In hindsight, not nerfing Storm Calling was a huge mistake

vadritox2 · February 5

ZOS should have sticked to their point and nerfed Storm Calling by moving Major Resolve to a different Sorc skill line during the initial release of subclassing. Literally EVERY non-meme PVP build currently uses this skill line. It's essentially mandatory for PVP. It has 4 S-tier skills, while half of the other skill lines in the game have 1 or max 2. It's kind of sad that we will have to wait till winter for the Sorc refresh for this to be addressed.

Drackolus · February 6

If there were more options for Major Resolve, there would at least be a little more choice. Currently, it's pretty much Stormcalling and Mighty Chudan, unless you're trying to be a tank or healer (and healers only have Restoring Light). The new version of Earthen Heart has the same buffs and corrosive armor, so it should at least provide another choice for normal pvp builds.

MincMincMinc · February 6

Its more of a problem that they left stormcalling with the flat damage buffs unconditionally, and then on other lines like dark magic you have all the conditional sorc sustain/tank passives. At the same time like you said, all the other skill lines that have major resolve are terrible because they were never designed for subclassing. Look at something like winters embrace....sure its the frost line, but thats such a niche build theme that not everyone wants to hard lean into only frost hoping the meta lines up and the other frost skill lines synergize well. If you notice, the most relevant class lines right now are just generic works with anything buffs.

Hurricane and crit surge has been the staple of stamsorc since IC, there's going to be backlash trying to gut core class identity skills that have served a core purpose for the past 10+ years. Streak is probably the one you should go after. Simply making it more of a skill shot instead of the abusive MASSIVE aoe that it is would curb half the complaints of the skill while keeping its uniqueness. For instance only having it do a 5m circle damage/stun at the ending location. Ball of lighting should simply be the reverse of that like it was intended to do the stun at the starting location for peeling. This was the vengeance version of the skill, which seemed to be widely accepted during the testing, except the main concerning part which was zos putting cooldowns on skills instead of heavier ramping costs. Next thing we want is them putting cooldowns on other skills like cloak, RAT, etc.

With the dk rework we can also see it getting way more "stand your ground" type skills like it used to have being the counter build path to streak kiting. Things like templar major mending and "build your house" should probably return. The reworks are gonna take forever, so its going to be a while. Warden probably shouldn't have things like deep fissure so bloated. Assassination Merciless probably shouldn't tooltip higher than any ultimate every 5s.

Xertasian · February 8

Sigh. They have other ways of getting major resolve than the one's named. Always nerf this and that. Let say the ugly part out loud. ZOS can magically fix and balance all classes for PVP, somebody will still cry NERF. See if you fix the classes and skill, you can't fix a bad player.

So many mmo's and other types went down the drain for this reason. People get beat by a certain class spec or passives. It happen to me , but i'm not gonna cry nerf. I gonna figure out why i lost the fight and how to counter or not lose next time.

Sure the game is not perfect and changes are needed here and there. Always crying nerf just degrade the gaming experience. ZOS this is where you don't fall into the trap. Crappy players gonna always cry nerf 9/10, when it not needed. Game companies cave to a lazy few and ruin it for more people overall.

Lastly stop coming on forums fussing about why you lost or can't win. Cause whatever the person who beat you is using, you can also use it. It comes down to skill and that how most PVP battles are won.

xylena · February 9

It was obvious way back on subclassing PTS that Storm Calling would take over the OW meta, but if you dare suggest nerfing Streak, the forums get burned to the ground, so we might as well just wait for the Sorc rework at this point.

MincMincMinc · February 9

There was also the perfect storm where for years stamsorc, stamwarden, and stamblade had all of their kit reliant on one line each. Then coincidentally they all perfectly filled in the holes in each other's builds.

Stamblade assassination brought the most potent spammable, burst skill, 1v1 ult with all the crit passives youd need during a crit meta. Stamden animal brought all the buffs and debuffs you need. Stamsorc just gave raw unconditional damage with the movement utility. To top it off, healing soul holds it together because now you have all the healing potential you could ever need in one click. Without healing soul I would probably see a lot of people running restoring light instead, older stamsorc players would probably be fine with just vigor and critsurge, but I think others would find healing back against burst difficult.

Thumbless_Bot · February 10

Skill lines are not balanced but even some skills, Just like some sets, are too strong as implemented not because of how much damage they do but because of the way they function. Streak comes to mind. They just need to be reworked so they arent broken. Streak provides way, waaaaay too much benefit for one click of a button. There are other skills even within sorc kit in this same boat. Dark Conversion/deal comes to mind.

Snit · February 11

After a year+ away from the game, it's nice to come back and see "nerf sorcs" remains a popular forum pastime.

