Study: How to balance without ruining classes

ArRashid · June 2014

Note: I don't want any hating responses in this topic please. Constructive feedback only (also feel free to add insights on sorcerer and templar, as I haven't played those). I'd also like to humbly ask a moderator to keep an eye on this and remove such hating/trolling comments

Note2: Understand this: No amounts of nerfs to the Dragonknight/Staff will make it ANY EASIER for OTHERS to solo VR quests. It won't fix NB's arsenal (and his zero and a half AoE dps), it won't buff templar, it won't do ANYTHING. It will just make DK have the same issues as these broken classes do. Nerfing is just a way to tell people: I give up, I have no idea how to make other classes work, so I'll just bombard the one working class with nerfs until people are disgusted with it and switch to other classes

before reading further, please READ MY OTHER BALANCE POSTS in this topic. I'm sick and tired of people reading about DK, then thinking "*** the rest, let's drop more whining about DK"

Dragonknight

Ardent Flame
- switch Fiery Grip and Searing Strike. Fiery grip is pretty much useless for most specs, it makes more sense to have Searing Strike go first, so you can actually skip Fiery Grip if you don't need it.
[more of a cosmetic change]

Fiery Breath
- currently worse than Blockade of Fire in every way except magicka efficiency. Also Fiery Breath morph forces you to use it as an opening spell for passive to be worth it and DoT to actually reach even half it's duration (since the instant damage component is REALLY weak).
[either increase it's damage (with +66% damage from passive it still deals just about 33% of Blockade's damage, even though it's several times more magicka efficient), or make the DoT shorter (aka ticking every half sec for half the duration but same overall damage)]

Inferno
- I don't know about you, but I didn't manage to find any use for this spell.
- It's damage is simply too low to justify practically REVERTING the magicka recovery into magicka drain (aka your magicka recovery is set to ZERO, and as if that wasn't enough, you're losing 28 magicka every second)
[big ?, I guess "just" reducing your magicka recovery by 28/s (which equals to 56 recovery aka about 70% of your overall magicka recovery) could make it usable, but in my mind still not exactly viable. Must have been drunken dev who created this ability]

Dragonknight Standard
- revert the damage nerf (serves no purpose as it is, it's more irritating than solving anything)
- the bane of all balance in this game is that some specs just generate ultimate too quickly (partially fixed by AoEs ulti generation being reduced) and just chain-use ultimates one after another (which IS op)
[either make players generate no ultimate points while their ultimate is active, or double their ultimate cost (cap is 1000, ultimate costs 200, 800 goes wasted for most people (who don't use ultimate each time they earn enough points, but only when they really need it)]

Draconic Power

Dark Talons
- revert all nerfs and conditions - lowering the range just made rooting VR mobs result in a quite a big beating, without pretty much fixing anything for PvP (as noone had any objections to it in PvE). A lot of conditionals for target count and everything else just made it lag 1-2 seconds before rooting, and failing to root in about 40% cases (NPCs drag the talon with them, without being rooted) [essentially return to pre-1.1.2 functionality]
- if you feel like it's doing too much damage, reduce the SYNERGY damage (although I think that one is not that OP as Lightning Flood's one, and is barely better to use it than to pass the opportunity and cast your own spell)
- make Talons CC-breakable (if they are not right now, I don't play PvP so idk myself)

Inhale
- the nerf was totally undeserved and uncalled for. Players are OK with limiting AoEs to 6 targets, but why was this reduced to 3 targets, without any other change? Now it doesn't heal nearly enough to justify it's absurd magicka cost, while doing less damage than activation of Razor Armor
[revert nerfs (aka 6 targets instead of 3) OR buff damage and heal considerably OR considerably decrease magicka cost)]

Earthen Heart

Magma Armor
- same remedy with ultimate as with Standard

Molten Weapons
- stops scaling after some lvl 40, therefore not very viable afterwards, unless you have a free place on bars (highly unlikely)
[working with this spell requires high amount of care - making it scale will make it even more OP than sorcerer's Surge, but how else to make it viable to use without making it OP (and "a must")? hard question with no right answers]

Petrify
[fix the tooltip, it falsely states it affects multiple targets, baiting you to waste a skill point]

Ash Cloud
- since it states it gives affected enemies 30% miss change, I don't know what to think. I guess we all saw that video of a DK soloing trials, where it seemed to provide 100% miss chance (at least it looked like it, as his HP was stuck at 100%)
[need to be checked. If it really bugs out to provide 100% miss, it needs to be FIXED (not nerfed, FIXED, if people still know what that word means]

CONCLUSION
- The only ACTUALLY OP (=exploitable) issue with actual Dragonknight class is chain casting Magma Armor. HOWEVER, the source of this evil is elsewhere - that actually everyone can generate ultimate WHILE HAVING ULTIMATE ACTIVE, which some more efficient builds can use to fill their ultimate bar within the duration of their previous ultimate. THAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED ASAP. NOT by nerfing ultimate damage/utility, but by not allowing players to generate ultimate while an ultimate is active (that is, at least ultimates with a duration, doing this for Overload, which is essentially a toggle, would pretty much ruin it). If you want a solution as a temporary hotfix, then double ultimate costs UNTIL YOU FIX IT PROPERLY (not indefinitely).
This thing also makes some spec deal exceedingly high damage or take almost no damage indefinitely.. not the actual class abilities.

Wargasmo · June 2014

Respectfully, I will have to disagree with your thoughts on balance. Your philosophy seems to promote balancing of various morphs between skills. While not a bad idea in itself, you fail to take into account the balance of skills to cross class counterparts and, more importantly, the balance of skill power to game difficulty itself.

For instance, your proposed changes to various DK skills would make undesirable skills more equivalent to their currently desirable counterparts, promoting morph diversity. The fallacy behind this logic is that the current optimal DK skills already result in gross class overperformance compared to other classes and the difficulty scaling of encounters.

Currently, a rough estimate of required dps to complete dps checks in trials is about 700 dps per dps player. This means that tuning wise, a moderately skilled player should output around 700 dps, an exceptional player should output perhaps upwards of 1k, and a poor player will fail the dps check.

It is NOT ok for a class to regularly output 1.3k dps for an average player and upwards of 2k dps for exceptional players, especially when other classes are not capable of this level of output. This promotes unhealthy class stacking in trials (as opposed to spec stacking, which is much less detrimental as it does not necessarily and inherently preclude players). Equally important, overperforming classes and/or specs promote unreasonably easy clearing of content, which shortens the longevity of the game due to boredom/burnout unless ZOS can keep pumping content out at a breakneck speed, something they have clearly demonstrated they are incapable of since they cannot even fix current issues with their game in a timely fashion.

