PTS Update 35 - Feedback Thread for Combat Balance Changes

dmvab · July 2022

Please, don't.
Just don't.
What's happening it's an absurd and it doesn't make anybody happy unless they have 1 month playing the game.

What's the point in create almost 2 years of content based on high damage and now nerf the damage overall? How those achievements will be possible to accomplish?
You literally put 20m+ health on bosses in 4men content, and 200m+ health boss in trials. Plus, A LOT of mechanics where things have to be killed superfast like in the dungeon Shipwright's Regret, 2nd boss, and several other dungeons and trials situations. And now, just like that you're nerfing the damage to the ground? What's going to happen in those situations?

Also, how solo players will be able to heal themselves if the ticks only happens in 2 seconds? Will aoe from mobs now also hit only after 2 seconds?

You see, this patch wasn't clearly well thought at all. To do those changes you will have to remake the whole game, otherwise it's only be a truly frustrating experience.

You want to make a big change that will finally make everybody happy and people will praise the developers?
Just separate PvP from PvE.
Oakensoul Ring was one the best things created for pvE so far because it allowed people to get into endgame without any stress and actually be in almost the level as people with great experience. I saw several people who were never able to beat Vateshran Hollows get easy clears. So why are pvP still affecting pvE? That's one of the most asked changes we want. We don't want damage to be nerfed at all.

siddique · July 2022

I want to know who comes up with these ideas?

In order to make the game "more accessible" to casuals, you practically nerfed their output to the ground? Like, okay, not everyone puts in effort or has the time to practice, but does anyone realize that those people who were unable to weave properly are going to hit for even less now as well? How is more content going to be accessible to them? How does this make any sense?

The argument that people focus on their "bars and not the action on screen, so we are increasing dots time" is absurd to say the least. Like seriously? Who told you that? Why is this even a reason for such drastic change to combat?

Now, moving on to more practical issues. Healing over time will now tick once every two seconds. Enemy damage output will still tick every one second. Bosses like Falgravn hardmode will become even more inaccessible to mid tier players. The 1% will adapt (if they are still playing after this) by having multiple abilities tick either second. But, the whole argument was to make it accessible to midtier or casual players, how many of those will even know what to do let alone execute it?

For damage, I want the combat designers/developers to put up a trial team with these changes on PTS and stream vRG Hardmode and vDSR Hardmode, im not even talking about getting trifectas. Just clear those hardmodes. See how "accessible" they are now with these nerfs. If any midtier guild was progging either of those hardmodes, they can say goodbye to it.

And obviously, all of this will fall on deaf ears, so there is no point. But gg in ruining the game. If these arent reverted, you'll kill the already dwindling endgame community and make the life of midtier/casuals even worse.

cro25519 · July 2022

Please work on making rotations interesting.

Other MMOs (like lost ark for example) has pretty easy rotations when it comes to skills because the combat is interesting and hard. The action is packed into dodging big AoEs and stuff. Look up Brelshaza Phase 5 or Phase 6 on youtube for an example and doing very interesting mechanics.

ESO doesn't have any mechanics on that level. The fun part was the combat. The current dots are literally:

Swap Backbar- 1 2 3 4 5 - Swap Front Bar - 3 - 2 - 2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 - Swap backbar...

This is not very enjoyable.

Marillea · July 2022

I'll wait to see how this goes live before anything, but please do not turn ESO combat into something super boring.
Dots every 20 seconds and spamming 1 skill in the meantime sounds very... ugh. I enjoyed managing my cooldowns, it was part of what made a player good.

I am curious however about how the weaving changes will close this gap between bad and good players, because if anything who couldn't weave/doesn't want to, will keep on doing their thing and pull even less DPS than before. So... great?

Zatox · July 2022

DOTs is too way long, as a result rotation is became extremely boring. 14 or 15 seconds gonna be much better, like DK dots on live.

Tannus15 · July 2022

Troodon80 wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

live parse

114k

pts parse, same build

96k

build if anyone is interested

Out of curiosity, what changed between Live and PTS for the critical damage to be reduced by ~10%? @Tannus15

pretty sure i had fighting finesse slotted on live and wrathful strikes on pts

JustAGoodPlayer · July 2022

DK looks really bad.

No unique skills, no pets, skill or do not normally work or are worse than not class skills.

