Concentration Light Armor Passive should be revisited.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2024

Hi everyone, i wanted to make a post on an issue that i think has flown under the radar for quite some time. That issue is armor types, specially the state of light armor.

It's fairly well known right now that medium armor is the way to go in pve as a dps right now. I know for example as a frost warden thats predominantly magicka based, that i use 6 medium and 1 light, simply because that's as far as i can go into medium before sustaining is absolutely impossible without needing to spend a ton of gcds spamming heavy attacks. Medium armor offering increased weapon and spell damage as well as critical damage simply provides so much more benefit to a dps than penetration and critical chance. While critical chance is incredibly strong, penetration is awful in organised pve content. It's simply not doing anything a lot of the time in groups, and therefore lessens the value of the armor type. Light armor is not a popular choice in any form of content i know of. And it's made worse by the armor downsides light has to deal with that medium doesn't, in not only losing inherent resistance from the pieces, but also taking increased physical damage and having reduced power from blocking. I also don't see how useful penetration is supposed to be for healers either. It doesn't do anything for healing output.

I propose that the concentration passive is updated to:

+1% damage done, healing done and damage shield strength per piece of light armor equipped.

now that shields are effected by major+minor vitality i think it's a reasonable suggestion to add this bonus to light armor as this is supposed to be armor for healers and magicka dps. additionally, this line has annulment as a damage shield and it would gain additional value from the bonus.

Penetration is not a bad stat in situations where it is getting value, however because groups (and not the player) build around it in organised content, it's simply not reasonable to keep it over a bonus that always gets value. I think penetration should be offered elsewhere.

I settled on 1% increased dmg, healing and damage shield strength for multiple reasons. Firstly, as minor and major vitality have been updated to increase shielding strength, it means that dmg shield and healing done bonuses can become more intertwined. Secondly, healing done is a useful bonus for healers instead of getting nothing from penetration. This also helps a light armored player to be just that bit more survivable which is something they absolutely need. Finally, 1% damage done should not be as strong as the increased weapon and spell damage bonus that medium armor gains, however i think that is fine as medium armor has crit damage when light has a stronger bonus in crit chance.

Magicka DPS should not be looking for ways to get rid of wearing light armor on their body. This issue just stifles magicka recovery and cost reduction as well as item set options.

Thanks for reading.

ZhuJiuyin · February 2024

Good advice, but I don't think the Penetration given by Concentration should be cancelled.
Medium Armor is the only type that doesn't have Penalties, so I think those armor types that do have Penalties should be given more advantages to make up for the loss caused by Penalties.
For example:
The Critical added by Prodigy has been increased from 219 to 657 (just equal to a bonus provided by the set.)
Concentration now adds healing done and damage shield in addition to Penetration.
In addition to the original effect of Evocation, an additional 2% of the maximum resources are added.

As for heavy armor, you can emphasize survival, such as:
In addition to its original effects, Juggernaut also adds a new feature that reduces the debuff time it receives.
Revitalize can add another new feature: reduce the stamina consumed when breaking free.

ZOS should give more advantages to light and heavy armor, so that medium armor is no longer the best choice in PVE and PVP.

Kartalin · February 2024

Adding healing done to light armor, whether as a passive or as part of the bonuses, would not be a bad thing. It would sort of mirror the healing taken passive that heavy armor has. But other than that, I think of all the balance issues present in ESO currently, armor balance is pretty low priority. I feel like it's in a pretty good place right now.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2024

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Good advice, but I don't think the Penetration given by Concentration should be cancelled.
Medium Armor is the only type that doesn't have Penalties, so I think those armor types that do have Penalties should be given more advantages to make up for the loss caused by Penalties.
For example:
The Critical added by Prodigy has been increased from 219 to 657 (just equal to a bonus provided by the set.)
Concentration now adds healing done and damage shield in addition to Penetration.
In addition to the original effect of Evocation, an additional 2% of the maximum resources are added.

