What would we give up if we did not have the magicka / stamina divide?

jarydf

If "power" was just magicka and stamina combined and the calcuations did not really matter if you were all stamina / all magicka / somewhere in between - how would it hurt the game?

dday3six

Everything's balanced with that dichotomy in mind. So it would be taking a hard turn away from the direction the game is currently going thus invalidating most of the design decisions made so far.

AzuraKin

jarydf wrote: »

If "power" was just magicka and stamina combined and the calcuations did not really matter if you were all stamina / all magicka / somewhere in between - how would it hurt the game?

a big difference actually, stamina builds get more weapon power then mages get spell power and mages get more max magicka then stamina builds get max stamina. in essence what you would do is make it so people are running around with 7k+ power and 50k max resource. thus granting a major boost to dps. we dont need more boost to dps, we need balance.

pattyLtd

It would take away a huge part of the fun of having multiple characters.
For me personally i had come to the point where i really didn't know what to do anymore on my magicka sorc in ESO and it got boring.

Creating a new stamina based character really brought it back to life for me

Sharee

The one place where i would like to see the magicka/stamina divide removed is break-free. Split the cost between magicka and stamina, instead of only charging stamina.

So, instead of break free costing ~5000 stamina, it will cost 2500 stamina and 2500 magicka, and you need to have enough in both pools to be able to break.

srfrogg23

There was some discussion a while back about uncoupling magicka and stamina from spell and weapon power, which would make hybrid builds less tricky to pull off because you would only have to manage your stat allocation with regard to your resource pools.

I think the downside would be a new, more homogenized, meta. Instead of 2 common types of DPS, it would become 1 with everyone using a mix of magic and physical attacks to maximize their use of both resources. Not necessarily better, just different.

Same with healing vs tanking. You have to be able to block and taunt, which requires some stamina investment, and that lowers the number of points available for magicka/ spell power so tanks can't fulfill both roles equally well. That helps to make sure there is still a need for a balanced group dynamic with each person fulfilling a specific role.

I think, if Zos did this, ESO would basically become Guild Wars 2. No need for any particular variety or group dynamics, just 4 people doing their own thing in the same place at the same time because everyone is responsible for doing everything in the group.

Probably not the best thing for the game in the long run. It would get boring.