I know by bringing this up I'm calling for all the Stamina users to get out their pitchforks and torches but I feel this issue is better addressed sooner rather than later before Perma-dodgers becomes the current meta for everyone (including Sorcs!). There are already no few number of skilled players taking advantage of this and more and more people are catching on.
Yes I'm aware that there are counters to the dodge roll but we all know that 90%+ off the abilities used in Cyrodiil are completely evaded by dodge rolling and a player that is exposed in combat can usually extract himself from danger by a large number of attackers with a number of successive dodge rolls. The tradeoff to this has always been the assumption that the player would run out of stamina eventually and that you'd be able to kill the target.
In 2.0 Dodge roll costs 3591 Stamina which is appropriately expensive.
The issue is the fact that currently there exists a way to reduce the cost of this action to less than half of its current cost without *any* sacrifice to damage or gearing.
With the massive increase in power given to Stamina builds in 2.0 Medium armor is the new offensive requirement for a Stamina user. Wearing a full set of Medium armor gives you a 28% reduction to the costs of Dodge rolls which by itself reduces the cost of a dodge roll to 2709.
Next we're going to look at Stamina Cost reduction enchants on rings and next.
Having all three VR14 Legendary Stamina cost reduction enchants reduces the cost of Stamina abilities, Dodge roll, and break free by 637. (Yes the tooltip says 200 each but each enchant gives you 212.something reduction). Having Medium Armor and Stamina cost reduction enchants will reduce the cost of your dodge roll to 2229. Pretty much every good stamina user in PvP will have at very least this cost as there is literally zero reason to use an enchant other than stamina cost reduction due its excessive strength compared to other choices.
Finally let's look at the Tumbler Champion Ability which at max rank will give you an 18% reduction to the cost of break free and dodge rolling. With max Tumbler your cost of dodge roll is reduced to 1741, a 52.5% overall reduction to the base cost of dodge rolling.
By itself this would seem reasonable but when you consider the ridiculous amounts of stamina regeneration a player can get coupled with the extreme cost reduction that is available to all stamina based weapon abilities a stamina user can build for pure damage and sustainability and by doing so give him the ability to "Permanently" dodge roll whenever he is threatened. He can in essence do this even after he has completely exhausted his stamina supply by regeneration alone!
Here are the current bonuses a player can get depending on his race/class to stamina regeneration (I'm sure I'm missing a few):
Bosmer 21%
Redguard 9%
NB Shadow passive 30%
Full Medium Armor 28%
Werewolf 15%
Vampire 10%
Green Dragon Blood 20%
Any Stamina Potion 20%
Focused attacks 10%
Restoring Aura 10/20%
Absorption Field 20%
Mooncalf Champion Ability adds up to 25%
*multiplicative* with everything else.
Now these by themselves are only powerful if you're able to boost your *base* stamina recovery to high levels.
The base Stamina recovery of a V14 character is 514. With Blue V10 Stamina/Magicka drink add 350. With 3 V14 Stamina Recovery set bonuses at 126 each your total base Stamina Recovery becomes 1242. That base becomes becomes 3322 Stamina recovery by itself to a Bosmer Nightblade Werewolf wearing Medium armor with under the effects of a tristat pot with maxed out Mooncalf. Now 3000+ Stamina Recovery is going to be the exception not the rule but for any stamina build getting over 2000 stamina recovery is relatively easy especially if you're a min/maxer like myself.
I'm wearing light armor and not even trying and I have stamina recovery of over 1200 while I'm under the effects of a tripot.
To demonstrate the absurdity of this setup I created the following character on the PTS.
He is a Bosmer Nightblade werewolf with V10 Tri-drink (not the better V10 Blue drink). I'm wearing full medium armor but have absolutely zero set bonuses to increase my base stamina recovery so I dumped in 100 points to Mooncalf to get my Stamina regen up to just under 2000. I then put 38 points into the tumbler passive which is doable by many players at this point and reduces the cost of dodge roll by only 9.8%.
I'll let the results speak for themselves:
(Note: I've never used a bow before this and my perma dodge-rolling technique is not nearly as smooth as it could be)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1AKU5kM5Dk
There are two proposals I have to fix this and other regeneration issues (including magicka regeneration which is another problem altogether).
First, the Stamina Cost reduction enchant should only apply to Stamina *abilities* not break free and dodge roll. Block was separated already and in set bonuses, passives, champion points and everything else in the game Stamina cost reduction and Dodge roll cost reduction are separate. I know people are going to say that break free and dodge roll shares the same pool as their damage abilities but to offset that stamina weapon abilities have far more cost reduction options available to them which make them far cheaper than your average magicka damage abilities. Additionally players have their magicka pool to dedicate to healing abilities, damage shields and other defensive abilities that follow similar effectiveness to a magicka user using dodge roll and break free.
Second, *all* Champion regeneration passives need to be made additive like other resources of regeneration instead of being multiplicative. Either that or they need to have their maximum capped at 18% or 15.8% like the cost reduction abilities.
I think if we do these things, perma dodge rolling will be far more difficult to achieve and the cost for the ability will be more meaningful while not changing anything for heavy and light armor users who aren't running pure stamina builds.
The regeneration fix will help stem (but not completely eliminate) the excessive resources people are running around with right now.
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom having the devs take a look at this would be awesome. Thanks!
Permanently banned from the forums for displaying dissent:
ESO - The Year Behind
Too Much Bolt Escape - banned for "hacking the game to create movement not otherwise permitted by in game mechanics."
Ezareth VR16 AD Sorc - Rank 36 - Axe NA
Ezareth-Ali VR16 DC NB - Rank 20 - Chillrend NA
Ezareth PvP on Youtube