Improvements for Stamina-Based Skills and Passives

nudel

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?'

Often people suggest just removing all defensive abilities from the Stamina pool. This is not something ZOS should do because such a change would inadvertently buff Magicka users. Instead of having a Stam pool that they had to split between 1-2 Stamina feats AND defensive abilities, they'd just have an entire new pool for damage.

If you keep them in the Stamina pool, but give every Stamina based weapon a passive that reduces the cost of defensive abilities (blocking, dodging, cc break, interrupt) by a hefty amount, then casters will still function in the same way but Stam users will be able to use their bar for more damage or more mobility/ utility. Alternatively, you could put this on Medium/ Heavy armor. The important part is not to make it a wholesale reduction in cost because that will buff all the casters as well.

Same goes for Stamina feat cost reduction. Make it a weapon skill passive which requires ___insert non-staff here____ to be equipped in order to work. Otherwise you're exponentially increasing the dps of any caster who slots even a single Stamina ability.

I don't think casters need nerfing. Stamina skills and weapons just need to be brought more in line with the damage and utility of magicka.

Kalanar Highwatch

I'm glad you're doing something but it still doesn't fix the fundamental problem I had trying to play with a 2-hander in PVP, which is that I had to choose between doing damage and dodging, blocking, escaping CC and sprinting. Magicka/staff users get to dodge roll, cc break, block and sprint all they want without draining the resource they need to continue doing damage. Nothing I've read here changes that.

Sakiri

Oh, and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ another thing you're forgetting is that the dot on cleave, blood craze, etc, are COMPLETELY FRAGGIN USELESS on a good portion of creatures.

Undead are immune to bleeds.
Gargoyles are immune to bleeds.

If you're going to rely so hard on dots, particularly bleeds, you *need* to make these creatures affected by them or you're just making stamina builds more subpar than they currently are.

If I remember right, poison arrow has this issue on some mobs due to poison immunity.

WoW had this issue all through Vanilla and BC for diseases, poisons and bleeds and it wasn't *too* bad until BC when bleeds came to be big for Druids and Wrath when they made an entire class based around frost/shadow damage diseases. Undead and stone/metal monsters immune to most of your stuff wasn't fun. They ended up changing it so that nothing is outright immune to anything.

I suggest you guys take a hint from it because I sure as hell wouldn't want to run a bleed heavy melee stamina build when a good chunk of what I'm killing is friggin immune to bleeds.

Kewljag_66_ESO

Zerikin wrote: »

Flurry needs a fundamental change. You can do just as much damage by doing light attacks over the duration. The rapid strikes speed buff also starts when the skill activates meaning you get almost no usable duration for the attack speed buff.

Id have to disagree, PVPwise flurry does alot of damage to my targets, much more than light attacks. I also have 51% crit change and Hundingtons Rage bonus. I also use suprise attack to lower the targets armor by 40% so that helps.

I also use the other morph to set the targets off balance. 1 out of 2 chains always does it and it allows for a heavy attack to hit really hard and knock the target down

ShedsHisTail

Erock25 wrote: »

Something else I feel strongly about is that medium's crit passive should be both physical AND spell crit. If you want to use stam weapons, you basically have to use medium armor, and if you use medium armor you need to focus on physical crit class abilities to complement your dps. Problem is Sorc have no physical crit class abilities so I'm basically locked out of any non-weapon ability means of damage. It really limits build potential.

Adding spell crit to medium will not affect magicka builds at all. They'll still prefer light armor for the other magicka passives. All this will do is help stam/med builds immensely and that is the point of these changes.

Please consider.

As much as I hate to be "that guy," I think your complaint is kind of what having to choose a class is all about.

Sorcerers, because they are Sorcerers, have class skills that lean more toward Magicka based builds. Admittedly, this is going to make creating a Stamina-centric build a more complicated and perhaps less viable affair for Sorcerers than for classes which are designed for more Stamina-centric actions.

Sakiri

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

Zerikin wrote: »

Flurry needs a fundamental change. You can do just as much damage by doing light attacks over the duration. The rapid strikes speed buff also starts when the skill activates meaning you get almost no usable duration for the attack speed buff.

My biggest beef with Flurry is that in order to get the most out of it I have to stand there doing little baby attacks while my opponent smacks me in the face if I want the big hit to land at the end. If I interrupt the series of little attacks (to defend myself) I can basically kiss that Stamina goodbye.

Basically makes it a very niche skill, only useful for attacking enemies which are already stunned or debuffed in some way.

Or being tanked by someone else. From the rear. Like a rogue.

Ragnar_Lodbrok

Sakiri wrote: »

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Who do you think is gonna be the 1st idiot to complain Light Armor gets a 3% cost reduction per item versus Mediums 2% per? lol

You just did.