Thus, rather than balance up undesirable DK morphs to equivalent performance with their currently favored counterparts, better performing DK morphs should be balanced DOWN to the dps and utility levels of the less desirable morphs. This would still allow for build diversity but would also help bring the class as a whole more in line with the difficulty checks of the game as well as other classes.

I like and support your idea regarding stopping ultimate generation while having an active ultimate. I would even one up you and suggest that the banner needs to be redesigned as a whole into a channeled skill rather than a triggered one. A better tuned and redesigned banner would have the same duration and be a channeled ability. To compensate for channel change, it should have increased damage reduction functionality (maybe 50%, with 99% for the DK him/herself) slightly increased damage (lets say 20% buff), increased effectiveness of synergy (lets add a 25% damage debuff for duration of synergy effect) and a raid buff effect (10% increase in damage for the group). It should also exhibit a limited aoe taunt functionality (meaning when the banner elapses so does the taunt… think challenging shout). Ultimate should still not be gained while in use, and the cost for this new ultimate should be fairly high as to not allow for high uptime in fights… lets say 450 (this should be a raid cooldown, like a bloodlust coupled with a pain suppression in WoW… not something that turns DK’s into the permanent bannerbi*ch totem). There. Instead of being a ridiculously OP personal dps ultimate, we just made the banner a very powerful raid cooldown. Very worth taking in many situations, and still worth the argument that DK’s would be indespensale to raids because of it, but no longer game breaking. It would put banner alongside the sorc’s negate as something to look for when building your raid while no longer making the DK your defacto first choice as dps because they literally do 30% more damage than sorcs, 50% more damage than NB’s and 70% more damage than Templars playing at equivalent skill levels.

The problem with the DK is that, as a choice for both tank and dps slots in the raid, they have it all: superior damage output, sustainability, utility, and survivability compared with all other classes. This may be marginally acceptable as a tank, but as a dps this is game breaking not only to class balance but in the manner that stacking them trivializes what would otherwise be decently designed pve encounters. So, in terms of overall balance, the DK needs to be brought down to a level where exceptional players are outputting about 1k, and your average player outputs about 700. It is utterly important that overtuned classes be nerfed in line with the standard rather than all other classes being buffed to their levels of output. I don’t want trivial encounters. A dps check should be a race, not a given. Mechanics need to be executed correctly, not ignored or trivialized. Don’t buff everyone to do 1.3k dps while being nigh unkillable. Just fix the DK.

Wargasmo · June 2014

I’ll deal with Templar for you since that’s the other class I have extensive experience with. The Templar experience is divided into two facets: healing and dps (I wont discuss tanking since I think tanking as a whole in this game is poorly designed, mind numbingly easy and equally boring regardless of the class you play). Basically, just be the tank if you want to raid lead... as the effort it takes will leave you plenty of attention to direct at what the rest of the raid is doing and what's going on in the encounter.

So lets deal with the upside first: healing. Healing feels incredibly powerful as a Templar. Despite most groups bringing 2-3 healers, it is my impression that most fights (except for the ones that split the group up) are solo healable and easily so. I feel that the Templar exclusive right to the 3 target burst heal while still retaining the utility, ultimate gen, and efficiency of resto staff line skills makes the Templar the defacto healer in trails. While not so much an issue in class balance as healers only take up 1-3 spots in a 12 man raid, I think the power of Templar heals (and resto staff heals also… just heals in general) trivializes the role.

Basically, anything that is designed to be survived is mind numbingly easy to heal. Anything else, (aka raid wipe abilities like Hel Ra warrior 30% bright light aoe spam or AA wispmother channel bomb with multiple adds up) kills the group without sufficient ultimate cooldowns anyway, and as such are not exactly the purvue of the healer anymore. I say this because the cooldown of choice seems to be siege shield, a skill not exclusive to the resto staff or Templar healing tree. Other DR shields and buffs, such as circle, bone shield, dk banner, and personal skills such as annulment are also largely independent of the actual “healing” experience.

Stacking CD’s for large boss abilities is fine and I like how skills synergize with each other to create this effect. I think, however, that the game would be more interesting if healing was more difficult in other stages of the game. Currently, except for certain periods of heavy boss burst damage on the raid, I spend most of my healing time actually serving the role as a really bad dps that occasionally throws a heal at people who are bad at the game and take damage. I’d rather be frantically trying to keep people alive who are doing their jobs and already mitigating what damage they can via good play.
The frequency of mob attacks can be increased to put more strain on the healer. The biggest problem with healing is that… no one takes damage. Also, encounters could put artificial strain on healers by introducing constant raidwide dots or otherwise unavoidable aoe pulses that have to be healed through. I also wouldn’t mind if the cost of resto staff and Templar heals were increased by about 10%... so there would actually be a decision on whether to toss that extra power of the light out or channel a heavy attack to get some mana back when there is a lul in healing. As it stands, between a warlock 3 pc bonus, capped magicka regen, and the occasional heavy attack, resource management is a nonissue for us happygolucky healers, who can keep hots rolling on the raid, burst heal ppl who get low, AND STILL FIND TIME TO DPS half of the time. I’d like to see healing difficulty upped to a point where your average healer in a trial would be unable to solo heal anymore and 3-4 healers would become the norm rather than the current 1-2.

On to Templar DPS. In a word, Templar dps is abysmal. If I set up for 2 class damage skills (biting jabs … which was finally fixed yesterday and vamp bane/reflective light), power of the light, a mage guild skill to keep power of the guild rolling (usually volcanic rune), and magelight for crit I can output maybe 800 dps for about 40 secs. To obtain this output I’ve macro’ed not only light attack animation cancel weaving but also instant cast one click ground aoe for my volcanic rune. I have stacked max crit for my class. Since ulti spam via syphon is no longer possible, I have been unable to break 900 dps on a one mana bar one potion burn (I could do about 1k with syphon cheese). I’m fairly certain this is the utmost hard cap performance for my class and would not be possible without heavy reliance on third party macros.

