1.6 PTS HEAVY ARMOR FEEDBACK

EnOeZ

I will try to demonstrate why Heavy Armor is still really bad in 1.6 in a PVP perspective and hopefully convince ZOS to re-evaluate their copy since after the upcoming patch it is too late as they said they will concentrate on content again.


So... I read the patch notes and what I have to say is :
THE WARRIOR DPS ARCHETYPE IS STILL BLATANTLY IGNORED

The notes :

The good

Armor: The amount of mitigation provided by Armor has changed.
A piece of Light Armor grants 1/4th of the mitigation of an equivalent piece of Heavy Armor.
A piece of Medium Armor grants 3/4th of the mitigation of Heavy Armor.

The bad

Immovable
Immovable now grants the buffs Major Resolve and Major Ward. Each additional rank of this ability increases the duration of the buffs by 0.5 seconds.
Increased the cost of this ability by 13% for all ranks and morphs.
Immovable Brute (morph): This ability no longer increases melee damage. Instead, in reduces the cost of CC break for each piece of heavy armor equipped while this ability is slotted in the activity bar.

Passives
Constitution: This passive now scales off your level rather than our maximum health when restoring magicka and stamina.
Juggernaut: This passive now grants a 0.5% increase in max health per piece of heavy armor worn. All other bonuses on this passive have been removed.

And... Siege damage will no longer be mitigated by armor, becoming the worst armor type to have against Siege since the other two can pull much better and numerous active counter measures for a longer time (roll dodge, chain bubbles and heals...)


So what do we learn ?

On the bright side, it seems that we have now what we thought we would have : an armour with significant damage mitigation over light, but is it not a long ? It seems however only slightly better mitigation-wise than Medium.

But on the dark side :

1. We lost 7% damage on melee attacks with juggernaut putting us further behind dps-wise
2. We lost CC break cost reduction gone to immovable (one slot lost)
3. Champion system has very interesting attributes to roll dodge (favoring medium)
4. And no improvement at all in terms of ressource management especially allowing us to survive roots, especially talon spam. Worse CC break is more expansive now (only hope in 80% stamina cost decrease in a 120 points Champion System attribute).
5. ... did I forget something ?

Also if you are like me combining :

• Heavy Armor
• 4/5 abilities Stamina (just to avoid a "dead" magicka pool)
• Full Melee
• DK with very few range abilities

Well you are still screwed PVP-wise. Sadly TESO PVP ability design team (if any) did not yet acknowledge the STAMINA DESIGN FAILURE. Why speak of Stamina in this Heavy Armor Thread, you will rightfully ask me ?

Because, if you chose to wear a heavy armor to PVP, it is that you want to play in the front line, right ? So, you charge in first, being at least 28m ahead of the rest of your team to open the way and you have to sustain heavy focus and heavy CC : so to survive, you charge and you... block.

Till now, light armour users do it better since they can still activate all of their abilities while blocking. But as a WARRIOR ARCHETYPE, STAMINA BASED with no range (DK weakness is range), you have nothing to do except block if you are rooted.

The problem is contrary to Hard CC, the game designers still do not recognise the absolute necessity to give ROOT CC IMMUNITY to a point to prevent root spam, at least PVP WISE.

So what to do ?

• Roll-dodge of course ? Super expensive, starving us to death even with full Stamina Jewelry, Stamina Food and being Redguard ! The DK in front of me will still be able to chain root me in front of his Zerg budies.
• Take the beating ? Sure I can block too but I have no magicka build to play the "blockcasting game" ZOS(Registered) efficiently
• Play differently ? Sure ! Then what is the purpose to go Heavy if the archetype you want to play is not the front liner WARRIOR with badass 2H + SB ?

And you still have to add the current META...
As we can all see in Cyrodil, there is no real "Front Line" since Heavy Armor (till now) is just a fail PVP wise, and the toughest guys in Cyrodil are (rightfully) wearing dresses, and since they do, they just can do most of their DPS from afar and/or without position requirement since to the almighty AOE DPS abilities. Now with even less DPS (relative -7% in my case since all my DPS is melee weapon) than before.

There is also no "manly" front line (sorry for gender word), also because of the current Zerg META that give you all the toughness you want and need if you just hold block and spam and spam and spam sticking to the "crown" during hours.

PTS 1.6 only betterment and only hope for this playstyle and character archetype is the 80% stamina reduction cost to abilities after CC break for 8sec after CC-Break we may find in the Champion System. I would personally just purposefully search for hard CC for this, isn't it strange ?

Even with this change, we will still not see HEAVY ARMOR warriors, weaving 2H Swords, Maces or Axes, even in Sword and Board (stamina-based characters) battling each other in the front line. We will still for months not be able to fight another Straight (true/classical) Warrior Archetype on the battlefield using the interesting-but-highly inefficient weapon mechanics in Cyrodil.

