I'm going to try and go in order of appearance in the patch notes. We did this in a live stream so not every thing here is my own opinion but it was run by me before I wrote it.
This is what was good and what was bad with this PTS
So first we have this set:
Mother Ciannait – Monster Mask
1 – Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
2 – While in combat, casting an ability with a cast time or channeling an ability grants you a damage shield that absorbs 3000 damage for 10 seconds. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
Cool idea, kinda like ice heart but overall it is probably one of the worst monster sets in the game right now. Because we have cast times (that we don't like) on stuff like incap this set has potential because a lot of people can easily use it. However the cooldown as well as the size of the shield is horribly balanced. Either the cooldown needs to be lower or the size of the shield has to be bigger in order for this set to be useful.
Now for the Wizard Riposte Parody:
Critical Riposte – Located in Vlasterus
2 – Adds 424 Critical Resistance
3 – Adds 1206 Maximum Health
4 – Adds 424 Critical Resistance
5 – When you take critical damage, you apply Minor Uncertainty and Minor Enervation to the enemy for 4 seconds, reducing their Physical and Spell Critical by 1314 and reducing their Critical Damage by 10%. An enemy can only be affected by your Critical Riposte once every 7 seconds.
So this set will probably suffer the same issue that Wizard's Riposte did when it was first released. The duration may not be as long but the fact it will apply if I just crit on you means it will be on me at almost all times. My other issue is that by reducing my crit chance, it means I can't heal as well so not only is this set just defensive but it will also help you secure a kill in a similar way to defile (not as powerful though.
This might be a bit OP:
Unchained Aggressor – Located in Bruma
2 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
3 – Adds 129 Stamina Recovery
4 – Adds 129 Weapon Damage
4 – Adds 129 Spell Damage
5 – After Breaking Free, gain Major Berserk for 9 seconds, increasing your damage done by 25%. This effect can occur once every 21 seconds.
This has a 45% uptime? That's a bit crazy.
This one is a little interesting:
Off Balance is no longer consumed on targets from Heavy Attacks or abilities.
So does this mean that if a target is off balance I can heavy attack them multiple times and get bonus resourced? Seems a little OP but ok. I only say It's OP because for some classes it's a little hard to get off balance.
Ok so
Stonefist. I am not a Stam DK so take what I say with a grain of salt. I think what they are trying to do is cool and all but I worry how useful it'll actually be.
One 1 change to
Nightblade and it's a bug fix? FeelsBadMan. You really need to take the cast time off Soul Tether.
This might be a bit nitpicky what whatever:
Summon Unstable Familiar: Reduced the cost of the special activate of this ability and the Summon Volatile Familiar morph to 3510, down from 4500.
The only problem this is that the familiar will still randomly stun you and it's annoying.
Ok so this is by far the stupidest thing I've seen this year:
Sacred Ground: This passive no longer snares enemies in the area. Instead, it increases your Block Mitigation by an additional 10% while standing in one of the mentioned abilities.
Why would you do this? No one asked for this. A sword and Shield Templar is already nearly impossible to kill so why are we just ,making them tankier. And I don't mean actual tanks I mean a DPS Templar with a sword and shield is currently incredibly hard to actually kill. The last thing Templars needed is a buff.
Legit thank you for this one
Ballista (morph): Fixed an issue where this ability could continuously break the caster’s invisibility.
This has been a problem for awhile and I'm glad ZOS is fixing it.
So this one puzzles me but I know it'll make some people happy.
Dizzying Swing (morph): This morph now stuns enemies who are already off balance.
Yeah this kinda gets rid of the point of not having a hard hitting ability attached to a stun. It's good that there is a condition attached but since off balance is no longer consumed by heavy attacks I feel like this will get annoying kinda quick. But it's not the largest so whatever.
This is also good:
The stun from this ability and its morphs now occurs when the cast completes, rather than when it begins.
However I kinda want this abilty to be more useful so maybe some kind of damage buff? IDK
Ok so
Volendrung got a bit of a buff? Most people aren't supper happy with how this mechanic currently works. Yet 3/5 of it's abilities just got damage buffs. The least you could do would be prevent the faction with emperor from picking it up.
So this change is both good and bad.
Scathing Mage:
This set no longer considers the first tick of each Damage over Time as Direct Damage.
