Balance needs to be made a top priority.

Phinix1

First off, I just want to say I love the game. I have enjoyed every aspect of it and believe it truly stands alone at the cutting edge of the industry on many levels. Just the graphics alone have been worth it. That said, there are certain areas of the game I would like to see some improvement, specifically the sustainability, damage, and utility of stamina-based builds in PVP and high-end PVE content.

I have leveled every class, quested through every faction, before finally settling on my Veteran 12 EP Nightblade main. I have read everything I can find online at various forums and theorycrafting sites and spent many tens of thousands of gold on respecs and gear testing abilities and builds myself, all in an effort to do something which should not be this difficult:

To create a melee weapons Nightblade that uses CLASS AND WEAPON ABILITIES and does not totally suck (read: can output competitive damage with viable sustain and functional utility). You know, like ANY well designed and played class should be able to, while still being FUN to play in the process.

I have reached the conclusion that these guys were basically right, and it simply can't be done effectively in the current state of "balancing."

Before every casual jumps in with "mine is fine, I kill Skeevers all the time," yes, you can make ANY build "work" for solo questing. Spamming Volcanic Rune and light attacks can "work" for solo questing. That is not the issue. The issue is with competitive PvP, Veteran Dungeons, Trials, and pretty much anything OTHER than solo questing.

You can just call it "the reason people continue to pay a monthly subscription once they finish all the quests in three months."

The main reason I stick with a game is PROGRESSION. Not just progression through content but of my character; gaining new abilities and synergies, scaling up of the challenges and content they are able to take on, and the sense of accomplishment in arriving at a build result and play style that I enjoy and which feels powerful.

As a Nightblade I experience none of that (outside of solo questing which I have long since completed), and no matter how many stragglers I sneak up and gank before I lose my ONE surprise attack buff and am summarily slaughtered, no matter how much Stamina I stack to spam my underpowered AOE's, no matter how much I tediously micromanage animation canceling light/heavy attack clipping into Rapid Strikes/Wrecking Blow to put out mediocre single target damage while spending a small fortune chugging potions for sustain, I cannot convince myself this is a viable and competitive play style.

• If I try to raise my Stamina to make my Dual Wield, 2H, or Bow abilities hit harder that a wet noodle, I end up with not enough Magicka and weak class abilities.
• If I try to build enough Magicka so my class abilities hit harder than a wet noodle, I end up with weak weapon damage and not enough Stamina for defense.
• If I try to PvP as a melee I have no effective self heals, clunky and obvious telegraphed windup attacks, and none of the survivability (class heals, damage shields, massive ultimate gains, etc.) of other classes. Basically free AP once out in the open after blowing your ONE surprise attack opportunity.
• ZOS threw some pittance Stamina regen on Medium Armor and tweaked a few damage coefficients and called it "the slow path to balance." This is insulting in a subscription game and will NEVER achieve balance. You cannot tweak your way to balance between two resources when one is not only shared between offense and defense but also split between class and weapon damage!
• Medium armor is needed to make Stamina/melee viable (cost reduction, sustain), but has ZERO Magicka reduction or sustain which is needed for CLASS abilities, even utility, to be viable. I'm just going to ignore heavy armor altogether as "that PVE tanky-type armor that is somewhat good for blocking."
• Stamina/melee abilities without effective class synergy to back them up are incredibly WEAK, vulnerable, easily nullified in PvP, and incredibly boring. The only really useful class synergies end up costing a quarter of your magicka just to cast once, which you need to save to vanish for 2.5 seconds and pray you make it to the shadows in time to escape. Automatic CC immunity and gap closers insure even gimmicky survival tactics like Mass Hysteria are ineffective.

Understand, I have held on this long for a good reason. I love the world design, the graphics, the questing, the art, the crafting, and the rest of the "Elder Scrolls" aspects of the game. However, this is simply the WORST balancing act I have seen in any MMO in the last 10 years. At least of the 5 or so big ones I have played.

I am forced to conclude that ZOS set out to apply an MMO shell around an Elder Scrolls core, and in that aspect, they have failed. The Elder Scrolls core is there. The MMO is not, other than there being a lot of other players running around in the same position.

THEY COULD STILL FIX THIS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE:

• Add a third yellow "Endurance" bar for defense abilities like block, break free, roll dodge, etc., and make Stamina strictly for offensive abilities as Magicka is for casters. Add perks for Endurance cost reduction and regeneration on Heavy Armor (like Light gets for Magicka and Medium gets for Stamina), and create enchanting glyphs, set options, and jewelry with this new stat.
• Add morphs for all class skills that allow you to turn them into Stamina abilities (or Endurance abilities if they are defensive) that scale off of weapon damage and Stamina.
• Overhaul the current armor system to allow incrementally modifying a type of armor piece to gain some of the bonuses from other types, through "Affinity Crafting."

New "Endurance" bar:

"Endurance is best understood in relation to time. While stamina is defined as the amount of time that a given group of muscles can perform at or near maximum capacity (do the most damage), endurance is defined as the maximum amount of time that a given group of muscles can perform a certain action. So the difference between stamina and endurance is one of focus: while stamina is limited to performing at maximum capacity, the focus of endurance is on maximizing time (staying power and survival) regardless of the capacity at which a given group of muscles is performing.

For example, while a sprinter may focus on stamina and running as fast as possible over a given distance, a long-distance runner may be more interested in endurance: he runs as far as possible with speed a secondary concern."

Source.

In ESO this makes perfect sense in the context of Stamina being the "damage" stat and Endurance being "defensive." Endurance is for builds that are more focused on survival and staying power with DPS as a secondary concern.

Affinity Crafting:

A crafting station interface to add some of the armor bonuses of another armor type to a given piece, up to a certain number of "slots" or "weights" based on gear level and quality, using mats required to make that different armor type of the same level. Account-bound armor could be upgraded through a trade interface where you drop the mats into a shared resource window (not for trade) and the gear in the gear slot, and if the right materials are there an "Add Light Affinity," "Add Medium Affinity," and/or "Add Heavy Affinity" button will light up on the crafter's side. Level and passives required to upgrade are based on gear materials and trait requirements of it's set bonus (which would be set arbitrarily between 1-9 for non-crafted sets as ZOS sees fit), and the actual effect the affinity points have will be a multiple of the effect of the points you have invested in that armor type.

