Arcanist (New Class)
You can see the most up to date tooltips for Arcanist skills and passives here.
The Arcanist is the 7th class to come out for The Elder Scrolls Online with the Necrom Chapter (Update 38). Its abilities and sound effects are completely unique and will be known for its rather flashy and bedazzling effects on screen.
The class, in summary, is quite tanky in both PvP and PvE. While the class doesn't bring any new Major debuff like the Necromancer did (Major Vulnerability), it does offer easier access to Minor Brittle on target and Minor Courage in the form of a persistent AOE. Healing-wise, due to the Minor Courage and other abilities, it will most likely be popular with healers.
The class as a damage dealer is probably the lowest APM (Actions per Minute) class when compared to any other class including Dragonknights, Nightblades and so forth. The class as a damage dealer is quite reliant on its Beam damage skill which can last for up to 5+ seconds when taking into consideration the 3-Crux system. It is quite an approachable class to play for both newer and older players with an easy to handle rotation that packs quite a lot of burst damage.
General Combat Changes
Melee Attack Range
Melee attack range is being changed to a standard 7 meter distance rather than the 5 meter distance.
One of the main callouts we hope will make life easier for our courageous warriors is the update to melee attack range being a default of 7 meters, rather than 5. Some of you have been around long enough to know this was our original standard – which changed quite a while back – but the game has evolved quite a bit since then and we’re confident we can move back to this experience to better align with our combat pacing and feel. This extra 2 meters won’t be astronomical, but we hope that it reduces the likelihood of missing melee attacks in high mobility encounters and gives those who stay up close and personal a few more precious moments to react to in coming threats.
We’re reverting the changes to melee attack range from years past to get them back where they were, since many of the original problems that caused that pass to be needed originally have been resolved with other targeted changes over time. It’s our hope that this helps make melee attack abilities far less frustrating to utilize in mobile encounters, as well as helping give melee builds slightly more reaction time to incoming mechanics. Note this does not affect radius sizes of abilities, only ranges.
Empower
Empower's buff bonus to Heavy Attacks has been reduced from 80% to 70%.
Since we've started working on Heavy Attack build viability in the past year, we've seen a massive surge in their use, which is absolutely phenomenal for seeing more players being able to participate in end-game content at a much more digestible pace. While we're happy to see these builds being ran, we're seeing these builds inch a little too close to some of the high end builds with how much more simplified they are, and in some rare cases, they're outperforming a standard build. We're cutting down the damage bonus here ever so slightly in hopes that when you have Empower with a bunch of other Heavy Attack bonus sets, the numbers are still nice and juicy, but not as close to a full-on Light Attack build.
After ESOU Faculty's testing and doing the mathematics on this reduction, all conclusions state that at worst, a heavy attack build such as the Oakensorc or Oakencro will see approximately a 3% to 4% nerf to overall DPS. If you were hitting 100k DPS on a dummy, you will be hitting 96k or 97k DPS.
Potions
Detection Potions: Reduced the bonus detection size of these potions to 43.5 meters, down from 100 meters. "These values will ensure similar power experiences and detection sizes as before, with the new updates to how Invisibility works with detection bonuses under the hood."
Dragonknight
Ardent Flame
- Inferno: Fixed an issue where the visual effects from this ability and its morphs would not disappear when their owner became undetectable with sources such as sneak or invisibility.
Draconic Power
- Burning Talons (morph): Reduced the damage over time by approximately 27%, but increased the duration to 5 seconds, up from 4.*
- Elder Dragon (passive): This passive no longer extends the range of melee attacks by 2 meters. Instead it increases your Health Recovery by 259 per Draconic Power ability slotted rather than 5% per ability.
*Note: PTS Week 1 changes had previously made it so that the Damage over Time effect from Talons, Acid Spray and any other ability that behaved similarly would only apply if the target hit by the initial hit does not have a stack of the DoT active. After feedback, this change was reverted.
Necromancer
Grave Lord
- Blastbones: Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs were appearing in a new, unintended place. Come to me my minions!
- Flame Skull: Increased the damage bonus of the 3rd cast for this ability and its morphs to 50%, up from 20%.
