HA VS LA

frozywozy

First of all, I would like to say that I'm pretty satisfied of the new class balances announced in the DB PTS Natch potes. I've decided to open this debate on Heavy Armor vs Light Armor because in my opinion, heavy armor should have always been about tanking physical damage while light armor should be for tanking spell damage.

It looks like we are going in the direction where both Light Armor and Heavy Armor can tank all forms of damage. I don't like this. With the actual CP cap and the incoming raise to 552, we are creating juggernauts.

In my opinion, LA users should be very squishy against physical damage and HA users should be very squishy against spell damage.

Discuss

Minno

Heres my thoughts:

1) Light armor should boost the effectivness of your spells, offer magicka dmg penetration, and magicka regen. This will boost the offensive while allowing magicka to help boost shields for a defense against one-hit wonders but not sustain dmg mitigation.

2) Heavy armor should boost the defense of your character against all attacks, add an increase in dmg via hit mechanics (building rage as a reason), return regen via hit mechanics, and boost the health/healing received.

Conclusion:
Light armor should not tank if containing easy to use offensive passives. But it should boost magicka based spell/skill defenses to allow builds to help stop "one-shotting"

RinaldoGandolphi

Minno wrote: »

Heres my thoughts:

1) Light armor should boost the effectivness of your spells, offer magicka dmg penetration, and magicka regen. This will boost the offensive while allowing magicka to help boost shields for a defense against one-hit wonders but not sustain dmg mitigation.

2) Heavy armor should boost the defense of your character against all attacks, add an increase in dmg via hit mechanics (building rage as a reason), return regen via hit mechanics, and boost the health/healing received.

Conclusion:
Light armor should not tank if containing easy to use offensive passives. But it should boost magicka based spell/skill defenses to allow builds to not help stop "one-shotting"

Agreed!

My only change to this is....as in all past TES games:

Heavy Armor should effect movement speed

The more your wearing the slower your toon moves...0.5% movement speed penalty per piece of heavy armor sounds about right.

This means wearing 7 pieces of heavy armor you will move 3.5% slower then someone in Light or Medium...i think thats a fair trade off for what boosts Heavy Armor has gotten.

Heavy Armor didn't just get a mitigation boost(which it needed) it got a huge DPS and resource regen boost as well...its going to be the go to for most classes now.

Minno

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Heres my thoughts:

1) Light armor should boost the effectivness of your spells, offer magicka dmg penetration, and magicka regen. This will boost the offensive while allowing magicka to help boost shields for a defense against one-hit wonders but not sustain dmg mitigation.

2) Heavy armor should boost the defense of your character against all attacks, add an increase in dmg via hit mechanics (building rage as a reason), return regen via hit mechanics, and boost the health/healing received.

Conclusion:
Light armor should not tank if containing easy to use offensive passives. But it should boost magicka based spell/skill defenses to allow builds to not help stop "one-shotting"

Agreed!

My only change to this is....as in all past TES games:

Heavy Armor should effect movement speed

The more your wearing the slower your toon moves...0.5% movement speed penalty per piece of heavy armor sounds about right.

This means wearing 7 pieces of heavy armor you will move 3.5% slower then someone in Light or Medium...i think thats a fair trade off for what boosts Heavy Armor has gotten.

Heavy Armor didn't just get a mitigation boost(which it needed) it got a huge DPS and resource regen boost as well...its going to be the go to for most classes now.

Agreed. Mobility decrease required for dynamic pro/con relationship in wearing heavy armor.

Would need a review to make sure it's not super debilitating, especially for classes without a viable escape mechanism.

Joy_Division

You are going to have to explain why you think Light Armor is somehow distinctive from Medium Armor in that it can tank all forms of damage.

kadar

The trend is not relegated to Armor effects either. A few changes to shields seem to push for blanket mitigation instead of mitigation specific to one type of damage. I believe Bone shield and Annulment will now both mitigate all damage.

frozywozy

Joy_Division wrote: »

You are going to have to explain why you think Light Armor is somehow distinctive from Medium Armor in that it can tank all forms of damage.

You are going to have to explain to me where I talked about medium armor.

Joy_Division

frozywozy wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

You are going to have to explain why you think Light Armor is somehow distinctive from Medium Armor in that it can tank all forms of damage.

You are going to have to explain to me where I talked about medium armor.

That's the point. You didn't. You say Light and Heavy Armor can tank all forms of damage and excluded Medium.

Minno

Joy_Division wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

You are going to have to explain why you think Light Armor is somehow distinctive from Medium Armor in that it can tank all forms of damage.

You are going to have to explain to me where I talked about medium armor.

That's the point. You didn't. You say Light and Heavy Armor can tank all forms of damage and excluded Medium.

Can we agree medium armor is at a good position? That's how I saw his OP as; no change to medium therefore excempt from discussion.

Minno

The_Outsider wrote: »

The trend is not relegated to Armor effects either. A few changes to shields seem to push for blanket mitigation instead of mitigation specific to one type of damage. I believe Bone shield and Annulment will now both mitigate all damage.

To me the change sounded like the protection aspect has no discrimination. But the secondary effects do have a specific resource attachment:

1) annulment returns magicka if hit by magicka projectile
2) bone armor allows group to receive a heal.

Another aspect to remember is that sorc and annulment shield scales off magicka. All others require high health to be as effective protection-wise.