Looks good so far though, wish they'd address heavy armor a bit more though. Maybe 1h/shield, I don't use those abilities though. Even on my tank outside puncture..

Basically this is more fail balancing by Zenimax, sadly Im expecting this to be normal

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Medium Armor

• With the Wind Walker passive, medium armor will reduce stamina costs by 2% per piece equipped.

Cost of what? Everything?
Is this on top of the 2% Regen? Or instead of?

This is on top of the 2% Stamina regen, and the 2% stamina cost reduction is for all abilities that cost stamina (per piece equipped, so a total of 14% possible stamina cost reduction.)

ShedsHisTail

Sakiri wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

Zerikin wrote: »

Flurry needs a fundamental change. You can do just as much damage by doing light attacks over the duration. The rapid strikes speed buff also starts when the skill activates meaning you get almost no usable duration for the attack speed buff.

My biggest beef with Flurry is that in order to get the most out of it I have to stand there doing little baby attacks while my opponent smacks me in the face if I want the big hit to land at the end. If I interrupt the series of little attacks (to defend myself) I can basically kiss that Stamina goodbye.

Basically makes it a very niche skill, only useful for attacking enemies which are already stunned or debuffed in some way.

Or being tanked by someone else. From the rear. Like a rogue.

Right, yes.
Which again, makes it only really useful in a situation where the enemy is otherwise occupied.
I guess my point is, for it being the primary damage skill in the Dual Wield book, I feel as though it should have more universal applications and be less situational.

But, then again, I guess with a Stamina build you're intended to be using your light and heavy attacks as your universal means of damage.

david.haypreub18_ESO

Also, am I the only one who would prefer to still have the range on Snipe? The cast time doesn't seem to me to be the issue.

Ragnar_Lodbrok

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Medium Armor

• With the Wind Walker passive, medium armor will reduce stamina costs by 2% per piece equipped.

Cost of what? Everything?
Is this on top of the 2% Regen? Or instead of?

This is on top of the 2% Stamina regen, and the 2% stamina cost reduction is for all abilities that cost stamina (per piece equipped, so a total of 14% possible stamina cost reduction.)

Do you have any plans for heavy armor and how pitiful one hand and shield is?

ShedsHisTail

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Medium Armor

• With the Wind Walker passive, medium armor will reduce stamina costs by 2% per piece equipped.

Cost of what? Everything?
Is this on top of the 2% Regen? Or instead of?

This is on top of the 2% Stamina regen, and the 2% stamina cost reduction is for all abilities that cost stamina (per piece equipped, so a total of 14% possible stamina cost reduction.)

Oh, nice.
Thanks for that.

SootyTX

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Medium Armor

• With the Wind Walker passive, medium armor will reduce stamina costs by 2% per piece equipped.

Cost of what? Everything?
Is this on top of the 2% Regen? Or instead of?

This is on top of the 2% Stamina regen, and the 2% stamina cost reduction is for all abilities that cost stamina (per piece equipped, so a total of 14% possible stamina cost reduction.)

Nothing for Sword and Shield as an offensive option?

I hate DW as a concept, always have in MMOs, both as a gamer and a historian. 2handers are ok but so slow and totally lacking style. Why can't S&S be allowed as a DPS option? the current skills are lackluster to say the least, one cannot be used except solo as it taunts (why couldn't one of the morphs be a non-taunt maybe?). Heck, on that note why can't several others be able to be morphed into tank or DPS versions for all three melee weapon lines.

It's a start but I have a feeling that the only weapon line I really enjoy (and I have every class but a sorc using it) is going to remain relegated to 'tanks only'

Edit: I remember watching a behind the scenes video for Ryse combat, where they brought in a real expert.....I wish that was how S&S was in ESO

Lyall84

Denaia wrote: »

Glad to see somechanges BUT I don't think that the current changes will suffice. The damage increase is too low to make stamina worthwhile and heavy armor is still as *** as it was before. Besides that I don't think 2% stamina cost reduction for medium armor will do much.

It's a start, but sadly not enough for my liking.

The 2% per piece, total 14% plus weapon reduction should be more than enough. At least see how it feels first. At least it is a step in the correct direction

Lyall84

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

WOW color me SHOCKED there is MORE Stamina reduction cost on TOP of the 20% you already get from melee weapons WOW. Medium Armor is going to rock.

Light armor gets 21% across the board, plus any reduction from class or mage guild skills. Same difference. Scales are just closer to balanced now.

Lyall84

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Who do you think is gonna be the 1st idiot to complain Light Armor gets a 3% cost reduction per item versus Mediums 2% per? lol

Apparently you.

