Spell Dmg vs Weapon Dmg Imbalances -- *Updated for Patch 2.1*

exiledtyrant

I don't get where all this specific class and build stuff is coming from for magicka to scale close to if not overlap weapon damage. My reguard sorc with 60 cp could hit 30 k with inner light and 33k with inner light + aegis. Any nightblade can get sorc level of maximum magicka by simply slotting a siphon ability + inner light, which means they only need to give up 3 slots instead of 4. Even at 4 slots the builds are not rocket science. Slot detonation / curse / frags and then you can position them any way you like for you BOL,shield, and healing ward. If you are breton or altmer you could drop one of the slots and open even more choices.

It is a long term projection but I believe that since CP scales up your max resource those with 10-20k more magicka than stamina will be seeing the gap close damage wise much sooner than they think.

Lastly stamina has more potential weapon crit, higher weapon damage, higher % regen, and lower skill cost. Magicka has higher penetration( with it's only "hard" choice being the mundus stone), more defensive utility, flat resource regen, and maximum resource percentage. Both resources have their trade offs. Both resources should have their trade offs. Stamina may get slightly more damage at the moment, but magicka is far easier to itemize for offense and defense.

I personally wonder why everyone is ok with someone stacking as high as 45k+ spell resist and still not being able to hit the 50% mitigation cap against all this magic pen. You can come close at around44-47% reduction but you can't quite hit it with full pen after you. ( test discussion seen here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1778730/#Comment_1778730) That means non nirn builds are basically food, but that's not a problem? When spell erosion is actually fixed this look to be an even bigger problem. Nirnhorn is an unhealthy extreme, but so is all this penetration. Mitigation deserves to be a thing even if crazy numbers( on both sides) are not the way to go about it

Ezareth

Yonkit wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

lots of stuff

I have snipes hit enemies for 3k while blocking or using some other form of mitigation (i can hit a snipe for 30k+ in ideal situations), so I'm still not sure what the qq is about? I'm just super confused. There are good magicka users out there making things work and tearing things up. I can't think of more than maybe... 10 stam users that I've come across that are more than one trick ponies or worry me at all (maybe folks think of me as a one trick pony too, as a stam user it would only exemplify my point) in a fight, then there are tons of magicka users that give me problems.

Is it an L2P issue? Would you even consider that as a possibility? I mean I've changed my playstyle and build maybe 6 times on the stam side alone (not counting variations into caster nb builds) in the past couple months. Some work better than others, but still there's lots of room to grow..

I fear hard-hitting Bow stam NBs least of all because they typically die the easiest and are more vulnerable while firing. I'll keep fragments flying to prevent them from sniping too much and instant casts just don't do enough damage. The NBs that concern me most are the 2-hander ones with perma-roll and stacked weapon damage (The kind of build that my NB is now using). Those are the ones that get close enough to use the fear/wrecking blow combo on you that has a chance to instagib you if you can't break free fast enough. Bow damage can be antipicated and easily avoided and with S&B you can reduce damage to a fraction of what it was. Sure I get killed as much as anyone else from stealth lining up on me while I'm engaged against another player, but that's just part of the game and if players enjoy that so be it.

Xsorus wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

@Xsorus
Please look at the video in this thread: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/168466/2v2-pvp-tournament-final-resut/p1

Feel free to watch the whole video if you have not to see the flaws on Nirnhoned.
Or -
Skip to 3:30.
Watch Sypher as he ambushes into 5 Daedric Mines - each with a base tooltip of atleast 4500 when magicka builds - according to Arcane Karstyll, "My mine tooltip unbuffed hit 4240 for each mine, buffed 4658 damage." And only drops to 32% from 79% (16k health). He is running full Nirnhoned. Watch as he eats mines for only 2.9k crits and 1.5k non-crits. This is a video of Nirnhoned at its finest. He later describes that he is using full Nirnhoned (w/ the exception of engine guardian) with Whitestrake's BUT get this, his suprise attacks crit for 8k - a GREAT example of how well weapon damage improves without very much or even little amounts of weapon damage sets can affect total output. - No intentions at calling anyone out on this issue.
I of course love that my critical hits hit for less than my tool tip and I am positive every other magicka build feels the same. I feel the urge to say that no build deserves to have their damage reduced by 2/3rds without blocking and should've been fixed when this issue was announced during the 1.6 PTS. Should I find more clips and point out the flaws of Nirnhoned for you Xsorus?