Edit: actually, someone correct me if annulment scales off magicka or just bastion. I doubt myself

Arthg

As a heavy armour fan (mind you, I even wear at least 5 pieces in Cyro), here are my 2 cents:
I'm not too sure about why HA should be squishy against spell damage.
Resistance against all sorts of damage doesn't sound out of place - possibly more magicka squishiness, then?
I agree about the loss of mobility: heavy is heavy, after all.
I don't see why HA warriors should not be able to dish out decent damage.
I think what the devs are trying to implement with Wrath goes in the right direction: I think HA should be able to deal MASSIVE damage at long intervals. Damage that would be visibly incoming, that one would have time to dodge, but one that would seriously hurt, possibly one-shot. Like a huge cannon that would take time to load, whose shells you'd hear incoming a long way, and whose shells you would not, for the life of you, want to be near when they land.

As to LA, i.e. those wearing dressing gowns in combat yes, they should be extremely squishy against physical damage.

frozywozy

arth-grogalith wrote: »

As a heavy armour fan (mind you, I even wear at least 5 pieces in Cyro), here are my 2 cents:
I'm not too sure about why HA should be squishy against spell damage.
Resistance against all sorts of damage doesn't sound out of place - possibly more magicka squishiness, then?
I agree about the loss of mobility: heavy is heavy, after all.
I don't see why HA warriors should not be able to dish out decent damage.
I think what the devs are trying to implement with Wrath goes in the right direction: I think HA should be able to deal MASSIVE damage at long intervals. Damage that would be visibly incoming, that one would have time to dodge, but one that would seriously hurt, possibly one-shot. Like a huge cannon that would take time to load, whose shells you'd hear incoming a long way, and whose shells you would not, for the life of you, want to be near when they land.

As to LA, i.e. those wearing dressing gowns in combat yes, they should be extremely squishy against physical damage.

That's exactly how I see it aswell. My point is, LA users should be tanky against spell damage but squishy against physical damage but be able to deal massive spell damage. HA users should be tanky against physical damage, squishy against spell damage but be able to deal massive physical damage.

Since Zenimax decided to make armor provide both physical and spell resistances, it made it worse to make that possible. Now with the changes to Annulement, LA users can mitigate all kind of critical strikes making it even harder to balance. I don't know how HA will go but I have a pretty good idea about what magicka sorcs will become. They will be impossible to burst through as a stam user unless you wear 5pc shieldbreaker. Good sorcs I mean.

Ishammael

HA passives should be focused on defense and "on-hit" effects. Here's how I would do HA passives:

1. Resources returned when hit (we already have this as Constitution)
2. Additional armor and HP (we have this)
3. Crit Resistance per piece
4. Reduced Break Free cost OR increased CC immunity timer per piece
5. Ultimate Gain on hit. (5-pc bonus)

Minno

Ishammael wrote: »

HA passives should be focused on defense and "on-hit" effects. Here's how I would do HA passives:

1. Resources returned when hit (we already have this as Constitution)
2. Additional armor and HP (we have this)
3. Crit Resistance per piece
4. Reduced Break Free cost OR increased CC immunity timer per piece
5. Ultimate Gain on hit. (5-pc bonus)

I like this!

This way HA becomes the "hybrid" middle ground for ESO. A 3rd way to setup builds in pvp/pve.

Joy_Division

Minno wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

You are going to have to explain why you think Light Armor is somehow distinctive from Medium Armor in that it can tank all forms of damage.

You are going to have to explain to me where I talked about medium armor.

That's the point. You didn't. You say Light and Heavy Armor can tank all forms of damage and excluded Medium.

Can we agree medium armor is at a good position? That's how I saw his OP as; no change to medium therefore excempt from discussion.

I guess I am confused then. I don't think Heavy and Light should be strictly opposites of the other because there are 2 armors geared toward DPS (thus excluding one from discussion seems strange to me) and having Heavy weak Vs. spells is going to infuriate those pesky "PvErs" who tank trials and melt the first time they come across a spellcasting boss.

But as this is a theory-craft exercise, I'll bow out.

Soris

Ishammael wrote: »

HA passives should be focused on defense and "on-hit" effects. Here's how I would do HA passives:

1. Resources returned when hit (we already have this as Constitution)
2. Additional armor and HP (we have this)
3. Crit Resistance per piece
4. Reduced Break Free cost OR increased CC immunity timer per piece
5. Ultimate Gain on hit. (5-pc bonus)

It had reduced break free cost before they removed it. CC immunity was handling by that awesome skill called immovable, but then when it abused by everyone, they overnerfed it instead making it requires 5 piece heavy armor.

Also block nerf...

They gone too far with nerfing heavy armor. I dont think heavy armor will be useful at some point unless they undo these changes. The new changes on the pts are just experimental and I dont think they will fix the issue anytime soon.

KenaPKK

I agree, reverse the Annulment buff.

MaximillianDiE

Personally I've always thought HA should be able to tank all damage but reduce mobility and magicka damage (hello bloody great heavy slab of metal or combination of smaller heavy metal bits). Light Armour should increase damage magicka output but be more manoeverable as well as vulnerable to all forms of damage (hello light paper dress!!). Medium armour has its niche, however there isn't the right combo of risk vs reward for the other two armour types.