ZOS are you trying to remove magicka builds or did you make a mistake?

Reykice

The_Outsider wrote: »

Reykice wrote: »

Right now stamina builds are doing 50k+ dps in trials with magicka at about 35k. The imbalance is so big i expected somebody to notice and redo things but i see no mention of this from you.

There is also the sustain issue, stamina has redguards, has 20% cost reduction on EVERY weapon while magicka has none of that so most magicka builds can`t sustain.

Is this intended? In most games people rage at a 10% difference in max dps, i get that you can`t make it perfectly equal but its beyond senseless right now. Stamina builds have more armor, more mobility, more sustain, more dps. What is the design logic behind this?

The CP tree also favors stamina as Thaumaturge increases dot damage and basically most of the max stamina dps build is made of dots. Rapid Strikes, Rearming Trap, Rending Slashes, Poison Injection, Dawnbreaker. All are buffed by the Vet Maelstrom Weapons too adding 3k Weapon Damage.

Magicka has none of that, their main spells, Funnel Health, Force Pulse, Crystal Frag, Whip get no bonus from Thaumaturge and no way to buff them via other means like Vet Maelstrom Weapons.

On top of that you made Rapid Strikes 0.6 seconds from 1.1 seconds channel its now the new super duper stamina filler. Why not change Force Pulse too or destro staff? Dual Wield has passives like "more damage under 20%, more weapon damage, 20% cost reduction and a pick between 10% crit, a very nice dot, 5% damage or armor penetration as a last passive".

Destro Staff has much weaker passives and Destro abilities with the exception of wall of elements(that was recently buffed) are also much weaker.

So i have to ask, was it a mistake that you will fix or are you slowly just keeping magicka for healing and you only want stamina to handle damage?

As a possible solution: revamp destro, make it good again, every magicka build uses it so it will bump everyone in damage. Either make Thaumaturge no longer affect every possible skill in some builds especially channels or just add a new Star that buffs "non dot" damage abilities so both will have 2 stars buffing the damage not like now where one has 1 star and the other 2.

Fix sustain somehow, add destro passive with 20% cost reduction for a start or just tweak the more costly spells.

If you agree please keep bumping this thread until we get some kind of answer!

Replace every instance of "Stamina builds" with "1 meta build, requiring Maelstrom weaps and 2 or 3 support DPS" and you'll have a more accurate OP. To say that 50k is representative of Stamina builds is, like others have mentioned, entirely misleading.

The OP isn't about Stamina vs. Magicka balance as a whole, you're talking about 1 specific DoT build wearing 1 specific set, in a group wearing other specific sets. Perhaps that "1 build" (and it is only one that can pull those numbers), can be toned down a bit by tweaking Maelstrom weapons or CP. Overall, balance between Stamina builds and Magicka builds is better than it ever has been, imo.

That would tone down dps to a point but still keep it well ahead of magicka plus it would not help with the other advantages like sustain, mobility and so on. Once stamina can sprint/dodge break and have similar ability costs as magicka we can talk about equal dps, but once stamina has an advantage to everything including dps saying its balanced is a bit wild.

MaxwellC

Honestly Magicka builds are still strong in PvP. I've fought sorcs who would shield stack all the damage I applied thus keeping the fight lasting forever and some who if I didn't stay alert upon engagement I'd face a nice flooring.

Magicka in PvE isn't doing a lot of damage in comparison to Stamina but the fact that survivability is there allows Magicka builds to pull through even the toughest content. If you think I'm wrong then I'd like to see 4 stamina builds go through ICP or any other "harder" dungeon (maybe the newest one would work) and try to survive the incoming damage. 4 Magicka builds can easily walk through PvE content such as dungeons. Edit: Without dying once.

I do agree that Magicka does need some more damage but Sorcs/nbs are ok at-least in my perspective; I feel Mag DK needs a buff and temps need more damaging abilities with a range reduction to RD to balance it out

Reykice

MaxwellCrystal wrote: »

Honestly Magicka builds are still strong in PvP. I've fought sorcs who would shield stack all the damage I applied thus keeping the fight lasting forever and some who if I didn't stay alert upon engagement I'd face a nice flooring.

