PTS Combat Test - Feedback Thread

phoenixkungfu · March 2020

Ok I Love the changes. I do have so concerns. My first concern is in pvp. In pvp the lightning staff heavyattack build is a hard counter to roll dogde builds.. aka nightblades. So if the last tick can be dodge roll where is the middle ground? PLEASE CONSIDER heavy attack can anti stealth cloak. This change make sense because your locked into a direct attack.

phoenixkungfu · March 2020

My next concern is off balance and purge/ cleanse. If heavy attack/off balance last tick can now be dogde roll. This is a universal counter gameplay. I honestly like this. However purge/cleanse remove heavy attack. Please change this as the universal counter is to roll dogde the last tick/ block. This is fair gameplay that make sense because you are locked into a direct attack. Therefore it doesn't make sense to purge/cleanse my direct damage I'm doing.?

SidraWillowsky · March 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!
What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?

Approximately how long did you test these changes?

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

1. Target dummy, both 6 mil and 21 mil. Tested on a magwarden (main on live) and magplar.
2. Probably two hours on the magwarden and 30 min on the magplar
3. I didn't test HAs, but LAs didn't seem to do much. I still had no problem sustaining on the 21 mil and could barely sustain on a 6 mil. If they're returning resources (I kind of doubt that it's working properly), they're not returning enough to justify a 78% nerf.
4. Worse It's terrible.
5. Nothing. I've not ever found Off-Balance to do a damn thing to be honest.
6. As I mentioned above, my sustain felt the same on the 6 mil (crap) and about the same on the 21 mil (zero issues)
7. High APM. YES I feel penalized... I worked HARD to get where I am. I know it's just a video game but I find it highly rewarding to see my efforts paid off when my DPS goes up, and I enjoy working on LA weaving. You're going to listen to people whining -95% of whom don't have good DPS because they can't be arsed to practice- and bring me down to their level?!?!? What kind of logic is that? Why not raise the floor and keep the ceiling where it is? I am fine with it being easier for people to pull higher DPS numbers without having to LA weave, but what kind of backwards logic is it to decide that EVERYONE needs to have crap DPS now?!

ZOS, this is awful, and it's going to screw magicka DDs way worse than it will stam DDs since our vMA weapon centers around light attacks. Even WITH the vMA staff, my light attacks on the 21 mil were hitting below 8k- that's a solid 50% decrease from live.

On 6 mil I'm down to 42/43k from 50k.
On the 21 mil I'm down to 66k from 84k.

I'm already kind of bored of the game so if this goes live, I'm out (and yeah, someone can have my stuff).

concegual · March 2020

Why change something that works fine as it is... many have worked hard tweaking rotations to get where they are and IMO those folks earned good dps. That being said whatever changes end up in the game folks will tweak that and dps will still keep rising... There are many many things in this game that need attention heavy and light attacks are not one of them.

Onefrkncrzypope · March 2020

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!
What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?

Approximately how long did you test these changes?

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

1. Target dummy, both 6 mil and 21 mil. Tested on a magwarden (main on live) and magplar.
2. Probably two hours on the magwarden and 30 min on the magplar
3. I didn't test HAs, but LAs didn't seem to do much. I still had no problem sustaining on the 21 mil and could barely sustain on a 6 mil. If they're returning resources (I kind of doubt that it's working properly), they're not returning enough to justify a 78% nerf.
4. Worse It's terrible.
5. Nothing. I've not ever found Off-Balance to do a damn thing to be honest.
6. As I mentioned above, my sustain felt the same on the 6 mil (crap) and about the same on the 21 mil (zero issues)
7. Not sure about the APM

ZOS, this is awful, and it's going to screw magicka DDs way worse than it will stam DDs since our vMA weapon centers around light attacks. Even WITH the vMA staff, my light attacks on the 21 mil were hitting below 8k- that's a solid 50% decrease from live.

On 6 mil I'm down to 42/43k from 50k.
On the 21 mil I'm down to 66k from 84k.

I'm already kind of bored of the game so if this goes live, I'm out (and yeah, someone can have my stuff).

I got that Charmin ultra. Trade for your stuff... Lol

clv · March 2020

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
Raid Dummy

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
MagDK and Stamcro. I mainly play MagDK this patch.

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
40ish mins on MagDK, 20 minutes on Stamcro.