PVE-centric Cyrodil ability Designers have chosen Heavy attacks to refund stamina... well try using heavy attacks in front line, rooted, or on moving targets (targets tend to move much more dynamically than in scripted PVE you know...). If you light or heavy attack you do not block anymore and get squishier than the guy in dress at your right who can perma-blockcast even with half your stamina stats.

My final words (especially to new players) : avoid rushing to the traditional WARRIOR ARCHETYPE using primarily stamina based abilities and weapons since it is just not in the radar on Zenimax at all - AT ALL if you want to PVP competitively. You will just accumulate several game design problems on your one character :

• Heavy Armor (the worse armor still, with less survivability considering the current survivability mechanics that need resources to be activated since you have LESS AVAILABLE STAMINA than both medium (passives) and light (not using stamina for abilities, so stamina pool always available)
• Stamina (you should go magicka since you have still have more ability options, MAGICKA ITEMISATION IS MUCH BETTER STILL)
• Melee (since sticking in the middle of the Zerg is the way to go to get AP over fun, having highest survivability to get the points, nullifying the necessity of heavy armor). Zerging is a slow paced process compared to smaller agile groups or solo PVP.

Other games rely on cooldowns, allowing you to jump and survive in the middle of the battle. TESO cannot afford to do that apart form Ultimates but... precisely now, ultimate generation for melee require you to jump in (......) and the ultimates that could fit like earthen heart magma armor and morphs cannot allow you to survive because they are countered by the overwhelming amounts of DOTs available to PVPers, completely negating magma armor design in PVP. Other survival options are :

• bubbles that are best in magicka, computed regardless of armor (without armor mitigation), so you are being inefficient relying on bubbles the more armor you have (do I make myself clear here ? The more bubbles you use, the more you could use the better light armor passives)
• 2H Brawler (scaling with the number of people hit which is the good idea) but since there is no front line or people sticking all together apart form Zergs (where you will be rooted anyway countering you ideal and necessary positionment) and... we learn patches after patches that the ability is still bugged
• ... ?

From a PVP Perspective, for the Archetype I thought I could play in this MMO I see little to no hope as long as :

• Heavy Armor Resource Management does not scale with the beating you take
• Heavy Armor Resource Management does not scale with the CC you incur
• Heavy Armor does not include important stamina cost reduction in all anti CC measures
• Stamina Resource Management itself relies on landing unrealistic heavy attacks PVP Wise
• We have to invest heavily in stamina Jewelry to fuel our abilities without built-in cost reduction like Light and Medium, leaving Health regeneration items aside which synergizes badly with the increased regeneration of "Constitution" and Green Dragon Blood for example
• There is so few options to slow target in stamina abilities (pigeonholed in frost enchant in many build options like 2H with no built-in slow) PVPers are moving much faster (and erratically) in PVP compared to scripted PVE
• Zerging "spamming monkeys" (like someone in this forum likes to call it) is the Cyrodil META (rightfully if you want AP points and aim the top tier rankings)
• AP Points relies on farming over skill/performance and strategic individual or small group decision making (taking objectives, cutting reinforcements, decoys, intelligence, etc...)
• There is no reward to skill or performance (compared to the ones able to spend the more time online)
• Warrior Frontliner Archetype is underperforming -> you will just be alone in front line -> Vicious circle -> less frontliners "Juggernauts" they say in passives lol (sadface)
• Archers can just get rid of 75% of your armor anyway and standard armor debuff is -40% + weapon traits (-55% with my two handed sword for example). My computations gives me from 5 to 10% increased survivability (when including armor debuffs) from Medium to Heavy compared to 10% to 20% DPS gain before factoring damage buffs, 20 to 30% after damage buffs. If you factor in better resource management for Medium... in the long run, I cannot see a competitive place for Heavy+Stamina+Melee in PVP (perhaps the Templar could with their stamina friendly line).

Let me highlight this last point again, going from Medium to Heavy :

• You gain only 5 to 10% increased survivability factoring PVP armor debuffs you can suffer from (and this does not include the best avoidance mechanic in game : roll dodging which has its cost reduced in Medium)
• You loose 20 to 30% damage factoring PVP damage buffs, damage that you cannot sustain for long in Heavy (the longer the fight the higher the DPS loss)

As a result Heavy as of now is really STILL only a PVE armor. You sure can have some fun if you like to play casually in Cyrodil... or somewhat you always have your pocket healer to follow you (taking advantage of the +heal passive of heavy). You enjoy the block casting mechanic ? Then you could justify that combination choice in Cyrodil going HEAVY+STAMINA+MELEE.

