In-Depth Resource Management Analysis + Calculator for Elder Scrolls Online – MW

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In-Depth Resource Management Analysis + Calculator for Elder Scrolls Online – Morrowind

1. Introduction

With the Introduction of the Morrowind Expansion, Resource Management became an integral part of the game by having less resource management tools and making the ones that are available less powerful. This guide is aimed to help newer players understand the resource management in ESO and give more experienced players a tool to theorycraft with a focus on sustain. I will go through the steps of the calculator in detail in this extract. I am currently doing my PhD in financial analysis, so you’ll notice a mathematically oriented approach to theorycrafting. I didn’t choose a more complex software, as most people have access to excel in some sort of way and are more likely to understand the calculator faster. I try to keep it as simple as possible and enhance it with graphs and diagrams to make it more interesting. Let’s do some number crunching!

Modelling to this extent is of course only possible under restrictions and certain assumptions on specific variables. This is an experimental simulator, but it matches actual ingame sustain with a very good accuracy. The guide is mainly focused on Magicka Characters right now, but I will include the Stamina Based Graphs and Tables wihin the next days.

2. Factors of Resource Management

There are multiple ways to approach resource management by yourself in the Elder Scrolls Online, notably: Cost Reduction, Recovery and Heavy Attacking. On either one of those, you’ll want to add as much additional resource restoration abilities and mechanisms as possible. But to begin with, we need to determine how the combat system and resource drain from skillcasting works.

2.1. Average Base Cost of Rotation

To assess how much resource return you need, we need to calculate the cost that your full rotation has and divide it by the length of it to arrive at the Average Base Cost per Second (referred to as AvCost from now on). All calculations in this text are done on a per second basis. This way you can immediately compare different setups by calculating the net resource gain (if it is positive) or net resource drain (if it is negative). Simply put, you know whether you’ll lose resources while executing your rotation or not and also, how fast you’re going to lose them. The formula is as follows:

Netresourcelevel=AvCost+CostRedu+Recovery+AddSustain

With CostRedu being the Resource gain per second granted by all your cost reduction buffs, Recovery being the Resource gain per second granted by recovery, and AddSustain being all additional sustain sources that apply after Cost Reduction and Recovery.

AvCost is a drain, so it is a negative variable. This negative drain gets reduced by CostRedu, leading to the Total Drain per Second. That Drain is then countered by recovery and flat resource restoration mechanisms. The respective points will be explained later on.

2.2. Cost of Skills

In order to determine the Average Cost of Skills, we need to list all the abilities in the rotation, their Base cost (without any reduction) and how often we use them in the rotation. Then multiply the number of casts with the Base cost and divide it by the duration of the rotation in seconds to arrive at AvCost. Formula is as follows:

AvCost=(Skill1Cost*n1+Skill2Cost*n2+…+SkilltCost*nt)/DurRota

So for example, 2x Force Pulse and one Elemental Blockade would lead to

AvCost=(-2700*2-3510*1)/3=2970

Important is that you use 1 skill per second, assuming perfect timing. I’ll introduce a variable that simulates imperfect weaving and skill casting in the next section as getting off 1 skill and weave every one second as basically impossible.

2.3. Global Cooldowns

As I already stated above, perfect weaving on the one second cooldown is impossible and we therefore need another term delivering realistic results. In order to achieve that, I simply used a Basic 0 to 1 variable that is multiplied with AvCost, namely SkillSpeed. 0 would mean you fire off 0 skills and light attack weaves per second, and 1 would indicate perfect weaving and skillcasting. This is the term you want to modify if the simulated drain is not matching your ingame drain. I mostly found a value between 0.8 and 0.9 adequate, but that depends on your capability to execute rotations.

So we then have

Netresourcelevel=AvCost*SkillSpeed+CostRedu+Recovery+AddSustain

This is the basic formula that determines your resource level. We’re now going to take a look at cost reduction in detail.

3. Cost Reduction

Cost Reduction was decreased a lot with Morrowind: 16% from Champion Point Passives and 1% per Armor Piece of Light and Heavy Armor. Stamina Builds even got another 5% increase on top. So your skills will now cost a lot more than before, making it harder to sustain rotations that use a lot and expensive skills.