You want me to show ya Sypher video where he instant kills 5 people with magicka nightblade?
There is countless videos of sorcs just ripping through people as well. i can show you video of me 3 shotting dodge rolling users left and right as well. Do you know why? Because a vast majority of them aren't running nirmhoned like you are crying about, they are running things like skirmisher. So you whining about a very defensive setup taking low damage vs them hitting someone with very low armor (and then having it pretty much ignored completely) isn't much of a concern to me. Against most players you pretty much need well over 33k spell resist before you even begin to negate there damage which means most players won't be running it since it requires at least 5 to 6 pieces of nirnhoned to hit that level of resist (I break 32k with 5 light for example and 4 nirnhoned using a shield)

oh incase your wondering I have video of me with 33k spell resist taking about 5k per crit from a sorcs mines. This is with bloody "cap" spell resist. I have zero sympathy for most magicka users since I play one and know what's it like. God sorcs would be absolutely stupid right now without nirnhoned

Most Medium armor dodge rollers don't need to run full Nirnhoned. My NB Build uses Skirmisher and only 2 pieces of Nirnhoned (+48% to spell resist). Consider Base full Medium Armor + Phase Champion Passive + Shadow Barrier Passive = Easy to get 40K Spell resist when you're a perma roller.

Sypher killing 5 people with a mana detonation /ultimate combo means at much as me killing 30 people in a row with overload.....nothing. The players who are dying to me and Sypher and the rest of skilled players out there are fodder and we all know it so don't try to make an argument out of it. I guarantee your Magicka DK is going to have a much harder time killing me than your Stamina DK because I'm sitting on 34K Spell Resist with only 3 Nirnhoned in Light armor due to Boundless Storm.

ummm say what..I run 4 nirnhoned on my nightblade...I don't break 40k Spell Resist..In fact i break 36k when I go into stealth and get shadow barrier passive.

Also you died to my Stamina DK because I reflected a Meteor back on your face....If you manage not to have that happen you shouldn't die to my DK if i was Magicka or Stamina.

I'll have to rerun the numbers, my NB is not VR14 yet but I'm assuming shadow barrier adds 12K to your spell resist (8K*1.48) as I know Boundless storm benefits from Nirnhoned as well.

Yeah I learned with DKs to just refresh shield and block meteors until the bug is fixed. I've died to stamina DKs without Meteor, but never a Magicka DK that I can recall in 1.6. Plenty of Magicka DK stalemates though as they can just spam Harness Magicka and wings and never run out of magicka depending on their build.

Ezareth

exiledtyrant wrote: »

I don't get where all this specific class and build stuff is coming from for magicka to scale close to if not overlap weapon damage. My reguard sorc with 60 cp could hit 30 k with inner light and 33k with inner light + aegis. Any nightblade can get sorc level of maximum magicka by simply slotting a siphon ability + inner light, which means they only need to give up 3 slots instead of 4. Even at 4 slots the builds are not rocket science. Slot detonation / curse / frags and then you can position them any way you like for you BOL,shield, and healing ward. If you are breton or altmer you could drop one of the slots and open even more choices.

It is a long term projection but I believe that since CP scales up your max resource those with 10-20k more magicka than stamina will be seeing the gap close damage wise much sooner than they think.

