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A solution for the Magicka/Stamina imbalance
The first part of the post sums up the issue, the second part is a suggestion for a solution
The issue:- The values Magicka, Spell Crit, and Spell Damage are far more influential/important than the values Stamina, Weapon Crit, and Weapon Damage. Character builds that focus on the first 3 are superior to builds that focus on the latter 3.
Why?
- The vast majority of all Ultimates (if not all) scale off of Magicka and use Spell Crit as their critical hit chance value.
- Class skills, Destruction Staff skills, and Restoration Staff skills all scale off of Magicka and cost Magicka to cast. (For further explanation see point 2 about weapon types.)
- All d.o.t. (damage over time) effects of class skills scale off of Magicka and use Spell Crit as their critical hit chance value.
- Characters with Spell Crit builds can easily and efficiently regain ultimate points out of combat by healing other players.
- There are far more and better passives (from passive skills, active skills, item set boni) that affect Magicka than there are passives that affect Stamina.
- There are skills that create Magicka efficiently by using up other resources (Health or Stamina) but no skills that create Stamina efficiently (=a large amount of Stamina in a short time).
- Most Magicka skills are by default a bit more efficient than Stamina skills (see point 2).
- The two weapon types Destruction Staff and Restoration Staff are superior to the other weapon types.
Why?
- For a character that uses staves, increasing only one resource (Magicka) will make all his or her weapon and class skills stronger. Stamina weapon users will have to invest into two different resources depending on whether they want to make their class skills or their weapon skills stronger. The increased survivability gained by a higher Stamina value cannot compete with the advantage of making all skills stronger by increasing only a single resource, especially if that resource has a lot more passives that make it more efficient to use (see point 1).
- Most Stamina weapon skills are a bit less efficient by default than Magicka weapon skills (they have worse effects for the same resource cost, meaning a Stamina weapon skill that costs 200 Stamina will generally have a worse effect than a Magicka weapon skill that costs 200 Magicka).
- Light Armor is superior to Medium and Heavy Armor
Why?
- In almost all situations, the passives granted by Light Armor are far superior to the passives granted by Medium or Heavy Armor. Light Armor grants the highest Spell Resistance (which is more important and has a higher influence than the Armor stat), it grants Spell Penetration, Spell Crit, and makes all Magicka-based skills cost less Magicka. The most efficient builds use only Magicka-based skills (with the exception of sporadic use of Fighter Guild abilities in some situations).
How to fix it:- Add balance to different weapon types.
How?
- Make all regular weapon attacks (light and heavy attacks) and weapon skills Stamina-based.
- Some skills in the Two-handed and Dual Wield skill lines need a boost (these skill lines are currently too weak when compared to the other weapon skill lines).
- Don’t let the “Burning” damage over time effect stack with itself (bleeding and poison effects do not stack with themselves either), only reset the duration when the effect lands again on a target that already has that effect.
- Make the values Stamina, Weapon Crit, and Weapon Damage as important/influential/beneficial as the values Magicka, Spell Crit, and Spell Damage.
How?
- Let ultimates use Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit or Spell Power and Spell Crit depending on which is more beneficial for the player (since Weapon Damage by default is higher than Spell Damage, a Weapon Damage value that is 30 points higher than the default Weapon Damage value for the level of the character should only result in the same Ultimate strength as a Spell Damage value 30 points above the default value for Spell Damage on the corresponding the level; if a Weapon Damage value of 190 makes an Ultimate equally strong as a Spell Damage value of 190 then the result will be Ultimate abilities that are far too strong).
- Have about half of the skills (including their damage over time effects) in all skill lines benefit from Weapon Crit and Weapon Damage and the other half benefit from Spell Damage and Spell Crit (make it clear in the skill description which skill uses which Crit and Damage value).
- Change ultimate regain from heals so that ultimate is only generated when a character that is currently in combat is actually healed (has an amount of Health recovered by the heal). (Similarly, other effects that let the player regain ultimate like the use of Earthen Heart skills on a Dragonknight with the passive skill Mountain's Blessing should only work in combat.)
- Add a re-use delay for Fire Rune and its morphs (all other skills have a cooldown; there is no reason why Fire Rune should be an exception).
- Increase the influence of Stamina on the damage of regular weapon attacks (light and heavy attacks).
- Add at least one more guild skill line that has Stamina-based skills (maybe a Thieves Guild skill line).
- Add balance for armor types.
How?
- Lower the Spell Penetration bonus on Light Armor
- Greatly increase the Spell Resistance and Armor bonus for Heavy Armor and increase both the soft cap and the hard cap for these stats.
- Add an Armor Penetration bonus for Medium Armor.
- All active skills from the Armor skill lines should scale depending on how many pieces of the corresponding armor type a character is currently wearing. For example, Immovable would only have a bonus of 100 to Spell Resistance and Armor and last only for 1.5 seconds when used by a character that isn’t wearing a single piece of Heavy Armor.