Thoughts About Current Status of Stats

Panda_iMunch

Remember when doing 700 dps in a dungeon was considered decent? That was the time.

Now I can do about 13,000 dps, which is about 19x increase.

This has given a huge value boost to dps skills, and in a way, devalued utility based skills considerably.
This in turn, has made PvP all about burst dps and healing and seeing who has the most skill runs out of resources first, or who has more people.

What about PvE?
Content is being blown through at epic rates, leaving the one fun pass time of grinding motifs and other misc. resources. Not to mention that this PvE stagnation has been further exasperated by the fact that large chunks of PvE content has been left in the dust (looking at you, Craglorn and Imperial City)

Solution?

In truth, it is very hard to say what system or how many systems need to be looked at. But, reducing stats would put less emphases on burst dps.

Another thing would be to put more value in utility skills. For example, making obsidian fist give a buff or remove a debuff.

What do you think should be looked at?

leepalmer95

Well soft caps got removed and all the stats got 10x.

Panda_iMunch

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Well soft caps got removed and all the stats got 10x.

Don't forget the champion system, which just raises stats for the most part

Waffennacht

It's all relative

Panda_iMunch

Waffennacht wrote: »

It's all relative

In a fashion, but the the boost in stats does hold negative consequences, including decreased performance. The main issue is that the value of just going pure face dps with nothing but burst is just really unnecessarily high! Half of the item sets in the game or relegated to the status "niche" for certain builds, which people can only really use for fun; just look at the ESO set list and tell me which sets are 'good.'

leepalmer95

Panda_iMunch wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

It's all relative

In a fashion, but the the boost in stats does hold negative consequences, including decreased performance. The main issue is that the value of just going pure face dps with nothing but burst is just really unnecessarily high! Half of the item sets in the game or relegated to the status "niche" for certain builds, which people can only really use for fun; just look at the ESO set list and tell me which sets are 'good.'

Any set that never got buffed to v16 is useless, if those sets got v16 dropd then suddenly theres a lot more builds.

However yes some sets are just out right better, however you'll always have sets that are just considered better, if the lower sets got v16 versions then instead of crafting there will just be some sets that are just better than other and people will use them instead, well at least after the theory crafting have had a bit of time.

AfkNinja

Separate damage gains from resources and tie them only to Spell/Weapon dmg. Resources shouldn't be raising your dmg, they should only be your available casting pool. It would make investing in all three resources reasonable and desirable and encourage more diversity IMO.

Lucky28

AfkNinja wrote: »

Separate damage gains from resources and tie them only to Spell/Weapon dmg. Resources shouldn't be raising your dmg, they should only be your available casting pool. It would make investing in all three resources reasonable and desirable and encourage more diversity IMO.

Wouldn't really make that much of a difference because people would still want as large of a 'casting pool' as they could possible get. Nah, actually i think that might have an adverse effect, since you take away that damage boost people will just go pure spam and still stack one resource only for a different reason.

Ffastyl

Remember when Update 6 first launched as 2000 weapon damage was good? Today, 4000 weapon damage is average. @Panda_iMunch is right, many system changes lead to this: oversaturated damage. The removal of softcaps, introduction of more percent modifiers and damage oriented sets are the currently known forces driving players to overpowered damage/healing.

Many buffs that granted flat values in the past, such as Major Brutality and Empower, were changed to percentage increases, rewarding stacking damage. The Champion System is also all percentages, further rewarding stacking one stat to get the most effect out of the percent modifiers.

Softcaps kept much of this imbalance in check by impeding player power beyond a set point. Removing them increased player power, theoretically increasing the number of viable and competitive builds. The reality is that the removal lowered the number of viable and competitive builds by allowing players to stack stats to the point of imbalance.

The addition of damage focused sets in Update 7 (Imperial City) gave players more means to increase Weapon and Spell Damage, further exacerbating the above two issues.

But in addition to opening the floodgates on damage, many defensive and utility abilities were balanced and/or nerfed. Reflective Scales and Sun Shield are well known examples. These abilities were key to their classes' success and while not removed like the Miss Chance debuff, they were crippled by balance changes.

AfkNinja wrote: »

Separate damage gains from resources and tie them only to Spell/Weapon dmg. Resources shouldn't be raising your dmg, they should only be your available casting pool. It would make investing in all three resources reasonable and desirable and encourage more diversity IMO.

In regards to this, check out a post by Sentinel in Improving Health (linked in signature). He suggests scaling healing abilities off a combination of their consumed resource, associated damage stat and Max Health (reducing effect of each to prevent a power spike), partially decoupling healing from damage.


While I suggest ways to buff defense, I actually prefer offense be nerfed. Buffing defense allows it to compete evenly with offense but still requires total or near total investment to match the power of offense; more builds will become viable but all viable builds will still stack one stat. Nerfing damage --bringing the maximum possible down, introducing hard caps or soft caps-- will make it possible to invest in multiple stats and be viable. Players will have the ability to reach competitive damage and still have gear slots, enchantments and attribute points left to invest in utility and defense and vice versa.

Glass cannons have an allure, but do we really want every fight to be decided on the first blow?

Panda_iMunch

The only thing I would say about soft caps is that I don't think we really need them.

If the stats we're bought to a reasonable level across the board, then a person could be a glass cannon while not 1 shooting peeps. Stats should be left open, but reduced to allow for longer combat and more diversity in builds!