Improvements for Stamina-Based Skills and Passives

Thejollygreenone

Tobiz wrote: »

OkieDokie wrote: »

Again, you guys are assuming magicka and stamina builds should be even. They've never said that.

Therefore, all these suggestions might be a waste of effort, because we don't really know if we should be talking about dps or resource management until
they actually say it.

I agree with you on this.
With the current construction of max 5 skills a stamina based skill has little to no place unless for flavor and rp. Even with a stam build I need heals and cc that are all on magicka. The 2 skills i have from weapon trees are easily surpassed by class skills in damage, and this is with a full stam build. No magicka enhancements.
Each and every magicka based skill does more, scales better and has a wide variety of synergies from passives, cross tree skills, ultimates. Stamina has none of the above and is often based on restrictions such as target below 25% health in order to even compare.
Unfortunately this IS an rp game wheather you want to rp or not and physical melee is a classical playstile that is and should be different but compareable to magicka based playstiles.
If there were testing of VR content before release, then either they did not test A) magicka, because they can solo the "group" VR content without many problems.
magicka vs stamina comparison, because they do not compare.
C)either, because magicka is supposed to be the only viable choice to scale your character.
Thus we need a Zos response to understand if stamina based skills were intended for rp flavor only.

This is one of the funniest responses I've seen yet, assuming so much. Hell, if stamina dps wasn't meant to be a serious dps option, this thread wouldn't exist. End of story.

The fact that they're putting themselves out there and saying they know this play-style is under-preforming is evidence enough that the developers of the game intended stamina and magicka based play-styles respectively to be a worth option in dps.

Furthermore, yes as a stamina build you need self heals and cc, just like magicka builds. But oh, guess what? You have access to both of those things in stamina form! (Prime examples: Blood Craze, Uppercut) Even if you didn't have those, pure stamina builds wouldn't make sense using 0 magicka abilities just like pure magicka builds dont use 0 stamina.

Pure magicka players still dodge, block, sprint, and even use active abilities like immovable that all cost stamina. In the same way, stamina pure builds should sacrifice an active ability slot or two for some magicka based spells that don't do damage but instead enhance one's stamina dps capability and/or adds needed defenses (Prime examples: Haste, Surge/Critical Surge, Green Dragons Blood, Igneous Weapons etc)

There are enough mechanics in the game as evidence for this to hold true. The only argument you bring up that is true/relevant is that stamina damaging abilities don't scale as well and therefore do less damage. This is true, but a flaw and is being worked upon, in time I assume this argument will become invalid. See changes for poison arrow, flurry, snipe, etc. The bit about restrictions certainly is also in existence, and limits our synergy, but I wouldn't say it's one of the big factors as to why stamina dps is under-preforming.

But what confuses me about your post particularly is that you question whether or not stamina dps was intended to compete, yet you go on to say this:

Tobiz wrote: »

...Unfortunately this IS an rp game wheather you want to rp or not and physical melee is a classical playstile that is and should be different but compareable to magicka based playstiles.

If you even know yourself that weapon based dps has been more than flavor in the past, why would you go so far as to assume that a game that has put so much time into that very same playstyle (there are a whopping SEVEN total stamina skill trees even though you only ever use up to four at once), actually intended said playstyle that has so much time put into it, to actually be somewhat of a joke playstyle that was never intended to output similar dps.

With all this in mind, the fact that such a conclusion as this can still be reached appalls me. The evidence is overwhelming that Stamina dps was meant to be competitive with Magicka dps, the only evidence that suggests otherwise is the current poor state of balance between the two WHICH HAS BEEN STATED IS BEING WORKED UPON, AND IS WHY WE'RE HERE IN THIS THREAD.

How people can still question whether or not the developers intended stamina dps to do so much less than magicka, in a developer thread intended to increase stamina dps, just hurts my brain.

To everyone who keeps asserting stamina dps may not be intended to do similar dps to magicka: You're being silly. Listen to what you're saying for Nirn's sake and look at the thread you're in. One last time, if stamina dps wasn't meant to be anything more than flavor, THEN THIS THREAD WOULDN'T EXIST.

