Could Argonians be the "third magicka race"?

dodgehopper_ESO

Xvorg wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Jar_Ek wrote: »

One of the big issues with the Argonian passives is that they are so situational compared to most other racials. Potion drinking relies on you drinking a potion, resistances rely on you being attacked by the appropriate damage types (which is also completely out of your control). The only passive that can be built around is healing received and tbh that is not really something that is easy to build around for 3 of the classes.

Now if thieves guild or dark brotherhood bring poisons then maybe that resistance racial will get better...

But generally not having situational potion based passive would be a start.

I just want to point out that while the resistant passives are nice, they are not hugely beneficial. I find the real problem with poison/disease is the debuff they apply, not the damage, and the damage mitigation from the racial isn't particularly compelling.

The fire resitance form dunmer is useful in cyro against any flame staff user, besides any DK with fire stacked. Also it is useful against siege weapons
The cold resistance from nords is useful in cyro ahainst any frost staff user, besides any cold siege weapon
The poison and disease resistance from argonians is useful against any bow user that slots: poison arrow (and their morphs) and/or acid spray and/or lethal arrow (total 3 skills), besides the meat bag catapult (just one siege weapon)

Thhe case is that you can build a nice archer without using any poison skill, while magicka DKs are forced to slot fire and any ice staff user has at least 5 skill to use.

Now, if Zos intention is to make Saxlheel tanky, add physical resistance to poison and disease, and get rid of the 50% healing reduction in Cyrodil. A 5% better healing is just an insult

I'm not really saying it is useless so much as the numbers are so low you can easily make up for them with a single enchant. They just aren't that huge of a difference, and CP honestly feels better to me. Just my opinion here. I'm not saying it is awful, but I don't think it is the core of what makes a race tough. The resistances are more like a 'cherry on top trait', a little like Red Diamond is for Imperials.

Junkogen

I don't know, guys. I don't think ZOS cares what we think or that Argonian passives are essentially worthless. They've actually done the opposite and nerfed us. Sure, we got a little buff recently, but overall, it's a sad state of affairs. I'm not saying we should stop trying to get them changed or buffed, but I don't think we have much of a real chance. They just don't care.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

ThatNeonZebraAgain wrote: »

So, if you want to buff Argonians' combat abilities, "from stealth"-based passives are, imho, not the way to do it. Or, at least if they do pursue that route, they should proc from Cloak and invis pots, since this would potentially then give back an Argonian-NB synergy that was behind many older players' choice in rolling Argonian in the first place (for those that don't know, Argonians and NBs used to share an Increase Potion Effectiveness passive, which combined made potion effects 45% stronger; combined with a potion cooldown that could be brought down to 15 seconds, this made Argonian NBs a challenging niche, yet powerful build). If this sounds like it would make Argonian NBs overpowered, I would direct you to Dunmer's boost to fire damage and their synergy with DKs; it's a form of class-race synergy more than a distinct disadvantage for other classes.

The racial stealth passive do work with invisible effects. Dark Cloak, Invisible Pots, Shadow Strike and Bat Swarm (morph) will grant you a 10% dmg bonus to your next hit and any current DoTs on the target. But it is indeed a more "PvP" focussed passive compared to the other racials that focus around ressources maxpool/recovery.

Back to the Argonian,

Argonians passives need 2 changes :
- First, Argonian resistance needs to be upgraded to 9%. So it is put on par with the Nord passive which does exactly the same but with frost resist instead of poison/disease resist!
- Secondly, they need to change the potion passive with something more in line with the other races. It could range to ressource recovery, or cost reduction, even sprint speed (Argonians used to be quite good Athletes back in Morrowind)

Something like Athletics : 50% Swimspeed, 3/6/10% sprintspeed, 1/2/3% stamina cost reduction.

Xvorg

Robbmrp wrote: »

How are they not considered a high magicka race currently? Is it because of the one passive Swim Speed that's pretty useless?

All of the other passives help to make a killer Templar healer or magicka DPS as you can stack damage and not worry about regen currently. With the healing passives, an Argonian Templar doesn't have to use The Ritual Mundus and can put more of their build into spell damage.

Sometme ago I was theory crafting a build that

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Spacemonkey wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

Aren't they supposed to be a Stamina race in line with the Khajiit and Bosmer?

