Not enough effective options to deal damage to clustered groups from afar

Earthgore is too powerful in group vs group battles

Not enough diversity in Ultimate choice

Large groups can have players take on specialized utility roles, reducing counter-play options against them

Synergy improvements

Updates to cast time and channeled abilities

Block cost changes

Improvements to off-balance and Heavy Attacks

Hi everyone,First, apologies for the delay in getting this month’s combat update published. We greatly appreciate the amount of constructive feedback you provided in our first combat update last month, and we plan to continue providing regular updates. With that said, we want to be clear that each month may not be as meaty; it depends on where we are in our development cycle. That doesn’t mean we’re doing less work, but just that we’re in more of a polishing phase rather than working on large changes.Since we posted the November update, we’ve been mainly focusing on fixing bugs (some that you’ve seen in recent incremental patches, but most of are still internal and for Update 17) and doing some work for Update 18, which we aren’t quite ready to discuss yet. We’re still moving full steam ahead with the synergy improvements we talked about last month, which you’ll see when Update 17 hits the PTS. We’re also continuing to work on improving interrupt, including adding a short cooldown to any interrupted ability. We noticed some confusion when we first mentioned this change, so we’d like to clarify: the reasoning behind this change is to add more strategic play when you interrupt another player’s ability, and in turn give players using abilities with a cast time an opportunity to use them against other players who repeatedly use interrupts.Another thing you’ll see when Update 17 goes to the PTS is a reduction in damage for some charge abilities. Decreasing their damage is going to ensure that at-range players who are utilizing movement and terrain to maintain their distance from melee enemies are better rewarded for that tactical advantage.Last month, we mentioned that we were looking at shortening the Heavy Attack cooldown, but ultimately decided not to go with this change to avoid making too many dramatic changes at once.We’re also beginning to look at ways to improve group combat in Cyrodiil, particularly when groups of varying sizes fight each other. Some specific concerns we’ve been looking into include:We’re still talking about what exactly we’ll be doing, but once we have a better idea of the direction we’re taking, we’ll include it in one of the next combat updates.Finally, once Update 17 is available on the PTS, you’ll notice that not many class abilities have changed. We’ve instead focused our efforts on the things we previously talked to you about, including:We look forward to having everyone try these changes on the PTS for Update 17. Again, please remember what’s listed here isn’t everything the team is working on. Keep the feedback coming, and thanks for your continued input!