I sincerely hope ZOS is gets serious about balance and soon, because there are only so many quests and only so much patience a community is willing to show waiting while paying a monthly subscription.

It should be obvious by now to whomever came up with the "slow and steady" approach to balance, who thought adding some Stamina regen to Medium Armor and tweaking a few damage coefficients would realistically solve anything, that this is a hopeless lost cause. Let me say it AGAIN:

You cannot tweak your way to balance between two resources when one is not only shared between offense and defense but also split between class and weapon damage! THEY DO NOT START ON A LEVEL FOUNDATION, therefor you cannot balance hybrids in one direction vs. the other without doing some of the more radical things I have suggested.

If the people responsible are really too stubborn to admit this, then perhaps it is time to reconsider which employees you have been laying off.

I am one of the most devout ES fans out there, very active in the modding community over the last decade plus for Morrowind (Sgaileach Estate and others, though Planet Elder Scrolls is now apparently dead), Oblivion, Skyrim, and my subscription teeters on the verge of being parked until this gets sorted.

ZOS is in a very good position right now. They have created a game with the potential to be one of the best in the industry, on many levels. They also have very little meaningful competition for the foreseeable future. They just need to get these core combat and character build mechanics (the things people spend the most time doing) nailed down.

Yet clearly there is some disconnect in the corporate metric priorities.

I would be happy to consider contract work, if you are hiring!

Honfold

It is hard to promote balancing since it seems the most l33t players are against it. Mentioning balancing in this forum, or any mmo for that matter, is likely to earn you nothing more than L2Play posts. It has been posted again and again that non-magic melee NBs are not up to par, but the posters of the topics are usually ridiculed.

People who are adamantly against balancing can be just as corrosive as the "nerf this and that" group.

Stratti

Honestly let me throw my hat in . I assume you are talking about trials. We have 2 NB Stamina builds that run Trials and are very competitive with dps. One of them is our leader and has basically a Tank . 2 DPS . 1 Healer between 3 toons at v12 . He runs Trial speed runs daily and leads our guild runs bi-weekly.

You can get viable with that build as I have seen it more than once with guildies . Find yourself a guild that isnt cookie cutter or going to dismiss you .

Im not saying L2P I'm saying the builds are fine we have completed AA with a few in the group because its a guild run and they were given the opportunity to test their builds and excel

lathbury

Agree balance isn't there ATM. However you can complete all vet dungeons at least as a melee/dw character. Trials though forget about it. I ran a dw/bow then dw/dw nb from beta to v12. Then I switched to the fotm caster build. Why because I tried trials and immediately realised the lack of meaningful sustained dps.
i have tried again since 1.3. I did loads of theory crafting testing spent a fortune on mats. I then read every article I could find. The answer it seems is this in a perfect scenario a dw nb can sustain 800-900 dps in trials. A bow one 1200 in great buff conditions with a perfect rotation. A caster in the same conditions upto 1700 while off healing and using an ultimate that provides great raid defense.
So I guess my medium armour is getting put in the bank again untill they sort it out. Which again I agree should be zos no1 priority ATM.

Stratti

lathbury wrote: »

Agree balance isn't there ATM. However you can complete all vet dungeons at least as a melee/dw character. Trials though forget about it. I ran a dw/bow then dw/dw nb from beta to v12. Then I switched to the fotm caster build. Why because I tried trials and immediately realised the lack of meaningful sustained dps.
i have tried again since 1.3. I did loads of theory crafting testing spent a fortune on mats. I then read every article I could find. The answer it seems is this in a perfect scenario a dw nb can sustain 800-900 dps in trials. A bow one 1200 in great buff conditions with a perfect rotation. A caster in the same conditions upto 1700 while off healing and using an ultimate that provides great raid defense.
So I guess my medium armour is getting put in the bank again untill they sort it out. Which again I agree should be zos no1 priority ATM.

Your numbers are off by a long way. First of all the only guys sustaining 1700 are the ones that have farmed all their gear already . Newer builds are coming in at 1000+ which is still fine.

This goes to my point. If you ask the 'community' they wont take a NB DW. They will do the run . If you are running with a guild they will take teh NB DW and they will complete the run. The problem isnt balance but in fact the encounters themselves.

They havent been designed with the need for class combinations like say a WoW raid is. this is the underlying issue that is never discussed

lathbury

I fail to see how my numbers are way off when I stated clearly that nb casters get upto 1700 in perfect conditions. Where as the dw is around half that in the same conditions and the bow maxes out at 1200. The dw and bow require that you provide no off healing and use dawnbreaker not vob so you lose the protection provided to the group.
Further to this I have tested with maxed stamina gear sets like ophidian and hundings two fanged snake etc. I can only get the above numbers for dw and bow rarely. I always outdo them with my caster build even without the triple pots.
While you are right the numbers are viable they are far from balanced. In the case of dual wield on the Mage fight there are only so many melee characters you can have due to her chain lightning. So in that situation DK's due to there massive dps or a Templar doing 1300 and off healing with a better ultimate are better choices.
The bow again poor ultimate and less then a sorc or nb caster.
The reason I think these matter is because I often find my self in 1 or 2 different types of raid. The hardcore runs with top geared ppl where every second counts so we want the biggest numbers you can do to shorten the fights. Or more casual runs with less experienced ppl looking to get that top gear and achievements. In this case any dps healing and protection I can bring I should do. Instead of knowingly short changing them because I don't like my dress and stick ensemble.
This is why untill further buffs my medium armour and blades are now gathering dust in the bank. Unless I'm soloing something then I can have a bit of fun with them .
As for the trial design I agree not great they could raise the boss spell resist and lower the armour but that's really just disguising the underlying imbalances. You are right though mechanics like chain lighting are hampering melee from the get go.

