Blackwater Blade and stats

Yasha

I am having difficulty understanding how character stats work in BB. I thought everyone's base stats are bumped up to the same level, with armor and class/weapon skill line points/passives adding to this baseline level. Also food/drink add to stats I think.

However, no matter what gear I wear my max magicka doesn't go past 16,784 and stamina stays at 15,139. Only my health pool seems to change. But there is something strange about the health pool as well. For example if I equip a shield/sword with shield health enchant (+385 max health) my max health is 29,007; when I switch to restro staff (no health enchant) my health INCREASES to 29,821. Similarly if I take my belt off (+152 max magic) my health pool drops to 28,736, but magicka pool stays at 16,784.

Also with physical and spell resistance: if I take off my armor these figures stay at 8,162. If I use an ability which is meant to boost my armor, again these figures remain at 8,162. Its kind of perplexing.

Does anyone know what is going on with this?

Cody

strange... magicka and stamina should be 17K+, and health around 27K. armor and spell resistance 8Kish, and regeneration rates for resources a max of 900ish if you take certain passives.

k, so what i just said, is that, first of all, some of your stats seem oddly low for battle level, which, unless ZOS changed it, is not right.

2. battle leveled stats are not changed by worn gear UNLESS its crafted set bonuses(also racial bonuses add to the resource pools) Once you hit veteran rank one after completing level 49 OR just turning off battle level while in PvE, you will be able to manually change your stats in PvP

Yasha

Cody wrote: »

strange... magicka and stamina should be 17K+, and health around 27K. armor and spell resistance 8Kish, and regeneration rates for resources a max of 900ish if you take certain passives.

k, so what i just said, is that, first of all, some of your stats seem oddly low for battle level, which, unless ZOS changed it, is not right.

2. battle leveled stats are not changed by worn gear UNLESS its crafted set bonuses(also racial bonuses add to the resource pools) Once you hit veteran rank one after completing level 49 OR just turning off battle level while in PvE, you will be able to manually change your stats in PvP

Thanks Cody, that helps explain things a bit, but still unsure of some things like why my health goes up when I switch from sword/shield to restro staff, or why my resistances don't change when I activate a skill that is meant to increase them . I'll make a video and post it here probably tomorrow, that will probably make things clearer.

I really like BB campaign because it seems to be a pretty even playing field, apart from some players who seem extremely strong for some reason- but I'll post about that later in a separate thread.

Yasha

OK so I made a video showing the issue. As you can see I have the same spell and physical resistance in full heavy armor or naked, my magikca pool and stam pool don't change at all depending on gear, my health pool goes up for some reason when I equip a restro staff, down a little bit when I take armor off - but the amounts don't correlate with the armor health enchants. Also when I use a shadow ability I don't appear to get the passive +4000 armor bonus.

Can someone help me understand this please? Do I need to enable some special setting, or is running around naked essentially just as good as heavy armor?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yQB2IJ1rlMU

nothing2591

magicka cost reduction works aswell as the arena set (5pc) so in my opinion they are the 2 best sets for blackwater blade if you wanna out sustain your opponent my lvl 23 nb is wearing 5pc seducer divines on everything and 166cp all into cost reduction can chain cloak for days even in that low lvl campaign. Using atronach mundus stone so im at 1.2k magicka regen.

Yasha

nothing2591 wrote: »

magicka cost reduction works aswell as the arena set (5pc) so in my opinion they are the 2 best sets for blackwater blade if you wanna out sustain your opponent my lvl 23 nb is wearing 5pc seducer divines on everything and 166cp all into cost reduction can chain cloak for days even in that low lvl campaign. Using atronach mundus stone so im at 1.2k magicka regen.

Thanks for the advice! Getting that magikca recovery up to 1.2k would be amazing. So do actual armor values make no difference for you when you play Blackwater Blade? I don't understand if this is a bug (my armor doesn't increase resistance, skill passives not giving resistance, ability pools not changing except for health etc) or if this is intended, and I don't understand the logic if it is intended.

Poxheart

Armor is a set value in Blackwater Blade, regardless of the pieces you wear.

Yasha

Poxheart wrote: »

Armor is a set value in Blackwater Blade, regardless of the pieces you wear.

I just want to clarify what you are saying. You mean that whatever armor I wear (light, medium, heavy, or no armor) I will have the same resistances? If so, that means I can just wear light armor and be as tanky as I am in heavy armor, while benefiting from light's great regen passives?