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?
I had no issue with sustain on either class. I used non-regen magicka food on my DK and never ran out of mag; the light attack resource return was ~400 mag/sec for me.

I was able to bash weave much more than on live, on my Stamcro. Typically with only bashing for Maarselok procs on live you would run out of stam near execute and be unable to sustain whirling throughout execute. On PTS I was able to bash weave during execute.

In live setups, Heavy attacks were not buffed nearly enough to outpace a light weaving rotation in any aspect or form.

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

For reference on live my Stamcro hits 97K on dummy, my MagDK hits 95K.

From parsing with different setups and rotations to try and accommodate for more opportunities to heavy attack, I came to the conclusion that heavy weaving in any capacity was still just not worth it. The damage gained from heavy attacks certainly did not offset the loss of GCD time needed to charge the heavy. In terms of sustain it is far better than live. The difference between a heavy weave rotation and weaving normally was 68K vs 82K on my MagDK.

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?
I attempted heavy weaves during DoT uptimes, heavy weaves throughout the entire parse, and heavy weaving only during OB. none of these attempts came even close to the DPS I had from just light weaving as normal. May I ask what should happen in raid when OB procs and people have to reapply DoTs? Uptimes are prioritized in raid because there is a lack of benefit to controlling procs such as OB and because rotations are so variant that you can not feasibly line up buff timings with everyone. If the idea is to heavy weave spammables during OB, people in raid are going to just lose damage due to their rotation misaligning with the buff, with nothing they can do about it.

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?
0 times. I had no need to consciously think about restoring my resources, nor would I need to, as light weaving was still better DPS than any variant of adding heavy attacks in the rotation.

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?
Medium. I certainly feel penalized for putting effort into what will be a bare minimum DPS gain.

phoenixkungfu · March 2020

My last concern on gameplay pvp heavy attack mechanics is defense stun. It is my belief that stuns is overpreforming (in terms of defense), when opponents use stuns as a get off me mechanic prolonging fights and fast paced gameplay. If heavy attack/off balance last tick can now be dodge roll/block. Please consider making heavy attack channels grant immovable.(all channel should grant immovable). This make sense because your character is committed to a direct action and offense should be rewarded over defense. Especially during a long reaction time heavy attack channel. This is why stuns are seriously overpreforming.

wills43b14_ESO · March 2020

I sent my concerns with /feedback, but I'll outlay them here as best as possible as well and be constructive.

Positive notes:

LA weaving did feel smoother on mag? PTS felt better, but it may be a coincidence. It's hard for me to say at this point (others gave mixed reviews).

It was actually kinda fun using a 2H greatsword and dw and hitting nearly the same as an inferno (and getting more bash weaves). This is only viable if you like to bash weave though, which adds another ~40 APM on top of the 120 from LA + skill weaving. The LA dps loss was ~ 2k using this method. The 2H MIGHT actually be good on triplet fights like in vHoF where the LA dmg bounces, but bashes are also worth less here where maybe aoe spam might be better on a front bar lightning staff instead. Overall, great design for more opportunities to play how you want.

Sustain on LAs feels very nice now and allows supports to go MUCH more offensive on support sets. I approve here, but would like to have more mag dmg support sets (i.e. something that boosts magic dmg like stam has morag tong).

Negative notes:

Magicka got hit... hard. It's about a 16k dps loss (most parses use orb on the dummy now, which is sustainable; factoring orb out equates to ~ 16-17k dps loss; if you do NOT factor out orb mag has little room to scale in trials right now relative to stam). Stam got hit for about 10k, but has more potential to scale in trials (see previous parenthetical comment). The dps disparity between mag and stam has increased, yet again. Class balance also seems to have been thrown further off.

The APMs actually went up, especially for stamina on the high end. End game players "bash weave" which allows for 2-3k extra dps on live. For stam, this equates to ~6k dps now on PTS. What this means: Stamina now has a MUCH higher skill ceiling as you will need to perform 3 actions per second to maximize dps, something lower end players will not do. Additionally, since bash dps requires a lot of stam, this is directly related to your ability to LA weave, pushing the skill gap higher. This is DIRECTLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to the reasoning for these changes in the first place.

HAs are not worth more than 2 LAs + 2 spammables, meaning they won't be used. Furthermore, HAs are hitting ridiculous #s which will probably create some pretty bad balance design in PvP. Increasing HA dmg further is a bad idea for this reason and so is nerfing LA dmg or spammable damage even further.