As for heavy armor, you can emphasize survival, such as:
In addition to its original effects, Juggernaut also adds a new feature that reduces the debuff time it receives.
Revitalize can add another new feature: reduce the stamina consumed when breaking free.

ZOS should give more advantages to light and heavy armor, so that medium armor is no longer the best choice in PVE and PVP.

The penetration would be replaced with damage done. that would give benefit to the wearer at all times rather than nothing at all in organised group content.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2024

Kartalin wrote: »

Adding healing done to light armor, whether as a passive or as part of the bonuses, would not be a bad thing. It would sort of mirror the healing taken passive that heavy armor has. But other than that, I think of all the balance issues present in ESO currently, armor balance is pretty low priority. I feel like it's in a pretty good place right now.

I think it's actually a pretty large issue that severely effects build creation for many players. Light armor being this weak makes us use less light armor sets due to wanting to avoid it on our body. It also means mag characters sacrificing way more sustain than medium characters just to compete in damage.

Dagoth_Rac · February 2024

Crit chance and penetration would be nice in Infinite Archive, but the incoming damage is so intense that wearing light armor is suicidal.

ZhuJiuyin · February 2024

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Good advice, but I don't think the Penetration given by Concentration should be cancelled.
Medium Armor is the only type that doesn't have Penalties, so I think those armor types that do have Penalties should be given more advantages to make up for the loss caused by Penalties.
For example:
The Critical added by Prodigy has been increased from 219 to 657 (just equal to a bonus provided by the set.)
Concentration now adds healing done and damage shield in addition to Penetration.
In addition to the original effect of Evocation, an additional 2% of the maximum resources are added.

As for heavy armor, you can emphasize survival, such as:
In addition to its original effects, Juggernaut also adds a new feature that reduces the debuff time it receives.
Revitalize can add another new feature: reduce the stamina consumed when breaking free.

ZOS should give more advantages to light and heavy armor, so that medium armor is no longer the best choice in PVE and PVP.

The penetration would be replaced with damage done. that would give benefit to the wearer at all times rather than nothing at all in organised group content.

Of course, in an organized team, Penetration is less important. But not all the time we can meet an organized team.
So I think the original Penetration passive of light armor should still be retained, and additional buffs should be added on top of it. Otherwise, some classes that lack Penetration will be affected and forced to choose some bonus sets with Penetration to make up for the lack of Penetration, but this will make them give up the better 5 sets bonus. (For example, replace Aegis Caller with Icy Conjurer, etc.)

So please don't get me wrong, I support improving the passive of light armor, I just think that the original Penetration passive should not be cancelled.
The best change to light armor should be to provide more damage gains without changing the original effect, such as more Critical Chance, maximum resources (different from the 2% damage of medium armor), healing, and shields improvement, etc.
Let light armor, an armor with a punishing passive, provide more effects than medium armor to truly provide incentives and make up for the punishment brought by the passive.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2024

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Good advice, but I don't think the Penetration given by Concentration should be cancelled.
Medium Armor is the only type that doesn't have Penalties, so I think those armor types that do have Penalties should be given more advantages to make up for the loss caused by Penalties.
For example:
The Critical added by Prodigy has been increased from 219 to 657 (just equal to a bonus provided by the set.)
Concentration now adds healing done and damage shield in addition to Penetration.
In addition to the original effect of Evocation, an additional 2% of the maximum resources are added.

As for heavy armor, you can emphasize survival, such as:
In addition to its original effects, Juggernaut also adds a new feature that reduces the debuff time it receives.
Revitalize can add another new feature: reduce the stamina consumed when breaking free.

ZOS should give more advantages to light and heavy armor, so that medium armor is no longer the best choice in PVE and PVP.

The penetration would be replaced with damage done. that would give benefit to the wearer at all times rather than nothing at all in organised group content.

Of course, in an organized team, Penetration is less important. But not all the time we can meet an organized team.
So I think the original Penetration passive of light armor should still be retained, and additional buffs should be added on top of it. Otherwise, some classes that lack Penetration will be affected and forced to choose some bonus sets with Penetration to make up for the lack of Penetration, but this will make them give up the better 5 sets bonus. (For example, replace Aegis Caller with Icy Conjurer, etc.)

