PVP Imbalance Discussion - Magicka vs Stamina Resource Pools

Leandor

Dracane wrote: »

...Medium and heavy armor can survive damage for some time without even protecting themselves...

Ok. We're talking the medium armor that provides 12k phys/spell resist in full gold. The one that gets completely negated even considering major/minor resolve by any stamina build (which will have 17k penetration if decently built) and almost fully negated by any magicka build (which will have at least 11k and reach 16k with breach applied)?

Just to clarify.

Dracane

Leandor wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

...Medium and heavy armor can survive damage for some time without even protecting themselves...

Ok. We're talking the medium armor that provides 12k phys/spell resist in full gold. The one that gets completely negated even considering major/minor resolve by any stamina build (which will have 17k penetration if decently built) and almost fully negated by any magicka build (which will have at least 11k and reach 16k with breach applied)?

Just to clarify.

So you too come to the conclusion, that it's still superior to light armor

psychotic13

After reading all of this, I don't think stamina needs to be nerfed, just that Magicka should be brought up to par. Thus by what @Dracane said, light armor passives only give 1 benefit, while many of the medium and heavy armor passives give more than that.

For example a 5pc light armor bonus is 10% crit, that's pretty bad when you compare that to the medium armor passive that grants (can't remember the exact amount) crit per piece of armor. The 5pc bonus should be a lot stronger than that and the crit should be interpreted into one of the other passives.

Same with the stamina passive 'wind walker' that grants you the regen and reduce cost in 1 passive, while in light armor that's 2 of the passives.

You then also have the sneak passive and the athletics passive for medium armor, both which grant bonuses on 2 aspects, reduce dodge roll and movement speed cost, and reduce sneak cost and detection radius.

Some of the same with heavy, you get health regen and the constitution bonus as 1 passive, you get armor and spell resist as 1 passive where light armor only gets spell resist, yeah I get that makes sense being heavy armor but I believe light should get something extra too.

I do feel light armor could do with a buff and that should sort it out, also 5k pen from a weapon is too much, I agree with that.

Dracane

psychotic13 wrote: »

After reading all of this, I don't think stamina needs to be nerfed, just that Magicka should be brought up to par. Thus by what @Dracane said, light armor passives only give 1 benefit, while many of the medium and heavy armor passives give more than that.

For example a 5pc light armor bonus is 10% crit, that's pretty bad when you compare that to the medium armor passive that grants (can't remember the exact amount) crit per piece of armor. The 5pc bonus should be a lot stronger than that and the crit should be interpreted into one of the other passives.

Same with the stamina passive 'wind walker' that grants you the regen and reduce cost in 1 passive, while in light armor that's 2 of the passives.

You then also have the sneak passive and the athletics passive for medium armor, both which grant bonuses on 2 aspects, reduce dodge roll and movement speed cost, and reduce sneak cost and detection radius.

Some of the same with heavy, you get health regen and the constitution bonus as 1 passive, you get armor and spell resist as 1 passive where light armor only gets spell resist, yeah I get that makes sense being heavy armor but I believe light should get something extra too.

I do feel light armor could do with a buff and that should sort it out, also 5k pen from a weapon is too much, I agree with that.

Indeed. This is not a nerf thread
But light armor (the main "weapon" of magicka builds) is lacking compared to medium and heavy armor.
Adding more benefits to this armor to compensate for its lack of defense and weakness compared to the other armors, would definately help magicka builds.

Waffennacht

One could say the sneak passives of medium armor are a complete waste.

While in combat said passive has no effect while all of the light armor passives effect combat.

Cronopoly

I have a fix for it all. Make the alternate Morph of Sorc Mines attached to the Sorc in a 5 spot pentagram, so when he/she moves, the mines move with them. Also raise them to waist height....

Just Kidding,

While I think some might like that, it would be a hard counter to melee toons added with a little mobility to the current static sitting in one spot mechanic. Also some would have a fit if it could be cast over and over lol.

Seriously the PVP Resource imbalance exists... Could you imagine if PVE toons A.I. was updated so PVE Veteran mobs dodge rolled multiple times up to 5 times in a row, and randomly Gap Closed, after a dodge roll and used Dawnbreaker within range at the same rate as we see in PVP? All hell would break loose in PVE and as people would get owned in dungeons alot more. Aaand you'd see a massive exodus to Stamina toons in PVE i suspect. Nevermind that is all fantasy and not going to happen....Just a funny point.

psychotic13

Waffennacht wrote: »

One could say the sneak passives of medium armor are a complete waste.

While in combat said passive has no effect while all of the light armor passives effect combat.

