Armor balance in PVP

Katyprairie

I feel that it is as if nobody uses heavy armor in pvp except for 1 piece for the undaunted bonus. What is wrong here? Like even the physical resistances that heavy armor provides doesn't really make much of a difference in comparison to the other two armors. Due to the fact that resistances don't really stand for much in this game and that heavy armor provides no offensive bonuses it is currently left out of the equation, except for maybe the Fasallas Guile set. What do you guys think? Should the effectiveness of physical and spell resistances be revised? Should heavy armor get some sort of passive like Reflection: 10% chance to reflect 15% of incoming damage back at the target(Please consider that this is just an example, not much thought were put into the percentages)? What do you guys think? Because in my own personal opinion, heavy armor just isn't as viable in eso as it is in many other MMOs.

UltimaJoe777

Revise resistances all you want but fact of the matter is penetration is the cause of resistances not doing much.

Wait until DB though, when Nirnhoned changes

IcyDeadPeople

Katyprairie wrote: »

I feel that it is as if nobody uses heavy armor in pvp except for 1 piece for the undaunted bonus. What is wrong here? Like even the physical resistances that heavy armor provides doesn't really make much of a difference in comparison to the other two armors. Due to the fact that resistances don't really stand for much in this game and that heavy armor provides no offensive bonuses it is currently left out of the equation, except for maybe the Fasallas Guile set. What do you guys think? Should the effectiveness of physical and spell resistances be revised? Should heavy armor get some sort of passive like Reflection: 10% chance to reflect 15% of incoming damage back at the target(Please consider that this is just an example, not much thought were put into the percentages)? What do you guys think? Because in my own personal opinion, heavy armor just isn't as viable in eso as it is in many other MMOs.

It's improved a lot since launch, when light armor was much more tanky than heavy. Heavy has been significantly buffed during the past couple years. Currently many more people use heavy compared to at launch when almost nobody used heavy.

Reflecting spells is a bit much, but it would be nice if heavy provided significantly more armor and spell resistance than medium. Also, if I understand correctly, there is a nerf coming to heavy armor block cost reduction coming with Dark Brotherhood - haven't tried this on PTS yet, but I saw a number of people still wearing heavy on PTS.

CyrusArya

Heavy armor already is very strong on particular builds and will only be stronger next patch. Off the top of my head, I can think of viable heavy armor builds for 8/8 classes- obviously some better than others. The issue is, they are harder to play than medium/light builds as they require more skill in resource management. But HA resources are seeing a huge buff next patch, so I can definitely see it being competitive across the board if built right. Just because it's not prevalent in PvP doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. And I do have a gut feeling heavy will be a lot more prevalent next patch.

Particularly, I am very excited to try out a heavy armor magicka Templar vampire next patch. In my humble opinion, I can see heavy armor Templar being as good as (if not better than) any light armor build. The set up is already really strong and is only getting buffs across the board. I also think this will apply to some other builds as well, but to a lesser extent than Magicka Templar.

Esquire1980g_ESO

The major problem with HA or any armor, in my estimation anyway, is the 50% cap. When you add the specials/passives that negate even that, the armor stat goes way down and becomes just about unnecessary. This is the largest reasoning why I would chose a build using LA or MA before HA.

These devs certainly played or were around SWG as they have patterned some of their systems around that game. In SWG, the standard was 80% mitigation, and in pre-CU you could get 90% with no way to offset that stat.

As with any game, power creep is, and is going to continue to be a factor. The only way to offset that is by buffing defenses. That 50% cap should go at least to 75% and probably more like 80% with HA being the best for stat builders. This is about the only game I think I've ever seen that mitigation is so low, and so offset, that hardly anyone looks towards to that type of build and rather looks at DPS passives for builds 1st, and/or shields/stacking for defenses.

This is simply a design problem, one that needs developer attention.

Lokey0024

They need to rethink the numbers as far as midigation on armors and what is suppose to be achieved by limiting your damage output and sustainably. They are moving in the right direction as far as dealing with the crazy amount of armor pen can be achieved, but there still is a big gap between the viability of stacking offensive stats compaired to defensive.

Its kind of like they made offensive abilities worth group play in mind, the reason they hit hard with damage bonuses stacking, and defensive focused around 1v1 with how much armor pen actually ignores and the amount of resources taken to cast abilities to counter and midigate damage.


What is 8% of a vigor tick? Like 300 lets say for arguments sake. What good is that when you can wear medium for weapon damage to get the same bonus if not more?

Could keep ranting but out of skcuf to give.

Eocosa

@Esquire1980g_ESO I totally agree that with the current meta of continually increasing damage and penetrations (thankfully this is being somewhat fixed with DB and nirnhoned) instead of constantly giving arbitrary buffs to increase the time to kill (although I will admit that these can sometimes band aid a situation) they need to work on giving incentives to improve defenses.

This promoted build diversity as well as you can choose to be full on glass cannon or full meat shield or anywhere in between! The main thing they have to avoid to not be quite like SWG is having certain abilities or things bypass armor completely or similar (stun damage preCU for example, let alone things like headshot and eye shot that hit a "health" bar that could not be healed haha... man I loved those abilities).

Esquire1980g_ESO

Eocosa wrote: »

@Esquire1980g_ESO I totally agree that with the current meta of continually increasing damage and penetrations (thankfully this is being somewhat fixed with DB and nirnhoned) instead of constantly giving arbitrary buffs to increase the time to kill (although I will admit that these can sometimes band aid a situation) they need to work on giving incentives to improve defenses.

This promoted build diversity as well as you can choose to be full on glass cannon or full meat shield or anywhere in between! The main thing they have to avoid to not be quite like SWG is having certain abilities or things bypass armor completely or similar (stun damage preCU for example, let alone things like headshot and eye shot that hit a "health" bar that could not be healed haha... man I loved those abilities).

/agree. SOE treated the Mind Bar so bad that they almost had no other alternative but to delete it in CU. But, there was 1 prof that could heal the mind bar, Combat Medic.

The influences I see here, are more from the NGE than CU or Pre-CU. I haven't been on TC as yet (here) but now are looking forward to taking a better look at ninhoned, etc.

llSRRll

I use 5 heavy and 2 medium and I do pretty well in PvP. Not saying I'm the best but I certainly have good survivability and cant remember the last time I got one shotted. I am more of an off tank/dps class and use sword and board and bow. When I use my sword and shield I have 5 hist bark and when I switch to bow I have 5 hundings rage. Best part of this game you can use anything and make it work.

Wolfchild07

4-5k weapon damage plus the amount of crit buffs kills any amount of resist right now.