How would you rate stamina based damage compared to magicka based damage?

trimsic_ESO

Many of us have tried a lot of different builds in order to see whether or not it was possible to have a viable stamina based damage template. But it looks like no one managed to find one.

Hence my question for this poll.

SirPuppingtonVonHat

For an average build at near level-cap or at level cap, stamina/weapon builds are currently slightly behind, especially in terms of self sustainability. For high-end builds, magicka is miles ahead.

(Wasn't a fan of the poll options.)

trimsic_ESO

Stamina based damage just sucks

I'm not a big fan of polls too, but there is a time when we must react. And this time has come.

Gilvoth

Stamina based damage just sucks

trimsic_ESO wrote: »

I'm not a big fan of polls too, but there is a time when we must react. And this time has come.

Gilvoth

Stamina based damage just sucks

SirPuppingtonVonHat wrote: »

For an average build at near level-cap or at level cap, stamina/weapon builds are currently slightly behind, especially in terms of self sustainability. For high-end builds, magicka is miles ahead.

(Wasn't a fan of the poll options.)

it's not just a slight amount.
it is a very noticable amount of less damage done by stamina based weapons!

Laura

Magicka based damage just sucks

am I doing this right? I think we need a recount.

The ballot was confusing. - Florida








(joking aside stamina attacks suck)

patrykplawskib16_ESO

Stamina based damage just sucks

agree we need samina to be the same as magika other wise its useless building a guy with weapon abilities but to use some abilities as CC or something.

Rosveen

Stamina based damage just sucks

I don't know why this is even a question.

Lynx7386

Stamina based damage just sucks

There's a fundamental flaw with stamina based builds in this game: Stamina is used for too many other 'gimmicks' to be relied on as your sole source of damage.

Blocking, dodging, CC breaking, interrupting/bashing, sprinting, and sneaking all use up stamina, and not in any small amount. These are all things that are vital and intrinsic to combat in this game - you have to block heavy attacks, you have to dodge things you cant block, you have to break out of crowd control effects to keep from being pinned down, you have to interrupt enemy spellcasters, you have to sprint to close distance with your enemy (or retreat from them), and some builds at least are reliant on sneaking to get within melee range or avoid enemy attention.

When you're using all of these things in combat, your stamina bar is going to be constantly strained. If you add in stamina-based abilities and attacks on top of that, you're killing your own survivability by depriving yourself of the resource needed to continue doing those things.

A magic based character uses magicka for one thing, and one thing only: Casting. Spells, defensive abilities, utility, crowd control, damage, buffs, healing. While they're doing all this casting, they still have 100% of their stamina bar available for blocking, dodging, cc breaking, interrupting/bashing, sprinting, and sneaking, and because most of those things take a percentage of your max stamina rather than a set amount it doesnt really matter that they dont have a bunch of points invested in stamina - they'll be able to do that stuff just as often as a player who has 49 points in stamina.




What ZOS really needs to do is add a new resource type, under health perhaps, called "energy" or something to that effect. This 'energy' resource would be the same for all players, scale based on level only, and would be utilized for blocking, dodging, cc breaking, interrupting/bashing, sprinting, and sneaking. This way, all players - regardless of build or what stats they put their points into - would be able to use these effects equally.

That would free up stamina to be used solely for attacks and abilities, just like magicka is currently.









Now, all that fundamental stuff out of the way, there's another issue that's currently hurting stamina vs magicka builds - a magic build will utilize light armor, which gives up to a 21% reduction in cost for all magicka based abilities. Neither medium armor nor heavy armor offers a similar reduction in cost for stamina based abilities.

This is somewhat countered by the fact that every weapon tree has a passive to reduce stamina cost of that tree's abilities by 20%, but it seems like these passives are not properly working. There's also the fact that the light armor passive also reduces the cost of class abilities, which even a heavy stamina user is going to be reliant on to some degree - but a stamina user will not have heavy investment in magicka points, so those more expensive class skills (because of the lack of the light armor passive) now require even more of the resource pool than they should.


Lastly, compare any magicka ability vs an equivalent stamina ability, and you'll notice that the magicka ability will do more damage at lower resource cost than the stamina ability does. This is just a basic balancing issue the devs need to go back and look at - equality between damage types doesnt exist right now.