Moltan armaments becomes garbage. Other morphs are lose of dps and useless buff. Needs rework. And buff time 35 seconds is even bad ! When skills are 20 seconds even time is not 40 seconds that make new version of skill 100% total garbage ! 🗑️

Wings - is skill that needs rework.

Stone throwing - needs rework.

Jump too target morph of chain needs rework.

HA of lightning stuff was changed even WITH NO info in patch notes !!!

It now make 3 hits, looks bad, feels bad - is bad for HA builds, that are now dead !

Undaunted infiltrator ... - just delete it already !!! Delete it !!!

Stop make garbage like this set !!!

And PVE only ??? Bad tendence. If it will go life next changes will make the game even more garbage.

ZOS_Icy · July 2022

Greetings,

After removing some unnecessary non-constructive and back-and-forth posts from this thread, we would like everyone to keep posts on the subject at hand, civil, and constructive. If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, please feel free to review them here.

Thank you for your understanding.

terrasight · July 2022

Idea: Make one class with one bar with one skill, one setup, one ressource and you get what you want @devs...

Tannus15 · July 2022

Stamdk 96k

this is actually higher than i'm getting on live. the change to molten whip is really good, it hits really hard and you're casting it lots.

JustAGoodPlayer · July 2022

Tannus15 wrote: »

Stamdk 96k

this is actually higher than i'm getting on live. the change to molten whip is really good, it hits really hard and you're casting it lots.

Do not forget they change dummy !

Now it has more debuffs/buff/penetration.

Sussuris · July 2022

As an endgame player (Templar DPS [Magplar 105k Deadlands]/Heals) - progging vRG and vDSR HM's and some older trifectas - who has played on and off since Closed Betas, if they wanted to reduce damage, I'm fine with that. As long as they went and retouched some of the newer content designed with those much higher numbers from the last few patches in mind (not that they're ever going to actually do that, as they've stated loudly and often).

Instead, they gut several class identities, don't "fix" weaving, destroy DoT's, and make healing incredibly difficult in some fights:
-Nerfs to everyone except maybe Nightblades. Templars are in a position where Rapid Strikes are just as if not more effective than Biting Jabs (let alone Sweeps) - where is my spear class identity? (Although I don't like the new animation, I do like the change to animation and channel time - as a High Ping player, that'll make it significantly easier. But they didn't have to drop its damage as well, especially with the comment that it's because you couldn't weave before - you absolutely could, even with high ping, it was just harder and required more practice.) Sorcerors don't even exist anymore, and Wardens got punched in the gut.
-They didn't actually solve any of the weaving issues they were complaining about with their LA/HA changes - weaving is still more DPS than not weaving, and they introduced MORE weaving dependent sets
-I was actually FOR the DoT duration increases, until they revealed it was 20s/30s. The majority of targets don't stay around that long - if timers had been bumped to 15s, maybe 20s on the extended morphs, I could get behind that, it would make rotations a little easier to get into without making the game nothing but spammable. Sure, on the dummy it might only be a small DPS loss, but in a lot of actual content it's just not viable. For example, Z'maja moves every 12s so these new DoT's are a huge downgrade - are we in a scenario where we use Spammables only?
-Healing proccing on 2s intervals is gonna make some fights ridiculous since PvE enemy DoT's are on 1s intervals - hello Falgravn HM. I'm even fine with the numbers nerf here! A lot of healing is too "easy". Just make it tick every 1s to match the incoming DoT's we have to deal with.

How out of touch can the devs be with their player base? How can you conscientiously design Trifectas that only the very top of the top can complete, then gut damage and not change the requirements? How can you fundamentally destroy class identities so that there is no incentive or uniqueness to playing them? How can you cry accessibility when your proposed changes aren't actually accessible because the use case doesn't match the content?

I'm tired of these sweeping changes that do nothing but hurt the game. I'm going to watch the PTS carefully. I'm going to see it drop on live. I'm going to make one of my groups run vKA HM so I can heal it. And then I'm probably gonna quit, because nothing about this patch makes me happy.

W0lf_z13 · July 2022

Tannus15 wrote: »

for those curious, how do things look outside the 21m with it's buff changes etc

3m live - 56k

3m pts - 45k

so 11k dps lost, just over 20%

I saw pretty much the same results.... 123k on live though.... and at first struggled to get 100k... got up to 109k though .... 14k dps loss for me.... right after the previous loss of 7k with the last patch........ granted mine was on the trial dummy

JustAGoodPlayer · July 2022

Ido not like change for HA too. They even did not say about changes !!!

