Stamina fixes + more

Malcations

Keep in mind that any of this can be changed and it is simply my own perception on how to fix the game.

I've been playing the game since beta and i never noticed a problem with stamina builds until late in the game. For the cost of stamina the abilities don't compete with magicka nor with the blandness we have of the same action over and over again with nothing to define our characters from another with roughly the same build. I've been thinking how you could change things with out making the system to complicated and i think i have come up with a solution to the whole stamina boredom /damage type. It will work in line with the Champion system and opens up a whole load of new options.

To start with, i am very upset that the game was basically advertised with the fact you could make any combination and freedom of character design. Only to log in on beta/launch and find that tanks should have shields.. if you hold a destruction staff you are a caster.. if you hold a restoration staff you are a healer or a mix.. you hold a 2 handed you are limited to 2 handed weapons and so on. The thoughts i've had that would open up many new windows of specs and possibilities are as follow:

Shields: Light / Medium / Heavy: Light: can block but at a increased cost of stamina: Medium can block half the amount of damage as Heavy. and Heavy has a threat built into it with Heavy also blocking full damage. This lets people who want to make the fabled Thane from other games such as daoc (my current toon rolls this but its not why i am suggesting it) you have the complete option of having additional magicka with out touching a destro staff.

Replace 1handed and shield to be just Shield... create a new spec called 1 handed. this can be used by anybody and the skills differ depending on sword/hammer/ axe and all the morphs differ a swell.. meaning a tank could hold a shield.. grab taunt from the Shield line and then grab a skill from the 1 handed line with a sword or something to create diversity

2 handed, i thought of how this could be better and the best thought came to mind... what is forcing people to use a 2 handed sword/axe/maul... why not have 2 handed staffs... such as you equip a restoration staff and you get all the bonuses of putting points into restoration staff with the styles of 2 handed.. meaning you can essentially heal while doing melee, or a destruction staff could be things like direct damage bonuses and the staff type explodes every few seconds causing a little more damage then normal. while swords get parry (maybe a 2 handed tank option) axes get bleeds, and Mauls get crush, lowering damage the target does. With the Champion system coming out you could tie the whole Champion points into bleed like i think you guys were hinting at Quakecon or Mauls hit 5% harder or you can parry 5% more with swords.

This is going to be the simple part.. my original toon which i love and think a lot of people are in the same boat was a nightblade. But the reason that they can not compete with damage is because the Nightblade does not have a damage type attached to it.. unsure if this was intentional or what not but every spell under the Nightblades class line is "magic" while you have 2 fire damage classes (1 has some magic) and a Lightning class (also has some magic). I propose we switch this up so:

DK = FIre
Sorc = Lightning
Templar = Light or Holy ( holy has never been represented in a Elderscrolls but it could just be light)
Nightblade = Cold/Frost

This would let all classes become what ever they want and none would excel greatly at being a caster while a Nightblade is forced into Bloodmage or 1 button debuff free rotations.

Feel free to let me know what you would want to improve as i often get into discussions in /zone and guilds regarding what would improve the future of this game. I dont want it to get boring and i do want it to attract more people for the diversity it offers... GO 2 HANDED RESTORATION STAFF STYLES!

Rune_Relic

I understand a lot of what you said and why you said it.
A shield is not a weapon and shouldnt be paired with one.
resources really arent spread fairly in a combat sense and have no real logic behind them other than an artistic way.

IMHO the system needs gutting. No one from TES really gets the concept of DK Templar mage and NB. They are like some alien concept rammed down our throat for some unknown reason.

Nor do these classes make any kind of sense from a guild point of view. What we do know or are familiar with is healer/mage Guild, Fighter Guild, Assasin Guild and Thief Guild. These are the 4 classes that should have been available if any at all.

1. Healers and Mages were always no armour robe wearers (relying on movement speed% and snare/cripple% [Magicka]).
2. Thiefs always relied on light armour to keep them supple but offer protection against the occasional brawl before you leg it (relying on detect% enemies and items long before others and sneak% around to avoid them [Stamina]).
3. Assassins always rely on medium armour to allow for good combat protection without compromising there skills (relying on critical% damage and dodge% [Dexterity]).
4. Fighter always relay on heavy armour for ultimate hardcore physical combat that compromised speed (relying in hit% and block% [Health])

Hence you have 4 clearly defined classes with their own clearly defined armour as well as an offensive (snare/detect/critical/hit) and defensive (move/sneak/dodge/block) speciality with everyone them using its own unique resource. More to the point they are totally compatible with the native guilds of TES.

eg. A fighter might have a high hit% but am healer might also have a high movement speed% and simply not be there to hit (automove). Thieves never really engage in combat and prefer to keep out of sight and out of mind (autosneak). An assassin might have a high critical% but the fighter block% might be sufficient to evade the critical damage (autoblock).

