Why I don't want Nirnhoned Fixed

vortexman11

Hey guys, time for another post to get everyone to hate me due to my unpopular opinions.

So theres been ALOT of people asking for Nirnhoned to get fixed, Im guessing when you all say this you mean for it to work in the same was as reinforced and such where its on each armour piece. I'm going to explain why I don't see this as a good idea, and then feel free to attack me as I honestly love reading what you guys have to say.

I'd like to start off by saying I DO NOT want it to simply remain how it is, sure I don't want Nirnhoned changed but I do want to see changes in armour/weapon traits in general.

So, over the passed few weeks there have been two things that have caught my attention on the forums, one is the fact that stamina builds hit so insanely hard, and two is that magicka builds simply don't because of this little thing known as Nirnhoned. Everyone is saying that fixing nirnhoned will balance the game blablabla yaddayadda same old thing, but will it really balance the game? It wont stop people sniping you for almost 20k (Just yesterday I was hit by a focused aim for 19 573 while on my horse and wearing 7/7 reinforced heavy armour) , all it would add is people being able to do the same amount of damage but with magicka attacks. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

Instead of Fixing/Nerfing/Whateveryouwanttocallit Nirnhoned, I believe they should put in a trait equivalent to nirnhoned but for physical resist BUT along with this, I would want to see changes to Sharpened/Infused so that theres an incentive for people who want to tank to wear Nirnhoned/Physical Resist Equivalent and for people who DPS to wear infused/sharpened.

The problem with the game right now is the fact that Nirnhoned allows people who DPS to be extremely tanky towards magicka users, basically what I said up there is that the answer is to give a better alternative so people who DPS wearing nirnhoned will be lacking damage compared to people who DPS wearing improved sharpened/infused traits.

Sacadon

Only suggesting clear separation between the Nirnhoned armor behavior vs. penetration as they both are not WAI to my knowledge. So when we say "no change" to nirnhoned, I think many are not making distinctions when they respond.

Ryuho

Nirn must be nerfed!

Lhorion

First a question: Do you running a magicka build?

You are talking about beeing a oneshot for magicka DPS but this is not true. You can test it out. Magicka DPS against non-nirn-armour is not too high. You can easyly counter magicka damage by dodging/shieldstacking thx to Harness/reflecting. Even if you just heal it out it is far less than stamina DPS.

Sacadon

They are changing either way. Please review this if you've not already: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1773463/#Comment_1773463

Pixysticks

This is what happens if you don't wear nirn:

Agrippa_Invisus

It's not any one particular trait or thing that's causing the balance issues, unfortunately.

It's nice to point to Nirnhoned as a culprit, but Vort has a major point -- We don't need MORE burst in this game. At all.

The burst that's in this game needs to be vastly reduced. Fights are too quick and globaling by a single player is getting more and more common. Player damage, across the board, either needs to be cut or have some hard caps imposed.

TTK/TTL was already low in this game, and it's getting to CS levels of bad.

Frankly, if I wanted a TTL this low, I'd be playing 'one hit kill slappers only' in Goldeneye with shots for kills/deaths. Then it'd at least be amusing.

We shouldn't be looking at the freaking lowbie campaign as a better example of TTL/TTK. There the fights have tactics that you actually have to use to win against other opponents of equal skill. None of this instagib business.

Ezareth

vortexman11 wrote: »

Hey guys, time for another post to get everyone to hate me due to my unpopular opinions.

So theres been ALOT of people asking for Nirnhoned to get fixed, Im guessing when you all say this you mean for it to work in the same was as reinforced and such where its on each armour piece. I'm going to explain why I don't see this as a good idea, and then feel free to attack me as I honestly love reading what you guys have to say.

I'd like to start off by saying I DO NOT want it to simply remain how it is, sure I don't want Nirnhoned changed but I do want to see changes in armour/weapon traits in general.

So, over the passed few weeks there have been two things that have caught my attention on the forums, one is the fact that stamina builds hit so insanely hard, and two is that magicka builds simply don't because of this little thing known as Nirnhoned. Everyone is saying that fixing nirnhoned will balance the game blablabla yaddayadda same old thing, but will it really balance the game? It wont stop people sniping you for almost 20k (Just yesterday I was hit by a focused aim for 19 573 while on my horse and wearing 7/7 reinforced heavy armour) , all it would add is people being able to do the same amount of damage but with magicka attacks. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

Instead of Fixing/Nerfing/Whateveryouwanttocallit Nirnhoned, I believe they should put in a trait equivalent to nirnhoned but for physical resist BUT along with this, I would want to see changes to Sharpened/Infused so that theres an incentive for people who want to tank to wear Nirnhoned/Physical Resist Equivalent and for people who DPS to wear infused/sharpened.