Denaia

I forget to add it in my first post; what is going to happen for us heavy armor-dps users? As it is decent enough to use, but certainly not as good as using medium (after changes) or light armor. I would like to see heavy armor becoming a bit more viable for those who wish to melee-dps with it.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Denaia wrote: »

I forget to add it in my first post; what is going to happen for us heavy armor-dps users? As it is decent enough to use, but certainly not as good as using medium (after changes) or light armor. I would like to see heavy armor becoming a bit more viable for those who wish to melee-dps with it.

We're looking at ways we can improve the Heavy Armor skill line as well.

Ragnar_Lodbrok

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Denaia wrote: »

I forget to add it in my first post; what is going to happen for us heavy armor-dps users? As it is decent enough to use, but certainly not as good as using medium (after changes) or light armor. I would like to see heavy armor becoming a bit more viable for those who wish to melee-dps with it.

We're looking at ways we can improve the Heavy Armor skill line as well.

And what of 1h & S?

Lyall84

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Im thinking Reverse Slash needs 15% base damage increase then maybe slight cost increase as well.

It is an executioner ability, simular to NB assassin's blade or sorcerer mages fury. Cheap and spammable, does ok damage until target is low health. If you alter the ability by increasing the damage and cost, it changes the intent of the ability from an executioner spam or a normal damage ability.

Kalanar Highwatch

I don't get the calls for sword and board to be a viable DPS weapon. It doesn't do as much damage because it gives you greatly increased survivability. This doesn't make any more sense than for me to say my 2-handed axe should be a viable healing tool. Sword and board should be for survivability, resto staff should be for healing and everything else should excel at dealing damage. They're already letting you equip all weapon types on any character so why do you need all weapon types to be viable in all roles?

david.haypreub18_ESO

nudel wrote: »

Most complaints from Stam users include some variation of 'why are there so many fingers in our resource pool?'

Often people suggest just removing all defensive abilities from the Stamina pool. This is not something ZOS should do because such a change would inadvertently buff Magicka users. Instead of having a Stam pool that they had to split between 1-2 Stamina feats AND defensive abilities, they'd just have an entire new pool for damage.

If you keep them in the Stamina pool, but give every Stamina based weapon a passive that reduces the cost of defensive abilities (blocking, dodging, cc break, interrupt) by a hefty amount, then casters will still function in the same way but Stam users will be able to use their bar for more damage or more mobility/ utility. Alternatively, you could put this on Medium/ Heavy armor. The important part is not to make it a wholesale reduction in cost because that will buff all the casters as well.

Same goes for Stamina feat cost reduction. Make it a weapon skill passive which requires ___insert non-staff here____ to be equipped in order to work. Otherwise you're exponentially increasing the dps of any caster who slots even a single Stamina ability.

I don't think casters need nerfing. Stamina skills and weapons just need to be brought more in line with the damage and utility of magicka.

Exactly.

Tweaking a few skills is not the best way to go about solving a problem that is not about individual skills, but about the fundamental ways the game works.

Buffing some Stamina skills will not do anything to make the other stamina skills viable; it will just foster 'flavor-of-the-month' builds. People will choose the few useful stamina skills and pass all the other useless ones, leaving the fundamental inequalities between magicka and stamina unaddressed.

What is needed is general improvement that addresses the fundamental inequalites themselves.

Lyall84

Erock25 wrote: »

Something else I feel strongly about is that medium's crit passive should be both physical AND spell crit. If you want to use stam weapons, you basically have to use medium armor, and if you use medium armor you need to focus on physical crit class abilities to complement your dps. Problem is Sorc have no physical crit class abilities so I'm basically locked out of any non-weapon ability means of damage. It really limits build potential.

Adding spell crit to medium will not affect magicka builds at all. They'll still prefer light armor for the other magicka passives. All this will do is help stam/med builds immensely and that is the point of these changes.

Please consider.

They should just combine critical rate to one type. Then they can put critical damage on the character sheet. That way you can see how much weapon traits and shadow mundus effect critical damage.

Selodaoc

Still quite bad for Nightblades.

In PvP you mostly use Magicka skills (Suprise attack/Concealed, Cloak and Impale)
In PvE, if your a melee ST nigthblade, you use maybe one more stamina based skill.

So this will mainly affect bow Nigthblades.
Melee nigthblades still needs alot of tweaking of its class skills.

As proven in other topics, Nightblade class skills does less dmg, sometimes only half the dmg, of other comparable weapon skills, like Suprise attack vs Cleave.

Lyall84

grizzbi wrote: »

Interesting. thanks for the update.

- I like the poison arrow change: overall, all the dots need more love (duration, amount, stacking mechanics etc..)

- Medium armor Wind walker passive: 3% would have been better..maybe..We'll see.

