Kisakee wrote: »

If they shut your mouth with magic you can't recite spells but you can still ram your sword into someone, even in complete silence.

Then how can you "Let loose a battle cry" in the case of, say, Vigor if your mouth is shut? Or spew Noxious Breath? It actually makes no sense if you want to use that reasoning.

The real reason is that the skill is out of date considering how much the game has changed in the last 9 years.

Because Negate is an anti-magic spell.

Stamina powers physical ability not magic or special effects.

If you want to do the same to Stamina then you would cast exhaustion or paralysis (if a mage) or use a potion or poison (if not)

It is an important difference in traditional Role-playing games and it is a difference that seems to have got somewhat muddied by ESOL designers.

Originally, all class skills cost Magicka while melee and bow weapon skills cost Stamina. So Negate Magic was intended to remove your ability to use class skills, utility skills like Purge, or Restoration Staff healing, but now there are many more skills that can be cast while in its area.

One could argue that making Negate Magic and similar effects cast by NPCs also block Stamina-costing skills would be too punishing--many Stamina characters are limited to melee range, so they would be unable to deal damage while the Negate persisted, and a tank could not Taunt the enemy to move it from the area without leaving the area themself.

However, if Sorcerer's healing abilities were shored up--perhaps by co-opting several Dark Magic skills that haven't been relevant in years--they could change one morph of Negate Magic to specifically block Stamina-costing skills and call it, say, Disintegrate Weapon.

(Let's not argue the semantics of calling a Stamina-blocking morph of Negate Magic "Disintegrate Weapon" considering that Negate Magic blocks things that are not magic per se, such as Death Stroke.)

Blood_again wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

Then how can you "Let loose a battle cry" in the case of, say, Vigor if your mouth is shut? Or spew Noxious Breath? It actually makes no sense if you want to use that reasoning.

Oh, that's simple.
Battle Cry is obviosly flows from the eyes.
Noxious Breath is from nostrils.
As for Vigor, I'm afraid it comes... umm... from the opposite side.
Solved!

I can not argue with such clear and obvious logic.

The developers clearly have theme and balance under control.

INM wrote: »

Because it was designed when the game barely had any stamina skills, but now, when we have "the same as magicka, but green skills" it absolutely should work on every skills with the exception of core-combat abilities for obvious reasons.

I have to strongly disagree with that. If an ability is Stamina-based, you are using physical energy, not magical energy, and as such it makes no sense for a spell which specifically prevents the targeted person from being able to use magic would also prevent them from using their own physical energy.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I have to strongly disagree with that. If an ability is Stamina-based, you are using physical energy, not magical energy, and as such it makes no sense for a spell which specifically prevents the targeted person from being able to use magic would also prevent them from using their own physical energy.

I would agree, but many stamina abilities don't have anything to do with physical prowless.

Arm yourself with the power of Oblivion for 40 seconds, causing your Light and Heavy Attacks to summon a Bound weapon for 10 seconds, up to 4 times.

Summoning bound weapons from another dimension to fly near you isn't a martial thing.

Encase your weapon in dark crystals for 6 seconds, causing your next two Light or Heavy Attacks to deal additional damage and reduce the target's Armor by 1000 for 5 seconds.

Imbuing weapons with dark magic isn't a martial thing

Manifest yourself as pure air, buffeting nearby enemies with wind dealing 478 Physical Damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.

Turning yourself into air isn't martial thing

Summon an expanding beam of pure sunlight to doom an enemy, dealing 1161 Physical Damage immediately, marking them for 6 seconds

Unearth a skeletal archer from the dirt to fight by your side for 20 seconds

Siphon the vigor from your enemies' blood, dealing 1742 Disease Damage to all nearby enemies.

And so on and so on, you got my point. At this point non-weapon stamina skills are just a conventionality (with some exceptions), making them green and costing a green resource doesn't make them non-magical in any meaningful way. I can assume that these abilities use stamina as fuel, but it's still sorcery. And if we allow one conventionality then I don't see anything wrong with having another conventionality for the sake of balance.

