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

Armitas

Zsymon wrote: »

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.

There is shield assault and brawler too. Brawler is actually fantastic. I suppose boneshield is meant to mirror harness magicka.

Cody

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

most of this PvP community will not have vigor for the next year and a half.

until then, stop using vigor as an example for a stamina self heal. most people wont even be able to use it for a very long time.

Armitas

In a year and a half there will still be people that will take a year and a half to get it so we need to talk about it sometime. I don't think a year and half really represents most peoples experience with getting it. I only play 2 hours a day on the weekdays and 8ish on the weekends and I managed to get it quickly while playing solo to small group. I think it took me 2-3 months mixed with pve.

The game has been out a year, we should expect that a lot of pvpers have this skill. I don't know if its the majority or minority but its out there. We have to talk about it conditionally but I think we can talk about it.

EnOeZ

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.

The hell, no !

What do you want Heavy Armor to be in PVP with 1/3 mitigation magicka ?
Walking Mammoths ?
Target dummies for LA wearers ?

And light armor users Magicka Tanks ?

HA is still the armor no one is complaining about except its wearers.

Do you guys realise that although it seems a big difference on paper the current (4/4 ; 3/4 ; 1/4) at the end, the HA users has about 30% mitigation (armor rating of 20000 by 0,0015) while the LA has 7,5% mitigation and MA about 22,5% mitigation... (VR14, purple quality items)

HA 30%
MA 22,5%
LA 7,5%

Only 22,5% mitigation difference between LA and HA... before spell and armor penetration ! Which is with 50% penetration (enchants, traits, CPs, spells...) just above 10% difference !

What are you guys complaining about ?!!
AND Passive mitigation given by armor is still much less inferior to Active !
AND of course you get much better resource management, sustain and about 20% and more DPS through build-in pen, crits and itemization !!

Do I have to bring in the damage shields you can endlessly spam ?
HA only good for tanking while getting heals. Let it do its jobs !

Please be serious when you whine !

Thx.

Khivas_Carrick

God forbid the game be balanced and you use a different shield from one of the many other options a Magicka user has at their disposal lol You're wearing what is mostly cloth and thin pieces of soft leather. Damn right you ought to drop like a sack of potatoes lol

Ezareth

I think the fact the heavy armor provides such insane spell resistance is absurd.

If I am hitting a character in full plate with lightning spells what do you think is going to happen? If I hit them with Fire and superheat it?

Heavy armor I'm fine with providing spell protection via the passives but to have heavy armor wearers running around with 20K+ Spell resistance while a comparable light armor user has 5-6K is ridiculous.

technohic

This realism stuff is completely stupid. It's about balancing; lest we want to all get one shot by many things and at very least be wounded enough to be taken to the ground, dragging our bloody nubs of legs behind us. I mean where the hell would you draw the line?

I would say for all the damage dealing you give up for heavy armor, it is fine being way better in protection. I would say that all armor across the board could use an effectiveness increase though, except for medium. mediums protection is where LA should be brought up to.

Davadin

so is Heavy Armor is actually viable now?

Ezareth

technohic wrote: »

This realism stuff is completely stupid. It's about balancing; lest we want to all get one shot by many things and at very least be wounded enough to be taken to the ground, dragging our bloody nubs of legs behind us. I mean where the hell would you draw the line?

I would say for all the damage dealing you give up for heavy armor, it is fine being way better in protection. I would say that all armor across the board could use an effectiveness increase though, except for medium. mediums protection is where LA should be brought up to.

What "Damage dealing" do you give up for heavy armor? I'm wearing two pieces of Heavy Armor now and I haven't noticed a damage drop at all but I did gain, 4% Health, 2% Stamina, 2% Magicka , a 12% reduction physical damage done to my health and a 9% reduction in magical damage done to my health along with the stam/magicka restored every time I'm hit (once for 4 seconds).

The cost? A 6% loss my my spell cost reduction( which actually works out to 5.56%) and a 8% loss to my Magicka regen which is a drop in the bucket. I still don't run out of Magicka.

My damage actually increased from the magicka gains and my survivability drastically increased as well. I'd wear more Heavy armor but I only need enough armor to survive snipe since the majority of the damage done to me is to my shields.

gurugeorgey

Interesting discussion. Just a general point:-

The "realism" stuff is important. Videogames are part game, part simulation, and developers always try and make things as realistic (to our folk-intuition - which may sometimes be wrong if you look into history!) as they can, otherwise, for many players, it's just annoying an immersion-breaking. (Re. the history thing: in older games, it used to be the trope that plate armor was heavy and clunky, but recent historical reconstruction has revealed that plate armor at its best was exceptionally cleverly made and actually not all that restrictive at all, and not even as heavy as one might think).