Otherwise, just forget about it and go Medium or prepare for a PVE-only life in Tamriel with your old-school Heavy Armor Warrior Archetype for patches and patches and patches and patches and patches...

At least now it is B2P for those of us who still wait for the INEVITABLE ROOT DESIGN CHANGES in the HEAVY ARMOR to RESOURCES department at least for Cyrodil.

My proposals for Heavy Armor PVP, (either/or) :

• CC Break -> Magicka (you kind of loose conscience after all when stunned, no ?), Root Break -> Stamina
• Magical CCs and roots -> Magic, Stamina CCs and Roots - > Stamina
• Current 1.5.x "Constitution" Passive becomes stackable (up to three times) for three seconds (to match the new 1.6 Werewolf Blood Rage Passive) increasing magicka and stamina Regen when CCed (stuns/roots).
• Current 1.5.x "Constitution" Passive scales with the amount of beating we take, increasing magicka, stamina and health regeneration by 1% for 8 seconds by piece of Heavy Armor equipped AND by enemy landing ability on us after the first one (i.e two enewies +7% regen, 5 enemies +28% regen with 7 pieces of Heavy, 5 enemies +8% regen with 2 pieces of Heavy Armor, etc.)
• 2H Brawler gets it right for PVE increasing the strength of bubble with the number of enemies hit but for PVP the position requirement is unrealistic, especially due to roots and Talon Spam, make "Forward Momentum" morph dispel roots too as well as reducing the duration of the following ones by 50%.
• Going down the block mechanic logic, blocking with a shield (sword and board equipped) prevent all armor debuff abilities and effects* to land (the shield takes the beating, not the armor) *apart from weapon penetration from trait. Which will preserve the survivability advantage of Heavy to reasonable level
• Bring back the +7% weapon damage to melee as it is right now in 1.5 since Heavy+Melee is easily outhealed (like perma outheal) without CCs and/or healing debuffs and as you have noticed neither 2H nor Dual Wield gets a reliable stun or interrupt and we still have no stamina option for that in other Skill Lines.
• Use a standard "Cyrodil Buff" artifice where everyone gets +1/2/3% stamina regen per piece of light/medium/heavy armor to make up for the incredible amount of CCs (and spammable CCs) in PVP compared to PVE, since abilities and game mechanics seem primarily designed, assessed and tweaked from the PVE perspective.
• Make Heavy Armor reduce the duration of Hard CCs and Roots by 3% per piece of armor equipped stacking up to five times if CCed or rooted in the last 5 seconds so that we can have the "wait option" to take the beating instead of roll-doging out of danger (medium armor friendly) or spamming bubbles and heals (light armor) and even roll dodging since stamina is barley used otherwise.
• Adress the "dead pool" syndrome regarding magicka as stamina users. The change in class stamina abilities is good BUT will cause more dead magicka pools nightmares to solve.
• Make the Warrior passive "Unchained" in the Lady Champion System somehow baseline to Heavy Armor (Reduces the Stamina cost of abilities by 80% for 8 seconds after breaking free of a stun, knockdown, fear, disorient or stagger.) http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/The+Lady

Thank you for your time and reading, tell me, tell Zenimax what you guys and girls think !


English is not my native language please forgive my errors

Cody

indeed

Sharee

EnOeZ wrote: »

1. We lost 7% damage on melee attacks with juggernaut putting us further behind dps-wise
2. We lost CC break cost reduction gone to immovable (one slot lost)
3. Champion system has very interesting attributes to roll dodge (favoring medium)
4. And no improvement at all in terms of ressource management especially allowing us to survive roots, especially talon spam. Worse CC break is more expansive now (only hope in 80% stamina cost decrease in a 120 points Champion System attribute).
5. ... did I forget something ?

Yea, you missed that the resource management not only didn't get improved, but actually got nerfed, as Constitution now only gives resources back on taking hits every 4 seconds (it's 2 seconds on live)

EnOeZ

Sharee wrote: »

EnOeZ wrote: »

1. We lost 7% damage on melee attacks with juggernaut putting us further behind dps-wise
2. We lost CC break cost reduction gone to immovable (one slot lost)
3. Champion system has very interesting attributes to roll dodge (favoring medium)
4. And no improvement at all in terms of ressource management especially allowing us to survive roots, especially talon spam. Worse CC break is more expansive now (only hope in 80% stamina cost decrease in a 120 points Champion System attribute).
5. ... did I forget something ?

Yea, you missed that the resource management not only didn't get improved, but actually got nerfed, as Constitution now only gives resources back on taking hits every 4 seconds (it's 2 seconds on live)

So "Constitution" is halved ?
Thank you for info

Cody

I expected much more with HA improvements. I am glad it now has 3 times the armor LA does(like it should have been from the dang start) but the resource management is dreadful.