PrinceShroob wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

INM wrote: »

Because it was designed when the game barely had any stamina skills, but now, when we have "the same as magicka, but green skills" it absolutely should work on every skills with the exception of core-combat abilities for obvious reasons.

I have to strongly disagree with that. If an ability is Stamina-based, you are using physical energy, not magical energy, and as such it makes no sense for a spell which specifically prevents the targeted person from being able to use magic would also prevent them from using their own physical energy.

That's a specious distinction. Biting Jabs and Power of the Light, for example, are magical abilities and are not blocked by Negate Magic. Conversely, Shield Wall, Rapid Fire, Lacerate, and Berserker Strike are nonmagical but are blocked by Negate Magic by dint of being Ultimates. Negate Magic does not prevent using light and heavy attacks from staves despite these being manifestations of the caster's power. It also, to my knowledge, does not prevent using light and heavy attacks after activating Mend Wounds, despite these being literal beams of magic.

Most skills are magic to some degree--unless we assume that, say, surrounding yourself in a cloud of shrapnel that follows you around (Blade Cloak) is completely mundane merely because it costs Stamina, or that violently siphoning the spark of life from a corpse (Shocking Siphon) is not magic because it does not cost Magicka.

Negate Magic takes its name from the Silence magic effect in Morrowind and Oblivion, but Silence also never truly blocked only magic--because Morrowind lacked the "immune to Silence" flag on spells, it could also block alits' poisonous bite or netches' poisonous gas, even though those are presumably natural abilities rather than cast magic. It's much better to view Negate Magic within the context of the game, that it does not prevent using Stamina-costing abilities because many Stamina-costing skills are melee-ranged; Negate Magic would prevent a melee-ranged character from hitting anything standing within the area, while a ranged combatant--that is, someone using Magicka-costing abilities--can move outside the area and continue to strike what's within.

Balance is purely the reason for why Negate Magic does not affect Stamina-costing skills; it has nothing to do with semantic arguments over what is and isn't "magic."

If you want to argue about whether or not certain abilities are "miscategorized" in terms of being magical or non-magical, that's fine. But if you want to rebut my comment, it would be most proper that you do so in reference to the specific comment which I was disagreeing with-- the one I bolded and italicized to make it clear what I was disagreeing with, which is the idea that Negate "absolutely should work on every skills" [sic]. That sweepingly-overgeneralized idea is what I disagree with, and that is a completely separate topic from whether some abilities are perhaps miscategorized and should also be affected by Negate. "Every skill" is not the same as "some skills," get it?

INM wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I have to strongly disagree with that. If an ability is Stamina-based, you are using physical energy, not magical energy, and as such it makes no sense for a spell which specifically prevents the targeted person from being able to use magic would also prevent them from using their own physical energy.

I would agree, but many stamina abilities don't have anything to do with physical prowless.

Arm yourself with the power of Oblivion for 40 seconds, causing your Light and Heavy Attacks to summon a Bound weapon for 10 seconds, up to 4 times.

Summoning bound weapons from another dimension to fly near you isn't a martial thing.

Encase your weapon in dark crystals for 6 seconds, causing your next two Light or Heavy Attacks to deal additional damage and reduce the target's Armor by 1000 for 5 seconds.

Imbuing weapons with dark magic isn't a martial thing

Manifest yourself as pure air, buffeting nearby enemies with wind dealing 478 Physical Damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.

Turning yourself into air isn't martial thing

Summon an expanding beam of pure sunlight to doom an enemy, dealing 1161 Physical Damage immediately, marking them for 6 seconds

Unearth a skeletal archer from the dirt to fight by your side for 20 seconds

Siphon the vigor from your enemies' blood, dealing 1742 Disease Damage to all nearby enemies.

And so on and so on, you got my point. At this point non-weapon stamina skills are just a conventionality (with some exceptions), making them green and costing a green resource doesn't make them non-magical in any meaningful way. I can assume that these abilities use stamina as fuel, but it's still sorcery. And if we allow one conventionality then I don't see anything wrong with having another conventionality for the sake of balance.

See my reply above to the other poster about possible "miscategorization" of certain skills.