But gameplay and balance do have to take precedence, and if it means massaging the "realism" here and there, that's fine. It's really a juggling act on the part of the devs to get a happy medium.

Cloth being relatively much further down on the scale makes sense, and it makes sense that the only thing that can compensate for that is "magic". Magic resistance on heavy armor indeed doesn't make much sense, but if it has to be there for balance, it has to be there (in a game where so much magic is flung around - it would be different if this was a GoT or LOTRO sim, with magic much rarer, in that case the magic user would have to tank the magic, and the heavy armor user would tank the physical stuff).

IOW, we each have our preferences for whether we weight "realism" or "balance" more, but we have to realize that sometimes we'll have to compromise on our expectations or intuitions.

technohic

Ezareth wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

This realism stuff is completely stupid. It's about balancing; lest we want to all get one shot by many things and at very least be wounded enough to be taken to the ground, dragging our bloody nubs of legs behind us. I mean where the hell would you draw the line?

I would say for all the damage dealing you give up for heavy armor, it is fine being way better in protection. I would say that all armor across the board could use an effectiveness increase though, except for medium. mediums protection is where LA should be brought up to.

What "Damage dealing" do you give up for heavy armor? I'm wearing two pieces of Heavy Armor now and I haven't noticed a damage drop at all but I did gain, 4% Health, 2% Stamina, 2% Magicka , a 12% reduction physical damage done to my health and a 9% reduction in magical damage done to my health along with the stam/magicka restored every time I'm hit (once for 4 seconds).

The cost? A 6% loss my my spell cost reduction( which actually works out to 5.56%) and a 8% loss to my Magicka regen which is a drop in the bucket. I still don't run out of Magicka.

My damage actually increased from the magicka gains and my survivability drastically increased as well. I'd wear more Heavy armor but I only need enough armor to survive snipe since the majority of the damage done to me is to my shields.

2 pieces, eh? Really going on a limb there. And are you counting the undaunted passives?

What happens if you are going full heavy or at least 5? That's what I am talking about; not your extra 2 pieces.

leeux

IMHO, I don't think that the problem with LA is *just* the mitigation difference...

As I said on other post, a big part of the problem is with stamina recovery and the constant stun/root/snare meta in PvP, coupled with the nerfs on stamina regen abilities that we used to depend on before 1.6

Thing is, is you're stunned and unable to break free, and you're wearing light armor => you're dead.

Hence, stunning a light armor wearer is a reliable winning strategy... it can never fail in 1.6. If you're singled out and nobody else takes part in the fight, you're dead.

Before 1.5 we had a chance to recover because costs weren't so high and we had abilities that helped to gain stamina at quicker pace when we needed.

Of course, potions can help a bit in certain cases, but with the extended cooldown period, they aren't a replacement for a good stamina regen ability you can use reliably (IMO.)

Before 1.5 the fundamental asymmetry between M vs S was that S needed its pool to break free, sprint, block, dodge roll *and* use abilities. That was a flaw, that they attempted to fix... ok.

But the pendulum were swung all the other way now, and now the asymmetry is that for M, stamina is useless... because at most 2 break frees (or 3 rolls...) leaves you defenseless unable to free yourself again for all the time it takes your stamina to regen... which is easily in the tens of seconds (compare that to the current TTK ratio...)

Again, this is all my opinion... of course I'm open to people thinking different.

Ezareth

technohic wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

This realism stuff is completely stupid. It's about balancing; lest we want to all get one shot by many things and at very least be wounded enough to be taken to the ground, dragging our bloody nubs of legs behind us. I mean where the hell would you draw the line?

I would say for all the damage dealing you give up for heavy armor, it is fine being way better in protection. I would say that all armor across the board could use an effectiveness increase though, except for medium. mediums protection is where LA should be brought up to.

What "Damage dealing" do you give up for heavy armor? I'm wearing two pieces of Heavy Armor now and I haven't noticed a damage drop at all but I did gain, 4% Health, 2% Stamina, 2% Magicka , a 12% reduction physical damage done to my health and a 9% reduction in magical damage done to my health along with the stam/magicka restored every time I'm hit (once for 4 seconds).

The cost? A 6% loss my my spell cost reduction( which actually works out to 5.56%) and a 8% loss to my Magicka regen which is a drop in the bucket. I still don't run out of Magicka.

My damage actually increased from the magicka gains and my survivability drastically increased as well. I'd wear more Heavy armor but I only need enough armor to survive snipe since the majority of the damage done to me is to my shields.