Only a full on tank has a reason to use HA. DPS wise? no. It would not have been a big deal for ZOS to have thrown in an ability granting 10% reduction to both stamina and magicka abilities. This would allow players focusing on one path to have double the reduction, but still allow HA users to manage their resources just a tad bit better,

Im not saying HA should do as much DPS as LA or MA, but it can do better,

Oronell

EnOeZ wrote: »

Also if you are like me combining :

• Heavy Armor
• 4/5 abilities Stamina (just to avoid a "dead" magicka pool)
• Full Melee
• DK with very few range abilities

This is my build as well so I'm disappointed to hear about the changes to Heavy Armor. At the moment my DK is full melee with zero ranged abilities.

Question...would it make sense for Heavy Armor to favor bladed weapons...Medium Armor to favor blunt weapons...and light armor to favor ranged weapons?

Cody

Oronell wrote: »

EnOeZ wrote: »

Also if you are like me combining :

• Heavy Armor
• 4/5 abilities Stamina (just to avoid a "dead" magicka pool)
• Full Melee
• DK with very few range abilities

This is my build as well so I'm disappointed to hear about the changes to Heavy Armor. At the moment my DK is full melee with zero ranged abilities.

Question...would it make sense for Heavy Armor to favor bladed weapons...Medium Armor to favor blunt weapons...and light armor to favor ranged weapons?

blade and blunt do almost the same damage in this game; blunt weapons just pierce more armor if you take the appropriate passives, and blades do 6% more damage, which is not much, with the right passives.

Due to the ridiculous damage shield spam/stack that is prevalent in this game, a LA player can be just as effective as a HA player in melee combat, and people in LA get cost reductions for the mostly magic based damage shields, further putting HA behind.

Oronell

Cody wrote: »

Oronell wrote: »

EnOeZ wrote: »

Also if you are like me combining :

• Heavy Armor
• 4/5 abilities Stamina (just to avoid a "dead" magicka pool)
• Full Melee
• DK with very few range abilities

This is my build as well so I'm disappointed to hear about the changes to Heavy Armor. At the moment my DK is full melee with zero ranged abilities.

Question...would it make sense for Heavy Armor to favor bladed weapons...Medium Armor to favor blunt weapons...and light armor to favor ranged weapons?

blade and blunt do almost the same damage in this game; blunt weapons just pierce more armor if you take the appropriate passives, and blades do 6% more damage, which is not much, with the right passives.

Due to the ridiculous damage shield spam/stack that is prevalent in this game, a LA player can be just as effective as a HA player in melee combat, and people in LA get cost reductions for the mostly magic based damage shields, further putting HA behind.

I wonder if they have ever considered Armor passives that provide bonuses to weapon type?

So instead of a blanket bonus for melee a Heavy Armor set would give you a bonus for bladed weapons only (Swords, Axes, etc.). Medium would give a bonus to blunt (maces, clubs, etc) and light a bonus to ranged (bows and staffs).

This would prevent LA players from being more effective at melee and HA players from being more effective at ranged. I remember there being weapon specialization skills (as in exact weapon type) in Oblivion and Skyrim. When I started playing ESO I was very surprised they didn't include it (i.e it isn't as robust). If I remember correctly you could even dual wield staffs in Skyrim.

EDIT: Yep, you could dual wield ANY one handed type weapon in Skyrim. The weapon type skills were the constellations.

EnOeZ

Oronell wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

I wonder if they have ever considered Armor passives that provide bonuses to weapon type?

So instead of a blanket bonus for melee a Heavy Armor set would give you a bonus for bladed weapons only (Swords, Axes, etc.). Medium would give a bonus to blunt (maces, clubs, etc) and light a bonus to ranged (bows and staffs).

This would prevent LA players from being more effective at melee and HA players from being more effective at ranged. I remember there being weapon specialization skills (as in exact weapon type) in Oblivion and Skyrim. When I started playing ESO I was very surprised they didn't include it (i.e it isn't as robust). If I remember correctly you could even dual wield staffs in Skyrim.

EDIT: Yep, you could dual wield ANY one handed type weapon in Skyrim. The weapon type skills were the constellations.

This could make sense. I feel it was their original intention with the current 1.5 +7% to melee as heavy "Juggernaut" Passive. But we are not even close to being "Mininauts"... And now this is gone too. As if we were a top threat DPS wise. Did someone ever complain HA doing too much DPS ?

Cody

Oronell wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

Oronell wrote: »

EnOeZ wrote: »

Also if you are like me combining :

• Heavy Armor
• 4/5 abilities Stamina (just to avoid a "dead" magicka pool)
• Full Melee
• DK with very few range abilities

This is my build as well so I'm disappointed to hear about the changes to Heavy Armor. At the moment my DK is full melee with zero ranged abilities.