The problem with the game right now is the fact that Nirnhoned allows people who DPS to be extremely tanky towards magicka users, basically what I said up there is that the answer is to give a better alternative so people who DPS wearing nirnhoned will be lacking damage compared to people who DPS wearing improved sharpened/infused traits.

You're speaking of two completely different issues and trying to address them both with a single sweeping design change which generally is not a good idea.

The first issue is Nirnhoned is too powerful compared to other traits. Forget what it does for a moment, the other traits are so many leagues behind Nirnhoned there is no consideration whatsoever on which trait you want to craft. Fixing this by buffing the other traits to the level of Nirnhoned would in my opinion be a significant break from the design philosophy of armor traits being minor enhancements to your character to one of them being central to the design of your character. This would also make the traits of many excellent non-crafted sets obsolete and homogenize what sets each class/build archetype was using. Your suggestion of buffing reinforced to act like a Physical Nirnhoned would further increase the divide between Heavy and Medium armors and Light armor (since Nirnhoned is multiplicative with overall resistance).

The second issue is the TTK (Time to Kill) in Cyrodiil is just way too low. This isn't necessarily because damage is off the charts as much as hitpoints have been reduced far too much in Cyrodiil. They need to increase the Cyrodiil buff from 5K Hitpoints to 10-15K hitpoints to compensate from the nerf of hitpoints from +50% bonus to +10%. If they reverse that change it will impact PvE which is why I suggest they just add more hitpoints to the Cyrodiil buff. If you've ever played on Blackwater blade you'll know why you'll find more and more of the top players playing on that campaign instead of the Vet campaigns. The PvP is just far more enjoyable when you aren't blown up in 2 hits from random players. (plus the lag is nonexistent).

Oughash

Agreed on the core problem: TTK way too short.

More and more veteran players are leaving for the lowbie campaign just to have fun b/c everything else is a mess of Crystal Frags, Snipes from stealth, and Wrecking Blows.

Rook_Master

They have already said Nirnhoned is not working as intended.

Any magicka build can tell you that it is obvious when you are going up against someone in 7/7 nirnhoned, because your crits are doing tooltip damage, and they clearly aren't functioning as just tanks.

That's wrong. You shouldn't be able to counter half the builds in the game by slapping on a few traits.

vortexman11

Ezareth wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

Hey guys, time for another post to get everyone to hate me due to my unpopular opinions.

So theres been ALOT of people asking for Nirnhoned to get fixed, Im guessing when you all say this you mean for it to work in the same was as reinforced and such where its on each armour piece. I'm going to explain why I don't see this as a good idea, and then feel free to attack me as I honestly love reading what you guys have to say.

I'd like to start off by saying I DO NOT want it to simply remain how it is, sure I don't want Nirnhoned changed but I do want to see changes in armour/weapon traits in general.

So, over the passed few weeks there have been two things that have caught my attention on the forums, one is the fact that stamina builds hit so insanely hard, and two is that magicka builds simply don't because of this little thing known as Nirnhoned. Everyone is saying that fixing nirnhoned will balance the game blablabla yaddayadda same old thing, but will it really balance the game? It wont stop people sniping you for almost 20k (Just yesterday I was hit by a focused aim for 19 573 while on my horse and wearing 7/7 reinforced heavy armour) , all it would add is people being able to do the same amount of damage but with magicka attacks. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

Instead of Fixing/Nerfing/Whateveryouwanttocallit Nirnhoned, I believe they should put in a trait equivalent to nirnhoned but for physical resist BUT along with this, I would want to see changes to Sharpened/Infused so that theres an incentive for people who want to tank to wear Nirnhoned/Physical Resist Equivalent and for people who DPS to wear infused/sharpened.

The problem with the game right now is the fact that Nirnhoned allows people who DPS to be extremely tanky towards magicka users, basically what I said up there is that the answer is to give a better alternative so people who DPS wearing nirnhoned will be lacking damage compared to people who DPS wearing improved sharpened/infused traits.

You're speaking of two completely different issues and trying to address them both with a single sweeping design change which generally is not a good idea.

