These combat changes are aimed at reducing the top level DPS and making the game more accessible to new and inexperienced players. From the testing that’s been done so far this update is a nerf to damage across the board for all players. The combat changes fail to meet the expectations set by the devs themselves with a wide range of things that appear to have been overlooked.

So the idea is we increase accessibility to the content in the game for all players. This appears to be way off the mark. Damage has been reduced meaning that the newer content in the game will be a lot more difficult than it is already. New content that has been added over the past year or so has been created with the current meta, DPS, HPS and Tanking in mind. Just flat out nerfing the DPS and keeping the content the same basically makes a lot of this content become inaccessible to the large majority of the community.

If you take things such as Rockgrove Hardmode and Dreadsail Reef Hardmode – these trials have now become virtually impossible to complete for almost the entire playerbase because it’s not just the high end damage that has been nerfed, it’s everyone!

The implications this has on us as Tanks is that lower DPS means longer fights. This makes Tanking a lot more difficult especially for the newer players and don’t forget the whole point of this is to make content more accessible not more difficult. Long fight times increases fatigue for Tanks, it means harder sustain, it means prolonged periods of trying to maintain buffs and debuffs to buff the group so those fights don’t take even longer, and it means you have to focus for longer to not die.

We then also have the HPS (Healing Per Second) which has taken a nerf. An AoE Heal can typically only heal 6 people per tick, and now those heals will only tick once every 2 seconds. If you are unlucky enough to not get a tick then you could end up waiting 4s for a heal tick. The problem is also the fact that skills such as Combat Prayer are just somewhat broken in the context that they don’t “smart heal”. It simply targets a set bunch of people and will only heal them so if you are not getting the AoE heal ticks, and the healer is spamming Combat Prayer on you and it’s not working, you are just not being healing enough to get through the high damage content we now have in the game with the most recent year or 2 of DLC content.

A few other things to keep in mind are the fact that we do benefit from the combat changes when it comes to certain skills – Elemental Blockade lasts for 30s rather than 14 which is a sustain buff for us, but then on the flip side we have an unintentional nerf to weapon enchants. So if you use an Infused Crusher it will activate once every 5s. Since Blockade now ticks only once every 2s this means you’ll always get 1s of downtime so you can only get an 83% Crusher uptime with Blockade now rather than the 100% you could achieve before.

Another downside to U35 is the Oakensoul nerf. Using this on the Accolade Build has opened the door for us to complete a ton of new content as a Tank. In PvE this was no way overpowered because you would still benefit more in organised groups from using 2 bars and the usual group buffing. But when it comes to doing more DPS and obtaining more buffs – Oakensoul was the best thing ever created by the devs to give more access to content to more people. So it’s a shame to see this nerfed for PvE as it helped not only new, beginner and inexperienced players but it also helped a wide range of players including people with certain disabilities or players who wanted a simplified rotation and build that is easier to use.

All in all we are looking now towards week 3 and week 5 of the PTS to see what adjustments are made with the combat – these changes cannot go live as they are currently. People have tested these changes in combat, in trials, in dungeons and the downsides to everything are extreme where even experienced groups of some top tier raiders cannot complete certain trials or they struggle immensely due to the healing and lower DPS.

I have trust in ZoS and I believe in the end they will have a solution that will appeal to everyone.

Lost Depths PTS patch notes: PTS Patch Notes v8.1.0 — Elder Scrolls Online

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