However, even this level of dps is unsustainable for lack of a magicka resource management tool and I have to channel heavy attacks with a resto staff after my initial burn, which lowers subsequent dps to an average of an abysmal 5-600, well below the cutoff for a successful dps check. If I try to sub in equilibrium for one of the skills, I have to drop either my 20% crit, my mage guild skill which is buffing every other skill by 20%, my filler spam (biting jabs) or my single click highest dps skill (vamp bane… clocking in at just shy of 700 dmg a click non crit with a full dot application). Dropping any of these skills also results in dps plummeting to an average of around 5-600.

Templars need a PASSIVE magicka recovery/management skill. We also need some sort of dps passive synergy to make our skills hit a bit harder.. something in the lines of a 150-200 dps upgrade from where we currently sit.
Our hard hitter with dot component, the vamp bane/reflective light line should be buffed roughly 20%. Biting jabs is fine as a filler. The aedric spear dps passives as well as the dawn’s wrath dps passives need to apply to ALL attacks, not just attacks of their line. Such synergy would allow us to have competitive dps boosting passives that rival the damage synergies of other classes and would probably be enough of a buff to net us the 150-200 dps we’re short right now on full burn while a magicka recovery passive would make our burn dps somewhat sustainable.

Finally, Templars lack a massive utility buff on the scale of sorc negate. While this is hardly game breaking and not a big issue, it would be nice if future game mechanics incorporated more in terms of debuff mechanics as opposed to exclusively making ground aoe the mechanic of choice in pve. This would allow us to be desirable for our aoe cleanse field, which currently is not exactly meeting its potential since most status debuffs are utterly trivial at the moment.

Nickdorlandb16_ESO · June 2014

Wargasmo wrote: »

I’ll deal with Templar for you since that’s the other class I have extensive experience with. The Templar experience is divided into two facets: healing and dps (I wont discuss tanking since I think tanking as a whole in this game is poorly designed, mind numbingly easy and equally boring regardless of the class you play). Basically, just be the tank if you want to raid lead... as the effort it takes will leave you plenty of attention to direct at what the rest of the raid is doing and what's going on in the encounter.

So lets deal with the upside first: healing. Healing feels incredibly powerful as a Templar. Despite most groups bringing 2-3 healers, it is my impression that most fights (except for the ones that split the group up) are solo healable and easily so. I feel that the Templar exclusive right to the 3 target burst heal while still retaining the utility, ultimate gen, and efficiency of resto staff line skills makes the Templar the defacto healer in trails. While not so much an issue in class balance as healers only take up 1-3 spots in a 12 man raid, I think the power of Templar heals (and resto staff heals also… just heals in general) trivializes the role.

Basically, anything that is designed to be survived is mind numbingly easy to heal. Anything else, (aka raid wipe abilities like Hel Ra warrior 30% bright light aoe spam or AA wispmother channel bomb with multiple adds up) kills the group without sufficient ultimate cooldowns anyway, and as such are not exactly the purvue of the healer anymore. I say this because the cooldown of choice seems to be siege shield, a skill not exclusive to the resto staff or Templar healing tree. Other DR shields and buffs, such as circle, bone shield, dk banner, and personal skills such as annulment are also largely independent of the actual “healing” experience.

Stacking CD’s for large boss abilities is fine and I like how skills synergize with each other to create this effect. I think, however, that the game would be more interesting if healing was more difficult in other stages of the game. Currently, except for certain periods of heavy boss burst damage on the raid, I spend most of my healing time actually serving the role as a really bad dps that occasionally throws a heal at people who are bad at the game and take damage. I’d rather be frantically trying to keep people alive who are doing their jobs and already mitigating what damage they can via good play.
The frequency of mob attacks can be increased to put more strain on the healer. The biggest problem with healing is that… no one takes damage. Also, encounters could put artificial strain on healers by introducing constant raidwide dots or otherwise unavoidable aoe pulses that have to be healed through. I also wouldn’t mind if the cost of resto staff and Templar heals were increased by about 10%... so there would actually be a decision on whether to toss that extra power of the light out or channel a heavy attack to get some mana back when there is a lul in healing. As it stands, between a warlock 3 pc bonus, capped magicka regen, and the occasional heavy attack, resource management is a nonissue for us happygolucky healers, who can keep hots rolling on the raid, burst heal ppl who get low, AND STILL FIND TIME TO DPS half of the time. I’d like to see healing difficulty upped to a point where your average healer in a trial would be unable to solo heal anymore and 3-4 healers would become the norm rather than the current 1-2.

On to Templar DPS. In a word, Templar dps is abysmal. If I set up for 2 class damage skills (biting jabs … which was finally fixed yesterday and vamp bane/reflective light), power of the light, a mage guild skill to keep power of the guild rolling (usually volcanic rune), and magelight for crit I can output maybe 800 dps for about 40 secs. To obtain this output I’ve macro’ed not only light attack animation cancel weaving but also instant cast one click ground aoe for my volcanic rune. I have stacked max crit for my class. Since ulti spam via syphon is no longer possible, I have been unable to break 900 dps on a one mana bar one potion burn (I could do about 1k with syphon cheese). I’m fairly certain this is the utmost hard cap performance for my class and would not be possible without heavy reliance on third party macros.

However, even this level of dps is unsustainable for lack of a magicka resource management tool and I have to channel heavy attacks with a resto staff after my initial burn, which lowers subsequent dps to an average of an abysmal 5-600, well below the cutoff for a successful dps check. If I try to sub in equilibrium for one of the skills, I have to drop either my 20% crit, my mage guild skill which is buffing every other skill by 20%, my filler spam (biting jabs) or my single click highest dps skill (vamp bane… clocking in at just shy of 700 dmg a click non crit with a full dot application). Dropping any of these skills also results in dps plummeting to an average of around 5-600.

Templars need a PASSIVE magicka recovery/management skill. We also need some sort of dps passive synergy to make our skills hit a bit harder.. something in the lines of a 150-200 dps upgrade from where we currently sit.
Our hard hitter with dot component, the vamp bane/reflective light line should be buffed roughly 20%. Biting jabs is fine as a filler. The aedric spear dps passives as well as the dawn’s wrath dps passives need to apply to ALL attacks, not just attacks of their line. Such synergy would allow us to have competitive dps boosting passives that rival the damage synergies of other classes and would probably be enough of a buff to net us the 150-200 dps we’re short right now on full burn while a magicka recovery passive would make our burn dps somewhat sustainable.