Magicka in PvE isn't doing a lot of damage in comparison to Stamina but the fact that survivability is there allows Magicka builds to pull through even the toughest content. If you think I'm wrong then I'd like to see 4 stamina builds go through ICP or any other "harder" dungeon (maybe the newest one would work) and try to survive the incoming damage. 4 Magicka builds can easily walk through PvE content such as dungeons. Edit: Without dying once.

I do agree that Magicka does need some more damage but Sorcs/nbs are ok at-least in my perspective; I feel Mag DK needs a buff and temps need more damaging abilities with a range reduction to RD to balance it out

Plenty of videos showing Stamina soloing 4 man Veteran Dungeons... Vigor + mitigation is just as effective as shields. Only sorcs use shields as they have no healing good enough to survive... and do good enough damage.

Yea the problem is in PvE, in PvP dps is not as important, there its about burst... but in PvE such differences can ruin a class, why take the much lower dps magicka build when you know most stamina can do much more?

Its a balance thing really, its way past the point of "maybe its not such an issue" as right now stamina is best as everything except healing others.... and in most cases its way ahead.

Minalan

MaxwellCrystal wrote: »

Honestly Magicka builds are still strong in PvP. I've fought sorcs who would shield stack all the damage I applied thus keeping the fight lasting forever and some who if I didn't stay alert upon engagement I'd face a nice flooring.

Magicka in PvE isn't doing a lot of damage in comparison to Stamina but the fact that survivability is there allows Magicka builds to pull through even the toughest content. If you think I'm wrong then I'd like to see 4 stamina builds go through ICP or any other "harder" dungeon (maybe the newest one would work) and try to survive the incoming damage. 4 Magicka builds can easily walk through PvE content such as dungeons. Edit: Without dying once.

I do agree that Magicka does need some more damage but Sorcs/nbs are ok at-least in my perspective; I feel Mag DK needs a buff and temps need more damaging abilities with a range reduction to RD to balance it out

^^^ this. Slightly more damage on destruction staff and significantly lower costs on the same. There is nothing on the destruction staff that remotely comes close to bow skills.

Yet.. Ranged is supposed to do less damage because of the lower risk? Snipe, snipe, poison inject, heavy attack...

Averya_Teira

Van_0S wrote: »

What ZOS should do is nerf dawnbreaker ! Its OP like hell for all stamina builds. I get 1 shotted by a NB ganker ( can't heal at that time, due to the dot damage and stun which is instant.)

Edit: I just want to see wrobel get nuked by it ( that is, if he ever plays this game)

He doesn't play the game, it's pretty obvious by now haha...

kadar

Reykice wrote: »

The_Outsider wrote: »

Reykice wrote: »

Right now stamina builds are doing 50k+ dps in trials with magicka at about 35k. The imbalance is so big i expected somebody to notice and redo things but i see no mention of this from you.

There is also the sustain issue, stamina has redguards, has 20% cost reduction on EVERY weapon while magicka has none of that so most magicka builds can`t sustain.

Is this intended? In most games people rage at a 10% difference in max dps, i get that you can`t make it perfectly equal but its beyond senseless right now. Stamina builds have more armor, more mobility, more sustain, more dps. What is the design logic behind this?

The CP tree also favors stamina as Thaumaturge increases dot damage and basically most of the max stamina dps build is made of dots. Rapid Strikes, Rearming Trap, Rending Slashes, Poison Injection, Dawnbreaker. All are buffed by the Vet Maelstrom Weapons too adding 3k Weapon Damage.

Magicka has none of that, their main spells, Funnel Health, Force Pulse, Crystal Frag, Whip get no bonus from Thaumaturge and no way to buff them via other means like Vet Maelstrom Weapons.

On top of that you made Rapid Strikes 0.6 seconds from 1.1 seconds channel its now the new super duper stamina filler. Why not change Force Pulse too or destro staff? Dual Wield has passives like "more damage under 20%, more weapon damage, 20% cost reduction and a pick between 10% crit, a very nice dot, 5% damage or armor penetration as a last passive".