Lastly stamina has more potential weapon crit, higher weapon damage, higher % regen, and lower skill cost. Magicka has higher penetration( with it's only "hard" choice being the mundus stone), more defensive utility, flat resource regen, and maximum resource percentage. Both resources have their trade offs. Both resources should have their trade offs. Stamina may get slightly more damage at the moment, but magicka is far easier to itemize for offense and defense.

I personally wonder why everyone is ok with someone stacking as high as 45k+ spell resist and still not being able to hit the 50% mitigation cap against all this magic pen. You can come close at around44-47% reduction but you can't quite hit it with full pen after you. ( test discussion seen here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1778730/#Comment_1778730) That means non nirn builds are basically food, but that's not a problem? When spell erosion is actually fixed this look to be an even bigger problem. Nirnhorn is an unhealthy extreme, but so is all this penetration. Mitigation deserves to be a thing even if crazy numbers( on both sides) are not the way to go about it

People should not be expecting to survive through the use of passive defenses. It makes combat pretty boring and unskillful when people can't just build their characters a certain way to become survivable so they can focus purely on offense.

Passive defenses like resistances should be some that reduce incoming damage that is otherwise unavoidable through active defenses like dodge roll, block, damage sheilds, LoS, Retreat etc.

technohic

Ezareth wrote: »

exiledtyrant wrote: »

I don't get where all this specific class and build stuff is coming from for magicka to scale close to if not overlap weapon damage. My reguard sorc with 60 cp could hit 30 k with inner light and 33k with inner light + aegis. Any nightblade can get sorc level of maximum magicka by simply slotting a siphon ability + inner light, which means they only need to give up 3 slots instead of 4. Even at 4 slots the builds are not rocket science. Slot detonation / curse / frags and then you can position them any way you like for you BOL,shield, and healing ward. If you are breton or altmer you could drop one of the slots and open even more choices.

It is a long term projection but I believe that since CP scales up your max resource those with 10-20k more magicka than stamina will be seeing the gap close damage wise much sooner than they think.

Lastly stamina has more potential weapon crit, higher weapon damage, higher % regen, and lower skill cost. Magicka has higher penetration( with it's only "hard" choice being the mundus stone), more defensive utility, flat resource regen, and maximum resource percentage. Both resources have their trade offs. Both resources should have their trade offs. Stamina may get slightly more damage at the moment, but magicka is far easier to itemize for offense and defense.

I personally wonder why everyone is ok with someone stacking as high as 45k+ spell resist and still not being able to hit the 50% mitigation cap against all this magic pen. You can come close at around44-47% reduction but you can't quite hit it with full pen after you. ( test discussion seen here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1778730/#Comment_1778730) That means non nirn builds are basically food, but that's not a problem? When spell erosion is actually fixed this look to be an even bigger problem. Nirnhorn is an unhealthy extreme, but so is all this penetration. Mitigation deserves to be a thing even if crazy numbers( on both sides) are not the way to go about it

People should not be expecting to survive through the use of passive defenses. It makes combat pretty boring and unskillful when people can't just build their characters a certain way to become survivable so they can focus purely on offense.

Passive defenses like resistances should be some that reduce incoming damage that is otherwise unavoidable through active defenses like dodge roll, block, damage sheilds, LoS, Retreat etc.

I don't necessarily agree. Passive defenses should protect you a lot, but it has to equally give up some offensive ability to do so. I do think Nirhoned is too easy of a way to get it up as high it is regardless of gold cost otherwise why have tanks? Why not have high resource sustained DPS that can keep active defenses up?

Yonkit

Ezareth wrote: »

I fear hard-hitting Bow stam NBs least of all because they typically die the easiest and are more vulnerable while firing. I'll keep fragments flying to prevent them from sniping too much and instant casts just don't do enough damage. The NBs that concern me most are the 2-hander ones with perma-roll and stacked weapon damage (The kind of build that my NB is now using). Those are the ones that get close enough to use the fear/wrecking blow combo on you that has a chance to instagib you if you can't break free fast enough. Bow damage can be antipicated and easily avoided and with S&B you can reduce damage to a fraction of what it was. Sure I get killed as much as anyone else from stealth lining up on me while I'm engaged against another player, but that's just part of the game and if players enjoy that so be it.

