Class Skills - Putting the Magicka and Stamina Confusion to Rest

iso_1a_ESO

Ok, if you're hoping for a huge informational post about what skills are modified in what way and all that, I apologize ahead of time. This is to reach out to other members of the community in order to compile "What we know", because frankly I don't know and I thought it best to just ask.

For my part, I mostly play as a Nightblade. I'm sure some of you have seen the confusion around the forums about certain melee style abilities like Veiled Strike and Assassin's Blade using magicka and doing magic damage, but being modified by the physical critical rating and mitigated by armor rather than spell resistance. In addition to that, I've also heard that the damage modifier comes from stamina for these types of abilities rather than magicka, even though they consume magicka to cast and do magic type damage. I don't know if this is true or not, but if so abilities like this are really rather broken.

I hope that I'm wrong about a lot of that, and this is my attempt to reach out to you guys who may know more about it and compile some information on abilities such as this. Aside from the Nightblade, I'm sure there are other skills in other classes that share a similar amount of confusion because of the misleading or often uninformative tooltips. If you can provide information, take it a step further and tell us how you'd like to see it fixed.

Personally, I think some of these abilities need to be changed over from magicka to stamina, and from magic damage to physical damage, as well as deriving their crit from the physical crit rating. Forcing an assassin to use magicka as a primary resource is quite different, and I'm not saying it couldn't work well. Please don't think this is me ranting about how this RPG should be like every other one on the market, because I'm definitely not. I'm just confused and seeking information.

At end game, it seems this is less of a problem as you can max both resources fairly easily. There's still the matter of what modifies what even then, however. During leveling it's a nightmare, and trying to figure out what modifies the damage and crit for half of my skills is extremely frustrating. I know it would probably take a lot of rebalancing, but having a mix of magicka and stamina based class skills really wouldn't have been a bad approach in my opinion. The Destruction Staff weapon tree uses magicka as a resource. Why do no class abilities use stamina?

Anyways, please shed some light on the topic for me and all the other confused folks who are trying to figure this whole thing out. The stamina / magicka confusion is really frustrating and hopefully soon this confusion will be put to rest in a future patch. Thanks in advance from me and everyone else who is seeking information on this.

Drachdhar

Well, them shifting that around now would be a slight bother since... Well I play a Nightblade as well, and most of 2/3 of my lvl up bonuses go to Magicka due to Nightblade using alot of costly skills. Rest into health.
Not found a reason to put into Stamina, due to Dual Wield being lackluster beyond Flurry and my sprinting and sneaking needs are easily filled by foods if I feel the need for extra Stamina.

If we got a free reset on those though, very much feel free to change... Would make that investment into Medium Armor account for slightly more.

iso_1a_ESO

Drachdhar wrote: »

Well, them shifting that around now would be a slight bother since... Well I play a Nightblade as well, and most of 2/3 of my lvl up bonuses go to Magicka due to Nightblade using alot of costly skills. Rest into health.
Not found a reason to put into Stamina, due to Dual Wield being lackluster beyond Flurry and my sprinting and sneaking needs are easily filled by foods if I feel the need for extra Stamina.

If we got a free reset on those though, very much feel free to change... Would make that investment into Medium Armor account for slightly more.

I'm in the exact same boat you are. Using Killer's Blade, Surprise Attack, Shadowy Disguise, Rapid Strikes, and Swallow Soul as my primary bar. The thing is, I've heard Veiled Strike (Morphed to Surprise Attack) and Assassin's Blade (Morphed to Killer's Blade) use stamina to determine their overall damage. If that's true, you and I are really getting gimped.

Drachdhar

I use Lotus Fan(no idea why except I like it), some version of Invisibility(the one with increased crit chance), Concealed Weapon, Blinding Flurry and Funnel Health(good for grouping I guess) as my primary.
As for Assassins Blade, I morph into Impale... Think that will be slightly more useful for some things, and have it with my Bow bar..