Destro Staff has much weaker passives and Destro abilities with the exception of wall of elements(that was recently buffed) are also much weaker.

So i have to ask, was it a mistake that you will fix or are you slowly just keeping magicka for healing and you only want stamina to handle damage?

As a possible solution: revamp destro, make it good again, every magicka build uses it so it will bump everyone in damage. Either make Thaumaturge no longer affect every possible skill in some builds especially channels or just add a new Star that buffs "non dot" damage abilities so both will have 2 stars buffing the damage not like now where one has 1 star and the other 2.

Fix sustain somehow, add destro passive with 20% cost reduction for a start or just tweak the more costly spells.

If you agree please keep bumping this thread until we get some kind of answer!

Replace every instance of "Stamina builds" with "1 meta build, requiring Maelstrom weaps and 2 or 3 support DPS" and you'll have a more accurate OP. To say that 50k is representative of Stamina builds is, like others have mentioned, entirely misleading.

The OP isn't about Stamina vs. Magicka balance as a whole, you're talking about 1 specific DoT build wearing 1 specific set, in a group wearing other specific sets. Perhaps that "1 build" (and it is only one that can pull those numbers), can be toned down a bit by tweaking Maelstrom weapons or CP. Overall, balance between Stamina builds and Magicka builds is better than it ever has been, imo.

That would tone down dps to a point but still keep it well ahead of magicka plus it would not help with the other advantages like sustain, mobility and so on. Once stamina can sprint/dodge break and have similar ability costs as magicka we can talk about equal dps, but once stamina has an advantage to everything including dps saying its balanced is a bit wild.

Reykice wrote: »

The_Outsider wrote: »

Reykice wrote: »

Right now stamina builds are doing 50k+ dps in trials with magicka at about 35k. The imbalance is so big i expected somebody to notice and redo things but i see no mention of this from you.

There is also the sustain issue, stamina has redguards, has 20% cost reduction on EVERY weapon while magicka has none of that so most magicka builds can`t sustain.

Is this intended? In most games people rage at a 10% difference in max dps, i get that you can`t make it perfectly equal but its beyond senseless right now. Stamina builds have more armor, more mobility, more sustain, more dps. What is the design logic behind this?

The CP tree also favors stamina as Thaumaturge increases dot damage and basically most of the max stamina dps build is made of dots. Rapid Strikes, Rearming Trap, Rending Slashes, Poison Injection, Dawnbreaker. All are buffed by the Vet Maelstrom Weapons too adding 3k Weapon Damage.

Magicka has none of that, their main spells, Funnel Health, Force Pulse, Crystal Frag, Whip get no bonus from Thaumaturge and no way to buff them via other means like Vet Maelstrom Weapons.

On top of that you made Rapid Strikes 0.6 seconds from 1.1 seconds channel its now the new super duper stamina filler. Why not change Force Pulse too or destro staff? Dual Wield has passives like "more damage under 20%, more weapon damage, 20% cost reduction and a pick between 10% crit, a very nice dot, 5% damage or armor penetration as a last passive".

Destro Staff has much weaker passives and Destro abilities with the exception of wall of elements(that was recently buffed) are also much weaker.

So i have to ask, was it a mistake that you will fix or are you slowly just keeping magicka for healing and you only want stamina to handle damage?

As a possible solution: revamp destro, make it good again, every magicka build uses it so it will bump everyone in damage. Either make Thaumaturge no longer affect every possible skill in some builds especially channels or just add a new Star that buffs "non dot" damage abilities so both will have 2 stars buffing the damage not like now where one has 1 star and the other 2.

Fix sustain somehow, add destro passive with 20% cost reduction for a start or just tweak the more costly spells.

If you agree please keep bumping this thread until we get some kind of answer!

Replace every instance of "Stamina builds" with "1 meta build, requiring Maelstrom weaps and 2 or 3 support DPS" and you'll have a more accurate OP. To say that 50k is representative of Stamina builds is, like others have mentioned, entirely misleading.

