PTS Update 30 - Feedback Thread for Classes & Abilities

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

After being introduced to the Frostbite Set this PTS, we Magicka Wardens know that some of, if not, all of our damaging Animal Companions skills need to be changed to Frost Damage from Magic Damage, The most important of which is Deep Fissure.

This is because Magic Damage just doesn't offer us much as Frost Damage, which our class passives are based towards. We gain a critical damage bonus by applying chilled which is synergistic with being minor brittle applicants. Frostbite looks like an amazing set, and yet it does not perform in this role because we just do not have access to the Frost Damage skills that we need.

Currently, most Frost Warden damage builds still use Deep Fissure and Fetcher Infection regardless of their damage type, because the damage is too good to pass up and there are no equivalently powerful skills in any other line. This means that we lose out on the additional chilled proc, and set synergy that we would otherwise get with Frostbite and a few other sets. Winter's Revenge is the only viable damaging skill in Winter's Embrace that we use in our normal rotation in PvE and while it is nice that it has 2 seperate increased chances to apply chilled, it just isn't enough because it is only one skill. There simply is no longer any reason for most of, if not, all of these skills to deal magic damage anymore.

Evidence of this can be seen from several of us in these threads: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/570473/pts-update-30-feedback-thread-for-new-item-sets

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/571106/the-frostbite-set-and-the-problems-it-faces

Bodycounter · April 2021

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I don't think I agree here but only with this statement. I certainly don't think it's the best, far from it and it should recieve some help for sure, but I'd honestly say that Dive is worse.

No doubt that Dive is a bad spammable. Problems with Stone Giant:

One quarter of it is AoE and melee
Three quarters of it is single-target and ranged
One quarter of it is a stun
One quarter of it has a cast time that drops block that happens to be your melee cast!

The visuals of the ability are really nice though. Stone Giant is awful to get into as a newer player, especially as tank, and is only worth slotting because of stagger. I agree with you that making more Warden abilities frost damage would be a really nice addition/flavour to the class.

BohnT2 · April 2021

General Balance issues

Lack of viable CCs

Over the last years many CCs have been nerfed which has reduced the number of useable and viable CCs to a low number for each spec. Most specs have access to a maximum of 2 viable CCs at best, the number of the very important offensive CCs is even lower, many specs don't have access to one of those at all.
A good CC has to combine at least two of the four following points:
-deal damage
-ignore block and dodge
-be AoE
-have useful secondary effect
While always being fully controllable by the user.

Depending on the class having access to a CC that allows to land a full combo can be overperforming, the best example was the Summerset iteration of rune cage. This is often then the case when classes can combine delayed damage to one big burst spike in a single gcd.
In those cases it has to be made sure that they have no access to a CC that has no counter.

Here's a list of bad CCs:
Flame clench ~ only damage, no secondary effect and held back by traveltime + knock back for certain classes
Mesmerize ~ no secondary effect, no damage, highly situational, no control over the CC
Turn Evil ~ no damage, no secondary effect, small delay --> less control
Fear ~ no secondary effect
Grave grasp ~ no useful secondary effect, delayed, no control
Rune cage ~ no secondary effect, delayed, no damage in pvp because people always break free (this ability can easily become overperforming if it allows to land a full sorcerer combo again)
Fear Totem ~ no control, no damage (however a useful defensive CC)
Stone giant ~ no control, easy to avoid

Casttimes on Ultimates

this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

Dots Class/universal

After the last standardization changes to Dots they have taken too much of a hit in PvP to be useful especially with procs being around that outperform Dot abilities by up to 4 times.
Additionally class dots have nothing strength wise which would set themselves apart from universal dot abilities everyone has access to.
This had a negative influence on overall class identity and balance.
Class Dots need a buff across the board in order to be more powerful than their universal counterparts while preventing that people can just stack as many dots on their bars as they want to as class dots are restricted and not widespread enough to become a big issue.
However the dot damage values which were used during the Scalebreaker Patch were too high, balanced class dots would sit right in the middle between the current damage values and the Scalebreaker damage values

Magicka and Stamina skill options

Magicka classes still lack the option to compensate for shortcomings in their class toolkits as good as their stamina counterparts.
This starts by the lack of a source of major sorcery that doesn't require a target but continues with no access to a universal execute (impulse with a fire staff is a joke) , a cheap burst ultimate (changes in the last patches have improved the situation for magicka classes with penetration and CP changes) or a good offensive CC.

Regeneration
The changes to Regeneration has heavily unbalanced big parts of PvP as it allows to easily stack healing in ball groups. Especially Radiating Regeneration is a big offender that has furthered the gap between stamina and magicka characters in ball groups.
While stamina specs always lacked access to good healing from their class abilities magicka specs had to deal with what they were given from their classes along with some help from the restoration staff skill line.

Bombard

This ability is a balance nightmare as it combines a verd powerful secondary effect in root with the counter to the counter to Roots.
The main counter of roots, outside of skills, is dodge roll, however with Bombard being an AoE therefore ignoring dodge this ability this ability directly punishes counterplay when spamming it.
This paired with its big range causes this ability to be imbalanced

Class Balance
Necromancer

the class still has a huge discrepancy between its offensive and defensive skill lines. Having access to two defensive skill lines is too much while a single offensive skill line can't satisfy all aspects of the game without having overperforming skills on this topic.
Blastbones: this ability is too cheap and deals way too much damage and is basically the only non ult offensive class ability necromancers will ever use in PvP.
Disdain Harm: this passive grants more mitigation against dots than anything else and isn't balanced with the rest of the game after the CP rework and the major/minor buff tweaks
Spirit Guardian: the mitigation offered by this ability is equal to major protection while being an unnamed buff that has 100% uptime and granting further healing
Intensive Mender: this ability offers way too much healing compared to other abilities like Cauterize or any other healing ability paired with a low cost
Restoring Tether: this ability scales way too good with weapon and spell damage resulting in absurdly high healing from an ability that costs nothing and can restore stamina on top of all that.

