BUFFING LIGHT ARMOR! (In a Logical Way)

Vaoh

So there is a clear Magicka/Stamina balance issue right now in PvP (not so much in PvE). I wanted to see if there were any obvious things which have been overlooked which must be changed to benefit Magicka. This took me directly to armor passives.

It turns out that Magicka is getting shafted from their passives, and though it was not an issue in the past, now is the time to actually balance this out.

Here is exactly what both Light and Medium armor provide you when you wear 7/7 pieces of them:

Light Armor:
• Increase Magicka Recovery - 28%
• Reduce the Magicka Cost of skills - 21%
• Increase Spell Resistance - 1925
• Increase Spell Critical rating - 2191
• Increase Spell Penetration - 4884
***Physical and Spell Resistance bonus with 7/7 piece of Gold, CP160 Light Armor - 6280

Medium Armor:
• Increase Stamina Recovery - 28%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of skills - 21%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of sneaking - 49%
• Reduce the size of your detection area - 35%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of Roll Dodge by 28%
• Increase sprint movement speed - 21%
• Increase Weapon Critical rating - 2296
• Increase Weapon Damage - 12%
***Physical and Spell Resistance bonus with 7/7 piece of Gold, CP160 Medium Armor - 9376

Maybe it's just me, but why is it that Stamina has so many more benefits? We could at least give 1-2 more nice benefits to Magicka.

Remember that the passives in these two skill trees have basically never been updated! They were created back when Magicka was supreme and Stamina was weak (and Hybrids were viable )!

Some obvious places for Light Armor buffs can be found within three passives: Evocation, Recovery, and Spell Warding.

• Evocation: Reduce the Magicka Cost of skills - 21%
• Recovery: Increase Magicka Recovery - 28%

These passives are outclassed by a single Medium Armor passive:
• Wind Walker: Increase Stamina Recovery - 28% AND reduce the Stamina Cost of skills - 21%

We need to remove the Recovery passive skill, and add its effect to the Evocation passive. This brings it in line with Wind Walker. It also provides space for a new Light Armor passive!

Next we have Spell Warding:
• Spell Warding: Increase Spell Resistance - 1925

This passive has two issues. First, it is really underwhelming. That is a minor amount of resistance. Second, the skill line's Active skill is a damage shield, which is not benefitted at all by this passive. Give Spell Warding a 1%/2% (based on Ranks I & II of this passive) damage shield strength increase per piece of Light Armor worn. Now this passive benefits Magicka a lot more AND stops Annulment from negating its own passives.

Finally we are left with a free spot to help out Light Armor (and therefore Magicka users). This can be anything! Remember that it replaces the current Recovery passive so it must have three Ranks!

Some of my ideas:

Arcane Knowledge:
Increase all Magic Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Also increases all Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.5%/1%/1.5% per piece of Light Armor equipped.

Agile Hunter
Reduce the cost of break free by 1%/2%/3% per piece of Light Armor slotted.
Increase movement speed while unmounted by 0.4%/0.8%/1.2% per piece of Light Armor slotted.

Battlemage
Increase all Magic, Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Grants your Physical Damage attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance at also dealing X Magic Damage. This chance is increased to 100% on Light and Heavy attacks.
(aka slight buff to Dual Wield Magicka build light/heavy attacks)

***Edited to make some stuff clearer

Rohamad_Ali

Sneaking in light armor should give the most bonus too . Leather vs cloth ? That's a no brainer .

Increased spell damage and spell crit to match medium versions of damage increase .

Good eye OP , this is one of the imbalances .

@wrobel

Reykice

Vaoh wrote: »

So there is a clear Magicka/Stamina balance issue right now in PvP (not so much in PvE). I wanted to see if there were any obvious things which have been overlooked which must be changed to benefit Magicka. This took me directly to armor passives.

It turns out that Magicka is getting shafted from their passives, and though it was not an issue in the past, now is the time to actually balance this out.

Here is exactly what both Light and Medium armor provide you when you wear 7/7 pieces of them:

Light Armor:
• Increase Magicka Recovery - 28%
• Reduce the Magicka Cost of skills - 21%
• Increase Spell Resistance - 1925
• Increase Spell Critical rating - 2191
• Increase Spell Penetration - 4884
***Physical and Spell Resistance bonus with 7/7 piece of Gold, CP160 Light Armor - 6280

Medium Armor:
• Increase Stamina Recovery - 28%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of skills - 21%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of sneaking - 49%
• Reduce the size of your detection area - 35%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of Roll Dodge by 28%
• Increase sprint movement speed - 21%
• Increase Weapon Critical rating - 2296
• Increase Weapon Damage - 12%
***Physical and Spell Resistance bonus with 7/7 piece of Gold, CP160 Medium Armor - 9376

Maybe it's just me, but why is it that Stamina has so many more benefits? We could at least give 1-2 more nice benefits to Magicka.