Finally, Templars lack a massive utility buff on the scale of sorc negate. While this is hardly game breaking and not a big issue, it would be nice if future game mechanics incorporated more in terms of debuff mechanics as opposed to exclusively making ground aoe the mechanic of choice in pve. This would allow us to be desirable for our aoe cleanse field, which currently is not exactly meeting its potential since most status debuffs are utterly trivial at the moment.

While i almost 100% agree with you, i got to correct you.. 1th off i dont think you can solo heal the second boss in Archives.. Unless your group makes it really easy, remember this.. That if you dont have to heal a lot, your party does it rly good.. and it does not say healing is EASY, in fact.. Your group makes it easy..

In PvP Templars are the best healers for sure, 1 thing we at least shine in.. Thank god, PvE for fast dps/heals, sorcerers might be better ( altough biting jabs fixed, might fixed this )

And about your buff utility, it might be good to change purify to a instant cleanse of debuffs etc.. like it does on us ( Prolly OP ) im just saying somthing..

Instead i would like to see Nova ultimate cost to be a bit to the equality of standart of might.. Since they are quite alike..

Also i would be very happy if Darkflare would have less casting time ( 1.5 to 1.2/1.1 or somthing )

These last suggestions, means one of them.. not all three.. But one of these changes would rly lvl things out i think.. Pick one :P

To the OP, i think you got it wrong, you want to change almost whole the class, while some simple tweaks like today would make it more balanced..

Wargasmo · June 2014

Ya I forgot about dark flare. IMO it should just be instant cast and have damage reduced by 50 (meaning it should be the filler, but vamp bane should be the button of choice if the dot falls off the boss). Then we would be able to sustain full ranged dps rotation and throw out biting jabs.

But as to second boss of AA, it's easy to solo heal. You just need negates and stack the group on a siege shield with circle and constant banner up. Sit there mindlessly spamming healing springs on the group for free because of the magicka return and you can farm ultimate for pound in about 15 sec. If you need to farm ulti faster roll a few rapid regens out between healing springs. Ulti whenever the boss pounds, not that he does much damage anymore after siege shield and through all the dmg reduction cd's you should have running.

ArRashid · June 2014

This is exactly what I'm talking about - underperforming classes (aka every class that struggles to deal with VR mob packs while solo leveling) should be buffed / reworked (you guys need to provide IDEAS), instead of blindly nerfing the class for performing better than them (which I still somehow can't achieve, I'm VR2 so far and I have about 250 (350 with flag) single target and 800 (1100+ with flag) AoE dps), when I have someone ELSE to tank and I can focus on dealing damage instead of running around and holding block (so I don't get 2-hit to death).

Yes, I'm not using the minmax build, but I'm not an elitist (which so far mostly means exploiter), I play what I enjoy, instead of playing in a way that makes other classes pale in comparison so badly that they rage on forums for weeks afterwards.

I've posted suggestions of how to improve lackluster spells so we are not all "forced" into one build, just because using "those other spells" is a huge waste of potential (and in case of Inferno, even most likely kills you). More variety means less people on the same build.

Natjur · June 2014

Balance in this game is easy
Remove all classes except DK and Sorcs
Remove medium armor
Remove all weapon except Staffs and Sword/Board

Now its balanced

Now you just have range (staff, light armor Sorcs and DK) and melee (DK, heavy with sword and board)

Post V1 (more so V10+) The templars and NB work out they rolled the wrong class and restart (unless they have a group that carry's them)
No one post V10 wears medium armor and most tanks don't wear\need heavy armor but still you may want at least 2 slots heavy to make tanking easier

Bhakura · June 2014

Nerf everything to 1 damage single target hitting once
there balance
Didnt need all that text.

captain_awesome · June 2014

@ArRashid‌

I think you need to go down to a more basic level with regards to skills and abilities. The current method of balancing classes by nerfing/buffing a skill is affecting ALL classes. I suggest having different values for each class.

Lets take the dual wield skill "Blood Craze" as an example. Currently it is a two hit attack for physical damage, affected target also bleeds for 9 seconds.

This is the same for all classes. If you nerf or buff this skill you change it for all classes.

IMO you should have a different values and/or different effects for each class. This would allow the developers to fully control the interactions at a fundamental level each ability has with the class specific skills.

And lets be realistic, its the interactions with class specific skills which are the main problem with balance at the moment. Breaking it down further for balance would help massively for pve and pvp.

You could buff medium armour for NBs and not the other 2 classes. You can change the passives for light armour on the DK's, you can increase the weapon damage for different classes - you have many more options if you balance at this level.

It's the only way forward for this game.

ArRashid · June 2014

Nightblade

Assassination

Death Stroke
- damage is too low even when spending 1000 ultimate instead of 50.
[increase maximum damage to be equal to Soul Assault's]

Assassin's Blade
- currently doing some damage only on low HP targets
- bugs out way too often - spends magicka and shows an animation, but deals no damage at all
- damage is based on magicka and spell power, which honestly makes no sense for a class based around weapons
[needs a fix for mechanics. Balancing would require this ability to scale ONLY with weapon damage/power (higher coefficient), and nothing else]

Teleport Strike
- same buggy mechanics as Assassin's Blade - magicka lost, animation played, but you aren't even teleported to target
- damage is based on magicka and spell power, which honestly makes no sense for a class based around weapons
[needs a fix for mechanics. Balancing would require this ability to scale ONLY with weapon damage/power (higher coefficient), and nothing else]
morph: Lotus Fan
- deals practically zero damage. As this is practically the only NB's AoE, it's really bad.
[increase damage of this morph by 100%. (that will still make it deal less single target damage than Teleport Strike and way less than Ambush, but it will make it usable)]

Blur
- one of the few abilities that have a potential to make Nighblade a solid melee fighter (aka without dying after 3 hits in VR, since NB is not a caster who can cast all spells while holding block, but a fighter who needs to swing his weapon)
- lackluster effect, to be worth a slot, it needs to be substantially increased
[increase Dodge percentage from 15% to 30%]
morph: Mirage
[the chance to set enemy you've just dodged attack from off-balance should be increased to 100%]
morph: Double Take
[bonus dodge chance for first 2 seconds should be doubled as well OR make it last 4-6 seconds instead]

Mark Target
- absolutely horrible spell, not worth casting in PvP (armor set to just 800) or PvE (you WILL die sooner than the enemy if you use it)
- this was supposed to be "you're going down next" focus for increased single target damage, instead it's a life hazard without any significant damage boost
[instead of the armor/resist dance, increase the damage target takes FROM YOU by 20%. 30% with Reaper's Mark morph. To balance it, reduce the healforkill percentage to 15/25% from 40/60%]

