WithMorrowindforElder Scrolls Onlinelaunching in just a few days, we took the time to break down the major changes that are coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One with this expansion and its accompanying patch. One of the truly amazing and little-known things that Zenimax has done in this update, is taken the exact map used in the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and duplicated it within Elder Scrolls Online. you’re able to visit all the same locations (such as Vivec City) and they should look, more or less, just like they did in the third installment of this iconic franchise. This is not the case with Oblivion orSkyrim, neither of which have their locations already included in the Online version of the game and are not duplicated from previous installments. Although the Morrowind map is exact, what’s inside of it is quite different indeed. Let’s take a look at what you can expect when the new content launches on June 6th.
Morrowind Patch Game Changes
Champion System
We’ll start here with theChampion System, which has been given a significant make over in a very positive manner. For starters, players will gain a cap increase of 30 Champion Points, but on top of that they will find that Champion Stars within constellations are nowheavilyfront-loaded. This means that players will not need to invest as many points into a star to get more out of it, in fact the benefit decreases much more significantly the more points you spend in a specific star. This will not only encourage players to spread out their points, and create some more build diversity, but will also give players who don’t have quite as many Champion Points a chance to be more competitive with players who are at the cap.
Furthermore, many of the Constellations and stars have been reworked in some form or another, either with completely different passive abilities or with reductions to their overall benefits. Notable changes are the replacement of the cost reduction stars for both Magicka and Stamina and the reduction of the recovery stars for Magicka, Stamina and Health down from 25% to 15%. What these changes do is put significantly more pressure on the player to manage their resources, encouraging more players to wear Light or Medium armor for the recovery/cost reduction passives as well as makes it harder for players to stack two really high DPS sets.
Other notable changes include reductions to the amount of healing and “damage-type” damage you can deal which are down from 25% to 15%. While this may seem like a huge nerf to DPS, Zenimax has cleverly added a new star that increases the damage of direct damage abilities by 25% called Master-at-Arms, to compliment theThaumetuergestar that increases damage over time abilities by 25%. This again is a move that should help build diversity and encourage players to find unique combinations of abilities that take full advantage of those passives. Have you been keeping a specific set in your bank that you thought you’d never use? Now might be the right time to dust it off and give it a go.
Cyrodiil and PvP Changes
Cyrodiiland PvP changes are a significant part of the changes. One of the major changes to Cyrodiil is the removal of all current campaigns to be replaced immediately by the following:
Taking a look at these campaigns, besides the heavily inspired Morrowind-ish names, players will notice only one Champion of which to choose from. Between this, the Non-Champion PvPBattlegroundsand the now heavily front loaded Constellations, one would assume that Zenimax is making preemptive moves to remove the Champion System all together. And, since this system has been widely considered a failure by many players, I think this might be a smart move. However, what they might replace it with is anyone’s guess.
Keeps, Outposts and Resources now have a 5 minute cooldown for granting Alliance Points when capturing; you won’t receive AP for capturing it again until 5 minutes have passed. We suppose this is to prevent Emperor AP farming. This may be how some players boosted to the top of a campaign leaderboard rather quickly because resources now give much more AP since the last patch. Hopefully this means that the only Emps we will see truly deserve it for busting their hump and killing lots of DC and EP…
The followingSetsare now included in not only Campaign Leaderboard rewards, but also Rewards of the Worthy, and Rewards of the Worthy will no longer contain weapons or jewelry. Yes, you can get gold versions of jewelry for all of these sets now!
General Combat Changes
The main focus of many of generalcombatchanges is resource management. Zenimax simply felt that players were too overpowered and had to spend very little effort to maintain their resource pools while being able to output huge damage numbers, so they have implemented some changes to make sustain something that must actually be managed. The first of these changes is to reduce the cooldown for being charged Stamina or Magicka to block an attack to 0.25 seconds from 0.5 seconds. This will drain these resources twice as fast when blocking, providing a huge nerf to tanks and PvP builds that could nearly perma-block.
Sneak attacks no longer grant a bonus to Critical Damage when used against other players. Sneak attacks will continue to guarantee a Critical Strike and stun the target, and will also still grant a bonus to Critical Damage when used against monsters. This is a huge nerf to PvPers that play from stealth often, primarilyNightblades. We can only assume this was done because they want players to get back into using Light and Medium Armor and Nightblades pose the biggest threat to making this possible by being able to CC and kill anyone within seconds who may have done so. It sucks for Nightblades, not so much for the rest of us.
Roll Dodge now grants a 2 second immunity to immobilization after the roll is complete. This change helps to combatSorcerersandDragonknightsthat spam root abilities in PvP making it nearly impossible to escape, or completely draining your Stamina. I don’t think it will be enough to seriously nerf these sorts of builds, but it should help give it a little balance.
Stamina abilities are now universally 15% cheaper than their Magicka counterparts, originally being 20% cheaper and this includes class abilities that morph into Stamina abilities. This was done because Stamina players were able to do huge damage without ever running out of resources because of their possible set combinations and Zenimax is trying to make it so that Stamina and Magicka builds must focus on resource management. We don’t see this nerf breaking anyone’s build, but expect a few people to complain.
To help combat some of these and other resource nerfs, Zenimax has:
Overall these changes should take some of the sting of the sustain nerfs off and might even encourage a few new niche builds in PvP that take advantage of Heavy Attacks. I fully expect to see people running these sort of builds with a Destro, theQueens Elegance Setand the newKnight Slayer Set, both of which increase the damage your Heavy Attacks deal significantly.
Class and Ability Changes
There are many Class changes that will have significant impacts on both PvE and PvP so let’s take a look at the ones that do the most damage.
Dragonknight
Nightblade
Light Armor
Medium Armor
Heavy Armor
All of these changes further reduce the effectiveness of sustain from wearing each armor type, again with the focus on making players choose between sustain and burst or somewhere in the middle. The Constitution reduction all but makesHeavy Armorimpossible to PvP in without making a pure tank build or using theBlack Rose Set.
Miscellaneous Changes
Added to the UI will be a debuff and buff tracker so that you can see when both of these effects expire, which is something that was only previously accomplished on PC via plugins and was not possible on console. Since most hardcore players on PC already had some sort of tracking plugins, this will not be a vital change to them, but this is a fantastic quality of life upgrade for console players. I can’t wait!
A new tab to your Collections is being included with this Update called “Stories”. In this section will be included anyDLCor “Chapters” you may have purchased. Yes you read that right: Chapters. Morrowind is considered a chapter in your log, so this would lead one to believe there will be more “Chapters” in the future! Please insert theories here..
Final Thoughts
The name of the game with this Update issustainability. Whether you purchase the expansion or not, these changes are coming and they will affectallplayers. Hopefully you’ve been watching the coverage of the expansion on the Public Test Server and were aware of this weeks ago, but if not you might want to spend your last few days before the patch collecting some sustain sets likeLich,Vestments of the Warlock,Bone Pirateetc, because you are going to need them. In all, the changes are probably a step in the right direction for Elder Scrolls Online, albeit a small one. It does honestly feel like Zenimax is trying the shotgun approach to some of the game’s problems. Instead of adjusting a few things at a time and seeing how it effects the game, they are going for broke and trying to hit them all at once. While this is certainly a way to make change happen, it may cause more harm than good in the long run. We’ll reserve judgement until we get some extensive time with the game on the live server, as always, but being aTemplarI’m a little more salty than your average player.
What are your thoughts on the major changes coming with Morrowind? Too much? Too little? Just right? Be sure to sound off in the comments and make sure you’re checking back with us often, both on thewiki,blogand ourYouTube channelfor the best Elder Scrolls Online coverage out there.