/endrant (sorry folks)

Eivar

Thejollygreenone wrote: »

Tobiz wrote: »

OkieDokie wrote: »

Again, you guys are assuming magicka and stamina builds should be even. They've never said that.

Therefore, all these suggestions might be a waste of effort, because we don't really know if we should be talking about dps or resource management until
they actually say it.

I agree with you on this.
With the current construction of max 5 skills a stamina based skill has little to no place unless for flavor and rp. Even with a stam build I need heals and cc that are all on magicka. The 2 skills i have from weapon trees are easily surpassed by class skills in damage, and this is with a full stam build. No magicka enhancements.
Each and every magicka based skill does more, scales better and has a wide variety of synergies from passives, cross tree skills, ultimates. Stamina has none of the above and is often based on restrictions such as target below 25% health in order to even compare.
Unfortunately this IS an rp game wheather you want to rp or not and physical melee is a classical playstile that is and should be different but compareable to magicka based playstiles.
If there were testing of VR content before release, then either they did not test A) magicka, because they can solo the "group" VR content without many problems.
magicka vs stamina comparison, because they do not compare.
C)either, because magicka is supposed to be the only viable choice to scale your character.
Thus we need a Zos response to understand if stamina based skills were intended for rp flavor only.

This is one of the funniest responses I've seen yet, assuming so much. Hell, if stamina dps wasn't meant to be a serious dps option, this thread wouldn't exist. End of story.

The fact that they're putting themselves out there and saying they know this play-style is under-preforming is evidence enough that the developers of the game intended stamina and magicka based play-styles respectively to be a worth option in dps.

What confuses me about your post particularly is that you question whether or not stamina dps was an intended game mechanic, yet you go on to say this:

Tobiz wrote: »

...Unfortunately this IS an rp game wheather you want to rp or not and physical melee is a classical playstile that is and should be different but compareable to magicka based playstiles.

If you even know yourself that weapon based dps has been more than flavor in the past, why would you go so far as to assume that a game that has put so much time into that very same playstyle (there are a whopping SEVEN total stamina skill trees even though you only ever use up to four at once), actually intended said playstyle that has so much time put into it, to actually be somewhat of a joke playstyle that was never intended to output similar dps.

With all this in mind, the fact that such a conclusion as this can still be reached appalls me. The evidence is overwhelming that Stamina dps was meant to be competitive with Magicka dps, the only evidence that suggests otherwise is the current poor state of balance between the two WHICH HAS BEEN STATED IS BEING WORKED UPON, AND IS WHY WE'RE HERE IN THIS THREAD.

How people can still question whether or not the developers intended stamina dps to do so much less than magicka, in a developer thread intended to increase stamina dps, just hurts my brain.

To everyone who keeps asserting stamina dps may not be intended to do similar dps to magicka: You're being silly. Listen to what you're saying for Nirn's sake and look at the thread you're in. One last time, if stamina dps wasn't meant to be anything more than flavor, THEN THIS THREAD WOULDN'T EXIST.

/endrant (sorry folks)

You know that meme "People listen to reply, not to understand"? Or whatever the exact wording is? This applies to forums and reading, a lot of people see the title of a thread, and just can't wait to "voice" their opinion, for example I opened a poll recently and in the OP specified why a certain option wasn't possible, and yet there are a number of replies asking for that option. A lot of people simply don't look before they leap.

tino.antoninieb17_ESO

Personally i dont like idea play however u want and it proves in practice that this approach is utopia. Eso proved so far that u can play however u want but in most cases your output will stink and that their execution of mentioned strategy provided in reality much less flexibility then some at first glance more rigid systems.
I am not against flexibility . Flexibility is ok but within certain boundaries.
I have an idea which could improve stamina builds and at least narrow the gap.
First step would be to merge spell and melee crit and on the other side weapon and spell damage. So instead of four u would have just 2 major output modifiers.
Second step would be to directly increase raw damage on the stamina driven weapon abilities.
Synergy of this two steps would do the trick and promote hybrid builds as solution. Both extremes should not be viable ( pure stamina and pure magica )
One weapon is totally unacceptable - resto stuff which makes huge difference coz of best passives, ability to do heal / damage and light attack clipping. By now it is obvious that normal attack clipping is technically easier to perform with staffs then other weapons. Kicking out clipping would promote balance between stamina/magic builds.
I think its necessary to nerf dps component of resto staff. I am aware that resto staff is flag ship of "play however u want" but at the end if we could play however we want this thread wouldn't exist in first place.
This much liberty is overwhelming.
To make long story short - there are number of solutions if ZOS has balls to implement them.