Haste
- is bugged and doesn't provide attack speed for like half weapons
[needs a fix]
morph: Focused Attacks
- makes no sense, most NBs are stamina regen capped, and this just overcharges a little (no visible effect)
[instead of providing combat stamina regeneration, make it regenerate % max stamina per weapon attack (3% for light, 5% for heavy]
morph: Incapacitate
- makes no sense. If it was Xth HIT (by anything), it would be usable at least for PvP, but who the heck uses that many weapon attacks on a single mob/player?
[make EVERY source of damage count OR reduce the number of weapon attacks needed]

Master Assassin
- so far, the first bonus did NOTHING, as no assassination ability was scaling with Weapon Damage anyway. However, I've proposed a change in scaling already in this post.
[make Assassination abilities scale with Weapon Damage AND change the condition from "When using Assassination abilities" to "With Assassination ability slotted"]

Pressure Points
- currently bugged, providing 3% crit for first assassination ability, but only 0.3% for each ability afterwards (resulting in having 3-4% out of this passive only, instead of up to 18%)
[in dire need of fix]

Shadow

Shadow Cloak
- bugs out very often, may end up with 3 different bugs:
- either you disappear and lose magicka, but mobs still attack you, or you just lose magicka, perform animation of "disappearing", but you still stay visible and get beaten. I was told there is a third bug now (to confuse the hell out of NBs completely), that drains your magicka, leaves you visible, but mobs can't seem to notice you.
[fix the ability ASAP]

Veiled Strike
- another wth ability that scales with magicka, spell power and uses weapon critical. In dire need of a rework to scaling, same as Assassin's blade and Teleport Strike, I recommend it to scale with only weapon damage/power, which would allow it to do damage no matter if you are a caster or a fighter.
[needs a fix for mechanics. Balancing would require this ability to scale ONLY with weapon damage/power (higher coefficient), and nothing else]
morph: Surprise Attack
- while reduction to armor is nice on paper, there are virtually no mobs with armor high enough for it to make a difference.
[instead of reducing armor, change the animation to dagger/shuriken/whatever throw, and increase range to 28m (to allow it to be used with bow, not just melee weapons)]

Path of Darkness
- the damage of this skill remains PATHETIC even after buff. What exactly is 40 dmg/tick on mobs with 3000+ HP?
[increase damage by 100%]

Aspect of Terror
- I don't know a single person who would use this ability. Probably because fearing 2 targets for 4 seconds isn't worth wasting over half your magicka pool for
[significantly reduce magicka cost]

Summon Shade
- while it looks cool, it doesn't appear to be doing anything but making the screen more crowded.
[make shade cast weaker versions of your abilities OR increase damage of the shade AND/OR make shades taunt enemies]

Siphoning

Cripple
- is supposed to be Nighblade's ONLY class DoT, but it's terribly weak and very magicka-hungry
[increase damage AND reduce cost.... OR make it affect up to 3 enemies in 3m radius of main target]

Siphoning Strikes
- the crippling reduction of weapon and spell damage has horrible effect on NB's dps. It's already a toggle, wasting a slot (or 2) on a bar(s), gimping you further is just mean
[change the debuff to "Reduces max magicka, health and stamina by 10-5% while active", that would be bearable]

Drain Power
- while a good skill (at least for a healer NB), it feels like the damage is not even visible
[somewhat increase the damage]

captain_awesome · June 2014

Strange that you don't reply you just monologue.

ArRashid · June 2014

@captain_awesome‌ that's just because I don't want to spam the topic by multiple posts. Also, I do not believe that making every other ability behave differently for each class is a right way to do something. The root of our problems are CLASSES, not the things we can all choose. Sure, they need adjusting (respectively at least stamina weapons direly need buffs - but I'll get to that eventually), but not for each class differently. That would only create chaos and more imbalance.

I (for now) just provide suggestions of how to increase viability of some underused (and honestly, BAD) skills so far. NB however needs more care than DK I've covered before (because he is kind of broken as he is), and I don't have enough time to write it all down, as I'm in the middle of finals (damn June)

captain_awesome · June 2014

It would not create chaos. It would do the absolute opposite.
A few charts here on the website with figures and correct descriptions and we would be good to go.

It would enable balance and the ability to fine tune without disrupting the other classes. It would enable proper balancing with the class specific skills.
It would enable easy balance when they add new classes with ZERO disruption to the other classes.

The current system where you adjust a non class specific skill, it unnecessarily affects all classes - there is no point in that when your goal is simply a small adjustment in the balance of a non class specific skill and/or its interaction with a class specific skill.

The current system is very bad, it's illogical and cumbersome. Your ideas have some merit but the base system itself is not good.

A new system is needed for competitive balance, my suggestion would be easy to implement, It's the only way forward imo.

ArRashid · June 2014

*Nightblade post updated

Do you know what would happen if shared abilities behaved differently for classes? ALL the people would be here on forum, whining about some class having more damage with the same skill than the other.

Not to mention that if shared skill lines behaved differently, it would mean TONS AND TONS of new bugs waiting to be fixed, and being broken again in every other patch.

The classes are here to provide some sort of diversity. The shared abilities are here to reduce the amount of diversity to some extend. If you take shared skills away and replace them by class-specific effects, all this "each class can be any role" will go sniff gilliflowers from bellow $:\$ That's what I've been trying to say.

Schallen · June 2014

ZOS: "Maybe if we nerf everything repeatedly and buff the DKs, the game will balance itself out. "

Everyone at ZOS: "... YES."

Therium104 · June 2014

Wargasmo wrote: »

Ya I forgot about dark flare. IMO it should just be instant cast and have damage reduced by 50 (meaning it should be the filler, but vamp bane should be the button of choice if the dot falls off the boss). Then we would be able to sustain full ranged dps rotation and throw out biting jabs.

But as to second boss of AA, it's easy to solo heal. You just need negates and stack the group on a siege shield with circle and constant banner up. Sit there mindlessly spamming healing springs on the group for free because of the magicka return and you can farm ultimate for pound in about 15 sec. If you need to farm ulti faster roll a few rapid regens out between healing springs. Ulti whenever the boss pounds, not that he does much damage anymore after siege shield and through all the dmg reduction cd's you should have running.

