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A study: Discussing class specific spell costs
Nihili
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Description: I woke up this morning wanting to study into the topic of spell costs, specifically class spell costs, with the intention of illuminating any kind of potential class imbalances. Seeing as this is a mere data/number crunching question, I quickly hopped onto PTS to do some tests and see what I can find. Most of this information has already been discussed and some have already found the answers for this topic or it's commonly known, but instead of searching for those results online/here, I decided to just do my own test and share my results with you, because it would be a fun exercise. If you are unaware of the results, look at what I have here.
This is done for Magicka costs only
LA = Light armor, HA = Heavy Armor, NA = No armor.
In my recording of the data I aimed to keep things simple:
Who has the greatest advantage when it comes to spell cost?
This is common knowledge. It is, overwhelmingly, the Nightblade. The average spell cost for class abilities in the Nightblade's skill trees comes to a value of 3043 with NA and no passives. With LA, the average is reduced to 2404. In HA it is the original amount of 3043. I say "overwhelmingly" because the other classes are quite behind...
What about the other classes?
The class that enjoys the 2nd least spell cost is the Templar, then Sorc, then DK. So entirely in order:
Note that lower spell cost is not necessarily a sign of better sustain -- Sorcerers have 2nd worst spell costs, but in terms of other passives they are offered more regen. This is however still very interesting to look at, considering that DKs especially have high spell costs, but little by way of passives that offer them more regen. Whereas NBs have no spell cost reduction passives, they're spells are just originally cheaper than any other class to begin with, and additionally they have passives that offer them regen, and Siphoning strikes, which offers lovely sustain. This in my eyes is the kind of imbalance I had hoped to identify when starting this. I do not endorse a nerf to Nightblade's spell costs. But after doing this, I would endorse a buff to DKs.
This is done for Magicka costs only
LA = Light armor, HA = Heavy Armor, NA = No armor.
In my recording of the data I aimed to keep things simple:
- All test characters will be imperial because this offers no benefit to spell costs (and for consistency)
- All skills will be unmorphed due to the complexity morphing them would introduce to the testing. There is one exception to this, and this is in the Sorcerer skill line, where Dark Deal unmporphed is a Stamina cost skill. Because this test deals with Spell costs only, I morphed this to the magicka cost morph.
- No use of CP as I only wanted to compare pure spell costs (CP invested into the Magician will do nothing to effect our interpretation of results anyways, so long as they are equally invested into the Magician across all test templates. Sorc with 30 into Magician and DK with 40 would obviously cause a bias in the results, so it would have to be invested fairly or not at all-- not at all being simpler for me)
- I recorded results with no points spent into passives and while wearing no armor, then after with points into class and armor passives and recorded LA and HA (due to the fact that we're examining spell costs and HA passives offer no passive for reduced spell cost, it can be seen as if wearing HA is the equivalent of wearing NA at all in so far as it effects spell cost. Why did I do this then? It was just a mistake of mine while doing the study which caused a lot of repetition,
Who has the greatest advantage when it comes to spell cost?
This is common knowledge. It is, overwhelmingly, the Nightblade. The average spell cost for class abilities in the Nightblade's skill trees comes to a value of 3043 with NA and no passives. With LA, the average is reduced to 2404. In HA it is the original amount of 3043. I say "overwhelmingly" because the other classes are quite behind...
What about the other classes?
The class that enjoys the 2nd least spell cost is the Templar, then Sorc, then DK. So entirely in order:
- NB--- LA: 2404, HA: 3043, NA: 3043
- Temp--- LA: 2629, HA: 3368, NA: 3508
- Sorc--- LA: 2776, HA: 3568, NA: 3756 (Interestingly, with no passives and NA, Sorc has the highest spell cost, but with passives unlocked, it is reduced)
- DK--- LA: 2844, HA: 3600, NA: 3600
Note that lower spell cost is not necessarily a sign of better sustain -- Sorcerers have 2nd worst spell costs, but in terms of other passives they are offered more regen. This is however still very interesting to look at, considering that DKs especially have high spell costs, but little by way of passives that offer them more regen. Whereas NBs have no spell cost reduction passives, they're spells are just originally cheaper than any other class to begin with, and additionally they have passives that offer them regen, and Siphoning strikes, which offers lovely sustain. This in my eyes is the kind of imbalance I had hoped to identify when starting this. I do not endorse a nerf to Nightblade's spell costs. But after doing this, I would endorse a buff to DKs.