The Final Lost Depths PTS Update is Today - Battleground Weekends and More Combat Changes - ESO

The final version of the Public Test Server for ESO Lost Depths is up today.

By Andrew   •  Published 2 years ago

It has certainly been an eventful few weeks for the Elder Scrolls Online, with large amounts of disagreement and controversy surrounding the Lost Depths update in the Elder Scrolls Online, and Zenimax's multiple changes in direction in response to player criticism of the originally planned changes. 

Today, the final changes to the PTS have been concluded, so presumably most of what is on the PTS now will be what is going onto the live servers on PC in a couple of weeks.

Battleground Weekends Tested on PTS

Something that Zenimax mentioned was in the works earlier this year was the introduction of special Battlegrounds weekends, where additional rewards would be available for players competing in battlegrounds over the weekend. Not a huge amount of information was available about this before, and we hadn't heard anything since which had led some players to wonder if the idea had been shelved. 

However this feature is now being tested on the PTS for the first time. Each day this week, PTS Battlegrounds will be restricted to a particular game type, and there will be a 25% AP bonus for players competing in those matches. There has been no announcement yet as to when this feature will be added to the Live server, or if there will be any additional collectible rewards for participating in them, but it is a sign that something is definitely in the works, which is good news for PvP players who have criticized a perceived lack of PvP focus in recent times.

ESO BattlegroundsESO Battlegrounds

Final Combat Changes for ESO Lost Depths

There have been another couple of apparent U-turns with ability balance changes in these patch notes, both related to the Nightblade class. 

The first of these is a nerf to Surprise Attack, which up until now on the PTS was guaranteed to critically strike when you were flanking an enemy. This has been toned back and the effect now has a cooldown of four seconds. 

In addition, Dark Cloak has been changed again and will now scale from your maximum health instead of your missing health. 

As for other classes, the duration of Seething Fury from Molten Whip has been increased to 15 seconds, the second hit of Crystal Weapon will now do 45% of the original hit's damage, rather than 30%, and Daedric Curse will buff your pets' damage by 45% instead of 20%.

There were also buffs to Radiant Destruction for Templars, and Screaming Cliff Racer, Arctic Wind, and Impaling Shards for Wardens. 

Surprisingly perhaps, no further changes to the Empower buff have been announced, which presents the very real possibility of a Medium Attack meta emerging next patch, an odd state of affairs given the purported aims of improving accessibility (Medium attack weaving is significantly harder to pull off than light or heavy attack weaving).

ESO Lost DepthsESO Lost DepthsIt is of course not out of the question that further changes will happen last minute, but we can now assume that the vast majority of what is on the PTS will be going onto the live servers when Lost Depths releases. 

You can view the full PTS patch notes here

We hope you enjoyed this article about the Lost Depths PTS in ESO. The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) developed by Zenimax Online Studios.
Andrew

Andrew

Published 2 years ago

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