The OP isn't about Stamina vs. Magicka balance as a whole, you're talking about 1 specific DoT build wearing 1 specific set, in a group wearing other specific sets. Perhaps that "1 build" (and it is only one that can pull those numbers), can be toned down a bit by tweaking Maelstrom weapons or CP. Overall, balance between Stamina builds and Magicka builds is better than it ever has been, imo.

That would tone down dps to a point but still keep it well ahead of magicka plus it would not help with the other advantages like sustain, mobility and so on. Once stamina can sprint/dodge break and have similar ability costs as magicka we can talk about equal dps, but once stamina has an advantage to everything including dps saying its balanced is a bit wild.

I disagree. The only reason the DW/Bow stam build can pull higher DPS than Magicka builds is because of the insane Maelstrom/DoT/thaumaturge synergy. Take that away or tone it down and Magicka builds will be outperforming Stamina once again. I'd love to see a meaningful Stamina parse from someone not using Maelstrom DW/ Maelstrom Bow combo.

kaithuzar

OrphanHelgen wrote: »

Magicka have been top dps for 2 years, while stamina have been for a few months.

For magicka sustain, you can go 7 light armor instead of meta 5-1-1, and you can have both elemental drain and siphon its called? those stack with eachother. Wormcult is also very common for healers to have.

Have you tried necropotence combined with master inferno cp160, which also works with nightblade clones.

Have you tried sorc with 5 elegant?

Have you tried the new sun set on dk?

Your welcome

None of this is new & those of us that have been around since beta/launch already know the outcome of those sets... been there done that....(sure the sets are nice for playing around with & maybe damage or testing numbers will change but as of right now the answer is no)

Necropotence - Not as great as it sounds, you end up losing too much spell damage for max magicka so the balance is off.

Elegant - great for 20k heavy attack builds, not top dps but maybe 2nd or 3rd place a mongst other viable sets

Silks of the Sun - while it seems really great, it's 6% or whatever is actually much less than stacking all spell damage. Maybe it can be combined with julianos or similar but it's still a dps loss when compared with other sets.

silky_soft

Reykice wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Please enough about "stamina is so OP" threads already. Magicka isn't weak it's just no longer easy mode wanna play it learn it.

It's the player who makes the character not the other way around.

Vid of you pulling 50k sustained single target dps on a 2.5.5 mage build plox.

Stamina sorc: https://youtu.be/qIF5eKVgVM8 - 49k

Stam DK: https://youtu.be/K9G3G3txKQs - 51k


I could not find any magicka. Just in case people don`t believe stam can do it while magicka can`t. (i know it was not what you asked)

All I am getting out of this is that maelstrom weapons are OP.

Allister101_ESO

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

clocksstoppe wrote: »

OrphanHelgen wrote: »

Have you tried the new sun set on dk?

Game is so dead I can't find anyone who does Hel Ra so the answer to this question will always be "no".

@clocksstoppe

I have three guild running HRC constantly.

Maybe look for some more active guilds.

Hillary Rodham Clinton??? ..................I kid I kid

Hortator Indoril Nerevar

I have to agree. I am a magicka nb and I do 25-35k dps depending on the boss in every dungeon and trial while I see nightblades with "worse" gear aka purple and or bad traits pulling 30-50k haha... its beyond stupid.

Lord_Eomer

Magicka is currently under powered comparig stamina, they have lot more edge in PVP and PVE.

Especially new changes to Sorcerer and fighter guild skills in DB patch was hugely in favour of stamina.

Heavy armor sets mostly favor Stamina Builds and with every update stamina sets are getting way better i.e. Viper, Red mountain, Velidreth, Heem Jas, marksmen, leki, skirmishers, black Rose, Shield breaker etc.

