Magicka & Stamina, Weapons, Enchantments, Armor and Poisons Balance

LegendaryMage

Hi everyone!

I hope you're doing good, this will be a lengthy post and the TLDR version of it is - fix this game please.

In this thread I would like to share my observations with the current PVP (I'm mostly a PVP player) situation in ESO. We have a lot of players agreeing and disagreeing that the game shouldn't be balanced for small scale combat, as it's designed to provide huge battles that involve dozens, potentially many more players. I personally think there's no reason why this game shouldn't be balanced in small scale and duels as well, ultimately providing awesome overall balance and making all types of PVP viable and fun.

I am of the opinion that the current balance greatly favors stamina oriented characters and although there's no reason to call for (many or any) nerfs, I think that the blue side of the coin needs to be brought up to par with the green one.

This is what I feel should be done with ESO's combat balance in general;

Light Armor

- Light armor tree pales in comparison to medium and heavy (which is overall the best one right now in my opinion). It needs to provide more bonuses as well as increased values from the ones that it currently does. With medium and heavy, although you can see differences in playstyles, they are both totally viable and provide many gear/set combinations for players to utilize, unlike the light armor one which is very limited. I have seen countless players run all types of light armor sets and still struggle to create a viable setup that won't render them without resources very quickly. This is why I run on pretty much all of my magicka characters 5 pieces of the seducer set, as a base on which I build upon - simply because a lot of other ones are not good enough.

There is also the fact that penetration values are very high nowadays and light armor provides practically no resistances at all. Medium armor is so-so and heavy is typically very good since you get both passives and base resistances from wearing heavy armor. It used to be that heavy armor was once the worst one in the game, but now it's pretty much the best one. Medium is closely behind, for a more bursty and evasive playstyle, and light is way behind all of this.

If light armor tree was buffed up a bit, this would open an array of new playstyles and possible gear combos, as it does with medium and heavy. This is the main issue for magicka oriented characters at the moment.

Weapons

- Weapons need to be balanced a little bit as well. In my opinion, it makes absolutely no sense that you can poison a magical weapon such as a staff, that shoots magical projectiles, or channels magical energies to damage your opponents. Instead, keep the enchantment/poison values the same on all other physical weapons, but re-do staves so that they're not available for poisons, but compensate with additional buffs that make staff enchantments stronger. How much? Open for discussion I guess.

Damage Shields

- On the infamous topic of shields and their duration, I personally have no problems with them lasting 6 seconds, but a lot of players are struggling with this, not only because some more experienced ones will say 'l2p', but also because shorter duration of shields means less sustain for damage, and therefore creates an additional gap between build diversity (you have to factor in the frequency of your shields firing off which leaves less space for other things).

Light armor balance and shield duration contributes greatly to not being able to run a higher damage build (like the one you could if your char was stamina based) and it kinda forces you to build for more sustain and lose damage. This is very obvious with the current amount of stamina vs magicka players, it should be pretty much 50-50, but now it's more like 80-20. I even remember some gatherings on the public test server where I walked among 30+ players and I counted literally only 2 magicka setups out of more than 30. This is very symptomatic.

Champion system.

- Greatly favors stamina players with its passives. 3+ seconds of practically free skills after every breakfree is a bit too much. Everyone breaks free all the time in this game, since there are tons of hard CCs, so this just gets multiplied and over the course of a longer battle, stamina setups with the unchained passive benefit tremendously from this. This needs to be either nerfed, or introduce something similar for magicka builds as well. The potion one that gives 80% on one spell after you use a potion, does not come close to this.

Healing

- Healing needs to be toned down, at least all the buffs that contribute and stack to pretty much replenish a huge HP bar in a matter of a second or two. Sets such as malubeth need to be re-designed entirely, these were not always popular because people didn't really understand how to utilize them to their fullest potential back then, and also the fact that there were no major/minor buffs or the champion system, or resolving vigor etc. stamina players didn't really saw malubeth as being that strong on its own. Now that we have all of this in the game, sets such as that one are simply too powerful when combined with everything else. If you change the game significantly (like 1.5 patch > 1.6 patch), you gotta change some other things too or it creates huge issues later on.

Snares and Roots

- Snares and roots need to be toned down a little bit. The duration of these soft CCs needs to be cut down, we're playing a slow motion game without purging or using shuffle or any other snare immunity, which is what is typically available for stamina setups, rarely magicka (unless you're a templar).

Potions and Poisons

- Potions and poisons need to be looked into. 60% skill cost increase is a bit too much, and immovability potions that buff up your speed and give you 15 seconds of being able to run around without worrying about being CC'd, are a bit too strong. I'm even considering using these on my sorcerer, which is a magicka based character - when by all logic potions such as spell power would make a lot more sense, but they're simply too weak compared to these, and how many CCs we get on a regular basis in a 2 minute long fight. I've been using the immovability potions against other players that have also used them, and those fights look ridiculous, it reminds me more of my 2006 counter strike days, than this MMORPG.

3x Bonus Sets, Imperial City Update

- Sets such as willpower, agility and endurance need to be toned down a bit, because they are pretty much mandatory as of now. If they get more in line with other bonuses, then we will have more build diversity and combinations opened up.

Cheat Engine and Hacking

- Zenimax needs to update this game so that no cheat engine can ever work with it. It may be a complicated thing to do, but unless this is done and unless they can catch every single cheater out there as soon as they fire up their cheat engine, this will be a real problem for ESO. Smart cheaters do it in subtle ways, editing all their pools/regens and adding values that are still in the same category of many other players, but ALL at the same time.