Many other abilities that necromancers have access to are overall too weak while the skills mentioned above are highly overtuned resulting in the class being overperforming while being badly designed at the same time and being as one-dimensional as it can get.

There is no way of balancing this properly without a rework of the whole class freeing it from the 1 Tank 1 Heal 1 damage skill line vision

Warden

Just like Necromancer this class suffers a lot from having 2 defensive focused skill lines while having only 1 offensive skill line.
Netch: this ability offers too much for a single skill slot while having no cost attached to it
Shalks: just like blastbones this ability on its own is too powerful for a single ability that only exists because the offensive toolkit of the class isn't fleshed out at all.
Shimmering shield: this ability shuts down ranged builds with very low cost while also granting a rare major buff in heroism
Dive: this ability has a way too long traveltime, which is a huge detriment in PvP while having no redeeming qualities.

This class has the same issues as Necromancer in having a few overperforming abilities that have to compensate the class for being badly designed especially offensive wise with overtuned defenses (although the Arctic blast nerf was a step in the right direction)

Sorcerer

Ball of Lightning: this ability shuts down ranged builds way too hard which results in using this ability every 3 seconds will assure you to never die to an opponent which is using ranged abilities

Dragonknight

As mentioned above Class dots have taken a huge hit in the past which has directly hurt Dragonknights, the loss was compensated with procs however those are imbalanced in a completely different way and shouldn't be used to fix the issues this class has.
Stone Giant: this ability has no idea what it wants to be which causes it to be one of the worst abilities in the whole game.
Combining all factors that make an ability weak in PvP by having casttime, traveltime and an uncontrollable CC makes this ability utterly bad.

Molten Weapons: this ability is outclassed by all other abilities that grant major sorcery or brutality which causes this ability to be one of the least used class abilities in PvP in the whole game. Even more concerning is that the buff this ability grants is basically mandatory for all specs in PvP which tells you everything you have to know about the viability of this ability.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

Bodycounter wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I don't think I agree here but only with this statement. I certainly don't think it's the best, far from it and it should recieve some help for sure, but I'd honestly say that Dive is worse.

No doubt that Dive is a bad spammable. Problems with Stone Giant:
One quarter of it is AoE and melee

Three quarters of it is single-target and ranged

One quarter of it is a stun

One quarter of it has a cast time that drops block that happens to be your melee cast!

The visuals of the ability are really nice though. Stone Giant is awful to get into as a newer player, especially as tank, and is only worth slotting because of stagger. I agree with you that making more Warden abilities frost damage would be a really nice addition/flavour to the class.

and i think that DK needs some help to it's abilities too

master_vanargand · April 2021

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

BohnT2 · April 2021

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

The counter to ultimates in the past was reading a fight and reacting proactively.
This adds depth to the game rather than dumping it down and promoting people to stall fights until numbers decide the fight

pihlaja · April 2021

PureEnvelope35 wrote: »

Arctic Wind and morphs:

So been testing quite a bit and in both PvE Tank and PvP Magden testing (no procs because I am a Pure and innocent boy.) and man this change hurts a lot.

I was personally hoping for a nerf to Arctic Blast (Because of the sheer amount of healing it put out in PvP with a hard CC) but more in the lines of scaling off of Max Magicka/Spell Damage, removing the stun or just removing the damage altogether and keeping Polar Wind a strong HP based heal for you and nearby allies...

PvE wise its definitely a painful change in regards to Polar Wind, so far not tested in any trials but recovering from hard hitting bosses such as Arkasis or that weird secret hardmode boss in Black Drake that I forgot the name of hurts sustain a lot.

I am not sure if it is something to do with the fact that is a base 20% reduction on a heal that already scales off of health but I do hope that other Wardens feel that a different approach to nerfing the heal should have been taken.

I’m very worried about the change in Polar Wind also. I understand the need to nerf “provide it all” type of skill Arctic Blast, but I’m not sure my pve warden tank will be as viable as it used to be with the nerf also in Polar Wind, but I’m unable to test this because I’m still practicing tanking and I’m not sure I can differentiate effect of the nerf and my bad tanking skills.

Ragnaroek93 · April 2021

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

I'm actually casting more on a usual Dizzy + Dawnbreaker build than on my caster in WoW. #ActionCombat #Fun #FastPacedGame

master_vanargand · April 2021

BohnT2 wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

The counter to ultimates in the past was reading a fight and reacting proactively.
This adds depth to the game rather than dumping it down and promoting people to stall fights until numbers decide the fight

I think lowered the threshold in PvP.
Not everyone is in an environment of 50 pings or less.
People in Asia and Australia will not be able to block in time without cast time of Ultimate Skills.
For fighting games, for example, Super Arts (this is like a ultimate) has time to block.

Urzigurumash · April 2021

A note on Stone Giant and Molten Armaments:

I believe the main purpose of Stone Giant is to provide a way for StamDKs to get that Ult Gen every 6 seconds without having Fragmented Shield hog up all their Mag.

I assume everything else about it was intended to be something that StamDKs slot flex skills for, to see if a combination of all of them would be useful: a gap closer or ranged skill of some sort, a single-target Direct Damage spammable, AoE Direct Damage spammable, and Stun. Problem is, it doesn't do any one of those things better than the non-class skills you find on many Stam builds in PvP; any gap closer or bow skill, D Swing, Whirlwind, and Turn Evil.

All Stone GIant needs is something better than a small damage shield and 6 seconds of Major Mending, and this would free up more Mag for either Wings, addressing some of DK's mobility issues and difficulty in handling high damage ranged builds with a sluggish melee toolkit, and/or for Molten Armaments, which could and should be a class defining skill.