Draxuul

I disagree with the title of this thread.

Balance is the ennemy of realism . You can not have a game such as this that is both realistic and balanced.

It is my opinion that MMO`s don`t have to be balanced . Some people seek realism more than balance and don`t care about making a freball ball do the exact same damage as a sword .

I don`t want a fire ball to do the same damage as a sword in fact.

The only way to achieve perfect balance in a game is :

1 : Don`t let players make their own choices , build each classes to be exactly the same give them all abilities that do the same damage and that heal for the same amount .

2 : Limit the mages potential or give mellee characters abilities that make absolutly no sense at all.

In a game where there are tons of abilities to choose from and where people choose which abilities they wanna use and which gear bonuses they wanna use and which enchants and so on and so forth, you cannot possibly achieve balance.

Unless , once again you make all abilities deal the same amount of damage and cost the same amount of magicka/stamina.

This game offers us variety and choice.

It is not up to the developers to give you the balance you seek , it`s up to you to find a solution to your own problem because the game gives you the tools and the oppertunity to do so.

This works the same as in real life. Where the strong eat the weak or rule over the weak.

This means , either adapt or die .

Again it`s a choice you have to make. People who beg developers to give them solutions are the same as people who blame all their miseries on god in real life and who pray for god to save them instead of standing up on their own two feet and look for a solution to their problems on their own.

ADAPT or DIE but don`t ruin a fairly realistic game because YOU are too stubborn to change your build .

I for one , do not want for this game to simply give me the illusion of being able to make choices.
I not only want the ability to make choices but i also want those choices to matter and to have an impact on the experience i will have .
Something i could obviously not have in a game that is perfectly balanced.

Draxuul

Phinix1

Draxuul wrote: »

I disagree with the title of this thread.

Balance is the ennemy of realism . You can not have a game such as this that is both realistic and balanced.

It is my opinion that MMO`s don`t have to be balanced . Some people seek realism more than balance and don`t care about making a freball ball do the exact same damage as a sword .

I don`t want a fire ball to do the same damage as a sword in fact.

The only way to achieve perfect balance in a game is :

1 : Don`t let players make their own choices , build each classes to be exactly the same give them all abilities that do the same damage and that heal for the same amount .

2 : Limit the mages potential or give mellee characters abilities that make absolutly no sense at all.

In a game where there are tons of abilities to choose from and where people choose which abilities they wanna use and which gear bonuses they wanna use and which enchants and so on and so forth, you cannot possibly achieve balance.

Unless , once again you make all abilities deal the same amount of damage and cost the same amount of magicka/stamina.

This game offers us variety and choice.

It is not up to the developers to give you the balance you seek , it`s up to you to find a solution to your own problem because the game gives you the tools and the oppertunity to do so.

This works the same as in real life. Where the strong eat the weak or rule over the weak.

This means , either adapt or die .

Again it`s a choice you have to make. People who beg developers to give them solutions are the same as people who blame all their miseries on god in real life and who pray for god to save them instead of standing up on their own two feet and look for a solution to their problems on their own.

ADAPT or DIE but don`t ruin a fairly realistic game because YOU are too stubborn to change your build .

I for one , do not want for this game to simply give me the illusion of being able to make choices.
I not only want the ability to make choices but i also want those choices to matter and to have an impact on the experience i will have .
Something i could obviously not have in a game that is perfectly balanced.

Draxuul

Sorry, but I must respectfully disagree with everything you just said.

First of all, your post seems based on an (inaccurate) assumption about what I mean when I say "balance." Contrary to what you posted, I am NOT suggesting a sword do "exactly the same damage as a fireball." Here is what I actually said, word for word:

Balance = "...[where any class or weapon type] ... can output competitive damage with viable sustain and functional utility."

Realism cannot be the goal in a fantasy RPG. If it was you wouldn't be summoning magickal daedric minions or teleporting to your enemy. This is not "Medeival Combat Simulator Scrolls Online," this is a the Elder Scrolls, and the Elder Scrolls is a genre based in FANTASY. If you want to play a combat simulator that fixates on "realism" that is fine, but that is not nor should it be what is expected from this game, or MMORPG's in general.

Please speak to the suggestions I made in the context we already have to work with.

I won't even bother getting into just how ridiculous "adapt or die" as an excuse for bad design can get, other than to pull a Goodwin and state that if that simple, quick-fix, easy-out solution were adopted for everything, the Allied Forces would have simple "adapted" to the situation in Berlin.

When the only choice in a "play how you want" game to "output competitive damage with viable sustain and functional utility" (read: BALANCE) outside of simple solo questing is to wear Light Armor and a Staff, you are simply defending a BAD DESIGN.

Draxuul

Ok in my first post to this thread i was replying exclusively to the title but now i`ve read the actual OP and see that at least the person who made this thread has played every class and shows that he knows what he`s talking about but i do have an issue with the arguments he`s bringing up.

The class he`s playing is a sneaky NB and from what i understand he`s feeling underpowered .

Well i only have one thing to say about this . OMG FINALY.
Back when i played WoW, the Rogue class was overpowered and omg so friggin annoying .

You`d always get backstab, stunned and killed if you played on a PvP server . They had permanent invisibility , you`d never see them coming and there was no way to ever win against them. Basicaly, if you had the misfortune of being spotted by a rogue , you death was near.

Then in LOTRO, the burglar was pretty much built with the same blueprint as the Rogue in WoW. It was basicaly the same class with a different name. Once again permanent invisibility as well as the ability to turn invisible right in the middle of a fight , never to be seen again.

So not only did they have a major advantage over you by having the advantage of the first strike, always, But also IF by some miracle the fight wasn`t going too well, they could simply dissapear and run away . And most of the time they would travel in packs of 2 or 3 but also sometimes up to 6-7 burglars together .
All invisible of course untill they spot someone and then obviously no one could ever survive that.

Those two classes in those two games were ruining everybody else`s enjoyment of the PvP aspect of the game . They were nothing but a major source of frustration for absolutly everyone who didn`t play a rogue or a burglar .

