Why is PVP mostly just a damage contest?

Prabooo

SNIP

zornyan

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

eliisra wrote: »

Remember back in the days when people used to put points into health lol?

Actually, you had to put points into all different attributes in PvP. Now it's like 62 magicka/stamina + every single enchant magicka/stamina for max dmg, max heals and max shields. The end.

Still have to put points into health, unless I want to run around with 15k health and get knocked down by everything. There are a few builds and classes that don't have to and that has more to do with the lack of balance between those classes/builds than it has to do with overrall balance of dps vs defense.

Not true.

My imperial templar on console has 26k hp in cyro, not a single health enchant or anything, just the racial passove, one heavy armor piece passive, and undaunted passives with food.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

I've had a great deal of success lately in PVP since switching to an odd shield based heavy armor Stamplar build. I even took a farm in Scourge (XBox) by myself last night, which for some may be a normal day at the office but for me was a grand accomplishment.

If you want to be different attack the Sorcs and NBs at their own game. Defensive stance to reflect those nasty spells, mixed with an invisibility potion to out nightblade the nightblade and you'll have a great time in Cyrodiil. There are many ways to beat "the meta". You just have to get creative.

Cathexis

I switched to a pvp tank build recently and I have been pleasantly surprised by the result.

What I have found is that the vast majority of high burst dps fail on 1v1, 1v2, and some 1v3 situations.

Tank builds don't sustain well in like you v 10 situations, but nothing really does when you think about it.

I have also found that players who think as you and I do - who believe in skilled combat - build their characters in a way that compliments this play style, and that when you are sustain oriented you begin to identify who those players are.

Every once in a while I do encounter a damage build that is highly competitive with my build, but I have found that they are often also very skilled players.

CatchMeTrolling

Cathexis wrote: »

I switched to a pvp tank build recently and I have been pleasantly surprised by the result.

What I have found is that the vast majority of high burst dps fail on 1v1, 1v2, and some 1v3 situations.

Tank builds don't sustain well in like you v 10 situations, but nothing really does when you think about it.

I have also found that players who think as you and I do - who believe in skilled combat - build their characters in a way that compliments this play style, and that when you are sustain oriented you begin to identify who those players are.

Every once in a while I do encounter a damage build that is highly competitive with my build, but I have found that they are often also very skilled players.

I switch up my build pretty often, go from dps, to a balance build, to healer or high recovery. Switching up my moves and everything. I looking at it from a skillful/role point of view.

Right now I'm running healer with plus 4k recovery and every heal, purge and repentance like moves you can think of. Now I probably can't burst anyone down but I'll keep myself alive and everyone else.

CatchMeTrolling

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

I've had a great deal of success lately in PVP since switching to an odd shield based heavy armor Stamplar build. I even took a farm in Scourge (XBox) by myself last night, which for some may be a normal day at the office but for me was a grand accomplishment.

If you want to be different attack the Sorcs and NBs at their own game. Defensive stance to reflect those nasty spells, mixed with an invisibility potion to out nightblade the nightblade and you'll have a great time in Cyrodiil. There are many ways to beat "the meta". You just have to get creative.

It's not that I have a problem with pvp, whatever I spec as I play it well, got emp a dozen times and everything but what I would like to see is more variety than I currently do.

GreenSoup2HoT

Tanking is underrated and just not seen. It suck's, tanking is awesome. No one does it though.

CatchMeTrolling

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

Tanking is underrated and just not seen. It suck's, tanking is awesome. No one does it though.

Tanking is fun to an extent lol just gets old after awhile but would be nice to see more

Lucky28

eliisra wrote: »

Still have to put points into health, unless I want to run around with 15k health and get knocked down by everything. There are a few builds and classes that don't have to and that has more to do with the lack of balance between those classes/builds than it has to do with overrall balance of dps vs defense.

Not really. I have a Stam DK, Magicka Sorc, Magicka NB none have any points in health and all do just fine in PvP. you don't need health period. As to rather or not that's alright by design, i don't know. though it is the way i would play any TES game, so it's kinda fitting i guess.

Derra

Personally i´ve only experienced this since they´ve increased the pvp dmg reduction with imperial city.

Sustain builds were still vaible before that because it was possible to kill someone with a sustain build in 1.6. Now it´s only all out dmg or bust. The system is borked on multiple levels.

