Why Health Based Abilities Are Bad (PVP)

InBedWithMySelf

The title basically says everything about the topic.

Health based abilities suck. I will explain each fact I say just after i say it.
Why do health based abilities suck? Because Health is not comparable to stamina and magicka.
Let me explain why from a couple of perspectives.
There is no "Health Power" or "Health Damage" like spell damage and weapon damage, and stacking max health is basically useless, if compared to stacking stamina and magicka.
Since this meta is all about burst, the more you have into one stat, the more you can spam it, and the more damage you do.

The second perspective is the fact that there are no soft caps in the game (changed in patch 1.6).
Before I go on, for those who didn't play before patch 1.6, soft caps (Diminishing Returns) was a cap that capped every stat in the same way:
If a stat would be pushed over the cap, it would start to get increased only by 50%, rather than 100% if it were to still be below the soft cap.
that made health based abilities compete well with stamina based ones, since the soft cap for health was a lot higher compared to stamina and magicka.
Soft caps suppressed absurd damage, absurd sustain and the ability to senselessly spam abilities without a penalty(50% of the fault goes to Champion Points).

The removal of soft caps didn't make health based abilities weak, it just made magicka and stamina based abilities so much better.

But then came the Imperial City patch, which was patch 2.1, And two of the changes to the battle spirit buff in cyrodiil was the 50% less healing received and 50% damage shields de-buff, Increased from 20%.

That debuff was meant to tone down magicka/stamina based abilities, and not health based, that were already completely outclassed by the others.

Health based abilities should not interact with the battle spirit buff. Doing that will still not make them even, but it will make them viable, and they will compete a little bit better with stamina/magicka based abilities.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

I am all FOR the return of soft caps. I can't help but feel that the buff-nerf yo-yo would stabilize a bit.

Oh, and racial choice would be a nice addition to a build, as opposed to the foundation upon which it has to be constructed.

InBedWithMySelf

@milesrodneymcneely2_ESO i'm having a hard time following what you said, except for the first and last sentence xD

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

InBedWithMySelf wrote: »

@milesrodneymcneely2_ESO i'm having a hard time following what you said, except for the first and last sentence xD

LOL!

I KNEW I liked you for a reason!

InBedWithMySelf

@milesrodneymcneely2_ESO xD

InBedWithMySelf

come on guys, any thoughts on the matter?

Armitas

Sort of the same situation with health based heals like dragonblood. While both blessing of restoration and dragonblood suffer the same percentage nerf, the mechanics of the skill combined with changes to cyrodiil make DB useless. In the past it was okay to let your health drop to 30% because dragonblood would heal it up and we had soft caps. Now, thanks to radiant destruction spam you are dead at 50%, so you need a heal that can keep you above that, which dragonblood can sadly no longer do. And it's not just RD that has done this, the power creep from every skill, 12k Wrecking blows, 20k heavy attacks all of it make health based heals like dragonblood worthless.

The game has gotten so ridiculous that we no longer even have a purpose to the lower half of our healthbar.

InBedWithMySelf

@Armitas when i wrote this thread, i actually had dragon's blood screaming in my mind the entire time ^^ that ability in my opinion is the best example for why health based abilities suck

lassitershawn

Softcaps. I never got to play while they existed, but it sounds beautiful.

InBedWithMySelf

@lassitershawn I feel bad for you QQ

Bosov

Armitas wrote: »

Sort of the same situation with health based heals like dragonblood. While both blessing of restoration and dragonblood suffer the same percentage nerf, the mechanics of the skill combined with changes to cyrodiil make DB useless. In the past it was okay to let your health drop to 30% because dragonblood would heal it up and we had soft caps. Now, thanks to radiant destruction spam you are dead at 50%, so you need a heal that can keep you above that, which dragonblood can sadly no longer do. And it's not just RD that has done this, the power creep from every skill, 12k Wrecking blows, 20k heavy attacks all of it make health based heals like dragonblood worthless.

The game has gotten so ridiculous that we no longer even have a purpose to the lower half of our healthbar.