Now finaly in this game, the sneaky one is not the strongest one . Finaly a game where those who choose a more honorable way of fighting have the advantage over those who choose the cowardly way.

So yeah Zenimax certainly gets my applause for not continuing the tradition of giving cowards the oppertunity to shine .

Thanks Zenimax , thank you so much .

Draxuul

Phinix1

Draxuul wrote: »

Ok in my first post to this thread i was replying exclusively to the title but now i`ve read the actual OP and see that at least the person who made this thread has played every class and shows that he knows what he`s talking about but i do have an issue with the arguments he`s bringing up.

The class he`s playing is a sneaky NB and from what i understand he`s feeling underpowered .

Well i only have one thing to say about this . OMG FINALY.
Back when i played WoW, the Rogue class was overpowered and omg so friggin annoying .

You`d always get backstab, stunned and killed if you played on a PvP server . They had permanent invisibility , you`d never see them coming and there was no way to ever win against them. Basicaly, if you had the misfortune of being spotted by a rogue , you death was near.

Then in LOTRO, the burglar was pretty much built with the same blueprint as the Rogue in WoW. It was basicaly the same class with a different name. Once again permanent invisibility as well as the ability to turn invisible right in the middle of a fight , never to be seen again.

So not only did they have a major advantage over you by having the advantage of the first strike, always, But also IF by some miracle the fight wasn`t going too well, they could simply dissapear and run away . And most of the time they would travel in packs of 2 or 3 but also sometimes up to 6-7 burglars together .
All invisible of course untill they spot someone and then obviously no one could ever survive that.

Those two classes in those two games were ruining everybody else`s enjoyment of the PvP aspect of the game . They were nothing but a major source of frustration for absolutly everyone who didn`t play a rogue or a burglar .

Now finaly in this game, the sneaky one is not the strongest one . Finaly a game where those who choose a more honorable way of fighting have the advantage over those who choose the cowardly way.

So yeah Zenimax certainly gets my applause for not continuing the tradition of giving cowards the oppertunity to shine .

Thanks Zenimax , thank you so much .

Draxuul

I'm sorry man. I have enjoyed some of your other posts, and I really wanted to take you seriously here. But really? Did you REALLY just ignore my balance suggestions, or the entire concept of balance in THIS game, that being the point of this thread, and say that it is a GOOD thing that Stamina users (Nightblade in particular) get screwed in THIS game because "in WoW Rogues were OP."

Really? I don't even...

Can we PLEASE stay on topic here, and discuss the merits or shortcomings of the actual proposed solutions?

If you want to have a WoW vs. ESO conversation just start another thread and I'll pop in and say hi!

Thanks.

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

I won't even bother getting into just how ridiculous "adapt or die" as an excuse for bad design can get, other than to pull a Goodwin and state that if that simple, quick-fix, easy-out solution were adopted for everything, the Allied Forces would have simple "adapted" to the situation in Berlin.

When the only choice in a "play how you want" game to "output competitive damage with viable sustain and functional utility" (read: BALANCE) outside of simple solo questing is to wear Light Armor and a Staff, you are simply defending a BAD DESIGN.

Thank you, I just couldn't find the words.

The concept of "adapt or die" in an MMORPG with over 500 skill points, where the number of actual high performing builds is somewhere around 5 is absurd to the point of being sickening.

If you want a game that shallow, don't pick one advertised as "play the way you want", don't pick one that gives hundreds of supposed options and for the love of god don't pick an Elder Scrolls game.

NadiusMaximus

Adapt= run the same freakin build as the rest of the zerg , wear light, use sticks.

Or die= see at least 3 fire rings, two devouring swarm, and one oddball attack used by a noob that hasn't adapted yet.

If the game was as balanced as some want you to believe, then why is everyone the same? Everyone must want to play that way huh?

zScars

NBs-

Shields?no
Self Heal? no
knockdown skills?no
1 spammable skill?no
skill that can ruin rotations?yes(magelight)
bugged skills since beta?yes
dependant on weapon skill likes cus class skills suck?yes

Phinix1

zScars wrote: »

NBs-

Shields?no
Self Heal? no
knockdown skills?no
1 spammable skill?no
skill that can ruin rotations?yes(magelight)
bugged skills since beta?yes
dependant on weapon skill likes cus class skills suck?yes

Well, we DO get SOME heals... In the form of Siphon Soul. However, since it uses Magicka, the heals are significantly less potent than when used on a pure Magicka build. Plus it is a heal-over-time, which usually isn't enough to keep you alive during heavy damage (read: PVP). Nothing like other classes shields and full health bar instant heals.

Of course you COULD pair it with Blood Frenzy, the HoT from Dual Wield, and try to get them both ticking on multiple targets, but it is difficult especially since you don't have much magicka to work with if you want decent weapon damage, and with Dark Cloak for survival and Killer's Blade/Impale for execute, there really isn't any room left for Ambush to teleport around.

Besides, same problem. Ambush is a high Magicka cost ability so would take 1/4 of your available resources just to pop over to the next target.

Melee Nightblade synergizes terribly with Stamina builds. Makes absolutely ZERO sense, but that's the way it is.

Of all the classes I would have thought would dominate Stamina...

Arthur_Spoonfondle

Balancing a mainly

Draxuul wrote: »

I disagree with the title of this thread.

Balance is the ennemy of realism . You can not have a game such as this that is both realistic and balanced.

It is my opinion that MMO`s don`t have to be balanced . Some people seek realism more than balance and don`t care about making a freball ball do the exact same damage as a sword .

I don`t want a fire ball to do the same damage as a sword in fact.

The only way to achieve perfect balance in a game is :

1 : Don`t let players make their own choices , build each classes to be exactly the same give them all abilities that do the same damage and that heal for the same amount .

2 : Limit the mages potential or give mellee characters abilities that make absolutly no sense at all.

In a game where there are tons of abilities to choose from and where people choose which abilities they wanna use and which gear bonuses they wanna use and which enchants and so on and so forth, you cannot possibly achieve balance.

