Hi eveybody. I'm not gonna complain about dps difference between bow NB and DK with fire staff.That's obvious for almost everybody right now. Both pro and casual players admit dps imbalance. But there's enough topics on official and fan based forums about that.
Today i want to talk about other reasons of that imbalance not class imbalance. In my opinion it's a roll dodge mechanic and how it affects different type of builds. And weapon skill lines themselves.
About roll dodge:
Every player that have experience in veteran dungeons and trials knows that there's quite some encounters needs you to be fast and maneuver a lot. And the main tool we have for that is roll dodge. Of course there's some class skills that can replace roll dodge sometimes. But you have to put that skill on you ability bar what you definitely don't want to do when you have roll dodge right? And those abilities not gonna help you to avoid damage all the time. One of the option to replace roll dodge for example is bolt escape (sorcerer). But no sane destro staff sorcerer will ever use it in PvE. Why? The answer for that question is the answer for the qeustion why stamina builds suck right now and why most hardcore players prefer magicka based builds. And it's obvious. Because roll dodge costs stamina. STAMINA BUILDS NEEDS STAMINA TO DEAL DAMAGE. And the game forces you to spend that precious resource to roll dodge. And here's some more reasons why this brakes stamina based builds. Most of those builds are melee builds (bow is an exception but everybody knows it's not viable atm because of running out of stamina too fast and poor choise of synergy class abilities for that weapon). And melee builds REALLY NEED more (at least not less) options to maneuver because of the bad view of battle field and a lot of cone aoe damage and all that staff that don't affect range classes at all.
About weapon skill lines:
So if ranged magicka based builds are so good why everyone just can't use destro staff?
Because of the different synergy abilities for weapons. DK has passive that currently buff all fire damage (will be fixed in 1.2 but still) and sorcerer is the class which simply was designed for that type of weapon. While NB have 0 abilities that works well with destro. And it's ok. It's actually ok that some classes are better for magicka based builds and some for stamina. NB for example has really nice abilities for melee weapons ("Power extraction" for melee aoe and "Focused attacks" for single target). Dual wield abilities themselve needs buff. If you buff dual wield I don't think all sorcerer's will switch for dual right? Cause they still will be good with destro while NB will stand more in line with other classes that uses destro staff.
So here's several thoughts I have:
1) You can make roll dodge resource free ability. And you can put a cooldown on it so it won't brake current game mechanics completely. And btw will make movement class abilities more popular on some bosses that really force you to move a lot (don't know if it's good or bad but encounters will be more dynamic with that change in my opinion)
2) You can increase stamina amount we get from gear and attribute points compared to magicka bonus (cause right now it's equal). But of course that kind of balance can be very tricky.
3) You just can buff underpowered weapon skill lines like dual wielding or bow so you won't interrupt current class skill lines design.
P.S.:
I made this post not to whine (I'm playing Dual Night Blade so I have some reasons ^^) but to help to improve the game. Of course i can be wrong with some of my argues and will be glad if you will point on my mistakes with this post.
I hope both devs and community will pay attention to this post cause i really like TES universe. And i really like MMO's. And i was there since the game was announced. And i really hope that TESO will be one of the best MMO's in the future. I hope you are not too bored after reading this ^^ Thanks for your time and see you in game guys
Edited by Kurusnow on June 9, 2014 8:50AM