Defensive play is worthless

noobfury · May 2015

So to reiterate ,

Stacking Magicka = Strong burst damage with shield stacking.

Stacking Stamina = Strong burst damage with evasion/dodge rolling.

Health and heavy armor = Should give greater survivability as a trade off for giving up dps but does not which is the entire point . You get neither.

I don't have any problem with damage builds , I can make whatever I want . I just figure the variable for defensive play should exist in a more balanced environment.

If defense really wasn't an issue then we wouldn't have this on going dispute over shield stacking and dodge rolling in the first place because no one would be overly concerned about the obscene amount of damage they are trying to avoid .

Or another way to put it , if either of those options were nerfed then what would you rely on for defense ?

Draehl · May 2015

Sustained dps type builds feel this issue too. Burst builds don't give up enough resource management or longevity to make playing regen based sustained damage build feasible. Combine this with weak DoT spells and it's just not a thing right now.

Attorneyatlawl · May 2015

ToRelax wrote: »

That's a pile of...

Seriously, yes, burst is the way to go, yes TTK can be pretty low, but offense is not stronger than defense. If you build as a tank you can not expect to win a fight on your own except against very bad players. Of course, if you tank a group long enough that more people show up you may die if you're now to heavily outnumbered - or win the fight if you got some allies.
Sure, escape skills are nice, but how does that make offense stronger? Death in this game is meaningless. It does not do anything other than you have to ride a minute. And with some luck even get a nice fight on the way.

In a group, a tank is useful. You have to make a compromise between the individual playtyles in a group obviously, and that can mean a tank or a kiter or w/e is not always what you need now, but a tank can have it's use.

I have a very balanced build on my Sorc - mobility, defense, offense, support, regen, I have some of each of them and it works very well unless people use a lot of nirnhoned armor (wich will be changed).
I could deal a LOT more damage if I invested into it at the expense of defense for example. But it's not needed.

The problem that I think makes people speculate about things like these are the "infinite resources" - basically, with the removal of softcaps you are able to invest a lot more into specific attributes you favoured before already or you invest actually less and add other things to your build. For example my magicka regen is a good bit lower than it was in 1.5, but I got more cost reduction and max magicka, giving me much higher sustain and yet can use the Arena set instead of Seducer, thus gain stamina management on top of it.

A player who focuses purely on damage, will have a hard time against good players who simplay outlast him, as well as multible bad players because he often won't have the time to kill them one by one, since he is very squishy himself.
A player who focuses purely on regen, will have less damage and so on (even a build with 2500-3000 magicka/stamina regen and a lot of cost reduction will usually also have some damage, in sets and CP).
It simply wouldn't be a problem if you couldn't have to much attributes in total.

Hope someone understands what I mean, not the best post I ever wrote ^^.

This is, and I say this with complete sincerity, one of the best posts I have ever read on the Elder Scrolls Online forums. I feel much the same and wrote a small new player's guide on that topic awhile back: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/153336/brief-new-players-guide-key-things-to-understand-for-making-a-good-build-in-eso , even

. /tips his hat