Argonians are experts in guerilla warfare, so they should have a Sneak bonus with their Swim Speem and a stamina bonus along with their poison resistance

I agree with this also.

If you look at the Elder's Scrolls Franchise - Bretons and Altmer have always been heavy magicka users indeed. Followed closely by the Dunmer, depending on the house, Telvannis are some of the heaviest magicka using cultures - I mean they almost *conjure their cities* to begin with....

The heavy 'stamina' races would normally be Orsimer, Redguard and Argonian.

The others are mixes of stamina and magicka. (Nord, Bosmer, Imperial)

And Khajiit are just weird and it entirely depends on their moon phase. They can be the noobiest as well as the master race.

Exactly. It should be noted that quite a few Dunmer have been the Psijics, which are de facto the most powerful mages on Nirn. The Telvanni are significantly powerful quite obviously, to the point they teach things the Mages Guild isn't privy to. The Tribunal is also another very magically oriented faction, and even houses like House Hlaalu have access to powerful mages, generally in the form of the Morag Tong. House Redoran is really the only house that represents a more 'physical' stamina type tradition among the Dunmer, and it should be noted that they are among the most adamant supporters of the Tribunal.

I think your general assessment of theme is in line with what I think about the races as well.

The Tong have accepted Argonians since... always.

But it's true, Huleeya, in Morrrowind, was a master trainer in Athletics and knew no magicka, While Smokeskin-Killer was a Telvanni warrior (?), Nine-Toes was an archer (Blades), An-zaw a NB, Chanil-Lee (sorc), Heim-La (mage) for the mages guild... (no argonian in the fighters guid, Sees-all-colors might be ashamed)

Nevertheless, in the mages guild one of the most powerful mages in Vvanderfell is an argonian,Skink-in-Tree's-Shade, at the point he is respected by the Telvanni mages. He's the same level than pathetic "I've got a rounded head" Trebonius

Junkogen

Xvorg wrote: »

Robbmrp wrote: »

How are they not considered a high magicka race currently? Is it because of the one passive Swim Speed that's pretty useless?

All of the other passives help to make a killer Templar healer or magicka DPS as you can stack damage and not worry about regen currently. With the healing passives, an Argonian Templar doesn't have to use The Ritual Mundus and can put more of their build into spell damage.

Sometme ago I was theory crafting a build that

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Spacemonkey wrote: »

Tryxus wrote: »

Aren't they supposed to be a Stamina race in line with the Khajiit and Bosmer?

Argonians are experts in guerilla warfare, so they should have a Sneak bonus with their Swim Speem and a stamina bonus along with their poison resistance

I agree with this also.

If you look at the Elder's Scrolls Franchise - Bretons and Altmer have always been heavy magicka users indeed. Followed closely by the Dunmer, depending on the house, Telvannis are some of the heaviest magicka using cultures - I mean they almost *conjure their cities* to begin with....

The heavy 'stamina' races would normally be Orsimer, Redguard and Argonian.

The others are mixes of stamina and magicka. (Nord, Bosmer, Imperial)

And Khajiit are just weird and it entirely depends on their moon phase. They can be the noobiest as well as the master race.

Exactly. It should be noted that quite a few Dunmer have been the Psijics, which are de facto the most powerful mages on Nirn. The Telvanni are significantly powerful quite obviously, to the point they teach things the Mages Guild isn't privy to. The Tribunal is also another very magically oriented faction, and even houses like House Hlaalu have access to powerful mages, generally in the form of the Morag Tong. House Redoran is really the only house that represents a more 'physical' stamina type tradition among the Dunmer, and it should be noted that they are among the most adamant supporters of the Tribunal.

I think your general assessment of theme is in line with what I think about the races as well.

The Tong have accepted Argonians since... always.

But it's true, Huleeya, in Morrrowind, was a master trainer in Athletics and knew no magicka, While Smokeskin-Killer was a Telvanni warrior (?), Nine-Toes was an archer (Blades), An-zaw a NB, Chanil-Lee (sorc), Heim-La (mage) for the mages guild... (no argonian in the fighters guid, Sees-all-colors might be ashamed)

Nevertheless, in the mages guild one of the most powerful mages in Vvanderfell is an argonian,Skink-in-Tree's-Shade, at the point he is respected by the Telvanni mages. He's the same level than pathetic "I've got a rounded head" Trebonius

And that is the problem with this game, the lore supports any race becoming great at anything yet the game does not allow that. We're supposed to be like the superheroes of Tamriel. That's why the racial passive system in an MMO is stupid. The bonuses in previous TES games never gimped you as much as some of the passives in ESO do. In other TES games, the racial bonuses didn't matter all that much.