Remember that the passives in these two skill trees have basically never been updated! They were created back when Magicka was supreme and Stamina was weak (and Hybrids were viable )!

Some obvious places for Light Armor buffs can be found within three passives: Evocation, Recovery, and Spell Warding.

• Evocation: Reduce the Magicka Cost of skills - 21%
• Recovery: Increase Magicka Recovery - 28%

These passives are outclassed by a single Medium Armor passive:
• Wind Walker: Increase Stamina Recovery - 28% AND reduce the Stamina Cost of skills - 21%

We need to remove the Recovery passive skill, and add its effect to the Evocation passive. This brings it in line with Wind Walker. It also provides space for a new Light Armor passive!

Next we have Spell Warding:
• Spell Warding: Increase Spell Resistance - 1925

This passive has two issues. First, it is really underwhelming. That is a minor amount of resistance. Second, the skill line's Active skill is a damage shield, which is not benefitted at all by this passive. Give Spell Warding a 1%/2% (based on Ranks I & II of this passive) damage shield strength increase per piece of Light Armor worn. Now this passive benefits Magicka a lot more AND stops Annulment from negating its own passives.

Finally we are left with a free spot to help out Light Armor (and therefore Magicka users). This can be anything! Remember that it replaces the current Recovery passive so it must have three Ranks!

My idea:

Arcane Knowledge:
Increase all Magic Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Also increases all Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.5%/1%/1.5% per piece of Light Armor equipped.

Yea this has bothered me for ages... doesn`t even have to be straight out dps tho it could be as magicka is lacking now. But even a sustain passive would help or a mobility one(sprint cost reduction, after all light armor is lighter than medium armor).

Medium Armor and Heavy Armor were buffed to the point where they get so much out of it while magicka was left as it was.

Beardimus

Nice concept actually, and simple to apply rather than messing with skills. Mag users ate in LA so pimp it. Nice.

ArchMikem

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Sneaking in light armor should give the most bonus too . Leather vs cloth ? That's a no brainer .

Increased spell damage and spell crit to match medium versions of damage increase .

Good eye OP , this is one of the imbalances .

@wrobel

I very badly want light armor to get a spell damage buff passive. My Stamblade base damage sits at 2850. My Magplar, 2200. And my Magsorc? 1600...

Totalitarian

ArchMikem wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Sneaking in light armor should give the most bonus too . Leather vs cloth ? That's a no brainer .

Increased spell damage and spell crit to match medium versions of damage increase .

Good eye OP , this is one of the imbalances .

@wrobel

I very badly want light armor to get a spell damage buff passive. My Stamblade base damage sits at 2850. My Magplar, 2200. And my Magsorc? 1600...

Not sure if that's the way to go though, considering the Spell Pen that Light Armor gives generally improves DPS better than a +12% Spell Damage would. The combo of the two would be very strong.

Knootewoot

Agree on all of this.

bebynnag

LA is def due for a buff,

the suggestion to have a passive that increases the effectiveness of the active skill, i have to point out that this exists on one of the morphs already.
personally I think an increase in spell resistance, which is then matched in physical resistance (when wearing 5 or more pieces) would be more beneficial.

i think the 1st suggestion you made of a % based increase to magic, flame, frost, shock & daedric would work well on all classes.

shepardTHEweak

+1 to OP

Vaoh

Glad to see the community agrees so much on this!

The mixing of Evocation and Recovery, and the buffing (somehow) of Spell Warding seems common sense to me.

Dymence

Totalitarian wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Sneaking in light armor should give the most bonus too . Leather vs cloth ? That's a no brainer .

Increased spell damage and spell crit to match medium versions of damage increase .

Good eye OP , this is one of the imbalances .

@wrobel

I very badly want light armor to get a spell damage buff passive. My Stamblade base damage sits at 2850. My Magplar, 2200. And my Magsorc? 1600...

Not sure if that's the way to go though, considering the Spell Pen that Light Armor gives generally improves DPS better than a +12% Spell Damage would. The combo of the two would be very strong.