Unless , once again you make all abilities deal the same amount of damage and cost the same amount of magicka/stamina.

This game offers us variety and choice.

It is not up to the developers to give you the balance you seek , it`s up to you to find a solution to your own problem because the game gives you the tools and the oppertunity to do so.

This works the same as in real life. Where the strong eat the weak or rule over the weak.

This means , either adapt or die .

Again it`s a choice you have to make. People who beg developers to give them solutions are the same as people who blame all their miseries on god in real life and who pray for god to save them instead of standing up on their own two feet and look for a solution to their problems on their own.

ADAPT or DIE but don`t ruin a fairly realistic game because YOU are too stubborn to change your build .

I for one , do not want for this game to simply give me the illusion of being able to make choices.
I not only want the ability to make choices but i also want those choices to matter and to have an impact on the experience i will have .
Something i could obviously not have in a game that is perfectly balanced.

Draxuul

This nonsense usually comes form PVPers who keep dying and blame everyone but themselves for their own failings. A mainly PVE game does not need to be balanced as Draxuul says above. It is right that each class/build/race should have strengths and weaknesses and it is for the player to decide on which variation works best for him or her self.

If you can't make a class work, when others clearly can, you need to change your build or class, not come bleating about balance in the forums and asking for the game to be ruined, by making classes homogeneous, like Rift which has been ruined with class choice pretty much meaningless, now that all classes can do every role.

Phinix1

Arthur_Spoonfondle wrote: »

This nonsense usually comes form PVPers who keep dying and blame everyone but themselves for their own failings. A mainly PVE game does not need to be balanced as Draxuul says above. It is right that each class/build/race should have strengths and weaknesses and it is for the player to decide on which variation works best for him or her self.

If you can't make a class work, when others clearly can, you need to change your build or class, not come bleating about balance in the forums and asking for the game to be ruined, by making classes homogeneous, like Rift which has been ruined with class choice pretty much meaningless, now that all classes can do every role.

This is not about all classes being homogenous. This is about the glaring disparity between Stamina and Magicka builds in general which even ZOS has acknowledged.

Instead of coming on here with a borderline offensive attitude calling my suggestions for potential solutions "nonsense," perhaps you should try contributing something productive to the conversation?

For example, would you care to address the stated problem with Stamina double-dipping for defensive abilities? Because all the theorycrafting site have shown the little extra Stamina regen we received hasn't made enough of a difference.

How about the fact that ALL class abilities, from Sorcerer to Nightblade, scale off of Magicka, and that this fundamentally undermines any effective stamina build synergy with class skills?

You clearly have a very strong OPINION, but you seem to have conveniently avoided talking about any of the actual facts this thread was posted to address, let alone the proposed solutions.

PLEASE (I am asking nicely), before you reply with an equally emotion and opinion-driven retort that likewise fails to address any of the actual issues and solutions this thread is supposed to be about, THINK about what has been posted and pick one specific thing I just said above and try to either prove it isn't a problem or that the proposed solutions wouldn't work.

Try using something other than your "feelings" or your "personal opinion" to formulate your arguments.

And lets get this back on topic, shall we?

Panda244

My NB build works fine, medium armor, 71% weapon crit, 30% spell crit, 145 spell dmg, 201 weapon dmg, basically you burn through all 2.1k of my magicka and then everything around me is lying dead. Because of that single target DPS

lathbury

Panda244 wrote: »

My NB build works fine, medium armor, 71% weapon crit, 30% spell crit, 145 spell dmg, 201 weapon dmg, basically you burn through all 2.1k of my magicka and then everything around me is lying dead. Because of that single target DPS

As the op stated we are not talking leveling here. He is talking about endgame PVE trials. And dungeon bosses in coh or craglorn. Balance does not mean making all build etc the same it means giving them the ability to be viable in some roles and excell in others.

Stx

Oh for the love of azura, enough with the damn 3rd resource bar ideas, it is a bad idea! It won't fix anything, and will actually make magicka users BETTER.

/sigh.

"Melee" class abilities, such as Veiled Strike or biting Jabs, should scale from stamina, weapon power, and weapon crit.

Stamina should have its base regen double that of magicka, and stamina regen on gear should be double that of magicka. (stamina has always regenerated much faster than magicka in ES games, due to being used for sprinting/blocking/power attacks).

That right there would put stamina builds on the map competitively. There would still be work to be done on the actual weapon/armor skills, because a lot of them are terrible. But the most important thing in balancing the two kinds of builds is fixing how reliant class skills are on magicka.

Phinix1

Stx wrote: »

Oh for the love of azura, enough with the damn 3rd resource bar ideas, it is a bad idea! It won't fix anything, and will actually make magicka users BETTER.

Hah! I actually agree with you on this one. I would much prefer that Stamina be brought in line more by the methods that you mention.

I guess no one thought the Affinity concept was particularly interesting either. Being able to improve a full set of Medium armor to have 33% the effects of a full set of Light armor as well...

Oh well. No matter how respectful and open minded I try to be, I am inevitably left with the impression that to question anything about this game is to somehow violate that which must remain sacrosanct.

Probably because the game has so much going for it that is unique and exceptional that to propose anything might need additional attention ends up seeming ungrateful or petty.

I guess we'll just have to wait, and see how it goes.

Faulgor

Frankly, the whole character system seems messed up to me. It's also the only thing I've been complaining about since beta, but nothing has changed since.
They copied most of previous TES mechanics, but added some other features to the system which totally changed its nature.

Something I first naively cheered for, the introduction of specific weapon abilities instead of only light and heavy attacks, turned out for the worst. Stamina is not for spamming. It's used for pacing, as a utility to block, sprint, dodge, use heavy attacks, etc, and recovers realtively quick when you do nothing. Magicka is a limited resource pool (in Morrowind there wasn't even magicka recovery unless you rested) that depletes much faster and recovers more slowly. You need to plan how to you use it before you enter a fight.