(sigh)

ZhuJiuyin · February 11

Hurricane and Streak may look scary with their visual effects, but if we actually analyze the damage taken, the skills that cause the most damage often don't come from the Storm Calling line, but rather from Deep Fissure, Northern Storm, Grim Focus, Soul Harvest, Surprise Attack, etc. Don't pretend you can't see the elephant in the room.

AndreNoir · February 11

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Hurricane and Streak may look scary with their visual effects, but if we actually analyze the damage taken, the skills that cause the most damage often don't come from the Storm Calling line, but rather from Deep Fissure, Northern Storm, Grim Focus, Soul Harvest, Surprise Attack, etc. Don't pretend you can't see the elephant in the room.

Cool. Now we also can agree that RoA, betty and charm aren't elephants at all.

MincMincMinc · February 11

AndreNoir wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Hurricane and Streak may look scary with their visual effects, but if we actually analyze the damage taken, the skills that cause the most damage often don't come from the Storm Calling line, but rather from Deep Fissure, Northern Storm, Grim Focus, Soul Harvest, Surprise Attack, etc. Don't pretend you can't see the elephant in the room.

Cool. Now we also can agree that RoA, betty and charm aren't elephants at all.

I mean he was referring to damage, but what is the problem with betty?

AndreNoir · February 11

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I mean he was referring to damage

Yeah, cheap move to draw attention away from what actually been said about it

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Skill lines are not balanced but even some skills, Just like some sets, are too strong as implemented not because of how much damage they do but because of the way they function. Streak comes to mind. They just need to be reworked so they arent broken. Streak provides way, waaaaay too much benefit for one click of a button. There are other skills even within sorc kit in this same boat. Dark Conversion/deal comes to mind.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

what is the problem with betty?

Everything literally.

MincMincMinc · February 11

AndreNoir wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I mean he was referring to damage

Yeah, cheap move to draw attention away from what actually been said about it

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Skill lines are not balanced but even some skills, Just like some sets, are too strong as implemented not because of how much damage they do but because of the way they function. Streak comes to mind. They just need to be reworked so they arent broken. Streak provides way, waaaaay too much benefit for one click of a button. There are other skills even within sorc kit in this same boat. Dark Conversion/deal comes to mind.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

what is the problem with betty?

Everything literally.

Cheap trick? dude he said "the skills that cause the most damage"..................he is talking about damage.

Why are you getting upset that he didnt list every issue with the game in one forum post?

Again what is wrong with betty netch, it is hardly worth slotting in most cases. Sustain is so free now adays that even darkdeal isnt needed.

ZhuJiuyin · February 12

I've noticed many people deliberately avoid addressing a crucial issue: the current PvP imbalance is largely caused by the Warden and NB builds. The Warden's Charm script is self-explanatory, and the NB skill line have critical and critical damage, along with Grim Focus, comparable to ultimate skill damage. These are the real problems. Furthermore, most of these are ranged effects with wider applicability, yet they blame the issue on Hurricane and Streak, which require close proximity to activate. On well-known PvP websites like eso-pvp-builds.com/, almost every build utilizes the NB build line.

And when someone points out their double standards, they inexplicably become angry, treating anyone who mentions this fact as an enemy and launching attacks.

BlackLabel · February 12

If you look at all meta builds running 3 of the 4 top skill lines (animal companions, storm calling, assasination, Daedric spear). There is one recurring theme. Animal companion is a non negotiable. The other 3 are interchangeable. The problem is warden is OP in many ways, fissure shouldn’t have major AND minor breach, they also have access to speed buffs, free cleanses + sustain, AND THEN charm…
Warden need a nerf, everything else is fine.

olsborg · February 12

Its also a big reason why everything and everyone is using assassination skill tree too, since Grim Focus got buffed with Major Prophecy and Major Savagery just for slotting it, not even considering the fact that the bow procc itself is "A-list" burst skill.

Zodiarkslayer · February 12

We have to wait for six more refreshes.
I am pretty sure that after every single one someone finds something PvP related to complain about.

Very
very
sure

In my opinion that is not a game problem. It's a PvP problem. And maybe even a PvP player problem.

MincMincMinc · February 12

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I've noticed many people deliberately avoid addressing a crucial issue: the current PvP imbalance is largely caused by the Warden and NB builds. The Warden's Charm script is self-explanatory, and the NB skill line have critical and critical damage, along with Grim Focus, comparable to ultimate skill damage. These are the real problems. Furthermore, most of these are ranged effects with wider applicability, yet they blame the issue on Hurricane and Streak, which require close proximity to activate. On well-known PvP websites like eso-pvp-builds.com/, almost every build utilizes the NB build line.

And when someone points out their double standards, they inexplicably become angry, treating anyone who mentions this fact as an enemy and launching attacks.