I suspect that Zenimax is not able to isolate this because the stats are still possible and used by many other players, but when looked at as a whole, such players become pretty much impossible to kill unless focused by a few good players. This needs to go, before anything else is done - ASAP. There should be no cheating in a multiplayer game, period. We've all seen speedhacks, crazy ultimate costs and regeneration, and I'm sure - absolutely sure that there are cheaters running around with their inflated stats right now in Cyrodiil. Unless something has changed or Zeni is catching them immediately upon using cheats, I'm pretty sure that's how things look right now.

So to conclude. Stamina setups are powerful and players actually enjoying playing them, which is great. But I would like to see magicka setups being right there next to them, so that the rest of us who still prefer playing this game as a caster of any kind, can actually compete with these.

Legendary Mage, PVPer since betas.

KenaPKK

+1

Ability cost increasing poisons, sustain offered by CP via green trees and Unchained, overtuned healing, and snares wrecking magicka classes are my personal top priorities for balance changes. Likely an incomplete list.

Waffennacht

Cost increasing poisons and high resources?

Wha...?

I would think one is used to counter the other...

You did make good points, not all I agree with, but some

bardx86

LegendaryMage wrote: »

Hi everyone!

I hope you're doing good, this will be a lengthy post and the TLDR version of it is - fix this game please.

In this thread I would like to share my observations with the current PVP (I'm mostly a PVP player) situation in ESO. We have a lot of players agreeing and disagreeing that the game shouldn't be balanced for small scale combat, as it's designed to provide huge battles that involve dozens, potentially many more players. I personally think there's no reason why this game shouldn't be balanced in small scale and duels as well, ultimately providing awesome overall balance and making all types of PVP viable and fun.

I am of the opinion that the current balance greatly favors stamina oriented characters and although there's no reason to call for (many or any) nerfs, I think that the blue side of the coin needs to be brought up to par with the green one.

This is what I feel should be done with ESO's combat balance in general;

Light Armor

- Light armor tree pales in comparison to medium and heavy (which is overall the best one right now in my opinion). It needs to provide more bonuses as well as increased values from the ones that it currently does. With medium and heavy, although you can see differences in playstyles, they are both totally viable and provide many gear/set combinations for players to utilize, unlike the light armor one which is very limited. I have seen countless players run all types of light armor sets and still struggle to create a viable setup that won't render them without resources very quickly. This is why I run on pretty much all of my magicka characters 5 pieces of the seducer set, as a base on which I build upon - simply because a lot of other ones are not good enough.

There is also the fact that penetration values are very high nowadays and light armor provides practically no resistances at all. Medium armor is so-so and heavy is typically very good since you get both passives and base resistances from wearing heavy armor. It used to be that heavy armor was once the worst one in the game, but now it's pretty much the best one. Medium is closely behind, for a more bursty and evasive playstyle, and light is way behind all of this.

If light armor tree was buffed up a bit, this would open an array of new playstyles and possible gear combos, as it does with medium and heavy. This is the main issue for magicka oriented characters at the moment.

Weapons

- Weapons need to be balanced a little bit as well. In my opinion, it makes absolutely no sense that you can poison a magical weapon such as a staff, that shoots magical projectiles, or channels magical energies to damage your opponents. Instead, keep the enchantment/poison values the same on all other physical weapons, but re-do staves so that they're not available for poisons, but compensate with additional buffs that make staff enchantments stronger. How much? Open for discussion I guess.

Damage Shields

- On the infamous topic of shields and their duration, I personally have no problems with them lasting 6 seconds, but a lot of players are struggling with this, not only because some more experienced ones will say 'l2p', but also because shorter duration of shields means less sustain for damage, and therefore creates an additional gap between build diversity (you have to factor in the frequency of your shields firing off which leaves less space for other things).

Light armor balance and shield duration contributes greatly to not being able to run a higher damage build (like the one you could if your char was stamina based) and it kinda forces you to build for more sustain and lose damage. This is very obvious with the current amount of stamina vs magicka players, it should be pretty much 50-50, but now it's more like 80-20. I even remember some gatherings on the public test server where I walked among 30+ players and I counted literally only 2 magicka setups out of more than 30. This is very symptomatic.

Champion system.

- Greatly favors stamina players with its passives. 3+ seconds of practically free skills after every breakfree is a bit too much. Everyone breaks free all the time in this game, since there are tons of hard CCs, so this just gets multiplied and over the course of a longer battle, stamina setups with the unchained passive benefit tremendously from this. This needs to be either nerfed, or introduce something similar for magicka builds as well. The potion one that gives 80% on one spell after you use a potion, does not come close to this.

Healing

- Healing needs to be toned down, at least all the buffs that contribute and stack to pretty much replenish a huge HP bar in a matter of a second or two. Sets such as malubeth need to be re-designed entirely, these were not always popular because people didn't really understand how to utilize them to their fullest potential back then, and also the fact that there were no major/minor buffs or the champion system, or resolving vigor etc. stamina players didn't really saw malubeth as being that strong on its own. Now that we have all of this in the game, sets such as that one are simply too powerful when combined with everything else. If you change the game significantly (like 1.5 patch > 1.6 patch), you gotta change some other things too or it creates huge issues later on.

Snares and Roots

- Snares and roots need to be toned down a little bit. The duration of these soft CCs needs to be cut down, we're playing a slow motion game without purging or using shuffle or any other snare immunity, which is what is typically available for stamina setups, rarely magicka (unless you're a templar).