They just make bad - in hope that no one see it !!!

Just think about it !

The same as jubs our lightning stuff HA now works - it makes 3 not 4 as before hits, feels bad, looks bad. Now is dodjable to all this !!!

DK skills lose last unique buffs, moltan armaments was destroyed !

Class looks like complete garbage !

Meridiano · July 2022

I probably will put my Oakensoul back to the chest and will farm Craglorn wood with no issues. Normals are done but Veterans will be closed now until I git-gud that will never be.

Best wishes,
your DoT-DK.

Sandman929 · July 2022

The road to making content more accessible has never been lowering overall damage. I honestly don't know what these devs could possibly be thinking.
If you want weaker robots, make the robots weaker. Sure, you'll bore the heck out of skilled players, but maybe that's better than annoying all players.

Pevey · July 2022

The hard truth for the devs is that the power creep was the best thing to happen to this game with respect to accessibility. It opened up vet content to people who had not tried it before. There was such a feeling of positivity just before these patch notes, with people getting into raiding who had never done it before. Once people get into raiding, they tend to be stickier long-term players, coming back with each expansion. They support other play styles like trading because raiders (along with hardcore PvPers) are the ones buying a lot of the mats and other things from guild stores for builds.

Not a knee jerk reaction. Just genuine sadness and bewilderment that the devs are doing this to their own game.

JustAGoodPlayer · July 2022

To make all accessible they can add time on trifecta timers and make it possible to pass different ways.

Pfff to hard to do. All last changes/trials/dunguans are = dps check + faaaat boss.

Now damage fall 1.5 times - how to play that garbage content ?

Klingenlied · July 2022

So, after parsing some, I guess I needa agree: dps loss is pretty hard. Don't see this warranted.

However, a large amount of thoughts that went into some specific class changes are awesome.
So what I personally like is a large amount of Warden design changes. I love that you gave Warden class identity back. Now we are a class that isn't "pushed" into between mid and long range, but we obviously are a mid- to close-range class now. Very fine with me. Good change to spamable. Good change in regards to the bear morph design (not the dps loss!). Good change to arctic wind design. Scorch is .. say the idea is good. But Warden has problems in regards to setting up burst. So reducing damage there is absolutely terrible.

Overall: I get some damage nerfs in regards to classes. Crystal weapon is overperforming for example, no questions asked. But if we do not get power elsewhere, you just nerf everyone by a serious amount. To me as player, that feels as if you destroy part of my progression. That is not fine.
Those changes right now will maybe really help the newest players. But if they stick with the game, they absolutely will be weaker than if those changes were not implemented.

My suggestion: Let the next PTS patch be as radical as this one. Pump up active skill potencies by ~10 to 15% and see what happens.

le_spy · July 2022

The huge overarching issue is that proposed changes within this patch and also last 2 major updates are inadvertently removing class diversity from the game, we're left with using more or less same rotations across many classes and builds, just with different animations, the classes do not have anymore their distinctive feel nor there is any excitement in playing the same content on different classes is getting close to zero.

Uniqueness of how classes feel when playing is what keeps people around and exploring, when many abilities are from actual functional point in the game just effectively reskins, then sorry, but there are certain other MMOs that have abilities to change the visuals of your abilities with crafted/bought effects, whilst retraining class diversity. Rerolling a new character and class will feel very unrewarding for new players, reducing the overall replayability of the game. It really does seem that the developers have forgotten the new players exitement when they learn new things in the game and unlock new abilities, the blanket dot changes are literally taking that joy away from people, when they realise that they just unlocked another carbon copy of ability they already had, either on the class they are playing in a form of different weapon or on a different class, just with different secondary that is irrelevant for 90% gameplay for those people, or barely noticeable.

Whilst some individual changes with correct package as an idea are decent (e.g reducing light attack damage), they'd need to come with mathematically sound rebalancing of e.g empower, abilities like molten armaments, are just a roleplay excuse of giving up valueable ability slot, without it being even remotely influencal even in best scenarios (just being zero sum at best case)

Certain goals that developers have given as the goal of update will work IMHO in a compltely opposite way, blanket changing huge amount of abilities in the game will only confuse the playerbase you intend to help (not top 1%) because those people are mostly not reading patch notes, mostly not reading updates, they just log into the game couple times a week and play. There are abilities that have been changed in almost every update in past 2 years, sometimes basically been reverted back to state they were before in update before last, it does not help those of more relaxed in their playing in any shape or form.

