Discussions: Heavy Armor Passives

CaptainSilverbrow

Part deus of my suggestions series. First thread here.

With regard to the Heavy Armor tree, these suggestions are offered freely (as in all my threads), and are intended to bolster this tree's combat viability and better enable balance/efficacy with proper testing and numbers tweaking; values herein are more or less placeholders, with proper throughput and analysis anticipated to appropriately guage what values are best. I'm pitching mechanics. Incumbent passives and skill names are bolded.

Personal philosophy: Heavy Armor is not your tanking tree, SnS is. It should undoubtedly best compliment tanking, just as Light Armor better compliments the Resto tree, but it should primarily be designed with defensive playstyles in mind, rather than tanking playstyles. Naturally, what I have largely in mind is more effective defensive DPS, with both regard to PvP and PvE. The scope of this thread is more about efficaciously broadening Heavy Armor's situational defensiveness, and hopefully making it more fun.

•Increase Resolve's Armor/base Spell Resist bonus from 3% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped to 5%.

•Add effect to Resolve: "1%/2%/3% chance to parry a melee attack and reflect 25% of (the parried attack's) damage per piece pf Heavy Armor equipped." The damage would be applied via a "Wracking" bleed effect, over say 5 seconds, and would stack; put a 2-3 sec. ICD on it. I'm on the fence with this one, but I'd love to hear opinions.

•Change Juggernaut's Weapon Power increase to a flat damage increase, and raise its value from 1% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped to 2%.

•Add effect to Bracing: "While channeling or casting a spell/ability, incoming damage is reduced by 20%/40%"; this will also require at least 5 pieces of heavy armor be equipped.

•Roll Rapid Mending's wording and effect into Constitution, allow it to take on that larger value (4%).

•Replace Rapid Mending in the final tier with new passive and effect;

"Vitality":
"Increases base Magicka and Stamina by 2%/4% per piece of heavy armor equipped. (max being 15%/28%)"

•Roll Constitution's regenerative mechanic into Vitality, leave said mechanic and value as is.

•Add new effect to Constitution: "Reduces the duration of negative effects by 2.5%/5% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped." Most effectively reduces negative effects by a third their total duration.

•Reduce Immovable's duration to 3 seconds (down from 8 ), but increase it by 1 second per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Minor buff for actual Heavy Armor wearers, discourages non-Heavy Armor wearers abusing it.

•Change Immovable's morphs accordingly:
••Immovable Brute: Increases base damage by 1% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped, as well as the former effect. With each rank, increase it moderately, with Rank 4 topping at 2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max, at rank 4, would grant 15% additional damage with 7/7 Heavy Armor.
••Unstoppable: Doubles the durational increase given per piece of Heavy Armor equipped to 2 seconds per piece. Max would be 17 seconds with 7/7 Heavy Armor. Didn't mean to publish with that. Ideally, the highest this should be is 12-12.5 seconds.

Here's how the passives would read, in order respecting their standing in the tree:

Resolve
Increases Armor by 1%/3%/5% and base Spell Resist by 1%/3%/5% for each piece of Heavy Armor Equipped.

Chance to parry a melee attack, and return 25% of parried attack's damage as Bleed damage over 5 seconds, by 1%/2%/3% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Can occur once every 3 seconds.

Constitution
Increases Health Recovery by 2%/4% and healing received by 2%/4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Reduces the duration of negative effects by 2.5%/5% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Juggernaut
Increases all damage by 1%/2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Reduces the cost of Break Free by 2%/4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Bracing
Reduces the Stamina cost of Blocking by 10%/20% when a Heavy Armor set of 5 or more pieces is equipped.

While casting or channeling a spell or ability, reduces incoming spell (or ranged) damage by 20%/40% when a Heavy Armor set of 5 or more pieces is equipped.

Vitality
Increases base Magicka and Stamina by 2%/4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Restore .15% of Max Health as Magicka and Stamina each time you are hit. Value is increased per piece of Heavy Armor equipped, and can occur once every 4/2 seconds.

Ruminate on this carefully before commenting, consider HA's current strengths (which are few and far between) and weaknesses. Thanks for reading~

Post has been edited for clarity and initially elusive typos.