Other negatives exist, but they are not worth mentioning right now relative to these.

My Suggestions:
Tone down the HA dmg increase, tone down the LA nerf to ~15%, and get rid of bashweaving (reduce its damage to nearly nothing). This will reduce the skill gap between high end and low end and simultaneously relieve much of the APM burden problem without causing your end game to quit. I would suggest a slight buff to skills to help compensate for this damage loss as well.

Responses to Gina:

What type of content did you test these changes in?
Target Dummy and a small amount of overland boss/dungeons

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
Magicka dps and stamina dps; I play both on live

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
4-5 hours so farm trying dw/2h on mag as well as lightning staff fb and various other things

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?
See above negative statements, but "HAs are not worth more than 2 LAs + 2 spammables, meaning they won't be used. Furthermore, HAs are hitting ridiculous #s which will probably create some pretty bad balance design in PvP. Increasing HA dmg further is a bad idea for this reason and so is nerfing LA dmg or spammable damage even further." The LA resource return is a good change imo (maybe a bit too strong right now).

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?
In PvE HAs are absolutely not worth it. However, in PvP they will likely overperform

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?
With a dynamic LA rotation I kept up the same thing generally. HA builds, even w/ OB, didn't seem very effective

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?
The resource return is GREAT. Maybe a bit too much though if you reduce the LA nerf like I suggest.

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?
Depending on the situation, I play at 200+ APM generally. On a target trial dummy you cannot get more than 180 APM, however, unless doing a full LA + bash spam off LA cooldowns without casting skills (not a great idea). 100-200 APM on a target dummy should be considered "high" APM and trials will be higher due to movement. With the new changes playing a high APM is severely penalizing as the dps loss is extreme. The medium will also be fairly penalizing. Low might get some benefit with the new changes, but they're generally the ones spamming bow LAs or just HA without any skills casts as is.

SidraWillowsky · March 2020

oops

Anethum · March 2020

If goal is to help new players - it will not simplify them playing eso.
It will make experienced players angry, that's what what we will have here as a result.
And nothing changed for new ones, that's how it will go on in reality.
To just understand a weight of such things, player should be hightly competent.
Eso is complicated system in general, this "swap" of functionality for light and heavy attacks is terrible/horrible waste of Zenimax team resourses

JumpmanLane · March 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

Nah...I'm not testing it. The fact that y'all could be sitting around the office and even think stuff like this up. The fact that you need FEEDBACK on an idea that should have been laughed at and disregarded out right means WE aint even on the same page. Do what you want to do and good luck in the future.

lRaiden · March 2020

I have lashed out before but I'd like to give some feedback as well.

Right now I think the changes are mostly idiotic and shouldn't make it to the live server. I understand you want to bridge the gap a little bit between "low apm" and "high apm" players but that's definitely not the way to do it. I do appreciate that heavy attack now deal more damage, which should be a staple to begin with.

It's mostly unfair to us who spent tons of hours practicing our rotations to try and improve ourselves and finish harder content, I think the way to go would be to buff heavy attack oriented sets seen in meme builds such as Xynode's Ez sorc, maybe a 10k difference between a meta build and the heavy attack oriented sets. I don't think it sounds too ridiculous while enabling some other players to tackle on harder content and to find a playstyle for those who have mobility issues or just can't be bothered to practice as much as others

tymojamson · March 2020

Overall, I didn't like the latest changes with combat, tho I really enjoyed the ability to restore resources with LA.
My opinion is, we need a mix of two.
We need the ability to regain resources with LA, but we don't need to devalue the damage of the light attacks.
I think it would be pretty balanced if we had an opportunity to restore the normal amount of resources after dealing 3 consecutive light attacks. 3 consecutive LA should be equal as the 1 heavy attack right now. Heavy attacks should restore resources as well, but only when you hit an off-balance opponent.

Also, I would like to point out that those latest changes ruin gameplay for hybrid users, for example, Magicka chars with stamina weapons. It is even harder for them to deal damage, and restoring resources is not that important for them. I was able to deal enough damage while having my Enpower buff on my templar, but now it's almost useless.
That is why I also think that ZOS need to reconsider the Enpower buff. Perhaps, Enpower should consider Light Attacks as Heavy Attacks, with equal stats and mechanics.

And last but not least, light attacks now don't deal damage anymore. Well, I felt that 78% decrease. I think, that you need to reduce this number up to 30-40% tops.
Anyway, will be waiting for more changes!