Question...would it make sense for Heavy Armor to favor bladed weapons...Medium Armor to favor blunt weapons...and light armor to favor ranged weapons?

blade and blunt do almost the same damage in this game; blunt weapons just pierce more armor if you take the appropriate passives, and blades do 6% more damage, which is not much, with the right passives.

Due to the ridiculous damage shield spam/stack that is prevalent in this game, a LA player can be just as effective as a HA player in melee combat, and people in LA get cost reductions for the mostly magic based damage shields, further putting HA behind.

I wonder if they have ever considered Armor passives that provide bonuses to weapon type?

So instead of a blanket bonus for melee a Heavy Armor set would give you a bonus for bladed weapons only (Swords, Axes, etc.). Medium would give a bonus to blunt (maces, clubs, etc) and light a bonus to ranged (bows and staffs).

This would prevent LA players from being more effective at melee and HA players from being more effective at ranged. I remember there being weapon specialization skills (as in exact weapon type) in Oblivion and Skyrim. When I started playing ESO I was very surprised they didn't include it (i.e it isn't as robust). If I remember correctly you could even dual wield staffs in Skyrim.

EDIT: Yep, you could dual wield ANY one handed type weapon in Skyrim. The weapon type skills were the constellations.

interesting.

EnOeZ

And two more things...

- Flawless Dawnbreaker adds only 8% damage now (13% on live) even if it adds a dot component on the active
- Corrosive armor from DK ads 100% armor penetration (as good as naked mitigation wise)

Warrior "traditional" archetype in Heavy gets compared to 1.5
-7% melee damage (armor passive)
-7% damage from Flawless

equals -14% damage if you are melee which you are probably at least for on weapon set since you go heavy !!!

Blackmoon777 wrote: »

Guilds

Fighters
Dawnbreaker
Reduced the cost of Dawnbreaker at all ranks and morphs to 100 Ultimate.
Dawnbreaker now also deals additional damage over time.
Fixed an issue so the damage over time aspect of Dawnbreaker and its morphs will now properly crit.

u forget to tell us u changed most important part of this skill in 1,6 ? = NERF




+8% weapon dmg? joke?

before it increases total dmg using weapon abilities by 13% now it increas it by 1%

Oronell

You should post this in the PTS forum.

Oronell

Ok, after reviewing info on the Champion system.....it looks like we classic warrior archetypes may be ok. Though I'm not understanding how they came up with the differentiation between Bladed and Heavy weapons. Great Swords are not heavy weapons but one handed axes are?

Classic Elder Scrolls is Bladed (Swords, Axes, Knives, etc) vs Blunt (Maces, Clubs, War hammers etc.) from what I remember. Edit: Although in Oblivion Axes were governed by blunt skills...which, for obvious reasons, doesn't make sense.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/148551/new-champion-system-constellation-details

david.haypreub18_ESO

I guess my central point was this:

Heavy wasn't just inferior to light... it was also inferior to medium. So to try to balance heavy by nerfing light only solves half of the problem.

Warraxx

EnOeZ wrote: »

And two more things...

- Flawless Dawnbreaker adds only 8% damage now (13% on live) even if it adds a dot component on the active
- Corrosive armor from DK ads 100% armor penetration (as good as naked mitigation wise)

Warrior "traditional" archetype in Heavy gets compared to 1.5
-7% melee damage (armor passive)
-7% damage from Flawless

equals -14% damage if you are melee which you are probably at least for on weapon set since you go heavy !!!

Blackmoon777 wrote: »

Guilds

Fighters
Dawnbreaker
Reduced the cost of Dawnbreaker at all ranks and morphs to 100 Ultimate.
Dawnbreaker now also deals additional damage over time.
Fixed an issue so the damage over time aspect of Dawnbreaker and its morphs will now properly crit.

u forget to tell us u changed most important part of this skill in 1,6 ? = NERF




+8% weapon dmg? joke?

before it increases total dmg using weapon abilities by 13% now it increas it by 1%

actually the nerf to flawless is much greater than 7%. in live it provides 13% bonus to your weapon ability's damage NOT weapon damage. HUGE difference. lets say a base weapon ability damge is 400. w/FD it would do 452 damge (13% increase). 8% weapon damage pales in comparison to weapon ABILITY damage buff...

EnOeZ

Even worse than I thought then. Thanks for info.

ZOS, Heavy + Melee + Stamina is NOT WORKING AT ALL in PVP.

_ Not a single streamer uses Heavy Armor, not one...
_ Not a single Youtuber neither : after hundreds of PVP videos of TESO I still have to see one, just one PVPer in Heavy...
_ Not a single of my comrades in Cyrodil in the top 10 (because we can see top 10 only) runs heavy stamina and I guess in no server and in no campaign since start of the game.