It really doesn't have to be better than D Swing, Whirlwind, or Turn Evil, it just has to be better than Fragmented Shield.

I believe more DKs would turn to Molten Armaments if they could drop Frag and not lose the Ult. Maybe I'm wrong. What's good and bad about Molten Armaments is another subject which changes quite a bit based on the patch and the content. There have always been niche builds on both DKs where it's quite useful. At least for StamDK, I think it's difficult to assess the strength of Molten Armaments when many DKs simply weren't slotting it because they preferred the overall more efficient combination of Fragmented + Rally.

ajkb78 · April 2021

Bodycounter wrote: »

Are there really no buffs to Dragonknights? I have been playing Dragonknight since release and its current state is just awful outside of PvE tanking. It has reached a point where DK is the worst Healer and one of the worst DPS class in the game, their class based passives/buffs/debuffs are negligible and their sustain is bad. Almost every passive of the Dragonknight needs to be looked at because they fall short in comparison to modern design like Necromancer.

Stone Giant is still the worst spammable in the game with an awful design

It's not a spammable though, it's a buff skill. Whip is the class spammable, and it sucks that there isn't a stam or max stat morph.

Ash Cloud and its morphs are still too costly and weak

Dragon Blood has no stamina and/or maximum health morph

Green Dragon Blood heals based on percentage of missing health, so it scales off max health. Sort of. It's a decent tank heal anyway.

Reflective Scale and Inhale (and their morphs) need buffs! Both are expensive and weak

Yes, reflective scale is much worse than Warden's shimmering shield. Inhale though: I think the interrupt version is ok, it's a utility skill and useful now and again on a tank. The other morph should probably change to something more like daedric prey: cast it and filling your draconic lungs with oxygen buffs all your ardent flame abilities for 6s, and at the end you exhale a fiery blast doing AOE flame damage in a cone in front of you. If you recast too early, you lose the final damage same as with daedric prey. Cost, damage and buff potential scaled to be similar to what you get from daedric prey.

Lava Whip needs the Soul Trap treatment to be viable on Stamina and Magicka

Agreed wholeheartedly.

Inferno needs Prophecy and Savagery baseline, should get Soul Trap treatment and tick more frequently

Also molten weapons and morphs are kind of useless because everyone gets these buffs from potions anyway. Change them to a new unique damage buff (area and duration are fine) and these skills might actually see some serious use. Maybe an x% buff to all non critical damage, seeing as you seem to be trying to deter us from dealing too much crit damage these days.

ExistingRug61 · April 2021

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

The counter to ultimates in the past was reading a fight and reacting proactively.
This adds depth to the game rather than dumping it down and promoting people to stall fights until numbers decide the fight

I think lowered the threshold in PvP.
Not everyone is in an environment of 50 pings or less.
People in Asia and Australia will not be able to block in time without cast time of Ultimate Skills.
For fighting games, for example, Super Arts (this is like a ultimate) has time to block.

As someone who plays from Aus and usually has 300+ ping, I disagree with this assertion.

Having a cast time on ultimates still does not give a player with my amount of ping a chance to reactively block, as by the cast time is still likely shorter than my ping anyway (so the ability generally hits me before I see it’s animation). As such I still have to proactively block just like I did before cast times were added.

But what adding cast times did do? It greatly increased the unreliability of those ultimates when when I use them. For those that require a target (ie: death stroke and morphs), these became impossible to land on a moving target due to position desync from my lag combined with the cast time causing the ability to fail.

So yeah. In my opinion: cast times made things worse for higher ping players, as we don’t have a good enough ping to benefit from the supposed benefit when they are used against us (being able to react), but just get hit with unreliability when trying to use them ourselves. I would prefer to see them removed, as BohnT2 states.

Artorias24 · April 2021

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

The counter to ultimates in the past was reading a fight and reacting proactively.
This adds depth to the game rather than dumping it down and promoting people to stall fights until numbers decide the fight

I think lowered the threshold in PvP.
Not everyone is in an environment of 50 pings or less.
People in Asia and Australia will not be able to block in time without cast time of Ultimate Skills.
For fighting games, for example, Super Arts (this is like a ultimate) has time to block.

So you want to Balance the game for ppl with bad ping?

Urzigurumash · April 2021

ajkb78 wrote: »

Also molten weapons and morphs are kind of useless because everyone gets these buffs from potions anyway. Change them to a new unique damage buff (area and duration are fine) and these skills might actually see some serious use.

Neither Morph should lose either Major buff. This would be a loss for the potential of this skill to be a unique, class-defining ability. Both Morphs having both buff boths might not do anything to push DK closer to a meta DD spec, but it's unique. Add some other unique damage buff to Igneous Weapons instead of the increased duration, and keep the Heavy Attack buff on Molten.

I enjoy the Heavy Attack buff on many builds but I understand this isn't useful for many DKs. From a certain point of view that Heavy Attack buff on Molten Armaments is one of our sustain passives.

As for people slotting this over potions, you know, there should be more potions that are useful for increasing your offense.

BohnT2 · April 2021

CP Imbalances
Salve of Renewal

This passive has the potential to make ball groups immortal, first of all it gives a huge gcd advantage as it adds a heal to the gcd you're spamming purge. Using this CP in a ballgroup will increase its power exponentially as the heal also applies to everyone in a 8m radius.

Another issue with this is the interaction with expunge and warden's netch as both abilities have no magicka/stamina cost and expunge's health cost will be compensated by the heal you gain from Salve of Renewal.

Survival instinct & Arcane Alacrity

between other CPs and light armor reducing dodge cost those CP are a big reason as to why magsorc has become very hard to kill this patch. Combining those will result in the ability to chain dodge rolls like there's no tomorrow on a class that doesn't need this amount of additional defensive power.