The Cost of your Skills is therefore very important, and trying to decrease that is a very effective way to sustain, leading us to Cost Reduction.

3.1. Base Calculation

There are two ways to decrease the Cost of your Skills: Flat Jewellery Glyphs and different %-Bonuses.

The Basic Formula for Cost Reduction is as follows:

CostRedu=(AvCost+Sumflatcost)*(1-Sum%Cost)

Where Sumflatcost is the Sum of Jewellery Glyphs you have and Sum%Cost is the Sum of percentages decreasing your ski cost.

Example from above with 1 Cost Reduction Glyph and 5 pieces of light armor:

CostRedu=(-2970+203)*(1-0.1)=-2767*0.9=-2492

And one more time with only 5 pieces of light armor:

CostRedu=-2970*0.9=-2673, which is a full 10% decrease from the original 2970.

You see that when Sumflatcost is applied, you get less return from the Sum%Cost variable. It is only a marginal decrease in effectiveness, but it is still interesting and worth noting for the further analysis.

As Cost Reduction is depending on AvCost, the effectiveness is also depending on the SkillSpeed variable. When you keep casting skills, you get more return on cost reduction.

3.2. Comparing three different setups via calculator

Looking at the example above, you see that worm cult gives you a return of 80 when applied without a flat reduction glyph. The glyph always gives a 203 return (here 175 as it’s multiplied by 0.9 due to skillspeed). When used after a flat glyph, you have a return of 246-175=71. So you lost 9 Magicka per second by applying a cost reduction glyph and applying worm cult. Of course the reduction from armor passives is also going to get decreased the same way, as all Elements of Sum%Cost.

4. Recovery

Recovery is the second aspect of sustain in Elder Scrolls Online. It ticks every two seconds in and out of combat and restores a flat value of the respective resource pool. Blocking stops recovery, namely the stamina recovery with all weapons but ice staffs.

4.1. Base Calculation

The basic concept works as all (or at least most) calculations in the game:

Recovery=(Base Value+SumFlatReco)*(1+Sum%Reco)

As we want the value per every 1 second, we simply divide the above formula by 2, leading to

RecoperSecond=((Base Value+SumFlatReco)*(1+Sum%Reco))/2

Now for cost reduction, the Base value was negative, making Flat and Percentage Bonuses work against each other. Recovery is positive and is thus giving them a proportional positive.

The Base Value for CP 160 characters is always 514. You can add flat recovery bonuses from glyphs (174 each), sets regular bonuses (129 per item) and special 5-piece bonuses with varying values. The Percentage increases come from a lot of different sources, notably Armor (4% per piece of light and medium armor), Champion Points Arcanist and Mooncalf (up to 15%), class passives, racial passives, vampirism et cetera. I will provide a full list of recovery sources (excluding regular 129 armor bonuses) in the next section.

4.2. Now it’s interesting to see how much sustain recovery can give you in an ingame environment.

This is a real setup simulation. You see that we have an 86% increase on recovery without the Altmer Passive and 95% with it (28% Light Armor, 10% Vampirism, 12% Warden Passive, 2% Mages Guild, 14% Arcanist CP, 20% Major Intellect, 9% Altmer Passive). That increase gets applied on the flat value of recovery. We see that a glyph is an 162 increase, with 162=(174*1.86)/2. Adding a 9% on the 514 Base recovery is 23, with 23=(514*0.09). Adding both leads to and overall increase of 193 instead of 185, as we have 193=(688*1.95)/2-(514*1.86)/2. So both increases positively influence each other. The overall contribution to sustain by recovery in traditional setups is a lot higher than the contribution of cost reduction, as it is easier to stack and easier to get.

5. Additional Sustain Sources

On top of recovery and cost reduction, there are additional flat bonuses that increase your sustain. Some of them are only available to certain classes, and some of them are only increasing your Magicka or Stamina. I’ll go through the ones that are available to all classes in this section and then look into all five classes in section 6. In the calculator you can simply choose whether you want a certain buff to be active or not by toggling it as “Yes” or “No” in the blue area next to the buff name.