Ozby · March 2020

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live? Healer & Tank

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

RMerlin wrote: »

I always found it counter intuitive that heavy returned resources while light did the DPS. Changing this is a good idea, it will now be a question as to how this will be balanced out.

To the people saying it dropped their DPS while making resource management a non-issue, are you still using enchants that increase your regen? Since the weapon attacks now do more regen and less DPS, have you tried replacing those regen enchants for DPS enchants, to compensate for the change?

I.e., those mechanics changes might require some gear changes as well to adjust.

we don't use regen enchants anyway we use spell dmg/weapon dmg, fire . poison etc.

Unified_Gaming · March 2020

I have made a video to help showcase the main points and also what I think - overall I think this idea could be good if implemented well. It's not as drastic as people think.

https://youtu.be/CsfxjdLDTH0

Sahidom · March 2020

Still testing but the LA damage is low (2.5k SD, 41k+ Max. Magicka) and Fire Staff hits about 1-1.3k damage on a Robust TD.

Siphoning Attacks morphs effectively does the SAME thing as the LA changes to regain resources. The proposed changes taps into the Nightblade's niche on superior resource recovery. Now other classes will have this same advantage but their builds will work much better than, oh say Magicka Nightblades.

https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/leeching-strikes

Here is a Veteran Dungeon casual gameplay video. ALSO -> You can ADD to the mapping hole in Volenfell dungeon. You will see my character fall through the map. It shares the same issue Crypts of Heart 2 has when the boss fears the character, sending them running and ignoring terrain collisions.

https://youtu.be/oJ6kxwHAxOM

Ezhh · March 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!
What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?

Approximately how long did you test these changes?

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

1 - Dummies (mostly 3mil). Tested as mag DD with build roughly equal to my main character's live set up, but switched to more dps focus instead of the dps/sustain mix I use on live.
2 - Approx 1 hour.
3 - Didn't feel a big impact to sustain. HA feels weak, but I can't compare to live since I don't really use them.
4 - Damage was noticeably less, and overall it feels a LOT worse to me. This feeling is linked to effort/reward. If I am putting in effort, I want reward for it, and now the LA damage is tiny and I don't feel rewarded for working in those attacks.
5 - I have always found off-balance difficult to even notice.
6 - No major difference; sustain felt the same as live probably because I switched to more damage focused sets (Siroria instead of False God). I had hoped this would compensate for lost dps, but overall I felt like I had less dps even with equip changes and the same sustain. Multiple LAs for restoring resources also feels horrible to me and disrupts the whole rhythm of combat. These changes are really not enjoyable to me.
7 - I think medium. I would definitely feel penalised by these changes because I have worked hard to reach a point where I can now enter the more difficult in-game content, and doing that has felt satisfying and earned. I think the dps loss with these changes would make it much harder for me to find groups, 1 - because I may no longer meet the standard required and 2 - because there'll be fewer overall players at the level that can handle the content (not counting the elite end-game type who would not want me around anyway!). Those who are struggling to learn and progress harder content will take a massive knock from this. To compare - I enjoy the combat as it is at the moment. I can succeed without needing to worry about crazy bash-weaving (LA weaving is fine for me, bash-weaving isn't) and feel comfortable playing, whereas with these changes I think I'd need to bash weave as well to be able to do the same content and at that point I think my enjoyment will be gone.

Tarkus1 · March 2020

Lag in TESO does not allow correct weaving : weaving is suppressed. Easy !

Here is the first screeenshot of TESO 2021: most problems have been cleared !

Ozby · March 2020

Unified_Gaming wrote: »

I have made a video to help showcase the main points and also what I think - overall I think this idea could be good if implemented well. It's not as drastic as people think.

https://youtu.be/CsfxjdLDTH0

I agree with you and I do endgame content. I do not think a 16k dps decrease is a the end of the world.
However heavy attacks take far to long and I think minor adjustments would have been better than this heavy hammer approach.

ThePedge · March 2020

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
Dueling, Target Dummy

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
2 hours

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?
Yes, I experienced that they work backwards.

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?
Worse, far worse.

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?
All, works same as live but feels less rewarding.
Hitting a HA on Off-Balance already provides damage boost and stun, now it does even more.

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?
Never, slightly better than on live when I actually lose some resources.

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?
Medium excluding movement, High including movement. It's almost impossible to do 200+ just combat as your game has a built in global cooldown.

