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A solution for the Magicka/Stamina imbalance

GaldorP
GaldorP
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The first part of the post sums up the issue, the second part is a suggestion for a solution :)

The issue:
  1. 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).
  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).
  3. 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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  • Jaxom
    Jaxom
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    •Let ultimates use Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit or Spell Power and Spell Crit depending on which is more beneficial for the player
    •Change ultimate regain from heals

    The above two points you made are currently going to go live. The first is going to happen in 1.3 and the second has been talked about by the devs (change incoming on it).

    As for the rest of it, some interesting points. I'm anticipating that both Spell Crafting and the Dark Brotherhood, Thief's Guild lines will benefit stamina based characters.
  • Obscure
    Obscure
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    A fine list of proposed changes, but none of them target a problem that will persist even if everything you've listed is enacted. Stamina opportunity costs. No matter how much damage you increase stamina skills by or how much more important stamina becomes to skill use, the requirement to use it defensively will always detract from using it offensively. Players can spam magicka abilities to their hearts content, but when they run out the only thing they have to worry about is no longer being able to cast. They can still block, dodge, sprint, sneak, bash, and CC break. Stamina builds, by the very nature of the basic/mundane uses of stamina, cannot be so offensive with their attacks without completely sacrificing defense.

    I'd therefore suggest that you add the following to your list:

    • CC break, dodge, block, bash, sprint, and sneak consume Stamina or Magicka based on weapon being used. Staves using magicka for these features will also have alternate animations to indicate the magicka version is in use (and because it would look epic as *** gliding around like a fire atronach instead of sprinting)

    • Much like One Hand and Shield specializes in block and bash efficiency all other weapons gain a more efficient usage of a different feature:
    -Dual Weild: sprinting costs less and you move faster.
    -Two Handed: CC break costs less and following immunity lasts longer.
    -Bow: dodge costs less and is a larger movement.

    •Medium Armor active skill Evasion/Elude/Shuffle also makes the user immune to snares and immobilize for up to 7 seconds based on the number of medium armor peices equipped when cast. Only the Shuffle morph removes these effects if active when cast.

    The above should improve stamina efficiency and force the staff user out of using its staff defensively if it wants to maintain defense via Stamina. This will no doubt result in a large number of builds that use a staff in one set and a weapon in another, though this is already common in many builds it's a stern step towards resource equality. The same restrictions placed on the stamina spec would also be placed on the Magicka spec.
  • Jaxom
    Jaxom
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    Obscure wrote: »
    A fine list of proposed changes, but none of them target a problem that will persist even if everything you've listed is enacted. Stamina opportunity costs. No matter how much damage you increase stamina skills by or how much more important stamina becomes to skill use, the requirement to use it defensively will always detract from using it offensively. Players can spam magicka abilities to their hearts content, but when they run out the only thing they have to worry about is no longer being able to cast. They can still block, dodge, sprint, sneak, bash, and CC break. Stamina builds, by the very nature of the basic/mundane uses of stamina, cannot be so offensive with their attacks without completely sacrificing defense.

    I'd therefore suggest that you add the following to your list:

    • CC break, dodge, block, bash, sprint, and sneak consume Stamina or Magicka based on weapon being used. Staves using magicka for these features will also have alternate animations to indicate the magicka version is in use (and because it would look epic as *** gliding around like a fire atronach instead of sprinting)

    • Much like One Hand and Shield specializes in block and bash efficiency all other weapons gain a more efficient usage of a different feature:
    -Dual Weild: sprinting costs less and you move faster.
    -Two Handed: CC break costs less and following immunity lasts longer.
    -Bow: dodge costs less and is a larger movement.

    •Medium Armor active skill Evasion/Elude/Shuffle also makes the user immune to snares and immobilize for up to 7 seconds based on the number of medium armor peices equipped when cast. Only the Shuffle morph removes these effects if active when cast.

    The above should improve stamina efficiency and force the staff user out of using its staff defensively if it wants to maintain defense via Stamina. This will no doubt result in a large number of builds that use a staff in one set and a weapon in another, though this is already common in many builds it's a stern step towards resource equality. The same restrictions placed on the stamina spec would also be placed on the Magicka spec.

