This article will go over the sum of the 5 weeks of changes being applied to all of the six Elder Scrolls Online classes in terms of combat skills from the Public Test Server cycle for Update 35 otherwise known as the Lost Depths DLC.
For the latest and accurate tooltips, refer to our Skills and Item Sets database.
Dragonknight
Ardent Flame
Molten Whip (morph):
- This morph now causes the ability to split the cost to half Stamina and half Magicka.
- Reduced the stacking damage bonus to Molten Whip to 20% per stack, down from 33%.
- Increased the Weapon and Spell Damage per stack to up to 100, up from 75.
- The Weapon and Spell Damage portion of Seething Fury is no longer consumed when using Molten Whip.
- Increased the duration of Seething Fury to 15 seconds, up from 10 seconds, to help it be easier to keep up with the new duration timers of Fiery Breath and Searing Strike.
To help this ability become more available to hybrid builds, we've opted to take a very unique route with the ability where the cost is now split evenly between Magicka and Stamina. In doing so, we hope to see more unique interactions with the skill as well as aiding more Stamina-focused Dragonknights in sustaining the skill.
Searing Heat: Reduced the damage done bonus from this passive to 25%, down to 33%.
Searing Strike:
- Increased the duration of this ability and its morphs to 20 seconds, up from 10.
- Reduced the damage per tick by 25%.
Burning Embers (morph): Increased the amount of healing this morph allows to up to 100% of the damage caused, up from 50%.
The previous reduction was made as a stop gap before this pass could be completed. Now that the ability deals less damage per tick, we feel comfortable bumping it back up.
Venomous Claw (morph): This morph now increases damage done per tick by 9 - 12%, down from 17 - 20%, as it now stacks up for longer to a higher value.
Draconic Power
Dark Talons: Reduced the cost of this ability and the Burning Talons morph to 3780, down from 4050, to help them be slightly more accessible in usability and to better account for the fact that the Immobilize may fail in many cases.
Inhale: Reduced the cost of this ability and its morphs to 3510, down from 4050.
Originally, this was higher in cost to account for the fact that its initial hit damaged and healed, but since these values are each half of an Area of Effect based attack, it wasn't gaining additional ability functionality (which dictates cost) so we're easing it back to make up for this oversight.
Potective Plate (morph): Increased the duration of the Snare and Immobilization immunity to 4 seconds, up from 2.
Spiked Armor: This ability and its morphs now deal Flame Damage, rather than Magic Damage.
Volatile Armor (morph):
- Increased the duration of the Damage over Time to 20 seconds, up from 10.
- Reduced the damage per tick of this morph by approximately 33%.
Earthen Heart
Ash Cloud:
- This ability and Cinder Storm now tick 1 extra time over their duration.
- Increased the cost per tick to 351, up from 278.
Eruption (morph):
- Reduced the cost per tick of this morph to 270, down from 278, to ensure it costs a similar amount of other DoTs.
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 29%.
Molten Weapons:
- Igneous Weapons (morph): This morph now extends the duration of the effects to up to 60 seconds, up from 45.
- Molten Armaments (morph): This morph now grants the caster Empower for the duration of the effect, rather than increasing the damage of their Heavy Attacks by a unique value.
Petrify: This ability and its morphs now deal Flame Damage, rather than Magic Damage.
Necromancer
Grave Lord
Boneyard:
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 27%.
- Fixed an issue where this ability's bonus visual effects for consuming a corpse would fail to play.
- Reduced the cost to 2970, down from 3780.
- Reduced the bonus damage when consuming a corpse to 30%, down from 50%.
Death Knell: This passive now increases your Critical Chance by 4/8% per ability slotted, up from 2/4%.
Rapid Rot: This passive now increases your damage done with Damage over Time effects by 5/10%, down from 7/15%.
Shocking Siphon:
- This ability and its morphs now tick every .666ms over 20 seconds rather than once every .333ms over 12 seconds.
- Increased the damage per tick by approximately 30%.
Skeletal Mage:
- This ability and its morphs now last for 20 seconds, up from 16.
- Reduced the cost of these abilities to 2970, down from 4320
Skeletal Arcanist (morph): Increased the radius of the splash damage to 5 meters, up from 4.