How can Templars be the best healers...... but also have you whine about dps. You have a very biased and selfish viewpoint on balance.

So best healer and dps right? Don't comment on balance.

Therium104 · June 2014

Schallen wrote: »

ZOS: "Maybe if we nerf everything repeatedly and buff the DKs, the game will balance itself out. "

Everyone at ZOS: "... YES."

DK are no where near as OP as you special kids make them sound. It is ridiculous. The game is a challenge for all players. The fact is no amount of buffing or nerfing another class is going to make you a good player. In fact, I believe DK is not OP at all at this point. You just don't play the class.

How can ZOS even pay attention to this garbage. Everyone thinks the class they do not play is overpowered and their class requires buffs. This is almost without fail. What is even the point.

Therium104 · June 2014

Schallen wrote: »

ZOS: "Maybe if we nerf everything repeatedly and buff the DKs, the game will balance itself out. "

Everyone at ZOS: "... YES."

DK are no where near as OP as you special kids make them sound. It is ridiculous. The game is a challenge for all players. The fact is no amount of buffing or nerfing another class is going to make you a good player. In fact, I believe DK is not OP at all at this point. You just don't play the class so want it changed because no stake in it.

How can ZOS even pay attention to this garbage. Everyone thinks the class they do not play is overpowered and their class requires buffs. This is almost without fail. What is even the point.

ArRashid · June 2014

Like I said..

ArRashid wrote: »

No amounts of nerfs to the Dragonknight/Staff will make it ANY EASIER for OTHERS to solo VR quests. It won't fix NB's arsenal, it won't buff templar, it won't do ANYTHING. It will just make DK have the same issues as these broken classes do. Nerfing is not a solution to anything, it's just messing up class out of spite.[/i]

Two Handed

- ain't it bothering the Devs that the same skill used by VR mobs deals about 2-2.5x more damage than when used by a player? gosh..
- heavy attack damage needs to be increased. Even dual wield's heavy attack deals about 160% of 2hander's damage, because it hits only for slightly less, while hitting TWICE (at a bare minimum, I've seen 3-4 hit heavy attacks as well)

Cleave
- as the only AoE skill of the line, it should be worth using - but it isn't
- every mob in game has more damage on his cleave than player
[remove the DoT component and stick all that extra damage into instant damage]
morph: Brawler
- absorb shields in this game are ENTIRELY useless, as they are currently being calculated BEFORE armor/resistance/block, and so take 100% of every damage taken, even though block
[instead of a shield, give the user 40-50% chance to dodge for 2 seconds]

Critical Charge
- the "actual base damage" is so low, that the "guaranteed crit" of this ability equals to the tooltip value (which is kind of low)
[fix needed]
morph: Stampede
- immobilize after a charge is VERY weak effect, even for PvP. In PvE it makes no sense at all, since mobs don't actually run away (except very rare cases of archer running out when you engage melees)
[change immobilize to small area knockdown (1-2m radius)]

Uppercut
- "cool" ability on low level changes to life hazard in later levels (= bigger packs), because being locked out of your skills for whole second can (and is) deadly.
[instead of 1s cast time, make it a "buff" that increases damage of your next heavy attack and add knockback+stun to it]

Reverse Slash
- 2h line doesn't have a single "spammable" (read: filler) ability, because this ability needs extremely low HP target to do any damage
[substantially increase basic damage, reduce the bonus damage percentage to produce roughly the same amount of damage on low-hp targets as it does now]

Momentum
- while a good skill (more or less), the caps of weapon damage are very low as it is, and using just one puts you often to the cap (for example Surge, Molten Weapons).
- both morphs are totally lackluster and needs a total rework (remove snare at a cost of several % of weapon damage? heals after 23 seconds? wtf)
[change bonus weapon damage to flat bonus damage that ignores cap) AND rework both morphs]

Heavy Weapons
- the bleed effect from axes is not doing any damage as it is, because it's just refreshing itself over and over
[make the bleeds stack (aka applying new DoT adds remaining damage to the new DoT and calculates new DoT tick amount) OR at least make it deal it's damage way faster - perhaps the same total damage, but ticking every 0.5 sec for 2 sec]

Battle Rush
- most people using 2handers already have stamina regen capped, this just gets wasted trying to overcharge a stat
[change it from buff to stamina regen to flat (for example 7.5/15%) max stamina return]

ArRashid · June 2014

Bow

Poison Arrow
- while it's nice to have a DoT, it's nicer NOT to have DoT in ESO, because they are terribly weak. All of them.
[instead of DoT, add it's damage to the instant damage and make the skill deal poison school damage]

Volley
- this skill is just weird. I mean, when used by your character, it deals (on VR2) about what? 6x 42 dmg, which is about 252 in 3 seconds... now used by VR2 MOB, it deals 1000 dmg over 3 seconds. Let that sink a little. Player archer is on average 4 times weaker than any NPC archer. Practically the same thing happens with everything else, really, but those other combat styles are reasonably quick to counter that. Archery is SLOOOOOOOOOW. Your average attack takes 3 seconds, while caster can weave 3-4 spells in that interval..
[double the damage of Volley and it's morphs. Currently it's one of the weakest AoEs in the game (if not THE weakest)]

Snipe
- while the idea of a charged attack is good, since you have to be at the max bow range to even use this spell that takes away everything but movement control of your character, it's pathetic
[reduce the minimum range to 10m (aka to "reasonable" amount) AND make attack speed % reduce the cast time (aka with 20% bAS the cast time would be 2.4 seconds. That should make it usable in PvE environment. Not every time, since some boss platforms don't even have 10m radius, but sill better than before]

Long Shots
- the root of most archer's trouble. You don't deal effective damage unless you stand at the edge of your range, which (even in cases where the area you're in is big enough) makes healer run around like crazy trying to reach you, because for some reason it seemed wise to make most healing spells virtually melee...
[Rework: Bow attack deals 15% more damage. 6 seconds ICD (first shot on the enemies will do more damage, then goes on cooldown, after 6 seconds, your next shot will be empowered. And so on).]

Wargasmo · June 2014

dude, I hate to break it to you but I don't think anyone is interested in studying class and skill balance with someone who is trying to argue for a buff to DK abilities. Might as well save yourself the time and effort. But lemme try to help you understand again.

