SeaGtGruff wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

It appears to be being done on purpose. Want something way OP to dominate with for a bit, then have to buy the latest content.

I thought the latest content (the Night Market) was freely available to all players, and that all future "latest content" will also be freely available?

Even older content, and the game systems introduced with them, will eventually be freely available to all.

For instance, the Antiquities system will become freely available later this year.

That means anyone who wants to acquire and use mythic gear must still (for the time being) purchase the Greymoor chapter, or "rent" it via an active ESO Plus subscription-- but Greymoor hasn't been "the latest content" for a number of years now.

Galagladi Dragonblood wrote: »

Thats from My Warden-Loving-Friend. He doesn't have an forum-account so im just posting this for him. (Its a bit more critical.

The Shattered Path Signet Cycle: Why This Mythic is Just the Latest Symptom of a Deep Systemic Crisis in Game Design'

I would like to join the current discussion (“Shattered Path Signet - Another trash Mythic Nobody will ever use again”). Today’s incremental patch (Update 50 Incremental 1) shows us in black and white how the new "Shattered Path Signet" has been completely gutted for PvP and massively scaled back in PvE. However, instead of just isolated outrage over the specific numerical changes to this single item, I want to look at today's patch for what it truly is: a perfect, undeniable symptom of a far deeper, systemic problem within ZOS's entire balancing and design philosophy.

The devaluation of this item is not an isolated incident—it is the logical consequence of a pipeline defined by contradictory decisions, reactive patchwork balancing, and a chronic disregard for the time players invest in the game. The ring is merely the current catalyst, but the fundamentally flawed development process behind it is the real issue.

1. The Chronology of the "Shattered Path Signet"—A Masterclass in Aimless Tinkering
When we look at the trajectory of this content, we see the blueprint of flawed development. The extreme damage potential of the status effects was not some hidden bug discovered on live servers through creative theorycrafting. It was flawlessly documented from Week 1 on the PTS (Public Test Server) through pages of Combat Metrics (CMX) analysis, mathematical calculations, and detailed community feedback in the forums.

The reaction during the PTS cycle exposes the entire problem: instead of designing the item holistically, foresightedly, and structurally, the combat team lost itself in selective micromanagement. They specifically targeted the Warden. First, you wanted to completely remove the synergy with the crucial class passive "Glacial Presence." Fortunately, this absurd decision was reversed during the PTS cycle, but it shows the full extent of the aimless tinkering going on behind the scenes. Ideas are thrown at the wall, walked back, a single class is patched up, and ultimately, the item's damage effect is cut in half whenever the iconic class ultimate—the Bear—is active. You had all the data on the table. You knew exactly what this item was doing.

Despite this knowledge, you pushed the item to live servers virtually unchanged. You generated the hype. You watched as players invested valuable lifetime leveling up their Scrying and Excavation skill lines, farming the five individual leads across Tamriel for days, camping bosses, and finally spending precious Transmutation Crystals to reconstruct the item with the appropriate traits for their builds. And just a few days later, you pull the "nuclear option": the maximum PvE bonus is slashed from 170% to 133%, and the effect is completely reduced to zero in PvP.

That is not balancing. That is the retroactive destruction of content that you knowingly released in a flawed state. Allowing the hype and the massive grind to happen first, only to render it completely useless days later, reveals a glaring lack of planning. Why is the actual evaluation shifted to the live servers and done at the expense of the players when a test server is meant to prevent exactly that?

2. The "Battle Spirit" Dilemma: The Inability to Separate Content Cleanly
This incident exposes a deeper problem: the inability or refusal to consistently and intelligently separate PvE and PvP. Every time a mechanic causes issues in one game mode, the proverbial wrecking ball is swung, ultimately devaluing or destroying the content for the other side of the game as well.

Yet, the global tools for this have been available for nearly a decade. The community has been suggesting it like a mantra for years: utilize the modifiers via "Battle Spirit" consistently to scale values mode-specifically. Why is an effect completely disabled (0%) in PvP for certain setups instead of using existing PvP mechanics to cushion it smoothly and percentage-wise, leaving PvE damage untouched?