And here we're back to a build that I'm not too concerned about. Wind up a wrecking blow and you're hit with a snipe/medium/poison injection shot, and dmg for dmg I'll win more times than not against that player. Of course this funnels back into my point that we're at a point of parity now where build advantages work in a circular fashion, some good against others, weak against another, who is stronger against the first. Your build is not good for everything, nor is mine, nor is anyone's, but so much of the qq'ing (not that you've been qq'ing, just in general) stems from players who seem to want to excel in all situations and all circumstances because that's kind of what they're use to.

Also, when it comes to wrecking blow, for me surprise attack with shadow cloak is a cooler and more efficient option for single target. WB just offers too much weakness for its one big hit, plus the 10k hits for surprise attack are very nice too.

Jules

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Jules wrote: »

Samuel_Bantien wrote: »

You can't really bring up Pixysticks because he quit due to Nirnhoned/spell resist stacking. He is tired of it, and almost all magicka builds are tired of it too. He is like me, I do not want to go stamina in order to be competitive and neither do the majority of magicka players, but at this rate magicka builds are a dying breed. I lurk the forums way too much and can find and understand both sides to the argument. Fighting on the side of Nirnhoned is a battle that will be surely lost - and it is already lost as ZoS is nerfing Nirnhoned, but the nerf is not happening soon enough.

The question is why, why, WHY this has not been fixed yet. ZOS can hot fix a good grind in under 24 hours but an armor trait that is gimping half the population stays as is for months now. #commonsense

Because sorcs were owning so hard that people grew seriously sick of them, that's why. For a while there, every other toon I ran into was a sorc, which is a pretty good metric. They don't want to put sorcs back the way we were, but they also don't want to nerf sorcs into a hole. They mentioned in another thread that they were going to make sure they did this right. I would rather that happen than to see my sorc nerfed into the ground.

I took advantage of the grinds when they were available and can switch between different classes at VR14 pretty easily. My sorc is my main but, I play an NB right now. All the classes have strong builds, yes even Templar, the problem is that every class does not have a build for every play style. I don't play DK or Templar very much because I have a habit of falling behind my group, and sorcs and NBs have the best way to catch up while making it look like you were always right there with everyone else....

The only problem with this logic is it presumes that sorcerers are the only magicka class in PVP. Which I hate to tell you, they aren't. Sorcs were owning, yadda yadda, let's not fix nirnhoned bc of that? Idk if this is even true, I can't imagine it is. But if it were, to keep a clearly broken and OP trait for the sole purpose of "bringing sorcs in line" would be absolutely idiotic.

Ezareth

Yonkit wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

I fear hard-hitting Bow stam NBs least of all because they typically die the easiest and are more vulnerable while firing. I'll keep fragments flying to prevent them from sniping too much and instant casts just don't do enough damage. The NBs that concern me most are the 2-hander ones with perma-roll and stacked weapon damage (The kind of build that my NB is now using). Those are the ones that get close enough to use the fear/wrecking blow combo on you that has a chance to instagib you if you can't break free fast enough. Bow damage can be antipicated and easily avoided and with S&B you can reduce damage to a fraction of what it was. Sure I get killed as much as anyone else from stealth lining up on me while I'm engaged against another player, but that's just part of the game and if players enjoy that so be it.

And here we're back to a build that I'm not too concerned about. Wind up a wrecking blow and you're hit with a snipe/medium/poison injection shot, and dmg for dmg I'll win more times than not against that player. Of course this funnels back into my point that we're at a point of parity now where build advantages work in a circular fashion, some good against others, weak against another, who is stronger against the first. Your build is not good for everything, nor is mine, nor is anyone's, but so much of the qq'ing (not that you've been qq'ing, just in general) stems from players who seem to want to excel in all situations and all circumstances because that's kind of what they're use to.