2 pieces, eh? Really going on a limb there. And are you counting the undaunted passives?

What happens if you are going full heavy or at least 5? That's what I am talking about; not your extra 2 pieces.

That's just the thing. You actually get 50% of the defenses of full Heavy by going 5 Light, 2 Heavy. The real issue is Heavy Armor is so powerful right now that it is practically a *given* for everyone to have 2 pieces of it.

I couldn't go five heavy without sacrificing one of my Light Armor sets that isn't crafted otherwise I would consider it. I know one successful Sorc @Teargrants who is running fully heavy armor now and he's practically unkillable and has no sustain problems and does decent damage.

What I'm getting to is they've shifted the balance far too much. Light Armor should at least be giving 1/3 the defenses of heavy, and medium 2/3.

Actually, I don't really understand why Medium is currently offering twice the defenses of Light Armor considering it is also a DPS set and Stamina abilities right now are far more powerful than Magicka abilities.

technohic

Ezareth wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

technohic wrote: »

This realism stuff is completely stupid. It's about balancing; lest we want to all get one shot by many things and at very least be wounded enough to be taken to the ground, dragging our bloody nubs of legs behind us. I mean where the hell would you draw the line?

I would say for all the damage dealing you give up for heavy armor, it is fine being way better in protection. I would say that all armor across the board could use an effectiveness increase though, except for medium. mediums protection is where LA should be brought up to.

What "Damage dealing" do you give up for heavy armor? I'm wearing two pieces of Heavy Armor now and I haven't noticed a damage drop at all but I did gain, 4% Health, 2% Stamina, 2% Magicka , a 12% reduction physical damage done to my health and a 9% reduction in magical damage done to my health along with the stam/magicka restored every time I'm hit (once for 4 seconds).

The cost? A 6% loss my my spell cost reduction( which actually works out to 5.56%) and a 8% loss to my Magicka regen which is a drop in the bucket. I still don't run out of Magicka.

My damage actually increased from the magicka gains and my survivability drastically increased as well. I'd wear more Heavy armor but I only need enough armor to survive snipe since the majority of the damage done to me is to my shields.

2 pieces, eh? Really going on a limb there. And are you counting the undaunted passives?

What happens if you are going full heavy or at least 5? That's what I am talking about; not your extra 2 pieces.

That's just the thing. You actually get 50% of the defenses of full Heavy by going 5 Light, 2 Heavy. The real issue is Heavy Armor is so powerful right now that it is practically a *given* for everyone to have 2 pieces of it.

I couldn't go five heavy without sacrificing one of my Light Armor sets that isn't crafted otherwise I would consider it. I know one successful Sorc @Teargrants who is running fully heavy armor now and he's practically unkillable and has no sustain problems and does decent damage.

What I'm getting to is they've shifted the balance far too much. Light Armor should at least be giving 1/3 the defenses of heavy, and medium 2/3.

Actually, I don't really understand why Medium is currently offering twice the defenses of Light Armor considering it is also a DPS set and Stamina abilities right now are far more powerful than Magicka abilities.

That was what I was originally saying? I actually went so far as to say light should be as much on defense as medium. Not from a realism standpoint, but just the fact that they both really are DPS gear. One has a healing and shield advantage, the other has more damage single target, better stealth and more ability to counter CC.

The part of raising armor across the board was more about just how passive armor is quite a bit outshined by actives. Which they probably should, but some actives are so cheap and are limited to what classes can use them.

Varicite

Honestly, I believe they could bump magicka damage up (or perhaps spell damage bonus sources) a bit to compensate for their lowered defenses.

I do believe that they should keep their lowered defenses, however, as magicka builds make up for lowered defenses w/ a MUCH larger amount of utility (shields, heals, CC, debuffs, buffs).

Cody

Armitas wrote: »

In a year and a half there will still be people that will take a year and a half to get it so we need to talk about it sometime. I don't think a year and half really represents most peoples experience with getting it. I only play 2 hours a day on the weekdays and 8ish on the weekends and I managed to get it quickly while playing solo to small group. I think it took me 2-3 months mixed with pve.

The game has been out a year, we should expect that a lot of pvpers have this skill. I don't know if its the majority or minority but its out there. We have to talk about it conditionally but I think we can talk about it.

i highly doubt you got to rank 10 in the skilline in just 3 months. I played 8 hours a day at one point, PvP, for about 2-4 months straight, Plus 3 other causally played months, and still have yet to reach rank 8 in the skillline. I think you are lying your butt off:( unless you are joining AP farm groups; if that's the case, then I suppose it may be possible to do it that fast.

its either that, or you are just a god at the game.

if you really think its appropriate to start using the skill in discussion when only 5% of the PvP community even has it, then fine; you and i just have different POVs.