I use it on my mag DK on a 30k health backbar. When i can already see the light at the end of the tunnel and are about to die i can get almost get a 5k heal from it! With major mending it goes up to almost a 6.5k heal! The anti excecute skill that cant even get you out of execute range! AWESOME

ToRelax

I think making certain abilities ignore battle spirit entirely as as much a band aid as battle spirit itself. So I'm against that.

bigereard

I agree with softcap!! at least for PvP.

However rather than not interact with battle spirit, I think it will be better if we have several defensive skill scaled on health.
The reason is (1) I think BS build will be quite OP without battle spirit; and (2) Give more playstyle for health build.
What I have in mind is:
- Duration of some Major Minor Buff Taken (or duration of all buff taken)
- Reduce duration of some/all debuff taken
- Reduce debuff duration from Purge and its morph
- Number of debuff removed from cleansing ritual (taken)
- Damage reduction Buff & duration
- Or at least additional damage reduction buff (from bolstering darkness, empowering sweep & circle of protection)
- Reverse scale for magma armor (currently magma armor damage cap is scaled with our health, higher health = higher potential damage taken per hit)
- Healing taken Buff
- Inhale damage & absorb
- etc.

RoamingRiverElk

I'm so sick of this meta that forces me to play magicka sorc or stamina dk for small group play if it's not ganking.

Blocking is too weak for magicka dks, they need to be able to block more attacks than they currently can. And obviously health based abilities need a boost. Not just dragon blood, but also igneous shield and blazing shield.

And when it comes to bandaids... that's how they're going about it. The holy CP system must stay in place. Now that they're trying to fix some of the infinite resources problem with higher costs and poisons, Azura - the only moderate campaign that actually feels more like how the game was intended to be played - is just screwed.

Armitas

Bosov wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

Sort of the same situation with health based heals like dragonblood. While both blessing of restoration and dragonblood suffer the same percentage nerf, the mechanics of the skill combined with changes to cyrodiil make DB useless. In the past it was okay to let your health drop to 30% because dragonblood would heal it up and we had soft caps. Now, thanks to radiant destruction spam you are dead at 50%, so you need a heal that can keep you above that, which dragonblood can sadly no longer do. And it's not just RD that has done this, the power creep from every skill, 12k Wrecking blows, 20k heavy attacks all of it make health based heals like dragonblood worthless.

The game has gotten so ridiculous that we no longer even have a purpose to the lower half of our healthbar.

I use it on my mag DK on a 30k health backbar. When i can already see the light at the end of the tunnel and are about to die i can get almost get a 5k heal from it! With major mending it goes up to almost a 6.5k heal! The anti excecute skill that cant even get you out of execute range! AWESOME

Yep, meanwhile we can get at least a 5k heal from blessing of restoration any time we want because it crits. It costs less, heals other people and gives everyone armor. Best part is we don't have to be at deaths executing doorstep for it to be valuable because it's always valuable.

It's unbelievable but zos actually told us they were OK with certain abilities being bad for PvP. It was on the thieves guild ESP live in response to a question about dragon blood. It wasn't designed to be bad, it's only bad because of the external changes, they just don't want to fix it so they make up these lame excuses.

I'm convinced that they just want players to die as fast as possible because you don't generate lag when you're dead. 50% health executes, vicious death, yeah they just want you to die as fast as possible. What a terrible development vision to have for the game.

Derra

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

I am all FOR the return of soft caps. I can't help but feel that the buff-nerf yo-yo would stabilize a bit.

Oh, and racial choice would be a nice addition to a build, as opposed to the foundation upon which it has to be constructed.

Problem with softcaps is things like "winperial" would make a comeback eventually.

If softcaps are set too low we would see homogenisation of builds again like we did in 1.5 - there was not much specialisation going on as people could get everything near the softcap anyways.
This would definetly keep pvp dmg in check - with the downside of complete pve rebalancing. I don´t think that´s an option for zenimax at this point in time at all. Also it screws over classes/builds reliant on burst dmg more than sustain dmg ones which isn´t desireable imo.
On the positive side this would enable the possiblity of vaible hybrid setups again.