Maverick827

I think this would make Heavy Armor too powerful, and I say this as someone who really wants HA to be more viable than it is. You want to give heavy armor:

• 35% Armor
• 35% Spell Resistance
• 28% Health Recovery
• 28% Healing Received
• 35% Shorter duration on debuffs
• 14% Damage
• 28% Cost reduction on Break Free
• 20% Cost reduction on Block
• 40% Damage reduction when channeling
• 28% Magicka
• 28% Stamina
• ~33 Magicka Recovery (ignores overcharge)
• ~33 Stamina Recovery (ignores overcharge)
• 17 Seconds of CC immunity, which is essentially full CC immunity
• Some sort of damage return on hit. I'm not sure what you mean by "Bleed damage over 5 seconds by 1%/2%/3%," but regardless, this passive equates to increasing your DPS by at least 5% of your opponent's DPS, and can overlap on to multiple attackers (lasts for 5 seconds, can occur every 3 seconds).

Compared to the "overpowered" Light Armor:

• 21% Magicka cost reduction
• 28% Magicka recovery (subject to overcharge)
• 56% Spell resistance
• 10% Spell Crit
• 28% Spell penetration

And Medium Armor:

• 21% Weapon crit
• 28% Stamina recovery (subject to overcharge)
• 14% Stamina cost reduction
• 35% Detection area increase
• 49% Sneak cost reduction
• 10% Attack speed
• 21% Sprint speed
• 28% Roll cost reduction

Light armor is only so popular because cost reduction is very powerful and magicka abilities are themselves just better than stamina abilities. The solution to this isn't to give the other armors huge buffs, but to redistribute the cost reduction to everyone (reduce all magicka skill's base cost by X% and then change Prodigy to 21-X% cost reduction) and also to buff the weapon/stamina skills themselves, which they are in the process of doing.

Sharee

CaptainSilverbrow wrote: »

•Reduce Immovable's duration to 3 seconds (down from 8), but increase it by 1 second per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Minor buff for actual Heavy Armor wearers, discourages non-Heavy Armor wearers abusing it.

Right now heavy armor users get 10.8 duration thanks to the morph. With your change they would get 10 base, and 13.5 morphed. That's a 25% increase in duration over current. Not sure i would call that buff minor

Sasky

Overall it seems suspect that you have to pack in at least 2 passives per passive, with 3 on some. It should try to stick to 1-2 as much as possible.

Resolve
Increase welcome but doesn't do much as full HA users already over softcap in armor (and usually SR too).

Parry seems a bit bizarre, with a low chance to throw back massive damage. So most of the time it does nothing but occasionally can throw 50dps back? Also keep in mind insta-cast means shields are up most of the time so an actual parry doesn't do that much. Perhaps a more along the line of "Increase strength of next attack by x% after successful bash interrupt".

Constitution
Makes sense as a roll-in more than the current, although that is a rather drastic boost (4x) per piece. Stacked with other +% healing bonuses this could take on ridiculous levels and be next to unkillable in PvP. The new addition is a bit hard to quantify what exactly that gets you, but you're stacking 3 effects on this now.

Juggernaut
Personally, I feel the +dmg should be flat-out removed from heavy armor. With the lack of regen, it promotes HA more as burst damage, which is the opposite of your stated intent.

Bracing
Rather high levels for damage reduction. What are the block mitigation percents again? This seems to tie into keep shield up all the time, and when you do drop it to cast a channeled spell you don't really lose much.

Vitality
Way, way, way too much of an increase to maxes. As well, this promotes burst damage, which is the opposite of what was intended. The existing bonus to stamina/magicka is pitiful, however, and doesn't really amount to much (about 5/s regen).

---

My suggestion to fix HA: 1 replacement and 1 addition. This keeps it close to current and provides a distinguishing reason to wear it for any role.
1) Replace second part of constitution. The current ~5/s regen is worthless. Instead have a straight-up +0.75%/1.5% per piece regen to each magicka and stamina.
2) To bracing add ultimate generation of some form. Not sure exactly the form, but something along the lines of "On hit, generate 7/15 ultimate. Once every 4s." This is on the 5-piece item to make it a serious commitment (and better able to control the values for balancing).

This gives a slight boost to resource management (one of key problems with trying to dps in HA) and also gives a huge boost to ultimate generation. Faster ultimate does translate to more DPS, overall utility, defensiveness, whatever depending on the ultimate. It also solves one of the issues tanking in PvE -- there's no ultimate generation by blocking.

james_vestbergb16_ESO

As much as I want heavy armor to get better, I still think ZOS is doing the right thing making very small changes, step by step. Heavy armor gives bonuses to blocking with shield already, there's builds out there that let ppl block very very long even when facing numerous players in PvP. Giving such a build too much offensive power as cherry on top could be devestating.