But you shouldnt be rail roaded into any of these 4 logical classes. Because everyone would want to take some of each to varying degrees. (I am not born a fighter/mage/thief/assassin but merely train to become one or more of them). Hence they must be guilds only rather than a class. Biasing you skill point attributes into magicka, stamina, dexterity and health will determine how effective you are in each class/guild or mix and match.

Now you can be any class you want to be (or call yourself)....and play as you want to play.

Darkonflare15

Malcations wrote: »

Keep in mind that any of this can be changed and it is simply my own perception on how to fix the game.

I've been playing the game since beta and i never noticed a problem with stamina builds until late in the game. For the cost of stamina the abilities don't compete with magicka nor with the blandness we have of the same action over and over again with nothing to define our characters from another with roughly the same build. I've been thinking how you could change things with out making the system to complicated and i think i have come up with a solution to the whole stamina boredom /damage type. It will work in line with the Champion system and opens up a whole load of new options.

To start with, i am very upset that the game was basically advertised with the fact you could make any combination and freedom of character design. Only to log in on beta/launch and find that tanks should have shields.. if you hold a destruction staff you are a caster.. if you hold a restoration staff you are a healer or a mix.. you hold a 2 handed you are limited to 2 handed weapons and so on. The thoughts i've had that would open up many new windows of specs and possibilities are as follow:

Shields: Light / Medium / Heavy: Light: can block but at a increased cost of stamina: Medium can block half the amount of damage as Heavy. and Heavy has a threat built into it with Heavy also blocking full damage. This lets people who want to make the fabled Thane from other games such as daoc (my current toon rolls this but its not why i am suggesting it) you have the complete option of having additional magicka with out touching a destro staff.

Replace 1handed and shield to be just Shield... create a new spec called 1 handed. this can be used by anybody and the skills differ depending on sword/hammer/ axe and all the morphs differ a swell.. meaning a tank could hold a shield.. grab taunt from the Shield line and then grab a skill from the 1 handed line with a sword or something to create diversity

2 handed, i thought of how this could be better and the best thought came to mind... what is forcing people to use a 2 handed sword/axe/maul... why not have 2 handed staffs... such as you equip a restoration staff and you get all the bonuses of putting points into restoration staff with the styles of 2 handed.. meaning you can essentially heal while doing melee, or a destruction staff could be things like direct damage bonuses and the staff type explodes every few seconds causing a little more damage then normal. while swords get parry (maybe a 2 handed tank option) axes get bleeds, and Mauls get crush, lowering damage the target does. With the Champion system coming out you could tie the whole Champion points into bleed like i think you guys were hinting at Quakecon or Mauls hit 5% harder or you can parry 5% more with swords.

This is going to be the simple part.. my original toon which i love and think a lot of people are in the same boat was a nightblade. But the reason that they can not compete with damage is because the Nightblade does not have a damage type attached to it.. unsure if this was intentional or what not but every spell under the Nightblades class line is "magic" while you have 2 fire damage classes (1 has some magic) and a Lightning class (also has some magic). I propose we switch this up so:

DK = FIre
Sorc = Lightning
Templar = Light or Holy ( holy has never been represented in a Elderscrolls but it could just be light)
Nightblade = Cold/Frost

This would let all classes become what ever they want and none would excel greatly at being a caster while a Nightblade is forced into Bloodmage or 1 button debuff free rotations.

Feel free to let me know what you would want to improve as i often get into discussions in /zone and guilds regarding what would improve the future of this game. I dont want it to get boring and i do want it to attract more people for the diversity it offers... GO 2 HANDED RESTORATION STAFF STYLES!

I think night blade should have passives with buffs to poison, Poison is a good dot that would work well with the dots that you have with the night blade skill line. This would work well with the bow night blades. Once spell crafting comes out you will be able to use these spells with any weapon type. So you would a restoration spell with a two handed so on and so on. This would bring much more diversity to builds. I do not think classes are suppose to be solid classes but a way to build upon the class to make unique style.

MonkeyAssassin24

I don't really understand your problem with being a caster when you equip a destruction staff, a healer with a resto staff, or a two-hander melee character with a two-handed weapon. Why would you even equip a destruction staff if you didn't feel inclined to be a caster? Your idea for two-handers is that you basically want to combine them with the abilities of the staff. I don't think people would have a lot of fun if a player swinging a battle axe was able to throw mutagen on himself at will. You already have the ability to switch out different weapons and skills already, combining them would actually take away some diversity in my opinion.