Lilly_Elessa · March 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer.

I did send feedback with /feedback in game, but that is a TERRIBLE feedback format (teeny uncomfortable box, relatively low character limit).

Target Dummies, Iron Atronach and some 6m. I plinked a couple of the little ones too, but didn't really smash on them.
- I exclusively play PvE. I am a (very salty) healer on live (I have every class except DK for healing), and occasionally DPS (magSorc, magDK, stamcrow, stamden, stamDK). I tested with DPS, I used my copied live characters (magSorc, magDK), not a "spawn everything maxed out" tester.
Couple hours. I got extremely bored after the first few rounds though.
Yes, the change to LAs/HAs was extremely noticeable. After playing around with trying to use the swapped LA/HAs, combat definitely did not "flow". I could have reconfigured my builds farther to try and make it work more, but really it just wasn't working out. It didn't feel like it was going to feel better by beating at it harder.
Worse. Absolutely entirely worse. I mean, I guess it's kinda cool if you just do a heavy attack at something and it feels like a real attack, but ... As far as that attack working functionally into the rest of your rotation? Hard pass, it just doesn't feel good.
Normal rotation. Off Balance being impactful is really more of a PvP thing...
I did actually run out of resources, despite all of the "too much resources" feedback I'm seeing (or perhaps because of them I expected it to be more), I actually found it to be far far less than resources than I was expecting. But the point is I did manage to run out. Part of it may have been holding back on potions for science. Anyways, when trying to get resources back with LAs I found the sort of 'response feedback' of trying to spam some LAs to be completely awful. It's counter intuitive, and it really felt like much less resources returned than you get on live with a HA. Which is probably due to having a mental "sit down" associated with the HA, to just let other things come back to you (passive regen, pot cd, orbs/shards cd).
- I am further concerned with these changes as a healer. The magicka returned from LAs is going to function really uncomfortably, and the risk/reward of having to take a second to HA when you have a moment for a HUGE return of magicka is much better.
Uh. Who tracks that? In my game bogged down with addons, I actually can't recall - No. Hold on. I'm actually looking through my addons now. Okay. Search done - One addon tracks a vague speed with a percentage, but there is no further information, and it doesn't even explicitly mean your APM anyways, it just ... might? So I'll take a guess here: I think high-med. A little lower (medium) as a healer, because the changes last year significantly slowed down what can even be spammed off quickly, and from THOSE changes I do feel heavily penalized (in so, so many ways). When I DPS, probably high. Not as coordinated as people who main dps, but absolutely not for lack of clicky-tappy speed. Anyways, to the rest of this question (and I'm going to swap the order); I do enjoy playing at a med-high/high rate, it is one of the things that makes this game so enjoyable to be so active. I routinely get frustrated and bored with games like FF14 that have a forced extreme low skill usage rate (sorry, I usually try to avoid naming other games, but this one in particular is a potent comparison as they have rather long cast times, cure is 1.5s and most other WHM skills are 2.5s, followed by an overwhelmingly long GCD, 2.5s). In this game I, like many players, enjoy the fast pace and consciously avoid skills with a long cast time that will slow you down, like wrecking blow and snipe. (Even before those skills are bad dps.) So do I feel penalized, based on APM, with these changes? Well, that depends on what rotations and weapons become prevalent, should these changes see live. On live, heavy attacking with melee weapons has never felt good, so if a HA stam melee build gets popular? Uh, yea, I'm going to feel grossly slowed down, and I will feel penalized for not wanting to slow down. Fire staff? Has always felt like it charges up kinda slow, and I did try that rotation on the PTS - I hated how slow it felt. Lightning staff? Tried that too, it was at least tolerable feeling since it's a channel, but the DPS was bad. Now on the flip side? When I tried to LA spam like current normal builds? I felt like the resources didn't pay off compared to the damage lost.

Rukia541 · March 2020

This feels horrible, I can safely say if these changes go through that I will be done with ESO especially with Cantha coming out.

You are killing a big part of the soul of your game, the awesome combat. Weaving works so flawlessly.. why change it? If casuals can't left click between their skills its no excuse to punish good players for learning the very basics of the game.

Instead why not add tutorials for the combat that explains weaving in detail? I love this game ZoS, don't do this please. Keep the heavy dmg and scaling weapons and expand on that to increase build variety but don't change LA dmg or weaving.