The first issue is Nirnhoned is too powerful compared to other traits. Forget what it does for a moment, the other traits are so many leagues behind Nirnhoned there is no consideration whatsoever on which trait you want to craft. Fixing this by buffing the other traits to the level of Nirnhoned would in my opinion be a significant break from the design philosophy of armor traits being minor enhancements to your character to one of them being central to the design of your character. This would also make the traits of many excellent non-crafted sets obsolete and homogenize what sets each class/build archetype was using. Your suggestion of buffing reinforced to act like a Physical Nirnhoned would further increase the divide between Heavy and Medium armors and Light armor (since Nirnhoned is multiplicative with overall resistance).

The second issue is the TTK (Time to Kill) in Cyrodiil is just way too low. This isn't necessarily because damage is off the charts as much as hitpoints have been reduced far too much in Cyrodiil. They need to increase the Cyrodiil buff from 5K Hitpoints to 10-15K hitpoints to compensate from the nerf of hitpoints from +50% bonus to +10%. If they reverse that change it will impact PvE which is why I suggest they just add more hitpoints to the Cyrodiil buff. If you've ever played on Blackwater blade you'll know why you'll find more and more of the top players playing on that campaign instead of the Vet campaigns. The PvP is just far more enjoyable when you aren't blown up in 2 hits from random players. (plus the lag is nonexistent).

I guess you're right there, I should of cleared it up, the main thing I was trying to say is that a nerf to nirnhoned will simply make the TTK issue even worse. (trying hard to make sure this doesn't turn into a nerf sorc thread)

Joy_Division

Your suggestion has merit but the designers clearly wanted Spell Resist / Spell Penetration to be a common mechanic and not copy this with physical damage / resist. They wanted spell and physical to have some different mechanics and counterplay so I don't see them throwing their hands up in the air and abandoning this idea to solve the nirn "problem". I really dislike the idea that one armor trait is so much better than all the others that it becomes the only choice. On top of this, I have no problem adjusting my build and my game style to your build, the 5 skills you choose to put on a bar, your weapon choice, etc.. But I should not have to completely reorient my build because of a few armor traits that you can just slap on with little opportunity cost.

vortexman11

Rook_Master wrote: »

They have already said Nirnhoned is not working as intended.

Any magicka build can tell you that it is obvious when you are going up against someone in 7/7 nirnhoned, because your crits are doing tooltip damage, and they clearly aren't functioning as just tanks.

That's wrong. You shouldn't be able to counter half the builds in the game by slapping on a few traits.

Thats why at the end of my post I said they need to improve traits which help with DPS rather than nerfing traits which help players be more defensive.

And Im pretty sure you can totally negate crit damage by wearing impen as well, though I've never tested it they said somewhere that impen caps at making crits do 0% increased damage.

blabafat

Even without nirnhoned, Magicka damage is not on par with Stamina. Stamina hits WAY harder.
Whenever people hear this, they say: " I WAS HIT BY A 20K FRAG "
Ok? And what else hit you for 20K that was magicka besides broken templar execute?

Concealed Weapon < Surprise Attack
Puncturing Sweeps < Biting Jabs
Magicka Javelin < Stamina Javelin (Even though the magicka one says it'll hit harder, stamina one is far more superior because it has a longer stun)

Fixing nirnhoned is only part of the problem in my opinion.

Huntler

Joy_Division wrote: »

Your suggestion has merit but the designers clearly wanted Spell Resist / Spell Penetration to be a common mechanic and not copy this with physical damage / resist. They wanted spell and physical to have some different mechanics and counterplay so I don't see them throwing their hands up in the air and abandoning this idea to solve the nirn "problem". I really dislike the idea that one armor trait is so much better than all the others that it becomes the only choice. On top of this, I have no problem adjusting my build and my game style to your build, the 5 skills you choose to put on a bar, your weapon choice, etc.. But I should not have to completely reorient my build because of a few armor traits that you can just slap on with little opportunity cost.

Where or in what world did they want spell resist/spell pen to be different from the physical counterpart? They use the EXACT same formulas, hardcaps, etc..... Since its so obvious I would love you to cite a source on that.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Rude and Insulting Comments]

Emma_Overload

Rook_Master wrote: »

They have already said Nirnhoned is not working as intended.

I know what they said, and I think it's a lot of baloney. Nirnhoned is working exactly as it was designed to work... what ZoS didn't intend was to hear endless grief about it from PvP players.

