Champion system - where are my physical damage mitigation options?

Baphomet

Stamina hits harder, there are shields specifically to counter magical damage (which can be stacked), there is nirnhoned, you've got elemental defender, hardy and spell shield in the champion system, magicka builds have to spread out a lot of CPs across multiple constellations to up the damage (where physical can go crazy in just one constellation), it's way easier to get a higher spell resistance than physical resistance, and it's way easier to get a high weapon damage than magic damage.

So where are all our equally beneficial counterparts to physical damage mitigation @ZoS ??

Are we only gonna get armor focus and gneric damage shield as our counters to physical damage when the game has a whole array of abilities and feats to negate magical damage??

1.6 has been out for some time now, so it must have dawned on someone that the constellations need to be redesigned, certain traits need to be changed, armor mitigation needs to be reworked etc.

Can we expect to see some changes to this messy and biased design or should we keep our faith that some PvP changes are coming imminently? Curious minds want to know, @Zenimax

Best regards.

Leandor

Please consider different scaling of the abilities. I am a full medium armor wearer without a single piece of nirnhoned. I have 20 (EDIT: sorry, misstype. not 30 but 20 each. Not yet that far in champion rank) points each in Hardy, Elemental Defender and Spell Shield. My character sheet values for Spell resistance are ~12k and Armor ~10k.

The highest Snipe I got was 17k.

The highest Proximity Detonation was 23k.

Where is the balance?

Baphomet

Same place where (non-stealthed) uppercuts hit you for 24k, heavy attacks hit you for 22k and light attack (crits) hit you for 6k when you have 20,000+ physical resistance.

Snipe caps a bit lower because most people use lethal arrow which is poison damage and thus mitigated both by armor rating and the hardy feat in the CP system.

I am talking generic physical damage here - the game needs counters to it, just like it has for magical and other misc. types of damage.

Leandor

I was referring to focussed aim crit. Lethal usually is a little lower than that, on top of my head I remember a 15k one, but not more.

I agree on wrecking blow, especially since it seems possible to cancelcast it in a way that prevents you from seeing the tell.

I would also like to bring into the discussion inferno staff heavy attacks for 20k+. I am talking about general magicka hits here when you do not have maxed out spell resistance.

My point is that I can agree to an increase in magicka focussed damage bonuses or physical damage mitigation perks from CP if and only if nirnhoned doesn't get changed - because without nirnhoned, magicka is still stronger than stamina. Since they have already confirmed that they will reduce nirnhoned effectivity (SoonTM), would you please wait until that is done before requesting buffs to magicka?

Baphomet

No buffs to magicka in general is needed as long as the they give us the same caliber of defensive options against physical damage. That way people can still spec as they see fit to counter their build's weaknesses without messing up abilities and such for PvE. It's the Champion System that needs to change - not necessarily the power of the different abilities.

Leandor

If you need the additional mitigation options present to turn down the damage of magicka abilities to be in line with the damage of the stamina abilities, you essentially restrict people gearing against magicka builds in their choice of trait.

Right now, nirnhoned is mandatory because you can catch 22k Radiant Destructions from 100% health or proximity detonations for similar magnitude. I personally cannot remember any single oneshot from a stamina ability but literally tens of oneshots from those abilities mentioned above.

I do not agree because giving defense other than "use heavy armor" for magicka user to be resistant to stamina attacks would basically bring us right back to 1.5 and the invincible light armor tank dragonknights. To type it out clearly: what you ask is not balancing, it is the opposite.

I DO agree that some abilities have to be changed, these being primarily wrecking blow and crit rush damage needs to scale less good (they are fine at base stats but not so much at maxed out status) and some of the CC effects still allow unbreakable CC combos (hello toppling charge).

I can also agree to tune down the damage scaling for snipe a bit, especially at weapon damage above 2200 (how about some diminishing returns at the very high levels?).

But introducing a CP trait that reduces physical damage has to come at the cost of reducing damage output of magicka damage abilities in general. I would also be okay with that, since it would extend TTK a little - that can only be a good thing.

Baphomet

You think it's good balance when physical damage builds can negate magical damage from hardy, elemental defender, spell shield, armor focus and nirnhoned while magical damage build can only negate physical from armor focus? I think you forgot to apply logic in your statement, he he.

As people gain more and more champion points, the gap in mitigation values will become increasingly larger, which will result in magical damage will hit less and less hard compared to physical, which will remain almost unaffected due to the dimishing return of armor focus. If people think that stamina builds already hit hard compared to magicka builds, they are not going to be pleased a bit further down the road - if Zenimax stays on this path.

Hopefully the right people will realize that some sort of feature that mitigates generic physical damage is needed in one of the constellations, aside from armor focus with its low value and harsh diminishing returns. Maybe there's even need for a physical counterpart to nirnhoned too, but it might not be necessary if the aforementioned suggestion is implemented.

Leandor

No, I did not forget logic. I simply look at the real game effects of it instead of grumbling about theoretical imbalances. To defend against magicka, you need to spend way more resources (CPs and armor traits) than to defend against stamina and still have less effect. It is much easier to stack spell penetration than to stack armor penetration.

EDIT: Also, while I am not anywhere near the current top end in regards to champion rank, I am at least in the upper middle percentile with 205. The difference I see in regards to survivability compared to 0 CP (intentionally reset points and compared 0 CP situation at around 180 CP) was by far and large not as noticeable as putting on one piece of nirnhoned. And as said before, ZOS has acknowledged the issue with nirnhoned, they will tone it down (hopefully not too much) and every complaint in regards to perceived magicka/stamina imbalancies should wait until after that.