Newbie Q's: stamsorc, vamp, and basics. Update 1~

g00gleyes

Heres mah list:

Does damage scale additively or multiplicatively?
What is the base value of critical damage and can it be increased?
Are there any buffs that increase my critical chance?
What is the standard reveal distance of stealth? What are the ways to decrease this? Does this number apply only in pve?
How does the vamp ulti Clouding Swarm work? If damage pulls me out of stealth, will I continually flicker in and out of stealth? Will DoTs create this effect?
I'm thinking about creating a Bosmer but I am unsure what their racial passive of 1500 poison/disease resist value gives me. Can anyone tell me if this good or not and maybe even throw out a percentage of damage resistance? Are poison/disease skills used often in meta builds?
Is there a way to hide an Argonians or Khajiits tail via an official or unofficial (armor clipping) option?
Is there a max where damage modifiers cap at?
In a 1v1 how fast is ulti built up? What about RvR? Does ulti share a pool for different skill bars, if so, whats the max amount you can store up?

That's all for now, I'll update this if I can think of any more. Thanks in advance.

davey1107

1. The game scales damage down the "stamina path" or "magic path." Meaning a physical hit (physical damage, poison, disease) is a factor of a.) max stamina, b.) weapon damage, c.) does the hit crit. A magic ability is the same for max magic, spell damage, crit. As a newbie, focus on increasing max resource first, then eventually max weapon/spell damage.

If buffs state a number (i.e., adds 174 weapon damage, a gold c160 jewelry enchant), the game adds the buffs. If it states a percent, typically it multiplies. I.e., you activate major brutality for 20% more weapon damage AND might of the guild for "next attack does 20% more damage". The system calculates the damage as described above, the takes xx base damage x 1.2 x 1.2 = 144%

2. Crit is an RNG value generally giving 50% more damage to a hit. Your character has a spell crit rating for magic abilities and weapon crit for stam. This is the percent chance any hit will crit. Increasing this is the best approach. There are a few buffs in the game that increase the actual crit damage, like a Mundas stone, but they are more rare than buffs that increase the percent rating. Note, lots of armor and abilities have weird numbers like "increase weapon crit by 642." When active, this increases that percent chance, not the damage output. See your character sheet for your crit percents.

3. Crit chance buffs: one of the Mundas stones. Mage light for mag and camouflaged hunter for stam domso by being slotted, and are major increases. Many, many armor sets for wearing multiple pieces of a set. Many passives as you level, both ability, armor and character.

4. Stealth: there's no standard. Your detect radius is dependent on class, race, etc. There's nowhere you see this as a numerical figure, you have to feel it out. The detect radius is the same in pve or pvp...if an npc can't see you ten meters away, you'll be invisible to a human enemy in pvp at this distance. Some passives reduces this (khajit). Some armor sets also, but this isn't generally a desirable buff. You can make invisibility potions...this reduces it to 0 for a short time. Nightblades have cloak, also a total detect reduction.

5. Any damage done pulls you from stealth for the duration of the battle. DOTs and AOEs serve to keep you out. In pve, once a mob is aggrod they see you and it's tough to enter stealth. In pvp it's a bit easier, except that humans will focus on you and cast abilities to prevent stealth. In Clouding swarm, you will not flicker, you will be entirely out of stealth.

6. Bosmer are a solid stam class, perhaps best utilized as nightblades. They have the sneak detect reduction passive mentioned above. There's no set percent that resistance figures offer. An incoming hit goes through multiple layers of calculations. But as a very rough guideline, I think of any "2000" number as a 10% buff. I.e., 2000 weapon crit increases critmpercent chance by 10%. 2000 poison resist decreases poison hits by 10%. It's a nice passive...especially for pvp, where players use a looooooooot of poisons.

7. Don't be ridiculous. No self respecting khajit would hide their tail ever.

8. Caps come and go in updates, both damage and resistance. I don't think there are damage caps right now to be concerned about. For sure to get to any cap they've ever used you have to be a veeeeeery experienced player with maxed champion points, armor, abilities...so don't worry about it for the next year, lol.