Yasha

Here is another thing I just found. My level 10 sorcerer, with no armor on has more physical resistance than my level 46 "front line tank" NB in full heavy armor with all passives to boost survivability, and the boundless storm skill actually works to increase my resistances (unlike NB shadow barrier) so this long range nuker is actually tankier than my "tank".

I wish there was some information on how all this works, it all seems very random.

CP5

Yasha wrote: »

Poxheart wrote: »

Armor is a set value in Blackwater Blade, regardless of the pieces you wear.

I just want to clarify what you are saying. You mean that whatever armor I wear (light, medium, heavy, or no armor) I will have the same resistances? If so, that means I can just wear light armor and be as tanky as I am in heavy armor, while benefiting from light's great regen passives?

Yes, both armor value, max attribute and regen buffs and a few other things don't do anything with battle leveling on. Things like crit rate, cost reduction and healing received do work however.

jrkhan

Battle leveling needs some dev attention - it's the main reason I've stayed out of BwB since 1.6

Things that work:
-5 piece set bonuses
-2 to 4 piece set bonuses to weapon/spell crit
-Food & drink buffs
-Mundus stone
-Passives which provide % bonuses
-Cost reduction jewelry enchants
-The Trait on your gear (though I doubt -reinforced/infused work since they modify the armor/enchant value on the gear which does NOT work)
-Weapon damage buff from Flawless Dawnbreaker


The main problem is:
-You can't differentiate your character
-Heavy armor is less relevant due to static armor values

It would be nice if:
- Your ratio of health/magika/stam were preserved
- The type of armor effected your resist totals


But above all, what really bothers me is:
This is the system intended for new players, yet the mechanics are opaque/not documented. It is by far harder to understand how your gear effects your character, then once you've hit vet1.

@ZOS_GinaBruno any chance that this system will be looked at, or at least documented?

Yasha

jrkhan wrote: »

Battle leveling needs some dev attention - it's the main reason I've stayed out of BwB since 1.6

Things that work:
-5 piece set bonuses
-Food & drink buffs
-Mundus stone
-Passives which provide % bonuses
-Cost reduction jewelry enchants
-The Trait on your gear (though I doubt -reinforced/infused work since they modify the armor/enchant value on the gear which does NOT work)
-Weapon damage buff from Flawless Dawnbreaker


The main problem is:
-You can't differentiate your character
-Heavy armor is less relevant due to static armor values

It would be nice if:
- Your ratio of health/magika/stam were preserved
- The type of armor effected your resist totals


But above all, what really bothers me is:
This is the system intended for new players, yet the mechanics are opaque/not documented. It is by far harder to understand how your gear effects your character, then once you've hit vet1.

@ZOS_GinaBruno any chance that this system will be looked at, or at least documented?

Thank you for this awesome post, like you say at the end of your post being able to read the rules of the game is vitally important.

Your above description of battle-levelling is very helpful, but you can see from my video that there are still discrepancies (like my health pool increasing when I switch to restro staff, no increase in stamina from 5 piece set bonus), and the NB passive shadow barrier does not seem to work at all (why has no one mentioned/noticed this? Seems like a straight out bug).

I actually find it hard to understand/believe that there is no clear official documentation on how the mechanics work, is it there but I just haven't found it perhaps?

Cody

dont feel to bad friend, it took me awhile to get it too, its confusing:(

idk why your health goes up when using a resto stsff, unless...

are you a NB?

jrkhan

Wasn't able to see exact values in your video, but it looked like you had points in the Shadow tree passive 'Fortitude'. I noticed you had at least 1 shadow ability on your resto staff bar (dark cloak or shadowy disguise), I wasn't certain if I saw one on your 1h/s bar?
So, you'd expect your health to go up 2% when switching from your 1h/s bar, to your resto bar, by virtue of:
-Passives which provide % bonuses


Looking at the stats on the Armor of Truth set, I would expect that your crit bonus on the 2 and 5 piece bonuses would apply (because 2 piece is weapon crit, and the 5 piece bonus always works), however the 3 and 4 piece set bonuses do not apply, because they are flat increases to stam/weapon damage. I wouldn't expect you'd have any increase in stam from the set bonus itself.
Make sure to look out for any 'Divines' trait on your gear - if you have the Tower Mundus, swapping out a piece of gear with that trait will actually effect your stam value.