But one could also say, that if it gives you any advantage getting in and out of combat then it's not a complete waste.

And even though all of the medium armor passives may not be 'active' as you're in combat, it's still has more active passives than light while you're in combat.

Dracane

Cronopoly wrote: »

I have a fix for it all. Make the alternate Morph of Sorc Mines attached to the Sorc in a 5 spot pentagram, so when he/she moves, the mines move with them. Also raise them to waist height....

Just Kidding,

While I think some might like that, it would be a hard counter to melee toons added with a little mobility to the current static sitting in one spot mechanic. Also some would have a fit if it could be cast over and over lol.

Seriously the PVP Resource imbalance exists... Could you imagine if PVE toons A.I. was updated so PVE Veteran mobs dodge rolled multiple times up to 5 times in a row, and randomly Gap Closed, after a dodge roll and used Dawnbreaker within range at the same rate as we see in PVP? All hell would break loose in PVE and as people would get owned in dungeons alot more. Aaand you'd see a massive exodus to Stamina toons in PVE i suspect. Nevermind that is all fantasy and not going to happen....Just a funny point.

It's funny, how counter productive the Sorcerer class is.
On the first glance, you think this class is supposed to keep enemies away and stay at range (encase, bolt escape, boundless storm)

But when you look again, you see that no other class benefits so much from close combat. (Daedric mines, lightining flood, volatile familiar, arguably suppression field) if enemies would truly remain in melee range, Sorcerer would melt them away with mines, flood and negate. But sadly, nobody does that everyone stays at range or mid melee range (8 meters) So maybe the first glance is right.

Waffennacht

I'm not sayin it's not a bit lopsided in armor, just saying sneak isn't really all that helpful. Yeah I just looked through and medium is better for stam than light armor is for magicka.

I think balance goes farther than just the armor though, the devs have to account for what is effected as well. Especially when it comes to magicka. Though now it should be easy with all 2 magicka non class attacks...

Durete

Tbh I think that the system is fair, and if anything benefits from it it's magicka users,

And here is why:

If i'm on my Magicka sorcerer: I sprint and something attacks me, guess what? I still have my magicka pool to heal/dps.

On my Stam DK or Stam Blade, I sprint and someone attacks me: Guess what, No stamina left! so I can only do some heavy atacks and lose important time while waiting for the other to kill me as I can't do much back.

And besides that, on most stamina builds you still need to sacrifice a lot of points to Health instead of pure stamina builds, or if you're a tank you still need to put some points in magicka for the self heals/shields.

it's not like any class is in a good place by putting everything in magicka, or stamina or health.
Balance is the name of the game, unless you want to be a cookie cutter and kill fast, die fast because you put everything in stamina or magicka. but then that's your choice.

Besides that, for pvp magicka users are usually the healers or dpsers, which stay on a distance and attack without being attacked themselves. (Environmental awareness/positioning is an important thing, especially if yoúre a heavy magicka or stamina user.)

Autolycus

Valera Progib wrote: »

For another my 5 cent, Light armor should have the biggest damage output it is just common sense, I can't believe that it is not the case at the moment... Magicka reduction/magicka regen/ spell penetration / crit chance and definitely bigger damage buff with 5 item set than Medium or Heavy or it should have the same defense rating as at least medium, because that is fair and that is common sense.

...

P.S. OP should read your text twice, a lot of your arguments are just irrelevant.
"Prior to Dark Brotherhood, with 2 or 3 shields, many average to good Sorcs definitely lived longer in close combat than they should have, and this was rightfully frustrating to many a Stamina toon trying to Wrecking Blow a Sorc etc who could not be damaged with Stacking Shields."

against wrecking blow you used to have only 1 shield... for healing ward to be effective you had to cast it on top of lost health, so it is irrelevant, you just proved the point that sorcs got buffed.

I believe that both of these statements are counter-intuitive.

First, it is not logical or reasonable to expect magicka to be inherently stronger than stamina. The vast majority of magicka skills in ESO can be used at range which, relative to most stamina builds, is inherently a lower-risk scenario. We can argue all day about gap closers and snipes against ranged casters, but when all is said and done, if you have to move to your target and they can hit you from range, they have an advantage. I would speak to the opposition here, however, and note that this advantage can be reversed very quickly with most of today's stamina build (particularly those in 2H setups, which has a great deal of burst and utility). This is an advantage that DKs have inherently against all casters and archers. Fun fact of the day: Magblades have only 1 magicka skill that can be used in melee effectively against a DK using flappy wings - and the second you do, it's talons + eruption + whipped to death. That is not balance. It stands to reason that melee builds (magicka or stamina) should be afforded higher burst or higher overall potential damage output simply for taking the risk of being melee.