tinythinker

OK, well I got through the first ten pages of comments before the level of repetitiveness and contentiousness wore me down. If I missed something really interesting you posted after that, my apologies. I am chiming in on three topics: medium armor/resource management for stamina, heavy armor/survivability, and two-handed weapons.

The quick version is:

1. Agree with post suggesting that CC-break and Sprint be added to Roll-Dodge for the stamina cost reduction found in the Athletics passive for medium armor. Would keep sprint speed boost.

2. Agree with posts for keeping health as the "resource" managed by heavy armor and the need to look at armor caps; favor boosting the Resolve, Juggernaut, and Rapid Mending passives to higher values; suggest replacing armor and spell resistance boost for Resolve with a percent-based damage reduction for all weapon/spell damage if armor caps are not on the table.

3. Suggest adding a decent chance to stun targets to the Forceful passive for Two Handed weapons.

Details in the spoiler box.

Medium Armor/Resource Management for Stamina

These two suggestions are interesting:

nudel wrote: »

adam.s.jonesub17_ESO wrote: »

....

'reduce blocking, dodging, and cc break cost by 50% with a melee weapon equipped' (not a staff or a bow)

....

all stamina skills cost shld be reduced by 10% -20% across the board

This would go a long way towards making Stam more viable. Most complaints from Stam users include some variation of 'why are there so many fingers in our resource pool?'

Thejollygreenone wrote: »

I'd like to suggest that the medium armor passive 'Athletics' should be changed to include sprint cost reduction (I'd take this over speed) as well as CC-break cost reduction if these functions are to remain stamina based.

blocking we can do without since that should be a tanking based thing and shouldn't be improved upon unless in heavy armor and/or 1h shield.

I think such a change to athletics would go a LONG way to mitigating the damage these utility functions have on our resource pool.

I prefer the second option, especially adding a reduction in the cost of CC-breaks to the existing reduction for dodge-rolls. PCs that are primarily spellcasters are going to want to use mostly light armor anyway, so a melee fighter using five, six, or seven pieces of medium armor is really going to get a break. I also favor adding a reduction to sprint cost but I would also keep the speed increase.

An initial 2% reduction for roll-dodges and CC-breaks only gives a10% -12% -14% stamina cost reduction for people wearing 5, 6, or 7 piece of medium, but at a 4% per piece discount the second skill point offers 20% - 24% - 28% stamina cost reduction for the same outfit. That's a meaningful difference in stamina management when you couple it with the proposed reduction to stamina ability cost (per the original post). It would be a good place to start, and if needed the 2%/4% cost reduction could be raised or lowered slightly for better balance.



Heavy Armor/Survivability

Should heavy armor have stamina or magicka management?

Cogo wrote: »

Um, Heavy armor is unique already. No stamina/magika what so ever have anything to do with heavy armor.

Heavy armor: Biggest protection, Increased armor and SPELL RESIST (this is a big one), Health recovery, even weapon damage bonus. Small bonus I agree and that can be discussed, increased healing. Even the 5% makes a difference for a tank. And the HUGE 20% reduction in BLOCK. There you have a stamina reduction already.

No regen of stamina and magika on heavy armor. You only make heavy armor to powerful then. We do NOT want that circus. Those attributes don't belong on heavy.

What I can understand is a question from heavy armor front damage builds. You do get protection, so that's useful for any damage dealer, as well as the resist and health regen.

I concur with this and similar statements. Heavy armor is as much about resource management as other armor types, but in this case it is health not magicka or stamina. Given the suggestion I endorsed just above for medium armor, you could go 5 heavy/2 medium if you want to have help with stamina sustainability just like some folks go 5 heavy/2 light for help with magicka sustainability. But heavy armor is about trading the bulk of such bonuses to attack options for increased defensive capability, and unless this concept is being abandoned that is where the fixes need to focus.