Personally I agree with the person suggesting a redistribution of passives. If something is overpowered or unbalanced the solution is far from always to buff everything to the same standard. Sometimes nerfs are exactly whats needed nomatter how many ppl say they "hate" nerfs.

Nerfs are a tool for rebalancing just as much as buffs are. You cant just buff everything (not aimed at you personally OP).

demonlkojipub19_ESO

Yea and thats why they finally give light armor one of the nerfs it needed, tho that passive could still stand to be less, like 1.5%/3% per piece, since nearly everything is still a spell.

Would be better if they made some "spells" attack the armor instead of the spell resistance, but nerfing concentration is likely much less work.

Most spells, specifically class "spells", are still too costly and not effective without pairing them with light armor tho. They could do for a blanket reduction to costs and reduction to light armor magicka cost reduction.

xaraan

I love my heavy armor, but that is a crazy list and makes heavy armor way too powerful. It does not need boosts to all damage or magicka/stamina - someone is trying to get zos to gift wrap them a heavy armor caster.

The only things I think need added to heavy armor passives is perhaps a damage mitigation, like 1% per piece of armor worn perhaps (or even .5% per piece). And maybe let wearers raise the armor softcap by 5% per piece worn or something. That's it. With the light armor getting the needed nerf, the armors aren't going to be as out of wack as they used to be.

CaptainSilverbrow

I'm on the run at the moment, and somewhat limited in my capacity to provide comprehensive responses. I counsel you to first read my opening paragraph; "values are ... placeholders" and "I'm just pitching mechanics" may not have been clear enough. I'd just use x% to define where value should be, but using arbitrary value is better for marketing. Impressions are everything; if I make values too low, I risk not making the mechanics seem interesting enough. I get closer to the happy median when I risk them seeming too high, though.

•Some sort of damage return on hit. I'm not sure what you mean by "Bleed damage over 5 seconds by 1%/2%/3%," but regardless, this passive equates to increasing your DPS by at least 5% of your opponent's DPS, and can overlap on to multiple attackers (lasts for 5 seconds, can occur every 3 seconds).

Let's quote what I actually wrote and clarify it, I'll also explain how bleed damage works. This is to you too, @Sasky. It might only be OP in that it every so often effectively negates a single instance of melee, (as in physical) damage on an ICD. Only physical damage. There's not a whole lot it can do, let alone return much damage to an aggressor.

Chance to parry a melee attack, and return 25% of parried attack's damage as Bleed damage over 5 seconds, by 1%/2%/3% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Can occur once every 3 seconds.

I'm not a fan of the phrasing, personally. I should've added commas to begin with, I'll correct that. What it does is negate a physical melee attack, doesn't include Bow attacks, and spells don't even apply, so the majority of class skills cannot be parried. When an attack is successfully parried, that damage is negated, and a fourth of it is applied to the attacker instead as a DoT. Bleed damage is mitigated by Armor rating, as it's Physical Damage. This isn't a new mechanic. I'm uncertain as to where the "5% of an opponent's DPS" and "~50 DPS increase" figures are coming from, but it's too limited in scope and applicability, and wouldn't occur frequently enough to constitute a DPS increase of too great a magnitude. It could be on a higher ICD (and I think could occur less frequently), but bear in mind that its ICD will mostly be occupied parrying light swing weapon attacks.

So if a physical melee attack of such a magnitude as, say, 1,200 damage were parried, that damage would be negated. Then, a Physical Damage DoT (a Bleed) for 300 damage would be applied to the attacker, would be subject to Armor mitigation, and would tick for the sum of that damage (less than 300 damage after Armor) over a period of 5 seconds. A Bleed damage DoT is most ideal for it as it's generally the weakest variety of applicable damage available.

•35% Armor
•35% Spell Resistance

Up %14 from the concurrently effective 21% increase to both, yes. Among my suggestions, there's a veritable legion of players that've already suggested this. Light Armor still pulls well ahead with the more valuable of the two.

•28% Health Recovery
•28% Cost reduction on Break Free
•20% Cost reduction on Block

Already concurrently effective in-game.