    I like your suggestions. I mentioned this in another thread, but if they update the Acrobatics passive on medium armor to reduce now only reduce dodge cost, but sprinting and CC break cost, as well as increase the percentage from 2% per piece to 5%, this would give a full medium armor wearer the option to go offensive without the opportunity cost of going through all your stamina as much.

    A 35% reduce to dodge, cc break, and sprint in 7/7 medium would go a long way to help. It wouldnt solve it completely, but would certainly bridge the gap a bit.
  • GaldorP
    GaldorP
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    First, thanks to all who've read my suggestion even though it's a long post and certainly not the first thread on the subject :)

    @Jaxom: I'm glad to hear that about the incoming change of ultimate regain for heals. I didn't know that yet :)

    @Obscure: You are right, builds focused on Stamina would still have a problem with running out of Stamina fast (if they want to use their best dps) which makes them defenseless. My suggestion that regular light and heavy attacks that are free to use become quite a bit stronger with higher Stamina values was supposed to counter-balance that in a way. My idea was also that everyone would have to rely on both Stamina and Magicka skills since all the Destruction and Restoration Staff skills would be Stamina-based, too, so everyone would have the same problems with running out of Stamina if they use weapon skills. And, also, I hoped Magicka to Stamina conversion added with the Spell Crafting system would help (I hope such skills will be added) ^^ But I guess builds that would focus on class skills, boost their Magicka and use Stamina only for cc break, sprinting, dodge rolls, blocking, and sneaking would still have an advantage (at least without the Spellcrafting system in place).
  • Illuvatarr
    Illuvatarr
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    You could look at it this way I suppose. Or, you could look at it as stamina based abilities complimenting magicka based ones. If you are drawing your abilities from two resource pools as opposed to one you will be much better off. You will have more things you can do. Seems a combo of both is best rather than just relying on one resource pool that is subject to a soft cap.
  • Izzban
    Izzban
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    I have suggested that CC break, dodge, block, etc keep their current cost, but split that cost and equally draw from stamina and magicka.

    I mean to say a dodge roll that currently costs 100 stamina will now cost 50 stamina and 50 magicka instead. If either of these resources is below 50, the roll cannot occur.

    My thought is, why use complicated procedures and balances? Just pull from both resource pools and the issue is over forever.

    If you keep drawing from just stamina for block, CC break, rolls, etc the problem will remain in one form or another for as long as the game exists.
  • vyndral13preub18_ESO
    vyndral13preub18_ESO
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    Illuvatarr wrote: »
    You could look at it this way I suppose. Or, you could look at it as stamina based abilities complimenting magicka based ones. If you are drawing your abilities from two resource pools as opposed to one you will be much better off. You will have more things you can do. Seems a combo of both is best rather than just relying on one resource pool that is subject to a soft cap.

    That is actually the biggest issue. As said Magicka builds are hybrids naturally. They use stamina for defense. Stamina has no such luck.
  • Vahrokh
    Vahrokh
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    I don't like the idea of NBs and melee in general to need to use magicka at all, as it is counter-intuitive to say the least.

    Likewise, I don't like the idea of mages using magicka to roll around. It's bodies using stamina do to those aerobatics, not some voodoo arcane whatever.

    Actually, a smarter idea would have been (I talk in the past, because it requires :effort: and thus it won't happen) to have melee classes use another resource and base their weapons on that, and leave stamina only for the defensive moves.
    Edited by Vahrokh on August 1, 2014 1:34PM
  • GaldorP
    GaldorP
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    I guess the simplest solution would be to just make all skills in the game (including weapon and fighter guild skills) Magicka-based and use Stamina only for cc break, sprinting, dodge roll, blocking, etc.
    Regular weapon attacks would scale with Magicka, too, then and there would only be one critical chance stat (instead of two as it it now: Spell Crit + Weapon Crit) and one Weapon/Skill Damage stat (instead of Spell Damage + Weapon Damage) :)
    Edited by GaldorP on August 2, 2014 4:29AM
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