However i don´t want 1.5 softcaps back as they were favoring sustain builds above everything. There was no decision back then (atleast not a hard one) and on top of that the old softcaps were so low they were blantantly favoring certain classes/builds (those with pressure and build in aoe over singletarget and burst).

Toc de Malsvi

zornyan wrote: »

Not true.

My imperial templar on console has 26k hp in cyro, not a single health enchant or anything, just the racial passove, one heavy armor piece passive, and undaunted passives with food.

You're running a race that has health buff, with food for health buff and taking advantage of small buff from heavy, and buffs from undaunted. Just changing your race would take a significant hit to your health, as a wood elf or khajiit I do not get max health buff from racials, but I get good recoveries and opening burst. I also take advantage of undaunted and minor bonus' from heavy but that leaves me at well below 20k hps unless I do max stats from food, if I do max recoveries though I can maintain over 1k recovery on every stat and over 2k on stam or I can push for 3k on just stam. You make sacrifices everywhere depending on you're build. I cannot not put points into health on Khajiit or woodelf or I will not have over 16k hps and that is an easy kill for any build with minimal burst.

There are only 4 races with health % passives, 2 of which get 3%, 1 gets 6% and the other gets 12%. You are using the race with the highest health % passive so yes you do not need to worry about putting points into health, although if you wanted to you would have way more health than those around you. NB's are the only class with a passive that can buff health %, by choosing NB's and using skills that benefit those passives, or choosing Imperial or Orc you can eliminate the need to put points into health but that does not mean that no one any longer needs to put points into those passives.

There are 6 races that do not get a passive buff to health % and there are 3 classes that cannot simply buff health % with a passive and skill choices. Meaning certain class/builds will not have to put points into health but others do, at least if they want to keep their survivability high and not be easily bursted down.

Toc de Malsvi

Lucky28 wrote: »

Not really. I have a Stam DK, Magicka Sorc, Magicka NB none have any points in health and all do just fine in PvP. you don't need health period. As to rather or not that's alright by design, i don't know. though it is the way i would play any TES game, so it's kinda fitting i guess.

I don't know your race choices, but I do know that Magicka sorc due to shields can keep much lower health than most because you can always have a shield up. Magicka NB can take advantage of NB passives to boost health %. Also depending on how you play and who you play with will change how much health you feel is necessary to survive. I've found around 20k+ is the number that makes me feel much more comfortable about surviving initial burst but that hardly makes me invincible.

revonine

Not just PvP. I'm fine with 18K health in PvE now because things just die SO fast.

contact.opiumb16_ESO

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

It seems the majority of pvp has turned into who hits the hardest & just about every build is centered around damage with little sustain. Completely understand the goal is to kill your enemies but at the same time where's the variety and originality?

I feel sustain builds are a bit better and more interesting too, at least you can get a taste of how skilled someone really is when it comes to using the game mechanics and managing their resources. In my opinion that's how it should be rather than bursting someone down, which is also pretty interesting since damage was "nerfed" but you still can manage to get insta killed thanks to certain builds & cheap skills. Note, I know you're not going to just burst someone down that's good but the average player you pretty much will which isn't skillful to me.

Which is a problem somewhat because I don't want to win a fight simply because I hit hard, would rather it be because I straight up outplayed my opponent using my skills and managing my resources properly.

Don't think it's ZOS fault, it's how the player base typically chooses to play, they could nerf the damage again but player's will just create a new hard hitting build to replace the old one's.

What's your thoughts?

Just 3 words : BRING BACK SOFTCAPS

Then, we can have more builds, not centered on the highest burst build

zornyan

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

zornyan wrote: »

Not true.

My imperial templar on console has 26k hp in cyro, not a single health enchant or anything, just the racial passove, one heavy armor piece passive, and undaunted passives with food.

You're running a race that has health buff, with food for health buff and taking advantage of small buff from heavy, and buffs from undaunted. Just changing your race would take a significant hit to your health, as a wood elf or khajiit I do not get max health buff from racials, but I get good recoveries and opening burst. I also take advantage of undaunted and minor bonus' from heavy but that leaves me at well below 20k hps unless I do max stats from food, if I do max recoveries though I can maintain over 1k recovery on every stat and over 2k on stam or I can push for 3k on just stam. You make sacrifices everywhere depending on you're build. I cannot not put points into health on Khajiit or woodelf or I will not have over 16k hps and that is an easy kill for any build with minimal burst.

