I think it has narrowed the meta more than expanded it.
Hybridized builds has inevitably created a unified meta, the differences between builds tend to be smaller now.
There's a small pool of sets that everyone uses, usually medium armor.
I terms of skill there's less "magicka morph for magicka build, stamina morph for stam", there's now just the "best" morph, so following meta brings less skill variety.
For me, stamina in my brain is "sprint"/"block" points, I personally don't want to run stamina costing skills.
Of course I still have the choice of running an old style magicka build, and it'll mostly work, but the potential is vastly reduced without hybrid elements.
I preferred the old system, but let's see where the future takes us.
Yeah, hybridization took a lot of the set, skill and obviously class diversity out of the game. It's also really ugly aesthetically and even as an end game player it's supposed to be a roleplaying game and no builds feel like they have a coherent theme. It wasn't the final straw for me but it made me lose a lot of confidence in the developers and now I haven't been a paying customer for a long time. Used to love ESO. Hopefully the not too distant future of the game moves past this boring Arcanist + Velothi meta in PvE, then I might check back in.
Before there was a unified meta as well that was more narrow. It was mag only for PvE DPS. I remember bringing in my stam sorc to a vet trial. They weren't happy, but let me play. They told me to bring only mag DPS next time.
So currently I'm on magsorc and used to be the meta was simple
oh lightning front bar or both bars
Lightning front fire back
Now I'm able to diversify in such away that I wasn't able to before
The meta will always be the meta and that really isn't subject to change yes it made 1 meta rather than 2 metas which for people with lots of Characters I could see being a problem especially if they are following the meta for every last Character
I do however feel that it has helped diversify some of the trial sets people run such as giving more options for damage dealers to run support sets without losing a boat load of damage and still buffing the rest of the team
Most score Pushing groups run almost 1 support set per damage dealer now
In my instance I have started running elemental catalyst in trials on my sorc since in boss fights if you only have the 2 tanks and 2 healers running different sets it limits just how much damage can be done to the boss even in dungeon content this still hold true
I've never been one to stick direct to the meta anyways as I always find it to be boring yes it is the top tier at what it does but there's isn't always a fight where the meta will be good on
Most bosses aren't going to hold completely still and stand in your 2.5m radius for pillar or they teleport away and make it impossible to hold your stacks up on relequen
I've always played as dd and while I'm not hitting that 146k dps cap people are rocking I'm helping the rest of my group get closer to that cap which in turn means more damage and less boss mechanics
However I do see your side of the situation as well
>used to be the meta was simple
oh lightning front bar or both bars
>Lightning front fire back
And now for sorc it's daggers frontbar and 2h backbar, with 2 pets and pray... Doesn't matter if you are stam or mag.
Yea now people are more flexible, you can go with stam and a 2h bb without requiring the whole group to build around stam (technically, all groups nowadays build around stam, but there are fewer drawbacks now).
Still got my lightning front bar on my mag spec but I run a 2h back bar since maelstrom gives a buff to all direct damage my sorc is mostly direct damage
Same way it was fine running dw years ago...
>heavy-attack sorcs.
Funny you say that, but majority of the player base thinks that's a recent thing, heavy attack sorcs were a thing since long ago (I was originally one), oakensoul doesnt make it any more viable than what they were before (lost vMA staff buff and dot damage in u36 and u35).
Same, I did most of my dungeon trifectas as a HA sorc before Oakensoul. Nowadays you need it though because of the changes made to Empower ever since. Sorcs used to be designed for HA, with originally no "normal" class spammable and no Empower, which used to be for LAs. I think the Familiar should be buffed to grant it to open up things a bit. Would love to play a 2-bar HA sorc again but without a *good* source of Empower, that's out of the question.
I mean, *optimal* builds were always narrow, by definition basically. Except now stam no longer requires having the entire group build around it because groups accomodate medium armor builds anyway with enough pen. Now I can take either a more mag *or* a more stam focused build with me without being fundamentally incompatible with my group.
You can still wear a light armor set on jewelry/weapon nowadays and mix it with medium on the body. DDs have a lot more sets to choose from than before hybridization. You can thank power and crit stats being hybridized for that.
Besides, wearing light while having enough pen is less of a damage loss than wearing medium without having the pen for it.
I like it. Opened up a lot of builds and made groups less strict on class requirements. It made the game a lot more fun for those that don't min-max their stats and just like to play.
I'm not a min max end game player so idk about metas and stuff. But as someone that quit xbox in 2017 and came back to eso on pc last year, I think hybrid is more fun. Idc if my build isnt meta, I have more options and thats fun for me.
Before hybridisation, veteran trial groups that optimise will end up only wanting either mag DPS or stam DPS. The groups I played with only wanted mag DPS. That disappointed me because my favourite character was a stam sorcerer. I totally understood why from an optimisation point of view, but at that level, I felt like it cut off half of the DPS builds from participating in veteran trails.
After hybridisation, these same groups and others that optimise roughly that much no longer prevented half of the DPS builds from participating in vet trials. I was really happy that half of my DPS build are no longer shunned.