Firstmep · April 2021

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

Casttimes on Ultimates
this change has resulted in a big imbalance as classes which don't have access to delayed burst abilities lose out on a lot of burst and lethality as they give the enemy a full gcd + the casttime to recover. This issue is further worsened by the lack of offensive CCs.
This single change has negatively affected PvP balance and overall fun in the game the most of all changes in the last 7 years

I like "Cast times on Ultimates".
I like watching beautiful ultimate animation.
And having time to roll dodge or block is a good game balance.
I think need Casttimes to be added to all Ultimate Skills.

The counter to ultimates in the past was reading a fight and reacting proactively.
This adds depth to the game rather than dumping it down and promoting people to stall fights until numbers decide the fight

I think lowered the threshold in PvP.
Not everyone is in an environment of 50 pings or less.
People in Asia and Australia will not be able to block in time without cast time of Ultimate Skills.
For fighting games, for example, Super Arts (this is like a ultimate) has time to block.

When I'm on the pts my lowest ping is 250, and the combat is just not playable with constant position desyncs and the like.
Having a cast time on ults won't change my reaction, Beacuse I won't see the ultimate either way before it hits me.
Just to make a counterpoint about high ping.
These cast times were added to help people react, but frankly i still treat these abilities as instant cast and try to predict them coming.

ZOS_Lunar · April 2021

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Ratzkifal · April 2021

BohnT2 wrote: »

CP Imbalances
Salve of Renewal
This passive has the potential to make ball groups immortal, first of all it gives a huge gcd advantage as it adds a heal to the gcd you're spamming purge. Using this CP in a ballgroup will increase its power exponentially as the heal also applies to everyone in a 8m radius.

Another issue with this is the interaction with expunge and warden's netch as both abilities have no magicka/stamina cost and expunge's health cost will be compensated by the heal you gain from Salve of Renewal.

[...]

Ball groups are always in motion though and Salve of Renewal is a ground based effect (it doesn't say that in the patchnotes, it does say that on PTS), so I am not sure it will actually be a problem because the healing effect will be left behind as soon as the ball group moves on, which is pretty much right away. A ball group standing still is a dead ball group.

Cellentel · April 2021

The Champion 2.0 passives change feels really bad. The magnitude of the benefits are too low to feel "satisfying". I realize this is as much psychological as anything else, but it's a common human psychological quirk that we like numbers that feel "big".

The current live Champion 2.0 already suffered from this problem a little bit — bonuses like 4% elemental damage reduction nor 1500 max resource don't really feel very "big". However, they're large enough that they exceed the value of a set bonus, so they feel like they provide some benefit.

For the most part, however, the max bonuses are each less than a set bonus. This feels really, really bad, to the point that I'd rather not have any passives at all and pretend that part of the system didn't exist. It's sort of like when your boss tells you that he's going to give you a bonus because you've been working so hard, so you get excited, and then he hands you a $1.50 McDonald's gift card. Yes, you're technically better off than you were before, but it's so low that psychologically it feels terrible and you wish it never happened.

I have no issue with the removal of ranks, but please rebalance the nodes so that the max bonus from each node is at least as good as a one-piece set bonus.

gariondavey · April 2021

Firstmep wrote: »

Rune focus and morphs: only tested restoring so far which is the stronger of the two, but I have to say, I don't like having to stand in the rune..
I understand that this is a cheap skill and it already restores resources etc, but the extra should persist for 2-3 seconds after leaving the rune for it to be relevant.
It's just not feasible to stay inside in any realistic pvp scenario.

Living dark: I already mentioned this, but sustaining this skill on a pve tank is basically impossible without spell symmetry, which kinda defeats the purpose.
Either reduce the cost, or increase the duration slightly.
The change to shards restoring equal resources is welcome, but I think I'll still run healing orb on my healer Templar, it's mobile, and it heals, unlike shards.

What's not in these notes:

Backlash needs something to be viable, after the latest nerf it's not even worth slotting in pvp, and Power of the light lost its unique debuff now that minor breach has so many more sources.
Please reduce the duration of Backlash to 3-4 seconds, and give potl a different secondary effect, like: Allies attacking a target with Potl on gain a small amount of wpd/spd, like let's say 200 for 6 seconds.

Healing ritual:
Please just make this skill into a yellow vigor like aoe hot, with hasty prayer giving minor expedition being the Stamina morph.

Jabs: this skill gets complained about a lot, here's what I would do,
Reduce the dmg dealt to the closest slightly, but make it so that it's not affected by aoe reduction effects.
This way it would do similar damage to people whether they use such effects or not, which is IMHO fair, considering only 1 target can receive this higher damage.

Burning light:
This passive atm is really only relevant with jabs, which when combined with the offensive power of that skill, makes for a very boring offensive kit, especially for stamina templars, both pve and pvp.
Consider making it a short, but hard hitting dot which procs off the first tick of any aedric spear skill, also allow it to be procced on multiple targets.
That would allow the passive to be more useful than now.
Or keep the direct dmg proc, but move it to the first tick and give it a longer CD, like 1 second.

Dark flare: after the cast time adjustment, the animation and the actual cast time of this skill are not in sync, it's actually harder to weave now, since you can't see when your character can start their next animation without interrupting this cast.
You just blindly need to have very good timing to actually be able to weave this skill properly now.
Please adjust.

Sun fire and morphs:
Since the dot nerf patch a while back, this skill have been irrelevant both in Pve and pvp.
Due to the split direct dmg and dot portions total power being counted towards the Standard, neither does any decent damage, and it makes scaling either part much worse than pure dot or pure direct dmg skills.
On top the extra duration morph of vampires bane is useless, as the extended duration on a useless dot, is well, useless.
Remove the initial damage and boost the dot to standards, make 1 morph stamina, to help stamplar rotations break away from mindless jabs spam.

That's it for now, thanks.