There are only 4 races with health % passives, 2 of which get 3%, 1 gets 6% and the other gets 12%. You are using the race with the highest health % passive so yes you do not need to worry about putting points into health, although if you wanted to you would have way more health than those around you. NB's are the only class with a passive that can buff health %, by choosing NB's and using skills that benefit those passives, or choosing Imperial or Orc you can eliminate the need to put points into health but that does not mean that no one any longer needs to put points into those passives.

There are 6 races that do not get a passive buff to health % and there are 3 classes that cannot simply buff health % with a passive and skill choices. Meaning certain class/builds will not have to put points into health but others do, at least if they want to keep their survivability high and not be easily bursted down.

Most of my builds are imperial, I've only got one min/max pve build, but I never felt like the extra 2k magicka was worth the 2k health, I didn't feel a significant dps buff, but I felt much squisher.

I always use food, as due to the high burst meta we have (and the fact I use vamp on all my builds ) I find food more desirable , you have more hp, and your heals/skills are more effective thanks to the stat boost.

My regen is normally around 1700-1800 for magicka, and the base stam regen, with a little buff from chugging tripots and 5% fro. Cp, although again i use imperial for the Stam buff, which with tri stat gives me around 18k stamina.

TheDarkShadow

The reason I go mostly damage build is it work both in pvp and pve. I only need a little twist when I need to switch from dps to heal. With the price of VR16 gear at the moment, and the price to change attribute points, I don't have the luxury to make a special tanky set for pvp and change attribute everytime I want to pvp/pve.

Jade1986

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Same reason people like points in football, and do not appreciate watching good defense or low scoring games. The killing of people makes us all feel like we've done something like we've contributed. A 20+ minute stalemate that is resolved only when friends arrive leaves players frustrated and flustered. The best games have balance, otherwise sustain becomes the new meta and ESO becomes "game of shields". For balance players should be able to be one shot, or virtually one shot, but they should also be able to build tanks that have epic survivability. The current game build is pretty close to balanced if you ask me, the only thing I think could be greatly improved is reducing zerg balls which they have said they recognize and are working on.

One shotting is horrible game design, it should not even be possible.

Jade1986

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Draxys wrote: »

How is being able to one shot someone balanced? No build should ever be able to one shot anything, unless your target is a naked lowbie with battle leveling off.

Same way that using a sniper rifle works in other games, you sacrifice utility and overrall survivability to be able to burst down targets who are low health or not using defensive's or armor. There are easy mechanics to nullify being burst down and mostly it has to do with paying attention to your surroundings as well as your build. If you put all your points into being bursty you should be able to be bursted down rather easy.

This is not a first person shooter, if you want to one shot people like that, then go play that kind of game, this is an mmo, with many more mechanics and one shotting should not even be possible. It is bad game design at its finest.

Jade1986

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

eliisra wrote: »

Remember back in the days when people used to put points into health lol?

Actually, you had to put points into all different attributes in PvP. Now it's like 62 magicka/stamina + every single enchant magicka/stamina for max dmg, max heals and max shields. The end.

Still have to put points into health, unless I want to run around with 15k health and get knocked down by everything. There are a few builds and classes that don't have to and that has more to do with the lack of balance between those classes/builds than it has to do with overrall balance of dps vs defense.

No you don't, not at all, you can run around with 0 points into health and all into stamina and eat the new orsinium foods and get better stam regen than the best vanilla drinks plus a massive boost to your health. I have 23 k health without any points into health, using only medium armor, and all stamina enchants.

Lucky28

laced wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Draxys wrote: »

How is being able to one shot someone balanced? No build should ever be able to one shot anything, unless your target is a naked lowbie with battle leveling off.

Same way that using a sniper rifle works in other games, you sacrifice utility and overrall survivability to be able to burst down targets who are low health or not using defensive's or armor. There are easy mechanics to nullify being burst down and mostly it has to do with paying attention to your surroundings as well as your build. If you put all your points into being bursty you should be able to be bursted down rather easy.

