Blocking Mechanic and Instant Abilities - why magicka builds trump stamina builds

Erock25 · May 2014

Just to preface, this is referring to VR content where standard mobs hit for 500+ and of course for PVP.

Maybe I'm wrong and a bad player for thinking this, but I really feel like a great way to go about PVP and certain PVE scenarios (basically where there are multiple mobs and you can not keep all of them CC'd) is to hold block down the entire time while using instant casts (with light attack weaving thrown in for good measure where possible). What this does, because of how block animations overrides all others, is basically allows you to perma-block, which prevents many CCs and greatly reduces incoming damage. I feel like this mechanic alone is what is causing a great imbalance between classes and also promoting people to use magicka builds because they must reserve all of their stamina for blocking/CC breaks.

I hate this mechanic, because it dissuades me from focusing on melee weapons skills and basic attacks. Sure, I can make melee work currently as VR3 Sorc, but I feel I must conserve stamina, which does two things... A) prevents me from holding down block and

promotes the use of basic attacks (light and heavy) which is also preventing me from holding down block.

I expect people to respond to this thread calling me a bad player, etc., for struggling with melee, but I really have given it a full effort and tried to analyze why magicka focused builds work better. No matter what combinations I try for melee, nothing beats Impulse spam (of course you are using whatever your class has to compliment Impulse as well) while holding block for AOE situations. It doesn't matter if I'm armor and spell resist soft capped, the best defense is block. As I said before, I can make melee work but it takes 3x the effort and every pack fight leaves me completely drained of resources while magicka focused build with Impulse spam is a cakewalk.

I'm not sure if I'm alone in this assessment and look forward to reading some constructive criticism if you think I am wrong. I personally can not see a melee/stamina focused build ever being as efficient as magicka focused as long as blocking eats away at stamina. This mainly applies to PVP and PVE scenarios in which you are taking damage (solo pve and group pve where there are adds). The only quick and dirty possible solutions are to create a new resource for blocking/interrupts/and CC breaks or to possible have a passive and universal stamina tap attached to all stamina using skills.

Amsel_McKay · May 2014

"I personally can not see a melee/stamina focused build ever being as efficient as magicka focused as long as blocking eats away at stamina"

Its not the blocking that is the problem for me its that I run everywhere and when I get to an attack I have so wait for that to regen

.

In all seriousness though melee will not work in ESO because almost all of the class abilities are mana. If the spear line with templar was stamina I would have been a stamina build but its magic, so I focus on light armor and large mana pools. I can spam jabs 12 times at v1 where as my melee abilities I can use 5 times at v1. And with the restro staff I can recharge mana between stuns so i never have down time.

nerevarine1138 · May 2014

Oh my Talos, again? Really? Did you need to raise this poor horse from the dead just to beat it back down again?

Stop conflating melee with stamina. Not all abilities that use magicka are ranged/spells, and not all abilities that use stamina are melee. The best builds use a balance of the two, and staff users actually face a significant issue when they can't keep enemies at a distance due to their builds having to be entirely centered on magicka use.

Erock25 · May 2014

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Oh my Talos, again? Really? Did you need to raise this poor horse from the dead just to beat it back down again?

Stop conflating melee with stamina. Not all abilities that use magicka are ranged/spells, and not all abilities that use stamina are melee. The best builds use a balance of the two, and staff users actually face a significant issue when they can't keep enemies at a distance due to their builds having to be entirely centered on magicka use.

I'm aware the not all magicka is ranged and all stamina is melee. I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at though and how it relates to my point. My point is that blocking = stamina and melee + bow weapon skills = stamina. Either block is too powerful or melee weapon skills are not powerful enough, because it is not worth using them when you could be using that stamina for blocking.

Mephos · May 2014

Just to preface, this is referring to VR content where standard mobs hit for 500+ and of course for PVP.

stopped reading there:

full cloth temp with 800 armor.

auto attack of a mob (average) around 200 - 250
channeld attack of melee mob around 650 (should be blocked)
channeld ranged attack (snare) around 600 (should be blocked/cancelled)
fire attack (I´m a vampire -50% fire resistance) hit me for about 400-600

Like I said this is without any armor and no blocking.
If you get hit by a 500+ attack its your own fault for not blocking, not rolling, not CCing. The game is designed to punish "run & gun" gameplay (run in, kill stuff, run to next)

edit: ok I did read the rest

magicka based builds lack the option to reduce incoming dmg by using stamina. you can do that, but you are VERY limited. therefore stamina build has the advantage of

a) more block/roll -> evade, reduce dmg
b) PVP (more cc breaking available)

magicka based builds don´t have that in this extend. I can only speak for my templar, but I don´t break CC in PvP. I use my magicka to HEAL incoming dmg and use stamina mainly for blocking or rolling (or charging with 1h/shield for stun). I do this because if I break CC with stamina it drains me that fast that the next hard CC will kill me properly. I only break CC when I´m about to die.

magicka based builds have more dmg in general I think. Many dps skills scale better with magicka, but you lack defense at all in my opinion. Except your a bolt escape mage that can kite for days. for a templar if you go full magicka your stuck at your enemie without any option to get away. any stamina build will stomp you in pvp if they know how to block your attacks.

edit 2:

I don´t know if there is something different for mages spamming impulse, but I think there is a lack of good AoE stamina abillities. I tried caldrops from pvp, but it just drains all your stamina (but good aoe dmg).

I also struggle when using a stamina build when doing groups of mobs. it takes longer then spamming aoe magicka abillites.