This

Bodycounter · April 2021

ajkb78 wrote: »

It's not a spammable though, it's a buff skill. Whip is the class spammable, and it sucks that there isn't a stam or max stat morph.

From a design perspective Stone Giant is meant as a spammable. You have to constantly apply the stagger mechanic and you are able to weave the stones. But yes, the Dragonknight needs some form of Lava Whip for stamina.

ajkb78 wrote: »

Green Dragon Blood heals based on percentage of missing health, so it scales off max health. Sort of. It's a decent tank heal anyway.

Yes, it is a good tank heal. Keep Green Dragonblood as it is. But Coagulating Blood should scale off your highest offensive stats to be viable for stamina and magicka. On top of that Coagulating Blood needs something different as Major Fortitude to be a good burst heal for DPS. It could give Minor Intellect/Endurance and/or Minor Courage/Berserk for example.

ajkb78 wrote: »

Also molten weapons and morphs are kind of useless because everyone gets these buffs from potions anyway.

Yes, a buff to Molten Weapons is definitely needed. It's kinda laughable in comparison to Netch or Critical Surge for example. The 50% damage increase to heavy attacks sound really good, but is barely useful in the current state of the game. Igneous Weapons is just a boring duration increase.

Joy_Division · April 2021

Firstmep wrote: »

Rune focus and morphs: only tested restoring so far which is the stronger of the two, but I have to say, I don't like having to stand in the rune..
I understand that this is a cheap skill and it already restores resources etc, but the extra should persist for 2-3 seconds after leaving the rune for it to be relevant.
It's just not feasible to stay inside in any realistic pvp scenario.

They figured this out a couple years ago. You're not meant to stand in it. PvE tanks often do stand still. I woudn;t fish for a buff here because those 2-3 seconds is going to be pretty much irrelevant and ZOs will incorrectly be able to claim that they buffed templars when it's proverbial peanuts.

Living dark: I already mentioned this, but sustaining this skill on a pve tank is basically impossible without spell symmetry, which kinda defeats the purpose.
Either reduce the cost, or increase the duration slightly.

Problem here is most skills function with this formula: good skill = higher cost. What happens is that ZOs oten nerfs good skills, but hardly ever adjust the costs. So now we have meh skill = high cost. At any rate, Templar tanks will be highly disappointed with this skill because it only heals when receiving direct damage, and NPC attacks tend to be sloooooooooooooow and not of the machine gun variety. It's not a proper HoT that other classes have that reliably heal themselves.

The change to shards restoring equal resources is welcome, but I think I'll still run healing orb on my healer Templar, it's mobile, and it heals, unlike shards.

Of course, why wouldn't you? Orbs is still a way better DoT. ZOS's burning Light change totally screwed Shards. Only one person can activate the shards. Everyone can activate the Orb and the Orb also goes BOOM.

Backlash needs something to be viable, after the latest nerf it's not even worth slotting in pvp, and Power of the light lost its unique debuff now that minor breach has so many more sources.
Please reduce the duration of Backlash to 3-4 seconds, and give potl a different secondary effect, like: Allies attacking a target with Potl on gain a small amount of wpd/spd, like let's say 200 for 6 seconds.

You're not being clear here what you want for Backlash. Because I can't fill the potential damage in a competitive PvP environment in 6 seconds, I'm most certainly not going to be able to do it in 3-4. This is by far the worst of the burst skills and needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

Healing ritual:
Please just make this skill into a yellow vigor like aoe hot, with hasty prayer giving minor expedition being the Stamina morph.

We've been asking this for years. My guess is that it's not happening because ZOS fundamentally believes the "healing" class should not have access to a normal HoT. Zero reason why this assumption should still hold after Wardens and Necros stole parts of the templar identity.

Jabs: this skill gets complained about a lot, here's what I would do,
Reduce the dmg dealt to the closest slightly, but make it so that it's not affected by aoe reduction effects.
This way it would do similar damage to people whether they use such effects or not, which is IMHO fair, considering only 1 target can receive this higher damage.

It's complained a lot by people who reject the notion that because their class has unique and effective skill that it's logical that other classes have unique and effective skills. Some people want to turn this into a single target dodgeable skill and claim that it;s just fine, even though the slow immobile templar that lack a HoT and has terrible skills people probably have never seen used like Healing Ritual and Radiant Aura, not remotely comparable to say a Stamden and Stamcro.

Burning light:
This passive atm is really only relevant with jabs, which when combined with the offensive power of that skill, makes for a very boring offensive kit, especially for stamina templars, both pve and pvp.
Consider making it a short, but hard hitting dot which procs off the first tick of any aedric spear skill, also allow it to be procced on multiple targets.
That would allow the passive to be more useful than now.
Or keep the direct dmg proc, but move it to the first tick and give it a longer CD, like 1 second.

Should have never been changed. If ZOS doesn't like calculations, then simply remove the passive in its entirety and adjust the damage to Sweeps and Shards. Then give us a passive that works in multiple combat scenarios and not just a target dummy where the enemy nicely stands still to be hit every 4th jab.

Dark flare: after the cast time adjustment, the animation and the actual cast time of this skill are not in sync, it's actually harder to weave now, since you can't see when your character can start their next animation without interrupting this cast.
You just blindly need to have very good timing to actually be able to weave this skill properly now.
Please adjust.

Reported years ago. The main problem with this skill however is not that it's hard to weave, it's just not very good. Interruptible, by far the easiest skill in the game to dodge, and when has it appeared in any PVE damage rotation video even though it's supposed to be the templar version of crystal frags (which has almost always appeared in every sorcerer DPS video)?

Sun fire and morphs:
Since the dot nerf patch a while back, this skill have been irrelevant both in Pve and pvp.
Due to the split direct dmg and dot portions total power being counted towards the Standard, neither does any decent damage, and it makes scaling either part much worse than pure dot or pure direct dmg skills.
On top the extra duration morph of vampires bane is useless, as the extended duration on a useless dot, is well, useless.
Remove the initial damage and boost the dot to standards, make 1 morph stamina, to help stamplar rotations break away from mindless jabs spam.