This is not a first person shooter, if you want to one shot people like that, then go play that kind of game, this is an mmo, with many more mechanics and one shotting should not even be possible. It is bad game design at its finest.

No it's not. you can one shot people in multiple games. Demon's souls and Dark souls to name a few and PvP is really damn good in those games. oh, and they're not first person shoots.

At any rate. i had ran a sustain build at the start of this patch carried over from 1.6 and i couldn't kill anything, so i had to switch to pure damage if i wanted to be competitive. it's the changes ZoS made on 2.1 that gave rise to this meta. as people have said, can't blame the players for it.

Rune_Relic

laced wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Draxys wrote: »

How is being able to one shot someone balanced? No build should ever be able to one shot anything, unless your target is a naked lowbie with battle leveling off.

Same way that using a sniper rifle works in other games, you sacrifice utility and overrall survivability to be able to burst down targets who are low health or not using defensive's or armor. There are easy mechanics to nullify being burst down and mostly it has to do with paying attention to your surroundings as well as your build. If you put all your points into being bursty you should be able to be bursted down rather easy.

This is not a first person shooter, if you want to one shot people like that, then go play that kind of game, this is an mmo, with many more mechanics and one shotting should not even be possible. It is bad game design at its finest.

One side of the coin is....equally skilled tank vs DPS should nullify each other and play for ever.
One side of the coin is... if nobody dies where is the fun in that.

Firstly I do veer greater to your point of view.
Does it matter if you're spending 3 hours in combat with 1 person or 3 hours in combat with 100 people.
You are still spamming the same skills in the same combat system regardless.
The only difference is....killing people strokes peoples epeen.
It lets them say....I am better than you !
Its like little wolf cubs vying for position within the pack.
Grown ups don't really have that issue.
(I don't fight for the kills....I fight to pit my skills against someone else)

ZOS actually encourages this view.
They have said DPS will always be biased to make sure people die.
So ZOS have blatantly admitted that not only is the game unbalanced but its also deliberately unbalanced.
So there really is no point being any build other than a DPS in PVP.
And People wonder why there is such imbalance....its by design.
Lame huh ?

So is there a middle road ? Yes.
1. All single target and general AoE be it healer/tank/dps nullify each other and balance perfectly (when the class is played properly).
If the class role isnt player properly then easy kill.
2. Ultimates (rare and unspammable) take prime position as a game changer.
These rare events let any player turn the tide of battle in an instant.
The challenge becomes wether to use
i). a low power ULT that has less impact but charges quick vs
ii) a high power ULT that has a massive impact but takes ages to charge.
...and which player on which side blinks first in this ultimate poker game.

What you allow then is a perfectly balanced game with no DPS bias.
BUT you also allow game changers (ultimate) that can massively influence the outcome of any battle too.
To me this was the original game design of ESO.....but this design template has been lost/forgotten.

BuggeX

Lucky28 wrote: »

laced wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Draxys wrote: »

How is being able to one shot someone balanced? No build should ever be able to one shot anything, unless your target is a naked lowbie with battle leveling off.

Same way that using a sniper rifle works in other games, you sacrifice utility and overrall survivability to be able to burst down targets who are low health or not using defensive's or armor. There are easy mechanics to nullify being burst down and mostly it has to do with paying attention to your surroundings as well as your build. If you put all your points into being bursty you should be able to be bursted down rather easy.

This is not a first person shooter, if you want to one shot people like that, then go play that kind of game, this is an mmo, with many more mechanics and one shotting should not even be possible. It is bad game design at its finest.

No it's not. you can one shot people in multiple games. Demon's souls and Dark souls to name a few and PvP is really damn good in those games. oh, and they're not first person shoots.

At any rate. i had ran a sustain build at the start of this patch carried over from 1.6 and i couldn't kill anything, so i had to switch to pure damage if i wanted to be competitive. it's the changes ZoS made on 2.1 that gave rise to this meta. as people have said, can't blame the players for it.

i liked my heavy sustain buuld on my magicka DK.

i tried anything to make it work aigan, but there isnt a valid Option for it.....

now i running 5LA with anything in dmg

Minno

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

It seems the majority of pvp has turned into who hits the hardest & just about every build is centered around damage with little sustain. Completely understand the goal is to kill your enemies but at the same time where's the variety and originality?