Potions and Poisons

- Potions and poisons need to be looked into. 60% skill cost increase is a bit too much, and immovability potions that buff up your speed and give you 15 seconds of being able to run around without worrying about being CC'd, are a bit too strong. I'm even considering using these on my sorcerer, which is a magicka based character - when by all logic potions such as spell power would make a lot more sense, but they're simply too weak compared to these, and how many CCs we get on a regular basis in a 2 minute long fight. I've been using the immovability potions against other players that have also used them, and those fights look ridiculous, it reminds me more of my 2006 counter strike days, than this MMORPG.

3x Bonus Sets, Imperial City Update

- Sets such as willpower, agility and endurance need to be toned down a bit, because they are pretty much mandatory as of now. If they get more in line with other bonuses, then we will have more build diversity and combinations opened up.

Cheat Engine and Hacking

- Zenimax needs to update this game so that no cheat engine can ever work with it. It may be a complicated thing to do, but unless this is done and unless they can catch every single cheater out there as soon as they fire up their cheat engine, this will be a real problem for ESO. Smart cheaters do it in subtle ways, editing all their pools/regens and adding values that are still in the same category of many other players, but ALL at the same time.

I suspect that Zenimax is not able to isolate this because the stats are still possible and used by many other players, but when looked at as a whole, such players become pretty much impossible to kill unless focused by a few good players. This needs to go, before anything else is done - ASAP. There should be no cheating in a multiplayer game, period. We've all seen speedhacks, crazy ultimate costs and regeneration, and I'm sure - absolutely sure that there are cheaters running around with their inflated stats right now in Cyrodiil. Unless something has changed or Zeni is catching them immediately upon using cheats, I'm pretty sure that's how things look right now.

So to conclude. Stamina setups are powerful and players actually enjoying playing them, which is great. But I would like to see magicka setups being right there next to them, so that the rest of us who still prefer playing this game as a caster of any kind, can actually compete with these.

Legendary Mage, PVPer since betas.

Good post. Agreed!

Izaki

@LegendaryMage You're one hell of a sorcerer in PvP dude
Seriously though you've pretty much said everything I ever wanted to say on this matter.
I would have added the fact that all the Destruction Staves should be treated as different weapons. They should not have the same skill line, they should all function differently, give different passives, different active skills etc.
Inferno Staff skill tree could be the damage dealer with hard hitting active abilities including AoEs, Dots and 1 nuke skill
Frost Staff skill tree could be all based on support abilities, hard and soft CC's, Shields,
Shock Staff skill tree could be a melee based skill tree. Here you would have a few melee skills, a few ranged ones. The whole thing would be based on Summoning a lightning sword (#bringinboundweapons) for all the active abilities, while keeping the heavy attack as it is now on live to have 1 ranged option.

This alone is a lot of work, it would probably never happen, but if it did magicka builds would be really fun.
In PvE infero staff would be the king for ranged DPS but a magicka melee build could also be very viable with the Shock Staff.
In PvP where most classes have spammable abilities Ice Staff would be awesome with all the defensive support it offers.

I'm dreaming here.

But at least give Maelstrom and Master Destruction Staves different enchants based on the element. More variety.

Ishammael

Wow.

I actually agree with every bit of that.

Some other things that should be added:
1. Dmg coefs on Stamina skills are WAY higher than magicka.
2. Major evasion needs a complete rework
3. Percentage buffs stacking needs a rework.

LegendaryMage

KenaPKK wrote: »

+1

Ability cost increasing poisons, sustain offered by CP via green trees and Unchained, overtuned healing, and snares wrecking magicka classes are my personal top priorities for balance changes. Likely an incomplete list.

Yeah, when you look at it as a whole, it's crazy strong. Every single stamina setup I played was stronger than a magicka counter part, including stamina sorcerers. The biggest difference was mag nb vs stam nb. The damage difference was just unreal.

Waffennacht wrote: »

Cost increasing poisons and high resources?

Wha...?

I would think one is used to counter the other...

You did make good points, not all I agree with, but some

I play a very good sustainable sorcerer build and when these poisons are brought into the picture by a stam setup, that goes out of the window with no problems. Then, once the last little bit of whatever is left of the build is out, there's nothing left really. No damage, no tankiness, no re-positioning (snares, CCs, keeping you locked in place), just stay there and try not to get killed, which ultimately fails due to no resources (and my sorc is built to last even against stamina people).

bardx86 wrote: »

Good post. Agreed!

Glad you liked it!

IzakiBrotheSs wrote: »

@LegendaryMage You're one hell of a sorcerer in PvP dude
Seriously though you've pretty much said everything I ever wanted to say on this matter.
I would have added the fact that all the Destruction Staves should be treated as different weapons. They should not have the same skill line, they should all function differently, give different passives, different active skills etc.
Inferno Staff skill tree could be the damage dealer with hard hitting active abilities including AoEs, Dots and 1 nuke skill
Frost Staff skill tree could be all based on support abilities, hard and soft CC's, Shields,
Shock Staff skill tree could be a melee based skill tree. Here you would have a few melee skills, a few ranged ones. The whole thing would be based on Summoning a lightning sword (#bringinboundweapons) for all the active abilities, while keeping the heavy attack as it is now on live to have 1 ranged option.

This alone is a lot of work, it would probably never happen, but if it did magicka builds would be really fun.
In PvE infero staff would be the king for ranged DPS but a magicka melee build could also be very viable with the Shock Staff.
In PvP where most classes have spammable abilities Ice Staff would be awesome with all the defensive support it offers.

I'm dreaming here.

But at least give Maelstrom and Master Destruction Staves different enchants based on the element. More variety.

Yeah, it would be cool if they re-did the staves a little bit. I would love to use some more skills from those trees, but as of now they're just too weak and underperforming. Even with things such as mael staves, the enchantment buffs need to be increased a bit, it's still weak in my opinion - and that's why I don't use those.