While your proposed fix would help a little, the skill would still be bad. The upfront damage portion you mention is/was actually what used to make the skill somewhat viable. Templars are bad at burst and anything that contributed to basically more damage now, less damage later was a boon for the class. Sunfire was actually semi-functional as a spammable because of that upfront damage (there was an video of a Templar DPs in the Twins fight who got top DPS spamming this skill. This was taken away in the name of standardization and it's been bad ever since.

Another issue with the skill is that it's secondary effect doesn't really do anything. SunFire Crit bonus? Every DPs worth their salt (and even many who aren't) use spell crit potions or have inner light slotted so the secondary effect contributes nothing. Vampire Bane duration bonus? It's just extending the duration of a DoT. That's not actually doing anything. Merely delaying the time I have to hit that button again.

Looking at it from a broader perspective, ESO has not been very imaginative in making any of the class DoTs actually interesting to use, too often removing things that disntugished them.

Bunning Embers used to have the strong appeal of being dirt cheap (and also a lot of upfront damage). Both gone, turned into generic boring DOT with same stats as every other DoT in the game.

Cripple used to provide the NB with a speed boost in addition to serving as it's primary DoT. That's gone. I legit cannot remember the last time I was hit with this skill.

The Necro summons have never done anything more than damage. They aren't even used by most of the better Necro players I come across.

It's almost like ZOS is afraid of having interesting skills that have different functions from other classes and do something other than damage over time.

Urzigurumash · April 2021

Joy_Division wrote: »

It's almost like ZOS is afraid of having interesting skills that have different functions from other classes

Many players seem to get frustrated when they're beaten by builds using some element they don't also use or have access to.

How broadly celebrated will be the nerf to HP Regen, simply on account of the removal of it as annoyance rather than particular concern for any theory of balance behind the change, none of the celebrants caring that there are only two classes without a unique buff to HP Regen: Necro and Warden.

universal_wrath · April 2021

Suggestion for sorcerer:

Bound armament should scale with highest offensive stat and provide mag8cka/stamina accordingly, likewise with bound aegis. Hurricane should get its full damage thoughout the duration, instead of increasing size and damage overtime. Greater storm atronach (AOE morhp) should do more AOE attacks and less single target, and major berserk need to affect group members instead of only one target. Mages wrath (AOE morph) should be chamged to melee excute instead of range and increase its damage, the 4 secs pre excute timer can be removed.

Dragonknight:

Cautirize should tick every 2-3 secs or should launch 2 balls for healing instead of ond like flame of oblivion. Flame of oblivion should be a flame claok thst deals damage each sec in AOE over 15 secs. Burning embers should heal over time instead of burst after its duration ends. Molten whip should scale with highest offensive stats. Obsidion shard should be instant like BoL, Actic wind, and twilight. Ash cloud need a cost reduction and size increase.

Firstmep · April 2021

Joy_Division wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Rune focus and morphs: only tested restoring so far which is the stronger of the two, but I have to say, I don't like having to stand in the rune..
I understand that this is a cheap skill and it already restores resources etc, but the extra should persist for 2-3 seconds after leaving the rune for it to be relevant.
It's just not feasible to stay inside in any realistic pvp scenario.

They figured this out a couple years ago. You're not meant to stand in it. PvE tanks often do stand still. I woudn;t fish for a buff here because those 2-3 seconds is going to be pretty much irrelevant and ZOs will incorrectly be able to claim that they buffed templars when it's proverbial peanuts.

Living dark: I already mentioned this, but sustaining this skill on a pve tank is basically impossible without spell symmetry, which kinda defeats the purpose.
Either reduce the cost, or increase the duration slightly.

Problem here is most skills function with this formula: good skill = higher cost. What happens is that ZOs always nerfs good skills, but hardly ever adjust the costs. So now we have meh skill = high cost. At any rate, Templar tanks will be highly disappointed with this skill because it only heals when receiving direct damage, and NPC attacks tend to be sloooooooooooooow and not of the machine gun variety. You know how every other class has a real HoT mechanic that actually heals them? This is lols by comparison.

The change to shards restoring equal resources is welcome, but I think I'll still run healing orb on my healer Templar, it's mobile, and it heals, unlike shards.

Of course, why wouldn't you? Orbs is still a way better DoT. ZOS's burning Light change totally screwed Shards. Only one person can activate the shards. Everyone can activate the Orb and the Orb also goes BOOM.

Backlash needs something to be viable, after the latest nerf it's not even worth slotting in pvp, and Power of the light lost its unique debuff now that minor breach has so many more sources.
Please reduce the duration of Backlash to 3-4 seconds, and give potl a different secondary effect, like: Allies attacking a target with Potl on gain a small amount of wpd/spd, like let's say 200 for 6 seconds.

You're not being clear here what you want for Backlash. Because I can't fill the potential damage in a competitive PvP environment in 6 seconds, I'm most certainly not going to be able to do it in 3-4. This is by far the worst of the burst skills and needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

Healing ritual:
Please just make this skill into a yellow vigor like aoe hot, with hasty prayer giving minor expedition being the Stamina morph.

We've been asking this for years. My guess is that it's not happening because ZOS fundamentally believes the "healing" class should not have access to a normal HoT. Zero reason why this assumption should still hold after Wardens and Necros stole parts of the templar identity.

Jabs: this skill gets complained about a lot, here's what I would do,
Reduce the dmg dealt to the closest slightly, but make it so that it's not affected by aoe reduction effects.
This way it would do similar damage to people whether they use such effects or not, which is IMHO fair, considering only 1 target can receive this higher damage.

