Offense vs Defense in Tamriel

LegendaryNinja

Hello Everyone, today I want to open up discussion on a dynamic look at both Offense and Defense gameplay in ESO. I know is a long article, but my sensei told me that in order to master the way of the Ninja I must master the path of knowledge.

1. Critical Vs Impenetrable: I think this is balanced in my opinion, im not sure the exact number of Inpen necessary to offset all of the bonus critical damage, but i think you are able to.
Shields are a Crit Negater since you cant crit against shields, I believe that you cant crit against someone blocking either(please correct me if im wrong)

2. Healing in proportion to damage received: The amount of Damage that you receive that can be healed is astronomical, it goes up and down depending on your build but below are a few examples.
A. Healing based on missing health (Vampire and DK come to mind) Moderate Healing, nothing OP.
B. Vigor and Rally Combo (Any Stam Class, Full Medium Armor) High Burst Healing, in some cases able to offset(by Healing) more damage than Full Heavy Armor Mitigation(Unblocked).
C. Nightblade Siphoning (Magic Build, 5L) High AoE Healing, Moderate Burst Self Healing.
D. Templar Healer (Magic Build, 5 L) High HOT Healing, Moderate Burt Healing to Self and Others, Extreme Healing Burst Ultimate. Able to offset almost all damage and its also sustained

My concern: That there is no clear sacrifice in terms of sacrificing Self Healing for high damage, crit, and power. What I'm trying to say is that you have extreme damage mitigation in terms of self healing but you also have high sustained burst damage, critical, armor penetration, and regen.

3. Damage vs Damage Resistance: This is my favorite one. In ESO you can stack Damage and Armor Penetration as high as you can get it. Damage resistance is capped at around 33k armor making damage outmatch damage resistance. I will get into more detail below.
A. Your Armor amount only affects unblocked damage resistance, put simply is Damage that you do not Block or Shield against.
B. Armor Penetration Lowers the targets Armor by that same amount; for example you have 10k total armor penetration, i have 33k armor, with the penetration taken into effect, when i receive damage and I do not block the damage, the damage I receive will be calculated as if I had 22k armor.
C. The amount of Damage Negated by Armor is percentage based as a percentage of the Total initial damage.
D. Blocked Damage Resistance its pretty high, some players getting to even higher than 90% damage reduction while blocking. I think the game is ok when it comes to Blocked Damage Resistance.CP, Heavy Armor, Class, and 1HS Abilities provide buffs to Blocking, Amount of Damage Blocked, and Block Cost Reduction.
E. Armor Cap at 33k reduces unblocked damage by 50%, if they ever raise the cap, the damage reduction percentage would increase. After reading about other mmos, 70% unblocked damage resistance at armor Cap makes sense.
F. Since with the number of buffs and super high damage builds, the amount of damage before the 50% reduction is still really high and that is why a lot of Heavy Armor users do not feel "Tanky" in heavy armor(Raw with no Heals).
G. Why is Armor the only thing that is Capped in the game even after they removed CAPS in Update 6? The only other thing is critical since you can still get it over 100% but it's only effective up to 100%.

My Thoughts: This is big imbalance in the game right now, there shouldn't be an armor cap.

4.Shield Mechanics vs Damage: A lot of players are unaware of certain mechanics that apply to shields.
A. Damage Shields cannot be Crit upon, making them Critical Nullifiers
B. Shields Cannot "Crit"
C. Shields Lasts for 6 seconds for most of them
D. Re casting the same Shield refreshes that same shield and it doesn't "ADD" an additional Shield amount
E. If you cast a different Shield Spell you can Stack Shields, meaning that you can wait a few seconds before casting another shield spell and reduce the vulnerability of the 8 second duration.
F. When you take damage and have multiple damage shields at a time, the shield that takes the damage is the last shield you casted not the first one. For example: You cast Hardened ward, 3 seconds later you cast Harness Magika; when you take damage Harness Magica will intercept the hit. User this to your advantage.
G. Armor Resistance Does not apply to Shields, Shields take raw damage; however De buffs on the enemy are taken into account, like minor maim.
H. Any damage reduction buffs you cast on yourself are useless if you have a damage shield on because your shields would be unaffected by them
I. You can still have a damage shields while in Mist Form as a Vampire, making Shields take 75% reduced damage instead of your health. Because when the mist form is cast that goes on top of all your shields.
J. If you Block with a Damage shield on, the shield would still take raw damage.

I hope this helps everyone understand some of the hidden mechanics of the game that might be unknown to some. I think this is something that both @Deltia and @HeroOfNone should talk about further, specially Unblocked Damage Mitigation.

Forestd16b14_ESO

You just explained what has been said for the past year and a half or when ever 1.6 happened.

Crit res nulls crit damage at 3300 which isn't easy to get so those who can null crit damage deserve it.

Damage is way to powerful and needs a soft cap again and resistance mitigation needs raised to 80% and the requirement needs lowered.

Damage shields are still OP.

There is the sum of it.

Wreuntzylla

You can in fact stack armor over the cap so that penetration is cancelled but mitigation stays capped. It just takes too much of a sacrifice.