Ishammael wrote: »

Wow.

I actually agree with every bit of that.

Some other things that should be added:
1. Dmg coefs on Stamina skills are WAY higher than magicka.
2. Major evasion needs a complete rework
3. Percentage buffs stacking needs a rework.

Glad you liked the post! I agree with your points too, the damage on the green side is scalling better, it's possible to obtain better overall stats and cost reduction is not a problem (regen either), champion system favors this side of the coin, and there are tons of sets to work with, unlike mag ones (light armor tree is to blame here too).

Major evasion needs a re-work indeed, it's way too strong as it is right now.

And % buffs also need re-designs, I agree.

Stacking vitality, mending, various other bonuses (heavy armor?), racial bonuses, couple of more things such as malubeth and you can heal, heal, heal until you're totally healed without having to worry about anything. Plus, in heavy armor you have tons of more protection than light, so it's even harder to bring those characters down again.

Whenever I played a heavy armor stam char, I literally never had to worry about being nuked down or slowly sliced by a mag char. It just doesn't happen. I fought some great sorcerers too, and my stam dk argonian would just take everything they had and keep on fighting like nothing is going on. One vigor with igneous and I've negated 5-10 spells of theirs just like that.

Ragnaroek93

Actually I haven't read the whole post, will do it later, just saw that you say that Medium Armor is the best right now and I have to disagree here. It's actually Heavy Armor that is pretty much OP in my opinion.

The biggest points why Sorc has a hard time at the moment are:
- No defense skill that scales with the amount of dmg you take (like dodgeroll or Shuffle -> the more people hitting you the more dmg gets negated)
- No good sustain skill (Dark Exchange is interruptable)
- Relies on shields, so overpowered stuff like Malubeth and Major Vitality potions is useless
- Mag Sorc isn't good in Heavy Armor
- Not enough dmg to take down tanky chars

But I wouldn't say in general that Stamina is stronger than Magicka, Magicka Templars are probably the strongest class together with Stamina DKs and from my point of view as Stamina Nb there is no class that doesn't have at least one build that doesn't dominate Stamina Nb.

Also don't forget that the difference between racial passives on stam races is greater than on magicka races. Something that is overpowered as Redguard might be balanced on other races for example.

Will read the rest of your post later.

LegendaryMage

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

Actually I haven't read the whole post, will do it later, just saw that you say that Medium Armor is the best right now and I have to disagree here. It's actually Heavy Armor that is pretty much OP in my opinion.

The biggest points why Sorc has a hard time at the moment are:
- No defense skill that scales with the amount of dmg you take (like dodgeroll or Shuffle -> the more people hitting you the more dmg gets negated)
- No good sustain skill (Dark Exchange is interruptable)
- Relies on shields, so overpowered stuff like Malubeth and Major Vitality potions is useless
- Mag Sorc isn't good in Heavy Armor
- Not enough dmg to take down tanky chars

But I wouldn't say in general that Stamina is stronger than Magicka, Magicka Templars are probably the strongest class together with Stamina DKs and from my point of view as Stamina Nb there is no class that doesn't have at least one build that doesn't dominate Stamina Nb.

Also don't forget that the difference between racial passives on stam races is greater than on magicka races. Something that is overpowered as Redguard might be balanced on other races for example.

Will read the rest of your post later.

Well I said that heavy is the best, not medium. Maybe read it first totally and then we talk. I agree with the things you said about sorcs entirely btw.

Ragnaroek93

LegendaryMage wrote: »

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

Actually I haven't read the whole post, will do it later, just saw that you say that Medium Armor is the best right now and I have to disagree here. It's actually Heavy Armor that is pretty much OP in my opinion.

The biggest points why Sorc has a hard time at the moment are:
- No defense skill that scales with the amount of dmg you take (like dodgeroll or Shuffle -> the more people hitting you the more dmg gets negated)
- No good sustain skill (Dark Exchange is interruptable)
- Relies on shields, so overpowered stuff like Malubeth and Major Vitality potions is useless
- Mag Sorc isn't good in Heavy Armor
- Not enough dmg to take down tanky chars

But I wouldn't say in general that Stamina is stronger than Magicka, Magicka Templars are probably the strongest class together with Stamina DKs and from my point of view as Stamina Nb there is no class that doesn't have at least one build that doesn't dominate Stamina Nb.

Also don't forget that the difference between racial passives on stam races is greater than on magicka races. Something that is overpowered as Redguard might be balanced on other races for example.

Will read the rest of your post later.

Well I said that heavy is the best, not medium. Maybe read it first totally and then we talk. I agree with the things you said about sorcs entirely btw.

OK, my bad, I've actually read it ^^

To the first point on light armor I'm actually not sure about it. I don't think that light armor is weaker than medium armor in general, the problem are some specific stam based sets that are simply too string, for example Viper (8k DMG all 4 seconds on meele hit is too much). Other stam based sets are fine and would be undpowered if medium armor gets a nerf, better nerf the overperforming stam sets. Heavy armor on the other side gives just a bit too much. A buff was ok in my opinion but right now it's overbuffed.

Your idea about that staff enchants would fit lore wise, but actually I'm not sure how to balance it. Or how to balance poisons at all. At the moment poisons favour mag builds because they can purge it (especially temp) but they are bad designed in my opinion at all. There should be more counters to it than purge.

The nerfs to damage shields was a bit too much. Sorc shield was unique but now everyone has a strong shield while shieldstacking got nerfed and sorcs got left behind.

On CP I agree, there should be a better sustain passive for magicka builds than this potion thing.