I agree that looking at realigning the armor caps to make the heavy armor bonuses meaningful, as well as making sure heavy armor has damage mitigation that is well above light and medium armor, is an obvious place to start. This is the core of the concept behind the heavy armor game mechanic. A light armor user shouldn't be able to (easily) reach the soft cap for the basic armor rating even with enchants.

As for the health bonuses, I have two VR Argonians. One is a DK with 5 heavy armor pieces and the other is a Templar who switches between a light armor focus and a heavy armor focus. The synergy between the heavy armor health passives and the Argonian health passives is sort of OK, but honestly, it could be better. I don't mind not being the major DPS person of the group when wearing heavy, but it would be nice if my characters got a little more out of Rapid Mending. I assume you get more health per point spent while leveling for an obvious reason, so why not do more for the health bonuses of heavy armor?

Again, any changes needs to be worked out and implemented carefully to maintain balance, but to throw out some numbers to make my thoughts more concrete (these are just for consideration), here is what simple buff might look like:

Resolve: Increases armor by 2%/3%/4% and base spell resistance by 1%/2%/3% for each piece of Heavy Armor equipped [Maxes at 28% boost to armor stat and 21% to spell resistance]

Juggernaut: Increases power with melee attacks by 1%/2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped [Maxes at 14% boost to melee damage]

Rapid Mending: Increases healing received by 1%/2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped [Maxes at 14% boost to restoration potions and spells]

If, however, there is no plan to alter the armor cap(s), the change to Resolve is just going to result in more over-charge on that stat. Instead, perhaps the following kind of change should be considered:

Resolve: Receive 8%/12% less damage from weapon and spell damage

In fact, that might be preferable to either the original or the suggested buffs of the original.


Two-Handed Weapons

ArRashid wrote: »

Also, what melee (2h, DW, 1h+S) need is adding a PARRY chance while they swing weapons - while weapon animation is playing, you have 50% chance to parry (ignore damage) of weapon hits on you. That would make up for not being able to use block.
Without that, they are pretty much killed within a Heavy weapon attack in VR difficulty (as you generally receive 2-6 "light" hits from mobs for 350+ damage till you finish your attack, or worse, get a single ability that instakills you because you didn't block/avoid it), just because VR mobs hit that hard even on armor capped people.

Given that they are large, two-handed weapons swung with great force, what about this change rather than parrying (which sounds like it might be more appropriate for Dual-Wield or One Hand and Shield):

Forceful: Light and heavy attacks with Two-Handed weapons deal 13%/25% splash damage to 1 nearby enemy. Heavy attacks have a 50% chance to stun both targets for 5 seconds.

Or maybe this version:

Forceful: Light and heavy attacks with Two-Handed weapons deal 13%/25% splash damage to 1 nearby enemy. Heavy attacks have a 75% chance to stun the primary target.

I am not saying those ought to be the exact numbers for either example. Maybe they are too high for the odds of a stun. Whatever the numbers, the general concept of adding a decent chance for a stun kind of makes sense from a "being hit with a very large weapon with a long wind-up" perspective, and it would help with the player character being a target during that windup for multiple blows.

Edited on July 7th:

Sorry, when I was fixing some things prior to posting the other day, I mixed up two idea for Forceful that made the versions presented unclear and contradictory. That has been corrected.

Pantherin

In my experience, I do not think it is the resources as much as the design of the classes.

For example on my DK in Heavy Armor all I have to do is drop all my mana based skills and then hold up my shield and block. Move around out of the big attacks and repeat until the content is defeated.

On my NB I dump all my mana and stamina based abilities on the same creatures and it is a health pool battle. One mistake and I pay for it in the form of a shard or trip back from the nearest way shrine.

Mistakes made by my DK are surviveable.

Mistakes made with my NB and they are usually not surviveable.

So for me to survive the content I have to dump all my points in health to have a chance. Other classes I have played can dump stat mana and it will enhance thier abilities. As I should be able to dump stat stamina and have the same effect and it is clearly not there.