5.1. Minor Magickasteal

Minor Magickasteal is a debuff applied on an enemy that restores 300 Magicka to allies damaging them with a 1 second cooldown. So this is equal to a 300 Magicka gain per second. There are three sources of minor Magickasteal in the game: Elemental Drain from the Destruction Staff Skill Line, Radiant Aura from the Templars Restoring Light Skill Line and Force Siphon from the Restoration Staff Skill Line. Now you might ask why there is no minor Staminasteal, and rightly so. Stamina Builds have an inherent 15% cost reduction on their skills. If they also had a minor Staminasteal, sustain on Stamina Builds would be a lot easier than on Magicka Builds. Minor Magickasteal basically covers the difference between the cost of Magicka and Stamina based skills.

5.2. Orbs and Shards

Orbs and Shards is a term for two different skills that do the same thing now. One is available to all classes (Necrotic Orb/Energy Orb) and one is available to Templars only(Luminous Shards/Blazing Spear). Both of them restore 3960 Magicka or Stamina to the player using their synergy with a 20 second cooldown. Which resource they restore is based on the highest maximum of your resources, so if you have a maximum Magicka of 44000 and a maximum Stamina of 8000, you’re always getting Magicka. The Formula for the Gain per second is therefore

OrbShards=3960/20=198

This is assuming you using the synergy on cooldown, which is not realistic, but the calculator uses all additional sustain sources on cooldown as it is very hard to simulate a delay with a certain standard deviation to one side only. I mostly plan a certain level above 0 for NetResourceLevel to include delays in cooldowns on those additional sources.

5.3. Potions

Potions are a very important source for buffs in ESO. They have a cooldown of 45 seconds and restore a good amount of resources and grant major intellect or major endurance, giving you 20% more recovery for a maximum of 47.6 seconds. I am assuming that we use crafted potions as the give a lot more flat Magicka and a longer duration of major recovery bonuses. The formula for the sustain per second coming from potions is as follows:

Potion=(FlatRestorePot+Resourceful)/45+(BaseReco+SumFlatReco)*0.2

The calculator only uses the first term as the major intellect is factored in prior to the AddSustain section.

Resourceful is the argonian passive which gives 4620 of all resources now on CP 160 characters whenever you use a Potion. The Sustain per second for argonians is therefore

Resourceful=4620/45=103

This is a very potent passive that gives more than any recovery or cost reduction Bonus in most regular setups, as the Base Recovery needs to reach a certain level to give more than a 103 recovery. I will get to that in detail in the racial section.

5.4. Drain Magicka/Stamina Poisons

Poisons are a good sourced of additional sustain. Drain Magicka/Stamina Poisons last 5.5 seconds and restore 238 Magicka each second when they proc. They proc with a 20% chance on light and heavy attacks and weapon abilities, but NOT class abilities. The last 0.5 seconds are not counting, so effectively, the maximum uptime is 50%. The calculator assumes a 30% uptime which was the average of what I got on different setups and classes. You can modify the uptime to match yours individually.You can use any two ingredients that give restore magicka or stamina to get the full 5.5 second duration. A third ingredient will not have any effect on the poison.

5.5. Constitution Passive

This passive is from the heavy armor skill line. It was recently nerfed again to weaken Heavy Armor Sustain in PvP. It gives you 108 Magicka And Stamina per Heavy Armor Piece every 4 seconds whenever you take damage. On a 5/1/1 Setup you therefore get a 27 Stamina and Magicka per second from this if it procs on cooldown. In a dummy fight this obviously won’t help you at all. Formula is as follows:

Constitution=(108*HeavyPieces)/4

This is a major contributor to heavy armor sustain, but not enough to function as a full substitute for light and medium armor pieces, mainly due to the lacking cost reduction of skills.

Looking at an example:

Obviously, 7 light armor pieces give the best sustain, followed by 6 light and 1 heavy piece, 5 light 2 heavy and 5 light 1 medium 1 heavy. So we have a tradeoff between higher sustain with 7 light and higher damage through higher pools with 5/1/1. The other two setups are compromises in between that also work. This conclusion is exactly the same when looking at medium armor.