You did not mention heal debuffs. You can cancel major and minor vitality and mending and go higher with CP befoul. I run a Templar hunting build that works great.

Mayrael

And shields last 6s not 8... Rest is true.

HeroOfNone

I'll see what I can discuss, but part of the issues I see is that debuffs can't scale, only be slightly augmented by champion points. this means major befoul can only reduce at 40%. then on top of that one place has the cheapest clense in the game, rendering a lot of DOT builds useless in a game of attrition. even the major befoul and poisons are easily clensed. I don't bemoan the Templar in efforts to get it nerfed however. I feel we should have more abilities that are non-purgable but at lower damage, poisons should not be purgable with class abilities, there should be a restoration more to allow purge, and the PVP clense should have the more expensive morph given the ability to purse some siege and poison DOTs.

This is just one idea off the top of my head. I really need to think about it to come up with a more inbetween solution that most would find challenging.

Woeler

The mitigation while blocking is fine. We really don't want to go back to the "tape your block button and go afk" times.

TreeHugger1

"F. When you take damage and have multiple damage shields at a time, the shield that takes the damage is the last shield you casted not the first one. For example: You cast Hardened ward, 3 seconds later you cast Harness Magika; when you take damage Harness Magica will intercept the hit. User this to your advantage."
are u sure? i casted healing ward and then hardened ward and i didnt get heal or it was very weak(it heals by the ward's remaining strength).

Amdar_Godkiller

3500 only mitigates against base crit damage, I believe; and I think wit shields you can improve that to 3750 mitigation. The Transmutation set takes it to around 5.1K, which puts you in the 1.7-1.75 range in terms of crit damage reduction. But that's still not even going to cancel out a Nightblade with the Hemorrage passive, with the shadow mundus running trap beast, not to mention the potential for much more with CP in Precise Strikes/Elfborn and Aggressive Warhorn.

LegendaryNinja

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

You just explained what has been said for the past year and a half or when ever 1.6 happened.

Crit res nulls crit damage at 3300 which isn't easy to get so those who can null crit damage deserve it.

Damage is way to powerful and needs a soft cap again and resistance mitigation needs raised to 80% and the requirement needs lowered.

Damage shields are still OP.

There is the sum of it.

You have a great point, i agree. Now in my opinion if you are able to obtain mitigation of 80% other things would have to be sacrificed, specially your damage. That way you can focus on either defense or offense game play depending on your role.

LegendaryNinja

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

You can in fact stack armor over the cap so that penetration is cancelled but mitigation stays capped. It just takes too much of a sacrifice.

You did not mention heal debuffs. You can cancel major and minor vitality and mending and go higher with CP befoul. I run a Templar hunting build that works great.

Sorry, i forgot about Debuffs, I've seen really good heavy armor heal debuff buiilds. Correct, even putting the CP system aside, there are so many abilities and passives that add or enhance penetration(or ignore) versus the Armor (minor and Mayor Armor). Not balanced.

LegendaryNinja

HeroOfNone wrote: »

I'll see what I can discuss, but part of the issues I see is that debuffs can't scale, only be slightly augmented by champion points. this means major befoul can only reduce at 40%. then on top of that one place has the cheapest clense in the game, rendering a lot of DOT builds useless in a game of attrition. even the major befoul and poisons are easily clensed. I don't bemoan the Templar in efforts to get it nerfed however. I feel we should have more abilities that are non-purgable but at lower damage, poisons should not be purgable with class abilities, there should be a restoration more to allow purge, and the PVP clense should have the more expensive morph given the ability to purse some siege and poison DOTs.

This is just one idea off the top of my head. I really need to think about it to come up with a more inbetween solution that most would find challenging.

Thanks for your reply @HeroOfNone. It would be a good idea to take a look at this without factoring the CP system. I just posted a reply comparing non cp sources of armor penetration and armor. Another viewpoint would be if the sources of armor penetration requires a player to sacrifice a lot or not. For example in a lot of skill lines just passives increase the penetration, while for Armor you get some extra armor in Heavy armor and the Major and Minor Armor Buffs, but no penetration resistance exists in 1HS skill line.

LegendaryNinja

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

You just explained what has been said for the past year and a half or when ever 1.6 happened.

Crit res nulls crit damage at 3300 which isn't easy to get so those who can null crit damage deserve it.

Damage is way to powerful and needs a soft cap again and resistance mitigation needs raised to 80% and the requirement needs lowered.

Damage shields are still OP.

There is the sum of it.

I believe that SypherPK discussed Shields nullifying the bonus critical damage on a podcast "We Are ESO", He mentioned that either make shields critable but make shields crit as well as an option. While it is correct that shields nullify the bonus critical damage they also don't have any mitigation and also last 6 seconds, seems balanced. But I do understand your concern about the investment in Inpen for builds that don't have shields (Stamina Builds) vs no investment in Inpen for Builds with Shields, that would free up more CP for other things and also trait slots. But I don't want to get too much into a Shield nerf talk in this topic, I might work on something specific with Shields soon.