Nightblade
Assassination
- Death Stroke: Increased the duration of this Ultimate and morphs’ debuffs to 8 seconds, up from 6.
For the masters of assassination, the Nightblade class is a little bit further behind in single target damage than we’d like. We’re increasing the uptime on this debuff to help Nightblades get more DPS and kill potential on priority targets.
Shadow
- Path of Darkness: The effects from this ability and its morphs will now apply more consistently, rather than having different behaviors for line-of-sight rules across them.
- Summon Shade: Fixed an issue where this ability and the Dark Shade morph could return as ranged abilities in some cases.
- Concealed Weapon (morph): This morph now grants its damage done bonus for 10 seconds if Major Expedition was active while it was cast, rather than for 5 seconds when Major Expedition ends or was refreshed, to ensure the skill is used actively rather than passively. The damage bonus still operates the same for leaving sneak or invisibility.
Sorcerer
Dark Magic
- Dark Exchange: This ability and the Dark Conversion morph now also grant Minor Berserk for the 20 second duration they restore resources.
- Dark Deal (morph): This morph now grants Minor Berserk and Minor Force for the 10 seconds it restores resources.
These abilities are meant to be the class’s primary resource restores skills, and while they do that just fine, they don’t offer any other reason to run leaving them feeling a bit behind when compared to other class resource skills like Restoring Focus or Bull Netch. To sweeten the dark deals occurring, we’re adding some named buffs for the duration to help the class reinforce their spell slinging nature, while making sure we don’t push them over the top in high end damage production with group compositions.
- Negate Magic: Fixed an issue with this Ultimate and its morphs where they could not dispel another version of themselves. Previously, Negate Magic would only dispel Absorption Field or Suppression Field but fail to dispel an enemy Negate Magic, or any permutation where the Ultimates were of the same version. Now, any version of these Ultimates will actively dispel any version of the Ultimates they are placed on if they are sourced from enemies.
Daedric Summoning
- Summon Storm Atronach: The synergy from this Ultimate and its morphs, Charged Lightning, now grants Major Berserk for 10 seconds, up from 8.
- Increased the amount of targets the synergy will target to 12, up from 6.
- Summon Volatile Familiar (morph): This morph’s special active now only stuns on the 2nd tick, rather than the 4th and final ticks, to make the stun less volatile in nature and help reduce the passive feeling of the skill. To make up for this loss, we’re increasing the chance of applying the Charged status effect from the special active’s damage to 5% per tick, up from 1%.
Since we’ve been slowly improving access to the highly coveted Major Berserk buff type (since we’re pretty generous with Major Protection) we wanted to make sure this source stands out in the pack as a special case and reason to consider bringing a Sorcerer or two to group compositions, without making them feel mandatory.
Templar
Aedric Spear
- Focused Charge: This ability and its morphs now grant Major Protection for 4 seconds after reaching your target.
- Explosive Charge: This morph now also extends the duration of Major Protection to 10 seconds.
After the adjustments to Templar’s damage to make sure they’re more in line with other classes, we’ve seen them drop down in effectiveness in PvP situations in some areas. Rather than bloating out their damage again, we’re trying to help enable them to stay in the fray longer and keep up the pressure by adding some defensive bonuses when they dive into foes, helping them go all in before needing to peel back and turtle up.
Dawn's Wrath
- Solar Flare: This ability and its morphs now also grant Sunsphere for 5 seconds after casting, increasing your damage done with class abilities by 5%.
- Solar Barrage (morph): This morph also extends the duration of Sunsphere to 20 seconds.
- Backlash: This ability and its morphs now need 60% less total damage needed to reach their final values.
We're lowering the amount of damage needed for these abilities to reach their big boom numbers, as they needed values that were essentially impossible to achieve in PvP to get to their maximum power. The damage required will still be challenging to reach in PvP environments, and in most cases where opponents are taking countermeasures to deny or mitigate the applier's pressure, the damage will still not reach the maximum amount; we are doing this intentionally so Templars retain a weakness in some capacity. We'll continue to monitor this value and adjust accordingly, if necessary, after we get more data from live servers with how this change interacts with the other buffs the class received in this update.