Red Guard / imperial Sorcerer can puah max stamina to around 40k+ same like mage build s and with 5k whopping damage they are extremely powerful. Whereas mages starts restricting at 3k-3.5k spell damage.

boundsy88

i cant see how they can buff magic dps in pve without it one shotting everything in pvp. they will probably just nerf stam cause its the easy solution for them

andy_s

Maelstrom weapons are too strong, buffing dots for 3k+ weapon damage, wtf? Should be 300 probably There is another issue with them also: stamina spam skills like surprise attack and biting jabs became kinda useless in pve. As long as you have maelstrom daggers/axes, you should use flurry for more deeps on bosses. As @Alcast said, the only reason msa weapons are not nerfed yet is because they are not that op in pvp

FloppyTouch

Magic range pls play a magic dk how much range is that these ppl with there false examples Stam is op in every way u can't argue that at all its like magic trying to say they where not op when Stam was crap just stop it! Stam can stay the way they are lets not nerf them lets buff magic.
Make staffs have more damage make better Passives is Mage guild then we will be good.

covenant_merchant

They probs won't do anything for magicka classes since magplars are still op. If anything, first they'll nerf back magicka templars, then when the outcry becomes to much to bear, nerf stamina in order to achieve "balance" xD

MLRPZ

kasa-obake wrote: »

They probs won't do anything for magicka classes since magplars are still op. If anything, first they'll nerf back magicka templars, then when the outcry becomes to much to bear, nerf stamina in order to achieve "balance" xD

Leave my magplar alone filthy sorc

Reykice

I agree with what you guys say, in the end how they balance it is up to them, i made some suggestions, you made some, they can pick or make their own solution.

But i`d like a post saying "yea we know and will work on it" or something, if you look at this thread most of the time its the most viewed thread on the page except for the sticky and still no answer.

For a company priding itself on talking to the community why are they not answering? I`d understand if it wasn`t true and other stuff, why reply to a troll thread but its true and even their own statistics/numbers should be showing it by now.

So lets just keep going eventually they have to say something about it i guess... i`m out of ideas.

Uriel_Nocturne

I'm starting to think that ZOS is taking ESO down the same treacherous path that ActiBungie took Destiny...

And I hope to the Gods that I'm wrong.

Reykice

Uriel_Nocturne wrote: »

I'm starting to think that ZOS is taking ESO down the same treacherous path that ActiBungie took Destiny...

And I hope to the Gods that I'm wrong.

What did they do? Not familiar with Destiny.

Uriel_Nocturne

Reykice wrote: »

Uriel_Nocturne wrote: »

I'm starting to think that ZOS is taking ESO down the same treacherous path that ActiBungie took Destiny...

And I hope to the Gods that I'm wrong.

What did they do? Not familiar with Destiny.

Constantly nerfing the player damage (weapons, skills, etc.) while beefing enemy health. Extends the grind for no reason than to cover a lack of actual content to conquer.

Creating disparity in the three character classes which creates one super-class and two weak classes, simply because players were playing one class more than the others.

Ignoring the player base to tailor the game to the Streamers rather than what is best for the majority of the player base.

Removing more content than they add with each DLC (old weapons can no longer be acquired), smaller areas per DLC, making older content irrelevant by adding in "character boosts" that jump the level of a new player so as to be able to hit the new content faster (which also means the new player can skip the older content completely) (ESO has not hit this one yet)

Locking content that a player used to be able to enjoy freely behind a pay-wall so as to force a player to buy the new DLC in order to play content that they already had paid for. (ESO has not hit this one yet)

Announcing that older Year 1 weapons would no longer be available in Year 2. This one wouldn't be so bad. Many people thought they would be fine with their Year 1 weapons/armors until they got better Year 2 gear. But right before the Year 2 update hit, all Year 1 equipment got a massive nerf making any/all Y1 gear detrimentally ineffectual against the game's enemies, thus forcing a purchase of the DLC to keep playing.

Finally; as has been the tale for the life of the game, the Developers (ActiBungie) took on an attitude of "screw you. We're doing what we want with the game. If you don't like it, leave.". Which made the existence of Player Feedback Forums nothing more than a huge "middle-finger" to their own players.

And there's so much more consumer abuse that I simply cannot list in the confines of a test post. It has to be observed first hand to be believed.

While ZOS hasn't done a lot of this with ESO, there are very similar, very worrisome patterns emerging.

