Questions: Zenimax - Why have you nerfed Light Armour so hard compared to the others?

byrom101b16_ESO

My first question is in the title, I would appreciate a detailed explanation rather than 'we thought it was over-performing'.

You have multiplied the armour ratings by 4 for MA and HA but only by 2 for LA.

With the parallel increase in damage output by PvE mobs multiplied by 10, with less than that for player character Health... the disparity grows even worse.

Add to this, that HA protects FAR better against spells than LA, and that magicka builds with sustain in mind have to have LA to work... you seem to be giving the magicka build character comparative choices of armour that make switching to a Stamina build instead an innevitable no-brainer.

My second question is; in nerfing LA this hard, was it your intention to make Stamina builds this much more effective in terms of survivability (not to mention dps etc.)?

As someone who thematically likes playing wizardy types with robes and staffs, 1.6 is shaping up to be a significant comparative nerf, not only to PvE, but also to PvP - where running with sword and shield is the only way to survive being a magicka using Sorc.

My last and third question is; with your 'manifesto' being 'play the way you want to play', how does the significant and gameplay-proven superiority of stamina/2H/wrecking blow with MA/HA help facilitate this?

I look forwards to some clarity on these issues.

montgomery.luke07b16_ESO

Lets be realistic here. Light armour was absurd on live. You should never be able to tank wearing a bath robe for christ sake. In live the only viable way to play is to go Light armour, 1h&s/resto.

This needs to change only time will tell have they done it correctly. The typical mmo scaling is as follows:
Light armour takes most damage but also deals most
Medium armour is middle of the road
Heavy armour absorbs most damage deals least


The lines blur in this game due to stamina being your major defense resource (block, roll, cc breakfree etc). A stamina build will always be the most risky build. As your damage and defense all come from the same resource.

byrom101b16_ESO

It has been stated that as spell resistances have gone up, spell penetration is more important and makes LA better.

But it hasn't got better, SR has gone UP... it's just makes LA becomes more utilitarian.

Besides - in halving the comparative effectiveness of LA armour rating Zenimax have effectively handed all mobs and players 50% armour pentration against LA users with no compensatory rebalance on other areas...

... nice...

If they had done that and it had been in the patch notes - veryone would have been outraged... not just 'clothies'. But for some reason we are expected to just accept this without issue!

byrom101b16_ESO

montgomery.luke07b16_ESO wrote: »

Lets be realistic here. Light armour was absurd on live. You should never be able to tank wearing a bath robe for christ sake. In live the only viable way to play is to go Light armour, 1h&s/resto.

This needs to change only time will tell have they done it correctly. The typical mmo scaling is as follows:
Light armour takes most damage but also deals most
Medium armour is middle of the road
Heavy armour absorbs most damage deals least


The lines blur in this game due to stamina being your major defense resource (block, roll, cc breakfree etc). A stamina build will always be the most risky build. As your damage and defense all come from the same resource.

That wasn't the 'fault' of the armour, it was an issue with the defensive stacking skills used to make LA a viable choice for tanking.

The cart was put before the horse and Zenimax have 'fixed' the wrong thing.

You can tank with MA in 1.6 and a Stamina build with MORE effectiveness than LA ever had in in 1.5.

Consider that...

ItsRejectz

All though it hit my build pretty hard, I think the nerd was needed. Just look at PvE and PvP prior to 1.6, I'd say 80% of people you see in game are wearing full light armour. My only issue now is heavy armour as well as being powerful, also boosts stats in stamina. As stamina in 1.6 is awesome at dps, it means you get strong tanks with very high dps at the moment.

Tankqull

montgomery.luke07b16_ESO wrote: »

Lets be realistic here. Light armour was absurd on live. You should never be able to tank wearing a bath robe for christ sake. In live the only viable way to play is to go Light armour, 1h&s/resto.

This needs to change only time will tell have they done it correctly. The typical mmo scaling is as follows:
Light armour takes most damage but also deals most
Medium armour is middle of the road
Heavy armour absorbs most damage deals least


The lines blur in this game due to stamina being your major defense resource (block, roll, cc breakfree etc). A stamina build will always be the most risky build. As your damage and defense all come from the same resource.

what we have with 1.6
light armor takes the most dmg(2-3x more) while dealing the least (~5% less than heavy)
medium armor is nearly as tanky as heavy armor while dealing by far the most dmg
heavy armor the most tanky while still dealing more dmg as a 1.5 light armor user ^^

absolutly great balance.

byrom101b16_ESO

ItsRejectz wrote: »

All though it hit my build pretty hard, I think the nerd was needed. Just look at PvE and PvP prior to 1.6, I'd say 80% of people you see in game are wearing full light armour. My only issue now is heavy armour as well as being powerful, also boosts stats in stamina. As stamina in 1.6 is awesome at dps, it means you get strong tanks with very high dps at the moment.