When ZoS said "Nirnhoned is not working as intended", what they really meant was "Nirnhoned IS working as intended, but we're gonna nerf it anyway". If they actually do what you guys want and make Nirnhoned work like Reinforced, there is going to be a MASSIVE backlash from PvE crafters, traders and owners of Nirnhoned gear. Nirnhoned trait costs about 15000 G a piece, Reinforced costs about 10 G. See the difference?

This is just another sorry example of PvE getting the shaft because ZoS refuses to stand up to the PvP griefers.

Ezareth

vortexman11 wrote: »

Rook_Master wrote: »

They have already said Nirnhoned is not working as intended.

Any magicka build can tell you that it is obvious when you are going up against someone in 7/7 nirnhoned, because your crits are doing tooltip damage, and they clearly aren't functioning as just tanks.

That's wrong. You shouldn't be able to counter half the builds in the game by slapping on a few traits.

Thats why at the end of my post I said they need to improve traits which help with DPS rather than nerfing traits which help players be more defensive.

And Im pretty sure you can totally negate crit damage by wearing impen as well, though I've never tested it they said somewhere that impen caps at making crits do 0% increased damage.

You can only negate 50% of crit damage by wearing 8/8 Impen and the crit damage reduction set. However Shadow Mundus, NB Passives, Champion abilities etc can make this much higher than 50%

Xexpo

vortexman11 wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

Hey guys, time for another post to get everyone to hate me due to my unpopular opinions.

So theres been ALOT of people asking for Nirnhoned to get fixed, Im guessing when you all say this you mean for it to work in the same was as reinforced and such where its on each armour piece. I'm going to explain why I don't see this as a good idea, and then feel free to attack me as I honestly love reading what you guys have to say.

I'd like to start off by saying I DO NOT want it to simply remain how it is, sure I don't want Nirnhoned changed but I do want to see changes in armour/weapon traits in general.

So, over the passed few weeks there have been two things that have caught my attention on the forums, one is the fact that stamina builds hit so insanely hard, and two is that magicka builds simply don't because of this little thing known as Nirnhoned. Everyone is saying that fixing nirnhoned will balance the game blablabla yaddayadda same old thing, but will it really balance the game? It wont stop people sniping you for almost 20k (Just yesterday I was hit by a focused aim for 19 573 while on my horse and wearing 7/7 reinforced heavy armour) , all it would add is people being able to do the same amount of damage but with magicka attacks. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

Instead of Fixing/Nerfing/Whateveryouwanttocallit Nirnhoned, I believe they should put in a trait equivalent to nirnhoned but for physical resist BUT along with this, I would want to see changes to Sharpened/Infused so that theres an incentive for people who want to tank to wear Nirnhoned/Physical Resist Equivalent and for people who DPS to wear infused/sharpened.

The problem with the game right now is the fact that Nirnhoned allows people who DPS to be extremely tanky towards magicka users, basically what I said up there is that the answer is to give a better alternative so people who DPS wearing nirnhoned will be lacking damage compared to people who DPS wearing improved sharpened/infused traits.

You're speaking of two completely different issues and trying to address them both with a single sweeping design change which generally is not a good idea.

The first issue is Nirnhoned is too powerful compared to other traits. Forget what it does for a moment, the other traits are so many leagues behind Nirnhoned there is no consideration whatsoever on which trait you want to craft. Fixing this by buffing the other traits to the level of Nirnhoned would in my opinion be a significant break from the design philosophy of armor traits being minor enhancements to your character to one of them being central to the design of your character. This would also make the traits of many excellent non-crafted sets obsolete and homogenize what sets each class/build archetype was using. Your suggestion of buffing reinforced to act like a Physical Nirnhoned would further increase the divide between Heavy and Medium armors and Light armor (since Nirnhoned is multiplicative with overall resistance).

The second issue is the TTK (Time to Kill) in Cyrodiil is just way too low. This isn't necessarily because damage is off the charts as much as hitpoints have been reduced far too much in Cyrodiil. They need to increase the Cyrodiil buff from 5K Hitpoints to 10-15K hitpoints to compensate from the nerf of hitpoints from +50% bonus to +10%. If they reverse that change it will impact PvE which is why I suggest they just add more hitpoints to the Cyrodiil buff. If you've ever played on Blackwater blade you'll know why you'll find more and more of the top players playing on that campaign instead of the Vet campaigns. The PvP is just far more enjoyable when you aren't blown up in 2 hits from random players. (plus the lag is nonexistent).