Its just that people get juked by streak and broken ankles = broken feelings. Streak should just stun and do damage 5m from the final location. Turn the skill into a pure skill shot that is only for offense. Then make BoL stun at the start location like it used to. This way you are forced to choose kiting or engaging morph wise, cutting streak's usability essentially in half without ruining the uniqueness of the skill. Regen nearly doubling due to hybridization and triglyph+trifood adoption have made it easier to use streak consecutively so raising the 33% ramp to 50% ramp is possible, but the regen is an overall game issue making sustaining skills like streak too easy. So overall the game just shouldn't have the doubled regen in the first place.

Merciless now on pts is the highest tooltipping skill/ult in the game. Take flight used to be higher, but it got cut by 10% damage. SO merciless is officially at the top and on a 5s cooldown. Something that on its own hits harder than any ultimate every 5s.....and can stack twice......and gives major/minor crit......and bonus crit passives......in a meta where there is no build counter to crit damage because impen was gutted.

Deep fissure is just a better dawnbreaker. The 2nd hit of deep tooltips the same as dawnbreaker. Then the 1st deep tooltip is about 2x the dawn dot tooltip. The pen is equivalent to 8922/660=13.5% damage done to EVERYTHING on your build. Where dawnbreaker only gets a 10%-20% damage buff on itself. Then passive wise deep gives 20% regens and 5% crit damage done.........its again just flat out eclipsing an ultimate every 9s instead of every 60s like an ultimate.

Just stacking skills like this you can literally ignore building for ultimate, or run low cost ults like onslaught or spell wall that give some sort of ongoing buff instead. At this point the only reason people play around ultimates anymore is because they can trigger 500 balorgh. We wonder why the game lags, yet we have bloated paragraphs of bonus effects onto each skill like they are all ultimates.

Zodiarkslayer · 1:07PM

In hindsight, not separating PvP from PvE was a huge mistake.

Vengeance should've come in 2019!

YandereGirlfriend · 5:54PM

MincMincMinc wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

I've noticed many people deliberately avoid addressing a crucial issue: the current PvP imbalance is largely caused by the Warden and NB builds. The Warden's Charm script is self-explanatory, and the NB skill line have critical and critical damage, along with Grim Focus, comparable to ultimate skill damage. These are the real problems. Furthermore, most of these are ranged effects with wider applicability, yet they blame the issue on Hurricane and Streak, which require close proximity to activate. On well-known PvP websites like eso-pvp-builds.com/, almost every build utilizes the NB build line.

And when someone points out their double standards, they inexplicably become angry, treating anyone who mentions this fact as an enemy and launching attacks.

Its just that people get juked by streak and broken ankles = broken feelings. Streak should just stun and do damage 5m from the final location. Turn the skill into a pure skill shot that is only for offense. Then make BoL stun at the start location like it used to. This way you are forced to choose kiting or engaging morph wise, cutting streak's usability essentially in half without ruining the uniqueness of the skill. Regen nearly doubling due to hybridization and triglyph+trifood adoption have made it easier to use streak consecutively so raising the 33% ramp to 50% ramp is possible, but the regen is an overall game issue making sustaining skills like streak too easy. So overall the game just shouldn't have the doubled regen in the first place.

Merciless now on pts is the highest tooltipping skill/ult in the game. Take flight used to be higher, but it got cut by 10% damage. SO merciless is officially at the top and on a 5s cooldown. Something that on its own hits harder than any ultimate every 5s.....and can stack twice......and gives major/minor crit......and bonus crit passives......in a meta where there is no build counter to crit damage because impen was gutted.

Deep fissure is just a better dawnbreaker. The 2nd hit of deep tooltips the same as dawnbreaker. Then the 1st deep tooltip is about 2x the dawn dot tooltip. The pen is equivalent to 8922/660=13.5% damage done to EVERYTHING on your build. Where dawnbreaker only gets a 10%-20% damage buff on itself. Then passive wise deep gives 20% regens and 5% crit damage done.........its again just flat out eclipsing an ultimate every 9s instead of every 60s like an ultimate.

Just stacking skills like this you can literally ignore building for ultimate, or run low cost ults like onslaught or spell wall that give some sort of ongoing buff instead. At this point the only reason people play around ultimates anymore is because they can trigger 500 balorgh. We wonder why the game lags, yet we have bloated paragraphs of bonus effects onto each skill like they are all ultimates.

I would gladly trade my OG Shalks tooltip for going back to the 3-second timer. Heh heh heh.

The Shalks that we have today is a pale imitation of the Gigachad Shalks that we had four years ago.

When they implemented the unwanted "second strike" mechanic to pacify the PvE crowd they butchered the tooltip by like 30%.