Please can we have official statement whether HEAVY is intended not to be for PVP plz and allow us a full change of armor crafting at no cost. Especially Since HEAVY+MELEE+STAMINA is a complete disaster : Charge, abilities, then out of stamina but you still need to block to survive or roll dodge...

We are Stamina STARVED really really really badly, especially 2H Heavy Melee Stamina. Just try or show us a PVPer in Heavy+Stamina+%Melee which "job" is not charge and hold block plz (he cannot hold block as long as the light armor wearers anyway, since they use another resource to fight).

For once I wanted to go Warrior old school and I chose the only MMO where he is not existant at all, where it benefits from no real PVP Design.
_ Give the meleers additional Stamina to stick to target, sprint, roll and/or retreat
_ Give the Heavy Armor wearers more Stamina to CC Break and Block all day
_ Give the Stamina Users some kind of (early) compensation mechanic for Stamina having to support unfair the entire CC Break design mechanic.

I repeat :

ZOS, Heavy + Melee + Stamina is NOT WORKING AT ALL in PVP,

N O T
A T
A L L.

@ZOS, Waiting for official confirmation that Heavy is only designed in TESO for Tanking in Dungeons can we have crafting respec/swap to light or medium armor for us PVPers if so ?

Thank you in advance.

Also added my proposals at beginning of the thread to tens of others on this forum desperately to try to catch your sincere attention on Heavy Resource (Stamina especially) Issue in PVP.

Oronell

Anyone been able to test HA stamina warrior builds on the PTS with the Champion system?

Magicka users still have a huge advantage when it comes to resource management, unfortunately that's a design they carried over from the single player console games.

The Champion system forces us to choose how effective we want to be at specific forms of damage (Mage Constellations), defense (Warrior Constellations), and resource management (Thief Constellations).

For example under the Mage constellation you have to choose how more effective your build will be at either melee, ranged or magic damage AND you only get to put 1/3 of your points into any one of those attributes (looks like there are 24 unique attributes under the Mage Constellations i.e. weapon type damage, flat physical damage, elemental damage etc.).

The end result should be no more LA builds that are more effective at melee unless they want to sacrifice attributes that may be better suited to LA. Likewise, no more HA builds that are more effective at ranged etc etc etc.

So under Thief-Tower my HA stamina warrior will most likely opt for:
Warlord which reduces the Stamina cost of spells and abilities by [x]%

..while a LA armor character will more likely opt for:
Thief - Tower Magician which reduces the Magicka cost of spells by [x]% OR something Magicka related under Thief - Lover

Fivefivesix

I usually don't read walls of text like this but that was a good write up sir. I play with 5 Heavy, 2 medium, 2H great sword and sword + board. I agree with everything you wrote

Warraxx

Boil everything down dealing with stamina/magika & Hvy/med/light armor balance. It all comes down to RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. THIS is why Stamina sucks and THIS is why Heavy Armor SUCKS!

EnOeZ

Another "one more thing", "Constitution", the HA passive that gives so little resources back appears to be halved on the PTS, ticking every 4 seconds instead of 2 in live.

So ZOS you agreed Heavy should be the toughest Armor. However, I guess you may have the figures to crunch all this and that passive mitigation account for less than a third or a quarter of all mitigations... right ?

We agree that this passive mitigation relative "bonus" to other armor types decreases drastically with armor penetration / Spell penetration right ? Currently on PTS we have almost all weapon that can give 15% with traits, many spells that give 40% pen, some 75% and even one at 100% pen (DK corroded armor ultimate) which makes armor irrelevant.

... whereas no mechanic in PTS (to my knowledge) affects Resources Gains at all, resulting in a very forecastable very low marginal utility for tanking (in PVP, I should say, hold the line) and even negative marginal utility in survivability the longer the fight, added to the negative utility in Damage, mobility, penetration and crit.

With the loss of our +7% to damage and the halving "Constitution", may I just give you the key to win every dual against heavy :

1- out heal and out bubble the crappy damage
2- get without effort the heavy armor guy/girl out of resource (force him to charge, unCC himself and roll) twice faster if he is stamina based !
3- enjoy the chat, the beauty of Cyrodil while he/she lights attack you.
4- If he/she tries to heavy attack to gain resources back, try not to laugh...
5- Be merciful kill and go to a more challenging target when you get as bored as the guy/girl and his/her shiny HA.

It has been said hundres of posts already, survivability is a matter of resource management -at least- as much as position awareness and passive mitigation. And the MELEE, HEAVY ARMOR, STAMINA player have it really, really, really Bad.

We could have rejoice in 1.6 if while giving us the (expected) mitigation we had not lost at the same time, HALF (!) the already tiny resource flow, and all the + damage we had.