I guess you're right there, I should of cleared it up, the main thing I was trying to say is that a nerf to nirnhoned will simply make the TTK issue even worse. (trying hard to make sure this doesn't turn into a nerf sorc thread)

Damn I was just about to point out how Sorcerers clearly should be nerfed

Jbugz97

@vortexman11
. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

i wear 2 pieces nirnhorned and sit at 26k spell resist and this guy pixysticks still hit me for 16k+ 3 times the other day

jpalm1995

Sorcs are going to be god-mode once nirnhoned gets fixed. ZOS should leave it as is. I'm still getting hit for 10k frags wearing 3 pieces of nirnhoned. I'm not a fan of nerfing a specific class but if they nerf nirn than sorcs need to be nerfed with it.

Rook_Master

So apparently there is this opinion floating around, that because Crystal Fragments does a lot of damage, the entire spell resistance system needs to be broken?

That's absurd.

Maulkin

jpalm1995 wrote: »

Sorcs are going to be god-mode once nirnhoned gets fixed. ZOS should leave it as is. I'm still getting hit for 10k frags wearing 3 pieces of nirnhoned. I'm not a fan of nerfing a specific class but if they nerf nirn than sorcs need to be nerfed with it.

Burst in general is an issue and TTK is very low, agreed. It all needs a nerf or average HP needs to be increased.

I get 15k Wrecking Blows and even more from stealth Snipes. Yet i have no easy way of mitigating that without making serious sacrifices on gear/skills etc. whereas med/heavy peeps can easily mitigate a lot of spell damage with 3-4 traits and next to 0 sacrifices. Count your blessings (if you're one of those peeps)

frozywozy

Let's not forget that people geared and speced to instagib anyone not keeping shields / evasion / hardened armor in two seconds are usually nightblades with alot of substain because of dodge roll spam / cloaking / extraordinary running speed with maneuvers + mist form or other gear bonuses / invisibility potions / rally / vigor.

It is way too easy right now to spec as a glass cannon nightblade bow / two handed user and instagib anyone in two seconds in the middle of a 15men group while still being able to run away without any problem.

Back on subject : I agree about the OP that without nirnhoded, sorcerers could probably instagib people aswell, but at least they can't dodge roll spam + stealth. Bolt escape is easy to counter with critical rush / shield charge.

Once again, solution is to make stamina only used for abilities (skills) and the rest should use a different ressource bar (dodge rolling - bashing - sprinting - sneaking - cc breaking).

Ezareth

Plenty of abilities stamina abilities doing more damage than Crystal fragments to people yet everyone wants to focus on a single ability in a rare scenario (someone stacking spell penetration, dual wield and spellpower) as a justification for breaking an entire damage mode.

DoctorSwampy

jpalm1995 wrote: »

Sorcs are going to be god-mode once nirnhoned gets fixed. ZOS should leave it as is. I'm still getting hit for 10k frags wearing 3 pieces of nirnhoned. I'm not a fan of nerfing a specific class but if they nerf nirn than sorcs need to be nerfed with it.

You know, a lot of people say stuff like this all the time but I've never been hit with a Crystal Frag that did more than maybe 10k damage . . . Snipe/Wrecking Blow on the other hand . . .

Ezareth wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

Hey guys, time for another post to get everyone to hate me due to my unpopular opinions.

So theres been ALOT of people asking for Nirnhoned to get fixed, Im guessing when you all say this you mean for it to work in the same was as reinforced and such where its on each armour piece. I'm going to explain why I don't see this as a good idea, and then feel free to attack me as I honestly love reading what you guys have to say.

I'd like to start off by saying I DO NOT want it to simply remain how it is, sure I don't want Nirnhoned changed but I do want to see changes in armour/weapon traits in general.

So, over the passed few weeks there have been two things that have caught my attention on the forums, one is the fact that stamina builds hit so insanely hard, and two is that magicka builds simply don't because of this little thing known as Nirnhoned. Everyone is saying that fixing nirnhoned will balance the game blablabla yaddayadda same old thing, but will it really balance the game? It wont stop people sniping you for almost 20k (Just yesterday I was hit by a focused aim for 19 573 while on my horse and wearing 7/7 reinforced heavy armour) , all it would add is people being able to do the same amount of damage but with magicka attacks. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

Instead of Fixing/Nerfing/Whateveryouwanttocallit Nirnhoned, I believe they should put in a trait equivalent to nirnhoned but for physical resist BUT along with this, I would want to see changes to Sharpened/Infused so that theres an incentive for people who want to tank to wear Nirnhoned/Physical Resist Equivalent and for people who DPS to wear infused/sharpened.

