Maintenance for the week of April 6:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – April 6
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – April 6
Thoughts About Dragonknight in PvP: A New Direction
Blackrim
✭✭✭
After extensive play in The Elder Scrolls Online PvP, particularly in Cyrodiil, it has become increasingly clear that the Dragonknight appears intentionally designed to function as a strong 1vX class.
The class possesses exceptional sustain, allowing it to remain viable in extended engagements. In addition, it deals substantial damage relative to other classes while maintaining access to extremely effective area-of-effect abilities, healing tools, and defensive buffs. Taken together, the Dragonknight’s toolkit is exceptionally well-rounded and highly resilient in outnumbered situations.
Overall, this direction for class design could be healthy for the game. Observations from other MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft, suggest that strengthening class identities through targeted buffs can improve gameplay balance and engagement rather than nerfing everything into oblivion. Overall, everyone is happy in the end.
At present, one of the most significant issues affecting Cyrodiil is server lag. A contributing factor appears to be prolonged engagements caused by highly durable builds combined with large volumes of damage-over-time (DoT) and healing-over-time (HoT) effects continuously processing on the server. Reducing the overall time to kill (TTK) could help alleviate server strain by allowing fights to resolve more quickly and reducing the accumulation of persistent effects during large-scale battles.
Looking forward, a productive design direction may involve granting other classes similarly defined identities while maintaining competitive levels of damage, sustain, and utility in both PvP and PvE environments. For example, the Necromancer could potentially lean further into mechanics such as defile or healing reduction systems to counter highly self-sustaining 1vX builds.
Ultimately, the goal should be to maintain meaningful class identity while still supporting the “play how you want” philosophy promoted by Zos. Achieving this balance would help preserve diversity in playstyles while ensuring the PvP environment remains dynamic, competitive, and enjoyable. A great example would be if the necromancer had unique defile debuffs to help it counteract extreme sustain toons in combat.
The class possesses exceptional sustain, allowing it to remain viable in extended engagements. In addition, it deals substantial damage relative to other classes while maintaining access to extremely effective area-of-effect abilities, healing tools, and defensive buffs. Taken together, the Dragonknight’s toolkit is exceptionally well-rounded and highly resilient in outnumbered situations.
Overall, this direction for class design could be healthy for the game. Observations from other MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft, suggest that strengthening class identities through targeted buffs can improve gameplay balance and engagement rather than nerfing everything into oblivion. Overall, everyone is happy in the end.
At present, one of the most significant issues affecting Cyrodiil is server lag. A contributing factor appears to be prolonged engagements caused by highly durable builds combined with large volumes of damage-over-time (DoT) and healing-over-time (HoT) effects continuously processing on the server. Reducing the overall time to kill (TTK) could help alleviate server strain by allowing fights to resolve more quickly and reducing the accumulation of persistent effects during large-scale battles.
Looking forward, a productive design direction may involve granting other classes similarly defined identities while maintaining competitive levels of damage, sustain, and utility in both PvP and PvE environments. For example, the Necromancer could potentially lean further into mechanics such as defile or healing reduction systems to counter highly self-sustaining 1vX builds.
Ultimately, the goal should be to maintain meaningful class identity while still supporting the “play how you want” philosophy promoted by Zos. Achieving this balance would help preserve diversity in playstyles while ensuring the PvP environment remains dynamic, competitive, and enjoyable. A great example would be if the necromancer had unique defile debuffs to help it counteract extreme sustain toons in combat.
1
-
AndreNoir✭✭✭From where comes your hapiness ? If a class can survive 1vX then it shouldn't dish any noticable damage.4 -
Avran_Sylt✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I don't know what point you're making.
Is it that DK's 1vX nature should be countered by Necromancer design?
Is it that TTK needs to be lowered in general in Cyrodiil to counter lag? Or from an Assassin class focused on bursting down builds like DK's, whereas Necros is about sustain elimination?
I don't quite understand how "play how you want" fits in a PvP environment where builds like: "Survives everything", and "Kills everything" are diametrically opposed.1 -
Blackrim✭✭✭Avran_Sylt wrote: »I don't know what point you're making.
Is it that DK's 1vX nature should be countered by Necromancer design?
Is it that TTK needs to be lowered in general in Cyrodiil to counter lag? Or from an Assassin class focused on bursting down builds like DK's, whereas Necros is about sustain elimination?
I don't quite understand how "play how you want" fits in a PvP environment where builds like: "Survives everything", and "Kills everything" are diametrically opposed.
I think the point should be every class needs its own identity. The only way ZoS can really fix DK power up is by making another class to deal with that one. That would be my fix.0 -
Blackrim✭✭✭From where comes your hapiness ? If a class can survive 1vX then it shouldn't dish any noticable damage.
I think its the vision and the possibility. The fact this thing is surviving so well right now is because the classes its meant to play against are not even in existence yet. They're reworking an old game for a player base that wants to play it. Cleaning up the mess of someone that came before is not an easy task. PvP has been insane lately and i've been enjoying every second of it. I am very excited for the next buff at this point lets just call the reworks that.1