Armitas

I can make 30k ap in an hour not even fighting the enemy, but typically I am making about the same fighting the enemy. On occasion I have made 100k an hour on good outnumbered fights. Can you link me to the source of your data.

I am not saying you are certainly wrong Cody, I'm just trying to find out why you believe what you do because on the surface it seems extraordinary.

Ezareth

Cody wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

In a year and a half there will still be people that will take a year and a half to get it so we need to talk about it sometime. I don't think a year and half really represents most peoples experience with getting it. I only play 2 hours a day on the weekdays and 8ish on the weekends and I managed to get it quickly while playing solo to small group. I think it took me 2-3 months mixed with pve.

The game has been out a year, we should expect that a lot of pvpers have this skill. I don't know if its the majority or minority but its out there. We have to talk about it conditionally but I think we can talk about it.

i highly doubt you got to rank 10 in the skilline in just 3 months. I played 8 hours a day at one point, PvP, for about 2-4 months straight, Plus 3 other causally played months, and still have yet to reach rank 8 in the skillline. I think you are lying your butt off:( unless you are joining AP farm groups; if that's the case, then I suppose it may be possible to do it that fast.

its either that, or you are just a god at the game.

if you really think its appropriate to start using the skill in discussion when only 5% of the PvP community even has it, then fine; you and i just have different POVs.

I hit rank 34 in about 5 months of PvP(probably less considering the first 2 months I didn't PvP at all) and I never did AP grinding, mainly solo PvP and some group PvP (No nuthugging the crown while AoEing newbs, usually just zerg busting with a dose of meat).

Makkir

Ezareth wrote: »

I couldn't go five heavy without sacrificing one of my Light Armor sets that isn't crafted otherwise I would consider it. I know one successful Sorc @Teargrants who is running fully heavy armor now and he's practically unkillable and has no sustain problems and does decent damage.

@Ezareth
Is he/you running a 2H sword yet to replace your staff?

Ezareth

Makkir wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

I couldn't go five heavy without sacrificing one of my Light Armor sets that isn't crafted otherwise I would consider it. I know one successful Sorc @Teargrants who is running fully heavy armor now and he's practically unkillable and has no sustain problems and does decent damage.

@Ezareth
Is he/you running a 2H sword yet to replace your staff?

@makkir no I'll quit the game before I'm force to go melee like everyone else. Speaking of melee....I was hit by a 22k wrecking blow last night. This was a against 2 heavy and my shield...over 10k armor.

Aimelin

EnOeZ wrote: »

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.

The hell, no !

What do you want Heavy Armor to be in PVP with 1/3 mitigation magicka ?
Walking Mammoths ?
Target dummies for LA wearers ?

And light armor users Magicka Tanks ?

HA is still the armor no one is complaining about except its wearers.

Do you guys realise that although it seems a big difference on paper the current (4/4 ; 3/4 ; 1/4) at the end, the HA users has about 30% mitigation (armor rating of 20000 by 0,0015) while the LA has 7,5% mitigation and MA about 22,5% mitigation... (VR14, purple quality items)

HA 30%
MA 22,5%
LA 7,5%

Only 22,5% mitigation difference between LA and HA... before spell and armor penetration ! Which is with 50% penetration (enchants, traits, CPs, spells...) just above 10% difference !

What are you guys complaining about ?!!
AND Passive mitigation given by armor is still much less inferior to Active !
AND of course you get much better resource management, sustain and about 20% and more DPS through build-in pen, crits and itemization !!

Do I have to bring in the damage shields you can endlessly spam ?
HA only good for tanking while getting heals. Let it do its jobs !

Please be serious when you whine !

Thx.

First of all be serious when you make posts.

The "damage shields" we can spam that you speak of .... harness magicka, only absorbs spell damage, it's useless against a 13+k wrecking blow .... or a 15k lethal arrow, or some mentally challenged dual wielder that spams steel tornado or any other melee skill they can spam

the only "damage shields" that absorb physical damage is either hardened ward from sorc, or bone shield, i guess you can consider healing ward but that is so situational it's a joke tho, if you consider barrier ult from support skill tree, not many, other than some smart healers in a zerg, run that ult

put LA at 2/4 mitigation, or lower all the damage the stupid spammable melee skills do, caus if you consider in pvp you're getting hit with 13k wrecking blows, while the passive pvp buff DECREASES dmg taken by 20% it's rly messed up

jarydf

What I am advocating is light armor go to 1/3 of heavy or give a spell power buff. Maybe medium being wound back to 2/3 of heavy. Because you can mix armors up I dont think they are too far out of wack balance wise with the use of shield spells. The problems will really come if ZOS choose to nerf the shield spells that light armor wearers now rely on...