I feel sustain builds are a bit better and more interesting too, at least you can get a taste of how skilled someone really is when it comes to using the game mechanics and managing their resources. In my opinion that's how it should be rather than bursting someone down, which is also pretty interesting since damage was "nerfed" but you still can manage to get insta killed thanks to certain builds & cheap skills. Note, I know you're not going to just burst someone down that's good but the average player you pretty much will which isn't skillful to me.

Which is a problem somewhat because I don't want to win a fight simply because I hit hard, would rather it be because I straight up outplayed my opponent using my skills and managing my resources properly.

Don't think it's ZOS fault, it's how the player base typically chooses to play, they could nerf the damage again but player's will just create a new hard hitting build to replace the old one's.

What's your thoughts?

"Noclip basketball"

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

People soft caps is not answer adding 100 points and getting 50 is not okay ever.

The fix is easy to me all attacks that cost stamina does Physical, Poison or disease. All magic attack deal Magic, or some elemental damage. All heals and shield should go off of Health.

How to build this for healers? Simple when they low max health allies the heal is weaker. Healers should have high recovery and the heal it self should be based on the person being healed.

It's War and health is pointless that statement should not make sense.

Millerman34n

You can't out heal the dps and you can't kill anyone with out high dps! Change the battle spirit buff plz!!!

Lucky28

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

People soft caps is not answer adding 100 points and getting 50 is not okay ever.

The fix is easy to me all attacks that cost stamina does Physical, Poison or disease. All magic attack deal Magic, or some elemental damage. All heals and shield should go off of Health.

How to build this for healers? Simple when they low max health allies the heal is weaker. Healers should have high recovery and the heal it self should be based on the person being healed.

It's War and health is pointless that statement should not make sense.

yeah no. they just need to re-work the battle spirit buff and make tanks viable in PvP

what you say is forcing people to put points in health for using abilities that should/did scale of magicka. that's not fixing anything just pissing people off. no, adding separate benefits to health would be the better option (like for example, investing in health also increases total armor rating by X amount and/or inceases poison resistance. things of that nature) but not fundamentally changing the way people play the game and have played for quite a while.

Toc de Malsvi

laced wrote: »

This is not a first person shooter, if you want to one shot people like that, then go play that kind of game, this is an mmo, with many more mechanics and one shotting should not even be possible. It is bad game design at its finest.

Just saying something is bad doesn't make it so. Being able to burst some one down quickly has been a part of many games and not just first person shooters. World of Warcraft for one had many builds with rogues/druids that were one shots or virtually one shots during certain periods of the game and it didn't ruin pvp. It only heightened the intensity of combat for fear that there was a rogue/druid sneaking about. Running around free of concern from gankers or snipers or the like is not what pvp is about, if you want to do so play a tank. You cannot one shot a tank build, people that are getting one shot are builds that do not set themselves up for defense.

Toc de Malsvi

laced wrote: »

No you don't, not at all, you can run around with 0 points into health and all into stamina and eat the new orsinium foods and get better stam regen than the best vanilla drinks plus a massive boost to your health. I have 23 k health without any points into health, using only medium armor, and all stamina enchants.

If you only want stam regen and you are not taking racial or class passives into account.

Toc de Malsvi

zornyan wrote: »

Most of my builds are imperial, I've only got one min/max pve build, but I never felt like the extra 2k magicka was worth the 2k health, I didn't feel a significant dps buff, but I felt much squisher.

I always use food, as due to the high burst meta we have (and the fact I use vamp on all my builds ) I find food more desirable , you have more hp, and your heals/skills are more effective thanks to the stat boost.

My regen is normally around 1700-1800 for magicka, and the base stam regen, with a little buff from chugging tripots and 5% fro. Cp, although again i use imperial for the Stam buff, which with tri stat gives me around 18k stamina.

I've bounced back and forth between drink and food, drinks allow me to stay actually in combat longer, I get well over 1k regen across the board and over 2k for stam when running drink. Food definitely gives me more burst and better survivability for that initial burst, but often when running food if I survive the initial burst I'm left high and dry on resources within 20-30s.

SneaK

There are still tanks and healers out there, you just don't notice them cause they aren't killing you.