ESO basically put this on its head. Mages basically never run out of magicka, and warrior and thief archetypes run their stamina dry trying to compete with magic damage. Using weapon abilities like spells just doesn't work in the TES system.
I'm so disheartened by this I might suggest something incredibly radical (also, because I don't like the idea of a new resource bar): Change all active weapon abilities to a "when slotted" passive. For example, when you slot Cleave from the Two-Handed line, all your light attacks become AoE. When you slot Executioner, your heavy attacks deal exceptional damage versus low health targets. Heavy attacks could still consume stamina like in previous single player games.

Another problem are the attributes themselves. Removing most of them in Skyrim was already a bad move IMO, and ESO tries to remedy this by putting more effects on the remaining three attributes. However, this just makes things worse. Why should the magnitude of my resource pool also increase its power for abilities that use that pool? This is entirely redundant, and was only introduced to make magicka and stamina more appealing compared to health.
Further, the +10 increase per level carried over from Skyrim is just a bad joke. There are more and possibly more meaningful choices that increase your attributes (enchantments, jewelry traits, food, mundus stones, item sets, passive skills), which makes the whole character-building-process in terms of attributes very unrewarding.
If I had one wish granted, it would be the re-introduction of the basic attributes for ESO. Possibly not personality because there's not much you can do with that anyway, but strength, endurance, agility, speed, intelligence, willpower, luck - those would provide much more flexiblity and an RPG system that deserves its name.

Finally, I have never been a fan of classes. They just don't fit very well with the rest of the system, and it shows that they changed design directions during development. If their incentive was to provide everyone starting out with a familiar template, the single player games already achieved that by giving every character starting spells based on their class and race. But everything thereafter was open. Furthermore, the restriction of magical spells to classes becomes absurd with the introduction of the spellcrafting system - which probably should have existed from the start to incorporate all available spells in the game.

In conclusion, ESO's character system is a combination of incoherent subsystems due to shifting paradigms during development that causes several balancing problems, mainly in its division of magicka and stamina abilitites, class and "open" abilities and the effects and magnitudes of attributes as well as armor types. It cannot be balanced in its current state, at least not to satisfaction. ZOS needs to streamline all subsystems in accordance with a unified vision, something I hope they can achieve with the champion system.

warbladex

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

Personally, I have hit a wall with the game.

I have leveled every class, quested through every faction, before finally settling on my Veteran 12 EP Nightblade main. I have read everything I can find online at various forums and theorycrafting sites and spent many tens of thousands of gold on respecs and gear testing abilities and builds myself, all in an effort to do something which should not be this difficult:

To create a melee weapons Nightblade that uses CLASS AND WEAPON ABILITIES and does not totally suck (read: can output competitive damage with viable sustain and functional utility). You know, like ANY well designed and played class should be able to, while still being FUN to play in the process.

I have reached the conclusion that these guys were basically right, and it simply can't be done effectively in the current state of "balancing."

Before every casual jumps in with "mine is fine, I kill Skeevers all the time," yes, you can make ANY build "work" for solo questing. Spamming Volcanic Rune and light attacks can "work" for solo questing. That is not the issue. The issue is with competitive PvP, Veteran Dungeons, Trials, and pretty much anything OTHER than solo questing.

You can just call it "the reason people continue to pay a monthly subscription once they finish all the quests in three months."

The main reason I stick with a game is PROGRESSION. Not just progression through content but of my character; gaining new abilities and synergies, scaling up of the challenges and content they are able to take on, and the sense of accomplishment in arriving at a build result and play style that I enjoy and which feels powerful.

As a Nightblade I experience none of that (outside of solo questing which I have long since completed), and no matter how many stragglers I sneak up and gank before I lose my ONE surprise attack buff and am summarily slaughtered, no matter how much Stamina I stack to spam my underpowered AOE's, no matter how much I tediously micromanage animation canceling light/heavy attack clipping into Rapid Strikes/Wrecking Blow to put out mediocre single target damage while spending a small fortune chugging potions for sustain, I cannot convince myself this is a viable and competitive play style.

• If I try to raise my Stamina to make my Dual Wield, 2H, or Bow abilities hit harder that a wet noodle, I end up with not enough Magicka and weak class abilities.
• If I try to build enough Magicka so my class abilities hit harder than a wet noodle, I end up with weak weapon damage and not enough Stamina for defense.
• If I try to PvP as a melee I have no effective self heals, clunky and obvious telegraphed windup attacks, and none of the survivability (class heals, damage shields, massive ultimate gains, etc.) of other classes. Basically free AP once out in the open after blowing your ONE surprise attack opportunity.
• ZOS threw some pittance Stamina regen on Medium Armor and tweaked a few damage coefficients and called it "the slow path to balance." This is insulting in a subscription game and will NEVER achieve balance. You cannot tweak your way to balance between two resources when one is not only shared between offense and defense but also split between class and weapon damage!
• Medium armor is needed to make Stamina/melee viable (cost reduction, sustain), but has ZERO Magicka reduction or sustain which is needed for CLASS abilities, even utility, to be viable. I'm just going to ignore heavy armor altogether as "that PVE tanky-type armor that is somewhat good for blocking."
• Stamina/melee abilities without effective class synergy to back them up are incredibly WEAK, vulnerable, easily nullified in PvP, and incredibly boring. The only really useful class synergies end up costing a quarter of your magicka just to cast once, which you need to save to vanish for 2.5 seconds and pray you make it to the shadows in time to escape. Automatic CC immunity and gap closers insure even gimmicky survival tactics like Mass Hysteria are ineffective.

Understand, I have held on this long for a good reason. I love the world design, the graphics, the questing, the art, the crafting, and the rest of the "Elder Scrolls" aspects of the game. However, this is simply the WORST balancing act I have seen in any MMO in the last 10 years. At least of the 5 or so big ones I have played.

I am forced to conclude that ZOS set out to apply an MMO shell around an Elder Scrolls core, and in that aspect, they have failed. The Elder Scrolls core is there. The MMO is not, other than there being a lot of other players running around in the same position.