It's complained a lot by people who reject the notion that because their class has unique and effective skill that it's logical that other classes have unique and effective skills. People want to turn this into a single target dodgeable skill and claim that it;s just fine because the slow immobile templar that lack a HoT and has terrible skills people probably have never seen used like Healing Ritual and Radiant Aura and would be perfectly balanced compared to say a Stamden and Stamcro.

Burning light:
This passive atm is really only relevant with jabs, which when combined with the offensive power of that skill, makes for a very boring offensive kit, especially for stamina templars, both pve and pvp.
Consider making it a short, but hard hitting dot which procs off the first tick of any aedric spear skill, also allow it to be procced on multiple targets.
That would allow the passive to be more useful than now.
Or keep the direct dmg proc, but move it to the first tick and give it a longer CD, like 1 second.

Should have never been changed. If ZOS doesn't like calculations, then simply remove the passive in its entirety and adjust the damage to Sweeps and Shards. Then give us a passive that works in multiple combat scenarios and not just a target dummy where the enemy nicely stands still to be hit every 4th jab.

Dark flare: after the cast time adjustment, the animation and the actual cast time of this skill are not in sync, it's actually harder to weave now, since you can't see when your character can start their next animation without interrupting this cast.
You just blindly need to have very good timing to actually be able to weave this skill properly now.
Please adjust.

Reported years ago. The main problem with this skill however is not that it's hard to weave, it's just not very good. Interruptible, by far the easiest skill in the game to dodge, and when has it appeared in any PVE damage rotation video even though it's supposed to be the templar version of crystal frags (which has almost always appeared in every sorcerer DPS video)?

Sun fire and morphs:
Since the dot nerf patch a while back, this skill have been irrelevant both in Pve and pvp.
Due to the split direct dmg and dot portions total power being counted towards the Standard, neither does any decent damage, and it makes scaling either part much worse than pure dot or pure direct dmg skills.
On top the extra duration morph of vampires bane is useless, as the extended duration on a useless dot, is well, useless.
Remove the initial damage and boost the dot to standards, make 1 morph stamina, to help stamplar rotations break away from mindless jabs spam.

While you proposed fix would help a little, the skill would still be bad. The upfront damage portion you mention is/was actually what used to make the skill somewhat viable. Templars are bad at burst and anything that contributed to basically more damage now, less damage later was a boon for the class. Sunfire was actually semi-functional as a spammable because of that upfront damage (there was an video of a Templar DPs in the Twins fight who got top DPS spamming this skill. This was taken away in the name of standardization and it's been bad ever since.

Another issue with the skill is that it's secondary effect doesn't really do anything. SunFire Crit bonus? Every DPs worth their salt (and even many who aren't) use spell crit potions or have inner light slotted so the secondary effect contributes nothing. Vampire Bane duration bonus? It's just extending the duration of a DoT. That's not actually doing anything. Merely delaying the time I have to hit that button again.

Looking at it from a broader perspective, ESO has done a terrible job at making any of the class DoTs actually interesting to use.

Bunning Embers used to have the strong appeal of being dirt cheap (and also a lot of upfront damage). Both gone, turned into generic boring DOT with same stats as every other DoT in the game.

Cripple used to provide the NB with a speed boost in addition to serving as it's primary DoT. That's gone. I legit cannot remember the last time I was hit with this skill.

The Necro summons have never done anything more than damage. They aren't even used by most of the better Necro players I come across.

It's almost like ZOS is afraid of having interesting skills that have different functions from other classes and do something other than damage over time.

Interesting points.

For backlash, either make work like curse, or adjust the the amount of % dmg copied, while also reducing the duration.
The current % copied dmg value is already low, despite the maximum explosion dmg being quite high(considering it scales with stamina/magicka).

I definetly dont like living dark as it is for either pve or pvp, but from the looks of it ZOS has no intention of giving templar 1 good HOT skill. Still, at least reducing the cost on this would make it marginally more viable than it is now.

Sun fire: You are not wrong, the dot standardisation patch really screwed class dots over, and i remember when you could use the skill as a viable spammable. Unfortunately, these days when i make suggestions here, i try to keep ZOS' almighty standards in mind. Its better to have a decent dot skill, than a *** nothing skill, imho.

Dark Flare: In the past i suggested giving it some kind of stack mechanic to allow us to eventually fire it off instant cast, like for using dawns wrath skills. instead ZOS seems to think that somehow by reducing the cast time on this skill it will become a viable spammable skill. I simply wanted to point out that its actually worse to spam it now than before, even if that before was already kinda bad.

Burning light: Really they shouldve never changed it, but apparently some people didnt like getting back to back 2-3k damage procs on them in the span of 1 seconds(basically the fabled 2 BL procs in 1 jab combo), and hence this nerf happened.
Im simply trying to suggest something(s), that would keep in line with the removal of this random burst chance, but would make it generally a more useful passive other than just spam jabs till your hands fall off.

Really with most of my suggestions, im just trying to play ZOS's game.

Arwen72 · April 2021

Hello all!
As of right now Nightblade in my opinion is pretty weak in support roles in group content, specifically in trials. I have been maining Nightblade DD for years now. The class definitely has an identity, the sneaky assassin, which provides solid single target DPS in PvE and is mostly played as an invisible ganker, sniper or bomber in PvP.

Nightblade has a lack of group supporting skills to buff allies in group content. Currently, NB is not competitive within endgame groups (Trials) as support role (Tank/Healer) at all, and now less favourable in DD spots, as it offers only average DPS output and no unique buffs. Other classes have a higher DPS output whilst also providing very strong unique buffs to group, such as Necromancers (at least 3 per group) being the only source of major vulnerability right now, and therefore mandatory for all competitive raid groups
I recently switched from DPS to tank lately for raid and felt inclined to change from NB to Warden due to the overwhelming group buffs it can provide. Wardens apply minor toughness and major resolve to the group and have better possibilities to apply minor brittle and minor vulnerability than all other classes. That means, in support a warden is almost a must have, as well as a DK tank with the rather new stone giant skill.