Look at WoW and how sweeping game changes completely killed it, now having to revert their path and return old abilities and mechanics. Casuals only sustain you for so long but you'll lose a LOT of vets with this change, it will introduce some really boring and less impactful+slow feeling combat.

There are more examples of MMOs dying quickly after big changes like this, all I can say is this is a warning and if you don't heed it then RIP ESO it was nice knowing you

good job on finally getting your wish scrubs, enjoy maintenance mode.

[Deleted User] · March 2020

Hello everyone,

Just a reminder, when commenting on this thread please be sure to answer the questions that were given in the opening post. All other discussions for the topic should be posted here.

Thank you for understanding.

MopeyHat · March 2020

I tested on a target dummy.
I tested magsorc DPS, same as I play on live.
I tested 1-2 hrs.
The changes were very noticeable. I tried on a template my live build, False God's/Draugrkin, seeing my Iron Atro dps go from 60kdps to 50kdps with light attack weaving. I also played with a heavy attack build using Infallible Aether or New Moon Acolyte/Knight Slayer, but did not get very good results (about 60% my usual damage), but it was at least interesting to see there might be new options.
The new paradigm, isolated, makes much more sense than what we had previously (character takes a break doing light attacks, then makes a heavy attack that actually hurts). But the new heavy attacks do not make up for the damage loss. We DEFINITELY don't need another dropoff on DPS.
I haven't learned to track Off-Balance yet, but my initial reaction is to dislike it. The uptime of Off-Balance is not intuitive on boss monsters that cannot even be stunned, and it is generally desynced from rotations. I also dislike that if I want to make a heavy attack build, I would have to waste a lot of CP on Thaumaturge to get the off-balance damage increase. I would like to see Off-Balance replaced with some other mechanic that makes sense for bosses. Maybe something like, attacking an Off-Balance enemy gives you a damage buff for the next X heavy attacks (maybe new Empower) for 10s (sort of the normal rotation time). The off-balance CP bonus or whatever replaces it should be on the Atronach.
Sustain is much much easier. I used to use a cost reduction/recovery enchant and easily swapped it out for spell damage with no problem, and even had no issue sustaining with New Moon Acolyte. I only managed to run out of resources when I experimented with using Crystal Fragments as a spammable as a bit of a joke. I could probably even sustain that with the new Elegance or something.
As I don't have a good way of measuring APM, I'm not sure, but I guess high since I have decent light attack weaving and regularly do vet hms, etc? I would say this definitely penalizes high APM DPS. I think bringing light attack damage closer to live and reducing the resource recovery would be more realistic, or increasing the damage of everything that costs resources to bring damage back in line with Live.

Cireous · March 2020

Testing on a test dummy on the PTS using a fire/resto staff. I'm super casual, but I can light attack weave fairly well simply because I have been playing this game for so long; I am a high APM player.

Looks like I am still doing more damage light attack weaving than heavy attack (weaving? --feels too clunky and slow to call that business weaving). So, I'm a little confused, heavy attacks feel like they still do less weaving damage, yet you cannot get resources from them now. Therefore, we wouldn't use heavy attacks at all in this new scenario, right?

I really felt like you nailed it when you changed heavy attacks to give resources and light attacks to do more damage. Everything just felt so much better at that point (than how it was before). Slow your roll for resources, speed up for exciting, fast paced DPS. Fun!

Right, so, I tested resto staff and it definitely feels uncomfortable light attacking for more resources with the resto staff animation being what it is. It's just so counter intuitive and it's hard to see when your light attack ends. Also, it feels redundant given that you can basically light attack on your dps staff for all the resources you need now.

I do like the idea of lessening the gap, though, but I am thinking maybe the numbers are a little off? Perhaps light attacks should not have had their numbers reduced quite as much and perhaps heavy attacks should have some sustain added back. But what do I know, I am not a numbers person. I do what feels good. So, with these changes in place, I would continue to light attack weave and apparently be rewarded with endless resources in the process.

Cool, I guess?

Why not try and equalize the play styles a little more? So which ever you choose (light or heavy attack weave), you still get a similar result with both dps and sustain. Although, I prefer just keeping things as they are.

MudcrabAttack · March 2020

What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
DPS, Stamblade and Stamina Necro

Approximately how long did you test these changes?
An hour

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage?
Yes

If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?