What turns this argument around in favor of stamina builds is in line with what was stated in the OP: stamina builds do not micromanage multiple resource pools. It's a fairly well-known fact that it pays to stack WD/SD more than magicka/stam in pvp since doing so is more favorable to tooltip and basic attack scaling - but if we break this down further, we see quite well that this is not the case for magicka builds. In an ideal scenario, stamina builds can sink almost everything into WD, build for "just enough" recovery and stamina, and then go to town, paying little mind to their resource management (so long as they allocated their stats properly). The same cannot be said for a magicka build, who can build the exact same way (except for magicka and SD instead). In this case, said magicka-user would still have to constantly monitor their stamina, which puts them at an immediate disadvantage. Additionally, many magicka skills, such as Annulment and Ward, don't scale off of SD, which means that there is a tradeoff to building a magicka character that, at the very least, is not as significant for stamina toons.

In your words, it is fair and is common sense to have evasive and mitigation techniques for magicka-users based on their magicka stats, particularly those that do not scale from SD at all, not split between stamina and magicka. I typically don't like to over-generalize, so take this portion with a grain of salt, but in many cases you see a magicka build either catering in some way towards a hybrid setup so as not to run out of stamina, despite it being a dps loss, or a very high level of player skill that is capable of anticipating those mechanics that would take advantage of the lack of stamina and stam recovery. The latter is something earned through a reasonably high level of experience, which we all know is a large time investment.

As for the latter portion of your statement, I disagree wholeheartedly that Healing Ward was ineffective at full health, and as such, I also disagree that the statement is irrelevant. During the same time frame mentioned by the OP, I could crit someone for 15k+ with a healing ward at full health in pvp. That is simply not the definition of ineffective. Take this a step further, in the sense that with 6s durations on shields, Healing Ward is now a substantially higher opportunity cost to be used in combination with other skills, and as such is less effective since these changes went live with DB. In other words, the changes in DB furthered the relative power disparity between magicka and stamina builds in pvp, rather than rebalancing it.

There is a notable difference between giving both magicka and stamina users "pros and cons" of their respective builds, and skewing balance between the two. For example, we can state that it is reasonably fair for stamina builds to have access to Evasion, but not shields, while magicka builds have access to shields, but not Evasion. I recognize it is not this black-and-white, but it will suffice as an example. Now, in DB, Evasion remains as effective as it was previously, but shields are substantially less effective. To accommodate the reduced duration on shields, it is crucial to either allocate more health, initiate more healing from offensive abilities (such as Strife, Frags, Embers, Jabs) to alleviate the need for shields, or have significantly stronger shields with impeccable timing on the cast. The potential damage output of stamina builds climbs higher each day as we continue to theorycraft and develop more efficient builds that are capable of superior burst damage, without sacrificing survivability. Magicka builds must give up survivability (noting how shields scale) to gain additional burst (i.e. giving up some magicka for SD, or vice-versa).

Barlthump

Dracane wrote: »

Barlthump wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Single shields need to get buffed as defensive mechanics, they are too weak.
Magicka users, now mainly speaking of Sorcerers, can't dodge if they want to be able to break CC.
They wear light armor, so they are one shots when they are unportected.

Shields are not like block, dodge, reflects and even heals.
You must take all CCs, all damage. Block makes you immune to almost all CCs, dodge roll even totally negates as good as all CCs and damage and heals truly keep you alive, while shields only are a virtual health, not actual health.

Single shields are the worst defensive mechanic in the game. You get punished for using single shields, you must shieldstack to be able to survive and then ? You spend all your time spamming shields and the next CC will still kill you.
Tell me @ZoS : Is that the way it was intended ? You wanted to reduce shieldstacking. Yet with each patch/nerf, you just make it so, that people are forced even more into it.

Remove shieldstacking already. No critable shields or all this non sense, just disable shieldstacking and buff single shields.
Or simply remove the 50% shield debuff from battle spirit after disabling shieldstacking.

Oh I use stamina to dodge roll, cc break, sprint and CAST SPELLS. Your argument is so weak that it just looks like you can't adapt to the new playstyle. I'm assuming you haven't tried drink? Green max magicka food ain't gonna sustain you anymore my friend. Maybe go with some health enchants too. Whats your max stamina? 10k? With what, 500 recovery?

Do that Then your magic is weak. For everything that you take away from your magic affinity and put it into stamina sustain or health, you will only weaken your magic.