Skeletal Archer (morph): Increased the damage done per stack to up to 15%, up from 5%.
Bone Tyrant
Hungry Scythe (morph):
- The Heal over Time from this morph now lasts for 10 seconds and ticks once every 2 seconds, rather than lasting for 5 seconds and ticking once every second.
- Increased the Heal over Time to 6.198% of your Max Health, up from 2%.
Grave Grasp: This ability and its morphs’ Minor Maim now last for 10 seconds, up from 5.
Ghostly Embrace (morph): Increased the duration of Minor Maim on this morph to 15 seconds, up from 7.
Empowering Grasp (morph):
- Increased the duration of Empower granted from this morph to 10 seconds, up from 5.
- The Empower for pets now increases their damage and healing potency by a flat 1000, rather than 40%. The Empower can now target Blastbones as well.
Living Death
Restoring Tether:
- This ability and its morphs now tick once every 0.666 seconds, down from once every 0.333ms.
- Increased the healing per tick by approximately 81%.
Spirit Mender:
- Reduced the healing per tick of this ability and its morphs by approximately 48%.
- Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs could sometimes lose a tick of healing when cast.
Spirit Guardian (morph): Fixed an issue where the transferred damage from this morph was not applying to the guardian's health, circumventing the risk of the ability ending early in situations you are taking a significant amount of damage over the duration. It will now die after absorbing 30,000 total damage, meaning after damage reductions you can take up to 300,000 damage over its duration before it will perish.
Nightblade
Assassination
Killer's Blade (morph):
- This morph now causes the execute scaling to change to a linear increase of up to 400% damage done to targets under 50% Health, rather than the static 300% damage done to targets below 25% Health.
- The heal from this morph now scales off of your highest offensive stats, rather than Max Health.
Impale (morph): This morph now also increases the execute scaling to 330%, up from 300%.
Blur:
- This ability and its morphs now reduce the cost of your next Roll Dodge by 10% whenever you take direct damage, stacking up to a maximum of 100%, with a half second cooldown between each stack.
- Reduced the duration of this ability and its morphs to 20 seconds, down from 26.
Mark Target:
- This ability and its morphs now once again cost 2700 Magicka, rather than having no cost.
- These abilities will now heal you to full Health when a marked enemy dies, to sweeten the risk reward gameplay. This heal ignores Battle Spirit but does not ignore other healing reductions or bonuses.
Reaper's Mark (morph): Increased the duration of Major Berserk granted to 10 seconds, up from 5, since the morph no longer increases the healing done as that would be unnecessary.
Lotus Fan (morph):
- Increased the duration of the Damage over Time to 20 seconds, up from 10.
- Reduced the damage per tick by ~23%.
Shadow
Aspect of Terror: This ability and its morphs now apply Major Cowardice to enemies hit for 10 seconds. Increased the target cap of this ability to 6, up from 3.
Mass Hysteria (morph): This morph now removes the target cap from the ability.
Manifestation of Terror (morph):
- This morph no longer fires 2 traps and instead fires 1 trap at your targeted location, as it was allowing you to effectively double the target cap and step on the morph distinction of Mass Hysteria.
- Reduced the duration of the trap to 20 seconds, down from 1 minute.
- Reduced the duration of the fear to match the base ability.
- Reduced the cost of this morph to 3240 at rank 4, down from 3780.
- This morph no longer summons a pet for a brief second to fear the target, and now instead immediately fears the target, to reduce situations where it could fail to go off.
Path of Darkness: This ability and its morphs now apply their effects instantly, rather than after a delay.
Twisting Path (morph):
- Reduced the damage per tick of this morph by approximately 38%.
- Reduced the cost to 2700, down from 3510.
Refreshing Path (morph): Reduced the healing per tick by approximately 35%.
Dark Cloak (morph):
- Reduced the base healing by approximately 42%.
- This morph has a new added functionality where the Heal over Time is increased by 150% when not moving.
The reason this morph has been iterated on so many times is due to the difficulty in finding a sweet spot where it feels powerful enough for specific builds (primarily tanks in PvE encounters) without being too dominant/enabling in other areas (primarily PvP encounters). By finding a solution that is not as synergistic with some of the classes’ main advantages in PvP encounters, while empowering the enforced playstyle for the builds it is meant to help in PvE, we think the new iteration will finally reach a point where it can settle (aside from potentially adjusting the simple numbers) and see less swings in design.