•~33 Magicka Recovery (ignores overcharge)
•~33 Stamina Recovery (ignores overcharge)

This is already effective in-game (I think you know that). At 3.4k HP in Cyrodiil, I get ~30 recovery when I'm attacked, on a 2 second ICD. They're following through on a paradigm I suggested awhile back, that Heavy Armor needs mechanics that bypass overcharge (mostly with regard to Armor). What they've done, which I think was a brilliant step, is make it so that this rewards the players for being attacked and in combat, exchanging health lost for a small boon to resources. It doesn't function so effectively as to constitute an extension of base Stam./Magicka Regen. rates, which is reserved for Medium and Light Armor wearers. It's more a tanking boon than anything.

•28% Healing Received

This isn't that tremendous, but could be reduced. I was more concerned with just rolling it into Resolve. I would, frankly, eliminate it entirely as it's presently too small to miss.

•35% Shorter duration on debuffs
•40% Damage reduction when channeling

More or less, I'm just pitching these mechanics as defensive boons, values notwithstanding. Should have noted I'd meant for the casting buff to affect exclusively spell damage.

•14% Damage

As opposed to increased Spell/Physical Penetration and Crit', which together generally output better damage, yes. Heavy Armor doesn't naturally bolster crit' of any kind as Medium and Light Armor do, nor penetration. It's the only strictly DPS bonus Heavy Armor provides wearers at present, but is too paltry to be effective; expanding it makes it somewhat more effective. Regardless, both Light Armor and Medium Armor pull well ahead.

•17 Seconds of CC immunity, which is essentially full CC immunity

Oh wow, I actually left the "one second per piece" line in, that was an accident. The only change I'd had in mind for it was to make it less appealing to casters and make so that Unstoppable provided some boost. Immovable itself would be 10 seconds in 7/7 Heavy Armor, Unstoppable shouldn't go higher than ~12.5. Ideally, the durations could remain as they are currently with the max being ~11 seconds (10.8 ), but keep the Immovable change so that casters aren't using it anymore.

Now, for the big one:

•28% Magicka
•28% Stamina

This is to increase the effectiveness of class abilities, as most of them scale with base Magicka, so Heavy Armor wearers actually deal less damage with their melee-based class abilities than casters do, which is why Light Armor off-hand melee Templars are more effective than Medium/Heavy Armor, wholesale melee Templars. This is also to somewhat compensate for giving up on far more superior boons from the other trees, (MA's Windwalker needs buffed, though). Benefits: Increases damage of class abilities so that HA wearers aren't wanting as much in that department, and less resource-starved due to no spell-cost reduction/straight resource regen. buffs.

In the end, the actual values are unimportant to me, the mission is to see better mechanics applied incrementally over time. Proper values are a matter for testing and player input.

Sharee wrote: »

Right now heavy armor users get 10.8 duration thanks to the morph. With your change they would get 10 base, and 13.5 morphed. That's a 25% increase in duration over current. Not sure i would call that buff minor

Higher, actually. I know, I didn't actually intend to publish the thread with that left in there (or that random emote!). I tend to sculpt and eke out the molds of my writings, undetailed or silly-looking planes intended to be revisited later. I missed that one.

I'll get to you in a bit, @Sasky.

Maverick827

I know all of those are already in the game, I was showing off everything that HA would have in total under your suggestions versus everything LA and MA would have, and it's just too much.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

I think they should make the juggernaut passive the same way they made the new part of constitution passive.

Increase damage dealt by .1% of your max HP per piece of heavy armor equipped. Something around those lines. So instead of making the armor increase magicka and stamina, it focuses on the max health once again.

Or they can use the resource pools. Increase damage dealt by .08% of half your combined max magicka and max stamina per piece of heavy armor equipped. Going off resource makes it so heavy armor DPSers won't have to focus too much on max HP and instead their resources.

Or if those tiny percentages are too hard to fine tune in a per piece of armor manor, a larger 5 or 6 piece bonus can take its place.

Cody

immovable should require 5/7 or more pieces of HA to use. with your suggested option, non-Ha users would still abuse it.

Faulgor

IMO, Heavy Armor should excel in prolonged fighting, whereas Light and Medium Armor are mainly focused on dealing damage quick and hard.