Joy_Division

@Oreyn_Bearclaw -

The problem I have with your position is that you are trying to justify why it's OK for stamina to be more powerful than magicka. And you are trying to do this with claims that you are presenting as Truths, even though there is no way to tangibly measure or prove them. You can't.

You can't prove a stamina rotation is harder. You can't prove your stam DK is squisher than my magicka templar. You can't prove harness being a crucial skill on PvE raid trials. I never used it. Even in hard mode AA when the raid leader said slot it, I did not and didn't die from meteors (because they could be blocked). Even if it was as good as you claim I would trade it in a heartbeat and not think twice about it for as "magicka" vigor spell (or better yet, shuffle) because such a skill is far better in PvP, which is mostly what I care about.

The "we deserve moar DPS" problem manifests itself when you are not DPSing a PvE Raid boss. I don't know what happens on the EU PvP servers, but I hardly even play PvP anymore because all those advantages that stam supposedly deserve to have are now using that high DPS to ruinous effect, where the alleged price is not there. It is absolutely ridiculous that DPS translates into super heals with builds that have Shuffle (a utility skill) are highly mobile and excel at damage avoidance. Ever since the TG, @Wrobel promised a "stamina patch" - a highly dubious notion to begin with since it was the dumb vicious death set and the proxy det spell (since nerfed) that were the problems - and has he delivered. The only magicka builds I come across in Cyrodiil as the FOTM templars (who will be rerolling soon enough if they already haven't) and the occasional NB. I haven't been hit with a DK whip since like June. I heal PvE raids - I don't even bother slotting elemental drain or siphon spirit anymore because all my DPS are stam. The only magicka skill that kills me in PvP is Radiant Destruction and that only happens because their stam zerg buddies damage and CC me.

So, high DPS is not only relevant in two fights on a modern trial setting. Even time I get crit rush, ambushed, poison injectioned - and that happens every fight I am in Cyrodiil - the "we have less utility" excuse [wrong btw, not only are they more mobile and naturally more evasive, they can use their magicka pool to get said utility, magicka players can never do that with their stamina pool, also Shuffle is by far the best "utility" ability in the game and it isn't magic-based] translates into all that extra damage, which also means extra healing. This is not anecdotal, not reliant on "feel." That's ESO mechanics of gap-closers, medium armor passives, the functionality of dodge rolls, and ZoS logic that high damage = high heals. This game is ALL about damage and has been since the 1.6 patch (and arguably burst at that, at least for PvP). That is the only currency that matters.

I will adamantly argue with any post or poster who forward any explanation why they are deserving of being more powerful. I'm not buying their "feelings" because they are the consequence of bias and cannot be empirically measured. And, I have "feelings" to. The feeling that utility is grossly overrated and does not compensate for raw power, especially in a game where that raw power translates into heals (and damage avoidance), which in most RPG games falls under the category of "utility".

I absolutely respect you as a player and a poster - my tone notwithstanding - but I absolutely reject the argument that stam deserves to have higher DPS.

Foxic

I find it strange that no-one mentions beyond infinity in this thread.

They have the fastest twins kill that I know of and had the first hardmode completions of the new aa and hrc while using almost all magicka dps.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf1URTs9Gfw

It is my opinion that stamina single target dps is slightly out of hand and the maelstrom weapons could be toned down a bit. But at the end of the day eso is heading away from single target fights more and more. And while stam could use s little toning down, the imbalance is not as large as everyone is making it out to be

reclaimervii.sierra117ub17_ESO

Just in case they do balance both stamina and magika I hope to god they dont NERF or BUFF just balance the playstyles. Its Crazy stupid how good stamina is good in pve and pvp

Alcast

Remember. 99% of Trial guilds have FULL MAGICKA GROUPS. Please tell me why that is if stamina is WAY TOO GODLY.

ai caramba

Reykice

Alcast wrote: »

Remember. 99% of Trial guilds have FULL MAGICKA GROUPS. Please tell me why that is if stamina is WAY TOO GODLY.

ai caramba

Clearly for other reasons as none of those magicka builds is close to the same dps you do with Stamina.

As people said, a VMA weapons rebalance + destro staff abilities looked at could be all its needed.