Summon Shade:
- This ability and its morphs now last 20 seconds, rather than ranking up to between 12 and 18 seconds.
- Increased the damage per hit of Summon Shade and Shadow Image by approximately 16%.
- Reduced the cost of this ability and the Dark Shade morph to 2970, down from 4050.
Dark Shade (morph): Reduced the damage per hit of this morph by approximately 25%.
Shadow Image (morph): Reduced the cost of this morph to 3780, down from 4050.
Veiled Strike: This ability and its morphs no longer stun targets when used from the flank.
Surprise Attack (morph): This morph now also always Critically Strikes, up to once every 4 seconds, when flanking an enemy.
Concealed Weapon (morph):
- This morph now passively grants Minor Expedition while slotted, instead of increasing your movement speed by 25% while in sneak or invisible.
- This morph now also increases your Damage Done by 7-10% for 5 seconds after leaving sneak or invisibility, or Major Expedition Ends while in combat.
Currently, the Nightblade's melee spammable options are a bit behind other melee spammables in terms of both flavor and impact in PvE areas, so we're adjusting both morphs to give some love. Surprise Attack's morph option reinforces the need for positioning as an assassin and continues to add some minor damage with the Sundered proc, while Concealed Weapon retains its stealthy and agile emphasis with less restrictions and more reward for playing from the shadows.
We’re also taking away the ease of access of having crowd control on their primary ability to reduce some of their overbearing nature in PvP situations, ensuring they need to look to other tools and make operational costs for running CC options like other classes. This was originally added since the class lacked a potent crowd control option in their kit, which has been amended in this Update by improving the functionality of Aspect of Terror.
Siphoning
Cripple:
- This ability and its morphs now last 20 seconds, up from 10.
- Reduced the damage per tick of these abilities by approximately 23%.
Crippling Grasp (morph): This morph now also reduces the cost of the ability to 2700, down from 2970.
Healthy Offering (morph): Increased the duration of Minor Mending to 10 seconds, up from 8.
Sorcerer
Dark Magic
Crystal Weapon (morph):
- Reduced the damage of this ability so that it now does 145% of a ranged spammable attack between both attacks, rather than 200% of a melee spammable. This damage reduction was taken out of the second hit rather than both, to help reduce situations where you are penalized for missing the 2nd part of the attack.
- Reduced the cost to 2983, down from 3443, to make up for the above adjustments.
- This ability now removes stealth and invisibility after casting.
In the previous Update, we wanted to help reinforce the uniqueness of this morph by giving Sorcerers the ability to change their rotation by have a spammable that persists through other ability activates. While we succeeded in this, not adjusting the damage of the morph caused it to spiral out of control in terms of raw DPS and burst potential. After spending a lot of time and testing, we believe we've hit the sweet spot where the morph brings something unique and powerful, without being too over the top.t
Daedric Mines:
- Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs could detonate instantly on a target multiple times.
- There is now a short cool down window where a target cannot be targeted again from the mines to prevent moments of immense instantaneous burst. This will also mean your mines will no longer detonate without dealing any damage to a target, vastly improving the viability of this ability in long term encounters where a single enemy may walk through the area.
Dark Exchange:
- This ability and its morphs now restore their resources in increments of 2 seconds over their duration, up from 1.
- Reduced the healing of these abilities to 8000, down from 8090.
Dark Conversion (morph): This morph now increases the amount of healing and resources restored, rather than reducing the cost. As a result, the cost is now 3240, up from 2160. It now heals for up to 10000, immediately restores up to 4500 Magicka, and up to 3000 Magicka over time rather than 8090 Health, 3600 Magicka, and 2400 Magicka over time.
Dark Deal (morph): Increased the cost of this morph to 2700, up from 2430. This morph now also causes the secondary resources to return over 10 seconds, rather than 20 seconds.
Daedric Summoning
Bound Armor: This ability and the Bound Aegis morph now also grant Minor Protection for 10 seconds after casting.
Bound Aegis (morph):
- This morph now extends the duration of the effects as well.