- Two handed: uppercuts changes are interesting. More burst damage.. In line with people expectations..

Do you have plan to change the overall stamina mechanics? soft caps, attributes bonus, weapon damage scaling/increase?

3% may have been too much in one go. Need to take smaller steps otherwise you will see a flood of medium armor ninjas instead of walking sticks and bathrobes.

temjiu

Overall, its again another step in the right direction. no matter how extreme I think they need to adjust stamina based skillsets, a little bit of positive at a times is better then no positive. This is moving in the right direction.

All the additions are beneficial and needed. But I will reiterate what many have said...it's still not enough. It's GOOD, but not quite there. And I hope it comes soon...I honestly don't think the game has enough time to sit back idly on certain areas of development, and dealing with the severe stamina imbalance is one of those areas.

even if stamina and magick skills and passives were exactly equal, STAMINA SKILLS WOULD STILL BE BEHIND BY A LARGE MARGIN. when you have to use half of your resources during a fight just to stay alive, you are severely cutting down your ability to....well...survive.

I agree with the idea of giving melee weapon users passives to reduce stamina cost of mitigation abilities. This is critical to the overall balance of the skill trees.

A simple fix would be to take the cost reduction from medium armor and the cost reduction from the individual skill trees and apply it to the cost of mitigation mechanics as well. simple and easy.

On a few specific notes:

Bow - We could still use some love in the area of short cast skills that can put out some damage. i really hate having to use Magnum shot as a DPS "filler" as it has a tendency to knock you INTO bad areas as well as out of them.

Perhaps a passive or a morph for Snipe that gives our Poison arrow DoT a chance to reduce the cast timer on it to zero? similar to the sorcs morph for crystal shard. keep the stamina cost so there's a price to pay...but being able to, on average of once per mob, throw out an instant snipe would be awesome. and its base damage isn't so high that the idea is overpowered...really. it does on average (i.e. no sneak snipe bonus) about as much as my sorcs crystal shard...and doesn't even knock them down. So IMO this is a very reasonable change.

Akhratos

Sorry to say, but this is a JOKE.


You buff medium armor (Im ok, they lack sta cost red) but make no change to heavy?

Buffing a few sta skills for 10% damage is what you think will fix this unbalanced mechanics?

Very disappointed.

Thejollygreenone

Denaia wrote: »

I forget to add it in my first post; what is going to happen for us heavy armor-dps users? As it is decent enough to use, but certainly not as good as using medium (after changes) or light armor. I would like to see heavy armor becoming a bit more viable for those who wish to melee-dps with it.

IMO, heavy armor as well as 1h/shield shouldn't yield as much damage oriented buffs as medium/light. Heavy armor exists because of it's increased defenses, same with 1h/shield. To expect something with increased defenses to have the same offensive output as something with less defenses is silly to me.

While I recognize this isn't necessarily what you expect or were implying, Denaia. I'm just using your comment as a vehicle to state my belief that someone who chooses to invest in some heavy armor shouldn't be absolutely crippled as a damage user, but should certainly give up some of that damage potential for a more defensive armor type. So I do agree with you to an extent.

Unfortunately one could argue light armor has enough defenses to make this all a moot point, but I think that was unintended and will be scaled down soon enough. My overall point is this:

Sure you should be able to go pvp as a melee or even caster in heavy armor and be effective due to your increased defenses and not have absolute crap offenses if you choose to use an offensive weapon.

However that by no means should go so far as to make heavy armor do the same or similar dps as the two dps oriented armor trees, light/medium, since the game works under the assumption that these two armor trees are less defensive, even though in the current state of the game that might not be the case(yet).

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

Erhm this will do very little. The core of the problem lies in staves being based on magicka and the passives in heavy armor and medium armor. Adjusting a few of the stamina skills will have no impact.

Lyall84

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

grizzbi wrote: »

Interesting. thanks for the update.

- I like the poison arrow change: overall, all the dots need more love (duration, amount, stacking mechanics etc..)

- Medium armor Wind walker passive: 3% would have been better..maybe..We'll see.

- Two handed: uppercuts changes are interesting. More burst damage.. In line with people expectations..

Do you have plan to change the overall stamina mechanics? soft caps, attributes bonus, weapon damage scaling/increase?

Wind Walker COULD be 2/4 % ON TOP of the 20% you get from weapons

You must really be afraid of an even playing field. While I agree with the 1% & 2% increase. 4% would be too much. A sarcastic comment like that when gets 21% ON TOP of the class passives or mage guild passives that reduce magicka costs makes you look incredibly bias. If you are going to start pulling numbers to prove your point you need to make sure you include all the numbers, not just the ones that support your point. Why are you so afraid of balance?