Also, when it comes to wrecking blow, for me surprise attack with shadow cloak is a cooler and more efficient option for single target. WB just offers too much weakness for its one big hit, plus the 10k hits for surprise attack are very nice too.

Against stamina builds I time my wrecking blows to land during that point in which their dodge roll ends, it is something that for some reason isn't as easily accomplished with surprise attack and only concealed weapon goes through dodge roll. Crit-charge-Wrecking blow combo seems to land on players 60-70% of the time.

I'll play around more with it but I've been considering concealed weapon as an anti-dodge ability even as a stam user. Not sure how that will work in practice.

I think a Stam Nightblades can hold their own in pretty much any situation except being zerged down with no LoS cover to use to put distance between you and the zerg. In 1 v 1s I haven't had any issues at all with players. The hardest build for me was a magicka DK but now I have a good rotation to run them out of stam and no rely on dodge roll for defense. Maybe this will all change in the VR zone.

k2blader

Draxys wrote: »

Seriously don't understand people defend the imbalance with gear examples (that are mostly not viable to boot). It's way easier to stack weapon dmg and not lose regen or raw stats, and it's way harder to mitigate stamina dmg. The mitigation might be the biggest issue.

Agree. Not sure if people are purposely ignoring the mitigation issue, but the only "reasoning" I've seen proffered is stuff along the lines of there has to be an "equivalent to being a sorc," for non-sorcs.

Huckdabuck

Very important stuff here ZOS.

kaithuzar

I think the main thing here is that sorc's got a major buff to sp dmg in 1.6 (they did need it), BUT magicka nb's & dk's got nothing. This is what happens when you buff a specific class instead of buffing "all magic builds". Because nirn honed + shield stacking = unkillable; it just makes non-sorc magic builds difficult to play & impossible to keep up damage wise.

Tankqull

kaithuzar wrote: »

I think the main thing here is that sorc's got a major buff to sp dmg in 1.6 (they did need it), BUT magicka nb's & dk's got nothing. This is what happens when you buff a specific class instead of buffing "all magic builds". Because nirn honed + shield stacking = unkillable; it just makes non-sorc magic builds difficult to play & impossible to keep up damage wise.

i do not know one Sorc using surge in pvp as degeneration accessable to everybody is so unbelivably stronger.

kaithuzar

Tankqull wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

I think the main thing here is that sorc's got a major buff to sp dmg in 1.6 (they did need it), BUT magicka nb's & dk's got nothing. This is what happens when you buff a specific class instead of buffing "all magic builds". Because nirn honed + shield stacking = unkillable; it just makes non-sorc magic builds difficult to play & impossible to keep up damage wise.

i do not know one Sorc using surge in pvp as degeneration accessable to everybody is so unbelivably stronger.

Who said anything about surge or degen? I'm talking the ability to put "SORC ABILITIES" on your bar gives inc. sp dmg.
The max sp dmg I can ever hope to achieve as a magic nb is around 2.6k & that's what my character sheet reads while stealthed. I have seen multiple sorc's getting between 2.9-3k sp dmg per character sheet.

wrathofrraath

Magicka builds NEED a 5 piece damage dealing set that have 2 rings and a neck. Healers habit is great for the 4 piece for pvp and 5 piece for well... healers ? (The healers I know don't even use it.) Stam builds have the almighy Ravagers which cant even compare to Burning Spellweave (rendered pretty much useless in 1.6) If Spellweave had rings and a neck thatcwould be glorious but for now everyone either runs two cyro light rings and a random neck or the same rings with the sun set neck, for damage dealing at least. Soulshine is a decent option but there is no version of it beyond v10 so its useless.

dodgehopper_ESO

Boiling down all of what you said OP, the real issue in my view is Soft Caps in general. Just like with some complaints by prominent players about the Champion system, I think the issue is not CP but Softcaps. Removal of the soft cap was just not a good idea for balance, not in my view anyways. Perhaps they have some other ideas going on we're not aware of.