- The block mitigation now lasts for 5 seconds and the Minor Protection now lasts 20 seconds.
Bound Armaments (morph):
- Reduced the damage per hit of this ability by approximately 11%.
- This ability no longer passively increases your Light Attack damage.
We're bringing this morph down to match a lot of the hybrid adjustments that the class has received. It was originally intended to help give Stamina Sorcerers a powerful option of a DPS skill since they couldn't use any of the other shiny abilities, such as Haunting Curse or Crystal Fragments. Now that those can be properly utilized on any build, this ability was enabling too much power that could be dumped at a moment’s notice when used in tandem with even just one of the others.
Empowered Ward (morph): This morph now also grants you and allies Minor Endurance as well.
Daedric Prey (morph): Increased the bonus to your pets’ damage to 45%, up from 20%.
Summon Storm Atronach:
- Reduced the duration of this ultimate and its morphs to 15 seconds, down from 21 seconds.
- The base cost has been increased to 275, up from 200, but reduces in cost back down to 200 when at rank IV of the base ability.
- The synergy, Charged Lightning, now goes to the synergizer and 5 nearby allies in a 12 meter radius, rather than the synergizer and the Atronach itself. This effect only targets players, as pets will inherit their owner's bonuses naturally.
Greater Storm Atronach (morph): This morph now increases the damage of the Atronach's single target attack by 30% rather than increasing the duration of the summon.
Summon Charged Atronach (morph):
- The Atronach from this morph now only uses its Area of Effect attack rather than a mixture of single target and AoE.
- Increased the frequency of the attack to once every 2 seconds.
This Ultimate is currently persisting for too long and creating scenarios where certain builds can get multiples of these impactful pets out, and producing significantly more damage than any other Ultimate in the game in relation to its cost. With the reduced duration, it's now much more reigned in while bringing more group utility with the improved synergy granting. Additionally, we've reinforced the distinction of each morph where the Charged Atronach provides much more Area of Effect damage, while Greater focuses on single target melting.
Summon Unstable Familiar:
- Increased the duration of the special ability from this ability and Summon Volatile Familiar to 20 seconds, up from 10.
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 23%.
Volatile Familiar (morph): This morph now stuns on the 4th and final ticks of the ability, rather than only on the final.
Twilight Tormentor (morph):
- Reduced the damage per hit of this morph's basic attacks by approximately 33%.
- Reduced the cost of the special ability for this morph to 2700, down from 2970.
- Increased the bonus damage to targets above 50% Health to 60%, up from 53%.
Storm Calling
Lightning Form:
- This ability and its morphs now tick once every 2 seconds, rather than once every second.
- Increased the damage per tick by 100%.
Hurricane (morph): This morph now increases in damage by 12% per tick, up from 8%. Along with the frequency adjustment, this will reduce the total maximum to 120%, down from 160%.
Lightning Splash:
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 20%.
- These abilities now properly tick one final time before ending.
- Reduced the cost to 2970, down from 3780.
Liquid Lightning (morph): This morph now increases the duration by 5 seconds, down from 10 seconds.
Templar
Aedric Spear
Burning Light:
- This passive now triggers after dealing damage with any attack, rather than only Aedric Spear abilities.
- Increased the cooldown of stack generation to 500ms, up from 1ms.
- Reduced the damage of the proc by approximately 33%.
Currently, this passive is strong arming the Templar into only using Puncturing Strikes as your spammable ability, removing a lot of the potential for other abilities that center around different gameplay. With maintaining the original identity of keeping up the pressure against your primary target, we've removed the restrictions of damage source completely and added a longer cooldown window to reduce burst potential and message spam on the server, helping the passive stabilize to a more expected power budget while vastly improving its flexibility.
Puncturing Strikes:
- This ability and its morphs now hit 3 times over a channel time of 800ms, rather than 4 times over 1 second.
- Implemented new animations and visual effects to match the attack cadence.
- Reduced the cost of this ability and the Puncturing Sweeps morph to 2295, down from 2700.
- Reduced the overall damage of the primary attack by approximately 21% since this ability no longer incurs a DPS loss while weaving within the 1 second global cooldown window.
- Increased the damage of the Area of Effect hits by approximately 7%.