Something I would like to see to achieve this is a flat damage reduction instead of a percentage like the current armor rating. Possibly changing Resolve to 4/6/8 damage reduction per piece of Heavy Armor. That means, if you were attacked for 500 damage and had 30% damage reduction due to your armor rating, normally you would take 350 damage. With 7 pieces of Heavy Armor, you would detract another 7*8 = 56 damage from that, leaving you at 294.
This gives Heavy Armor a unique trait that enhances its supposed strength of defense while circumventing soft and hard caps. It's also a better defense against lots of small sustained attacks than single larger attacks, and thus requires different strategies to bring down Heavy Armor characters.

Another possible change would be to Juggernaut, which currently increases weapon damage by 7%. This seams rather boring and too straightforward to me. Instead, I would change this to 0.5/1% chance per piece of Heavy Armor to set target off balance with a melee attack. This would give Heavy Armor a bit more CC to prolong the fight, provide the chance for damaging follow-up attacks and differentiate Medium and Heavy Armor some more.

leandro.800ub17_ESO

Just increase the spell and armor % bonus. I don't like having to put defense trait on a weapon because of poor passives on heavy armor

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO

Oh god yes to Immovable Brute, let Heavy do some real damage instead of just forcing it into tank armor.

Shiall

Really bad that in this game you cannot stop enemy's movement with your body. No collisions = no tanks in pvp.
I mean - whats point of being a tank if you cant stop enemy AoE train - they dont care about your CC and your damage (heavy aoe damage from heavy armor tank? really?). Yeah you can survive their rush - and what's next? your allies already dead.
It's better to be another defensive AoE DD - (hi firestaff DK).
Tanks are usefull in pvp? Don't make me laugh.
(P.S. By tank in pvp i mean heavy armor guy who can stop the enemy's anvance with his body)
P.P.S. Now i'm rolling v12 DK with Shield/Sword+Destro Staff + full light armor. Wanna wear some heavy armor but...it's a trash. Don't need this garbage for now - no matter for pvp or pve (and i can be dd or tank without any problem).

Wifeaggro13

Shiall wrote: »

Really bad that in this game you cannot stop enemy's movement with your body. No collisions = no tanks in pvp.
I mean - whats point of being a tank if you cant stop enemy AoE train - they dont care about your CC and your damage (heavy aoe damage from heavy armor tank? really?). Yeah you can survive their rush - and what's next? your allies already dead.
It's better to be another defensive AoE DD - (hi firestaff DK).
Tanks are usefull in pvp? Don't make me laugh.
(P.S. By tank in pvp i mean heavy armor guy who can stop the enemy's anvance with his body)
P.P.S. Now i'm rolling v12 DK with Shield/Sword+Destro Staff + full light armor. Wanna wear some heavy armor but...it's a trash. Don't need this garbage for now - no matter for pvp or pve (and i can be dd or tank without any problem).

Ive been saying this since may. This game is not for me

Varicite

Shiall wrote: »

Really bad that in this game you cannot stop enemy's movement with your body. No collisions = no tanks in pvp.
I mean - whats point of being a tank if you cant stop enemy AoE train - they dont care about your CC and your damage (heavy aoe damage from heavy armor tank? really?). Yeah you can survive their rush - and what's next? your allies already dead.
It's better to be another defensive AoE DD - (hi firestaff DK).
Tanks are usefull in pvp? Don't make me laugh.
(P.S. By tank in pvp i mean heavy armor guy who can stop the enemy's anvance with his body)
P.P.S. Now i'm rolling v12 DK with Shield/Sword+Destro Staff + full light armor. Wanna wear some heavy armor but...it's a trash. Don't need this garbage for now - no matter for pvp or pve (and i can be dd or tank without any problem).

You don't need collision to make tanks useful.

Just make the taunt abilities make players do lower damage to anyone except for the player that taunted them, like SWTOR PvP.

That was one of the few things that they really did right in that game.

Shiall

Varicite wrote: »

You don't need collision to make tanks useful.

Just make the taunt abilities make players do lower damage to anyone except for the player that taunted them, like SWTOR PvP.

That was one of the few things that they really did right in that game.

1. Can't agree with you.

2. Like Warhammer Online (Age of Reckoning) lol.

Varicite

Shiall wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

You don't need collision to make tanks useful.

Just make the taunt abilities make players do lower damage to anyone except for the player that taunted them, like SWTOR PvP.

That was one of the few things that they really did right in that game.

1. Can't agree with you.

2. Like Warhammer Online (Age of Reckoning) lol.

I'm confused.

Are you disagreeing about taunts? Or are you saying that you do need collision detection to make tanks useful?