One step forward, two steps back.

Currently, even as a Redguard, with all legendary jewelry, epic enchants, and 2 of the 10 abilities dedicated to having Stamina Back, even with like 50 stamina pots/day I starve and cannot stand a fight more than a few seconds before being "exhausted", "dry", a standing dummy.

And yes, I have 42 points in Stamina, capped in both Stam Regen and Stamina...

I have to repeat it :
MELEE, HEAVY ARMOR, STAMINA is not working AT ALL in PVP

If you go Heavy, you will have even in 1.6
- lower DPS
- lower regen
- lower pen
- lower crit
- lower mobility
- much lower active mitigation (the most important), especially in the long run
- ... but slightly better passive mitigation (after factoring those armor pen mechanics), yeahhh ! (the least important)

And I am very happy to read so many others agreeing !

Why Gimp Yourself ?

EnOeZ

If you pay attention to duels among good to top notch players, very few are won or lost thanks to DPS or CCs (almost only NB can do this), most are won/lost out of resources (especially due to spammable damage shields).

In TESO, durability is much more defined by resource management than it is by passive mitigation, that's why the Heavy Armor is the less durable of all still now in 1.6 PTS with the unexpected nerf of "Constitution" the already crappy stam and magicka regen passive.

Moreover, I feel like we have to pay like 10 times more effort to even not compensate for being completely resources-starved than our peers in light and medium to get in a single ability to our level of armor (immovable, spiked armor, bound armor, etc...)

I hope ZOS will REALLY acknowledge their failure on this (and stamina CC Break burden) to pick among the plethora proposals from the community about HA management, a long overdue solution.

Oronell

EnOeZ wrote: »

If you pay attention to duels among good to top notch players, very few are won or lost thanks to DPS or CCs (almost only NB can do this), most are won/lost out of resources (especially due to spammable damage shields).

In TESO, durability is much more defined by resource management than it is by passive mitigation, that's why the Heavy Armor is the less durable of all still now in 1.6 PTS with the unexpected nerf of "Constitution" the already crappy stam and magicka regen passive.

Moreover, I feel like we have to pay like 10 times more effort to even not compensate for being completely resources-starved than our peers in light and medium to get in a single ability to our level of armor (immovable, spiked armor, bound armor, etc...)

I hope ZOS will REALLY acknowledge their failure on this (and stamina CC Break burden) to pick among the plethora proposals from the community about HA management, a long overdue solution.

What are your thoughts on the Champion system? Is it of any help to HA at all? Apologies if I missed your mention of it in previous posts.

Orchish

That's the issue with heavy armour, resource management. 1.6 has proven to me that ZoS do not test these things out in PvP only PvE.

Heavy users have been saying since release that resource management is terrible, so ZoS made 1 change before 1.6, they added the recovery when taking damage every 2 seconds. Yet in 1.6 decided to nerf an already quite pathetic passive. It seriously boggles my mind as to what they were thinking?

If we take two equally skilled players and put one in heavy and the other in light. Place your bets for the light armour user, for the very simple fact that in light armour your magicka is so far superior to that in heavy that the light user can stack enough shields to be as good if not better protected in absorbing damage than a pure heavy user. Not only that, but the light armour user can dish out far superior dps when the time is right where as the heavy will remain defensive.

He should remain defensive he is a tank, except he is guaranteed to lose the battle of attrition every time as the light armou user has far superior resource management.

Heavy should not be doing decent dps, not even in PvP. It should however offer the best all round protection. The tank should be soaking up damage having enemy players focus on him while his team mates blast them all away with their dps.

A competent stamina player will have a heavy users stamina depleted far quicker than the medium user, the tank will no longer be able to block nor roll. He will be rooted and quickly downed. So yes heavy may mitigate the most damage, but ironically is not the best armour for defense as the most important thing in PvP is resource management. Without resources you cannot stay alive.

Warraxx

Orchish wrote: »

That's the issue with heavy armour, resource management. 1.6 has proven to me that ZoS do not test these things out in PvP only PvE.

Heavy users have been saying since release that resource management is terrible, so ZoS made 1 change before 1.6, they added the recovery when taking damage every 2 seconds. Yet in 1.6 decided to nerf an already quite pathetic passive. It seriously boggles my mind as to what they were thinking?

If we take two equally skilled players and put one in heavy and the other in light. Place your bets for the light armour user, for the very simple fact that in light armour your magicka is so far superior to that in heavy that the light user can stack enough shields to be as good if not better protected in absorbing damage than a pure heavy user. Not only that, but the light armour user can dish out far superior dps when the time is right where as the heavy will remain defensive.

He should remain defensive he is a tank, except he is guaranteed to lose the battle of attrition every time as the light armou user has far superior resource management.