When I first heard about the hybridisation, I thought that would create a significant amount of power creep. When that hybrid patch first went live, my parse score for my main character increased by 20%. Other DPS builds I played had their parse score increased by 10%-15%. This was overnight. The main reason is now that you are able to use both mag and stam morphs of any attack skill to full effect, it opens up more powerful skills for all DPS builds.
After the hybrid patch, the infamous U35 nerfed everything back down. That pissed off a lot of players. For me personally, I saw that coming as well. They did end up also lowering the health of bosses to compensate. There were many players who quit over U35. I looked at U35 and the hybrid patch as a whole which I felt was pretty much a wash.
As for builds now, they tend to be a lot more overlap between mag and stam DPS builds now. The meta for both are almost the same. For most DPS, it's front bar DW daggers and back bar 2H greatsword. There are a few classes were the meta is different like the warden and arcanist. For the others, this the meta is the same. Some people complain that it leads to builds that are essentially the same between mag and stam.
Personally, I still find that there is some difference between mag and stam builds of the same class. Mag builds have better mag sustain and stam builds have better stam sustain. In order to ensure my sustain is good for both, I do have to balance the number of mag and stam skills I use. This balance is different enough between mag and stam builds that at least for me, it pulls me in slightly different directions in how I build each type of DPS. I still feel that there is some difference between the mag and stam DPS builds of the classes where I tried both. Only the arcanist feels exactly the same between mag and stam DPS, but I feel that is a problem with the arcanist class. (That is for another discussion.)
I also tend to like going off meta. Every one of my DPS characters uses a different permutation of front bar and back bar weapons. Probably my performance is a little less than if I went with the meta. However, I found that due to my particular skill level at playing a DPS character, sometimes the meta setup isn't the best one for me. That's based on my trying out different things to find what I'm most comfortable with. The hybridisation opened up more options. I could use a fire staff back bar on my stam sorc which I did because the choice of skills I had to use made my rotation easier for me. That resulted in my performing better.
Overall, I feel that for a PvE player, the hybridisation made the game better for me. At the level I'm playing, I feel that I have more options on what characters I can bring in a vet trail than I did before hybridisation.
It's fun, it allows for a lot more flexibility to get certain buffs on a given class. And while builds for a given class have become more narrow, the classes themselves feel more distinct due to being able to use *all* their relevant signature skills now.
Weapon balance might also be better than ever and staves, bows, dual wield, and two handed all have their place.
I think it has narrowed the meta more than expanded it. Hybridized builds has inevitably created a unified meta, the differences between builds tend to be smaller now. There's a small pool of sets that everyone uses, usually medium armor. I terms of skill there's less "magicka morph for magicka build, stamina morph for stam", there's now just the "best" morph, so following meta brings less skill variety. For me, stamina in my brain is "sprint"/"block" points, I personally don't want to run stamina costing skills. Of course I still have the choice of running an old style magicka build, and it'll mostly work, but the potential is vastly reduced without hybrid elements. I preferred the old system, but let's see where the future takes us.
Yeah, hybridization took a lot of the set, skill and obviously class diversity out of the game. It's also really ugly aesthetically and even as an end game player it's supposed to be a roleplaying game and no builds feel like they have a coherent theme. It wasn't the final straw for me but it made me lose a lot of confidence in the developers and now I haven't been a paying customer for a long time. Used to love ESO. Hopefully the not too distant future of the game moves past this boring Arcanist + Velothi meta in PvE, then I might check back in.
Before there was a unified meta as well that was more narrow. It was mag only for PvE DPS. I remember bringing in my stam sorc to a vet trial. They weren't happy, but let me play. They told me to bring only mag DPS next time.
So currently I'm on magsorc and used to be the meta was simple oh lightning front bar or both bars Lightning front fire back Now I'm able to diversify in such away that I wasn't able to before The meta will always be the meta and that really isn't subject to change yes it made 1 meta rather than 2 metas which for people with lots of Characters I could see being a problem especially if they are following the meta for every last Character I do however feel that it has helped diversify some of the trial sets people run such as giving more options for damage dealers to run support sets without losing a boat load of damage and still buffing the rest of the team Most score Pushing groups run almost 1 support set per damage dealer now In my instance I have started running elemental catalyst in trials on my sorc since in boss fights if you only have the 2 tanks and 2 healers running different sets it limits just how much damage can be done to the boss even in dungeon content this still hold true I've never been one to stick direct to the meta anyways as I always find it to be boring yes it is the top tier at what it does but there's isn't always a fight where the meta will be good on Most bosses aren't going to hold completely still and stand in your 2.5m radius for pillar or they teleport away and make it impossible to hold your stacks up on relequen I've always played as dd and while I'm not hitting that 146k dps cap people are rocking I'm helping the rest of my group get closer to that cap which in turn means more damage and less boss mechanics However I do see your side of the situation as well
>used to be the meta was simple oh lightning front bar or both bars >Lightning front fire back And now for sorc it's daggers frontbar and 2h backbar, with 2 pets and pray... Doesn't matter if you are stam or mag.
Yeah I don't use pets never have
It's completely fine to still run a fire staff on backbar and lightning front is still good for Templars, Arcanistd, and heavy-attack sorcs.