- Reduced the duration of the snare to 0.5 seconds per hit, down from 1 second.
Puncturing Sweeps (morph):
- Reduced the healing of this morph to 33%, down from 40%.
- Fixed an issue where this morph was only healing up to 5 times in large target count encounters, instead of the intended 6 times.
Biting Jabs: This morph now also increases the damage of the Area of Effect portion of the attack by 25%, in addition to the base 7% damage increase.
Spear Shards:
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 23%.
- Reduced the cost to 2970, down from 3780.
Blazing Spear (morph): This morph now increases damage done of the entire ability by 30%, up from 20%.
Dawn's Wrath
Purifying Light (morph):
- This morph's heal now ticks every 2 seconds over 10 seconds, rather than once every second over 6 seconds.
- Reduced the healing per tick by approximately 12%.
Radiant Destruction: Increased the base damage of this ability and its morphs by approximately 23% to ensure it stands up to execute abilities when looking at their ability to be more frequently weaved with.
Solar Flare: Increased the duration of Empower granted from this ability and Dark Flare to 5 seconds, up from 3.
Solar Barrage (morph):
- This morph now lasts 20 seconds, up from 8.
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 24%.
- The damage visual effects for this morph now only pulse when successfully dealing damage, rather than all the time.
Sun Fire:
- This ability and its morphs now last 20 seconds at base, up from 10.
- Reduced the damage per tick by 25%.
Vampire's Bane (morph): This morph now increases the duration of the effects by up to 10 seconds, up from 4.
Restoring Light
Cleansing Ritual:
- This ability and its morphs now last 20 seconds, up from 12.
- These abilities now tick one extra time over their duration.
- Reduced the healing per tick of this ability and Extended Ritual by approximately 3%.
Ritual of Retribution (morph):
- Reduced the damage per tick of this morph by approximately 52%.
- This morph now increases by 12% damage per tick, up from 5%.
Hasty Prayer (morph): Increased the duration of Minor Expedition granted from this morph to 10 seconds, up from 5.
Restoring Aura: This ability and the Radiant Aura morph now grant Minor Endurance, Fortitude, and Intellect to you and nearby allies for 20 seconds, rather than applying Minor Magickasteal to enemies. It still will passively grant these buffs for slotting the ability as well.
Radiant Aura (morph): This morph now also extends the duration of its effects to 60 seconds.
Warden
Animal Companions
Advanced Species: This passive now increases your Armor Penetration by 495/990 per Animal Companion skill slotted, rather than damage done by 1/2%.
Cutting Dive (morph): This morph now applies a Bleed on targets for 10 seconds if they are not off-balance, rather than a stacking bleed on targets for 7 seconds if they were already off-balance.
Screaming Cliff Racer (morph): This morph now increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 100 for 10 seconds after hitting an enemy and increases by an additional 300 when hitting an Off Balance enemy, rather than increasing its damage by up to 15% based on your distance from the enemy. The bonus Weapon and Spell Damage is tracked separately so you do not need to worry about losing the bonus when hitting an enemy that is no longer Off Balance.
We're going back and adjusting the morph distinction of these abilities by helping them focus on different areas where we feel the Warden can struggle. Cutting Dive’s bleed is now much easier to maintain but will produce less damage as it no longer requires as intense of requirements to upkeep, while Screaming Cliff Racer will help increase your overall damage by more, rather than making the attack itself more bursty.
Falcon's Swiftness: This ability and its morphs now also grant 4 seconds of snare and immobilization immunity after activating.
Scorch:
- This ability and the Deep Fissure morph now last for 9 seconds in total, detonating once after 3 seconds and again 6 seconds after that, rather than only once every 3 seconds.
- These abilities now hit with 2 unique damage sources – the first hit deals approximately 20% less damage. The second hit does 38% more damage when compared to the new base value.
- Increased the cost to 2700, up from 2430, now that they can potentially cost significantly less per cast if you let their full durations ride out.
Subterranean Assault (morph):
- This morph continues to reduce the time it takes for the second hit to go off, but this second hit does not gain the extra damage.
- This morph retains its cost of 2066.
- Reduced this morph’s damage by the 20% reduction of the base ability.