Light attacks restore a whole lot of resources, so much that this orc completed a 4-1/2 minute trial atronach parse with only shards and light attacks for sustain, I used max health and max stamina food, and sitting on 21,000 health and near max stamina during the whole parse:

Here's my Bosmer Stamcromancer for comparison, who needlessly had lavafoot soup for dinner and has a noticeably smaller amount of damage per second:

I tried Heavy attack weaving with a bow build on a Nightblade. I was thinking perhaps it might be similar dps to light attack weaving since a heavy attack adds two stacks of relentless focus each, but it was about 5-10% behind pure light attack weaving around spammables and dots, since the heavy attacks are still kind of slow or maybe a little too weak.

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

I really like the idea of changing things up to an extent, but the current implementation could put some races far ahead of others in PVE.

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any?

Didn't change a thing with either the Orc or Bosmer, the Orc seriously had no need for more resource regen when raid buffs were present, and the Bosmer wasn't having much luck getting better DPS from heavy attack weaving, so it was all just light attacks between skills.

Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

Not really

How often did you run out of resources during your play session?

Didn't run out

Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

Way better for the orc

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm?

I get around 120 on a Stamina Necromancer. The archer Nightblade is around 100 because I need to slow down to land light attacks, and there aren't as many things happening off global cooldown, and lethal arrow tends to be a slower spammable.

Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

I really love fast paced action

Massive_Stain · March 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

This change or proposed change is mind-blowing, when you consider the direction you told the player base you where going this year; system performance. I will tell people on console to stop playing ( not that I'll have to) because you are going to cause wrist injuries. It's already hard enough to get good with the game as is. You are literally proposing making this game play like a FPS. I don't even have words, but no, I won't test this abomination.

JusticeSouldier · March 2020

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert
Heavy attacks restoring of resourses is intuitive thing for eso.
Light attacks damage-garnish function is also intuitive thing for eso.
U created in the past beautiful system. It's an uniq and interesting part of it.
And u need to understand that such change can drastically ruin exactly PvP combat feeling.

PvE is secondary envinronment for combat mechanics because PvE in eso is fight vs dumb frosen mechanics without any AI.
Every step is programmed. Every trial, dungeon etc is always the same set of actions, again and again.
It's like series of customized target skeletons...

PvP in eso is real high end content.
Huge part of comunity never grow up to it with different reasons and that's their choice.
They or don't play pvp at all or playing it inside huge zergball groups only without any learning or creating process.
Just for feeling of teamwork or idk friendly interaction.
I'm not a judge, they like what they like.
But they are not active high end core of eso.

U need to think about PvP first.
Think about that. Please.

Nevasca · March 2020

1. Stamina DK
2. 2 hours
3. Yes I did notice, I adjusted my build accordingly to the playstyle (HA build or LA build)
4. I don't mind the direction, I actually think it's better to reward good players with sustain instead of raw DPS like on live. Numbers need to adjusted for the reasons I explain below.
5. I honestly just continued my rotation as normal.
6. I adjusted the build to never run out of resources on both cases
7. I played on both low APM and high APM playstyle. High APM felt punished and forced into even higher APMs than before to remain competitive. There's no "medium" APM which was the sweetspot for most builds (LA>Skill instead of la>skill>bash everytime)

From the early testing it seems HA are parsing a bit higher. As things are now is it is forcing LA builds into bash weaving maniacs to compensate for DPS loss, since this is the only way to remain competitive. This is pretty bad imo.

The suggestion from many people have been something similar or along the lines of:
Cut by half the resource return from LA, and bring back damage to compensate. I don't mind LA rotations doing same damage as HA, but they should never be forced into 3 actions per second (LA > Skill > Bash) to remain competitive. This also means magicka builds don't have anything to compensate the damage loss on LA builds like Stamina builds, some builds can already go blue food comfortably on live, so there's no possible gain by adjusting build.

I personally think bash weaving can be pretty cancer if you have to spam it to remain competitive, people don't mind bash weaving once in a while to proc Maarselok for example, but doing it after every skill feels really bad. Holding M1 too much actually hurts my wrists, so I will to ironically play LA builds for my wrists health.

EDIT: Adjusted my post to fit the format better.