Yasha

jrkhan wrote: »

Wasn't able to see exact values in your video, but it looked like you had points in the Shadow tree passive 'Fortitude'. I noticed you had at least 1 shadow ability on your resto staff bar (dark cloak or shadowy disguise), I wasn't certain if I saw one on your 1h/s bar?
So, you'd expect your health to go up 2% when switching from your 1h/s bar, to your resto bar, by virtue of:
-Passives which provide % bonuses


Looking at the stats on the Armor of Truth set, I would expect that your crit bonus on the 2 and 5 piece bonuses would apply (because 2 piece is weapon crit, and the 5 piece bonus always works), however the 3 and 4 piece set bonuses do not apply, because they are flat increases to stam/weapon damage. I wouldn't expect you'd have any increase in stam from the set bonus itself.
Make sure to look out for any 'Divines' trait on your gear - if you have the Tower Mundus, swapping out a piece of gear with that trait will actually effect your stam value.

Good catch, yes the fortitude passive explains the health increase!

Still not sure why the passive shadow barrier doesn't work though. See that's another area that is confusing- the passive fortitude IS boosting my health, but passive shadow barrier isn't boosting my mitigation- meanwhile active skills like lightning form do boost mitigation. (edit: looking at jrkan's post above I assume that the reason is because shadow barrier provides a flat bonus and not a "percentage" bonus).

But I think I am getting the rules down thanks to your help (and others, ty!). One thing I want to confirm- do the passive skills for the armor lines work? For example Light armor- will I get extra magikca regen if I take Recovery? If I take Spell Warding am I right in thinking that will not give me extra spell resistance because passive abilities do not seem to increase mitigation (I am assuming this is why shadow barrier doesn't work? edit- I now think it is because passives only work if they give a flat bonus which is why SB doesn't work).

If I get all these rules and exceptions down I want to write it up and get it stickied!

TheFamousMockingbird

In my BWB experience the spell resist from the Light Armor passive Warding does not add into total SR, the battle level scaling surpasses it. I usually skip it until I am ready to turn off Battle Leveling.

Shadow barrier should work though, that sounds bugged. I will have to check into it on my lowbie NB.

Update: I tested out shadow barrier in BWB and it appears that the bonus is not stacking with battle leveled stats. Sad, but consistent.

I did discover that the bonus duration for armor and SR boost is NOT being extended by wearing heavy armor. With 2 pieces of HA my tool tip says extra 50% duration but it does not actually get extended. The base is 6 seconds (more like 5 seconds in reality) and so should extend to ~9 seconds but it doesn't work.

jrkhan

Bumping this. It effects a significant number of players, especially new players, and is one of the least transparent areas of the game.

Just hoping that someone at ZOS could let us know if providing more specific documentation about this is on the radar.

CP5

Also a fun fact, sorcerer pets don't scale well in non-vet either. They will miss npc's all the time (no problems hitting other players at least) but they literally die in one hit a lot.

Yasha

Thanks for the help so far everyone, I am starting to understand how the system works.

One more question: I noticed that my weapon damage appears to stay the same no matter what weapon I use (I think some traits/passives like SnB from the one hand and shield line boost damage, although I haven't tested this to be sure); does that mean that auto- attacks from say a one hander that does 600 damage will do the same amount of damage as auto attacks from a two hander that does 800 damage? Also I believe duel wield has a faster attack speed right? So that could mean more hits at the same damage per hit as a two hander?

Going further- if the weapon damage is normalized does that mean that skills that scale off stamina/weapon damage essentially only scale based off stamina in non-vet?

mcurley

jrkhan wrote: »

Battle leveling needs some dev attention - it's the main reason I've stayed out of BwB since 1.6

Things that work:
-5 piece set bonuses
-2 to 4 piece set bonuses to weapon/spell crit
-Food & drink buffs
-Mundus stone
-Passives which provide % bonuses
-Cost reduction jewelry enchants
-The Trait on your gear (though I doubt -reinforced/infused work since they modify the armor/enchant value on the gear which does NOT work)
-Weapon damage buff from Flawless Dawnbreaker

@ZOS_GinaBruno any chance that this system will be looked at, or at least documented?

After reading this thread I can't help but to be completely furious.

I spent a good amount of time theory crafting a sweet 5l/2h magicka NB (my lvl 44 main) to pvp with effectively on BWB. I hired a crafter to make my armor/weapons/enchantments since the items I've found up to this point are just not worthy of use in Cyrodiil (for the most part). I chose blue quality armor/weapons/enchantments to max their quality while not pushing the price to a point where I couldn't afford it anymore. I paid about 15,000 gold, which to me is a HUGE amount (nearly 25%) of what I have saved since starting to play.