THEY COULD STILL FIX THIS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE:

• Add a third yellow "Endurance" bar for defense abilities like block, break free, roll dodge, etc., and make Stamina strictly for offensive abilities as Magicka is for casters. Add perks for Endurance cost reduction and regeneration on Heavy Armor (like Light gets for Magicka and Medium gets for Stamina), and create enchanting glyphs, set options, and jewelry with this new stat.
• Add morphs for all class skills that allow you to turn them into Stamina abilities (or Endurance abilities if they are defensive) that scale off of weapon damage and Stamina.
• Overhaul the current armor system to allow incrementally modifying a type of armor piece to gain some of the bonuses from other types, through "Affinity Crafting."

New "Endurance" bar:

"Endurance is best understood in relation to time. While stamina is defined as the amount of time that a given group of muscles can perform at or near maximum capacity (do the most damage), endurance is defined as the maximum amount of time that a given group of muscles can perform a certain action. So the difference between stamina and endurance is one of focus: while stamina is limited to performing at maximum capacity, the focus of endurance is on maximizing time (staying power and survival) regardless of the capacity at which a given group of muscles is performing.

For example, while a sprinter may focus on stamina and running as fast as possible over a given distance, a long-distance runner may be more interested in endurance: he runs as far as possible with speed a secondary concern."

Source.

In ESO this makes perfect sense in the context of Stamina being the "damage" stat and Endurance being "defensive." Endurance is for builds that are more focused on survival and staying power with DPS as a secondary concern.

Affinity Crafting:

A crafting station interface to add some of the armor bonuses of another armor type to a given piece, up to a certain number of "slots" or "weights" based on gear level and quality, using mats required to make that different armor type of the same level. Account-bound armor could be upgraded through a trade interface where you drop the mats into a shared resource window (not for trade) and the gear in the gear slot, and if the right materials are there an "Add Light Affinity," "Add Medium Affinity," and/or "Add Heavy Affinity" button will light up on the crafter's side. Level and passives required to upgrade are based on gear materials and trait requirements of it's set bonus (which would be set arbitrarily between 1-9 for non-crafted sets as ZOS sees fit), and the actual effect the affinity points have will be a multiple of the effect of the points you have invested in that armor type.

I sincerely hope ZOS is gets serious about balance and soon, because there are only so many quests and only so much patience a community is willing to show waiting while paying a monthly subscription.

It should be obvious by now to whomever came up with the "slow and steady" approach to balance, who thought adding some Stamina regen to Medium Armor and tweaking a few damage coefficients would realistically solve anything, that this is a hopeless lost cause. Let me say it AGAIN:

You cannot tweak your way to balance between two resources when one is not only shared between offense and defense but also split between class and weapon damage! THEY DO NOT START ON A LEVEL FOUNDATION, therefor you cannot balance hybrids in one direction vs. the other without doing some of the more radical things I have suggested.

If the people responsible are really too stubborn to admit this, then perhaps it is time to reconsider which employees you have been laying off.

I am one of the most devout ES fans out there, very active in the modding community over the last decade plus for Morrowind (Sgaileach Estate and others, though Planet Elder Scrolls is now apparently dead), Oblivion, Skyrim, and my subscription teeters on the verge of being parked until this gets sorted.

ZOS is in a very good position right now. They have created a game with the potential to be one of the best in the industry, on many levels. They also have very little meaningful competition for the foreseeable future. They just need to get these core combat and character build mechanics (the things people spend the most time doing) nailed down.

Yet clearly there is some disconnect in the corporate metric priorities.

I would be happy to consider contract work, if you are hiring!

Totally agree i played a lot of MMO's and this is some of the worst balancing I have ever seen. Like tanks wearing dresses speaks for itself let alone many other things. You can't play the way you want to play because your forced into certain specs because other specs do not work and are greatly unbalanced. So its forcing people like DK's to wear dresses for tanking.

They have to redo and rethink a lot of spells etc. Like whats the point of having some skills or passives if there completely useless, underpowered, broken bugged, and never used. They need to overhaul the system which I can see them doing but will take time.

zScars

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

zScars wrote: »

NBs-

Shields?no
Self Heal? no
knockdown skills?no
1 spammable skill?no
skill that can ruin rotations?yes(magelight)
bugged skills since beta?yes
dependant on weapon skill likes cus class skills suck?yes

Well, we DO get SOME heals... In the form of Siphon Soul. However, since it uses Magicka, the heals are significantly less potent than when used on a pure Magicka build. Plus it is a heal-over-time, which usually isn't enough to keep you alive during heavy damage (read: PVP). Nothing like other classes shields and full health bar instant heals.

Of course you COULD pair it with Blood Frenzy, the HoT from Dual Wield, and try to get them both ticking on multiple targets, but it is difficult especially since you don't have much magicka to work with if you want decent weapon damage, and with Dark Cloak for survival and Killer's Blade/Impale for execute, there really isn't any room left for Ambush to teleport around.

Besides, same problem. Ambush is a high Magicka cost ability so would take 1/4 of your available resources just to pop over to the next target.

Melee Nightblade synergizes terribly with Stamina builds. Makes absolutely ZERO sense, but that's the way it is.

Of all the classes I would have thought would dominate Stamina...

thats not a self heal, you need to target someone to active it

self heal is dragonblood, or honor the dead, or the sorcs dark exchange- which can be activiated at any time

Guppet

It's down to armor types not functioning correctly. Heavy should give massive damage reduction verses physical weapons, but not spells. Physical weapons should do massive damage to light armour wearers.

As a light armour wearer, if a melee class gets to you, you should be absolutely boned, unless you can get away.

As a heavy armor wearer, you should not fear weapons, but spells should give you nightmares.

Rock, scissors, paper. It works! Why try to reinvent what works perfectly.

They would need to give mobs/bosses appropriate levels of resistances though. That juggernaut should require you to use spells and not weapons to take down most effectively. That lich should get smashed to pieces by weapons that make it into range of him.

They would need to have bows do piercing damage that bypasses armour. Then add earth based staves (with less range), so they can do physical damage to mobs that are more resistant to spells. That way magica and stamina builds can change how they deal damage. Heck it would really help weapon switching.