Magicka damage is pretty foolish in pvp already, I can't effort weakening myself further.
I'm talking about traditional 100% magicka and 100% stamina builds. That's how many people do it

Then you are going to suffer, my stam nightblade is running health enchants, my agility set is healthy and my shoulders use health enchant. I'm using drinks so I have 1k magicka regen and 2k stamina regen. I give up close to 400 weapon damage for survivability. It's a must for pvp. I'm also using 5 pc impen and 48 points into impen CP. Expecting the best of both worlds without any consequence is insane. Used to be a time where magicka tools shield stacked to infinity, it wasn't a crutch. It was just plain irritating when someone was in execute range and they slapped on a hardened and healing ward and heal for all his hp. The nerf to shields times were much needed. You can still shield stack, but if you do that the only thing you should be able to do is defend.

Barlthump

Autolycus wrote: »

Valera Progib wrote: »

For another my 5 cent, Light armor should have the biggest damage output it is just common sense, I can't believe that it is not the case at the moment... Magicka reduction/magicka regen/ spell penetration / crit chance and definitely bigger damage buff with 5 item set than Medium or Heavy or it should have the same defense rating as at least medium, because that is fair and that is common sense.

...

P.S. OP should read your text twice, a lot of your arguments are just irrelevant.
"Prior to Dark Brotherhood, with 2 or 3 shields, many average to good Sorcs definitely lived longer in close combat than they should have, and this was rightfully frustrating to many a Stamina toon trying to Wrecking Blow a Sorc etc who could not be damaged with Stacking Shields."

against wrecking blow you used to have only 1 shield... for healing ward to be effective you had to cast it on top of lost health, so it is irrelevant, you just proved the point that sorcs got buffed.

I believe that both of these statements are counter-intuitive.

First, it is not logical or reasonable to expect magicka to be inherently stronger than stamina. The vast majority of magicka skills in ESO can be used at range which, relative to most stamina builds, is inherently a lower-risk scenario. We can argue all day about gap closers and snipes against ranged casters, but when all is said and done, if you have to move to your target and they can hit you from range, they have an advantage. I would speak to the opposition here, however, and note that this advantage can be reversed very quickly with most of today's stamina build (particularly those in 2H setups, which has a great deal of burst and utility). This is an advantage that DKs have inherently against all casters and archers. Fun fact of the day: Magblades have only 1 magicka skill that can be used in melee effectively against a DK using flappy wings - and the second you do, it's talons + eruption + whipped to death. That is not balance. It stands to reason that melee builds (magicka or stamina) should be afforded higher burst or higher overall potential damage output simply for taking the risk of being melee.

What turns this argument around in favor of stamina builds is in line with what was stated in the OP: stamina builds do not micromanage multiple resource pools. It's a fairly well-known fact that it pays to stack WD/SD more than magicka/stam in pvp since doing so is more favorable to tooltip and basic attack scaling - but if we break this down further, we see quite well that this is not the case for magicka builds. In an ideal scenario, stamina builds can sink almost everything into WD, build for "just enough" recovery and stamina, and then go to town, paying little mind to their resource management (so long as they allocated their stats properly). The same cannot be said for a magicka build, who can build the exact same way (except for magicka and SD instead). In this case, said magicka-user would still have to constantly monitor their stamina, which puts them at an immediate disadvantage. Additionally, many magicka skills, such as Annulment and Ward, don't scale off of SD, which means that there is a tradeoff to building a magicka character that, at the very least, is not as significant for stamina toons.

In your words, it is fair and is common sense to have evasive and mitigation techniques for magicka-users based on their magicka stats, particularly those that do not scale from SD at all, not split between stamina and magicka. I typically don't like to over-generalize, so take this portion with a grain of salt, but in many cases you see a magicka build either catering in some way towards a hybrid setup so as not to run out of stamina, despite it being a dps loss, or a very high level of player skill that is capable of anticipating those mechanics that would take advantage of the lack of stamina and stam recovery. The latter is something earned through a reasonably high level of experience, which we all know is a large time investment.

As for the latter portion of your statement, I disagree wholeheartedly that Healing Ward was ineffective at full health, and as such, I also disagree that the statement is irrelevant. During the same time frame mentioned by the OP, I could crit someone for 15k+ with a healing ward at full health in pvp. That is simply not the definition of ineffective. Take this a step further, in the sense that with 6s durations on shields, Healing Ward is now a substantially higher opportunity cost to be used in combination with other skills, and as such is less effective since these changes went live with DB. In other words, the changes in DB furthered the relative power disparity between magicka and stamina builds in pvp, rather than rebalancing it.

