Now that we know where The Elder Scrolls Online is headed in 2022, the combat team is now discussing where things are going in that realm as part of update 33. Expect more hybridization, flexibility, and eventual streamlining.
The combat team is looking at changes focused on player abilities that better reflect what a character’s highest offensive stats are. If your highest defensive stats are in a particular style, they want to offer the chance to build upon that. According to the update from Combat Designer Alex Verish:
“This means any ability that used to scale exclusively with Spell Damage and Max Magicka will now dynamically scale with Weapon Damage and Max Stamina, and vice versa. With this, we want to retain the identity of many playstyles by reinforcing ability cost as a limiting factor in how frequently you can engage with abilities, but with less concern as to how powerful that ability is based on what stat path you’ve chosen.”
This will follow what ESO has already done with regards to item sets and passives. Eventually, item sets and abilities may see dual sourced buffs, and eventually merged bonuses so there’s less to keep track of individually. This will also be seen in some practical cleanup and strengthening of abilities, with lesser used ones getting some much needed sprucing up. Additional tweaks might mean making abilities as functional as their names imply, with something like Piercing Javelin now piercing through a block. Some less thorough quality of life changes might give less to micromanage by adding increased duration or additional options. An example cited is Lotus Flower, which gives the choice to gain more health overall or a significant boost to uptime.
It seems that some of the community’s feedback on combat is being looked at, in addition to the art of working to keep things feeling fresh and dynamic in a long-running game. You can read the full devblog on upcoming combat changes at The Elder Scrolls Online.