The problem with the game right now is the fact that Nirnhoned allows people who DPS to be extremely tanky towards magicka users, basically what I said up there is that the answer is to give a better alternative so people who DPS wearing nirnhoned will be lacking damage compared to people who DPS wearing improved sharpened/infused traits.

The second issue is the TTK (Time to Kill) in Cyrodiil is just way too low. This isn't necessarily because damage is off the charts as much as hitpoints have been reduced far too much in Cyrodiil. They need to increase the Cyrodiil buff from 5K Hitpoints to 10-15K hitpoints to compensate from the nerf of hitpoints from +50% bonus to +10%. If they reverse that change it will impact PvE which is why I suggest they just add more hitpoints to the Cyrodiil buff. If you've ever played on Blackwater blade you'll know why you'll find more and more of the top players playing on that campaign instead of the Vet campaigns. The PvP is just far more enjoyable when you aren't blown up in 2 hits from random players. (plus the lag is nonexistent).

OT: ^ This needs to be done more than anything. Nirnhoned is a bit insane, but the true issue is stamina attacks hit way too hard because the only counters are useless compared to the possibilities of having much higher weapon damage than spell damage, plus all the mitigation to spells possible with CP, Spell Resist, and Nirnhoned. Thus lowering the TTK making some form of physical resistance much more viable. Honestly, they should just replace some useless CP passive with a resistance to physical attacks or something.
Vortex's idea is an interesting concept but in the long run it would most likely cause more problems than solve it. It would be like putting Scotch tape on a leaky faucet in a way.

ilu5ever Vortex but a physical equivalent of Nirn is a scary thought.

Huntler

DoctorSwampy wrote: »

jpalm1995 wrote: »

Sorcs are going to be god-mode once nirnhoned gets fixed. ZOS should leave it as is. I'm still getting hit for 10k frags wearing 3 pieces of nirnhoned. I'm not a fan of nerfing a specific class but if they nerf nirn than sorcs need to be nerfed with it.

You know, a lot of people say stuff like this all the time but I've never been hit with a Crystal Frag that did more than maybe 10k damage . . . Snipe/Wrecking Blow on the other hand . . .

Ezareth wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

Hey guys, time for another post to get everyone to hate me due to my unpopular opinions.

So theres been ALOT of people asking for Nirnhoned to get fixed, Im guessing when you all say this you mean for it to work in the same was as reinforced and such where its on each armour piece. I'm going to explain why I don't see this as a good idea, and then feel free to attack me as I honestly love reading what you guys have to say.

I'd like to start off by saying I DO NOT want it to simply remain how it is, sure I don't want Nirnhoned changed but I do want to see changes in armour/weapon traits in general.

So, over the passed few weeks there have been two things that have caught my attention on the forums, one is the fact that stamina builds hit so insanely hard, and two is that magicka builds simply don't because of this little thing known as Nirnhoned. Everyone is saying that fixing nirnhoned will balance the game blablabla yaddayadda same old thing, but will it really balance the game? It wont stop people sniping you for almost 20k (Just yesterday I was hit by a focused aim for 19 573 while on my horse and wearing 7/7 reinforced heavy armour) , all it would add is people being able to do the same amount of damage but with magicka attacks. Are you guys really looking forward to getting one shot by Pixysticks? Thats why I do not see this as the solution.

Instead of Fixing/Nerfing/Whateveryouwanttocallit Nirnhoned, I believe they should put in a trait equivalent to nirnhoned but for physical resist BUT along with this, I would want to see changes to Sharpened/Infused so that theres an incentive for people who want to tank to wear Nirnhoned/Physical Resist Equivalent and for people who DPS to wear infused/sharpened.

The problem with the game right now is the fact that Nirnhoned allows people who DPS to be extremely tanky towards magicka users, basically what I said up there is that the answer is to give a better alternative so people who DPS wearing nirnhoned will be lacking damage compared to people who DPS wearing improved sharpened/infused traits.

The second issue is the TTK (Time to Kill) in Cyrodiil is just way too low. This isn't necessarily because damage is off the charts as much as hitpoints have been reduced far too much in Cyrodiil. They need to increase the Cyrodiil buff from 5K Hitpoints to 10-15K hitpoints to compensate from the nerf of hitpoints from +50% bonus to +10%. If they reverse that change it will impact PvE which is why I suggest they just add more hitpoints to the Cyrodiil buff. If you've ever played on Blackwater blade you'll know why you'll find more and more of the top players playing on that campaign instead of the Vet campaigns. The PvP is just far more enjoyable when you aren't blown up in 2 hits from random players. (plus the lag is nonexistent).