There is a notable difference between giving both magicka and stamina users "pros and cons" of their respective builds, and skewing balance between the two. For example, we can state that it is reasonably fair for stamina builds to have access to Evasion, but not shields, while magicka builds have access to shields, but not Evasion. I recognize it is not this black-and-white, but it will suffice as an example. Now, in DB, Evasion remains as effective as it was previously, but shields are substantially less effective. To accommodate the reduced duration on shields, it is crucial to either allocate more health, initiate more healing from offensive abilities (such as Strife, Frags, Embers, Jabs) to alleviate the need for shields, or have significantly stronger shields with impeccable timing on the cast. The potential damage output of stamina builds climbs higher each day as we continue to theorycraft and develop more efficient builds that are capable of superior burst damage, without sacrificing survivability. Magicka builds must give up survivability (noting how shields scale) to gain additional burst (i.e. giving up some magicka for SD, or vice-versa).

Honestly speaking after reading through your whole post I took away some nice points. You mentioned that stam builds get more damage without sacrificing survivability. Which is not the case, a magicka class has one bar just for cc breaking and dodge rolling. Do you know how insane it is to use my stam bar for almost everything? I have to dodge roll (increasing cost) cc break, block (no stam regen) and heal and dps with one bar? I need to customizer my build to survive. I myself am running 4 health items and drinks just to sustain myself. Yes shields took a hit this patch while dodge stayed the same, but have you ever fought a good sorc post patch and wonot fairly? I haven't, cause everytime I bring them down to execute range it's the same thing all sorcs do, steak, mines, hardened ward and healing ward. (Repeat) and that automatically resets the fight in their favor. Yes the nerf to shields were a hard blow, but you can adapt, lesser damage = more survivability. Run impen, use tumbling and shields to your advantage. Streak, dodge roll, shield and CC. This cannot be done if you are however fighting 5v1.

Leandor

Give magicka users the true feeling of the dodge incident.

Give hardened the initial duration. Everytime you reapply while it is still active, you double the cost. Cost resets once you have not re-applied for the full duration of 20 seconds

Fubar8

While dueling against a good player, even with 20 secs duration you won't be able to up your shields more than 6 seconds so it is not that effective on duel but ofc you always want to see your stacked shields since there are many gankers.

leepalmer95

You want to talk about stamina/magicka differences?

On console in order to dodge roll or bash you need to hold block, now since zos decided that blocking should stop regen when any stamina build bashes or dodges they loose their regen.

This is the equivalent of a magicka build losing regen when casting shields or heals.

A bad change by zos with no though't to console players who can't remap the badly mapped skills/actions.

Cronopoly

Durete wrote: »

Tbh I think that the system is fair, and if anything benefits from it it's magicka users,

And here is why:

If i'm on my Magicka sorcerer: I sprint and something attacks me, guess what? I still have my magicka pool to heal/dps.

On my Stam DK or Stam Blade, I sprint and someone attacks me: Guess what, No stamina left! so I can only do some heavy atacks and lose important time while waiting for the other to kill me as I can't do much back.

Do you seriously PVP ? I'm not trying to name and shame but in reality, As soon as you sprint and are out of Stamina, the first CC, Stun, knockback, or Root, you wont be able to Cast nearly anything, or turn your camera. Most EVERYONE opens with a CC on magicka classes as it's 99% effective to cause your death 1 second later if you have no stamina to break free.

So your saying the system is fair doesn't sound like you PVP at all in my opinion. Not at endgame on Trueflame. Seriously sorry if that sounds harsh, but most of us have quite a different opinion in practice.

Autolycus

Barlthump wrote: »

Honestly speaking after reading through your whole post I took away some nice points. You mentioned that stam builds get more damage without sacrificing survivability. Which is not the case, a magicka class has one bar just for cc breaking and dodge rolling. Do you know how insane it is to use my stam bar for almost everything? I have to dodge roll (increasing cost) cc break, block (no stam regen) and heal and dps with one bar? I need to customizer my build to survive. I myself am running 4 health items and drinks just to sustain myself. Yes shields took a hit this patch while dodge stayed the same, but have you ever fought a good sorc post patch and wonot fairly? I haven't, cause everytime I bring them down to execute range it's the same thing all sorcs do, steak, mines, hardened ward and healing ward. (Repeat) and that automatically resets the fight in their favor. Yes the nerf to shields were a hard blow, but you can adapt, lesser damage = more survivability. Run impen, use tumbling and shields to your advantage. Streak, dodge roll, shield and CC. This cannot be done if you are however fighting 5v1.

I have utmost respect for your rebuttal, and feel it's a fair point. However, I have experienced many varying combinations of fights since the DB patch on both stamina and magicka toons, and after further consideration, I think I stand by my initial conviction.

