Racial Passives - Some QoL improvements please!

Ratzkifal

ZOS, please throw us a bone. I don't want major balance changes, all I want is something that's fun.

My main pain points are with:

• Bosmer, who are stealthy in the lore but not in gameplay, despite having been so in the past. Having only one option, Khajiit, sucks. We were told that no two races can share a passive, but since then a lot of races came to share passives. Please, for the sake of lore and my sanity, do away with detection and give them back stealth. Buff the detection CP bonus to compensate if you must, I'm sure nobody would complain.
• Redguards, who just don't really have many useful passives. Sure, the change to Maelstrom 2handers this PTS is probably a buff to them, but it's not going to matter considering how cheap stamina skills already are in general. Just upping their numbers is probably not going to be meaningful unless you go overboard with it, which would also be bad. I don't have a good suggestion for them, but whatever it is, it should lean into the weapon master fantasy more. Also the snare effectiveness reduction is meaningless when there are many options to make you wholey immune to snares, so do away with that to free some budget for buffs.
• Argonians, who are mainly not happy with being shoehorned to only being healers or tanks. I would add another effect to their potion passive that buffs alchemical poisons and shares a cooldown with the potion passive so you can only take advantage of one at a time. Anyone on any class and any build can use poisons, so that'll be a neat universal buff to Argonian damage dealers out there that's also unique to them.

I'm sure other people have other complaints about racial passives, so let's hear them.

MashmalloMan

In a few more years :P

In all seriousness, agreed. Redguards have been dead since the last rework. They went from the number 1 stam class to dead last. The main drawback is making them attached to cost reduction... and then also attaching that to only weapons.

What happens in a meta where you don't need cost reduction?
What about if we get more skill lines to use over time as the game expands?

Well both of those 2 things happened, back when the changes were made, we use to heavily rely on weapon skills because hybridization wasn't a thing and many skills were outdated. They've made great efforts over the years on these fronts and stam toons no longer have the same skill bars.

If you don't remember every stam toon looked like this:

Bar 1 - Weapon Execute - Weapon Spammable - Weapon DoT - Class skill - Flex Spot/Passive Buff Skill
Bar 2 - Weapon Ground DoT - Class Ground DoT or Caltrops - Weapon DoT - Class Skill - Flex Spot

We also used to rely on the bow ult... not anymore.

PrinceShroob

Just remove racial passives except for the first one. The lore doesn't really support the role differentiation that exists in-game. For pretty much every assertion about a race's "proper" role I'll show you a counterexample. So just do away with them and roll things like the Spell and Weapon Damage and resource bonuses into our base stats. Don't really agree that your endgame effectiveness is impacted by a choice you make at the beginning of the game that, in particular, is monetized.

I don't even think that Race Change tokens would suddenly stop being sold--a lot of people would switch their characters to the race they actually want to play rather than what's meta, and they still have utility to convert one character into a new one without having to delete them.

Stx

The racial passives are long overdue for an overhaul to bring them into balance post Cp 2.0 and post hybridization.

Maybe in another three chapters.

Ratzkifal

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Just remove racial passives except for the first one. The lore doesn't really support the role differentiation that exists in-game. For pretty much every assertion about a race's "proper" role I'll show you a counterexample. So just do away with them and roll things like the Spell and Weapon Damage and resource bonuses into our base stats. Don't really agree that your endgame effectiveness is impacted by a choice you make at the beginning of the game that, in particular, is monetized.

I don't even think that Race Change tokens would suddenly stop being sold--a lot of people would switch their characters to the race they actually want to play rather than what's meta, and they still have utility to convert one character into a new one without having to delete them.