OT: ^ This needs to be done more than anything. Nirnhoned is a bit insane, but the true issue is stamina attacks hit way too hard because the only counters are useless compared to the possibilities of having much higher weapon damage than spell damage, plus all the mitigation to spells possible with CP, Spell Resist, and Nirnhoned. Thus lowering the TTK making some form of physical resistance much more viable. Honestly, they should just replace some useless CP passive with a resistance to physical attacks or something.
Vortex's idea is an interesting concept but in the long run it would most likely cause more problems than solve it. It would be like putting Scotch tape on a leaky faucet in a way.

ilu5ever Vortex but a physical equivalent of Nirn is a scary thought.

I made quite an indepth post a while back about this very issue and how spell damage has more counters while physical damage has no pure CS damage reduction to physical line... its actually a pretty big deal and gets worse every day as people get more CP...

Agrippa_Invisus

Ezareth wrote: »

Plenty of abilities stamina abilities doing more damage than Crystal fragments to people yet everyone wants to focus on a single ability in a rare scenario (someone stacking spell penetration, dual wield and spellpower) as a justification for breaking an entire damage mode.

I think, ultimately, what we're suffering from is the ZOS decision to not do a secondary balance pass after 1.6/2.0.

SWTOR, for example, recently released a new XPack that rebalanced game and specs for everyone. After giving time for everyone to hit the new max level and get geared and raiding/pvping they started doing class reviews to make sure everyone was where they should be.

ZOS didn't do this. They started locking the code down and getting ready for console, and it's the players whose play experience is suffering for it.

TTK/TTL is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to short for most people, and it's nirnhoned that's preventing some styles of play from catching up to that same meta. That's not fair, either way you look at it.

Ultimately, they need to rebalance again, get the TTK/TTL back up from the near CS levels it's at right now, and redesign how they're approaching both these damage caps, regen rates, and HP pools.

There's no silver bullet to this (eg; fixing nirnhoned), but each one is a puzzle piece in a larger work.

And all this having to wait until June, possibly July? That's going to be an eternity.

Pixysticks

Ezareth wrote: »

Plenty of abilities stamina abilities doing more damage than Crystal fragments to people yet everyone wants to focus on a single ability in a rare scenario (someone stacking spell penetration, dual wield and spellpower) as a justification for breaking an entire damage mode.

People just get hit by one person for a ton, then use it as ammunition to say that specific class or spell does too much damage. But the real problem is there's just too many multipliers in this game that all stack with each other. If I was a templar I would run my exact same setup and probably 100-0 someone in a single radiant; could easily 1-shot someone with these stats with a heavy attack of a dest staff if I was a DK, as a NB the Focused Aims would be even more damage than I do now.

Removing the empower buff from the game is the first solution to the problem; if you want wrecking blow to add damage on your next attack that's fine, but make it add a flat amount of damage so it's not exponentially multiplied by every other multiplicative variable used to calculate damage in this game. At least take the empower buff away from Inner Light/Radiant Light. Make people actually entropy someone and come out of stealth if they want a 20% damage bonus on their snipe or frags.

Huntler

Pixysticks wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Plenty of abilities stamina abilities doing more damage than Crystal fragments to people yet everyone wants to focus on a single ability in a rare scenario (someone stacking spell penetration, dual wield and spellpower) as a justification for breaking an entire damage mode.

People just get hit by one person for a ton, then use it as ammunition to say that specific class or spell does too much damage. But the real problem is there's just too many multipliers in this game that all stack with each other. If I was a templar I would run my exact same setup and probably 100-0 someone in a single radiant; could easily 1-shot someone with these stats with a heavy attack of a dest staff if I was a DK, as a NB the Focused Aims would be even more damage than I do now.

Removing the empower buff from the game is the first solution to the problem; if you want wrecking blow to add damage on your next attack that's fine, but make it add a flat amount of damage so it's not exponentially multiplied by every other multiplicative variable used to calculate damage in this game. At least take the empower buff away from Inner Light/Radiant Light. Make people actually entropy someone and come out of stealth if they want a 20% damage bonus on their snipe or frags.