Also, why are Argonians forced to be gimped because of the histskin ability from Skyrim? Khajiits had night vision and then in this game they get crit and damage bonuses? Talk about a loose interpretation of lore. People keep insisting that Argonians need health regen...No they don't. As we've seen with all the other passives, ESO isn't sticking to lore in a lot of cases. They're making races more relevant for this game. Why shouldn't Argonians get that same treatment? The lore supports ANY passives for Argonians. You could make a case for Argonians having any racial passive that any other race has. So why do we get the short end of the stick? Why does ESO get to shaft us and it's okay?

Dammit, I want justice!

ashlee17

OP, I erect the spine of agreement.

Jitterbug

It's nice to see a mature and goal oriented discussion on my topic, even though I'm semi afk these days. Good community *pats on head*

Duiwel

I have two opinions of this:

A - I thought Dunmer was the 3rd Magicka class and that Argonians are stamina ( like mentioned above ).
After having a look at the racial passives again because all I remember the Argonian having was the Resto staff & self healing passives I see that neither Dunmer nor Argonian are actually the 3rd class.

So a very valid request OP, you have my support because at this time I deleted my Argonian templar which had 120 mount upgrades on Friday in favour of a Redguard NB.

B - If you guys remember that Argonian thief in Oblivion that always messed up and was surely the worst thief in Elder Scrolls history, it would make sense that perhaps they are more Magicka attuned. Maybe he just wanted to be a thief but deep down he was destined to learn the arcane arts.

Personally I believe that the self healing passive stems from the Salamander in real life and they took that as a concept for ESO.

A nice way for them to actually implement this is almost with the champion point system - you get to choose a birth sign which adds one or 2 very subtle passives. Everyone gets this choice, so no one is advantaged over the other. Then the Argonians can decide whether they want to be the Thief, Warrior or ....pum pum pum the Mage OP you already suggested what these passives should be and I have no objection to it or better suggestion it seems reasonable and rather good I must say, you have clearly given it much though. Kudos for the reptile love!

R.I.P. Likkewaan

Junkogen

Who's taking bets on whether ZOS does something to balance racial passives in this coming patch? My money is sadly on no.

If anything they'll probably buff a couple Aldmeri Dominion races and act oblivious as to why EP players are ticked off. I mean Altmer and Bosmer need help. They're sooooo disadvantaged.

Does anyone remember when they did that? They buffed the Altmer and Bosmer passives and didn't give anything to Argonians until everyone raised a stink. That was the exact moment I lost faith in the developers on this issue. How does something like that even happen?

Lava_Croft

Racial passive changes will come when the barber shop and race change options are available. This has been stated by ZOS quite a few times by now.

TheRubiksCube

I agree and think the racial passives for the argonian need to be changed to make it the best race to be a Templar with. I already see a lot of argonian Templars, but don't think the passives are useful.

Amphibious: increased swim speed and recover heath, magicka, and stamina from drinking a potion.

This has to be one of the most useless passive I have ever seen

Argonian Resistance: increased maxed health and poison/disease resistance

It's nice to have, but what class is this useful for?

Quick to mend: increased healing received

Not bad, but I think it should be changed to increased healing initiated by caster.

Junkogen

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Racial passive changes will come when the barber shop and race change options are available. This has been stated by ZOS quite a few times by now.

Maybe, but do they even acknowledge that Argonian passives need work? That's my concern based on their previous actions and inaction.

Jitterbug

Junkogen wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Racial passive changes will come when the barber shop and race change options are available. This has been stated by ZOS quite a few times by now.

Maybe, but do they even acknowledge that Argonian passives need work? That's my concern based on their previous actions and inaction.

Good point. I love my lizard and am in no hurry to get it changed, but it would be nice to see a simple "yeah, we know it sucks... watch this space." from the devs.

Lava_Croft

Junkogen wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Racial passive changes will come when the barber shop and race change options are available. This has been stated by ZOS quite a few times by now.