They were indeed -I am not arguing that point, I agree with it.

But it wasn't because the mitigation on LA was too high, it was because the mitigation of skills that stacked with them were too high, making LA tanking a possibility.

They should have seriously nerfed shields and buffs and rebalanced damage and the cost of blocking etc to make the game more skill based... not nerfed LA to death, assuming magicka users would sheild stack.

It's the worst possible solution as it doesn't tackle the root cause of the problem.

daemonios

montgomery.luke07b16_ESO wrote: »

Lets be realistic here. Light armour was absurd on live. You should never be able to tank wearing a bath robe for christ sake. In live the only viable way to play is to go Light armour, 1h&s/resto.

This needs to change only time will tell have they done it correctly. The typical mmo scaling is as follows:
Light armour takes most damage but also deals most
Medium armour is middle of the road
Heavy armour absorbs most damage deals least


The lines blur in this game due to stamina being your major defense resource (block, roll, cc breakfree etc). A stamina build will always be the most risky build. As your damage and defense all come from the same resource.

Are you kidding me? Nobody tanked based on LA alone. You had to use magick shields / damage absorbs for that. It was great that there was an option for tanking that didn't involve getting hit in the face and taking less damage due to being a metal golem. What exactly is your objection to magicka-based tanks? Doesn't it contribute to build diversity?

Frenkthevile

Get out of your pijama and start acting like a man!

byrom101b16_ESO

Frenkthevile wrote: »

Get out of your pijama and start acting like a man!

Give me spell cost reduction in medium and the same damage boost as medium for my spells and I won't look at LA.

But that's not the reality...

A magicka based Sorc. for PvE Trials etc. has to be in LA despite how shite it is, due to sustain.

Reykice

Light armor has the worst defense while its users, the ranged casters, also have a lot less dps compared to stamina users...
They tried but failed to balance it out... and now they are launching anyway.

Cogo

Hi.

A robe have no armor. They simply balanced the 3 armors like they should.
Want protection, use bigger armor. Don't like that you loose the magika strenght from light armor? Don't wear heavy.

Don't like that you can't have all the good stuff at once? Welcome to ESO where players skills, styles and strenght is up to players and you can't have everything at once. You have to choose and the one to blame if you choose "wrong", is you.

Lower AC in light armor was the last thing needed for balance. And to make Evasion (Medium active), useful.

The changes are awesome.

Tankqull

Cogo wrote: »

Hi.

A robe have no armor. They simply balanced the 3 armors like they should.
Want protection, use bigger armor. Don't like that you loose the magika strenght from light armor? Don't wear heavy.

Don't like that you can't have all the good stuff at once? Welcome to ESO where players skills, styles and strenght is up to players and you can't have everything at once. You have to choose and the one to blame if you choose "wrong", is you.

Lower AC in light armor was the last thing needed for balance. And to make Evasion (Medium active), useful.

The changes are awesome.

they are crap cutting LA dmg by 20+% while making its dmg mitigation none existant is not balancing MA either needs it dmg cut sinificantly or lose its dmg mitigation to be on par with LA.

byrom101b16_ESO

Cogo wrote: »

Hi.

A robe have no armor. They simply balanced the 3 armors like they should.
Want protection, use bigger armor. Don't like that you loose the magika strenght from light armor? Don't wear heavy.

Don't like that you can't have all the good stuff at once? Welcome to ESO where players skills, styles and strenght is up to players and you can't have everything at once. You have to choose and the one to blame if you choose "wrong", is you.

Lower AC in light armor was the last thing needed for balance. And to make Evasion (Medium active), useful.

The changes are awesome.

You are wrong on every level for one simple reason.

Stamina DD get huge benefits from the armour designed to support their primary resource, and decent protection.

Magicka DD get signifiicantly fewer benefits from the armour designed to support their primary resource and little protection.

Even is the benefits in terms of resource support were equivalent, the lkack of armour would make stam build MA better.

But actually it's worse than that.

Most games balance LA low armour with high magicka protections, but LA is outclasses by HA there too.

It is the worst armour available for many reasons, when what it should be is balanced for a type of role.

It isn't...

Plus, and as you brought the ridiculous point up in the first place, it's called Light ARMOUR - not 'robes' or t-shirts or dresses... so ARMOUR should be a signifcant part of it's design.

Islyn

montgomery.luke07b16_ESO wrote: »

Lets be realistic here. Light armour was absurd on live. You should never be able to tank wearing a bath robe for christ sake. In live the only viable way to play is to go Light armour, 1h&s/resto.

This needs to change only time will tell have they done it correctly. The typical mmo scaling is as follows:
Light armour takes most damage but also deals most
Medium armour is middle of the road
Heavy armour absorbs most damage deals least


The lines blur in this game due to stamina being your major defense resource (block, roll, cc breakfree etc). A stamina build will always be the most risky build. As your damage and defense all come from the same resource.

A stupid S&B with my 'bathrobe' is another thing that is absurd.

Islyn

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

But actually it's worse than that.

Most games balance LA low armour with high magicka protections, but LA is outclasses by HA there too.

It is the worst armour available for many reasons, when what it should be is balanced for a type of role.

It isn't...

Plus, and as you brought the ridiculous point up in the first place, it's called Light ARMOUR - not 'robes' or t-shirts or dresses... so ARMOUR should be a signifcant part of it's design.

This is soo true. I am hoping my new choices will be viable after patch

Cody

LA tanks should never have existed. You are wearing LIGHT ARMOR. It is not really armor in the first place, its almost regular clothing! You are SUPPOSED to have minimal protection!

LA players have big cost reduction to spells and magicka recovery bonuses, as well as having their spells ignore a good chunk of spell resistance; this, combined with the glyphs covering up the armor gaps, made LA players OP as heck compared to MA and especially HA users. HA SHOULD offer more physical and magical protection. One wears heavy armor FOR the protection; it was absurd LA gave equal to or more protection due to glyphs, than heavy armor. LA is screwed up and unbalanced on live right now, and 1.6 thankfully changes that.

Now its time to tone everything else down and fix this armor issue once and for all. Once this is done, we all can put this issue behind us and focus on bigger and better things.

Tankqull

Cody wrote: »

LA tanks should never have existed. You are wearing LIGHT ARMOR. It is not really armor in the first place, its almost regular clothing! You are SUPPOSED to have minimal protection!

LA players have big cost reduction to spells and magicka recovery bonuses, as well as having their spells ignore a good chunk of spell resistance; this, combined with the glyphs covering up the armor gaps, made LA players OP as heck compared to MA and especially HA users. HA SHOULD offer more physical and magical protection. One wears heavy armor FOR the protection; it was absurd LA gave equal to or more protection due to glyphs, than heavy armor. LA is screwed up and unbalanced on live right now, and 1.6 thankfully changes that.

Now its time to tone everything else down and fix this armor issue once and for all. Once this is done, we all can put this issue behind us and focus on bigger and better things.

perfectly fine with that. but MA and HA should not give that amount of resource management and hihger dmg compared to light armor in cunjunction with 3-4x the amount of dmg mitigation. wich is currently the case.

Cody

Tankqull wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

LA tanks should never have existed. You are wearing LIGHT ARMOR. It is not really armor in the first place, its almost regular clothing! You are SUPPOSED to have minimal protection!

LA players have big cost reduction to spells and magicka recovery bonuses, as well as having their spells ignore a good chunk of spell resistance; this, combined with the glyphs covering up the armor gaps, made LA players OP as heck compared to MA and especially HA users. HA SHOULD offer more physical and magical protection. One wears heavy armor FOR the protection; it was absurd LA gave equal to or more protection due to glyphs, than heavy armor. LA is screwed up and unbalanced on live right now, and 1.6 thankfully changes that.

Now its time to tone everything else down and fix this armor issue once and for all. Once this is done, we all can put this issue behind us and focus on bigger and better things.

perfectly fine with that. but MA and HA should not give that amount of resource management and hihger dmg compared to light armor in cunjunction with 3-4x the amount of dmg mitigation. wich is currently the case.

I agree with that.

As I said in my post, ZOS needs to tone down the issues with the others armors and fix them ASAP so we can all move on to something bigger and better.

Artemiisia

montgomery.luke07b16_ESO wrote: »

Lets be realistic here. Light armour was absurd on live. You should never be able to tank wearing a bath robe for christ sake. In live the only viable way to play is to go Light armour, 1h&s/resto.

This needs to change only time will tell have they done it correctly. The typical mmo scaling is as follows:
Light armour takes most damage but also deals most
Medium armour is middle of the road
Heavy armour absorbs most damage deals least


The lines blur in this game due to stamina being your major defense resource (block, roll, cc breakfree etc). A stamina build will always be the most risky build. As your damage and defense all come from the same resource.

Thats true, but Sadly this will never be the case as long as DKs have both best survivability and best dps.

It should had been from the start, you gain something to lose another

Tankqull

Cody wrote: »

Tankqull wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

LA tanks should never have existed. You are wearing LIGHT ARMOR. It is not really armor in the first place, its almost regular clothing! You are SUPPOSED to have minimal protection!

LA players have big cost reduction to spells and magicka recovery bonuses, as well as having their spells ignore a good chunk of spell resistance; this, combined with the glyphs covering up the armor gaps, made LA players OP as heck compared to MA and especially HA users. HA SHOULD offer more physical and magical protection. One wears heavy armor FOR the protection; it was absurd LA gave equal to or more protection due to glyphs, than heavy armor. LA is screwed up and unbalanced on live right now, and 1.6 thankfully changes that.

Now its time to tone everything else down and fix this armor issue once and for all. Once this is done, we all can put this issue behind us and focus on bigger and better things.

perfectly fine with that. but MA and HA should not give that amount of resource management and hihger dmg compared to light armor in cunjunction with 3-4x the amount of dmg mitigation. wich is currently the case.

I agree with that.

As I said in my post, ZOS needs to tone down the issues with the others armors and fix them ASAP so we can all move on to something bigger and better.

currently they trade one evil against a bigger one. no tank is going to use heavy armor with the much higher stamina cost reduction, stamina reg while having comparable amount of mitigation when used in conjunction with all the nice stamina abilities like vigor, boneshield etc.

daemonios

Cody wrote: »

LA tanks should never have existed. You are wearing LIGHT ARMOR. It is not really armor in the first place, its almost regular clothing! You are SUPPOSED to have minimal protection!

LA players have big cost reduction to spells and magicka recovery bonuses, as well as having their spells ignore a good chunk of spell resistance; this, combined with the glyphs covering up the armor gaps, made LA players OP as heck compared to MA and especially HA users. HA SHOULD offer more physical and magical protection. One wears heavy armor FOR the protection; it was absurd LA gave equal to or more protection due to glyphs, than heavy armor. LA is screwed up and unbalanced on live right now, and 1.6 thankfully changes that.

Now its time to tone everything else down and fix this armor issue once and for all. Once this is done, we all can put this issue behind us and focus on bigger and better things.

If you mean you shouldn't be able to tank as a DK with light armour and no damage shields, I agree. I absolutely disagree that magicka-based characters with damage shields shouldn't be able to tank with light armour.

As others have pointed out, light armour is often compensated with higher spell resistance. Why is this not the case in ESO? Why should heavy armour provide both the best damage protection and the best spell protection? I'm worried that magicka characters (except Templars) will be forced to play as DPS and only DPS, since if a magicka-based character goes for heavy armour they'll all but lose any chance at sustainability. Even if that weren't the case, I can't understand what's so shocking about tanking with magic shields/absorbs, or with stealth/dodge/evade for that matter. I hate how this game is basically eliminating any chance of diversity.

Kode

Its called active defense. I really wish people had a better understanding of game mechanics before calling things out.

danno8

daemonios wrote: »

As others have pointed out, light armour is often compensated with higher spell resistance. Why is this not the case in ESO? Why should heavy armour provide both the best damage protection and the best spell protection?

Which leads back to another problem with the games design, that all class based skills used magicka (most still do). So you were crazy to go with anything but LA, for both offense, defense and utility.

Gargragrond

Tankqull wrote: »

what we have with 1.6
light armor takes the most dmg(2-3x more) while dealing the least (~5% less than heavy)
medium armor is nearly as tanky as heavy armor while dealing by far the most dmg
heavy armor the most tanky while still dealing more dmg as a 1.5 light armor user ^^
absolutly great balance.

It does not take 2-3x more damage, it's more like 20% - 30%. You can find some test results in the forums, e.g. here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/150528/1-6-armor-mitigation-formula

And you are not doing more damage in heavy as you can cast >50% more spells in light due to far better resource management. Heavy armor in PTS feels actually less viable than in live (at least with 70cp), and you can see that heavy was in fact nerfed compared to live. (break free cost reduction gone, constitution bonus more than halved, while the mitigation values are about the same as in live).

Please don't let the ridiculous inflated number scheme mislead you, 21678 or so resistance may sound huge but it is not. Without active mitigation (blocking, dodging, damage shields), you will get 2-shotted by a wrecking blow, no matter which armor you are wearing.

SickDuck

LA provides more damage mitigation with block(cast)ing than MA which is rarely used for blocking during DPS. LA has good bonuses against spell damage due to passive and Annulement, making it better than MA. Thanks god HA has the best defense, you wouldn't want your tank to die on every caster boss.

On the other hand MA was nerfed in terms of crit (21% downto 11%) and weapon damage (12% downto 9-10%) while LA passives basically remained the same. It feels pretty balanced although personally I'd still vote for LA being slightly better in combat (while MA adds some flavour utility outside combat).

Ezareth

Gargragrond wrote: »

Tankqull wrote: »

what we have with 1.6
light armor takes the most dmg(2-3x more) while dealing the least (~5% less than heavy)
medium armor is nearly as tanky as heavy armor while dealing by far the most dmg
heavy armor the most tanky while still dealing more dmg as a 1.5 light armor user ^^
absolutly great balance.

It does not take 2-3x more damage, it's more like 20% - 30%. You can find some test results in the forums, e.g. here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/150528/1-6-armor-mitigation-formula

And you are not doing more damage in heavy as you can cast >50% more spells in light due to far better resource management. Heavy armor in PTS feels actually less viable than in live (at least with 70cp), and you can see that heavy was in fact nerfed compared to live. (break free cost reduction gone, constitution bonus more than halved, while the mitigation values are about the same as in live).

Please don't let the ridiculous inflated number scheme mislead you, 21678 or so resistance may sound huge but it is not. Without active mitigation (blocking, dodging, damage shields), you will get 2-shotted by a wrecking blow, no matter which armor you are wearing.

Light Armor Spell cost reduction was nerfed from 21% to 18.417%

The Spell penetration was nerfed from 21% to a garbage debuff.

The other thing people need to consider with the Light Armor mitigation nerf is the fact that damage done to *health* is now far more powerful due to the total gimping of Impenetrable. Now critical hits are going to be commonplace and a 30% increase in base damage is going to be closer to a 45-50% increase in damage or more depending on how you're being hit and by whom.

There is also the fact that Health itself was made far more expensive (Nerfed from +50% bonus to +10%) which increases the effectiveness of armor and damage mitigation even further.

All the changes introduced by 1.6 have really gimped Light Armor, and if we want to be a caster instead of a stamina build we're still forced to use it.

ZRage

It looks like some people aren't aware that light armor on LIVE, gives almoust 0 protection against physical attacks.

For instance LA set for level 50 gives around 600 armor which is like 12-13% damage reduction total for phys attacks, in cyrodil it's further reduced since every character have armor penetration bonus.

In other words if someone was tanking with LA, it was either 1h and shield (which standalone gives more damage reduction bonus trough block than full LA set) or stacking of armor from other sources.

Therefore I have no idea what sort of mitigation nerf you are all talking about here? If you want mitigation against physical attack you need something more than Light Armor, either spells or enchantments nothing changed on this matter.

Tankqull

ZRage wrote: »

It looks like some people aren't aware that light armor on LIVE, gives almoust 0 protection against physical attacks.

For instance LA set for level 50 gives around 600 armor which is like 12-13% damage reduction total for phys attacks, in cyrodil it's further reduced since every character have armor penetration bonus.

In other words if someone was tanking with LA, it was either 1h and shield (which standalone gives more damage reduction bonus trough block than full LA set) or stacking of armor from other sources.

Therefore I have no idea what sort of mitigation nerf you are all talking about here? If you want mitigation against physical attack you need something more than Light Armor, either spells or enchantments nothing changed on this matter.

you allready said it, LA lifed by the ability to use block on the live server - thats pretty much gone with 1.6 if you are not medium or heavy user blocking drains your stamina a heartbeat.
the compensation more powerfull dmg shields(cc efficency reduction patched out, dot imunity gone(alot of snares are connected to dots wich noe are applied) and so on) has allready been nerfed slightly and will be further nerfed for sure as the stamina crowed will not be happily there after.

Snit

I think most agree that LA was overly dominant in live, starting at launch. MA and Stamina both needed buffs.

The issue is whether ZOS overcorrected. It certainly looks like MA now provides comparable damage output, along with far better mitigation and a bit better PvP utility (sneak). I am definitely in the "this is guardrail to guardrail" club, but as a long-term member of the pajamas-and-a-stick club, I am probably not as objective as I'd like to think

cschwingeb14_ESO

5 light, 1 heavy, 1 medium still gets you about 15% mitigation if the non-light pieces are chest/legs/shoulders/helm and reinforced.

By contrast, 5 medium, 1 heavy, 1 light provides about 20% mitigation

It's not that big of a gap if you stop looking at 7 of any armor type. And the undaunted bonus is just to big to ignore once you have it