I believe an inherent rouge passive of evasion and or parry would be a viable option.

Allowing them to dump stat stamina and do what they are designed to do...without having to worry about a large enough health pool to survive the content.

Being forced into a role or design is not playing how I want to play...

Just my observations thus far.

arnaldomoraleseb17_ESO

My suggest to improve heavy armor:


Resolve - Reduce all damage taken by 1% per piece of heavy armor. Max bonus 7%.
Constitution - Increases Health Recovery by 4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max bonus 28%. AND Reduce all skills cost (magicka/stamina) by 1% per piece equiped. Max bonus 7%.
Juggernaut - Increases Damage with melee attacks by 1% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max bonus 7%. (Not only weapon dmg, The skill should increases global melee dmg like downbreaker passive does).
Bracing - Decreases cost of blocking by 20% when a Heavy Armor set of 5 or more pieces is equipped.
Rapid Mending - Increases healing received by 2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max bonus 14%.

bg22

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ how about a passive that adds a 1.5% evade chance per piece of medium armor equipped?

Lyall84

arnaldomoraleseb17_ESO wrote: »

My suggest to improve heavy armor:


Resolve - Reduce all damage taken by 1% per piece of heavy armor. Max bonus 7%.
Constitution - Increases Health Recovery by 4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max bonus 28%. AND Reduce all skills cost (magicka/stamina) by 1% per piece equiped. Max bonus 7%.
Juggernaut - Increases Damage with melee attacks by 1% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max bonus 7%. (Not only weapon dmg, The skill should increases global melee dmg like downbreaker passive does).
Bracing - Decreases cost of blocking by 20% when a Heavy Armor set of 5 or more pieces is equipped.
Rapid Mending - Increases healing received by 2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max bonus 14%.

Cost reductions do not belong on heavy armor. Heavy is supposed to add protection. Does it need more in the protection department? For sure. But if you start adding the magicka reduction from light or the stamina reduction from medium, you are taking away from those two armor types. The way that the armors each have a five set bonus points to the intention that if you feel like you need help in the magic department, equip two light, or if you want stamina help, two medium.

Don't get me wrong, I am all about the Knight in shining armor look, but this is not a game where you are locked into an armor type by class. If you start adding magicka and stamina usage benefits to heavy, it will become the all around better armor.

Looking for better damage numbers? I am all for increasing juggernaut and immovable morph to the point where the damage is comparable. If anything, heavy should hit harder, not more often.

Lyall84

bg22 wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ how about a passive that adds a 1.5% evade chance per piece of medium armor equipped?

I would like to trade that for all the stealth passives.

Add stealth cost reduction to well fitted armor trait (so you could have sneaky light medium and heavy) and re introduce detection radius reduction with the Thief Guild and Dark Brotherhood update.

mikeymike2785b14_ESO

You fixed stamina zos. Change nothing about the patch coming out. I am very happy

Thejollygreenone

ass monkeys

mikeymike2785b14_ESO wrote: »

You fixed stamina zos. Change nothing about the patch coming out. I am very happy

Lolwut? So.. you're pulling 1100 dps in trials like magicka based dps? If so, please elaborate, I'm sure we'd all like to know how.

Father

Just increase the damage of skills and lower the costs, for example Steel tornado from DW tree, it has a great range, can cause more damage to low health targets,but the damage of the skill is a joke compared to the stamina cost.
Skills like Elemental ring is super usefull, why not make another usefull skill like that ? the DW tree active skills are really disappointing . on paper looks great but in actual combat..its nothing but a stamina burn.

Make bow do more damage, yes BOW the only ranged physical weapon in game, the skills are not bad at all but the stamina cost is huge!

What is the benefit of lets say.. class skills that buff weapon damage if the use of weapon attack skills are so minimal ?

on a side note :
Heavy Armor set should get somthing like damage mitgation % passive when low on health. But this can cause vampires to be OP

madangrypally

Stamina builds will never be fixed until they do something about ability scaling. All class abilities scale on Max Magicka and the weapon abilities (other then staffs) scale on Max Stamina.

This means doing a Stamina build will seriously hurt all class abilities. There are not enough stamina abilities to make this viable.