Because then you mention WAR, which did feature collision detection, and ran itself into the ground in under 5 years and is now widely seen as a failure...

Of course, I don't think that WAR's tale is really all that much different than ESO's, reception-wise. : P

Shiall

Varicite wrote: »

1. Are you disagreeing about taunts? Or are you saying that you do need collision detection to make tanks useful?

2. Because then you mention WAR, which did feature collision detection, and ran itself into the ground in under 5 years and is now widely seen as a failure...

1. I can use a taunt...and sneak somewhere. Or shoot the enemy with my ranged abilities. Nice tank yeah?

2. 5 years almost without any developer's support. The game was good.

Varicite

Shiall wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

1. Are you disagreeing about taunts? Or are you saying that you do need collision detection to make tanks useful?

2. Because then you mention WAR, which did feature collision detection, and ran itself into the ground in under 5 years and is now widely seen as a failure...

1. I can use a taunt...and sneak somewhere. Or shoot the enemy with my ranged abilities. Nice tank yeah?

2. 5 years almost without any developer's support. The game was good.

You actually can't use stealth in combat, and taunting will put you in combat.

If you mean that you can taunt somebody and run away, sure, there's always that.

WAR being "good" is completely subjective, btw, and doesn't lend anything to the discussion. : )

Shiall

Varicite wrote: »

1. You actually can't use stealth in combat, and taunting will put you in combat.

2. If you mean that you can taunt somebody and run away, sure, there's always that.

3. WAR being "good" is completely subjective, btw, and doesn't lend anything to the discussion. : )

1. NB can.
2.I mean that with this taunt ability we will get a lot of light or medium armor ranged "tanks".
3. In WAR good shieldwall can lead you to victory. In TESO...well...there is no shieldwall in TESO.

Varicite

Shiall wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

1. You actually can't use stealth in combat, and taunting will put you in combat.

2. If you mean that you can taunt somebody and run away, sure, there's always that.

3. WAR being "good" is completely subjective, btw, and doesn't lend anything to the discussion. : )

1. NB can.
2.I mean that with this taunt ability we will get a lot of light or medium armor ranged "tanks".
3. In WAR good shieldwall can lead you to victory. In TESO...well...there is no shieldwall in TESO.

You do realize that Invisibility isn't Stealth though, yes? And that everyone can Invis via potions (and many non NBs do).

There are plenty of light armor tanks. Moreso than heavy, in my experience, as heavy doesn't bring much to the table, unfortunately.

My comment was for tanks in general, though, not specifically aimed at heavy armor tanks. I personally have no issue w/ light and medium armor tanks existing.

I do agree that they shouldn't completely outclass their heavy armor counterparts, though. They should all be equal in their own way.

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO

Varicite wrote: »

My comment was for tanks in general, though, not specifically aimed at heavy armor tanks. I personally have no issue w/ light and medium armor tanks existing.

I do agree that they shouldn't completely outclass their heavy armor counterparts, though. They should all be equal in their own way.

YES!! It's Elder Scrolls dammit! Weird non-standard builds should be encouraged, not forced into one of the half-dozen typical ones!

Shiall

Varicite wrote: »

1. You do realize that Invisibility isn't Stealth though, yes? And that everyone can Invis via potions (and many non NBs do).

2. There are plenty of light armor tanks. Moreso than heavy, in my experience, as heavy doesn't bring much to the table, unfortunately.

3. My comment was for tanks in general, though, not specifically aimed at heavy armor tanks. I personally have no issue w/ light and medium armor tanks existing.

4. I do agree that they shouldn't completely outclass their heavy armor counterparts, though. They should all be equal in their own way.

1. Yes but effect almost the same. Well...you cant see someone.
2. Heh i'm one of them. Sort of... tank/aoe in fact
3. And what's the point of heavy armor then?
It can really protect you? NO.
it can offer you more damage? NO.
That's why better to be a light armor tank and even medium armor tank.
4.But they do - for now.

Shiall

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO wrote: »

YES!! It's Elder Scrolls dammit! Weird non-standard builds should be encouraged, not forced into one of the half-dozen typical ones!

Sure we need more frags in pvp. I hope you are no DC player.

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO

Shiall wrote: »

jamie.goddenrwb17_ESO wrote: »

YES!! It's Elder Scrolls dammit! Weird non-standard builds should be encouraged, not forced into one of the half-dozen typical ones!

Sure we need more frags in pvp. I hope you are no DC player.