Maybe, but do they even acknowledge that Argonian passives need work? That's my concern based on their previous actions and inaction.

Meaningful changes to racial passives have to be tied in with an option to change your race.

That's basically what ZOS said. Make of it what you will.

threefarms

NAH, you get 100% faster swimming speed.

Junkogen

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Junkogen wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Racial passive changes will come when the barber shop and race change options are available. This has been stated by ZOS quite a few times by now.

Maybe, but do they even acknowledge that Argonian passives need work? That's my concern based on their previous actions and inaction.

Meaningful changes to racial passives have to be tied in with an option to change your race.

That's basically what ZOS said. Make of it what you will.

That's them playing politics to keep us on the line. The race changes will come without much change to racial passives at all. It's clear what their intention for each race is. It's different from game launch, but it is what it is. Argonians are the other health race, which is inferior to the other stats.

Jitterbug

threefarms wrote: »

NAH, you get 100% faster swimming speed.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad

Nerouyn

Junkogen wrote: »

And that is the problem with this game, the lore supports any race becoming great at anything yet the game does not allow that.

The underlying problem here is how damage scales with magicka and stamina. It never did in the single-player games, until in an attempt to fix Skyrim's woefully underpowered magic, modders took the simple option of making magic damage scale with magicka. That was a simple and popular fix to make magic more on par with weapon damage.

As a simple workaround for some bad game design it was fine. But it's not good game design in itself. Remove stamina and magicka damage scaling and far fewer people would care about their race not having a bonus for them.

Though I would go further. I think ZO got racials right with the training boosts, eg. how Argonians gain skill in the restoration staff skill faster. That speaks to an affinity for healing magic but doesn't make them better at it than anyone else so would-be healers aren't disadvantaged if they pick another race. Expand on that and ditch the stat boosts. Eg. give Argonians a boost to learning any skill (magic or otherwise) which has a healing component.

Then everyone could play the race they want, without worrying about how their racial passives stack up against someone else's or how they might be nerfed in the future.

Jitterbug

That sounds good @Nerouyn but it doesn't help the Argonians compete in the game's main component: Combat. Once you have learned the skills they will be learned and the passive becomes literally useless. I'm not trying to knock your idea, but I can say that me personally it's not what I'm after.

joleda4ub17_ESO

Nerouyn wrote: »

Junkogen wrote: »

And that is the problem with this game, the lore supports any race becoming great at anything yet the game does not allow that.

The underlying problem here is how damage scales with magicka and stamina. It never did in the single-player games, until in an attempt to fix Skyrim's woefully underpowered magic, modders took the simple option of making magic damage scale with magicka. That was a simple and popular fix to make magic more on par with weapon damage.

As a simple workaround for some bad game design it was fine. But it's not good game design in itself. Remove stamina and magicka damage scaling and far fewer people would care about their race not having a bonus for them.

Though I would go further. I think ZO got racials right with the training boosts, eg. how Argonians gain skill in the restoration staff skill faster. That speaks to an affinity for healing magic but doesn't make them better at it than anyone else so would-be healers aren't disadvantaged if they pick another race. Expand on that and ditch the stat boosts. Eg. give Argonians a boost to learning any skill (magic or otherwise) which has a healing component.

Then everyone could play the race they want, without worrying about how their racial passives stack up against someone else's or how they might be nerfed in the future.

Excellent post! Would you care if I expanded on this thought a bit?

We get 65 attribute points, give or take. Why not have power associated with these attribute points? Putting all attribute points in Magicka raises your magic damage, but your Physical damage would be (near?) zero. The bonus Magicka or Stamina from racial passives would allow the character a larger pool in which to use abilities. The bonuses are still important, but not unbalancing.

This idea still doesn't help Tanks much unless putting attribute points Health raises mitigation. What if this bonus mitigation could not be bypassed?

eventide03b14a_ESO

Dark Elves fit as a "magicka race" far better than Argonians.

Xvorg

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

Dark Elves fit as a "magicka race" far better than Argonians.

Other alliances have 2 stamina based races, what's the problem of having 2 magicka races?

Neverthless, Dunmer more than a magicka race are an hybrid race (and that's been always the same in every TES game)

Jitterbug

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

Dark Elves fit as a "magicka race" far better than Argonians IMO.