On the other hand if they implemented softcaps and set them relatively high things would not change thaaat much compared to now.
It would eliminate a hand full of really extreme builds in terms of dmg or regeneration but basically any balanced build would be untouched imo.
The problem is this would still require pve rebalancing as those are mostly completely unbalanced pure dmg setups while not having the desired effect of balancing pvp.

I don´t really think softcaps are an option for ZOS at all in the current development phase of the game.

BlackMadara

I don't know about soft caps, but I think the real problem is the CP system. It simply gives too much. They should either tone down the bonuses in stats that CP give, or rearrange the stars. Place damage boosts and regen in the same sections so people have to choose one or the other as an example.

Excluding health scaling abilities can be tricky as well due to potential builds that can be made. Imagine unkillable tanks in large scale combat. They could have large shields and can't be burst down. At least for sorcerers now, if you time certain combos when their shields are low or down, you can burst their smaller hp bar down. A tank with 60k HP and 20k shield is different.

In regards to dragonblood, I believe it should have a flat heal, scaling off magicka, that increase by a percentage based off missing health. Say average build might have 3-4k heal, cut in half by battle spirit. It increases by up to 300% based on missing hp, resulting in 7-8k heal when low for example. This way it isn't hurt as much by battle spirit and keeps its niche as an anti-execute heal.

InBedWithMySelf

@BlackMadara about the last thing you said about dragon's blood. You know how DK is kind of "The Tanky Class"?

if you take one of the most unique thing about them, which is health based abilities and passives, they will lose most of that tanky aspect. Battle roar heal, Dragon's blood and Igneous shield are all health based. Make them Magicka based and dragonknights will lose their tanky aspect almost completely

InBedWithMySelf

Something I'd like to point out about the CP system and Softcaps. As already mentioned, the champion system gives absolutely absurd bonuses. so basically half of the reason for this endless resource meta we have today is thanks to cp giving so many stats. on top of the flat max stats it gives , the more cp you have(at cap you get about 2500 health and 2000 magicka/stamina).
Taking out the max base stats, and nerfing the perk bonuses to the ground is the way to go. Giving things like, up to 5%,6% or 7% stat regen, and about 3 or 4% cost reduction, instead of 25% and 16%, which is a joke.

And @Derra about soft caps. I had this idea for a while. You know how some classes suffered because of no CP and softcaps? how about each class will have different soft caps. for example: Sorcs will have a soft cap of lets say... 1500 spell damage, and 28K magicka instead of 1300 and 24K, like in 1.5, and nightblades will have similar stats, except on stamina and magicka, to achieve their bursty playstyle, while dragonknights and templars will have the old softcaps. They're the tankier classes of the 4, I think they would do fine with the old softcaps. Then you can just get rid of battle spirit and... walla, problem of softcaps solved. Does it get any easier?...

Derra

InBedWithMySelf wrote: »

And @Derra about soft caps. I had this idea for a while. You know how some classes suffered because of no CP and softcaps? how about each class will have different soft caps. for example: Sorcs will have a soft cap of lets say... 1500 spell damage, and 28K magicka instead of 1300 and 24K, like in 1.5, and nightblades will have similar stats, except on stamina and magicka, to achieve their bursty playstyle, while dragonknights and templars will have the old softcaps. They're the tankier classes of the 4, I think they would do fine with the old softcaps. Then you can just get rid of battle spirit and... walla, problem of softcaps solved. Does it get any easier?...

And that would create enormous problems. A imperial NB with the right sets would be able to reach pretty much every softcap with the use of triglyphs.

Also NBs would tremendously benefit from regeneration softcaps in place (as siphoning attacks bypasses that).

For PvE it would not be practical in general - so you´d have to implement it pvp exclusive (as a new battlespirit).

Also everyone with a twohander or DW would reach the weapondmg softcap by default (or do you want to go back to different softcaps for weapon and spelldmg aswell).

It´s a monstrosity to balance even thinking about that. Yet ZOS currently crumbles under the pressure of balancing certain skills at the moment. I really don´t want to see the whole game reworked again. I´ve got the feeling it won´t end well.