HA! I suck at PvP so badly that I'd probably get destroyed even with an OP build.

Doesn't change the fact that balance should be more about creating more variety instead of limiting it.

Varicite

Shiall wrote: »

3. And what's the point of heavy armor then?

Oh, this is simple enough.

It should protect you in a different manner than the other two types. Heavy protects through raw armor mitigation, whereas medium protects through evasion, and light helps through allowing you to use spells to bolster your defenses.

Heavy would be protection w/out having to resort to buff spells as often, or dodging as much.

That's how it should work, imo. It'll get there.

Cogo

CaptainSilverbrow wrote: »

Part deus of my suggestions series. First thread here.

With regard to the Heavy Armor tree, these suggestions are offered freely (as in all my threads), and are intended to bolster this tree's combat viability and better enable balance/efficacy with proper testing and numbers tweaking; values herein are more or less placeholders, with proper throughput and analysis anticipated to appropriately guage what values are best. I'm pitching mechanics. Incumbent passives and skill names are bolded.

Personal philosophy: Heavy Armor is not your tanking tree, SnS is. It should undoubtedly best compliment tanking, just as Light Armor better compliments the Resto tree, but it should primarily be designed with defensive playstyles in mind, rather than tanking playstyles. Naturally, what I have largely in mind is more effective defensive DPS, with both regard to PvP and PvE. The scope of this thread is more about efficaciously broadening Heavy Armor's situational defensiveness, and hopefully making it more fun.

•Increase Resolve's Armor/base Spell Resist bonus from 3% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped to 5%.

•Add effect to Resolve: "1%/2%/3% chance to parry a melee attack and reflect 25% of (the parried attack's) damage per piece pf Heavy Armor equipped." The damage would be applied via a "Wracking" bleed effect, over say 5 seconds, and would stack; put a 2-3 sec. ICD on it. I'm on the fence with this one, but I'd love to hear opinions.

•Change Juggernaut's Weapon Power increase to a flat damage increase, and raise its value from 1% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped to 2%.

•Add effect to Bracing: "While channeling or casting a spell/ability, incoming damage is reduced by 20%/40%"; this will also require at least 5 pieces of heavy armor be equipped.

•Roll Rapid Mending's wording and effect into Constitution, allow it to take on that larger value (4%).

•Replace Rapid Mending in the final tier with new passive and effect;

"Vitality":
"Increases base Magicka and Stamina by 2%/4% per piece of heavy armor equipped. (max being 15%/28%)"

•Roll Constitution's regenerative mechanic into Vitality, leave said mechanic and value as is.

•Add new effect to Constitution: "Reduces the duration of negative effects by 2.5%/5% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped." Most effectively reduces negative effects by a third their total duration.

•Reduce Immovable's duration to 3 seconds (down from 8 ), but increase it by 1 second per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Minor buff for actual Heavy Armor wearers, discourages non-Heavy Armor wearers abusing it.

•Change Immovable's morphs accordingly:
••Immovable Brute: Increases base damage by 1% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped, as well as the former effect. With each rank, increase it moderately, with Rank 4 topping at 2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Max, at rank 4, would grant 15% additional damage with 7/7 Heavy Armor.
••Unstoppable: Doubles the durational increase given per piece of Heavy Armor equipped to 2 seconds per piece. Max would be 17 seconds with 7/7 Heavy Armor. Didn't mean to publish with that. Ideally, the highest this should be is 12-12.5 seconds.

Here's how the passives would read, in order respecting their standing in the tree:

Resolve
Increases Armor by 1%/3%/5% and base Spell Resist by 1%/3%/5% for each piece of Heavy Armor Equipped.

Chance to parry a melee attack, and return 25% of parried attack's damage as Bleed damage over 5 seconds, by 1%/2%/3% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped. Can occur once every 3 seconds.

Constitution
Increases Health Recovery by 2%/4% and healing received by 2%/4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Reduces the duration of negative effects by 2.5%/5% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Juggernaut
Increases all damage by 1%/2% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Reduces the cost of Break Free by 2%/4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Bracing
Reduces the Stamina cost of Blocking by 10%/20% when a Heavy Armor set of 5 or more pieces is equipped.

While casting or channeling a spell or ability, reduces incoming spell (or ranged) damage by 20%/40% when a Heavy Armor set of 5 or more pieces is equipped.

Vitality
Increases base Magicka and Stamina by 2%/4% per piece of Heavy Armor equipped.