Well, in all honesty a templar couldn't run your build because damage buffs don't act like that for radiant and in addition our shield is based off health, not magicka.... and it only lasts 6 seconds. A magicka glass canon templar doesn't really exist in the current meta because they'd get wrecked left and right. Thats not to say it isn't possible and is basically a rinse/repeat of entropy, dark flare, dark flare, radiant, but its basically a poor man's Sorc build (we can't get a double % damage buff from dark flare as well) since we don't have the synergy between our survivability and damage mechanic (as well as 0 escapes). Sorcs/NBs can afford glass canon because of their escape tools and ways of mitigating damage that simply don't exist for a class like magicka templar. Right now its very clear the powerhouses for mitigation are dodge roll and shields based off magicka, players get the best of both worlds. Strong mitigation countermeasures while maintaining maximum damage.


I like your thoughts on changing how empower works though. I think ZOS made a big mistake when they didn't realize how damage buffs could stack. They thought putting a % damage reduction on everyone in Cyrodiil would work at keeping burst in check (20% reduction), but when 1 buff immediately removes that measure while also allowing other buffs such as spell damage buffs (and certain other abilities not having to obey the minor/major buff status).... the cyrodiil debuff basically is pointless at that point. It makes it even more complicated because you can't just increase the debuff.... you only further force people to HAVE to stack those buffs or else nothing dies. Its not in a good place right now.

Pixysticks

Huntler wrote: »

Pixysticks wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Plenty of abilities stamina abilities doing more damage than Crystal fragments to people yet everyone wants to focus on a single ability in a rare scenario (someone stacking spell penetration, dual wield and spellpower) as a justification for breaking an entire damage mode.

People just get hit by one person for a ton, then use it as ammunition to say that specific class or spell does too much damage. But the real problem is there's just too many multipliers in this game that all stack with each other. If I was a templar I would run my exact same setup and probably 100-0 someone in a single radiant; could easily 1-shot someone with these stats with a heavy attack of a dest staff if I was a DK, as a NB the Focused Aims would be even more damage than I do now.

Removing the empower buff from the game is the first solution to the problem; if you want wrecking blow to add damage on your next attack that's fine, but make it add a flat amount of damage so it's not exponentially multiplied by every other multiplicative variable used to calculate damage in this game. At least take the empower buff away from Inner Light/Radiant Light. Make people actually entropy someone and come out of stealth if they want a 20% damage bonus on their snipe or frags.

Well, in all honesty a templar couldn't run your build because damage buffs don't act like that for radiant and in addition our shield is based off health, not magicka.... and it only lasts 6 seconds. A magicka glass canon templar doesn't really exist in the current meta because they'd get wrecked left and right. Thats not to say it isn't possible and is basically a rinse/repeat of entropy, dark flare, dark flare, radiant, but its basically a poor man's Sorc build (we can't get a double % damage buff from dark flare as well) since we don't have the synergy between our survivability (as well as 0 escapes). Sorcs/NBs can afford glass canon because of their escape tools and ways of mitigating damage that simply don't exist for a class like magicka templar. Right now its very clear the powerhouses for mitigation are dodge roll and shields based off magicka, players get the best of both worlds. Strong mitigation countermeasures while maintaining maximum damage.

You can use healing ward and annulment by massing magicka just like a sorc can. But I would just run 5 piece Cyrodiil's Light and spam radiant, since flat damage reduction works while you have shields on, just not with armor and spell resist (the 5 piece is 25% less damage while channeling).

Yeah, radiant is technically a DoT so it doesn't work with empower. Me asking for empower to be removed is simply for the hard hitting spells that 1 shot people like Frags, Snipe, WB.

Pixysticks

Huntler wrote: »

I like your thoughts on changing how empower works though. I think ZOS made a big mistake when they didn't realize how damage buffs could stack. They thought putting a % damage reduction on everyone in Cyrodiil would work at keeping burst in check (20% reduction), but when 1 buff immediately removes that measure while also allowing other buffs such as spell damage buffs (and certain other abilities not having to obey the minor/major buff status).... the cyrodiil debuff basically is pointless at that point. It makes it even more complicated because you can't just increase the debuff.... you only further force people to HAVE to stack those buffs or else nothing dies. Its not in a good place right now.

Yeah, the reason why stacking magicka and spell damage is so OP right now is because of all the multipliers.

Normally I only get a 2% damage increase from a magicka set bonus on gear. But my instant cast frag does 20% more, empower gives me 20% more, I do 10% more from CP, I get 20% more spell damage from entropy, critting is 60% more. Just like that, the 200 extra tooltip damage I gained adds up to almost 550 extra damage after all of the multipliers.