This is one of the things to consider when comparing passives. I think the better way of equalizing light armor with medium armor is to boost defensive capabilities. Medium armor gets dodgeroll cost reduction, while light armor gets spell resistance worth ***.

Another thing that needs to be adressed is that there needs to be a reason you'd want to go 7 light over 5/1/1, like stamina has. Not sure what it'd be though.

bebynnag

I wanted to take the following suggestion in, think about it for a while before responding
Battlemage
Increase all Magic, Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Grants your Physical Damage attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance at also dealing X Magic Damage. This chance is increased to 100% on Light and Heavy attacks.
(aka slight buff to Dual Wield Magicka build light/heavy attacks)

I like the idea of this passive because it would benefit dual wielding mages, but im concerned it would make hybrid builds too strong. now i know hybrid build are not the meta, and try as i might i cant make one work (thats not saying much though) but could a 100% proc rate on light attacks take hybrids from the 'fun way to play' to the 'op way to play'?

Vaoh

puffytheslayer wrote: »

I wanted to take the following suggestion in, think about it for a while before responding
Battlemage
Increase all Magic, Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Grants your Physical Damage attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance at also dealing X Magic Damage. This chance is increased to 100% on Light and Heavy attacks.
(aka slight buff to Dual Wield Magicka build light/heavy attacks)

I like the idea of this passive because it would benefit dual wielding mages, but im concerned it would make hybrid builds too strong. now i know hybrid build are not the meta, and try as i might i cant make one work (thats not saying much though) but could a 100% proc rate on light attacks take hybrids from the 'fun way to play' to the 'op way to play'?

Not. Even. Close.

Not even close

It wouldn't even make them viable again. Hybrids are forced to run Heavy for maximum effectiveness anyway! (or Medium armor w/ Pelinal's Aptitude for the Damage buff)

The damage amount would likely be between 2K Magic Damage if balanced correctly. Only nice for giving decent damage to light/heavy attacks on Mag builds using non-Staff weapons.

Destyran

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Sneaking in light armor should give the most bonus too . Leather vs cloth ? That's a no brainer .

Increased spell damage and spell crit to match medium versions of damage increase .

Good eye OP , this is one of the imbalances .

@wrobel

Sneaking in leather should be better since you are wearing a second skin. Leather is skin

WillhelmBlack

Light Armour should increase the duration of damage shields.

The rest is absolutely fine. Great in fact, it's just physical damage and penetration is just way OTT.

justinbarrett

dear initial poster, do you use your magica pool for second hand combat abilities like roll, dodge or block? stamina users and magica users are fine as they are....

you still have all your stamina for rolling and dodging...that is your light armor perk.


ZOS asked me to tell you "your welcome."

Komma

justinbarrett wrote: »

dear initial poster, do you use your magica pool for second hand combat abilities like roll, dodge or block? stamina users and magica users are fine as they are....

you still have all your stamina for rolling and dodging...that is your light armor perk.


ZOS asked me to tell you "your welcome."

Magicka users get maybe 2 or 3 break frees before they are out of stamina. Want to even it up?

5 pc light armor: break free and roll dodge use magicka and have a 20% reduction in cost.

Running out of stamina is the number one killer of magicka users.

Solariken

It's a huge problem and it needs addressed before any other balancing. IMO the most effective and sensible way to fix it is to decouple armor type from magicka and stamina and instead use a system where you choose an armor based on playstyle. Here is my idea:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/292368/armor-skill-line-re-design-is-needed/p1

leepalmer95

Komma wrote: »

justinbarrett wrote: »

dear initial poster, do you use your magica pool for second hand combat abilities like roll, dodge or block? stamina users and magica users are fine as they are....

you still have all your stamina for rolling and dodging...that is your light armor perk.


ZOS asked me to tell you "your welcome."

Magicka users get maybe 2 or 3 break frees before they are out of stamina. Want to even it up?

5 pc light armor: break free and roll dodge use magicka and have a 20% reduction in cost.

Running out of stamina is the number one killer of magicka users.

Maybe, but managing your stamina is also a thing, dodge be dodge rolling for days, use imov or tri pots etc...

SkylarkX

I think the penetration bonus for light armor would be roughly equivalent to the 12% weapon damage bonus for medium?