Attorneyatlawl

wrathofrraath wrote: »

Magicka builds NEED a 5 piece damage dealing set that have 2 rings and a neck. Healers habit is great for the 4 piece for pvp and 5 piece for well... healers ? (The healers I know don't even use it.) Stam builds have the almighy Ravagers which cant even compare to Burning Spellweave (rendered pretty much useless in 1.6) If Spellweave had rings and a neck thatcwould be glorious but for now everyone either runs two cyro light rings and a random neck or the same rings with the sun set neck, for damage dealing at least. Soulshine is a decent option but there is no version of it beyond v10 so its useless.

For what it's worth, I wrote a big feedback submission in private to ZOS back in February relating the same info and issues basically as jules has in his op here from may. I saw these issues and disparity coming back then. I sincerely hope it was addressed with the newer itemization in the patch for the Imperial City .

Septimus_Magna

Its hard to get a lot of spell damage, you also need to use DW if you really want to push it.
Without spell damage enchants on jewelry I can get up to 3129 spell damage buffed on my DW bar.

The main difference is the ulti damage, with 4k weapon damage they hit a lot harder.

Septimus_Magna

Tankqull wrote: »

kaithuzar wrote: »

I think the main thing here is that sorc's got a major buff to sp dmg in 1.6 (they did need it), BUT magicka nb's & dk's got nothing. This is what happens when you buff a specific class instead of buffing "all magic builds". Because nirn honed + shield stacking = unkillable; it just makes non-sorc magic builds difficult to play & impossible to keep up damage wise.

i do not know one Sorc using surge in pvp as degeneration accessable to everybody is so unbelivably stronger.

In some situations Power Surge is more useful because you can cast it while stealthed without a target and its lasts twice as long.
If you want to quickly burst down someone it helps to be able to buff up in stealth. You can buff up with harness magicka and power surge without breaking stealth, cast hardened ward (which breaks stealth) and start the damage burst.

For open world fighting or group fighting Entropy usually is the better choice.

Jules

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

wrathofrraath wrote: »

Magicka builds NEED a 5 piece damage dealing set that have 2 rings and a neck. Healers habit is great for the 4 piece for pvp and 5 piece for well... healers ? (The healers I know don't even use it.) Stam builds have the almighy Ravagers which cant even compare to Burning Spellweave (rendered pretty much useless in 1.6) If Spellweave had rings and a neck thatcwould be glorious but for now everyone either runs two cyro light rings and a random neck or the same rings with the sun set neck, for damage dealing at least. Soulshine is a decent option but there is no version of it beyond v10 so its useless.

For what it's worth, I wrote a big feedback submission in private to ZOS back in February relating the same info and issues basically as jules has in his op here from may. I saw these issues and disparity coming back then. I sincerely hope it was addressed with the newer itemization in the patch for the Imperial City .

This is great to hear. I'm glad that as a community ambassador you are relaying these important issues to them.
Also I'm not a he

Jules

Edited OP to include continuous attack passive from alliance war.
If anyone can think of additionally passive/active buffs that buff weapon damage but not spell, feel free to leave it here.

MightyHarken

Can we also argue about how weapon damage bases on stamina? and how we need to continuosly dodge roll/ block attacks from monsters to even hope to survive?. It's amusing when you think about how all the sorcerers are attacking from a safe distance while using their stamina to dodge perfectly without it affecting their DPS.

Cuyler

leepalmer95

MightyHarken wrote: »

Can we also argue about how weapon damage bases on stamina? and how we need to continuosly dodge roll/ block attacks from monsters to even hope to survive?. It's amusing when you think about how all the sorcerers are attacking from a safe distance while using their stamina to dodge perfectly without it affecting their DPS.