One easy solution is just make the abilities scale off of whichever stat is highest. Ill still be limited based on my resource pool but at least making a stamina pool wont make all my class skills useless.

eventide03b14a_ESO

This is the problem that class based systems have. ZOS would have saved themselves so much trouble if they had simply modeled it after Skyrim with no classes and completely skill based. I knew this was a bad idea from the moment I heard they were going in a class direction. They are never going to satisfactorily balance these classes and it's about time they just accepted it and moved to a pure skill based system.

Skaald

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

This is the problem that class based systems have. ZOS would have saved themselves so much trouble if they had simply modeled it after Skyrim with no classes and completely skill based. I knew this was a bad idea from the moment I heard they were going in a class direction. They are never going to satisfactorily balance these classes and it's about time they just accepted it and moved to a pure skill based system.

I really like this idea. Make each class skill tree available to everyone...ideally with a quest line to open each one up. You would still have balance issues between classes, but everyone would benefit/suffer equally. The passives from each line could still provide an incentive for people to try for a purer class build.

Gillysan

NerfEverything wrote: »

And just like that NBs become the most powerful class in PvP by far.

It sucks that it is going to be nearly impossible to balance PvP and PvE since Zen refuses to separate PvE and PvP stats like every other MMORPG that has figured out how to balance them.

This also needs to go into the calculus of stamina builds.

Gillysan

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

This is the problem that class based systems have. ZOS would have saved themselves so much trouble if they had simply modeled it after Skyrim with no classes and completely skill based. I knew this was a bad idea from the moment I heard they were going in a class direction. They are never going to satisfactorily balance these classes and it's about time they just accepted it and moved to a pure skill based system.

I think the design decision on this game is already a done deal. Personally I've been waiting for over 10 years for an MMO like this. Well high fantasy based MMO, EVE already has this. My plan is to win the lottery then go to Sweden and discuss a deal with the dude who made Wurm Online. I have a feeling my plan will never come to fruition.

However, even in EVE balancing the ships is a never ending activity, so I don't think a purely skill based system would be the ultimate solution. Balance is just something that has to be dealt with constantly. The trick for the devs is in the managing of it.

BugCollector

Sure, heavy armor should be buffed as well, but medium armor should get even more buffs than these changes state, and I say this as a magicka user!

Dodging, cc breaking and sprinting drains your stamina. Do something about it. Give some more stam cost reduction when a stamina user uses one of these 3 abilities.

david.haypreub18_ESO

This thread was first posted more than a month ago... so what's happening now? Medium got a bit of a boost, and some other skills as well, but heavy in particular is nowhere near as good as light at the moment. Can we expect to see more changes and the fix to heavy armor soon?

One suggestion: give us a toggle to use either magicka or stamina for sprint, CC break and interrupt. There are spells that make you faster, and many of the CC abilities are spells anyway, so there's not really any reason why all of these have to cost stamina instead of magicka.

david.haypreub18_ESO

Tumbleweeds...

opethfan27

I've recently heard a lot of how there goin to 'fix' the stam builds. stam doesn't give the correct value in terms of dmg output and that's goin to get raised incrementally. and there changing all the armor sets to help compliment stam builds.... all hear say. I hope neither of these are true. neither one is the problem. I've seen the new armor bonuses and theres a ton goin into weapon crit and added stam. I've created new characters, both a sorc and a nightblade to cross reference base dmg's to make certain that there isn't any change in value from class to class. there the same across the board. from the very get go the ability dmg isn't even comparable.

i'm only goin into duel wielding since it's the only weapon line im interested in as a base for the NB class

aoe; Impulse 8 dmg 40% chance to do some nasty stuff
whirlwind 4 dmg increased dmg vs low health

1/2 dmg right out of the gate. as it scales and as it stands now on my vr 12 in full stam gear impulse 203. skill not lvled at all. whirlwind lvled to morph into steel tornado 123. near capped weapon dmg. not comparable.

twin slashes is a travesty. as it stands its the best dual weild ability to weave with and the dmg output is abysmal.

twin slashes. 3 dmg 15 over 9 seconds bleed.
destructive touch. 10 dmg and 1 of three lil nasties.

again not even comparable. twin slashes morphed into bloodcraze and lvled to max does 91 dmg and 380 over 9 seconds. destructive touch with nothing into points, gear, lvled...242. bleed isn't in itself a bad idea but how its implemented with the long dot makes it worthless. 380 divided by 9 is 42 a second. basic combat health regen is 42 even other second so half of that is negated before I even hit the button to use it and bleed doesn't even work vs raid bosses making it a complete inferior abililty. front end the dmg and make make the bleed over 2 ticks would prolly help fix this or atleast take it a long way towards that end.