InBedWithMySelf

@Derra should have mentioned i meant that all these changes should only be in PVP.

but yea, while what i said wont fix pvp completely, it will fix that specific section i was talking about. If I would to make a thread about fixing pvp, with all the details, it would be longer than the last dark brotherhood 2.4 patch notes on pts. which would be way to long to read. especially when we know that zenimax only cares so much about this.

BlackMadara

InBedWithMySelf wrote: »

@BlackMadara about the last thing you said about dragon's blood. You know how DK is kind of "The Tanky Class"?

if you take one of the most unique thing about them, which is health based abilities and passives, they will lose most of that tanky aspect. Battle roar heal, Dragon's blood and Igneous shield are all health based. Make them Magicka based and dragonknights will lose their tanky aspect almost completely

If you feel that the health aspect should stay, then the flat heal from db could be based off of health. It needs some flat value instead of just percentage of missing HP. I still believe that db in particular scaling off of magicka wouldn't hurt the tank aspect of dragonknight. All classes of methods of tanking and mitigation. Dragonknight just has some nice utility, like chains, that others don't. There is no true "tank class" however.

Baconlad

I do not agree with softcaps...every character back in the day was a hybrid, yeah there were minor differences in health/stam/magicka

Baconlad

But my BOL still hit pretty hard when not specced into it at ALL...and that's not something I agree with. I like that builds are either magic or stamina. I do think health needs to be brought back to old ratios. Battle spirit is pointless to be honest, they could just give back old ratios, and allow the player base to learn that max builds are LITERALLY glass canons and can't take a hit. Every one would build more tanky, and go from there. Battle spirit is ridiculous...

Firerock2

Baconlad wrote: »

I do not agree with softcaps...every character back in the day was a hybrid, yeah there were minor differences in health/stam/magicka

What's wrong with being a hybrid? You don't like utilizing more than 3 skills? The gameplay was far more balanced back then and you didn't get insane damage numbers like we do now.

This Stamina/Magicka parity thing is killing the game.

ToRelax

Derra wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

I am all FOR the return of soft caps. I can't help but feel that the buff-nerf yo-yo would stabilize a bit.

Oh, and racial choice would be a nice addition to a build, as opposed to the foundation upon which it has to be constructed.

Problem with softcaps is things like "winperial" would make a comeback eventually.

If softcaps are set too low we would see homogenisation of builds again like we did in 1.5 - there was not much specialisation going on as people could get everything near the softcap anyways.
This would definetly keep pvp dmg in check - with the downside of complete pve rebalancing. I don´t think that´s an option for zenimax at this point in time at all. Also it screws over classes/builds reliant on burst dmg more than sustain dmg ones which isn´t desireable imo.
On the positive side this would enable the possiblity of vaible hybrid setups again.

On the other hand if they implemented softcaps and set them relatively high things would not change thaaat much compared to now.
It would eliminate a hand full of really extreme builds in terms of dmg or regeneration but basically any balanced build would be untouched imo.
The problem is this would still require pve rebalancing as those are mostly completely unbalanced pure dmg setups while not having the desired effect of balancing pvp.

I don´t really think softcaps are an option for ZOS at all in the current development phase of the game.

@Derra

What do you think about more continous diminishing returns then, starting as a small malus somewhere under 20k and increasing as you invest more into a stat. I would think that would allow a player to invest as much in a stat to get a malus he is still comfortable with, as opposed to softcaps, which just punish further investments at a certain point very hard.

Baconlad wrote: »

I do not agree with softcaps...every character back in the day was a hybrid, yeah there were minor differences in health/stam/magicka

Uhm, just no, hybrids were a minority even then and stat pools varied quite a lot even with softcaps. Yuu had anything from 1k - 2.7k magicka/stamina and like 2.2k-4k health.

Derra

ToRelax wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

I am all FOR the return of soft caps. I can't help but feel that the buff-nerf yo-yo would stabilize a bit.

Oh, and racial choice would be a nice addition to a build, as opposed to the foundation upon which it has to be constructed.

Problem with softcaps is things like "winperial" would make a comeback eventually.