Restore .15% of Max Health as Magicka and Stamina each time you are hit. Value is increased per piece of Heavy Armor equipped, and can occur once every 4/2 seconds.

Ruminate on this carefully before commenting, consider HA's current strengths (which are few and far between) and weaknesses. Thanks for reading~

Post has been edited for clarity and initially elusive typos.

I am sorry since you wrote such a good post. Giving a good view and in a very good way.

I play only in heavy, with 2 medium, done since launch. Tank. And I seen all the changed live in game.

Heavy is good! Bit too good. This is NOT good for heavy at all!

The problem is not heavy armor. It is that players have not tried to use it. Guides, forums, calculations, even looking at changes and thinking naaah.

Try it! And trying does not mean you test it for a few days......Come back in 2 weeks, playing with it and say again...then maybe.

Heavy is awesome! People keep forgetting the global abilities that are available to all. Block, roll, interupt. All kinds of enchants and whatever setup you can do.

These suggestions is not needed. In fact, they would make balancing worse!
And I play only in heavy. ok and 2 medium, even when I do damage, with my bow.

Armors are fine! Caps already gotten higher. If removed....you see ONLY heavy armor after people realize they DO protect you with the good setup.

And champion system with passives + 2 more skill trees coming. No more buffs to heavy!

Also. Heavy armor is not "tank" armor. Any armor is for any use. Its up to each player to find their own build.

CaptainSilverbrow

@Cogo‌ I wasn't going to submit a response to this post as I've yet to address even Sasky, but my conscience will not abate. I'll keep it more subdued than the initial propensity inspiring it.

You're mistakenly correlating your experience and successes in the Sword and Shield line of skills and passives-- a very well-designed tree, mind you-- with your experience in 5/7 Heavy Armor, which is itself entirely unrelated to your "success. In fact, your performance would improve in 5MA/2HA, though you'd be better served in some Light Armor. I promise you, you are not some lone, insightful stalwart that stands among a few souls that've "figured out how to make it work" and touched upon some element about the HA tree that the majority of the base have yet to fathom. No, that isn't what's happening; you're just enjoying the functionality and ease-of-use integral to what may be the simplest, most user-friendly skill line in this game. And it had to be well-designed because it's the only skill line that exists solely for tanking, even hazarding being

Bit too good.

Replace your Bow with the Resto Staff, you'll be delighted with the results when you've got that composition down pat. It's among the most popular cookie cutter specs for a reason.

Cogo

CaptainSilverbrow wrote: »

@Cogo‌ I wasn't going to submit a response to this post as I've yet to address even Sasky, but my conscience will not abate. I'll keep it more subdued than the initial propensity inspiring it.

You're mistakenly correlating your experience and successes in the Sword and Shield line of skills and passives-- a very well-designed tree, mind you-- with your experience in 5/7 Heavy Armor. Your performance would improve in 5MA/2HA, though you'd be better served in some Light Armor. I promise you, you are not some lone, insightful stalwart that stands among a few souls that've "figured out how to make it work" and touched upon some element about the HA tree that the majority of the base have yet to fathom. No, that isn't what's happening; you're just enjoying the functionality and ease-of-use integral to what may be the simplest, most user-friendly skill line in this game. And it had to be well-designed because it's the only skill line that exists solely for tanking, even hazarding being

Bit too good.

Replace your Bow with the Resto Staff, you'll be delighted with the results when you've got that composition down pat. It's among the most popular cookie cutter specs for a reason.

I understand well!!

I know what would be "the best". That is not why I play, nor what ESO is about!
You play your way, does not mean, what is the best damage, etc.

I know if I replace X with X it would improve a lot. So what? It would not be FUN!
I got 45 days in "Played". Vet 6. Played since launch. Only started an alt a few weeks ago. Also, playing what is fun! And my style!

As an old raider, my playstyle now, is stupid. ESO is not ONLY about "best effects/Performance". I enjoy every second in the game! I am NEVER bored!

I trust Zeni to balance, work on skills, systems, additions etc, for everything. It is just a matter of time. Look at heavy armor. Until a month ago, it was almost impossible to use well, in high level challenges.

Now, heavy armor is VERY useful. Still, other choices are better. But heavy is a choice now!

As long as you do your part in a dungeon, your play style does not NEED to THE BEST. I tank vet dungeon's and kill bosses. I would do better in X, but have less fun!