Healing is out of control right now, especially on Stamdk or Templar with Major Mending, Malubeth and Major Vitality potions. 10k heals from single Vigor ticks on Stamdks is just *** and takes away every chance to take down this class without insane amounts of burst.
However on the other side, Malubeth is at the moment the only thing for Nbs and Stamsorcs to handle dotbuilds. Cloak on Nb is so broken that it doesn't even work 70% of the time and you simply can't outheal the Dots from a Stamdk without Malubeth. I don't play a Stamsorc but I think that they have exactly the same problem. In my opinion Malubeth should get nerfed (maybe just give major mending) and every class should at least have acess to either purge or Major Mending.

Roots are just annoying, I agree on that. Sorcs have mines which are just ugly and boring design (they are actually a bit too strong if you fight in meele but they can also be easy countered by just walking away, I don't like that design). Beasttrap on the other side is an issue. Six second root is way too long especially for mana based chars, even against templars it's really strong. The thing is, that the trap rearms it self after someone walked in and that you actually can place a new one without the rearmed trap disappearing. I tested it out, you can actually have 10 traps up at the same time, I don't know if it's intended or not, but it needs a fix. The skill is too strong in my opinion.

I don't think that Agility, Willpower and Endurance need a nerf. On sorc I agree, I wouldn't know what else to use than Willpower but the other classes have strong other jewelry setups. For example Viper jewelry with Viper weapons which are too strong in my opinion because the weakness of Viper set is that it's medium armor without impen. However with jewelry and weapons you can ignore this fact and still go heavy armor on a Stamdk while dealing massive dmg with Viper (the set is actually buggy, it scales with Spellpen and Spelldmg so it would be even stronger). Next update we can go Ravager instead of Viper, Nightblades can use Vice Canon jewelry and Magplars Transmutation jewelry. Sorc has the opportunity to go for Destruction Master, Necropotence, Elegance or Aether jewelry next patch and I'm pretty sure that there will be setups which outperform the classic Agility, Willpower and Endurance Jewelrys.

Cheating... I don't know, I've never saw someone cheating and I can't proof it anyways (unless they are extremely stupid) so it's 100% the job of Zenimax to fix it. But you could be right, there are maybe some people out there who cheat.

In conclusion I don't think that Stamina is outperforming Magicka in general, only on a few classes. There are Stamina builds out there that are extremely (or probably simply too strong) like Stamdk but there are also strong Magicka builds like Magplar. Manasorc and Manablade are in a pretty bad spot right now in my opinion because the burst dmg was nerfed (Deto and Dawnbreaker, Meteor is easy to counter) and the meta shifted towards more healing (Malubeth and Major Vit pots). Maybe Mana based chars should get something like Magicka based dodgeroll to get out of roots and handle outnumbered situations better. But actually it would probably be better to wait for the next patch, the upcoming sets like Necropotence and Destruction Master will help a lot I think.

Forestd16b14_ESO

Something that does need looked at is resistance and penetration effects cause how it is now HA is still lack luster cause of it (don't even bring up Malubeth and black rose just don't).

Here's the scenario and I'm rounding about just to make it easier. The mitigation cap is 33,000 and you get 50% mitigation let us start with maul since % values factor in first a 2H maul passive is 20% physical penetration well 33,000*.2=6,600 so that be 33,000-6,600=26,400. No longer at the mitigation cap still pretty high but then the maul is gold level with the sharpen trait and say it's another 5000 something give or take so 26,400-5000=21,400 your resistance and mitigation took a even bigger hit over 10K resistance is now gone from the weapon alone. Now you factor in CP and if say the have all 100 points into piercing that's another 5000 so 21,400-5000=16,400 your resistance is now the same level as medium armor. Lastly factor in armor debuffs both major and minor. Major armor de-buff given by piercing mark or noxious breath lowers armor again by another 5000 now your at 11,400 armor and then factor in a poison of armor de-buff another 1000. Your armor is now 10,400 resistance and your 50% mitigation is.... who knows all I know it's not enough to survive in.

We have ways to reduce damage we have ways to critical damage we have ways to reduce snares and other negative effects so why don't we have ways to reduce penetration effects ? Now this may not be a problem to LA or MA users with damage shields taking all the damage and dodging avoiding all the damage but HA users have no choice but to take the damage and penetration laughably chews threw heavy armor no problem turning that all mighty 33K resistance into 10K the same as high end LA or low end MA.

Like with being force to invest everything into blocking now and HA passive still lacking in the actual survival category and wraith trying to turn HA into a poor mans MA it's kinda no surprise why players are abusing Malubeth and black rose and saying that's "the only way to tank".

Xeven

Excellent post LM. You have my support.

LegendaryMage

Xeven wrote: »

Excellent post LM. You have my support.

Thank you Xeven, glad you liked the post! Hopefully we'll see some more balance introduced into this game soon.

Makkir

Good summary! Really nothing to dispute there.
A little better mobility wouldnt hurt us (maybe looking at the cost penalty of bolt escape).

Derra

Waffennacht wrote: »

Cost increasing poisons and high resources?

Wha...?

I would think one is used to counter the other...

You did make good points, not all I agree with, but some

The problem with this is:

Cost increase poisons are only a problem for magica builds (because their defense gets increased and they´re lacking something even remotely comparable to unchained.

Cost increase is a huge problem for any magica build whereas it´s barely noticeable and definetly not threatening on stamina which offers better sustain/ higher dmg to begin with.

Baconlad

I would like a reason to get back into my light non impen armor as magplar. Don't get me wrong it IS an option, but it makes me SO damn squish. And the damage isn't even better...i mean in PVP I don't really care much about crits, and spell pen is nice and I can feel the difference but....meh, they need to just add in a 12% bonus to spell power and call it even.