Restoring Light
- Lightweaver (passive): Fixed an issue where this passive’s Ultimate could apply to the caster, rather than only allies, as its tooltip states.
- Rune Focus: This ability and its morphs now heal you for 2% of your Max Health every second they are active, rather than 4.5% of your Max Health while you are standing within the rune. I ncreased this healing effect by 200% while you are standing in the rune, resulting in a 33.3% (repeating of course) increase overall while in the rune. Fixed an issue where the heal from these abilities was not properly considered a Restoring Light heal. Fixed an issue where these abilities were not considered as healing abilities in some cases.
After the changes to these abilities to grant them healing, we’ve seen a slight improvement in their ability to defend their sanctified grounds, but we’re noticing the class really suffers in the majority of content with mobility. While the class is meant to feel empowered while locked to an area, we’re trying to help them feel less clung to an area by offering some passive healing in between and doubling down (well, tripling in this case) when they decide to mark their fighting arena.
Warden
Animal Companions
- Scorch: Fixed an issue with this ability and its morphs where they could fail to hit larger monsters in some cases.
Winter's Embrace
- Arctic Blast (morph): The stun from this morph now fires after a 2 second delay, rather than immediately. Recasting the ability before the delay completes will reset the delay timer.
- Fixed an issue where the stun ignored line of sight rules.
Weapons
Restoration Staff
- Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs visuals could stack in some cases.
- Fixed an issue where casting these abilities could result in client crashes.
- Fixed an issue where the morphs of this ability could have their visuals of the buffs they provided appear before targets were healed.
One Hand and Shield
- Low Slash: This ability and morphs' secondary effects now last 15 seconds, up from 12.
- Shield Wall: Fixed an issue where this Ultimate and its morphs’ block functionality would become lost after sprinting.
Dual Wield
- Flurry: Fixed an issue with this ability and its morphs where they could sometimes, ever so incredibly rarely, only hit 3 times when weaving in extremely rapid succession (within a 1ms time span).
Bow
- Acid Spray (morph): Increased the damage per tick of the Damage over Time effect of this morph by approximately 11% and increased the duration to 5 seconds, up from 4.
Racial Passives
Argonian
- Resourceful: Fixed an issue where the heal from this passive was not considered a proc.
Vampire
- Fixed an issue where feeding on hostile enemies at Stage 4 Vampirism could cause their health bar to become desynced.
Combat and Arcanist Fixes
- Abyssal Impact (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where your game could crash if too many people used this ability simultaneously.
- Tome-Bearer Inspiration (Arcanist): Updated the ability icon to display a Crux generation symbol.
- Passage Between Worlds (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the camera and character orientation when casting this ability was not consistent with the base ability. Fixed an issue where the synergy granted from this morph could only apply to one ally. It can now be used by all nearby allies.
- Reconstructive Domain (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where this morph was not considered a healing ability for various passive procs and triggers.
- Remedy Cascade (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the Healing Mage item set would not trigger when casting this ability.
- Curative Surge (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the tooltip values were not accounting for rank progression.
- Vitalizing Glyphic (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the glyphic would reset to full health if you ran far enough away from it while it was summoned.
- Fixed an issue where many Ability Timers were resetting erroneously.
- Fixed an issue where a health desync could occur when you used some specific abilities in a specific combination very specifically.
- Rune of Displacement (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the pull could ignore line of sight. fixed an issue where this ability would aggro the target before the pull or damage was applied. This morph’s pull function will now only target enemies between 2 to 8 meters away from the initial target. The Damage over Time will continue to apply to all enemies within 8 meters. Also fixed an issue where the pull from this morph could fail to apply.
- Cruxweaver Armor and Unbreakable Fate (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the ability icons for these two abilities were swapped.
- Gibbering Shelter (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where the damage shields would remain visible for too long.
- Rune of Uncanny Adoration (Arcanist): Fixed an issue where this ability could not be blocked. Fixed an issue where the charmed target would not follow the caster. Fixed an issue where the debuff text referenced a Fear instead of a Charm.
- Fixed an issue where passives and item sets that activated from consuming a potion would fail to activate when consuming a crafted potion.