There may be some players who use their off-bar only for buffs/breaks/etc, but that's not the case for all magicka builds, and that same point can be used in favor of stam builds too (as I know of some renowned stam players who do just that). Sorcs are extremely predictable... that doesn't make them easy to kill (to assume so would be pretty ignorant), but it does put them at a disadvantage. PvP on the whole favors those who know their opponents classes. I can recall many a time when I have foreseen that Streak and simply blocked it, counter it with a hard CC (such as agony, petrify, defensive rune) and burst them down. As a stam character building predominantly for WD and recovery (and assuming proper CP allocation, which is very important), a block or break free from a streak isn't enough to turn the tide. However, throwing a hard CC on a sorc is enough to turn it, if not immediately, than ultimately from being stuck on the defensive.

Ultimately, however, my point was not an argument in favor of boosting shields. It moreso a call for defensive rebalancing. Shields are simply one way to go about, the most popular way sure, but still only one method. Consider for a moment that basic attacks scale twice as effectively from WD/SD than they do from max magicka/stamina. This means for a stamina build, virtually everything can be invested in high WD (which most effectively boosts damage, specifically burst, potential), and said player need only invest in enough recovery and max stamina to get by. In most cases, this is around 2k stam reco and ~25k max stam.

Looking at the other side now, we see magicka characters who want to be able to sink as much as they can into SD to afford the same burst potential, as investing in max magicka is less benefit per unit invested, relative SD. But then, if a magicka player wants to have a strong enough Ward/Annulment so as to have it actually last the full 6s against high-burst stam players, they have no choice but to invest in max magicka instead. To forego a shield in today's PvP means investing in stam recovery, reduced break-free costs, or a more significant investment in magicka recovery than would expected as a stamina build. Either way, you give up burst to survive as magicka, but as a stamina toon investing in burst supplements your healing just as effectively, and recovery alleviates the need for additional stamina. Magicka recovery and SD does not alleviate the need for stamina, as in my example earlier, because a hard CC is all it takes to sway the fight.

Edit: After re-reading I decided it was important to disclaim this as a pvp insight only. PvE sees these mechanics through a vastly different lense, particularly the WD/SD vs. stam/magicka comparison I mentioned, because in PvE we try to optimize both. In PvP, burst is more important than sustained dps potential, hence the call for WD/SD as a priority over max stats.

Cronopoly

Barlthump wrote: »

. The nerf to shields times were much needed. You can still shield stack, but if you do that the only thing you should be able to do is defend.

That's just it, that's all many Magicka classes are forced to do shield and die. With your dodge roll mechanics, there's a good chance that you will not be hit at Range at all.

Should Magicka classes get an ACCURACY CP? Yes that's right, I said it, a better chance to hit someone at range (Even make it applicable to >8 meters) to counter the double dipped (Dodge Roll+Shuffle) chance to evade?

The whole historical balance thing goes out the window if a magicka class hits nothing at range?

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

Autolycus wrote: »

In an ideal scenario, stamina builds can sink almost everything into WD, build for "just enough" recovery and stamina, and then go to town, paying little mind to their resource management (so long as they allocated their stats properly). The same cannot be said for a magicka build, who can build the exact same way (except for magicka and SD instead). In this case, said magicka-user would still have to constantly monitor their stamina, which puts them at an immediate disadvantage. Additionally, many magicka skills, such as Annulment and Ward, don't scale off of SD, which means that there is a tradeoff to building a magicka character that, at the very least, is not as significant for stamina toons.

~SNIP~

Take this a step further, in the sense that with 6s durations on shields, Healing Ward is now a substantially higher opportunity cost to be used in combination with other skills, and as such is less effective since these changes went live with DB. In other words, the changes in DB furthered the relative power disparity between magicka and stamina builds in pvp, rather than rebalancing it.

I'm actually running face-first into this issue on my melee MagBlade.

I'm running Impale, Dampen Magic, Lotus Fan, Concealed Weapon, Crippling Grasp and Soul Harvest on my front bar. The build selection works beautifully for my playstyle, since it allows me to stay on target and dump my damage into them from behind the comfort of a shield. If I need to LoS, I can weave in and out while letting my DoTs tick away.

Here's my problem: This setup DEVOURS Magicka.

The only way I've been able to make it work is to run 7 Light Armor pieces, sink 100 CP into cost reduction, at least 50 into regeneration, and run a 5-piece Seducer set in gold quality. I'm sitting at 1954 regen, and that's as an Altmer. The downside is that my Concealed Weapon tooltip is only about 8K. To be fair, I don't have Willpower Jewelry yet and I need another DPS 2-piece to go with that, but I am running a pair of Torug's Pact swords.