I've tried every dmging ability in the DW tree and the best dps I can get outta them is around 600. hidden blade is the only redeemable skill and I have to melee with it in weaving.

as of today the best dps as a nightblade I can put out is a destruction staff and light armor for aoe and a resto staff and light armor for single target. so i'm reduced to ranged caster battles with ranged casters whose class abilities are made for it. shockingly it doesn't often turn out well. i'd say things are a lil broken and judging from the dmg values right outta the gate its not hard to see why. what it seems like is happening is you guys are fixing parts on an engine that doesn't work from the ground up.

so from what I can figure with the new gear sets i'll be able to crit more with incrementialy better dmg with vastly inferior abilities. but i'll look good doin it in my newly dyed armor and guild tabard.

lathbury

Thejollygreenone wrote: »

Furthermore, yes as a stamina build you need self heals and cc, just like magicka builds. But oh, guess what? You have access to both of those things in stamina form! (Prime examples: Blood Craze, Uppercut) Even if you didn't have those, pure stamina builds wouldn't make sense using 0 magicka abilities just like pure magicka builds dont use 0 stamina.

Pure magicka players still dodge, block, sprint, and even use active abilities like immovable that all cost stamina. In the same way, stamina pure builds should sacrifice an active ability slot or two for some magicka based spells that don't do damage but instead enhance one's stamina dps capability and/or adds needed defenses (Prime examples: Haste, Surge/Critical Surge, Green Dragons Blood, Igneous Weapons etc)

There are enough mechanics in the game as evidence for this to hold true. The only argument you bring up that is true/relevant is that stamina damaging abilities don't scale as well and therefore do less damage. This is true, but a flaw and is being worked upon, in time I assume this argument will become invalid. See changes for poison arrow, flurry, snipe, etc. The bit about restrictions certainly is also in existence, and limits our synergy, but I wouldn't say it's one of the big factors as to why stamina dps is under-preforming.

First off blood craze as a viable endgame self heal are you joking? Uppercut I have less experience with this is mainly because its buggy as hell and the cast time is to long.
Your next point clearly proves you don't see the problem even if a stamina build used magicka abilities ''hint they do'' they would still also need to roll dodge block and cc. This limits their dps a magicka build throwing the odd stamina ability in has their main dps pool unaffected.
Also haste is useless when you factor in that high dps is achieved through animation cancelling not spamming light attacks.
Then combine this with your last point about the damage abilities not scaling well and the best ones being class ones which scale off magicka including ultimates.
Now maybe you see why after months people think that the devs are not making effective changes by buffing a few damage skills.

Tyr

madangrypally wrote: »

Stamina builds will never be fixed until they do something about ability scaling. All class abilities scale on Max Magicka and the weapon abilities (other then staffs) scale on Max Stamina.

This means doing a Stamina build will seriously hurt all class abilities. There are not enough stamina abilities to make this viable.

One easy solution is just make the abilities scale off of whichever stat is highest. Ill still be limited based on my resource pool but at least making a stamina pool wont make all my class skills useless.

But using class abilities isn't a stamina build since class abilities are all majicka based. It's a mixed build by definition.

Am I missing something here?

monden1980b16_ESO

madangrypally wrote: »

Stamina builds will never be fixed until they do something about ability scaling. All class abilities scale on Max Magicka and the weapon abilities (other then staffs) scale on Max Stamina.

This means doing a Stamina build will seriously hurt all class abilities. There are not enough stamina abilities to make this viable.

One easy solution is just make the abilities scale off of whichever stat is highest. Ill still be limited based on my resource pool but at least making a stamina pool wont make all my class skills useless.