Aimelin

jarydf wrote: »

What I am advocating is light armor go to 1/3 of heavy or give a spell power buff. Maybe medium being wound back to 2/3 of heavy. Because you can mix armors up I dont think they are too far out of wack balance wise with the use of shield spells. The problems will really come if ZOS choose to nerf the shield spells that light armor wearers now rely on...

they allready did by 15% in pvp .....

Alexander Powerkill

OK first off anyone saying you can survive easily with medium armor is just wrong. I have used med plus elude and dodge roll and it grants you some survivability but not a lot. In contrast the hardest people I have found to kill are magicka NBS and sorcs running DMG shields in full or most LA. It is as good as it ever has been stop crying

Kypho

Spell power always got more benefit than exact same number of weapon power. Magic damage is still owns. And Magicka is spampool, stamina need for lot things. even if you do a little fart, it cost you stamina. There is no warlock set for stamina eighter. i could continue...

And if anyone again coming with WB 10k hit.... Fragment hits 13k. 13k fragment can be instant LAWL... crushing shock animcanceling is almost same dps. Curse 9k. Mine 9k. All on medium armor.... so stop missleading infos.

golfer.dub17_ESO

*See everyone complaining about how light armor sucks now.*
*See 90% of people in PvP are still light armor mages despite how much "it sucks"*

Yeah that's cool.

Aimelin

Kypho wrote: »

Spell power always got more benefit than exact same number of weapon power. Magic damage is still owns. And Magicka is spampool, stamina need for lot things. even if you do a little fart, it cost you stamina. There is no warlock set for stamina eighter. i could continue...

And if anyone again coming with WB 10k hit.... Fragment hits 13k. 13k fragment can be instant LAWL... crushing shock animcanceling is almost same dps. Curse 9k. Mine 9k. All on medium armor.... so stop missleading infos.

Lol, I haven't been hit with 13k frags since they "fixed" ( read bugged it to useless) nirnhoned ...

While people still do 13k+ wrecking blows, and you don't rly need to be in medium armor to pull this off, can do this in HA, so yea .... LA op according to you , oh and I take that kind of dmg on a v9 character with 5LA 2HA with 14.5k armor .......

Armitas

Alexander Powerkill wrote: »

OK first off anyone saying you can survive easily with medium armor is just wrong. I have used med plus elude and dodge roll and it grants you some survivability but not a lot. In contrast the hardest people I have found to kill are magicka NBS and sorcs running DMG shields in full or most LA. It is as good as it ever has been stop crying

Sorc damage shield strength is coming from hardened ward and the fact that they can now focus fully on magicka rather than health for survivability which simultaneously increases their damage and they have the ability to escape. They are hard to kill for anyone, but not because of light armor directly. I'm not sure what you are experiencing with magicka NBs. Even so that would only account for 2/4 of the classes.

It's not as good as it's ever been, see 1.6 patch notes for changes.

rb2001

gurugeorgey wrote: »

Interesting discussion. Just a general point:-

The "realism" stuff is important. Videogames are part game, part simulation, and developers always try and make things as realistic (to our folk-intuition - which may sometimes be wrong if you look into history!) as they can, otherwise, for many players, it's just annoying an immersion-breaking. (Re. the history thing: in older games, it used to be the trope that plate armor was heavy and clunky, but recent historical reconstruction has revealed that plate armor at its best was exceptionally cleverly made and actually not all that restrictive at all, and not even as heavy as one might think).

But gameplay and balance do have to take precedence, and if it means massaging the "realism" here and there, that's fine. It's really a juggling act on the part of the devs to get a happy medium.

Cloth being relatively much further down on the scale makes sense, and it makes sense that the only thing that can compensate for that is "magic". Magic resistance on heavy armor indeed doesn't make much sense, but if it has to be there for balance, it has to be there (in a game where so much magic is flung around - it would be different if this was a GoT or LOTRO sim, with magic much rarer, in that case the magic user would have to tank the magic, and the heavy armor user would tank the physical stuff).

IOW, we each have our preferences for whether we weight "realism" or "balance" more, but we have to realize that sometimes we'll have to compromise on our expectations or intuitions.

Good post.

Dragnelus

What is a normal spell and psyical res? Im a dk healer and in pvp I use hardened armor and dragon wings and pve without and ofc shielding. Im full cloth but if im using those 2 skills is it equal with having 2 heavy pieces?