Just for the reference all this 'casual' talk comes from a person who has had top leaderboard scores and was hardcore raiding for years. Endgamers and experienced people will adapt and in the end will follow whatever is best, people who are actually getting screwed by updates are always mid to lower time investment or skill players, it's just a hard fact that seems to be hard to swallow for many people.

PileggiPileggi · July 2022

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

As a necro main, intensive mender kinda needed the nerf. It was healing for the same tooltip as my resistant flesh every 2 seconds.

However, they also made spirit guardian pretty much unusable in PvP as now it heals for even less than it already did and it can die now. Pretty insane.

Exactly, Intensive Mender was really powerful in PVP (on my bomber I basically couldn't die unless I run out of resource) but Spirit Guardian was not, very weak healing especially in PVP cause of battle spirit. So it really should be only intensive mender receiving a nerf imo.

Many solo builds use Spirit Guardian because pale order healing on necro is the lowest of any class, now with these changes solo necro seems really unattractive compared to other classes. Harder to play, heals for less and can't proc effects like hexos ward/Spellweave/pale order etc nearly as effectively as others. We don't even have Major Sorc/Brutality.

Empowered Grasp does make all minions including ghost better and is buffed but nobody will use it, it's not retroactive either afaik. Same deal with Tether, most people don't have room for it and using it over Guardian takes away agency for when you don't have a corpse.

It's like they want Necro to slot more abilities than is actually possible, I don't get these changes at all.
.

Moonspawn · July 2022

Daedric minefield is hardly used by anyone at all. The skill is already extremely expensive and easily avoidable. Please dont do this.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 2022

PileggiPileggi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

As a necro main, intensive mender kinda needed the nerf. It was healing for the same tooltip as my resistant flesh every 2 seconds.

However, they also made spirit guardian pretty much unusable in PvP as now it heals for even less than it already did and it can die now. Pretty insane.

Exactly, Intensive Mender was really powerful in PVP (on my bomber I basically couldn't die unless I run out of resource) but Spirit Guardian was not, very weak healing especially in PVP cause of battle spirit. So it really should be only intensive mender receiving a nerf imo.

Many solo builds use Spirit Guardian because pale order healing on necro is the lowest of any class, now with these changes solo necro seems really unattractive compared to other classes. Harder to play, heals for less and can't proc effects like hexos ward/Spellweave/pale order etc nearly as effectively as others. We don't even have Major Sorc/Brutality.

Empowered Grasp does make all minions including ghost better and is buffed but nobody will use it, it's not retroactive either afaik. Same deal with Tether, most people don't have room for it and using it over Guardian takes away agency for when you don't have a corpse.

It's like they want Necro to slot more abilities than is actually possible, I don't get these changes at all.
.

On top of it all, Skulls are still laughably bad compared to other spammables.

The Guardian change is absolutely baffling to me. You're now forced to use a (rightfully) nerfed Intensive Mender. Guardian doesn't even last the full duration in a duel on PTS, which means in a setting like BGs or even Trials on a tank its going to feel absolutely terrible to use. Please reconsider the Guardian "fix" ZOS. You can't change something 3 years later and claim it was a "fix".

icAirborne · July 2022

The dot extension was the only light attack nerf that you needed. I struggle to light attack weave all of a sudden because I cant stay awake literally casting the spam spammable 15 times in a row. The sad part is that I'm not exaggerating that at all.

Damage on the dummy went through the floor by about hmmm 20-30k, despite getting minor courage and major slayer.

Dots tick every 2 seconds and have absolutely no burst whatsoever. A straight nerf to every burst phase in the game. For example Nahvi trash is just gonna be worse for everyone (especially learning players), because dots dont do anything anymore. Lmao.

Hots are in even worse condition. Forget about Falgravn 3rd floor. Ppl gonna be dropping like flies during conga between 2 second ticks that are also reduced in healing power. Every heal check is just gonna be harder for literally everyone. I wouldnt be surprised to see simply just roaring flare + dark drain in vCR absolutely shred people.