If you don't want to be a caster while using a destro staff, then stick with another weapon or use it as a means to support your class skills if you can. If you want to be a tank, whose role it is to soak up damage and control threat, you're probably going to end up using a shield. The issue you touched on, as has been stated many times already, is magicka builds vast superiority over stamina builds, and armor not having any impact other than with passives. It doesn't really have anything to do with weapons.

Still not quite sure why you thought the "play how you want" slogan, which has been dissected more than a presidential speech, could translate into wanting to use a resto staff like a two-handed sword. However, everything you said about stamina boredom/problems is on point...though it has been said already plenty of times on these forums.

jelliedsoup

Ive always thought they dropped the ball, with the level of armour, stealth, speed you can have with the types of armour as well. They should behave differently, but pretty much act the same apart from the passives. And of course the light armour preference due to magicka overpowering stamina.

I still have no idea what they were trying to achieve. All classes are used the same way, I.e. use the same skills. I think its because so many of the skills are just not worthwhile. From an NBS perspective, haste, fear, summon are pretty much a waste of time. There are others and each class has their own fillers which occupy space but few use them.

Ser Lobo

I would have dropped classes entirely, made armor behave differently between the styles (positives and negatives, with heavy armor providing noticably more defense and making the character slower, etc, etc). And I would have made weapons more noticably unique (two handers having longer range, daggers being very fast, etc).

Then, throw everyone in the world without leveled zones, where all content is set in proportion to the player (it is possible to completely ignore player level; see Neverwinter Online's call-to-arms events), and let them find the way and make their own story.



Then again, if they'd have done it this way, it would have been far more of a niche game than it is today, and turned away a huge portion of the MMO playerbase that has decided to make ESO home.

Of course, if it had been just another MMO, I wouldn't be here. I hate games that artificially limit armor and weapons in order to make balancing easier. I know most people just can't understand uniqueness or individuality ... others have to conform. But if they had taken that route, they would be sinking just like all the other copycats are. Maybe ZOS and Bethesda know something more than I do.

At the very least, I'd probably drop the class system, and let players learn spells and moves that suit them. But that's because I think the current system, come spellcasting, will become useless entirely.

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO

Rune_Relic wrote: »

But you shouldnt be rail roaded into any of these 4 logical classes. Because everyone would want to take some of each to varying degrees. (I am not born a fighter/mage/thief/assassin but merely train to become one or more of them). Hence they must be guilds only rather than a class. Biasing you skill point attributes into magicka, stamina, dexterity and health will determine how effective you are in each class/guild or mix and match.

Now you can be any class you want to be (or call yourself)....and play as you want to play.

This is exactly the point I've been making. There is no need to further rail road class/gear combinations. They can be balanced to all be effective.

It shouldn't just be "best build wins", particularly in a game with the Elder Scrolls moniker stamped on it. If skill lines were balanced properly then most builds would perform adequately. Note I said "well" not exactly as good as others.

There does still need to be some advantage to finding an optimum build. After all the people willing to sacrifice their preference for performance should receive some bonus. These are the folk who will continue to set the records in trials... but it shouldn't be the single key determining factor in overall game performance.

I think the biggest problem right now is the enormous gap between good builds/gear combos. There needs to be some level of damage/defense/casting standardization done.

Darkonflare15

jelliedsoup wrote: »

Ive always thought they dropped the ball, with the level of armour, stealth, speed you can have with the types of armour as well. They should behave differently, but pretty much act the same apart from the passives. And of course the light armour preference due to magicka overpowering stamina.

I still have no idea what they were trying to achieve. All classes are used the same way, I.e. use the same skills. I think its because so many of the skills are just not worthwhile. From an NBS perspective, haste, fear, summon are pretty much a waste of time. There are others and each class has their own fillers which occupy space but few use them.

Haste actually have morphs that are actually useful now plus summon shades are perfect for night blade tanks they also help team members by lessen the damage done to them. The Haste morph Focused Attacks raises weapon speed by 30% and at max raises stamina regeneration by 40% this boosts my regen to 121 per 2 sec also I get a further increase because of my two handed passive that raises my regen by 50% when I kill a enemy. Also my two handed skill benefits from the increase skill speed. So these abilities are not a complete waste but are actually useful.

jelliedsoup

@Darkonflare15‌ the haste morph would be OK if it worked on bow. Do you use summon shades in PvP?

Darkonflare15

jelliedsoup wrote: »

@Darkonflare15‌ the haste morph would be OK if it worked on bow. Do you use summon shades in PvP?

Well I do not know about the weapon speed of bow changing but the stamina regen part of focused attacks should still work.