to affect resource management in combat; it's not as though excessive use of CC is necessary. This would also work to help reduce stun-lock bugs which can occur when too many CC abilities are spammed on targets simultaneously.

4) Effect Stacking: Stacking effects on either a players own self or their target is a key part of combat. In an effort to make that more strategy oriented no skill or set should apply both the matching Major & Minor versions of an effect. This would require the player to apply those effects via their rotation if they wish to utilize both. Any skill or set that brings both matching effects simultaneously avoids the opportunity cost concept of having to allocate resource as well as the strategy needed to apply them. There are only a few instances where this occurs in the game (thankfully), however, the instances where they do occur are heavily abused. Again, in the past, in-game elements like this might have made sense in the vacuum of class limitations but those are now gone. We can (and should) still have skills and sets which provide multiple benefits, however, they shouldn't stack the same, named, effects together.

5) Evasion Mechanic re-work: Adjust any skill or set that provides evasion to instead provide a player scalable resource pool increase OR resource pool recovery increase. Rather than providing a player with automatic evasion; any dodge to an attack should be 100% player skill dependent. Providing evasion enables players to ignore portions of incoming damage with no skill application requirement. Mitigating damage is not the same thing as avoiding damage. We can have elements which work to mitigate damage passively, that's perfectly sensible, however, any sort of damage avoidance should have a skill check factor as it pertains to combat. Switching from providing evasion to instead providing scalable resource essentially provides the player with an equitable tradeoff, they have an increase resource pool with which to execute a dodge but it will be up to the player to actually perform the maneuver.

6) Ability Animations: This one will take some creativity, but, the long & short is; rework animations so that they complement the skill. Some abilities have such a ridiculous and excessive animation duration that it amounts to (essentially) a cast time when there shouldn't be one. This heavily discourages their use because they're too slow and clumsy to be effective in combat. Animations are nice & immersive effects but when they inhibit effectiveness then they don't really serve a purpose. Just because something looks good doesn't mean that it is good. If an ability has a cast time then an animation which executes during that duration makes sense, but, when we have instant abilities that have long or slow to respond animations they're always going to feel underwhelming. Players shouldn't have options that seem to fit their build on paper but then when they go to use them don't behave the way they present. Some instant abilities have a blisteringly quick response & animation which complements their mechanic; every instant ability should have a similar response curve. We shouldn't have some instant abilities that execute in a blink while others seemingly need time to wind up. If an ability is going to have a slower animation then it needs to have a displayed cast time and attributes adjusted accordingly to give it a value proposition. This can also help to reduce a lot of ability trigger failures that occur constantly in combat.

The idea here is to tweak base combat mechanics to raise the floor on combat strategy in light of all the effects subclassing has had on PvP. Subclassing isn't going away and with a refresh to some of the main mechanics it doesn't have to. Players should still have the potential to explore build crafting theory but not be penalized because the core of combat favors certain mechanical elements over others. This doesn't mean that every build will be the same, or that even every build will be competitive. What it does mean is that outcomes would move to be more player skill based rather than mechanical manipulation based.

We don't want class changes simply getting rolled up amongst existing mechanics that have questionable logic. Part of the feedback from the player community post-subclassing has exposed some of these underlying mechanics as root causes of problems and while the effort to refresh classes is positive, let's not forget that is not necessarily going to address many of the issues we're all experiencing in the current game state.