Also, we gotta talk about destro staves, I mean...WTF why do those skills just SUCK. hell the second skill in the line practically ignores any reason to want to use a lightning or ice staff, the skill causes all three types and is ugly as all ***. Just make it a damn single element bamf looking attack. Also give everyone more of a reason to use their heavy attacks. In the beginning of eso, before people learned how to animation cancel, you saw a LOT of heavy attacks, and the abilities were pretty much there for utility purposes. Anyway bacon over and out

Aedaryl

This is a really good idea Mage, I've recently make a stam sorc and a stam blade : he difference between magicka build and stamina build is huge !


All of your ideas are verygood, really.

Mojomonkeyman

Agree with everything except the part about the imperial city 3p sets. They are powerful but the available (needless to say - stamina based) 5 piece set bonuses are so good, that I dont run 3p imerial city set on any of my setups.

I consider them a balanced alternative, without the stat boost I`d never even think about using them.

Valencer

Derra wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Cost increasing poisons and high resources?

Wha...?

I would think one is used to counter the other...

You did make good points, not all I agree with, but some

The problem with this is:

Cost increase poisons are only a problem for magica builds (because their defense gets increased and they´re lacking something even remotely comparable to unchained.

Cost increase is a huge problem for any magica build whereas it´s barely noticeable and definetly not threatening on stamina which offers better sustain/ higher dmg to begin with.

Do stamina cost poisons not increase the cost of roll dodge? I've honestly never tested it.

Minalan

Baconlad wrote: »

I would like a reason to get back into my light non impen armor as magplar. Don't get me wrong it IS an option, but it makes me SO damn squish. And the damage isn't even better...i mean in PVP I don't really care much about crits, and spell pen is nice and I can feel the difference but....meh, they need to just add in a 12% bonus to spell power and call it even.

Also, we gotta talk about destro staves, I mean...WTF why do those skills just SUCK. hell the second skill in the line practically ignores any reason to want to use a lightning or ice staff, the skill causes all three types and is ugly as all ***. Just make it a damn single element bamf looking attack. Also give everyone more of a reason to use their heavy attacks. In the beginning of eso, before people learned how to animation cancel, you saw a LOT of heavy attacks, and the abilities were pretty much there for utility purposes. Anyway bacon over and out

I agree with everything here, except for the heavy attacks, there's plenty of reason to do them and weave them into a rotation. Fire because every idiot out there is a vampire, and heavy attacks light them on fire. Ice for the chain freeze snares. Lightning for damage on the permanent dodge rollers. Heavy resto attacks to regenerate Magicka.

Plus if you're a Magicka DK, you can stack staff damage and hit people for 20-25K.

Kas

Minalan wrote: »

Baconlad wrote: »

I would like a reason to get back into my light non impen armor as magplar. Don't get me wrong it IS an option, but it makes me SO damn squish. And the damage isn't even better...i mean in PVP I don't really care much about crits, and spell pen is nice and I can feel the difference but....meh, they need to just add in a 12% bonus to spell power and call it even.

Also, we gotta talk about destro staves, I mean...WTF why do those skills just SUCK. hell the second skill in the line practically ignores any reason to want to use a lightning or ice staff, the skill causes all three types and is ugly as all ***. Just make it a damn single element bamf looking attack. Also give everyone more of a reason to use their heavy attacks. In the beginning of eso, before people learned how to animation cancel, you saw a LOT of heavy attacks, and the abilities were pretty much there for utility purposes. Anyway bacon over and out

I agree with everything here, except for the heavy attacks, there's plenty of reason to do them and weave them into a rotation. Fire because every idiot out there is a vampire, and heavy attacks light them on fire. Ice for the chain freeze snares. Lightning for damage on the permanent dodge rollers. Heavy resto attacks to regenerate Magicka.

Plus if you're a Magicka DK, you can stack staff damage and hit people for 20-25K.

imho the best use of heavy attacks is on a heavy-armor magplar/magdk: sustain a CRAZY amount of stamina. I can bash-cancel aklmost everything on my MAGtemplarts s+b bar and spam reverb and/or def stance without problems, if I do frequent heavy attacks

Ashamray

I'm fine with Unchained, it can be used by Magicka too. It's already has been nerfed, If you forgot.
I'm fine with healing until damage stays on these tremendous numbers, BUT I want it to be reduced if we gain diversity of tools to mitigate damage. For magplar-dps now only reliable tool is healing, and reduction without compensation can turn them into pillow whipping. Previously we all also had Blinding flashes and Blazing shield.

I'd recommended to re-work Befoul CP star to make it more effective against healing. So there would be a choice: you go full sustain or you cut your sustain to become more effective against healing.

Agree, Poisons are theme of discussion.

kaithuzar

@LegendaryMage
I agree with some stuff you said so I'll only state the areas I disagree with.

Light Armor -
I agree light armor should be buffed from a sustain point of view but only very slightly. There is another option to sustain, it's called Worm Cult & I use it.

Weapons -
Staves with poison makes sense to me, but then again so did staves scaling off weapon dmg instead of sp dmg but enough people complained which caused that to change. I'm afraid if they come up with some "new thing" for staves it's going to majorly affected balance because there is no 1:1 .

3x IC sets/healing -
This needs to be a one or the other type thing. But, I feel if you nerf the healing & nerf the damage of the sets you end up pretty much the same as it is now. Nerfing the damage without nerfing the healing creates a worse scenario. Nerfing the healing without nerfing the damage isn't a bad idea.

bardx86

Makkir wrote: »

Good summary! Really nothing to dispute there.
A little better mobility wouldnt hurt us (maybe looking at the cost penalty of bolt escape).