Stamina build could use DW/2H for light mobs and bows for heavy mobs.

Magica users could use fire/frost/lightning verses heavy mobs and earth verses light mobs.

Guppet

It's down to armor types not functioning correctly. Heavy should give massive damage reduction verses physical weapons, but not spells. Physical weapons should do massive damage to light armour wearers.

As a light armour wearer, if a melee class gets to you, you should be absolutely boned, unless you can get away.

As a heavy armor wearer, you should not fear weapons, but spells should give you nightmares.

Rock, scissors, paper. It works! Why try to reinvent what works perfectly.

They would need to give mobs/bosses appropriate levels of resistances though. That juggernaut should require you to use spells and not weapons to take down most effectively. That lich should get smashed to pieces by weapons that make it into range of him.

They would need to have bows do piercing damage that bypasses armour. Then add earth based staves (with less range), so they can do physical damage to mobs that are more resistant to spells. That way magica and stamina builds can change how they deal damage. Heck it would really help weapon switching.

Stamina build could use DW/2H for light mobs and bows for heavy mobs.

Magica users could use fire/frost/lightning verses heavy mobs and earth verses light mobs.

Potenza

Imo, there will never be 'balance'. Every other mmo I ever played - people were always yelling for 'balance' - and no matter what they did 'balance' never happened. And really when you think about it - in pvp, should it be 'balanced'?
War is not 'balanced' - it is suppose to be a war isn't it? not a 1vs1 war but entire alliance's against each other.
If things were truly 'balanced' you might as well just give us sticks and stones and whoever throws the most stones or swings the most sticks wins.

Nefrast

Draxuul wrote: »

Balance is the ennemy of realism . You can not have a game such as this that is both realistic and balanced.

If I bury a sword in the body of someone, he is dead or at least unable to fight on. If someone appears on a battle field with archers on it and is without a shield, he is dead. There is no realism in this game, not at all. Thus I think we can perfectly aim for balance. Which I think is good, I doubt that we all would have great fun with a 'realistic' game.

Super_Sonico

@AlienDiplomat I agree with the problems you put forward. Unfortunately I disagree with your solutions, especially the 4th resource bar.

I think there's ways to tweak numbers and add effects in the current system that would make much more system and require less coding.

Here are a few examples of ways to balance (in your definition, which I completely agree with) some of the more obvious items in the game.

• Instead of having things like dodge roll, block, etc. take up a % of the stamina bar, make it a fixed number. (It doesn't make sense to me that it cost me 50 stamina points to dodge roll at lvl 5 but 350 to do the same action at lvl 50.) For stamina using effects, such as weapon attacks or medium armor, a passive reduction to the cost of these actions can be given per slotted effect. So a pure stamina build could effectively only pay 10% of the fixed cost to dodge roll where someone using all magicka skills is going to pay full cost.
  
• Better identify class skills that are 'physical' versus 'magical', and assign them appropriately to stamina and magicka respectively. Not all class skills should be coming from magicka and not all weapon skills should be coming from stamina.
  
• Numbers, numbers, numbers. I wonder if the coding team has any mathematicians or physicists working for them. There are ways of mapping out base damage and modified damage (from gear or passives) that can show how each compare. I know they're not doing this just based on a lot of the numbers I've seen in game. Number balancing needs to be done. Having variations are fine, but shouldn't be more than 2-5% of the number. Base AoE damage from a mage shouldn't be but 2-5% different for any other AoE skill.
  
• Itemization needs a look. Take a look at all the sets in the game. Hit ctrl+F: Health appears 84 times, Magicka appears 87 times, and Stamina appears 67 times. Basic rule of balancing; every attribute buff/debuff needs to have a counterpart. Such as, if you have a set that gives X max magicka and Y magicka recovery, then there should be one that does the same for stamina. This works well when you follow the numbers in the list (and is partly how you accomplish it.
  

I think you get the point. They just need to take a hard look at what they have and fix that. That's much less work and would happen a lot faster than if they had to add a whole new resource bar. Think about the work for adding a 4th resource bar. Think about having to make items, mats, craftable sets, etc. for just that 4th resource, plus all the rebalancing of the numbers you'd have to do anyway. Nope. Just fix what's there.

Phinix1

What do you guys think about these two, specifically?

• Add morphs for all class skills that allow you to turn them into Stamina abilities (or Endurance abilities if they are defensive) that scale off of weapon damage and Stamina.
• Overhaul the current armor system to allow incrementally modifying a type of armor piece to gain some of the bonuses from other types, through "Affinity Crafting."

I think having each class skill have a total of 3 or 4 morphs would be a HUGE improvement to the game.

This would allow skills like Assassin's Blade, the execute ability from Nightblade's Assassination tree, to be used more effectively on a stamina spec if morphed to the stamina version. Likewise, if you were building a magicka character, you could morph this to a magicka-based melee or range ability that was more effective to that setup.

This would be a lot more true to the "play as you want" spirit than simply making the melee range version stamina and the ranged version magicka, since many stamina users prefer the ranged Impale morph to use with bow.

In the end, more options is always favorable to less, and having stamina options for morphs of class skills would, combined with more tweaks to coefficients, essentially solve this problem without the more radical changes like another resource bar.

I also think the Affinity system would be a really nice way of offering people a LOT more extreme fine-tuning capabilities. FFXIV did it with reasonable success with their Materia system. This would be similar, only you wouldn't be slotting specific stats so much as "weight points" that would give that armor piece a corresponding percentage of the other armor type's passives, if you were spec'd for them.

Like fine leather bindings added to heavy armor gauntlets, would allow a piece of hybrid gear with benefits of both styles. That sort of thing.

kieso

People might yell for balance but it's because the meta is way too narrow in this MMO.

Other MMO's werent perfectly balanced either but they did a heck of a better job and each class in those MMO's had a very strong Meta for something.

I really want to like this game but I'm honestly done paying and playing till they fix end game to where you have very viable alternatives that are up to par and even surpass just having a bunch of mages.