Kyotee0071 · May 2014

@Erock25 Please see my old thread here for a lot of info regarding the flawed combat system that needs addressed:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/85594/major-combat-flaw-animation-canceling-damage-stacking-devs-please-look-here/p1

Thanks

Erock25 · May 2014

Mephos wrote: »

Like I said this is without any armor and no blocking.
If you get hit by a 500+ attack its your own fault for not blocking, not rolling, not CCing. The game is designed to punish "run & gun" gameplay (run in, kill stuff, run to next)

This is my point though. With magicka focused set up, I have tons of excess stamina to block/dodge/etc. With a focus on melee and stamina, I block a couple of heavy attacks/ranged snare attacks and I am out of my primary resource.

Erock25 · May 2014

Kyotee0071 wrote: »

@Erock25 Please see my old thread here for a lot of info regarding the flawed combat system that needs addressed:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/85594/major-combat-flaw-animation-canceling-damage-stacking-devs-please-look-here/p1

Thanks

I'm familiar with Kutsuu and follow Tamriel Foundry. I agree with what you linked and how it is a problem. It does relate to this topic in how blocking overrides all other animations but I'm not sure what you are specifically getting at in regards to this topic and how magicka focused builds benefit from the blocking mechanic more than stamina ones. I only read the first page of that link but I do agree that there are deep seeded flaws in the combat system that your link exposes.

nerevarine1138 · May 2014

Erock25 wrote: »

Mephos wrote: »

Like I said this is without any armor and no blocking.
If you get hit by a 500+ attack its your own fault for not blocking, not rolling, not CCing. The game is designed to punish "run & gun" gameplay (run in, kill stuff, run to next)

This is my point though. With magicka focused set up, I have tons of excess stamina to block/dodge/etc. With a focus on melee and stamina, I block a couple of heavy attacks/ranged snare attacks and I am out of my primary resource.

With a magicka-focused build, you aren't putting enough points into stamina to have "tons of excess stamina" to do those things with.

Kyotee0071 · May 2014

Erock25 wrote: »

What this does, because of how block animations overrides all others, is basically allows you to perma-block, which prevents many CCs and greatly reduces incoming damage. I feel like this mechanic alone is what is causing a great imbalance between classes and also promoting people to use magicka builds because they must reserve all of their stamina for blocking/CC breaks.

I was just referring that thread because you mentioned the block overriding all other animations. Also my thread's major issue is animation canceling which revolves around using bash/block to override the animations.

Sorry if you felt it was out of place. Was just trying to back up the animation canceling part of your post.

Also I fully agree with you this :

Erock25 wrote: »

I personally can not see a melee/stamina focused build ever being as efficient as magicka focused as long as blocking eats away at stamina. This mainly applies to PVP and PVE scenarios in which you are taking damage (solo pve and group pve where there are adds). The only quick and dirty possible solutions are to create a new resource for blocking/interrupts/and CC breaks or to possible have a passive and universal stamina tap attached to all stamina using skills.

As well as thinking the stamina based/ weapon abilities could use some major love. There is a reason a huge percentage of VR content folks are relying on magicka based builds.

1 - Exactly what your post is implying. Save that stamina for blocking/defense.

2- Stamina based abilities (weapons) just don't have the damage output as magicka based abilities.

Kyo

Erock25 · May 2014

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

Mephos wrote: »

Like I said this is without any armor and no blocking.
If you get hit by a 500+ attack its your own fault for not blocking, not rolling, not CCing. The game is designed to punish "run & gun" gameplay (run in, kill stuff, run to next)

This is my point though. With magicka focused set up, I have tons of excess stamina to block/dodge/etc. With a focus on melee and stamina, I block a couple of heavy attacks/ranged snare attacks and I am out of my primary resource.

With a magicka-focused build, you aren't putting enough points into stamina to have "tons of excess stamina" to do those things with.

The stamina softcap is close enough to the baseline stamina that even going way over softcap, you will end up with more blocking/dodging/ccbreak stamina using a all magicka build.

Obscure · May 2014

Magicka Builds > Stamina Builds

Roll a Sorc and everything from getting around quickly to murdering everything in an AoE is all easily managed with magicka. Anything with a Stamina focus is distinctly restricted with the exact same specialization, and can't get their skills as cheap as they could with magicka (Light Armor reduction in addition to skill line and jewelry reduction). The game design put entirely too much emphasis on the mundane uses for Stamina (CC break, Sprint, Sneak, Dodge, Block, and Bash). So much so that to use it to also primally use skills that consume it is a sub optimal build strategy.

Look at every high end farming spec or PvP spec and you will see the overwhelming majority have a large emphasis on Magicka, with little to no focus on Stamina. This is not a coincidence. Magicka specialization is in every way superior to Stamina specialization: More skills use it than Stamina (more build versatility), skills that use it can be made 21% cheaper than Stamina no matter how hard you try (superior resource management), there's no need to worry about draining the resource due to non-skill mechanics that require it (no consequences for skill spamming), and by focusing on only Magicka based skills you've optimized your build for using Stamina defensively automatically (more survivability and sustainability by default).

All of the Stamina based skills should have their costs heavily reduced, or their effects dramatically enhanced to facilitate practical usage of Stamina for skills. Otherwise when people finally get over trying to "play how they want to play" and get sick of being taxed at every turn because they've burnt out on Stamina, they'll all just be wearing light armor and spamming the *** out of magicka skills just holding down block 99% of their time in combat. It's a huge design flaw, and is front and center in every build that is making a the game their dirty little ***.