This set no longer requires Critical Strikes to proc.
Reduced the duration and cooldown to 5 seconds from 6 seconds.Battlegrounds
The decision to wipe MMR is good. Honestly despite the poor state of balance around Nightblade I actually might play battlegrounds this patch because of this change. I personally think they should do this every major update or maybe every year, twice a year, whatever. This is good. This good. This is good!
What did ZOS miss/should still do regarding classes/weapons
-Dragonknight
While a very powerful class, it doesn't feel all that good to play at times. There are a lot of DKs on the forums who scream way to much about how bad it is but honestly it has seldom been bad in terms of performance and is really only bad in how it feels to play. The themes of a Dragon do not match the performance of the class. It has way to much self healing and not enough mitigation. Dragons do not heal like crazy but rather they just don't take that much damage do begin with. I feel like Nightblade has a similar issue in that it has too much mitigation but not enough self healing. These roles should be switched.
Also you have been changing the cost of ground AOE abilities but it seems like you have forgotten Ash Cloud. While it has a long duration so it's cost should remain larger it is kind of too large since everything else is getting a change.
Sorc
Everyone's favorite OP class. ZOS has been doing a relatively good job with sorc in not making it super OP. However there are 2 skills which seem to be a bit to good. I'd also like to take this chance to say that if frags does have a audio queue I have really never heard it unless I am right next to the sorc, but you can hear the Grim Focus audio queue no matter where you are. Fix this.
The first overloaded skill is Ball of Lightning. It has the base function of the skill + snare removal (very powerful) + the projectile absorb. Now the projectile absorb might not be as good anymore. I've yet to test it, but I feel it deserves a mention at least for now.
Curse... Yall had to know it'd be this. Back in homestead they tried to nerf curse. Due to public outcry they not only reverted the nerf but actually buffed it! To this day, I still think that was a dumb move. Sorc already has enough skills that bring you out of cloak, the haunting effect is incredibly annoying. Also the fact that it isn't affected by block, dodge, major/minor protection, major/minor evasion makes it even stronger. So this skill isn't a DOT but it isn't an AOE? But if it isn't an AOE why is it taking me out of cloak. So if it's taking me out of cloak then it's an AOE, right? Nope because it isn't affected by Evasion at all. Also it persists after death which is a little weird.
Matriarch's heal ability is way to good at the moment. It also does a lot of a damage. You should only pick one of these. Not have both in one skill.
Rune cage feels very weird to use. It works, and it does an ok job, but it just doesn't feel good to use and often fails in terms of targeting well. However the targeting thing could just be because I suck at sorc.
Templar
Possibly the best class this patch and last. It received a couple of buffs that it actually probably deserved. However they did not compensate for the added power the class got. Making their burst crit is good for Templar and it's fair because everyone else's burst can crit. However jabs is possibly the most overloaded skill in the game.
Lets talk about jabs! So the magicka morph does AOE Damage, Single target damage, procs burning light (which hurts), snares your target, and heals the caster. That is 5 things in one skill. At least nerf the damage on burning light or remove the bloody snare. The stamina morph does the same things except it does not heal the caster, it does however give you weapon crit, which is fine, I think that this is a more balanced model of the skills however please remove the snare at least.
Ok so what else is wrong with Templar? Well we can look at burning light the passive. It make's Templar's good damage abilities amazing. I'm not saying nerf it, but it's basically a class version of old Viper's Sting. I personally don't have a solution that would not impact PvE that much so I'll just leave it to ZOS.
Radiant Destruction, also down as Radiant Depression, is an undogable execute which may not be blatantly overpowered but due to Templar's spammable also being undogable, could be considered balance flaw. Also it goes through LOS a lot which is more of a technical problem but it does greatly impact combat gameplay.
Eclipse is a very defensive and very powerful tool in a Templar's kit. I'd it's probably too powerful especially when you consider what else they have in their kit. When fighting a Templar using the Living Dark morph I feel as if it's a futile fight. Not only does it defend the Templar with a high rate of healing (not large heals themselves but it's very fast) but it also snares the attacker so the point where I feel like I'm being harassed (That's a joke but honestly it feels terrible even with snare removal). As for the other morph, unstable core, it's not super OP but just as annoying as the the other morph. In the past this could be removed with a CC break but now it's stuck on you and you just have to suffer.