Alcast

Alcast wrote: »

Remember. 99% of Trial guilds have FULL MAGICKA GROUPS. Please tell me why that is if stamina is WAY TOO GODLY.

ai caramba

Reykice wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Remember. 99% of Trial guilds have FULL MAGICKA GROUPS. Please tell me why that is if stamina is WAY TOO GODLY.

ai caramba

Clearly for other reasons as none of those magicka builds is close to the same dps you do with Stamina.

As people said, a VMA weapons rebalance + destro staff abilities looked at could be all its needed.

You have better ranged capabilities and better movement but slightly less dps. That is the reason why most guilds still run magicka setups. And if people do not get that and keep QQing for nurfing then well.....ok

Zourem

I left for 6 months and now I am back and the game already feels totally like another game.

Stamina builds dominate pvp while I used to be able to compete with my magicka templar and sorcerer.

It also makes no sense from a lore point of view that stamina/medium armour builds are way stronger than magicka/light armour builds. Light armour sacrifices protections for power which is how it should be combined with medium armour having more protections while being less powerful. It seems that this is totally contradicted now by flawed design.

I hope some changes will be made to increase the power of magicka abilities and armour while reducing the power of stamina abilities and gear.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Alcast wrote: »

Remember. 99% of Trial guilds have FULL MAGICKA GROUPS. Please tell me why that is if stamina is WAY TOO GODLY.

ai caramba

I know, I know!!! Because it is easier to play.

@Joy_Division We have come full circle. Again, limiting my discussion to PVE, so I am not going to touch the second half of that last post. You say I cant prove any of this stuff. How would one go about doing that exactly? Perhaps a good place to start would be to have the same person run the hardest PVE content in the game both Solo and Trials on both stam and magic and share their insights, and if you want hard data, their parses on both classes?

Well that is what I am trying to do. You might disagree, but it's all I got. I have run VMA on both magic and stam toons. Stam pulls a little better DPS, Magic is much easier, at least in my experience. Pretty sure the best VMA time is still magic Sorc. You wrote some great VMA guides, so I will ask you this. If someone says, "I am going to roll a brand new toon, how should I learn the arena", what are you going to say? You are going to say magic Sorc or magic NB. And before you say something about a resto staff, I wouldnt suggest it on either of those classes. They get by with solid ranged DPS, shields and utility skills.

I have also cleared VMOL on both a magic and stam DK. Magic is MUCH MUCH easier to stay alive. How do I know? Because I have spent the last 3 months in that place. Harness Magic is a more useful tool than Vigor in there. I make that statement based on my personal deaths and what I generally see of our group. Stam toons die more. We actually have a running joke about seeing a dead cat (i.e. a stam DPS just died in trash). As for DPS, my personal highest parses on the first two bosses are higher with magic, and as I have said, the last boss I do better with stamina. As for trash, I pull better DPS on magic. That is objective as I can be.

As for difficulty of rotation, again, I can only speak from personal experience and listening to others. In my experience, I get fatigue in my hands much faster when I play stamina. It also has less range than pretty much any magic build, so yes, you are in more danger as you are closer to the boss. Not to mention that many bosses have "spread mechanics." Look at Manti or the first boss of VMOL. These are easier to deal with at range. The best stam DPS in the world are going to get popcorned or spread a curse once in a while. It should not happen to siphonblades or sorcs.

These mechanics are actually designed to discourage the entire raid from going melee range, and that is my whole point. Modern raids in encourage a mixed group of both stam and magic DPS. This allows the absolute best DPS to play stamina for max DPS, but at the cost of increased exposure to mechanics, and other DPS to play back and provide a bit of additional support to the group. I think it works very well, but clearly you dont. I see a meaningful tradeoff, and I am okay with it.

Saturn

It is very uncommon to see 50k+ single target dps in most content and personally having played with a lot of very endgame players you rarely see beyond 45k dps on most boss fights. That being said, the highest single target dps I have seen posted in serious content was 46k on the last boss of vMaw by a magicka dragonknight. The majority of ridiculously high dps parses are done by dragonknights, which I think just points to how strong that class is in PvE content. I have seen a lot of magicka builds pull 40k on boss fights though, so it's not like the disparity is as great as you might think. I personally think balance wise that the game isn't doing that bad, although maelstrom dual wield weapons are perhaps a bit too powerful with dot builds.