Of the crafted sets that I could choose from there were two choices that fit exactly what I wanted. I wanted 4pc Magnus and 4pc Eyes of Mara for a nice balance of max magicka / magicka regen / spell power.... oh yea probably a good idea of have Infused traits on my light armor to max resources from enchantments and Reinforced traits on my 2 heavy pcs for a bit of extra armor, right?

So I finally finished leveling to 44 and put on my sweet (I thought) new gear-set to head into Cyrodiil. I thought it was a bit strange that my spell power and weapon power were both exactly the same. It also seemed that my regen numbers were wrong since magicka and stamina regen were about the same.... onto the forums to figure this out!

Now I read that the set bonuses / enchantments / traits I chose and paid for won't do anything for me at all if I leave battle leveling on in Cyrodiil?

Seriously? @ZOS_GinaBruno

This is all that is said about battle leveling in the Game Guide under the Alliance War Section...

"The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited features a battle leveling system that temporarily increases a player's combat effectiveness to compete against higher level players, ensuring that everyone enjoys the experience, from players who have never experienced PvP combat, to seasoned veterans demanding a deep, rewarding PvP experience."

Was I expected, as relatively new player, to just intuitively know that certain stats/enchantments/traits are completely useless in battle leveled pvp from this snippet of information that was given to us?

I know that you don't want to disclose any of your mathematical formulas (according to other posts) but being so opaque about what does and does not affect your character under battle leveled conditions..... why?

Yasha

@mcurley Yes it was a bit of an eye-opener for me, I spent hundreds of thousands of AP trying to get a set from those AP vendors, in the end my level one gear is the same as the blue set- actually better. I can craft you a nights silence set for free if you want (just get the matts) if you are in game. That set lets you move fast in stealth which is a useful bonus. Just PM me if you want it.

I also tested the weapons and here is how it works:
All weapons do the same amount of damage by skill-line type.
For example against the V12 zombies near Sej, a level 1 dagger and shield (one hand and shield) does 709 damage on a light attack; a high level blue sword (with shield equipped) does the same.
All two handed weapons do 877 damage
Resto staff 645
Dual weild 709 (but attacks faster.
I haven't tested destroy staff or bow.

The bonus for having a higher level weapon will be the enchantment. You can put stronger enchants on higher level gear and get a bit more damage. The sharpened trait also works.
With armor there is absolutely no difference (as far as I can tell). Currently I am wearing a level 1 crafted nights silence set- as long as you have the traits researched you can actually craft and use any set for BB pvp as a low level crafter, and not suffer any penalty.

Its not bad once you know the rules.

mcurley

@Yasha

Knowing the rules definitely helps. I just wish the rules were clearly stated somewhere so I wouldn't have wasted my time and gold. Thanks for the weapon damage info. Now at least I know what to theory craft for ... although the way things are doesn't seem to leave much to theorize about.

Using divines on all pcs of crafted sets seems mandatory. I don't even have CPs but with all divines on armor and the Atronach mundus as a Breton I almost never run out of magicka without being able to cloak away to safety first. I bet having the Twice-Born Star 5pc bonus would be super helpful however my crafters are months away from 9 traits.

This way of battle leveling does put everyone on the same page but makes build diversity far to boring for me to stick with BB for too long. Oh well, I'll be v14 in a year or two.

kijima

5 piece sets work. I was using hundigs 5 piece and getting the weapon damage bonus from it, but honestly I found the extra weapon damage wasn't worth it.

I'm using spectre's eye atm for the dodge bonus on my DK, works very well. Set's that give you more health, armour etc... these are all a waste of time in blackwater. Better off using a 5 piece set to give you a particular bonus built around a play style. I've got one guildie on blackwater using a level 46 medium skirmisher set, he wanted the extra weapon damage and crit after a roll dodge with his stam build.

What I've been noticing is the prices of some of the rare lower level sets like adroitness are starting to rise as more vets are making alts to play in blackwater.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Yasha wrote: »

The bonus for having a higher level weapon will be the enchantment.

There is one exception to enchantments, the weapon damage enchantment on masters weapons doesn't work (I assume it's the same with the max magicka enchantments on masters staves, but I don't have a masters staff to check it.)

kijima

My level 26 Masters Ice staff is working correctly. An oh, the proc on it, so nice! It's so good I've dropped bow to use the staff.