For this reason, I'm seriously thinking of running back to my StamBlade because the cost of spamming Concealed Weapon and keeping a shield running is just WAY too high. I don't mind the 6-second shield duration because it forces me to be actively defensive, and I like the pressure. But a 3400 Magicka cost at baseline is just out of control.

I LOVE the build I'm running and I've never enjoyed this game more than when I'm playing it. But I just don't see how to make it viable with the Magicka costs as high as they are.

Of course, if y'all know something I don't know, I'm your eager student.

ScruffyWhiskers

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

I'm running Impale, Dampen Magic, Lotus Fan, Concealed Weapon, Crippling Grasp and Soul Harvest

You could try funnel/swallow soul and that would cut your spam skill cost in half...but then you have taken off the only cc skill you had on the bar....which was going to be problem anyway since you didn't have cloak on the bar either.

You might want to try something more balanced with a back bar using restro that functions as your defensive/buff bar.

so bar 1 could be Lotus, Concealed, Impale, Crippling Grasp, Cloak Ult: Soul Harvest

bar 2 couild be Restro staff Healing Ward, Dampen/Harness, funnel/swallow, Fear, Utility and UIt: Meteor

1900 regen is very workable though. You just have to pace yourself and you can recharge with the restro heavy attacks + potions or you can hit Siphoning Attacks just before you go offensive and burst for 15 seconds then assess your magicka.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

ScruffyWhiskers wrote: »

You could try funnel/swallow soul and that would cut your spam skill cost in half...but then you have taken off the only cc skill you had on the bar....which was going to be problem anyway since you didn't have cloak on the bar either.

You might want to try something more balanced with a back bar using restro that functions as your defensive/buff bar.

so bar 1 could be Lotus, Concealed, Impale, Crippling Grasp, Cloak Ult: Soul Harvest

bar 2 couild be Restro staff Healing Ward, Dampen/Harness, funnel/swallow, Fear, Utility and UIt: Meteor

1900 regen is very workable though. You just have to pace yourself and you can recharge with the restro heavy attacks + potions or you can hit Siphoning Attacks just before you go offensive and burst for 15 seconds then assess your magicka.

Hey, Scruffy!

The reason I have Dampen Magic on my front bar is because I haven't really been able to make it work, otherwise. Even with 20K health, I'm still taking a beating trying to weave it in from the back bar. And if there's even a little bit of lag messing up my bar swap, I'm done for. Using it rotationally works very well, but only if I weave it with my spammable DPS.

I hadn't really considered Siphoning Strikes, though. My back bar consists of Purge, Dark Cloak, Healing Ward, Mirage, Mass Hysteria and Soul Tether. Which one of those would you consider dropping for Siphoning Strikes?

Thanks a TON for your insights!

ScruffyWhiskers

If you are not out there by yourself ganking or roaming looking to jump into isolated fights, then I would drop purge. You seem to be stand up fighting for the most part assuming you have support around you, you can shrug of a mark target. Any damage you might want to purge you can just shield off or healing ward if it gets really bad. Efficient purge is a great skill but you might benefit more from SA in that slot.

Also you might seriously think about changing Mirage to Double Take. That 4 sec burst of Major Expedition can save you in situations like when the zerg ball charges you...since you have cloak on that bar it will really be effective. dodge roll, double take and cloak.

Also been thinking about your dilemma. You probably want to grind Amberplasm when it comes out. That could really help your sustain too. Also maybe run Atronach mundus. I used to run drinks but now use food to get 40k magicka. For regen I go Atronach + 1 regen on a willpower + 1 regen in Archmage + vamp and get 1900 regen unbuffed. I generally try to melee if lag isn't bad so I get in and hit hard and then disengage if I can before the magicka runs out or is to low for an escape routine.

thankyourat

@milesrodneymcneely2_ESO I was having the same problem as you what helped me out was running the lich set. You can try one of these set either 5 julianos and 5 lich, or 5 twice born and 5 lich and 3 willpower with all spell damage glyphs, 1 spell damage weapon glyph on one sword and a disease glyph on the other. And run the shadow mundus for extra damage (with twice born you would run the shadow and thief) i've had the most success with Julianos. My front bar is lotus fan, SAP essence, mass hysteria, concealed weapon, shadowy disguise and soul harvest. And my back bar is healing ward, double take, crippling grasp, shadow image, merciless resolve/harness magicka, and shooting star. Both these set ups the burst damage is through the roof you will hit just as hard as a stamblade with decent sustain from the lich.