This is a categorical nerf to everyone. It doesn't help anyone learn the game. It doesn't help to include anyone in the more difficult content of the game. It doesn't make anything more accessible at all. All it does is exclude the players you say you are catering to. The end game players already at the top will find ways to adapt (if they even stay for such an awful patch). While everyone else gets left in the dust of a patch that literally nerfed the tools that helped them clear content in the first place. These changes were all so obviously adjusted on a spreadsheet with absolutely no regard to the contexts of how any content in this game works.

Absolute lmao of a patch

notyuu · July 2022

As a templar powered templar lets go over the pros/cons of the new changes

Pros

The new Spear model on jabs looks nice
weaving flows so much better with jabs
spear shards doing damage for once is plesant
increased duration on solar flare is nice
as is the incresaed duration on cleansing ritual
and finally restoring aura has a reason to exsist

Cons

The jabs damage reduction is disgusting, weakens the already limited toolset of the stamplar
The burning light damage nerf results in a heavy loss of dps for the templar
The burning light stacking cooldown results in the damage being reduced even further
The removal of one of the hits of jabs means it can not proc burning light consistantly
the stamina morph of jabs is still lacking a useful utility compared to the mag healing
the animation on solar flare is still terrible
the audio on the new jabs animation is outta sync
sun fire, a skill which was mostly not bothered with due to lack of power is now even weaker
the empower changes have rendered the fact that you gain it from solar barrage almost moot

I can't stress this enough, the jabs nerf is terrible
25% less power due to losing a hit
21% nerf on the remaining hits
25% nerf on 2/3 uses of jabs (mathmatically speaking it only procs half way through every 3rd use, but I couldn't get it to trigger at all)
total nerf to jabs damage: too damn high
I mean come on ZoS pick ONE
-Remove a hit from jabs
-Reduce the damage of jabs
-Break burning light in half
not all three, or at the very least start selling class change tokens so I can contiue to play the game

Vaoh · July 2022

I’ve seen some crazy class balance suggestions on these forums before, but they pale in comparison to what the actual game Devs were thinking lol.

So yeah, as for “accessibility”, rip group finder pugs, all trial prog groups, and also console Swashbuckler trifecta until next chapter.

Pevey · July 2022

In the interest of transparency with the community (and because so many of these changes make no sense to us right now), I would really like to see some of those parses from the 80 hours of parsing.

How did the dev team get comfortable that classes were balanced, for instance? Show us the parses, please.

Lykeion · July 2022

The combat mechanism needs improvement but not like this. If your goal is to drive all the players away then you've made an excellent job, keep up.

prof_doom · July 2022

Pevey wrote: »

In the interest of transparency with the community (and because so many of these changes make no sense to us right now), I would really like to see some of those parses from the 80 hours of parsing.

How did the dev team get comfortable that classes were balanced, for instance? Show us the parses, please.

Would be interesting to see. The community spent 5 hours after the PTS went live, and showed us a roughly 10-25K damage loss across the board, which seems way higher than what they claimed they were aiming for.

BretonMage · July 2022

After some time playing on my pet sorc with a dummy and with a WB, these are my thoughts.

LA nerfs: Years ago when ZOS insisted that weaving was part of ESO, and even went so far as to put in the tips, I decided to set about learning how to weave. It took some months, but now I find it a lot of fun. It's actually very enjoyable to watch when the LA flows smoothly into my skill. It makes me sad that this part of combat is being nerfed, because as someone else said, it is a unique and enjoyable aspect of ESO combat.

DOTs: Where to start. I'm sorry, but the changes are utterly horrible; they were the worst changes in the PTS for me. I'm not even talking about damage, because I haven't even looked at the cmx breakdown. But the 20 second length is too long. It is unnecessarily long, even for me, a mediocre player who fumbles and forgets sometimes.

On a dummy, the 20 seconds of Wall of Elements makes my rotation beyond dull, especially as a pet sorc. I'm basically spamming one skill. I tried it out in the field on a WB, and the 20 seconds was useless, because the boss was never in the same spot so I had to keep re-casting the WoE anyway.

As an aside, I like Wall of Elements not because it's a DOT, but because it's an AOE. AOEs (and splash damage skills) are really fun to cast; in fact, if I could, I would spam them. Please do not lengthen or nerf them.

Editing to add: I forgot that these changes were supposed to try and help struggling players like me, so I just want to add that my damage went down by 10% on PTS. The changes affected even my damage negatively.