The answer is sobering: because a reactive, total nerf requires less mathematical effort than thoughtful, mode-specific balancing. Only the currently burning hole is ever patched, while in the same breath, three new craters are opened up in other areas of the game. There is a lack of a long-term, stringent vision for how the combat system and build diversity should coexist.

3. Historical Precedents: A Recurring Pattern of Structural Contradictions
The fact that this is a systemic failure is proven by a look at the patch history of recent years. We see a recurring pattern of an unbearable double standard:

The Mythic Pattern (Example: Oakensoul Ring, 2022):
The exact same toxic principle occurred with the Oakensoul Ring. Packed with overpowered Major Buffs on the PTS despite massive warnings, pushed to live, players incentivized to farm it—and shortly after, mechanically shattered by downgrading almost all buffs to Minor. It creates the fatal impression that new content is intentionally released overpowered to artificially force metas, only to be panicked-nerfed afterward.

The Class Exception (Example: Arcanist, since 2023):
However, when it comes to a new, paid class, different standards apply. The Arcanist was allowed to completely dominate the entire PvE and PvP landscape for over a year with its uninterruptible beam (Fatecarver) and permanent shields. The combat team watched for months and only intervened effectively after more than a year. Why is a new damage option for weaker classes executed within days, while other overpowered levers are allowed to monopolize the game for months?

The Trauma of Update 35 and the Consequences of Ignorance:
This aimless approach has already caused real damage in the past. Let us remember the devastating combat update a few years ago (U35). Back then, the combat system was attacked with fundamental, ill-considered interventions, and DoT timings were completely distorted. The receipt was an unprecedented, massive player exodus from which the endgame and raiding community has still not fully recovered. Entire guilds broke apart because months of sound feedback on the PTS were ignored, only for fragments of those changes to be painstakingly walked back (revised) months later. You learn absolutely nothing from your own design history.

4. The Warden as Eternal Collateral Damage
Instead of elegantly strengthening a class like the Warden—which is already lagging behind in PvE damage—through innovative items and enabling new, valid options (like the highly discussed Travelling Knife setups), the class is first blocked on the PTS by special Bear rules and stands exactly where it did before after the live nerf: left behind by the meta, without real progress. The fact that this rigorous beating down of potential options takes place right before the announced class refresh strips away any hope as a Warden main for a well-thought-out class design. It shows that the individual design teams at ZOS operate completely isolated from one another.

5. The Chasm Between PR and Reality: A Decade of Untapped Capital
In recent months, you have repeatedly emphasized in streams and letters how important community feedback is to you and that you want to "listen to the players more." If you ask for feedback, you must also be willing to listen to it and act accordingly!

It is not enough to repeat the word "feedback" like a pure PR phrase while shortsighted decisions continue to be made on the live servers. This forum is a proverbial goldmine. It is filled with a decade's worth of sound, mathematically precise feedback from players who love this game and have invested thousands of hours.

This capital has been systematically ignored or selectively filtered out for over ten years. You have an entire decade of ignorance and selective balancing to make up for to even remotely restore the community's trust. With rushed steps like this patch, you immediately destroy every spark of newly gained credibility.

Conclusion: A Structural Wake-Up Call
Stop this purely reactive patchwork balancing that lacks any common thread. If content on the PTS is flawed or mathematically unbalanced, correct the values before it goes live. When you make adjustments, use the fine blade of mode-specific balancing (Battle Spirit) instead of the heavy sledgehammer of total disabling.

Once again, this patch leaves behind the frustrating feeling that in ESO, it is simply no longer worth investing time, gold, and passion into theorycrafting or farming new content. Finally show us that you respect your own game, the mathematical realities of your combat system, and above all, the lifetime of your community.

aLi3nZ wrote: »

Pve nerf is tiny and I’m keeping it on and keeping my pve build as is.

PvP nerf was ridiculous. They should have kept it in PvP and scaled it back even further to 100% boost or just have as is now 133%