9 I recommend going into settings...interface...display ultimate number. This puts a little number in the ult box that is very helpful in seeing how you earn and spend it. Mostly you earn it via light and heavy attacks. The ultimate pool applies to any ultimate ability on the bars...you store ultimate until you use it, you don't lose it swapping bars, changing out skills or logging out the character. Most ultimate abilities wipe out the whole pool no matter their cost, so they're designed to be used as soon as charged. (Exception, a sorc ultimate called overcharge). You can store 1000 for now, which becomes 500 next week with update 13. This is only detrimental to sorcs w overcharge.


When you roll a toon, I recommend creating a post footer (account...edit profile...signature) that includes your server and character(s) class, race, level. A lot of times this helps responders offer specific advice...like you ask about an ability then we realize you should move to a stronger class ability that might do the same but more.

Hope that helps. If you have questions on any of this, reply with @davey1107 so I get notification of the questions. Happy to help.

Waffennacht

1. Additionally, ZoS is moving stats into all addition rather than multiplication - if not now soon
2. Base 50% for crit damage and can be modified
3. Yes, theif mundus is an example, armors, and the precise trait, even class passives can increase crit chance
4. Stealth reveal is your circle of awareness (not actual name) vs their circle of detection, potions can increase your cirlce, many passives and armors decrease their circle. Medium armor, guild lines all change detection radius, works in PvE and PvP
5. It seems you just stay invisible, bats is gonna be different in u13
6. 5000ish (standard resistance buff number, say boundless storm buff) is 8% so 1.5kish is close to 2%ish poison and disease resistance reduces the effectiveness of Defile as well.
7. Defile is a VERY common debuff in PvP
8. I do not know of a way to remove the tail.
9. There no max damage outside of having all that is available
10. Ult gain is the same no matter your allies or group, only buffs modify your gain, heals and la and ha all gain ult

Waffennacht

Let's again do one at a time.

1. I'm not familiar with his build, going more damage less survivability is fine in small scale, odds of you dying does increase though. The best way I have heard it put for damage dealers is: "The higher your weapon/spell damage the better you will do against lower skilled opponents, the higher your regen and resources the better you will do against more skilled opponents." It's very true, it really depends on what you like do. Yes it's very possible to tank with a stam sorc, and anything inbetween.
2. DW is "better" because you have better spammable/dot compared to SnB + 2H. SnB gives you access to some nice buffs and debuffs + gap closer, 2h gives you a great HoT and execute and gap closer - No Dots however. I've used SnB + 2H, and you can too with no real draw backs - you'll prob end up using Dizzying Swing or it's morph a lot, DW gives a hot, dot, and a spammable. Bow gives a great DoT, range, movement and decent damage.
3. Procs will still do damage, just not as stupidly high, your resistance will (against a good pvp player) probably be completely negated by their penetration.
4. Swarm mother has some niche builds, seen a Rune Mage use it very well, seen a Blazing Templar use it well and a few DKs use it well.
5. Undaunted spells... I think they are very Niche, most builds won't use them, I do have a build that uses bone shield (it has 41k health so a 7k ward in PvP)
6. HA just provides a different playstyle, like you mentioned dodge roll, as a medium armor user dodge roll is your best defense, HA only very rarely dodge rolls. HA uses heals and mitigation to survive, Medium pretty much uses High HoTs with well timed dodges to survive, IMO the dodge rolling takes more practice to do well.
7. The Vampire passives for Undeath do have a "tiered" type thing going, but it will prevent massive damage (though with mDKs being fire and the u13 fire staff buff it may hurt more) the passive regen boosts are great. A lot of players (A LOT) are vamps in PvP atm. The health regen loss isn't really anything to consider, health regen builds are extremely niche.
8. It's very easy and inexpensive to remove vamp. You just pay gold to a priest. However, if you do not respec your skill points Out of the vampire skill tree and you remove your vampirism, you WILL LOSE ACCESS TO THOSE SKILL POINTS.
9. The 20% is from your opponents total resistance, against someone with 15k resist it'll give you 3k penetration (lower than sharpened trait) but against a 33k it'll give you 6.6k penetration (more than sharpened) - most people say forget the hammer, go with Sword or Axe with Sharpened trait. Yeah you can 1-3 hit glass cannons like that, usually something like: Crit Rush, Weave Light Attack, Proc Viper armor, Dawnbreaker of Smiting, LA, Executioner, GG.
10. Break free does not have an increase in cost, it's a flat cost, yes there is CC immunity after you break free, something like 8 seconds?