NB's and Templars don't need buffs to finish solo content and hit VR 12. Every VR 12 NB and Templar is pretty good testament to this. Leveling was easy. Regardless of class. It's not the issue. DK's need a nerf because they 1) they so outperform other classes that it makes it difficult for other classes to fill obtain DPS roles in decent trial groups who are interested in efficient setups and 2) they outperform the tuning of content by so much that stacking them trivializes encounters, hence putting them on farm far earlier than ZOS anticipated, giving them less time to put out the next wave of PvE content before players get bored and decide to give Wildstar a try. Or EQnext. Or the next WoW expac comes out and their guild starts raiding again. Or they become so integrated into society that they no longer have time to dedicate to MMO's. Or they get married, have a kid, and take an arrow to the knee.

That's the problem. DK performance is hurting the game as a whole because it's killing the natural pace of progression that was supposed to keep us busy and is failing as well as alienating everyone who doesn't play a dk from the game. Some classes may need a buff, but it's more important that they get a nerf... and a sizable one.

ArRashid · June 2014

SERIOUSLY, this again?

Average DK is not any better than average sorcerer or average templar. That DKs have elitists with minmaxing builds who outperform everyone else? That happens in EVERY game. They are just not attracted to other classes because they SUCK and you guys will rather walk on hands than admit they need fixing.

Or does it actually offends players that I'm offering solutions instead of screaming "Nerf class X"?
DK was nerfed in every single patch from the early access till now. If you still think he's THAT much better, go get your head checked. Don't think a whole class is the reason for a couple of experts outperforming everyone else by EXPLOITING various bugs (animation canceling and such), which is NOT DONE by majority of players, that are just pissed off when the whole class gets nuked in every single patch.

How would sorcerers react if all their skills got a 20% nerf because Bolt Escape spam is too good in PvP?
How would templars react if all their skills got a 20% nerf because Biting Jabs spam was to OP? OH WAIT, they just nerfed Biting Jabs... HOW SURPRISING THAT THEY CAN ACTUALLY BALANCE A SPELL WITHOUT NERFING 10 OTHERS.. I WONDER WHY THEY'RE NOT DOING THAT WITH DK TOO?

Seriously, one more nerf and I'll have to look up some OP build myself, because what I'm using would just get me killed. It's pretty risky even now, but I guess according to whinners, there's a room for more nerfs!

As for the trials..... I've heard some interesting stories about templars changing tactics for whole boss fights with their OP spells. So don't even get me started. 11 ppl can just nuke boss because all adds kill themselves due to a single skilled templar Eclipsing them all...

Wargasmo · June 2014

Stop kidding yourself. Average DK's perform the same dps as exceptional Templars and very good sorcs/nb... about 700 dps. Decent DK's will output the same as exceptional sorcs and NB... about 1000 dps. Very good DK's outperform all other classes at about 1.3k and exceptional DK's are sitting at about 2k dps... about twice the dps of top performing players of other classes. Hell I have a very sub optimally geared DK who is still 2 lvls shy of VR12 and he can already pull 1.3k in trials without breaking a sweat while my VR 12 tricked out Templar couldn't break 1k if I sweat bullets and broke my balls trying to do it.

I'm assuming you're a dk that is performing about the same as average members of other classes. This doesn't make your class average. It just makes you very very bad at your class.

No one forced you to pick all the wrong dk morphs and not play the "good" build. No one forced you to be a 2h/bow dk when 2h/bow are underperforming. If someone asked me to build a cabinet and provided me with professional carpentry tools and fine finished wood to start with and I decided instead to chop down a palm tree with a golf club and carve the wood with a sewing needle, the resulting failure would be my fault, not the fault of my tools and materials.

DK's need to be nerfed because there ARE people who can do what the rest of us are describing with the class. It doesn't matter that YOU may not be capable of doing this. If I had my grandmother race me in a car race and I gave her a formula 1 car and used a Prius myself I'd still win... because she would crash the Formula 1 racecar and then probably die because she would stand in the fire. This doesn't mean the race was fair. It just means my grandmother, who is older than time and has Alzheimer's, dementia, and the reaction speed of a cardboard box, can't drive for crap and has no business being behind the wheel. Likewise, the fact that you find yourself in balance with other players doesn't mean your class is balanced. It likely just means that you're particularly bad at this game.

Class balance needs to be based on the highest possible performance of the class, not the lowest common denominator failing to play the class correctly.

ArRashid · June 2014

78be62f68a84116500dd40052c820fbed5ab2831658d6cd3c0836c110d35a88c.jpg

ALl you're saying is: "use the most OP build you can, or we hate you for no reason".
All, I was saying was that such builds can be taken care of WITHOUT ruining whole classs by multiplne nerfs to every damn ability in every patch and maintenance.

If you start balancing around what a few top individuals might do (given chance to exploit every bug in the game AND with full legendary gear and full legendary enchants), you may as well only hand out driver's licenses only to people who beat a race record.. It's the same logic you people are using.

I do not want to be forced to animation canceling and another exploits just because some tard thought it would be nice to nerf a class bellow the point of being usable.

And I also know that other classes are BROKEN. I HAVE A NIGHTBLADE. OUTSIDE A FEW EXOTIC BUILDS THAT *** CAN'T TAKE CARE OF A VR GROUP OF MOBS! Gets blown to smithereens when he tries to take care of the pack, because he takes 10x more damage than he can do himself (especially with bow or any melee weapon). Not to mention 100 bugs plaguing him.
I did write some suggestions on him too. But you people are probably too blind to look beyond first post. Because that's DK and you hate DKs and so you have to talk *** about them, ALL THE TIME.

NB post, 2h post and bow post got ZERO attention whole week. Only "nerf DK, because I can't do damage with my class" spam and some trolls.

edit: deleted insults not to look like a random idiot when I'm angry

ArRashid · June 2014

Destruction Staff
- main problem seems to be the relative OPness of Inferno staff compared to very weak frost and lightning staves, forcing almost all people to use flame staves.
- per my politics of nerfs being evil and gamebreaking, I'll focus on buffing/reworking frost and lightning staves:

Destructive Touch
- frost
[change the effect to a big pillar of ice emerging from the ground and impaling the enemy in place for a couple of seconds, the Clench morph then damaging and greatly slowing all enemies close to the impaled one]
- lightning
[disorient is just the weakest CC in game, seriously. Since it has no value, I propose: target is stunned for 4 seconds and imbued with such energy that he turns into tesla coil, shooting lightning at enemies near it for the duration (damage is great at start and wanes with ticks - for example 150->110->70->30)]

Wall of Elements
- frost
[instead of 60% slow (or whatever it's now), make it properly root for a duration (like bow's Bombard does)]
- lightning
[lackluster effect replaced by a synergy opportunity to deal a little damage and briefly (0.5-1s) stun targets (interrupted casts put casters off balance)]

Force Shock
- even after buffs, this ability still deals really low damage for a single-target spell, but whatever.