I disagree. I want racial passives to be part of the game. No, they don't have to be super meaningful, but they tell you something about the race (as an average in general). It's part of the flavor and the fun if characters are different - choice of race is just one of the choices you make along the way in creating your own unique build. Following your line of reasoning, we could do away with all sorts of other differences as well, like armor weight or weapons types, but that would leave us in a boring and bland game.
I don't think racial passives should make or break a build, so in that sense, I agree that they shouldn't affect your endgame effectiveness. But if the differences are small enough, then they are unproblematic to have. Just like right now most of your build's power isn't actually in your racial passives, so even a Nord damage dealer can succeed at an endgame level, but that doesn't mean we can't make that difference narrower still. If all 8 damage dealers are on a "bad race", then it does add up. But that is the topic of another thread. I mainly want to focus on the quality of life of the races at the bottom rather than some revolutionary system change like doing away with them altogether.

lQrukl

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Don't really agree that your endgame effectiveness is impacted by a choice you make at the beginning of the game that, in particular, is monetized.

This! Why should I even have to change my pretty lizzard face to altmer/dunmer, reaching endgame? I choose argonian because I love its lore, but game says me that I'm trash at <any unsutable role> only because of race reason.
It's terribly disappointing

Ratzkifal

Nords also need some love. Right now they are great tanks but neither suited for healing or damage dealing. Considering they received bonuses to medium armor and twohanded weapons, it seems like they were always intended to be a damage option while Orc was always more focused on heavy armor and tanking. I don't think Orcs need to be changed to reflect this, but Nords could use a buff.

I wonder if I can find some pain points for every race, even the ones considered "meta".

thedoodle_90

Argonian need to lose their 6% healing and gain a passive like "+% dmg to hots and dots" It would fit their histskin and their poison reliance it would also support their gorrilla warfare style fighting.

Ratzkifal

thedoodle_90 wrote: »

Argonian need to lose their 6% healing and gain a passive like "+% dmg to hots and dots" It would fit their histskin and their poison reliance it would also support their gorrilla warfare style fighting.

That would do as well. Really just give them anything that benefits their offensive capabilities.

Drako_Ei

Add khajiit to that list.

Remove the critical damage cap or add the 125% cap to battle spirit.

In optimized pve groups I'm sitting at 140% and I hate it. 15% is going to waste.

Or give us back the critical chance.

You ever notice how nobody uses shadow mundus stone? Or axes? Critical damage is an undesirable stat.

Drako_Ei

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Just remove racial passives except for the first one. The lore doesn't really support the role differentiation that exists in-game. For pretty much every assertion about a race's "proper" role I'll show you a counterexample. So just do away with them and roll things like the Spell and Weapon Damage and resource bonuses into our base stats. Don't really agree that your endgame effectiveness is impacted by a choice you make at the beginning of the game that, in particular, is monetized.

I don't even think that Race Change tokens would suddenly stop being sold--a lot of people would switch their characters to the race they actually want to play rather than what's meta, and they still have utility to convert one character into a new one without having to delete them.

This

Ratzkifal

Drako_Ei wrote: »

Add khajiit to that list.

Remove the critical damage cap or add the 125% cap to battle spirit.

In optimized pve groups I'm sitting at 140% and I hate it. 15% is going to waste.

Yeah, I remember ZOS saying they wanted to give Khajiit crit chance originally, but that was before they changed everything about crits and it would have been too strong at the time. Now they could totally go back to giving them crit chance.
As for your build, I think ZOS would want you to wear light armor in that scenario because it'll drop you from 140% on medium to 126% on light but with extra crit rate and pen instead of weapon damage. Yeah, I don't really get it either.

Drako_Ei

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Drako_Ei wrote: »

Add khajiit to that list.

Remove the critical damage cap or add the 125% cap to battle spirit.

In optimized pve groups I'm sitting at 140% and I hate it. 15% is going to waste.

Yeah, I remember ZOS saying they wanted to give Khajiit crit chance originally, but that was before they changed everything about crits and it would have been too strong at the time. Now they could totally go back to giving them crit chance.
As for your build, I think ZOS would want you to wear light armor in that scenario because it'll drop you from 140% on medium to 126% on light but with extra crit rate and pen instead of weapon damage. Yeah, I don't really get it either.

The problem is that medium armor gives you % over your weapon/spell damage.

Light armor gives you pen that you don't need.

So either option is bad.