Waffennacht

Lol, oh I see what you're saying. So what happens is: you cure vampirism, that skill line tree in your menu will disappear - taking with it all points left in.

Once you get re vampired that skill line will re appear in your menu exactly as you left it.

Those do stack, it's just that you run the risk of having more penetration than your opponent's armor, or you could gain more damage by doing something different. For example, the bleed damage from an Axe choice may provide more damage against a light armor opponent than the Hammer armor reduction damage.

Yeah the CC immunity is a little bit, but it goes by quickly while in battle

g00gleyes

Thanks for the awesome info guys. Couple more Q's:

- I'm building a khajiit stamsorc and I've watched a few vids by fengrush. I aim to do small scale pvp as well as large scale. Should I aim for his stats or can I go a bit glassier for small scale? Also what about if I want to tank, is it possible on stamsorc?
- Want to use 2 hander / sword and board or bow for stamsorc, but keep on hearing dual wield is better. Would these combos work out ok in practice (pvp)? What about sword and board plus bow?
- With u13 I heard gear procs wont crit. Are they still going to do a lot of damage? I don't know how much my resist will be but by the looks of it I will be around 15K or so (stamsorc).
- Thinking about getting the Swarm Mother monster set. Anyone have success with this or is it bad?
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Swarm+Mother+Set
- Thoughts on Shadowstrike (the shadow cp 120 bonus)? Is it ever useful in pvp?
- Is there a max amount of cp's you can have?
- I'm looking at some of the Undaunted guild skills (overflowing altar and spiked bone shield) but don't see them used alot in builds. Are they bad?
- I'm thinking about medium armor and possibly stacking dodge roll / break free reduction stuff for stamsorc. Is heavy armor so much better that medium cant compete no matter what? I keep on hearing how good heavy is and would like to hear some alternatives.
- Confused a bit by vampirism, in particulars the undeath passive. It says:
While you have Vampirism stage 3 or higher:
Reduces damage dealt to you when you fall below 50% Health.
Lower health increases the effect up to 33%.
So does that mean there are "tiers" of damage resistance? Also if I level up vampire and decide I don't want to be one anymore (how do I do that btw and is it expensive lol) will I lose all of my rank progress? Obviously I would try to offset some of the negative effects but I would still have at least 50% less hp regen. How much is the unnatural resistance passive? Is vamp even worth it lol.

Thanks again in advance.

Edit
- Looking at 2 hand hammer and its 20% armor penetration. Does that mean it cuts through the enemies physical resistance total? If so, for calculating how much physical penetration I want (what amount is good btw) how should I factor hammer in?
- Want to make a high damage stamsorc with 2 hand hammer and wondering if I can 2-3 hit people. How to pull this off? Crit rush-heavy-onslaught/executioner? Definitely want to use onslaught.

Edit
- Does the cost of break free increase with the number of disables? Also whats with this set, is there is a cc immunity period after break free?
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Alessian+Order+Set

g00gleyes

@Waffennacht
Great info thanks again. Two things I'm still hazy on is if I cure vampirism, you said I can get the skill points back, but what about the passive rank points? Are they lost? The next is: the 20% from hammer and sharpened trait don't stack?
Break free gives ~8 seconds of cc immunity? Wow lol that seems like a lot.
Any who I'm probably good on questions for a bit, so you can relax! :P.

g00gleyes

Cheers man. Good stuff.