And if you're going to suggest that "every skill" should be Negated except for "core-combat abilities," then perhaps you should define precisely what you consider to be a "core-combat ability," since your argument seems to be that abilities currently are categorized incorrectly as far as whether or not they involve some sort of magical action or effect. [Edit: What I'm trying to say there is that if the water is muddy so to speak as far as what's what, then we should try to make the water clearer, and in this case that means being more specific rather than being less specific.]

As far as the example of staves which do magical damage, I would argue that the single-player Elder Scrolls games do not prevent a Silenced player from using enchanted items or potions that have magical (or, if you prefer, non-restorative) effects. Why is that? It's because enchanted items and potions do not require any spell-casting ability on the part of the player; even character classes which have no Magicka or "Spell Points" whatsoever can use them. That includes staves which fire magical effects at enemies, because those magical effects come from spells which have been enchanted into the staves (and limited amounts of magical charges which have been imbued to them), not from the character's own pool of Magicka or Spell Points.

Whoa this got moved to "players helping players" section? How is any of this about Players helping Players? How about "Combat and character mechanics" at least?

Dead thread I guess.

danno8 wrote: »

Whoa this got moved to "players helping players" section? How is any of this about Players helping Players? How about "Combat and character mechanics" at least?

Dead thread I guess.

Yeah, I would have thought Combat to be a better choice, too. But I guess the idea is that this discussion consists of players trying to help each other understand the topic in question? I dunno. /shrug

Technically, the "silence" effect of Negate is actually just a secondary effect, since the main effect (as indicated in the way its description is worded) is to nullify any existing AOEs. Its secondary effect is to stun NPC enemies without silencing them, but to silence players instead of stunning them.

It seems unfair for there to be a difference like that, but if there were to be any changes to the secondary effect then I'd vote for silencing both NPCs and players but not stunning them, as opposed to stunning them both but not silencing them. I hate that NPC mage guards can silence me with Negate when I'm soloing a resource, but if I use Negate on them then they can still use magic against me.

OBJnoob wrote: »

I don't think stuns are the antithesis to silences. Someone who is stunned can't cast magic abilities either. There really should be something in the game that acts as a silence for stam abilities not including core combat abilities. Let's use the word skills instead if that's easier to wrap our minds around.

A stun is not as long in duration as a skill like Negate. And stun or CC still requires stamina to break free. If you are running a stamina character, then stuns and CC's have a direct impact on your ability to use skills to inflict damage or heal (i.e. Vigor). If I have 20,000 in stamina resources, and I have to use 5,000 to break free, then I have lost 25% of my resources for healing or damage. Can you still technically inflict damage while CC'd? Sure. For about a second or two until you die.

A magicka character does not have those concerns as stamina is only there to sprint, block, break free, etc. so they constantly have 100% of their resources to heal or cause damage. To the point some magicka builds will intentionally deplete their stamina resources to increase their magicka damage.

While its not a perfect corollary, and until magicka is also used to break free, block, or sprint [something I am not advocating for], silence is one skill used to even the playing field in PVP between stamina and magicka. If you were to extend "silence" to effect a stamina character in the same way, why would anyone run a stamina DD in PVP? Hit a stamsorc with Negate, then annihilate them because they can't fight, heal, or break free. It would be pointless.

AdamLAD wrote: »

You forget than stamina users have much higher stamina pools and way higher stamina recoveries than a magicka user. So by ur own very logic if a magicka user has 10k stamina and breakfree costs 5k. He is now loosing 50% of his stamina which is double of the stamina users 25% whilst simultaneously having less stamina recovery and not being able to cast any abilities

And you forget that the magicka resource on a stamina character is mostly useless, as you have acknowledged in your argument that Negate has no effect on a stamina character. Again, can you use magicka to sprint? Break free? So its not the same.

If it were the same, a stamina character hit with a CC should be able to use magicka to get away. But since you can't, if you hit a stamina player with a Negate that effects stamina the same way it effects magicka, you suddenly have a character that can't use any skills, AND can't break free, sprint, block, etc. Heck, at that point, both magicka and stamina are stuck and these boards light up complaining that Negate is OP and needs to be nerfed.