Anyway, I think the best fix would be to merge Evocation and Recovery as OP suggests, then add a new passive called 'Arcane Adrenalin' (or something) that converts the cost of break free from stamina in to magicka.

leepalmer95

The penetration bonus is roughly a 7.4% dmg increase.

But thats assuming they have armour to penetrate and they are not using damage shields because at that point it becomes useless.

Where as the 12% wpn dmg buff will always be present, plus weapon damage stacks easier because of class passives, fighters guild passives, etc... all stacking.

Dracane

Medium armor offers significantly more damage in both, pve and pvp. I would even say, that the difference is even bigger in pve.
Because 12% weapon damage is so huge, 4880 penetration is not compareable, especially since most mobs have already reached their penetrable value.

Light armor needs its spell recovery and cost reduction combined into 1 passive. The other passive should then add raw spell damage. Roughly equal to 1 spell damage set piece when wearing 5 light armor.

Spell warding's spell resistance is useless. As OP said, it should instead increase damage shield strenght by a percentage. Because that's what light armor needs to survive.

Nifty2g

1 simple thing would solve this issue, look at the weapon lines

Dual Wield gains access to Twin Blade and Blade across the board
Two Hander gains access to Heavy Weapons across the board

Now look at Destruction Staff,
Penetrating Magic
This passive is utter trash and only works on destruction staff skills while the others effect it for every skill/stat.

Simple change, make penetrating magic apply to all skills while using a destruction staff.

SkylarkX

Keep in mind it's only a bonus to weapon damage and weapon damage is only a portion of your total power.. Say you have 3.5k weapon damage and 35k stam pool, a 12% weapon damage is only going to be a 6% increase in your power rating.

Edit: Roughly*

Strider_Roshin

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Sneaking in light armor should give the most bonus too . Leather vs cloth ? That's a no brainer .

Increased spell damage and spell crit to match medium versions of damage increase .

Good eye OP , this is one of the imbalances .

@wrobel

I'd happily give up my 12% weapon damage increase for that extra penetration. It's not all about the character sheet.

leepalmer95

SkylarkX wrote: »

Keep in mind it's only a bonus to weapon damage and weapon damage is only a portion of your total power.. Say you have 3.5k weapon damage and 35k stam pool, a 12% weapon damage is only going to be a 6% increase in your power rating.

Edit: Roughly*

Those are pretty standard and easily reachable stats, but i'd take the 6% wpn power which like you said is like a 6%-8% overall dmg increase depending on your wpn dmg over the 7.4% pen bonus which is only useless some of the time.

Blackmoon777

WillhelmBlack wrote: »

Light Armour should increase the duration of damage shields.

The rest is absolutely fine. Great in fact, it's just physical damage and penetration is just way OTT.

I like the idea of light armor increasing damage shields duration! -> 5-10% per piece of light armor would be nice (so total 35-70% for full 7/7 set and increase damge shield duration from 6 sek to 8-10 sek

also another idea is :
flat increase magicka (like HP increase for heavy) 1-2% per piece of light armor

Komma

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Komma wrote: »

justinbarrett wrote: »

dear initial poster, do you use your magica pool for second hand combat abilities like roll, dodge or block? stamina users and magica users are fine as they are....

you still have all your stamina for rolling and dodging...that is your light armor perk.


ZOS asked me to tell you "your welcome."

Magicka users get maybe 2 or 3 break frees before they are out of stamina. Want to even it up?

5 pc light armor: break free and roll dodge use magicka and have a 20% reduction in cost.

Running out of stamina is the number one killer of magicka users.

Maybe, but managing your stamina is also a thing, dodge be dodge rolling for days, use imov or tri pots etc...

Which is why this is even more of a burden for magicka users. Stamina users can concentrate on stamina and turn a blind eye to magicka. Magicka users have to give up stats to help out with stamina regen or more stamina. Another imbalance.

Dakrana_Thrazvoth

Vaoh wrote: »

So there is a clear Magicka/Stamina balance issue right now in PvP (not so much in PvE). I wanted to see if there were any obvious things which have been overlooked which must be changed to benefit Magicka. This took me directly to armor passives.

It turns out that Magicka is getting shafted from their passives, and though it was not an issue in the past, now is the time to actually balance this out.