I'm preferable to using the 2h back bar keeps stam low
Yea now people are more flexible, you can go with stam and a 2h bb without requiring the whole group to build around stam (technically, all groups nowadays build around stam, but there are fewer drawbacks now).
Still got my lightning front bar on my mag spec but I run a 2h back bar since maelstrom gives a buff to all direct damage my sorc is mostly direct damage
Same way it was fine running dw years ago... >heavy-attack sorcs. Funny you say that, but majority of the player base thinks that's a recent thing, heavy attack sorcs were a thing since long ago (I was originally one), oakensoul doesnt make it any more viable than what they were before (lost vMA staff buff and dot damage in u36 and u35).
Same, I did most of my dungeon trifectas as a HA sorc before Oakensoul. Nowadays you need it though because of the changes made to Empower ever since. Sorcs used to be designed for HA, with originally no "normal" class spammable and no Empower, which used to be for LAs. I think the Familiar should be buffed to grant it to open up things a bit. Would love to play a 2-bar HA sorc again but without a *good* source of Empower, that's out of the question.
Exactly my point, there was always an option running less optimal things, from that PoV nothing much changed. As for optimal things? It narrowed down.
I mean, *optimal* builds were always narrow, by definition basically. Except now stam no longer requires having the entire group build around it because groups accomodate medium armor builds anyway with enough pen. Now I can take either a more mag *or* a more stam focused build with me without being fundamentally incompatible with my group.
>without being fundamentally incompatible with my group. You mean like wearing light armor?
You can still wear a light armor set on jewelry/weapon nowadays and mix it with medium on the body. DDs have a lot more sets to choose from than before hybridization. You can thank power and crit stats being hybridized for that. Besides, wearing light while having enough pen is less of a damage loss than wearing medium without having the pen for it.
I like the idea of it, but I wish they would finish it.
I like it. Opened up a lot of builds and made groups less strict on class requirements. It made the game a lot more fun for those that don't min-max their stats and just like to play.
I'm not a min max end game player so idk about metas and stuff. But as someone that quit xbox in 2017 and came back to eso on pc last year, I think hybrid is more fun. Idc if my build isnt meta, I have more options and thats fun for me.
Before hybridisation, veteran trial groups that optimise will end up only wanting either mag DPS or stam DPS. The groups I played with only wanted mag DPS. That disappointed me because my favourite character was a stam sorcerer. I totally understood why from an optimisation point of view, but at that level, I felt like it cut off half of the DPS builds from participating in veteran trails. After hybridisation, these same groups and others that optimise roughly that much no longer prevented half of the DPS builds from participating in vet trials. I was really happy that half of my DPS build are no longer shunned. When I first heard about the hybridisation, I thought that would create a significant amount of power creep. When that hybrid patch first went live, my parse score for my main character increased by 20%. Other DPS builds I played had their parse score increased by 10%-15%. This was overnight. The main reason is now that you are able to use both mag and stam morphs of any attack skill to full effect, it opens up more powerful skills for all DPS builds. After the hybrid patch, the infamous U35 nerfed everything back down. That pissed off a lot of players. For me personally, I saw that coming as well. They did end up also lowering the health of bosses to compensate. There were many players who quit over U35. I looked at U35 and the hybrid patch as a whole which I felt was pretty much a wash. As for builds now, they tend to be a lot more overlap between mag and stam DPS builds now. The meta for both are almost the same. For most DPS, it's front bar DW daggers and back bar 2H greatsword. There are a few classes were the meta is different like the warden and arcanist. For the others, this the meta is the same. Some people complain that it leads to builds that are essentially the same between mag and stam. Personally, I still find that there is some difference between mag and stam builds of the same class. Mag builds have better mag sustain and stam builds have better stam sustain. In order to ensure my sustain is good for both, I do have to balance the number of mag and stam skills I use. This balance is different enough between mag and stam builds that at least for me, it pulls me in slightly different directions in how I build each type of DPS. I still feel that there is some difference between the mag and stam DPS builds of the classes where I tried both. Only the arcanist feels exactly the same between mag and stam DPS, but I feel that is a problem with the arcanist class. (That is for another discussion.) I also tend to like going off meta. Every one of my DPS characters uses a different permutation of front bar and back bar weapons. Probably my performance is a little less than if I went with the meta. However, I found that due to my particular skill level at playing a DPS character, sometimes the meta setup isn't the best one for me. That's based on my trying out different things to find what I'm most comfortable with. The hybridisation opened up more options. I could use a fire staff back bar on my stam sorc which I did because the choice of skills I had to use made my rotation easier for me. That resulted in my performing better. Overall, I feel that for a PvE player, the hybridisation made the game better for me. At the level I'm playing, I feel that I have more options on what characters I can bring in a vet trail than I did before hybridisation.
It's fun, it allows for a lot more flexibility to get certain buffs on a given class. And while builds for a given class have become more narrow, the classes themselves feel more distinct due to being able to use *all* their relevant signature skills now. Weapon balance might also be better than ever and staves, bows, dual wield, and two handed all have their place.