Fixed it.
But, seriously. That may very well be the case. I'm just thinking that game by no means need another stamina race, and that magicka argonians would fit both with the shadowscale type and the healing (regenerating) thing ZOS seems to want them to be.

edit: Furthermore, Dunmer don't need fixing. Argonians do.

Nerouyn

joleda4ub17_ESO wrote: »

Excellent post! Would you care if I expanded on this thought a bit?

We get 65 attribute points, give or take. Why not have power associated with these attribute points? Putting all attribute points in Magicka raises your magic damage, but your Physical damage would be (near?) zero. The bonus Magicka or Stamina from racial passives would allow the character a larger pool in which to use abilities. The bonuses are still important, but not unbalancing.

This idea still doesn't help Tanks much unless putting attribute points Health raises mitigation. What if this bonus mitigation could not be bypassed?

I would do the following, to address the separate balance problem of players stacking a single stat to have both really powerful healing and damage - which most games don't allow.

1. Have skills scale with level (as is).
2. Have offensive skills scale with magic or weapon damage.
3. Have defensive (including healing and crowd control) skills scale with magic or weapon defense.

None of these would be inherent character stats. They'd all come from enchants, food buffs, mundus stones and potions. If you pour all your character stats (from levelling) into magicka that would just give you a bigger magicka resource pool, i.e. more burst capacity for spells before you need to replenish.

My preferred racial passives - as I said - would just be training speed boosts for certain skills. Though a small bonus magicka / stamina boost for some races in this scheme would only marginally boost burst capacity.

Jar_Ek

If magicka and stamina were decoupled from damage, then the max stat passives wouldn't matter as much. However I'm not sure Argonians would be any more popular as their passives would still be meh.

Nerouyn

People will always complain when there are differences. That's people. Even when they in fact have it too good.

I remember back when argonians and nightblades had passives which boosted potion effectiveness. Paired up they gave players a very big boost to whatever potion they chose as suited the situation. Health, magicka, stamina. Maybe all of the above. Or spell power, crit, invisibility. You name it. With the right enchants potentially as often as every 15 secs (from memory). That was much, much, much more powerful than a little extra resources or regen, which in actual play have very little impact.

But the boards were awash with players going on and on and on about awful argonian passives were and how they needed to be buffed. Instead ZO wise gutted those passives. I don't love the replacements but the old ones had to go.

IMO players should choose their race based on the character they want to play, not some arbitrary and changeable passives. Though given the current state of things I could understand why many wouldn't.

Jitterbug

I don't quite know what your point actually is here @Nerouyn :-)

Sure, it would be nice if people could pick the race they like, but it doesn't work like that in an mmo. People aren't going to pick the worst possible racial passives, except of course us masochistic few :P

The old passives were indeed extremely strong and I feel fine they corrected them, but I don't feel fine with what they corrected them to.

This thread isn't about complaining (and I don't think my OP was complaining at all personally), it's about making constructive suggestions as to how the Argonian passives could be made useful. So if you have any suggestions as to specific Argonian racial passives, feel free to chime in

AshTal

Has there been any movement on getting agreement from Dev's that Argonian's will get better racials?

Jitterbug

AshTal wrote: »

Has there been any movement on getting agreement from Dev's that Argonian's will get better racials?

They got buffed from 8% return on potions to 12%. Which is a complete joke if you ask me.

Nerouyn

Jitterbug wrote: »

I don't quite know what your point actually is here @Nerouyn :-)

I think you do. Get rid of racial differences. There doesn't need to be a racial passive incentive to play race x,y,z. Players should pick it cos that's what they want to be.

I love Argonians. I think they're very cool. I'd be happy if ZO buffed their racials. But I think it would be better for players and the game to do away with or completely rethink racials.

Jitterbug wrote: »

Sure, it would be nice if people could pick the race they like, but it doesn't work like that in an mmo.

There's no universal law requiring MMO races to have such differences and many don't.

Eg. GW2. The differences between races are entirely cosmetic and story. They look different (obviously). They have different homes and racial armour. They have a few different racial quests at the lower levels. There are some racial (active) abilities but they are almost universally weaker than profession ones and can't be used in PvP so there's no balance issues.

Players just pick what the race they want and never have to worry about whether they've made an optimal choice or if their choice has ceased to be optimal because of changes.