If softcaps are set too low we would see homogenisation of builds again like we did in 1.5 - there was not much specialisation going on as people could get everything near the softcap anyways.
This would definetly keep pvp dmg in check - with the downside of complete pve rebalancing. I don´t think that´s an option for zenimax at this point in time at all. Also it screws over classes/builds reliant on burst dmg more than sustain dmg ones which isn´t desireable imo.
On the positive side this would enable the possiblity of vaible hybrid setups again.

On the other hand if they implemented softcaps and set them relatively high things would not change thaaat much compared to now.
It would eliminate a hand full of really extreme builds in terms of dmg or regeneration but basically any balanced build would be untouched imo.
The problem is this would still require pve rebalancing as those are mostly completely unbalanced pure dmg setups while not having the desired effect of balancing pvp.

I don´t really think softcaps are an option for ZOS at all in the current development phase of the game.

@Derra

What do you think about more continous diminishing returns then, starting as a small malus somewhere under 20k and increasing as you invest more into a stat. I would think that would allow a player to invest as much in a stat to get a malus he is still comfortable with, as opposed to softcaps, which just punish further investments at a certain point very hard.

Baconlad wrote: »

I do not agree with softcaps...every character back in the day was a hybrid, yeah there were minor differences in health/stam/magicka

Uhm, just no, hybrids were a minority even then and stat pools varied quite a lot even with softcaps. Yuu had anything from 1k - 2.7k magicka/stamina and like 2.2k-4k health.

I´ve toyed with that idea aswell before. Something threw me of back at the end of 1.6 and i can´t remember what it was. I´ll try to remember it.

One minor point were hard values for enchants - cost reduce vs. regen with softcaps in place isn´t a decision anymore.

Armitas

BlackMadara wrote: »

InBedWithMySelf wrote: »

@BlackMadara about the last thing you said about dragon's blood. You know how DK is kind of "The Tanky Class"?

if you take one of the most unique thing about them, which is health based abilities and passives, they will lose most of that tanky aspect. Battle roar heal, Dragon's blood and Igneous shield are all health based. Make them Magicka based and dragonknights will lose their tanky aspect almost completely

It needs some flat value instead of just percentage of missing HP. I still believe that db in particular scaling off of magicka wouldn't hurt the tank aspect of dragonknight. All classes of methods of tanking and mitigation. Dragonknight just has some nice utility, like chains, that others don't. There is no true "tank class" however.

It's actually good that DB is based off of health. If it were based off of mag/stam or spell/weapon power it wouldn't be an effective heal in tank mode which would be poor in all of those characteristics. If you made it effective in tank mode based on low stats then it might be too high when your stats are high, such as in dps mode. So being based on health makes it always valuable and always balanced no matter what your set up is...well before Battle Spirit and game changes wrecked everything.

I would like to see the heal put into two parts. The first part will be a flat 33% heal that is immune to battle spirit and always occurs as is, the second part will represent any present healing modifiers like major mending, quick recovery, ritual, etc upon the base heal. The second part will be affected by battle spirit. You will only see it as one total heal but it will have two hidden parts in it.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

Soft caps need to stay dead if you want to know get killed in five seconds then stop running builds that kill in five seconds and some defensive powers beyond a miss chance.

You don't have to be a take to use heavy armor a "Brawler/Bruiser" build does damage while in heavy armor. You min/max with light and medium and die cause of more glassly canons and cry for soft caps back.

No putting 160 points to something and getting 80 was sad. They need to make heavy armor, health and health based powers better to bring them up not nerf everything else down.

NativeJoe

What "health" based abilities do I have as options?
bone shield is now stamina scaled.

NativeJoe

Armitas wrote: »

Sort of the same situation with health based heals like dragonblood. While both blessing of restoration and dragonblood suffer the same percentage nerf, the mechanics of the skill combined with changes to cyrodiil make DB useless. In the past it was okay to let your health drop to 30% because dragonblood would heal it up and we had soft caps. Now, thanks to radiant destruction spam you are dead at 50%, so you need a heal that can keep you above that, which dragonblood can sadly no longer do. And it's not just RD that has done this, the power creep from every skill, 12k Wrecking blows, 20k heavy attacks all of it make health based heals like dragonblood worthless.

The game has gotten so ridiculous that we no longer even have a purpose to the lower half of our healthbar.

I agree.