Now I mentioned this already but the change to the Sacred Ground passive is dumb. Cool and all, but I'd prefer the sacred ground passive to stay the same but have jabs loose the snare. As it is, Templars with Shields are nearly impossible to kill without assistance from a second player or more.
Nightblade
Everyone's favorite edgelord, not you Necro. This class while on paper looks like it's mostly fine is actually kinda painful to play especially as a mag spec. Stamina is less painful only because it has good sustain and survival, but that's mostly due to it being stamina not it being a Nightblade.
Nightblades right now currently have a fairly respectable amount of damage. I do think it should be increased a slight bit. However their struggle is actually that the damage they do have never hits. I understand ZOS wants to add counterplay and giving incap a cast time sure is one way of doing it, but incap never hitting plus grim focus never hitting makes the the class almost useless outside of ganking.
Nightblade's execute is kinda weird because it is so similar to Executioner. Maybe give it a bit of love!
Incap is a weird skill because it does damage and applies a fairly strong debuff, however the silence is almost useless especially since most people in PvP are stamina builds anyways. I think they should replace this effect with something more useful. Also the fact that this skill has a sustain function is an insult to Magicka Nightblade who desperately needs that extra sustain. Having a cast time makes it very hard to land this skill which largely impacts nightblades ability to kill someone. Then the fact that their main burst also is fairly easy to avoid you are just throwing a bunch a bunch of DPS into dodges
Soul Harvest in PvE is pretty powerful. In PvP ever since they removed the "undogable bug" it hasn't been anything special. Having a cast time makes it very hard to land this skill which largely impacts nightblades ability to kill someone. Then the fact that their main burst also is fairly easy to avoid you are just throwing a bunch a bunch of DPS into dodges. Making this skill more useful in PvP would be nice but as it is I'll settle for other buffs to nightblade.
Strife causes me exactly that, this unending internal strife with why I bother to play a nightblade. The Funnel Health morph is an RP skill. It's TERRIBLE. Because the amount of healing is tied to damage done, and the damage of the skill was halved by 50% awhile back, it results in depressingly low heal numbers. Like it's bad I can't even describe it. The largest heal I got in a BG with Funnel Health is a mostly damage oriented build was 700 health. The other morph is nightblade's primary source of healing. As for the Swallow Soul skill, Right now my tool tip is about 10k and the amount of healing I get from it is 39% so upping it by 11% won't be that bad. Now either making the heal be able to crit could help or make it go off ever second rather than every 2 seconds. There are a lot of options. Seeing as nightblade desperately needs better self healing I'd say make the heal to Swallow Soul heal for 50% of the damage done.
As for the Siphoning skill line in general, nightblade probably has the second worst self healing in the game, it should be one of the top contenders. Currently as I mentioned above Dragonknight has too much self healing and not enough mitigation, and nightblade has the opposite problem, to much mitigation, not enough self healing. This needs to be addressed. Dragons don't heal, they just don't take much damage to begin with.
@ZOS_Gilliam has mentioned that a nigtblade's job isn't always to do damage, he is right to an extent, and while I can see where he is coming from just because they aren't always supposed to do damage all the time doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to heal to save their lives, much less apply meaningful counter pressure to their attackers. I can say with certainty that it feels like nightblade is having an identity crisis. It's an assassin, it should do good damage that isn't easily avoidable.
Magicka Nightbalde sustain is actually in some ways worse than mDK, at least for my builds. Feel free to look at my YouTube if you want to see what I run on both of them (The builds are similar, both destro/resto, both bright throat and 1 damage set. The mDK is so much better it's sad). However my mDK runs out of stam more than by nightblade. So something with a passive, or siphon attacks would be nice, also for the love of the divines please give magblade a better way to sustain their stamina as well.
Remove the cast time of Tether, or make it only .1 second
Resto Staff
Fix healing ward. Then I won't complain about nightblade's healing ever again. Just revert it with different values or increase the current values. Just please let me heal myself.
Because of how the Regeneration (Mutagen/Rapid Regen) skill works now, vMA resto is slightly useless. Not totally, just slightly.
Sword and Board
Not gonna say OP but like, it's very good. Everyone knows we are in a tank meta. The ult for this skill line is also incredibly powerful for a fairly low cost but I'll let other people debate this matter.