Weakness to Elements morph: Elemental Drain
- was hit by a nerf so hard (since it was "TOO HARD" to make it only work on 1 target and only take DoTs as 1 spell), that they (in addition to not working from DoTs) reduced the magicka return from ~100 to ~20... with spells costing 240-360 magicka, that is REALLY too weak to even consider putting on bar
[with the other nerfs in place, I really don't think that the magicka return being down by 80% is justified]

Impulse
- now this is an interesting ability and a source of many theories of how the heck it works
morph: Pulsar
- reduces max HP by 13%. While it looks nice on paper, from what I've seen, it ONLY reduces MAX HP, not CURRENT HP. So, unless you're fighting against a healer heavy team in PvP, this has no use.
- in PvE, it ONLY provides a buff to a SINGLE cast, and even that just IF 13% of mob's HP is more than Impulse's damage and IF you initiated with it.
Average mob on VR3 has 3300 HP, 13% of it is 429. IF you use Pulsar to initiate, it will deal about 203 dmg by itself, and reduce HP by 226 more (the enemy is now at "full" HP, just his HP bar is reduced by 13%.
If you don't use Pulsar to initiate (aka mob is under 87% HP), Pulsar has no additional effect that could help you even if used for the first time on said mob - unless that mob is capable of healing to full HP and therefore heals to 13% less hp.
[does it still seem OP to you? I think not]
morph: Elemental Ring
- another ability that is ruined by current DoT mechanics. Since DoTs don't "add up" (like let's say some in WoW do - for example Ignite - a passive DoT from fire spells).
- you DO NOT simply use Elemental Ring ONCE. Every one of us uses at least 2-4 casts per pack of mobs, and the DoT doesn't even have time to tick ONCE, because it's constantly being reset and never gets to even first tick.
[this morph is equally stupid as the Pulsar one. They just both look better on paper than in reality]

Ancient Knowledge (passive)
- to my knowledge, this passive is definitely NOT working. When you're charging an attack for 3 seconds, you'd notice the 10% faster attack. I do not.
[needs a fix]

williamburr2001b14_ESO · June 2014

Wargasmo wrote: »

dude, I hate to break it to you but I don't think anyone is interested in studying class and skill balance with someone who is trying to argue for a buff to DK abilities. Might as well save yourself the time and effort. But lemme try to help you understand again.

NB's and Templars don't need buffs to finish solo content and hit VR 12. Every VR 12 NB and Templar is pretty good testament to this.

Bro, do you even talk to players? Every NB and Temp I know stopped PVE content and went Craglorn farming to hit V12, because that's the only way they could do ti.

Or they quit. A lot of people quit. A lot of lot of people quit. If v12's illustrate your point, people who've quit, (and there are less than 100k subscribers of the 5million that bought the game) argue against your point.

Personally I am a v12 Templar, and I stopped quest content around vr7. I'm not bad. I can math and forum and theorcraft with the best of 'em. It's just a completely painful process. You can't expect ever 3-pull to play like Dark Souls and expect people are going to just accept that and have fun and keep playing your game.

ArRashid · June 2014

Yeah. Lately I've seen a "true" NB (dagger DW khajiit in medium armor) questing in the same area as me. That was the first NB I've seen above VR2 for weeks.
He said he can manage, but it's REALLY painful and slow to be able to kill even a pack of 3. It takes A LOT of sneaking, stealthing, Ambushing and Surprise attacking.

Sneak->Ambush->heavy->Surprise Attack
->Shadowy Disguise->Ambush->heavy->Surprise Attack
->Shadowy Disguise->Ambush->heavy ->Surprise Attack
Then rest while you wait for HP, magicka and stamina to regen (Siphoning Strikes makes him unable to kill anyone so he doesn't use that). As NB has virtually no CC or AoE, this is the only tactics left. Painfully slow, and one mistake costs you your life, because being in medium armor means you don't reach spell resist or armor cap (those caps at 25%, so even at caps you still take helluva lot damage as VR mobs hit for 3-5x more than players) - you take less damage just for the 4 seconds after jumping out of stealth.

NB and Templar direly need some reworks and buffs.
Sorcerers could use a tiny bit cheaper spells.
Nerfing Dragonknights so that they won't be able to solo quest in VR is NOT a solution.

Soloeus · June 2014

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/110262/balance-observations-requests-the-sorcerer#latest

Unaware of this thread, I posted a thread for my feedback and balance requests for Sorcerers.

Misunderstood because we are a strong class but not for the reasons you think. Many of our abilities are garbage and if you slot them you are weaker for it, and many of them have no real use value.

Instead, we usually have about 3 things we spam over and over. My thread looks at some of the trash abilities and proposes solutions.

Natjur · June 2014

I have a V12 Templar, V12 Sorc and V12 DK.
I only play the sorc now as the templar is not wanted or needed and the DK is no longer fun.

The Sorc, I can tank, dps or heal vet dungeons and still have fun doing it.
I have read lots of theses 'balance' threads, and even tho I have 3 of the 4 classes maxed, I can't see anyway to balance them.

Each has their own issues and I think the problem is bigger then just abjusting a few skills/morphs.

The Sorc class appears well designed, with lots of synchronizes and can do any role.

The Templar class was designed to have heavy mana costs and no mana recovery skills to stop them from healing forever, but that design just does not work. They have no 'across' skill line synchronizes.

The DK was designed to be the 'tank' and have high dps by getting in there at melee range but with range being so much better then melee, and stamina a 'broken' resource, again it does not work and the more they balance it, the least fun they are to play. Forced to be a DK in light armor and a staff..... its just takes the fun away.

So now, 'in my view' sorcs are the only fun one out of the three to play.

captain_awesome · June 2014

The entire skill system needs a 100% rebuild. It just does not work.

ArRashid · June 2014

captain_awesome wrote: »

The entire skill system needs a 100% rebuild. It just does not work.

They can't rebuild it from scratch. That would require AT LEAST another year.. changing a few numbers on some spells could do wonders however, and it should be pretty easy to do too.