Heavy should not be doing decent dps, not even in PvP. It should however offer the best all round protection. The tank should be soaking up damage having enemy players focus on him while his team mates blast them all away with their dps.

A competent stamina player will have a heavy users stamina depleted far quicker than the medium user, the tank will no longer be able to block nor roll. He will be rooted and quickly downed. So yes heavy may mitigate the most damage, but ironically is not the best armour for defense as the most important thing in PvP is resource management. Without resources you cannot stay alive.

resource management applies to PVE as well... I currently PVP, and Tank PVE with 5medium, 2 hvy. if 1.6 stays as-is then i'll go 5med 1 hvy, 1 light solely for the undaunted passives.

Fivefivesix

I really hope ZOS looks at this thread. Lots of good info here

EnOeZ

Oronell wrote: »

EnOeZ wrote: »

If you pay attention to duels among good to top notch players, very few are won or lost thanks to DPS or CCs (almost only NB can do this), most are won/lost out of resources (especially due to spammable damage shields).

In TESO, durability is much more defined by resource management than it is by passive mitigation, that's why the Heavy Armor is the less durable of all still now in 1.6 PTS with the unexpected nerf of "Constitution" the already crappy stam and magicka regen passive.

Moreover, I feel like we have to pay like 10 times more effort to even not compensate for being completely resources-starved than our peers in light and medium to get in a single ability to our level of armor (immovable, spiked armor, bound armor, etc...)

I hope ZOS will REALLY acknowledge their failure on this (and stamina CC Break burden) to pick among the plethora proposals from the community about HA management, a long overdue solution.

What are your thoughts on the Champion system? Is it of any help to HA at all? Apologies if I missed your mention of it in previous posts.

There is some "hope" (we are so desperate anyway...), that any bit of additional resource will help.

You can find details here :

• http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Champion+System

Especially aiming at :

• the Lady 120 CS "Unchained"
• the Lover "Mooncalf"
• the Tower "Tumbling" and of course "Warlord"

The new Evil Hunter (Fighters Guild) is supposed to restore 795 stamina back at each attack

• http://imgur.com/a/Wrubf#3

But I don't have the answer (yet) if it will work against any target. Looking for that info/confirmation from someone who has been able to test it.

Sigtryggr

I could not agree more with the feedback in this thread. I have to say that HA feels a bit more robust that when I abandoned it (couple of months back) but it is still not viable option in PVP. I have had a few 1v1 fights on PTS and the only possible outcomes where:

• the opponent is able to wear me down and drain all my resources and I die,
• the opponent don’t know how/don’t have the skills to drain my stamina and the fight goes on forever (so basically, sort of a draw).

My damage was to weak to burst anyone, especially if they use shields and/or healing staff. My defence is good but expensive and I am constantly low on stamina.

I have fought two sorcerers, and in both cases they used about 3 ultimates for my one. With them moving around and attacking from range all the time I was at a huge disadvantage, I can’t just play defensive and wait for my ultimate to charge, I have to chase them around to land a light attack (wasting more resources in the process). It was not a fun experience.

I can understand why a tanky build is not viable in a duel and dealing damage and I could still enjoy playing HA in Cyrodil defensibly, but two things need to happen:

• HA builds have to be very tough to kill
• HA melee builds have to have a viable way to earn AP in battle

I see why you don’t want to buff it too much because of the PVE aspects of the game, but why not add a tank skill line to the Alliance War skill with a bunch of ‘While in Cyrodil’ passives?
As was mentioned in this thread, as a melee character I am forced to fight in the front line, which means I need super cheap block and cheap defensive skills to survive. For now both are very expensive.

I will still try to use HA when this goes live to see how it works in big battles, but if no changes are made, I don’t have high hopes…

david.haypreub18_ESO

EnOeZ wrote: »

The new Evil Hunter (Fighters Guild) is supposed to restore 795 stamina back at each attack

• http://imgur.com/a/Wrubf#3

But I don't have the answer (yet) if it will work against any target. Looking for that info/confirmation from someone who has been able to test it.

Does that work for all spells and abilities? Like, would I get Stamina back if I used a resto staff heavy?

Lionxoft

david.haypreub18_ESO wrote: »

EnOeZ wrote: »

The new Evil Hunter (Fighters Guild) is supposed to restore 795 stamina back at each attack

• http://imgur.com/a/Wrubf#3

But I don't have the answer (yet) if it will work against any target. Looking for that info/confirmation from someone who has been able to test it.

Does that work for all spells and abilities? Like, would I get Stamina back if I used a resto staff heavy?

If the ability procs vs an undead or WW enemy then you gain the stam back. Otherwise, no.

david.haypreub18_ESO

Nice! Thanks.

Time to hunt some vampires!

Oronell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtLSp0eP2Vs