Haroeris · March 2020

Hi @ZOS_GinaBruno ,
After testing the light/heavy attack changes on the PTS and drafting my feedback, I discovered that the /feedback option has far too short of a character limit to provide any sort of detailed feedback for the requested questions. I'm more than happy to submit it there -- do you recommend breaking it up into multiple sections, or how else? I will also summarize it here for the time being.
Also, is there a particular Impact/Category/Subcategory you'd like us to use when submitting via /feedback?
Thanks,
Haro

Overall feedback for Light and Heavy Attack changes: NOT ADVISED.

The current (live) system works remarkably well [I think the devs should be very proud of the live combat system, I'm really impressed and happy with the recent balance adjustments up to and including Harrowstorm], is intuitive, balanced, and accommodates a great range in player skill level. The proposed new (PTS) system not only makes it difficult for experienced and/or endgame players who would need to fundamentally change play styles to optimize builds, but these changes are generally counter-intuitive, will further confuse new players by complicating their resource management, and likely only widen the DPS gap that these measures sought to avoid. Not to mention countless down-stream effects for abilities and sets that are in conflict...this would cost increased effort for little/no or, more likely, negative reward. Keep the current/old system -- it's actually pretty good and balanced

Specific answers as requested:
1. Content tested: PvE DPS; Vet trial, vet dungeon, and target dummy

2. Duration: 2 hours so far, further testing may expand situational intricacies but is not expected to significantly modify conclusions.

3. Light attack resource restore: Yes, light attacks restore a lot of resources, but sustain turned effectively infinite despite being spec'ed for maximum damage with no effort for sustain, which is a severe threat to build diversity.

Heavy attack damage increase: Yes, I can now parse 30k dps by holding down the left mouse button for continuous heavy attacks and hitting no other ability (yes, I literally tested this; even with a non-optimized setup, it’s excessive).

Overall Experience: Negative for both changes, described more below.

4. Paradigm feel: This feels worse and seems inherently counter-intuitive:

Free resources from a little blip of a light attack with literally minimal energy put into it by a character makes no realistic sense -- resources take effort to collect, so magicka/stamina should be no different. Intuitively, biding my time to conserve/build up energy (no attack) shouldn't give me less resources than gently poking something with a stick (light attack). Further, it contradicts the intent of several skills and gear sets fundamentally based on light attack damage, like Elemental Weapon. Addressing this fundamental disconnect would be a new, huge can of worms that I don't think is wise to open as it would drastically alter the game's balance for several patches to come.

Heavy attacks are intrinsically too slow and boring of a play style for me, so I won’t use them, especially if they no longer return resources. However, a smaller damage increase (as implemented on PTS, it’s a bit too much) could be useful to newer players who aren't used to other combat mechanics. The removal of resource return, however, is perplexing and counter-intuitive -- a heavy attack takes time to build up energy for the attack, so it should power up and return more resources than an instantaneous little blip of a light attack. When I was a new player, I was horrible at sustaining my resources, and requiring more button clicks would have made it even harder for me to manage resources and severely impacted both my actual damage output and progression as an ESO player. I would actually recommend increasing heavy attack resource return -- I think that would benefit newer players much more, whereas experienced players can already manage their resources well and won't need to use heavy attacks (and seem to be more opposed to them too).

5. Off-Balance: No different from usual. The effect on PvE seems negligible, and many boss monsters are balance-immune anyways.

6. Resources: I had near infinite sustain in PTS tests, despite being spec'ed for maximum damage with minimal sustain, and that's simply counter-intuitive and feels...wrong. That is likely to decrease build diversity as there would no longer be the spectrum of trade-offs between resource management and damage power.

7. I normally play at a medium (~150) actions per minute rate, and enjoy that level. Personal experience in previous patches (Morrowind in particular) that disproportionately encouraged use of heavy attacks taught me that using heavy attacks feels (and is) slow, and thus makes combat less active and as a result less fun to play. Contrary to the request for feedback, too high of APM and button-mashing actually become inefficient from confusion over cooldowns, so I strongly disagree on that premise behind these changes. The challenge of a medium APM in my experience is that you need to time things just right – too fast and you miss attacks because of cooldowns, too slow and you're wasting time that could be spent doing something more, so it's a fun optimization challenge for players (and optimally is not mindless button-mashing for high APM, which I also hate but is appropriately handled on Live via cooldowns). Encouraging heavy attacks, as this proposed change would effectively do, would preferentially penalize the effectiveness of medium and high APM players, and is thus out of balance. I think the current state (Live server) with medium APM is an optimal middle ground and maintains an appropriately fast-paced and optimally fun play style.