Until then can we remove the "escape" from the name? lol

Toc de Malsvi

Derra wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Cost increasing poisons and high resources?

Wha...?

I would think one is used to counter the other...

You did make good points, not all I agree with, but some

The problem with this is:

Cost increase poisons are only a problem for magica builds (because their defense gets increased and they´re lacking something even remotely comparable to unchained.

Cost increase is a huge problem for any magica build whereas it´s barely noticeable and definetly not threatening on stamina which offers better sustain/ higher dmg to begin with.

HA! LMAO!

No, cost increase will wipe out stam builds as well, provided you have a cost increase poison that lasts for longer than 2 seconds. The 10s or 6 second variety are devastating, one dodge roll can literally take half your stamina pool, a second dodge roll and you are empty. Blocking isn't much better.

Don't block or dodge roll you say? That is the primary defense of every stamina build, without it you go splat.

Toc de Malsvi

So buff light armor, buff staffs, buff shields, nerf healing...

Didn't even need to get Potion and Poisons section to know you were a sorcerer.

So to conclude. Stamina setups are powerful and players actually enjoying playing them, which is great. But I would like to see magicka setups being right there next to them, so that the rest of us who still prefer playing this game as a caster of any kind, can actually compete with these.

Magicka is right there with them, Mag Templars are top of the pack, Magicka Sorcerers and NB's are 1v1 beasts while providing burst for groups. The only real huge change is Sorcerers cannot tank 15 people at once in 7 light armor. Magicka DK's still sit at a very hard to play setup that tends to be rather weak.

Light armor balance and shield duration contributes greatly to not being able to run a higher damage build (like the one you could if your char was stamina based) and it kinda forces you to build for more sustain and lose damage. This is very obvious with the current amount of stamina vs magicka players, it should be pretty much 50-50, but now it's more like 80-20.

I know its not like stamina characters have to dodge roll every 4 seconds.... oh wait they do. I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers from but I certainly see plenty of Magicka characters, instead of hordes of Mag Sorcs now its hordes of Mag Templars.

Healing needs to be toned down, at least all the buffs that contribute and stack to pretty much replenish a huge HP bar in a matter of a second or two. Sets such as malubeth need to be re-designed entirely, these were not always popular because people didn't really understand how to utilize them to their fullest potential back then, and also the fact that there were no major/minor buffs or the champion system, or resolving vigor etc. stamina players didn't really saw malubeth as being that strong on its own. Now that we have all of this in the game, sets such as that one are simply too powerful when combined with everything else. If you change the game significantly (like 1.5 patch > 1.6 patch), you gotta change some other things too or it creates huge issues later on.

This I can agree with on its own merit, not with the inclusion of buffing shields and light armor.

The cost increase poisons are awful as they divulge into effective "I win" mechanics regardless of stamina or magicka. You have to have Cost increase poisons yourself as a counter or your dead in the water.

Heavy armor is way to capable of putting out damage while retaining strong defensive's.

Snares and roots need to be toned down a little bit. The duration of these soft CCs needs to be cut down, we're playing a slow motion game without purging or using shuffle or any other snare immunity, which is what is typically available for stamina setups, rarely magicka (unless you're a templar).

Cause that purge ability from that support tree costs stamina right?

There is an issue with Shuffle and dodge roll in relation to projectile damage both from destruction staffs and bows, as well as class skills. These abilities have long flight times and are fairly unresponsive versus targets with shuffle who are actively dodge rolling. Especially on opening attacks where the dodge chance appears to be much higher than 20%. This is not shuffle's dodge chance in and of itself as it has been shown to proc around 20%. But rather something related to the projectiles and dodge in general.

LegendaryMage

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

So buff light armor, buff staffs, buff shields, nerf healing...

Didn't even need to get Potion and Poisons section to know you were a sorcerer.

So to conclude. Stamina setups are powerful and players actually enjoying playing them, which is great. But I would like to see magicka setups being right there next to them, so that the rest of us who still prefer playing this game as a caster of any kind, can actually compete with these.

Magicka is right there with them, Mag Templars are top of the pack, Magicka Sorcerers and NB's are 1v1 beasts while providing burst for groups. The only real huge change is Sorcerers cannot tank 15 people at once in 7 light armor. Magicka DK's still sit at a very hard to play setup that tends to be rather weak.

Light armor balance and shield duration contributes greatly to not being able to run a higher damage build (like the one you could if your char was stamina based) and it kinda forces you to build for more sustain and lose damage. This is very obvious with the current amount of stamina vs magicka players, it should be pretty much 50-50, but now it's more like 80-20.

I know its not like stamina characters have to dodge roll every 4 seconds.... oh wait they do. I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers from but I certainly see plenty of Magicka characters, instead of hordes of Mag Sorcs now its hordes of Mag Templars.

Healing needs to be toned down, at least all the buffs that contribute and stack to pretty much replenish a huge HP bar in a matter of a second or two. Sets such as malubeth need to be re-designed entirely, these were not always popular because people didn't really understand how to utilize them to their fullest potential back then, and also the fact that there were no major/minor buffs or the champion system, or resolving vigor etc. stamina players didn't really saw malubeth as being that strong on its own. Now that we have all of this in the game, sets such as that one are simply too powerful when combined with everything else. If you change the game significantly (like 1.5 patch > 1.6 patch), you gotta change some other things too or it creates huge issues later on.

This I can agree with on its own merit, not with the inclusion of buffing shields and light armor.

The cost increase poisons are awful as they divulge into effective "I win" mechanics regardless of stamina or magicka. You have to have Cost increase poisons yourself as a counter or your dead in the water.