In terms of sustain I feel like stamina builds have it harder than magicka builds, unless you play a magicka sorc (magsorcs are just incredibly good at gulping down magicka). That being said, you have Siphon Spirit, Elemental Drain and Orbs for magicka users, whereas stam users in boss fights without adds only have shards that usually they won't get unless healers are extra caring.

In terms of your whole statement about dots and thaum, I feel like you aren't considering all the skills that magicka users have that also benefit from this CP passive, so you saying only stamina builds benefit from dot damage increase is misleading.

Further, something you didn't point which is where stamina dps really drops is whenever you have to go ranged on a boss fight. Stamina dps is only really at its best whenever you are up close, but there are a lot of endgame boss fights were ranged dps is necessary, which is where magicka builds have a superior standing. A very good example of a fight where ranged dps is better is on the twins in vMaw.

Also something I think you misunderstand is that having to be melee dps means less mobility when trying to stay in range of a boss = less reaction time = higher chance of getting hits by attacks, plus it is difficult to avoid stacking with other melee dpses when you have to be within a certain range to use your skills. On a fight like Rakkhat in vMaw melee dpses often die to Darkness Falls because they have less room to manouvre than magicka builds that can stay at range.

There may be a slight disparity between magicka and stamina dps, but nowhere near as huge as you make it seem like. Saying that magicka builds only do 35k and stamina builds to 50k+ is kind of ridiculous, not to mention incorrect. Magicka builds can hit 40k dps and more, and 50k+ stam dps is really rare and not something you really see that often.

Samuel_Bantien

KisoValley wrote: »

Stamina DPS takes over for a few monthsand everyone is crying lmfao. Shows how bad players are imo, they can't adapt or just refuse to adapt.

I agree it's imbalanced but it was in the favour of magicka builds for so long and I saw a lot less crying.

The main thing that makes stamina DPS OTT is the maelstrom weapons. They're crazy strong, usually I would say buff magicka but with the way the game is going both in terms of PVP & PVE, I would rather see nerfs to everything. ZOS are incompetent though.

Only made it to the 2nd page before I had to post.

I am proud to say I was pulling 1.7k SINGLE TARGET dps in Hardmode Aetherian Archive when it released in update 1.3 (August 2014) as a stamina Nightblade build (R.I.P. Lionguard thanks for having me) and as a Breton. While I was pulling 1.7k single target dps as a stam build we had several magicka DKs running Frag Shield (when everyone's shield would pop for damage) only pulling 2.2k AoE dps during Axe Phase.

Stamina DPS has been the top notch single target (and AoE DPS in PvE upto 5k dps with Steel Tornado) for over 2 years now. The champion system completely favors Stamina builds (which all the top players and their mother knew) and completely skewed any kind of balance when they got rid of soft caps. In 1.0-1.5 players could easily reach the weapon damage soft cap as magicka and dedicated stam builds could easily have hardcap weapon damage with Caltrops + Ravager set. When 1.6 came out, we all know soft caps went away and all stamina builds went loose. Not to mention the Nirnhoned breakout and how there was 0 way to mitigate physical damage for the longest time was certainly disheartening and caused alot of top players (PvE and PvP) to quit.

We should also talk about the overwhelming amount of stam races than their are magicka races and compare their passives! /sarcasm

Completely agree on the second part though.

Tl;dr
Stamina = Damage, Magicka = Utility: (The reverse was also possible when update 1.3 released).
ZoS is infact trying to do the opposite of what weapon skills were designed for: "Fillers".

Read on if you don't understand what I mean when I say "Fillers":
Magicka and Stamina builds were never supposed to exist. Weapon Skills were there to add variety to builds - the play as you want mentality. ZoS did not think hard enough or expect any kind of min-max gamers playing their game based on this thinking - this was supposed to be a Casual MMO.