From a "new player's" perspective, hybrid scaling feels terrible

CS310 · May 2023

I've owned the game for a solid two years now but never actually bothered to play it for more than an hour every few months before bouncing off. Now I've finally "clicked" with the game and have played nothing else for a week. Finding out about the hybrid scaling, the fact that weapon- and magic-based abilities scale off of whichever stat is higher, has left me feeling incredibly deflated. I feel like a toddler in a playpen who cannot be trusted with picking the appropriate stats for the character I want to make, and this tears into the fantasy of it in my opinion.

As someone who, for all intents and purposes, is still a fresh newbie, the mechanic that is meant to cater to me makes me feel disrespected instead.
I would appreciate if this change was, at least partially, undone in the future, to re-increase the impact of buildcrafting.

Cheveyo · May 2023

No.

The way things work now actually allows for greater "buildcrafting". Before the change, you went full stam or mag based on which kind of damage you wanted to do. ZERO choice. ZERO "buildcrafting". Pick Blue for magic, Green for Physical and poison.

The way the game currently works actually allows for more diverse builds and allows for hybrids to exist. As someone who tried to make a hybrid Templar when the game first launched, let me tell you it was miserable back then. I struggled in those big dungeons with the group events. I had to work my ass off to kill packs of enemies. I finally gave up and went full Stam. It was like night and day. Things I struggled to beat before, I steamrolled.

Now, you can make a viable hybrid build.

tsaescishoeshiner · May 2023

Glad you've been getting into the game, and too bad about that setback.

Keep it simple: For your attributes, pick either Max Magicka or Max Stamina. It might make sense to pick whichever one you want to use more skills from.

Weapon damage and spell damage: don't worry! Most sources that give one actually give both. Same with critical.

Which skills to use? Pick one spammable (a direct damage skill that deals 7k+ damage) and then a lot of DoTs, a heal, and whatever buffs you need. It doesn't matter which resource they cost if you can sustain it. Some builds use only one, and some use both.

In sum, you use very little from treating yourself as "just mag" or "just stam".

AcadianPaladin · May 2023

I like the hybrid scaling and, as said above, it expands the types of builds you can make. Go all in for either blue or stam based on your primary weapon and your spammable. Then, when selecting skills add in one or two that use the other resource to find a sweet spot of balancing your use of mag and stam. One nice result is less reliance on high mag/stam regen allowing you to focus on other areas like crit $ and weapon/spell damage.

fred4 · May 2023

ZOS are gradually moving towards unifying that aspect of the game, which currently retains unique weapon and spell damage mundus stones and unique minor class passives. In those cases the distinction between spell and weapon damage still matters. In most it does not and your weapon / spell damage will turn out identical, making the distinction moot. The reason you aren't being catered to, as you put it, is because ZOS haven't finished what they began. That said it's a complex game and the complexity is part of it's appeal. Looked at it from that angle, this is just one more thing to wrap your head around.

kringled_1 · May 2023

I think the potion derived buffs are also specific to weapon or spell damage, but those are the only major things that aren't hybridized.
Roaring opportunist still looks at spell damage and not weapon for things on the other side of the stat.