Heavy armor is way to capable of putting out damage while retaining strong defensive's.

Snares and roots need to be toned down a little bit. The duration of these soft CCs needs to be cut down, we're playing a slow motion game without purging or using shuffle or any other snare immunity, which is what is typically available for stamina setups, rarely magicka (unless you're a templar).

Cause that purge ability from that support tree costs stamina right?

There is an issue with Shuffle and dodge roll in relation to projectile damage both from destruction staffs and bows, as well as class skills. These abilities have long flight times and are fairly unresponsive versus targets with shuffle who are actively dodge rolling. Especially on opening attacks where the dodge chance appears to be much higher than 20%. This is not shuffle's dodge chance in and of itself as it has been shown to proc around 20%. But rather something related to the projectiles and dodge in general.

Thank you for the input. I like your signature - knew you were a stamina build before even reading this post entirely.

Btw I personally have no problems on my sorcerer against anything really, so this is not me complaining that my class/build is weak, I wrote this for other people that struggle from what I saw, and I think that in general stamina builds have it much easier nowadays than magicka ones.

Some setups are so weak for solo play, that I don't even bother logging onto those chars anymore, for example magicka dragonknight.

Pandorii

I agree with a lot of things that you are saying OP.

Light armor makes magicka types more vulnerable, pushing them to go heavy instead at a cost to their magicka recovery from losing the 5 piece light armor bonus. If they are more vulnerable, than it makes sense that they hit harder, but that's not so.

Weapons don't make sense. Mage types try using DW because it gives them higher spell damage and an additional set piece, but they never actually swing them. Destro should be to go to weapon for magicka types, somehow.

What I think is funny is that the only changes I foresee is malubeth nerfs and healing (to magicka type) nerfs. You know, the types that would make stamina types even better. Because ZOS loves stamina types, clearly.

Toc de Malsvi

LegendaryMage wrote: »

Thank you for the input. I like your signature - knew you were a stamina build before even reading this post entirely.

Btw I personally have no problems on my sorcerer against anything really, so this is not me complaining that my class/build is weak, I wrote this for other people that struggle from what I saw, and I think that in general stamina builds have it much easier nowadays than magicka ones.

Some setups are so weak for solo play, that I don't even bother logging onto those chars anymore, for example magicka dragonknight.

I apologize if I came off dismissively or rude. After your first several paragraphs it appeared to me that the overall benefit of suggested changes would benefit Sorcerers more than anyone else. It is easy to fall into a habit of continual rudeness when frequenting these forums.

I appreciate the maturity and humor in your response, and attempt toward better understanding instead of simply ardent opposition.

I am not suggesting that you are incapable as a Sorcerer, I have run into many very capable ones in Cyrodiil. I simply do not agree that all of your suggestions will bring about balance.

As to whether stamina builds have it easier, it is after all just after the "stamina" patch where ZOS finally tried to address stamina after telling stamina builds during Thieves Guild that they would have to wait until Dark Brotherhood to see any changes.

There is a duality to the 'ease' of stamina builds, and that is in somewhat of a lack of diversity when it comes to healing as well as class support. Most stamina builds center around the same 2-3 class skills and the same 2 heals, and the same 1 defensive. The only real diversity among stamina is which weapons and to an even lesser extent which morphs of those weapon skills.

The over performance of certain skills has led to even less diversity.

With Rally being both one of the only strong healing options and a source of a significant buff it is hardly a wonder why so many have 2H on their bar. To make things even worse for diversity, 2H offers the only direct damage execute, and it scales from 50% health making it highly desirable.

Then if you examine that the Bow offers both ranged damage, major expedition tied to dodge rolling which is a staple of stamina defense, and a DOT which acts as an execute. It is not that surprising that 2H/Bow is a predominate combination.

Kas

I agree with everything except the poisons. Imho cost reduction poisons are a GREAT idea in a tie of everlasting fights. It's just annoying that they have inherent Xv1 mechanics. Imho 10sec to proc a poison is relatively long. Personally, I'd prefer no timer to proc a poison but a relatively long timer of, say, 15sec where a poison can be procct against a given target.

Playing outnumbered you could decide to (or don't) tag many enemies with poisons, yet every single player won't be affected as much and likewise, a solo players wouldn't be overwhealmed by countless poisons.

While 60% is incredibly much, they don't last too long. a littler longer downtime and better visuals and one could counter these poisons by playstye.

dodgehopper_ESO

OP: You wrote a lot and I'm sleepy, so this is going to just come off stream of conscious. My apologies but that's the best I can do at this 2am. I agree with some points and disagree with others.

Make health more meaningful - it would solve a lot of your complaints.

Mage = Magick, Tank/Warrior = Health, Thief = Stamina. ZoS should use its own paradigm. Mitigation comes from the blue and green resources far more than it does from the Red. If the red resource were more valuable, then perhaps blues and greens would have to offset the balance between the two.

I think your statement about spell power potions is ridiculous. In pvp you often want to chug potions which offset your weaknesses.

The point about shields makes sense. Having to raise a bubble every 6 seconds does interrupt combat flow. Then again if you're under heavy fire you'll need to bubble up more than that. I see the point though.

Reading your assessment if they did everything you suggest, Templar would be back in the doghouse again. The class has seen enough nerfing though, and while it performs decently well right now still has some buggy glitched out nonsense to deal with in a major way. I'd rather they find a way to make break free more reasonable to the mage crowd than go back to screwing up the Templar yet again. I'm not going to break down the history of the class right now, but the cc immunity changes hit Templar the hardest and kept the class down for a very long time. The reason for this was the way the skills were originally designed and not prepared for.