Nox_Aeterna

What is the point of this poll really?

There is no point in voting in this.

Just check the numbers, stamina got lower values , what people think of it , wont change this fact.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

Stamina based damage just sucks

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Now, all that fundamental stuff out of the way, there's another issue that's currently hurting stamina vs magicka builds - a magic build will utilize light armor, which gives up to a 21% reduction in cost for all magicka based abilities. Neither medium armor nor heavy armor offers a similar reduction in cost for stamina based abilities.

This is somewhat countered by the fact that every weapon tree has a passive to reduce stamina cost of that tree's abilities by 20%, but it seems like these passives are not properly working. There's also the fact that the light armor passive also reduces the cost of class abilities, which even a heavy stamina user is going to be reliant on to some degree - but a stamina user will not have heavy investment in magicka points, so those more expensive class skills (because of the lack of the light armor passive) now require even more of the resource pool than they should.


Lastly, compare any magicka ability vs an equivalent stamina ability, and you'll notice that the magicka ability will do more damage at lower resource cost than the stamina ability does. This is just a basic balancing issue the devs need to go back and look at - equality between damage types doesnt exist right now.

Add on to this that Light armor has another trait that gets up to 42% spell resist penetration. Nothing in the melee skill lines or armor trees offers anything to the effect of Armor penetration.

The armor tree's skills for medium and heavy armor also cost stamina, and there is nothing to reduce this outside of jewelry, meanwhile light armors reduce magicka use trait reduces the magicka cost of the light armor skill....

Nothing to reduce to cost of fighters guild skills either. meanwhile light armor reduces the cost of all mages guild skills even tho the mages guild line has a trait to reduce the cost of mages guild skills already, decreasing them further. Undaunted and Vampire skills get reduced by light armor as well..

Overall, With light armor Magicka usage drops too far, one for things that shouldn't be decreased at all and 2 for things at are already decreased.

I see more and more people sporting the light armor every day.

Aoifesan

Stamina based damage just sucks

The absolutely simplest fixes are increasing stamina based weapon abilities damage by 20% or so ( to match their magicka counterparts output) and to reduce the weapon skill stamina cost by 50%, so the sustain is comparable given sprinting, blocking, roll dodging and all that jazz

Gwarok

They both compare equal

AND THEY NOW BOTH SUCK IN VETERAN LEVEL CONTENT!!!

Stormhaven is an unplayable zone @ VET4-5

@ZOS
#ThreeMonthRule

...and time is running out.

Yajnho

It's a bit on the theory crafting side for me at this point since I have not maxed out a character yet. But I play a variety of characters, and with my 2 hander I run out of stamina after one charge and one uppercut, particularly if I have dodged anything.

It seems obvious on the face of it that stamina has to be stretched farther than magicka. I wouldn't argue against a slight uptick in damage for stamina abilities. But I think the real solution is in decreasing stamina costs across the board, and increasing stamina recovery. This would increase the staying power of stamina builds considerably.

I would argue against increasing armor piercing abilities, there are already to many folks out there that feel heavy armor is useless, or at least that the mitigation it provides is useless. I suspect giving stamina abilities better sustained dps will fix this part of the complaint anyway. I would adjust one parameter at a time and reassess in any case.

Of course since I don't work for zos...

Obscure

Stamina based damage just sucks

Even if you can get similar damage numbers from Stamina skills they face the opportunity cost of not only no longer being able to use them once you're exhausted in Stamina, but also no more dodging, sprinting, sneaking, blocking, bashing, or CC breaking. Stamina specialization is high risk:low reward where Magicka specilization is low risk:high reward.

Fix? There's many ways it can be done and none of them are perfect. Personally I'd double the Stamina recovery soft cap, double the recovery bonus from Medium Armor (Windwalker passive), and increase the damage coefficient from Stamina for skills to be higher than the Magicka damage coefficient. Much faster regeneration of the resource and better return on resource allocation investment may solve the inequality. Otherwise we must continue to reserve 40% or more of our Stamina pool for mundane usage whilst a Magicka spec can spam without consequence.

The Mage archetype is the optimal play style for every role, be it Tank, DPS, or Healer. This thread is less a matter of opinion than it is a statement of a factual resource specialization inequality present in the game design.