ZOS just published the patch notes for Week 4 of the Lost Depths public test server in ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) and players were once again surprised by the amount of changes that came with it. The U35 Lost Depths DLC test server changes were very chaotic so far. I already reported on a few things like the 100% Surprise Attack spam or how the Oakensoul got nerfed just one update after it went live.
In this weeks PTS there have been plenty of changes but mostly two things stood out, the nerf to the Maelstrom Staff and a huge buff to the Empower skill now boosting Heavy Attacks like crazy.
What’s changed with the Maelstrom Staff in ESO?
Both the normal and perfected Maelstrom Staff had their effect changed. Previously your light and heavy attacks did 1353 extra damage. With the new iteration the Maelstrom Staff won’t buff your light and heavy attacks anymore, but buffs the Wall of Elements and it’s morphs directly.
Reading the tooltip inclines that it only buffs it by a total of 1087. However, it is likely that every tick of the wall gets buffed by this amount, they probably forgot to add that in the tooltip. This also has to be tested to confirm it though. In the end, this is very likely a nerf, even if only a minor one.
Empower now buffing Heavy Attacks by 80%
Another odd change is what they did to the Empower buff. On the liver server Empower buffs your light and heavy attacks by 40%. Now with the newest test server iteration light attacks won’t be buffed at all anymore but heavy attacks now get a crazy 80% boost. That is high and I doubt that this will go live like this. Players will come up with builds in which their heavy attacks will deal 100-200k damage.
ZOS also mentioned that this buff won’t be active in PVP, basically killing the Empower buff completely for any PVP related activities and this lowering build diversity.
This change seems very out of order and came out of nowhere.
Now I can only think of one reason why this change went through. There has been a lot of drama around accessibility options for ESO. They actually gave the Oakensoul Ring a permanent Empower buff in the latest test server. That is basically them saying ” look here, you now have your accessibility option with One Bar Heavy Attack Builds”.
I am not convinced that all of these changes will go live, we will have to wait for the next weeks test server changes to really know what will be going live.
Video about the changes can be found here:
