Light Armor changes in 1.6 and why it went too far.

Armitas

I really do not comprehend the changes made in 1.6 to light armor. Light armor was changed to have 1/4 of the armor of heavy armor, while medium armor remains at 3/4 of heavy armor. In addition to that concentration was changed to require 5 pieces of light armor, ruining hybrid builds. When you compare light and medium armor three things easily stand out as imbalanced. On top of that there is one independent variable that really makes it even worse.

1. Light armor is the only set with 2 passives requiring 5 armor pieces to activate.

2. Light armor and medium armor are both dps sets but the defense is incompatible.
Light

• 1/4 armor
• Mitigationless shield which are also nerfed to -15%, and only protects against magic.
• Spell resistance

Medium

• 3/4 armor
• Dodge roll reduction allowing one to avoid damage often
• Elude - Evades damage and provides CC protection by evading it; unlike shields
• Armor naturally provides its own spell resist in 1.6

So the only thing not overcome by medium armor for defense is a mitigationless shield, nerfed 15%. Now there is the fact that we don't have to double tap our stamina but that comes with having no regen, cost reduction, or recovery for it either.

3. Offense. The highest spell damage I have heard reported is 2400 with entropy up, the highest weapon damage I have heard reported is 3200. In addition to this 2handers provide more spell damage than staffs. It doesn't make any sense, these are both dps sets. Why am I sacrificing so much defense for less damage?

4. With the changes to CC and what goes through block, along with the poor server timing that allows things to go through block that should not go through block, and the changes to block costs, you can no longer protect yourself from CC with Block. This puts breakfree on a 5 second timer. As soon as CC immunity goes down you will be CCd again, every 5 seconds. This could be overcome with immovable but it was nerfed off the table for anything but heavy users. This upsurge in stamina requirements puts a large demand on an undeveloped resource in light armor. To over come this a lot of people are running 4L 3medium, which means we lose the spell penetration from concentration. Even so 1.6 still puts a new demand on stamina and then pairs that demand with drastic nerfs to an armor line that already provides nothing for stamina.

Please review your changes to light armor. Light and Medium armor are both dps sets, they should be different, but comparable in dps and defense. We need light armor and medium armor to both be good choices, right now it seems like all we are doing is reversing the meta.

My suggestion is to increase the armor on light armor while leaving it below medium (scale spell resist down to compensate) and remove the 5 piece requirement for concentration by making it scale by pieces equipped.

timidobserver

The entire point of the 1.6 balance changes was to destroy magicka in order to make medium stronger. It was intentional.

Cody

you have become one of them...

NO ARMITAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/the all is lost moment

/sarcasm end

leeux

One thing they could do to compensate Light Armor, maybe, is to increase a fixed amount of spell power (or is spell damage?, got the terms mixed in my head now ) per piece worn. So, in that way, magicka based DPSers doesn't have to retort to a mix/mash of random sets to get the increase, which to me (IMHO) is a huge defect of the new "meta".

It makes no sense that randomly combining 2 piece sets together is "better" in every way to just use two fully complete 5 piece set.

EDIT: rewording.

jarydf

Light armor could be "balanced" by going to 1/3 of heavy for armor and spell resist mitigation. Now that the concentration passive actually works everything else could remain the same. I am still a bit suspicious of the prodigy passive spell critical actually working but that might just be me feeling shaken by the changes.

Mumnoch

As if Zenimax cares? They got your money.

You want them to listen and do positive changes? Flood public forum's with your view's on the state of ESO. Drive away their potential customer's so they are forced to listen to you and make positive changes. Then go back and let the public know positive changes were made. 100% of the time Developer's listen to money before they will listen to their current customer base.

Panda244

Light armor simply needs to go back to what it was in 1.5, with the change now, light armor wearers are nothing more than walking bags of 900 AP. Walking unmitigated bags of AP.

Morvul

Well, personally I am completely fine with the idea that light armor offers basically no protection.
It is the fact that medium offers significantly more damage (in addition to higher protection) which ircs me...

deepseamk20b14_ESO

I have had 2700 spell damage with entropy up and the buff from reapers mark. Besides the point though I guess. I do think light armor is a bit to weak. The right skills help a lot but I see where most people are coming from. I've said it before and I will say it again, I'm fine with it having less armor but I think it should have high spell resist because of it's natural connection with magicka. As far as hybrid builds go, even pre 1.6 they weren't competitive with full magicka builds so I am not to worried about it, though I can see how someone using 5 medium and 2 light or 5 heavy and 2 light would be adversely affected.

AssaultLemming

I think the worst thing here is that armour is now directly related to spell resistance. It seems so counter intuitive. Imo heavy armour should provide the best resistance against physical attacks and light armour the best against magicka attacks. Medium armour should provide half half.

Heavy armour 3/3 physical protection 1/3 magicka.

Medium 2/3 both

Light armour 1/3 physical 3/3 magicka.

Maybe what they intended was for light armour users to use damage shields, which scale off magicka and come from the light armour line? In this case I would say make magicka based damage shields have improved spell resist and stamina based damage shields have improved physical resists...

So long as damage scales from stat pools hybrid will never be viable, but that's another discussion.

pugyourself

I tried running all LA with Prodigy. Even with Hardened Ward, I got killed fast. I ended up putting on chest and legs heavy and taking the 5-piece bonuses while leaving Prodigy unticked. I survive a lot better now.

PKMN12

AssaultLemming wrote: »

I think the worst thing here is that armour is now directly related to spell resistance. It seems so counter intuitive. Imo heavy armour should provide the best resistance against physical attacks and light armour the best against magicka attacks. Medium armour should provide half half.

Heavy armour 3/3 physical protection 1/3 magicka.

Medium 2/3 both

Light armour 1/3 physical 3/3 magicka.

Maybe what they intended was for light armour users to use damage shields, which scale off magicka and come from the light armour line? In this case I would say make magicka based damage shields have improved spell resist and stamina based damage shields have improved physical resists...

So long as damage scales from stat pools hybrid will never be viable, but that's another discussion.

Thing is, Guess what is the most important stat in every elder scrolls games for a tanky character.....yeah, magick Resist.

MasterSpatula

Adding a 5 sec cooldown to CC in PVE doesn't help too much either, since it throws a big monkey-wrench into Light Amor's #1 defensive strategy, "don't take any hits."

Snit

pugyourself wrote: »

I tried running all LA with Prodigy. Even with Hardened Ward, I got killed fast. I ended up putting on chest and legs heavy and taking the 5-piece bonuses while leaving Prodigy unticked. I survive a lot better now.

Prodigy only requires 5 pieces of LA. At least, the character sheet will reflect the crit bonus with 5. I've seen multiple reports that something is up with spell crit, and some blame it on this passive.

byrom101b16_ESO

Considering that LA is far less survivable now, it should increase damage output to AT LEAST MA levels, if not a little more, and Spell Resistance should be tripled...

Then at least users would be getting something for their 'bend over and take it' physical defences...

Sotha_Sil

People die in LA in PvP, they complain it is underpowered. Seriously ?

Don't play alone in LA unless you don't have a survivability kind of build ( vampire / bolt escape ... ).

asteldian

I think light armor should be 1/3 defense of heavy. Also a spell power boost when wielding a staff (so that you get more spell power than DW would give you)

Cody

Panda244 wrote: »

Light armor simply needs to go back to what it was in 1.5, with the change now, light armor wearers are nothing more than walking bags of 900 AP. Walking unmitigated bags of AP.

and if it goes back to pre 1.6 we have LA players having ridiculous amounts of survivalbility again.

I guess its just a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils:/

olsborg

I agree with OP, there are too few offencive gains to spellcasting from wearing light armor, there should atleast be some kindof boost to spellpower per light armor piece worn, like there is for weapon power and medium armor.

Elijah_Crow

This entire thread assumes that spell resistance is always equal to physical for all. In my experience spell resistance is generally lower on mobs and players which explains why spell damage does not need to be as high weapon damage to be on par. The changes have makes sense. I hope they stand as is.

Zsymon

Armitas wrote: »

I really do not comprehend the changes made in 1.6 to light armor. Light armor was changed to have 1/4 of the armor of heavy armor, while medium armor remains at 3/4 of heavy armor. In addition to that concentration was changed to require 5 pieces of light armor, ruining hybrid builds. When you compare light and medium armor three things easily stand out as imbalanced. On top of that there is one independent variable that really makes it even worse.

1. Light armor is the only set with 2 passives requiring 5 armor pieces to activate.

2. Light armor and medium armor are both dps sets but the defense is incompatible.
Light

• 1/4 armor
• Mitigationless shield which are also nerfed to -15%, and only protects against magic.
• Spell resistance

Medium

• 3/4 armor
• Dodge roll reduction allowing one to avoid damage often
• Elude - Evades damage and provides CC protection by evading it; unlike shields
• Armor naturally provides its own spell resist in 1.6

So the only thing not overcome by medium armor for defense is a mitigationless shield, nerfed 15%. Now there is the fact that we don't have to double tap our stamina but that comes with having no regen, cost reduction, or recovery for it either.

3. Offense. The highest spell damage I have heard reported is 2400 with entropy up, the highest weapon damage I have heard reported is 3200. In addition to this 2handers provide more spell damage than staffs. It doesn't make any sense, these are both dps sets. Why am I sacrificing so much defense for less damage?

4. With the changes to CC and what goes through block, along with the poor server timing that allows things to go through block that should not go through block, and the changes to block costs, you can no longer protect yourself from CC with Block. This puts breakfree on a 5 second timer. As soon as CC immunity goes down you will be CCd again, every 5 seconds. This could be overcome with immovable but it was nerfed off the table for anything but heavy users. This upsurge in stamina requirements puts a large demand on an undeveloped resource in light armor. To over come this a lot of people are running 4L 3medium, which means we lose the spell penetration from concentration. Even so 1.6 still puts a new demand on stamina and then pairs that demand with drastic nerfs to an armor line that already provides nothing for stamina.

Please review your changes to light armor. Light and Medium armor are both dps sets, they should be different, but comparable in dps and defense. We need light armor and medium armor to both be good choices, right now it seems like all we are doing is reversing the meta.

My suggestion is to increase the armor on light armor while leaving it below medium (scale spell resist down to compensate) and remove the 5 piece requirement for concentration by making it scale by pieces equipped.

1. General balance purposes.
2. In general magicka skills are more powerful than stamina skills, provide more utility, healing, protection and defence.
3. Twohanders are melee, staves are ranged, melee should always do more damage than ranged.
4. Light armor was simply far too powerful, and light armor magicka builds always superior to any stamina build, now this got changed I understand you are disappointed, but game balance is more important than some people's dissapointment, because imbalance causes far more disappointment and frustration. Light armor magicka builds have such powerful healing and shield abilities, none of which are available to medium armor users, therefor nerfing light armor was badly needed.

When a magicka user has low health, they can protect or heal themselves, when a stamina user has low health, he dies. Your death rate now will be higher, and more in line with the death rate stamina users suffer from. Instead of nerfing light armor they could have given stamina users some proper shields or heals, but that makes little sense in any realistic way, since spells like that are meant to cost magicka, not stamina.

Skyfall

Heavy 3/3 armor
Medium 2/3 armor
Light 1/3
+
nerf all armor bonus + magicka and + stamina
up attributes bonus

eliisra

Zsymon wrote: »

When a magicka user has low health, they can protect or heal themselves, when a stamina user has low health, he dies. Your death rate now will be higher, and more in line with the death rate stamina users suffer from. Instead of nerfing light armor they could have given stamina users some proper shields or heals, but that makes little sense in any realistic way, since spells like that are meant to cost magicka, not stamina.

Yeah right...because every stamina user is a DW/Bow NB tyro without any defensive skills slotted.

How about a Vigor, Rally, Green Dragon Blood(scales of max health not magicka fyi) spamming DK, that can dodge roll forever on top of that. Totally dies instantly when low on health, sure

Joy_Division

Zsymon wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

I really do not comprehend the changes made in 1.6 to light armor. Light armor was changed to have 1/4 of the armor of heavy armor, while medium armor remains at 3/4 of heavy armor. In addition to that concentration was changed to require 5 pieces of light armor, ruining hybrid builds. When you compare light and medium armor three things easily stand out as imbalanced. On top of that there is one independent variable that really makes it even worse.

1. Light armor is the only set with 2 passives requiring 5 armor pieces to activate.

2. Light armor and medium armor are both dps sets but the defense is incompatible.
Light

• 1/4 armor
• Mitigationless shield which are also nerfed to -15%, and only protects against magic.
• Spell resistance

Medium

• 3/4 armor
• Dodge roll reduction allowing one to avoid damage often
• Elude - Evades damage and provides CC protection by evading it; unlike shields
• Armor naturally provides its own spell resist in 1.6

So the only thing not overcome by medium armor for defense is a mitigationless shield, nerfed 15%. Now there is the fact that we don't have to double tap our stamina but that comes with having no regen, cost reduction, or recovery for it either.

3. Offense. The highest spell damage I have heard reported is 2400 with entropy up, the highest weapon damage I have heard reported is 3200. In addition to this 2handers provide more spell damage than staffs. It doesn't make any sense, these are both dps sets. Why am I sacrificing so much defense for less damage?

4. With the changes to CC and what goes through block, along with the poor server timing that allows things to go through block that should not go through block, and the changes to block costs, you can no longer protect yourself from CC with Block. This puts breakfree on a 5 second timer. As soon as CC immunity goes down you will be CCd again, every 5 seconds. This could be overcome with immovable but it was nerfed off the table for anything but heavy users. This upsurge in stamina requirements puts a large demand on an undeveloped resource in light armor. To over come this a lot of people are running 4L 3medium, which means we lose the spell penetration from concentration. Even so 1.6 still puts a new demand on stamina and then pairs that demand with drastic nerfs to an armor line that already provides nothing for stamina.

Please review your changes to light armor. Light and Medium armor are both dps sets, they should be different, but comparable in dps and defense. We need light armor and medium armor to both be good choices, right now it seems like all we are doing is reversing the meta.

My suggestion is to increase the armor on light armor while leaving it below medium (scale spell resist down to compensate) and remove the 5 piece requirement for concentration by making it scale by pieces equipped.

1. General balance purposes.
2. In general magicka skills are more powerful than stamina skills, provide more utility, healing, protection and defence.
3. Twohanders are melee, staves are ranged, melee should always do more damage than ranged.
4. Light armor was simply far too powerful, and light armor magicka builds always superior to any stamina build, now this got changed I understand you are disappointed, but game balance is more important than some people's dissapointment, because imbalance causes far more disappointment and frustration. Light armor magicka builds have such powerful healing and shield abilities, none of which are available to medium armor users, therefor nerfing light armor was badly needed.

When a magicka user has low health, they can protect or heal themselves, when a stamina user has low health, he dies. Your death rate now will be higher, and more in line with the death rate stamina users suffer from. Instead of nerfing light armor they could have given stamina users some proper shields or heals, but that makes little sense in any realistic way, since spells like that are meant to cost magicka, not stamina.

Dude, stop saying these falsehoods. Bone SHIELD is a shield that is based off stamina. Vigor is an excellent stamina based heal. Not to mention a stamina user can block and dodge roll for much longer than a light armor user.

m2super_ESO

I am pretty confident that leather armor would provide more defense than a bathrobe.. just sayin.

Tankqull

m2super_ESO wrote: »

I am pretty confident that leather armor would provide more defense than a bathrobe.. just sayin.

im pretty confident you can move more silently, run longer, make roll dodges alot easier in a bathrobe than a leather armor unless the leather is so thin its mitigation advantage is nonexistant.

as an evidence for everyone to test by them selfes go to your next C&A into the gentleman compartmant get som long leathjer jackets and do the wind mill with your arms the squeeking will surprise you and that not even hardend leather you will need to deliver any armor effect...

Panda244

In reality... Leather wouldn't to anything more to protect you than a bathrobe, actually, if that bathrobe was made out of silk, you'd have better protection from arrows than you would while wearing leather armor.

"Genghis Khan was once said to have issued all his horsemen with silk vests, as an arrow hitting silk does not break it but ends up embedded in the flesh wrapped in silk, allowing the arrow to be removed by gently teasing the silk open, as opposed to the usual method of removing barbed arrows, cutting them out or pushing them right through an injured limb and out of the other side.""

They've nerfed Light Armor into near uselessness, they either need to fix the mitigation issue, or have the ability to stack Armor and Spell Resistance buffs again, so you can make up for the mitigation with slotted skills, meaning more defense but lacking a few skills for damage.

Armitas

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

This entire thread assumes that spell resistance is always equal to physical for all. In my experience spell resistance is generally lower on mobs and players which explains why spell damage does not need to be as high weapon damage to be on par. The changes have makes sense. I hope they stand as is.

In 1.5 mobs had armor and spell resistance. In 1.6 Mobs either have only spell resistance and physical resistance, only Armor (which provides physical and spell resistance) or both. We don't which path they took but having mobs just have armor is the simplest path. Test it out and let us know.

Zsymon wrote: »

1. General balance purposes.
2. In general magicka skills are more powerful than stamina skills, provide more utility, healing, protection and defence.
3. Twohanders are melee, staves are ranged, melee should always do more damage than ranged.
4. Light armor was simply far too powerful, and light armor magicka builds always superior to any stamina build, now this got changed I understand you are disappointed, but game balance is more important than some people's dissapointment, because imbalance causes far more disappointment and frustration. Light armor magicka builds have such powerful healing and shield abilities, none of which are available to medium armor users, therefor nerfing light armor was badly needed.

When a magicka user has low health, they can protect or heal themselves, when a stamina user has low health, he dies. Your death rate now will be higher, and more in line with the death rate stamina users suffer from. Instead of nerfing light armor they could have given stamina users some proper shields or heals, but that makes little sense in any realistic way, since spells like that are meant to cost magicka, not stamina.

1. This is incredibly vague, but I think we can all agree they made changes based on certain reasons. I am not challenging the reasons, but the actions performed based on those reasons.
2. This may have been true in 1.5 but in 1.6 several new stamina skills were added. It is only slightly true for 1.5 as well. Due to the fact that there were only 5 stamina skills available per weapon, utility and damage were combined. This resulted in nukes that also had debuffs or CC such a lethal arrow and wrecking blow. The destruction staff line has CC and debuff separate ex force pulse and destructive reach.
3. I agree with your reason for this statement but not your method. Range dps and melee dps should be equal in dps, it is the defense that should be different. Obviously melee needs more defense, not damage. If melee provided more dps then melee would simply become preferred over range. It is also worth mentioning that just because you are in a magicka build it does not mean you are automatically ranged. For example DK's magicka attacks are melee ranged attacks. It also would not account for PBAOE.
4. Game balance is the focus and reason for the OP. Several abilities were changed to stamina in 1.6 and even in 1.5 it had stamina heals, stamina shields and even it's own guild line. Now it just has a lot more options along with 1.5's consolidated functionality, ex wrecking blow.

I started out in stamina with a 2 hander. I'm happy that stamina is working right now, but I'm not interested in a new meta, I want 0 metas. I want 2 dps sets that are each good choices for different reasons. It is my opinion that 1.6 has only switched which set is a good choice rather than provide for 2 good choices.

Armitas

Tankqull wrote: »

m2super_ESO wrote: »

I am pretty confident that leather armor would provide more defense than a bathrobe.. just sayin.

im pretty confident you can move more silently, run longer, make roll dodges alot easier in a bathrobe than a leather armor unless the leather is so thin its mitigation advantage is nonexistant.

Yep. Never seen a ninja in leather, they wear cloth. Leather armor is defensive when it is hardened, which also makes it stiff and restrictive.

Zsymon

eliisra wrote: »

Zsymon wrote: »

When a magicka user has low health, they can protect or heal themselves, when a stamina user has low health, he dies. Your death rate now will be higher, and more in line with the death rate stamina users suffer from. Instead of nerfing light armor they could have given stamina users some proper shields or heals, but that makes little sense in any realistic way, since spells like that are meant to cost magicka, not stamina.

Yeah right...because every stamina user is a DW/Bow NB tyro without any defensive skills slotted.

How about a Vigor, Rally, Green Dragon Blood(scales of max health not magicka fyi) spamming DK, that can dodge roll forever on top of that. Totally dies instantly when low on health, sure

Vigor is a non spammable heal, since it's a HOT, Rally you can't control when it's at full power, both very weak compared to magicka heals and shields. GDB uses a TON of magicka to cast, so a stamina user will be able to use it once, maybe twice if he spends some points in magicka, and not in conjuction with igneous shield, which is what makes GDB a strong heal. It is also only available to Dragonknights.

A magicka user can just dump his magicka in shields to become nigh unkillable, even if it's Healing Ward, or heal himself back up to full from near death, a stamina user will never be able to do that. Dodge rolls are only useful against projectiles as far as I know, there are plenty of spells that can't be dodged.

Though I agree it is weird to have to wear 5 light armor pieces to get spell penetration, that's just not in line with the armor passives. Imho hybrid builds should be encouraged, not punished, they could add so much build variety.

Zsymon

Armitas wrote: »

4. Game balance is the focus and reason for the OP. Several abilities were changed to stamina in 1.6 and even in 1.5 it had stamina heals, stamina shields and even it's own guild line. Now it just has a lot more options along with 1.5's consolidated functionality, ex wrecking blow.

I guess Boneshield counts as a shield, but it doesn't absorb any spell damage.