Methariorn

What I feel very unbelanced is the way a stamina class can close distance with crit rush/shield charge: how I'm supposed to fight ranged and keep it at distance if I got only 6m advantage (22 vs 28) before he charge me? Mines? Every decent stam dk and templar just laught at them. Def rune? He just istant break free. Can I cc to gain time? Nope: shuffle + forward momentun and my encase is useless. If I build to have a decent stamina recovery to have a chance vs CC I lose too much dps. I've both magicka and stamina build and the difference is too high atm. I don't ask for a stamina nerf but magicka damage need to be boosted (stam dk and templar with passive, some chapions in the right place just need to click vigor). Magicka build need some CC immunity skill like shuffle to avoid begin sitting ducks the moment stamina is finished: a magicka dps build can't put 19k in stamina, 1300 stamina recovery and hoping to do some decent damage: I've try that on my sorc...yes I can survive longer...but I'm just a good bait for my nightblade's friend or the winterborn wallelemental/negate magic bot of a warband.

Lucky28

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

So this is a nerf stamina and buff magikca thread right ?

Look shields are still OP and that 1 resource reliability or what every hurts stamina users alot for that they need stamina for both attacking and everything else which can drain stamina pretty fast and it doesn't help Wrobel increased the cost of blocking, sprinting, stealth, and break free. Stamina is now at the point you have to invest everything into 1 of those 5 things just to use it more than 2 or 3 times.

Like blocking for example you have to pool everything CP, traits, and enchantments into reducing block cost just to block for a reliable amount of time.

Magicka users are fine if not even more powerful from annulments buff and stamina users are still getting kicked in the gut cause ZoS logic.... No not ZoS logic Wrobels logic.

Also don't even bring up the perma-blocking Malubeth users ok ? Malubeth is OP just leave it at that.

No magicka is not really fine. if ZoS did not nerf magicka with DB we probably could have had a legit discussion about how magicka and stamina performs side to side. seeing as how they did, it gives a bleak outlook on balancing as we cannot have that conversation.

as for annulment: 5 second duration (maybe that's just with Dampen) it's not enough to do anything with. only shield that's worth anything is healing ward because of it's heal.

incite

Cronopoly wrote: »

I'm definitely not calling for discussion of any Nerf for Stamina classes, as They are ok in my opinion, or a hell of a lot better off in PVP. I feel like an energizer battery when playing them in PVP. I just want to compete.

On my Stamina toons I typically get killed from being out of position, outplayed, or outmanned, but NEVER an empty Stamina resource pool preventing me from CCBreaking, Dodging, or sprinting. So that begs the question, is it viable to go Hybrid just to try to survive? And is that the adjustment we should be making?

Thinking out loud...:
I haven't run any of the numbers but I'm musing about Twice Born Star? Hybrid? Bah while the set has it's uses no one see's it as a panacea. Malubeth? It seems a broken proc at the moment eventually to be put in the same Olympic Medal stand as Proxi Detonation as insanely overpowered sets for everyone that has been let go on for far too long. forget I mentioned it....

Since Dark Brotherhood, I don't think we've seen ANY magicka Sorc PVP 1vX videos from any of the usual sources. Please let us know from an entertainment standpoint if there's some Master out there that has the secret sauce. We're all here to learn.

I 1vX quite fine (i do admit its a bit more difficult than in the past) the secret sauce imo: implement your ward cast in your weaving, thats 1 of the few things ive changed in my game

Hope that helps

Hexys

The only thing that sorcerers have lost this patch is burst with Proximity Detonation and Dawnbreaker. Shield even became stronger in my opinion now that Harness Magicka absorbs all damage.

About dawnbreaker, to make it even with the Mages Guild so both have a magicka/stamina morph, just make shooting star a rock and change it to physical damage.

Lokey0024

I am trying out the new dampen magika ability and love it. Pair it with elusive mist and stay near los for best results.

Sorcs are mad they cant cast hardend ward and just keep applying shields over the top of it, effectivly making them 30k hp monsters in pvp. When my MDK went from being able to tank 10 people to being a challenge to kill 1, i re rolled stam so i could at least be relevant again.

Stam is just stronger because of healing and dodge roll. If they take the dodge roll reduction cost off of medium and put it on shuffle instead of snare immunity, giving forward momentum a purpose, you might see the gap close a bit.

SamTheSwan

I've played an absolute ton of Mag Sorc, and I have to say the shield nerf didn't do that much to my open world play style. My biggest complaint is how major evasion and dodging makes it nigh impossible to keep pressure, much less land a complete combo. I would request that there be some mechanic major "de-evasion" that would cost resources that would allow sorcs and other classes, (magicka or stamina based) actually land skills. Slap a stacking mechanic (much like streak) so it cannot be spammed to remove stamina classes defenses, and call it a day