More like using there stamina really wisely as if they run out they don't have 2k regen to get it back up.

You can stack a lot more weapon dmg than you can spell dmg ^^.

FlounderOG

Jules wrote: »

People who deny the imbalance seem to not understand that 2≠4.
I challenge you all to get 4k spell damage on any build regardless of whether it's viable.
When you inevitably fail, come back and tell us all about it.

I'll take that much spell damage on my nightblade any day.

Zsymon

There is no imbalance between spell damage and weapon damage. Weapon damage is higher, but in return magicka builds get far superior utility and survivability. If spell damage were as high, it would be completely overpowered.

That's also why CPs can be used to mitigate magical damage easier than physical. All stamina skills can do is damage and some CC, while spells get a wide range of powerful utility (Dragon Fire Scales, Hardened Ward, Illustrous Healing, Mutagen, Healing Ward, Dark Cloak, Breath of Life, Limunous Shards, Repentance, Bolt Escape, etc etc)

Magicka builds are simply far more versatile, they have spells that are tactical game changers, while stamina skills just do damage, which spells can do as well and often even better. Spells are just superior in every way to stamina skills, so there has to be some kind of trade off or no one would ever play a stamina build.

With the changes coming with IC, stamina builds already took a gigantic hit, most players ditching their build to go magicka, make this even worse by raising spell damage or lowering weapon damage, and there'll be a total absence of stamina builds.

In the future stamina builds will have to receive some kind of significant upgrade to offset the huge nerfs.

Lava_Croft

Zsymon wrote: »

There is no imbalance between spell damage and weapon damage. Weapon damage is higher, but in return magicka builds get far superior utility and survivability. If spell damage were as high, it would be completely overpowered.

That's also why CPs can be used to mitigate magical damage easier than physical. All stamina skills can do is damage and some CC, while spells get a wide range of powerful utility (Dragon Fire Scales, Hardened Ward, Illustrous Healing, Mutagen, Healing Ward, Dark Cloak, Breath of Life, Limunous Shards, Repentance, Bolt Escape, etc etc)

Magicka builds are simply far more versatile, they have spells that are tactical game changers, while stamina skills just do damage, which spells can do as well and often even better. Spells are just superior in every way to stamina skills, so there has to be some kind of trade off or no one would ever play a stamina build.

With the changes coming with IC, stamina builds already took a gigantic hit, most players ditching their build to go magicka, make this even worse by raising spell damage or lowering weapon damage, and there'll be a total absence of stamina builds.

In the future stamina builds will have to receive some kind of significant upgrade to offset the huge nerfs.

I think you are overlooking quite a few utilities that are based on Stamina.

Zsymon

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I think you are overlooking quite a few utilities that are based on Stamina.

Tell me one good utility spell that is based on stamina.

Scyantific

Zsymon wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I think you are overlooking quite a few utilities that are based on Stamina.

Tell me one good utility spell that is based on stamina.

Vigor

Zsymon

Scyantific wrote: »

Zsymon wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I think you are overlooking quite a few utilities that are based on Stamina.

Tell me one good utility spell that is based on stamina.

Vigor

Well, good point, but apart from Rally and Vigor the selection is extremely thin, and there isn't a single good class utility spell based on stamina. There are countless powerful utility spells used by magicka builds, and barely any stamina skills that offer utility, available. You're not going to convince me that spell utility isn't superior by far.

If they increase spell damage or lower weapon damage, you're going to see the large decline in stamina builds that's already happening, take a sharp turn for the worst.

ScruffyWhiskers

Rapid maneuvers and caltrops

Besides, just like quantity is a quality all of its own, damage is a utility all of its own.

Mr-jo-handsome

But the amount of max magika you can stack equalls out to the weapon damage I can still get 1 shot by both kinds of builds