So please don't get me wrong, I support improving the passive of light armor, I just think that the original Penetration passive should not be cancelled.
The best change to light armor should be to provide more damage gains without changing the original effect, such as more Critical Chance, maximum resources (different from the 2% damage of medium armor), healing, and shields improvement, etc.
Let light armor, an armor with a punishing passive, provide more effects than medium armor to truly provide incentives and make up for the punishment brought by the passive.

I suppose it would be fine as long as the end result is wearing light armor is around the same as wearing full medium in optimised group content. in addition to adding healing done and damage shield strength bonuses to help survivability and healer's output.

Zodiarkslayer · February 2024

While I absolutely agree that light armour could use a boost in organised PvE, I would hate to loose my passive penetration in SOLO ESO.
There are many more players playing alone and without aid from abilities, sets or glyphs to punch through monster armor value. I mean, is everybody now expected to wear Alkosh, Tremorscale and use an Infused crusher glyph on the frontbar, when they want to farm some WBs? Just to offset the pen loss? Or will we be expected to run mauls and maces on magicka toons?
It is much harder to source penetration for a solo player. The cat bites its tail here.

@ESO_Nightingale Deleting passive penetration means effectively a drop of anywhere between 2% to 14% in damage. Remember, the concentration passive gives 939 pen per piece and 500 armor value means about 1% of damage mitigation. So, if anything, you'll need 2% damage done as the bonus of your new light armor passive. Not just 1%. And at that you'll still havent buffed light armor. You switched out one bottleneck for another.

One could also argue, that it isnt light armor that is weak, but medium that is too strong. 😳 I think you cannot change one armor type and have a good balance for everyone, without touching at least the other two, or providing accessible bonuses to penetration in other areas of the game to set off the net loss.

Penetration is really tough to balance, imo, because, even if you only just scratch the surface, you'll create so many ripples in the pond. And maybe even waves.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2024

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

While I absolutely agree that light armour could use a boost in organised PvE, I would hate to loose my passive penetration in SOLO ESO.
There are many more players playing alone and without aid from abilities, sets or glyphs to punch through monster armor value. I mean, is everybody now expected to wear Alkosh, Tremorscale and use an Infused crusher glyph on the frontbar, when they want to farm some WBs? Just to offset the pen loss? Or will we be expected to run mauls and maces on magicka toons?
It is much harder to source penetration for a solo player. The cat bites its tail here.

@ESO_Nightingale Deleting passive penetration means effectively a drop of anywhere between 2% to 14% in damage. Remember, the concentration passive gives 939 pen per piece and 500 armor value means about 1% of damage mitigation. So, if anything, you'll need 2% damage done as the bonus of your new light armor passive. Not just 1%. And at that you'll still havent buffed light armor. You switched out one bottleneck for another.

One could also argue, that it isnt light armor that is weak, but medium that is too strong. 😳 I think you cannot change one armor type and have a good balance for everyone, without touching at least the other two, or providing accessible bonuses to penetration in other areas of the game to set off the net loss.

Penetration is really tough to balance, imo, because, even if you only just scratch the surface, you'll create so many ripples in the pond. And maybe even waves.

while i understand that you don't want to lose penetration, i fail to see how a bonus that always gets value is worse than one that only gets varying levels of value from nearly nothing in an organised group, to a lot when not in a group or one that is not well organised. raw damage is not a bottleneck. it's uncapped unlike penetration. i do however agree that penetration should be shifted elsewhere as i stated in my post. however, where would be appropriate, i'm not sure, though i'm sure there are multiple ways you can do it. without pointing at any specific bonuses or passives, the issue with light armor is that it's not offensively potent enough, as well as too defensively weak, while not accomodating an audience of the armor, healers. it's simply not strong enough as is, so if zos was to apply changes that fix that, that would be good. If that involves not touching penetration, i suppose that's fine.