The same can be said for Nightblade as healers which offer so much less than Templar, Warden, Necromancer…and even Sorcerers.
The need to have certain classes in certain spots sets really tough boundaries in terms of group composition. Nightblade do not really have a spot atm. Its only mandatory buff is minor savagery for stamina groups. Therefore, I have thought of some skill changes to make it more viable. Focusing on the skills which are least used in my experience. These would be the following: Malevolent Offering, Mark target, Consuming darkness and Refreshing path.

Malevolent Offering: Right now, the Skill is useless, the healing is ST focused and negligible.
Suggestion:
Base skill: Sacrifice your essence to intoxicate the enemy, while draining your own health by X amount for 8 seconds. The enemy will take Y more damage (% of X) of all attacks hitting it.
Morph 1 (Fortified Offering): This morphs scales with your max health
Morph 2 (Healthy Offering): The skill now provides x healing per second to allies rather than more damage done to the enemy and applies minor mending to the caster.
Comment: For this skill I took stone giant as an inspiration, therefore it would be a good option for NB tank. The skills could even be stacked. While the Base morph should provide a weak buff, the buff of the health scaling morph could be significant on tank, but with an equal significant health drain as a compromise and some cap of course. Morph 2 would be a strong option for NB healer. The skill would also still fit into NBs class identity.

Mark Target: The Skill provides major breach, which is given by taunt or elemental drain (with minor magicka steal on top), so it is really weak. The bonuses provided upon death of a marked enemy are, for both PvE and PvP, rather useless. The only use of it is detection of other NBs in PvP (Piercing Mark).
Suggestion:
Base skill: Expose an enemy’s weakness, afflicting them with Major Breach for 20 seconds and provide detection for 3 seconds.
Morph 1 (Magical Mark): Additional to the base skill the marked target takes X% more damage from magical attacks.
Morph 2 (Piercing Mark) Additional to the base skill, apply Minor Breach to the target.
Comment: Again, a strong buff for NB supports in PvE, whereas in PvP both morphs provide more damage to the target which could make NB more viable in duels. In terms of ganking, it shouldn’t matter, as applying mark takes time which the target can use to build up defence.

Consuming Darkness: Another example of a NB skill, which is not used in the current iteration of the game. The game is currently focused on offensive Buffs and less on defensive ones, as Major Protection from this skill. Also, the synergy is absolutely useless.
Suggestion:
Base Skill: Conjure a ring of shadow, reducing the movement speed of enemies by 70% for 10 seconds. Heal allies in the circle for X amount per second. Reduce cost to 150 Ult.
Morph 1 (Veil of Blades): Increase Ultimate Cost to 250 and duration to 12 seconds. Instead of healing, enemies inside take x damage (scaling with offensive stats) and the skill applies major vulnerability.
Morph 2 (Bolstering Darkness) Increase Ult cost to 200. Additional to the base skill, all allies within the circle gain major protection.
Comment: This would take the pressure of X amount of Necromancers in raid compositions for major vulnerability and give the skill some offensive use, while still keeping a defensive option. The base skill could be compared to warden trees, while still being more expensive.

Refreshing Path: This morph is also not used anymore in PvE besides solo content, while twisting path has a stable slot in NBs DPS setups.
Suggestion:
Change the radius to 15x10 meters. Conjure a path of shadows for 12 seconds, granting you and your allies’ minor expedition and minor resolve. The effects persist 4 seconds after leaving the path. Allies on the path are healed for x per second.
Comment: This would line up with warden’s frost cloak, while keeping its AoE healing focus (which could be a bit higher than on live) and binding the Minor resolve to the ground as a compromise, rather than to targets. Would qualify as support skill in PvE and PvP.

Summary: With these proposed skills changes, NB could reach a spot in support roles which it now lacks. Please note, that those are only suggestions of how I could imagine skills to change to line up with the current meta. I do not demand them to be taken over as suggested. I did not provide numbers, as without tests the skills might be too overpowered, which is not the aim of this. Also, I want to mention, that Sorcerer and Templar also have a rather weak spot in the PvE group compositions, so I would also support some skill changes there too, in order to line up with the newer classes Warden and Necromancer (provide Empower, Minor Toughness, Major Berserk, other unique buffs…).

Narvuntien · April 2021

I understand you are all super passionate about balance but we all know that ZoS's balance team moves at a glacial pace at best you'll see some of your ideas start to turn up next year.

I feel like you should really focus on small tweaks to numbers that can be implemented in a month. rather than whole mechanics or skill reworks

You can post these bigger ideas later on in the cycle when even small changes are not possible.

Raegwyr · April 2021

Can we get a developer comment what is the vision for magblade in PvP? Current implementation of the class is really weak and changes to already weak heal clearly states that developers don't know what exactly is the problem here or think that magblade class is balanced in pvp (in the vacuum maybe but compared to necros, wardens or sorc not att all)

Strider__Roshin · April 2021

Still a cast time on "instant" cast ultimates. Not coming back to the game until this is reverted. The game will not be fun to play for me until then.

Strider__Roshin · April 2021

Narvuntien wrote: »

I understand you are all super passionate about balance but we all know that ZoS's balance team moves at a glacial pace at best you'll see some of your ideas start to turn up next year.

I feel like you should really focus on small tweaks to numbers that can be implemented in a month. rather than whole mechanics or skill reworks

You can post these bigger ideas later on in the cycle when even small changes are not possible.

ZOS's balance team will move as fast as it wants to. They've done some insane changes overnight. If they're not making suggested changes on here it's because they don't want to. And whether or not we agree is irrelevant. Malacath band, and cast times on instant ultimates are perfect examples of this.