Drachdhar

But nonetheless the confusion as to how these things work is really bad... In the same category of bad as how various stats(Defense vs Attack etc) work in The Secret World MMO.

iso_1a_ESO

You are using mostly what I use, except the opposite morphs, but the same concept is there. I also agree with you that the Dual Wield tree is severely lacking. Two-Hand has a crazy execute ability, knockdowns, damage buffs. We get some sparks and a DoT. Woo

Drachdhar

Hell, even Sword and Board tree is more fun than Dual Wield... Feels great for a Dunmer Dual Wielder(who gets extra xp with dual wield)

iso_1a_ESO

Drachdhar wrote: »

Hell, even Sword and Board tree is more fun than Dual Wield... Feels great for a Dunmer Dual Wielder(who gets extra xp with dual wield)

Again, we are in the exact same boat there too lol. I feel your pain.

Erock25

All of this information was taken from Mystborn's youtube series called ESO Unraveled.


What changes the overall effectiveness of my attacks? First off just to get the terminology I use, an ability is anything put into your 1-5 slots and the ultimate and a basic attack is left mouse button attack.

Basic Attacks (light and heavy left click attacks)
- All weapon basic attacks are affected by weapon dmg and not spell dmg
- All weapon basic attacks are only affected by increased max stamina, not magicka
- Destruction and Restoration staff basic attacks are affected by spell crit
- 2h, dual wield, 1h and shield, bow basic attacks (light and heavy) are affected by weapon crit

There are three layers of modifiers that affect any Ability.

1. Total Stamina or Magicka
-If ability cost stamina, total stamina will increase its damage
-If ability cost magicka, total magicka will increase its damage
-If ability cost ultimate, its damage is affected by what resource that skill line uses. For example Dawnbreaker ultimate in Fighter's Guild line will increase damage based on Stamina.

2. Weapon damage or Spell Damage
-If ability is under a weapon tree, weapon damage will increase its damage
-If ability is under class/guild/world/(everything besides weapon), spell damage will increase its damage. This includes all ultimates as well.

3. Weapon Crit and against Armor Mitigation OR Spell Crit and against Spell Resistance
-All non-staff weapon abilities use Weapon Crit and go against Armor Mitigation
-All staff weapon abilities use Spell Crit and go against Spell Resistance
-Non-weapon abilities are tougher to determine but based on common sense. If it seems like a physical attack (even though it uses magicka such as Dragon Knight's Searing Strike) it uses Weapon Crit and goes against Armor Mitigation. If it seems like a spell, it uses Spell Crit and goes against Spell Resistance.
-Easiest way to test this to be sure of a particular ability is that all abilities affected by Weapon Crit and Armor Mitigation can sneak attack (besides charges which take you out of hide when activated), while all abilities affected by Spell Crit and Spell Resistance can not sneak attack.

iso_1a_ESO

That's some really good info! I don't know if I really agree with their design choice to not allow certain class abilities to be dependent on stamina, but if it works it works I suppose. Hopefully they'll update tooltips for the exceptions that are in game right now to clearly state what they are dependent on for crit and damage. As it stands, it's quite irking to have to split points because you want to mix stamina and magicka abilities on your bar. But, maybe I'm alone in that regard.

Kyubi_3002b16_ESO

always knew the ressource also increase the damage since the tooltip tells but im amused to hear some ability like killer blade actualy are considered as weapon strike XD

Castielle

You could probably do some testing with a UI mod and a bunch of food. See if increasing Stamina does in fact increase some of your Nightblade skills, since I have watched that video as well. Would be great if you could pinpoint which skills, if any, are indeed increased by Stamina.

Cas

realking

I play a melee sorcerer, but before that I was sort caster. Everything was fine as a caster I had my main abilities that used magical and with my stamina I could sprint and use it to interrupt. However, after fully committing myself to the melee spec I found it more complicated. At first I started off with just stay abilities that used stamina and had one magical ability. (Bound Armour 235 magical reduces magical by 10 percent) I found when using all my stamina I had this full bar of useless magicka. So I added another magicka skill that was AE dmg. I feel like something needs to be changed or maybe it's just me I am lvl 25 after all.

iso_1a_ESO

I agree realking. I think I'll just reroll to a sorcerer for now and get my caster on as it's something I've been considering for a few days. Maybe after a while I'll come back to the Nightblade, because I've ALWAYS played a stealthy assassin / ranger in TES games.

Sleepwalker

Agreed with both of you. It seems to me that if you want to go melee, you really have to commit to stamina hardcore. However, I do believe that there are classes that can transform magicka to stamina, yes?