Here is exactly what both Light and Medium armor provide you when you wear 7/7 pieces of them:

Light Armor:
• Increase Magicka Recovery - 28%
• Reduce the Magicka Cost of skills - 21%
• Increase Spell Resistance - 1925
• Increase Spell Critical rating - 2191
• Increase Spell Penetration - 4884
***Physical and Spell Resistance bonus with 7/7 piece of Gold, CP160 Light Armor - 6280

Medium Armor:
• Increase Stamina Recovery - 28%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of skills - 21%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of sneaking - 49%
• Reduce the size of your detection area - 35%
• Reduce the Stamina Cost of Roll Dodge by 28%
• Increase sprint movement speed - 21%
• Increase Weapon Critical rating - 2296
• Increase Weapon Damage - 12%
***Physical and Spell Resistance bonus with 7/7 piece of Gold, CP160 Medium Armor - 9376

Maybe it's just me, but why is it that Stamina has so many more benefits? We could at least give 1-2 more nice benefits to Magicka.

Remember that the passives in these two skill trees have basically never been updated! They were created back when Magicka was supreme and Stamina was weak (and Hybrids were viable )!

Some obvious places for Light Armor buffs can be found within three passives: Evocation, Recovery, and Spell Warding.

• Evocation: Reduce the Magicka Cost of skills - 21%
• Recovery: Increase Magicka Recovery - 28%

These passives are outclassed by a single Medium Armor passive:
• Wind Walker: Increase Stamina Recovery - 28% AND reduce the Stamina Cost of skills - 21%

We need to remove the Recovery passive skill, and add its effect to the Evocation passive. This brings it in line with Wind Walker. It also provides space for a new Light Armor passive!

Next we have Spell Warding:
• Spell Warding: Increase Spell Resistance - 1925

This passive has two issues. First, it is really underwhelming. That is a minor amount of resistance. Second, the skill line's Active skill is a damage shield, which is not benefitted at all by this passive. Give Spell Warding a 1%/2% (based on Ranks I & II of this passive) damage shield strength increase per piece of Light Armor worn. Now this passive benefits Magicka a lot more AND stops Annulment from negating its own passives.

Finally we are left with a free spot to help out Light Armor (and therefore Magicka users). This can be anything! Remember that it replaces the current Recovery passive so it must have three Ranks!

Some of my ideas:

Arcane Knowledge:
Increase all Magic Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Also increases all Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.5%/1%/1.5% per piece of Light Armor equipped.

Agile Hunter
Reduce the cost of break free by 1%/2%/3% per piece of Light Armor slotted.
Increase movement speed while unmounted by 0.4%/0.8%/1.2% per piece of Light Armor slotted.

Battlemage
Increase all Magic, Fire, Frost, Shock, and Daedric Damage done by 0.4%/0.7%/1% per piece of Light Armor equipped.
Grants your Physical Damage attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance at also dealing X Magic Damage. This chance is increased to 100% on Light and Heavy attacks.
(aka slight buff to Dual Wield Magicka build light/heavy attacks)

***Edited to make some stuff clearer

With your ideas, you're just overbuffing magicka builds.

You forget very something important stamina and magicka does not work in the same way.

For example, I've played a long time nightblade, magicka and stamina. And tooltip values on skills are lower for stamina, but weapon damages and critical are higher. For magicka nightblade it was the opposite. But damages from both was very similar finally. Because magicka class can stack a lot of maximum magicka, and maximum stamina is always significantly lower.

And gameplay from both is really different. For once, and since a long time they're both goof for pvp. (available sets are another story).

Apherius

agree , up the light armor .

jrgray93

I switched my magicka templar from light armor to heavy in PvP. What a difference. I am now almost gank-proof, I do within 3% of the damage I did in light, I can sustain my stamina better, and I'm generally just having a much better time fighting the stamina meta.

And yes, I realize magicka templars are generally in a better place than other magicka classes in PvP, but we aren't without our issues. For instance, good luck 1v1ing a good magicka sorc's shields down when your best offensive abilities completely lack the synergy (not the press 'x' kind). A magplar can either burst or execute. There isn't enough natural flow and compliment between the abilities to really take down certain builds, whereas a lot of good builds can really load up the DoTs before focusing on burst. Then you have the excruciatingly long time between dark flares, etc.

Oh, back to the point. Light armor was a joke. Heavy armor is far superior for magplars. Sustain is a bit harder, but there are ways to rectify that.

Inherent stamina sustain is a huge part of why heavy is so much better. In light, anyone could beat me by simply hitting me with a CC every time my immunity was up. I'd eventually be caught in CC and die. Blocking was also out of the question in light because it would speed up the process.