The changes to Scorch and their morphs were done in attempts to try and help the class feel less intensely focused on buff management and allow for other actions in combat, while still trying to retain their burst-oriented nature, to a more balanced degree when comparing them to other burst skills and taking their total time before impact better into account. By separating the damage, we can also better allow the skill to function as a burst skill or a sustained DPS skill, where recasting it earlier will result in more total DPS, whereas waiting for the bigger explosion will result in those dopamine printing burst combos.
Swarm:
- This ability and its morphs now last for 20 seconds, up from 10.
- Decreased the damage per tick by approximately 23%.
Fetcher Infection (morph): Increased the bonus damage on the second cast to 60%, up from 50%.
Wild Guardian:
- The bear from this ultimate and morphs now attacks once every 2 seconds, instead of a mixture of timers.
- Reduced the damage of the bear's passive attacks by approximately 19%.
- Increased the cooldown of the Crushing Swipe attack to 8 seconds, up from 5, so it better lines up with CC immunity timers as this attack can stun enemies.
- The active ability, Guardian's Wrath, now has a 700ms cast time for the bear (not your own cast!) so that it properly matches up with the attack animation and reduces the desync potential of the attack.
Feral Guardian (morph): This morph now quintuples (5x) the status chance application of Hemorrhaging, instead of guaranteeing the effect, to reduce the ease of access of the status without investment into applying it.
Eternal Guardian (morph): This morph now also increases the execute scaling of the special activate to 150%, up from 100%.
Green Balance
Budding Seed (morph): Increased the healing per tick of this morph by approximately 3%.
Nature's Grasp: Reduced the healing per tick of this ability and Nature's Embrace by approximately 33%.
Winter's Embrace
Arctic Wind:
- This ability and the Polar Wind morph no longer deal damage over their duration.
- The Healing over Time effects now tick once every 2 seconds over 10 seconds, rather than once every second over 5.
- Increased the healing per tick to 6% of your Max Health, up from 2.5%.
Polar Wind:
- This morph now causes the initial heal and Heal over Time to target an additional ally, rather than only the initial heal.
- Increased the healing over time by 20%.
Arctic Blast (morph):
- This morph now causes the initial heal to scale with your highest Offensive stats, rather than Max Health.
- This morph now causes the Heal over Time to be converted to Damage over Time.
- This morph no longer ranks up in cost reduction.
- This morph now stuns immediately upon cast, rather than requiring hitting the same target 5 times in succession. The stun is no longer unblockable.
- Increased the duration of this morph to 20 seconds, up from 10 seconds.
- Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 3%.
- Increased the chances of applying a status effect with this morph to 15%, up from 1% per tick.
We’re readjusting (again) the requirements and differentiations of these morphs to help improve their gameplay distinctions for different types of activities. The base ability and Polar Wind will now have their added functionality act closer to a Heal over Time ability, while Arctic Blast will be centered on allowing more offensive oriented Ice Wardens to gain access to extra damage and a long time requested on-demand stun ability.
Crystallized Shield:
- Fixed numerous visual errors with this ability and its morphs.
- Fixed an issue where the shield could fail to grant its full value when recasting it while it was already active.
Crystallized Slab (morph):
- Fixed an issue where the 3rd projectile would fail to visually appear in many cases.
- This morph no longer has a 500ms cooldown, as it was allowing the ability to sometimes absorb more than 3 projectiles.
Since the projectile limit exists and this morph's damage return is not bound by a duration but rather charges, the cooldown does not need to exist. This does, however, mean that builds that weave multiple projectiles in tandem will feel extreme pain when attacking users with this morph.
Frozen Armor: Increased the amount of Armor granted from this passive to 495/990 per Winter's Embrace skill slotted, up from 250/500.
Ice Fortress (morph): Increased the duration of this morph to 30 seconds, up from 25.
Impaling Shards: Reduced the damage per tick of this ability and Gripping Shards by approximately 25%.
Gripping Shards (morph): Reduced the cost of this morph to 2970, down from 3240.
Winter's Revenge (morph):
- Decreased the damage per tick of this morph by approximately 55%.
- This morph now deals 30% more damage if you cast it with a Destruction Staff equipped, to help it stand out more for the spell caster focused Wardens.