Like metioned elsewhere, making class abilities scale off (magicka pool + stamina pool)/2 would be even better (to scale it of the higher of the two values will still gimp hybrids, i.e. players using magicka AND stamina)

Rest I agree, class skills should still use magicka (but scale off of magicka AND stamina)

frwinters_ESO

To me it just seems that most magicka based abilities have a higher damage output then Stamina abilities. even if you go full stam in attributes to boost the damage, Magica damage will usually beat it as you can get more of your magica abilities off more often. Especially in PvP when your blocking, dodging, and sprinting you use up your stamina and then have not much left over to use abilities. I try and use a balance of Magic and stam abilities so i can go back and fourth between the two and always have something to fire off allowing the other stat to regen a bit. It works ok, but as a NB my sustained DPS still lags a bit.

The only ways I can see to make Stamina builds better if they keep the current block/dodge/sprint system is to make stamina abilities MUCH cheaper to use, and scale the damage better based on your stamina stat. Was even thinking of giving ultimate options for weapons, but I feel this takes away from your class ultimate's.

Rune_Relic

This game has been designed for MMO (wack-a-mole) magic casters that can dabble in melee to keep the TES folks happy. Melee and magic users will never balance for that reason.

Anything other than a ground up rewrite that starts with the concept of Melee users and magicka users on equal footing will simply be a half baked bodge to shut people up that will never ever balance.... because it was never designed to balance, as it was never in the original system design.

Personally I consider the artwork and animations the most time consuming aspects of this game. So I really cant wait for ESO 2.0... where they do the mechanics right.

Matuzes

Notes from 1.3.3 NB, DK PvP (thanks @Farkaz)tests:
- Poison Arrow - no posion afer block; while in Shadowy Disguise poisons dont crit
- Volley - only weapon aoe skill that can't be blocked
- Arrow Spray - aoe ability; when blocked poison dont work
- Cleave - aoe ability; when blocked bleed dont work
- Twin Slashes - no bleed after block; bleed 'procs' can be blocked
- Whirlwind - aoe ability; block works
- Ember Explosion - aoe ability; block works but miss chance apply

- Impulse - block dont work
- Dark Talons - block dont work

This is another example of 'great' magica/stamina balance.
360° block and ability spam while blocking distorts sense of fights like positioning. I think patch 1.3.3 only increase differences between magica and stamina.

Grim13

Broken game is broken.

Honestly, there doesn't seem to be much hope for stamina, melee, or NBs...

..because I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how ZOS decided that the current system was a good idea in the first place!?


Basically, by deciding to become a dw/bow NB I've gimped my damage output AND my defensive capabilities.

For some silly reason most of my class skills go off of weapon crit... but determine their damage based off of spell power... spell power I haven't soft-capped because I plugged points into stamina for the stamina-based weapon skills I use... which means my class skills aren't doing comparable damage to those of predominantly magicka builds... AND I drain my defensive pool everytime I use a stamina-based weapon skill... whereas a magicka build does not... THEN there's the fact that magicka-based weapon skills have higher damage outright over stamina-based weapon skills (nevermind the awful imbalances between class skills)!!!

..and just when that wasn't enough: full light armor wearing, soft-capped spell power, class skill wielders can attack me WHILE BLOCKING when stamina weapon skill wielders cannot!?

ROFLMAO


That is terrible game design. It really is. How does that leave the drawing board without 3/4s of the team going "..um, wait just a second, if..."!?



Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty bad ass... just not as bad ass as I should be, given a level playing field.

Lancillotto

Hum... I don't think any of those things are really going to fix the issue. I have seen that some of the new 5 piece sets coming out in the next patch offer ways to replenish some magicka or health when below 30%, why is there no such set for stamina? that may help a bit. Moreover, removing or softening the cap for stamina regeneration may also help.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

It doesnt help that there hasn't been any update as to what they are doing to balance it out in a long time. Just "we're doing something" or whatever it is they said about it at quakecon... not really any concrete info that gives me any assurance what they are doing will mean anything.

Unless its making a new resource pool for Blocking,dodging and whatnot to use, then it probably wont do much.