A 7 light/medium armor setup is more effective when you have a relatively high skill cost (AvCost) and a high flat recovery value. Here’s the difference between 7 light and 5/1/1 depending on AvCost and (BaseValueReco+SumFlatReco):

5.6. Heavy Attacks

A unique mechanic in ESO is that heavy attacks restore a flat amount of resources when successfully executed to the full duration. The six different weapons restore different amounts of resources, and while Dual Wield, Two-handed, Bow and One Handed & Shield restore stamina, destruction staffs and restoration staffs restore magicka. Here’s a table with the base resources restored of fully charged heavy attacks:

Dual Wield and One Handed & Shield take the least time to charge, while lightning staffs take the longest, since bows and inferno/ice staffs got their charge time sped up.

Since Morrowind, heavy attacks became a lot more frequent in combat, and they therefore make a good part of damage and rotations and can make the difference between a sustainable rotation and a draining one that runs out within 1 minute of fighting.

Those are the bonuses that all classes have access to, now we’re going to take a look at class-specific sustain sources in detail.

6. Sustain Options per Class

Every Class in ESO has a different way to sustain and different bonuses, favouring certain sets and skills in particular. I'm going to use examples of typical rotations on every class so we can see how high their skill cost usually is and whether there is any imbalance in sustain right now. We’re going to start with the Nightblades. At the end, I’m going to post a table with an overall comparison of passives and skills on different classes.

6.1. Nightblade

Nightblades are a high recovery class. Their skill cost is relatively cheap and with Strife and it’s morphs and surprise attack, they have good spammable skills for both stamina and magicka. They have a 15% recovery bonus on all three attributes, which makes recovery based builds more effective on them. Strife is the cheapest spammable skill in the game, enabling Magicka Nightblades to retain a good level of sustain through the morrowind changes.

6.1.1. Force Pulse vs. Funnel Health

This is going to become clear when looking at a nightblade example of Force Pulse versus Funnel Health:



This is an example nightblade rotation using force pulse as a spammable. When we now take a look at Funnel Health as a spammable:



You can see that Funnel Health is about 800 Magicka cheaper than Force Pulse. In terms of AvCost, it leads to 2567 for the Force Pulse Rotation and 2163 for the Funnel Health Rotation. That is 400+ Magicka per second we save just by using a different spammable skill.

6.1.2. Siphoning Attacks/Leeching Strikes

The second unique sustain aspect of nightblades is Siphoning Attacks/Leeching Strikes. The formula for the resource gain per second from siphoning attacks/leeching strikes is as follows:

SiphoReturn=((-InitialCost+SumFlatCost)*(1-Sum%Cost)+4290)/20+106*SkillSpeed

The initial cost and thus the net return depends on your cost reduction bonuses, so we need to include that in the equation. Initial cost for siphoning attacks is 1120, for leeching strikes it is 952. The return from light attacks depends on your weaving accuracy and can happen once per second, so we need to multiply it with sskillspeed. The return of this skill has been reduced a lot with Morrowind, so it’s interesting to see how much sustain it actually provides after the reduction. The following table shows the return of siphoning strikes on three different setups:

You see that the difference is nearly non-existent, because the initial cost is so low. This holds for stamina even more due to the lower initial cost. This is assuming a SkillSpeed variable of 1, so perfect weaving and an immediate activation after the final return. With a coefficient of 0.9, we have about 10 less net return.

6.1.3. Executioner

This passive returns 1876 Magicka over 6 seconds whenever you kill an enemy with an assassination ability. Therefore, using impale or the assassin’s will proc to kill enemies will restore 1876 Magicka over 6 seconds. This does not stack, so you can keep impaling enemies in a few seconds, but it will only refresh the 6 second duration return. So calculating the total return from this reliably is basically impossible, as it completely depends on the number of enemies killed. Also, the net return depends on the skill you used to kill the enemy. So I do not include this passive in the calculator. In solo play, this is a very important part, and it is the reason why you should use impale and the assassin’s will to kill enemies.

6.2. Templar

Templars have a 4% cost reduction on all abilities, including ultimates. They also have a relatively high skill cost in general, making them favour cost reduction more than nightblades. Here’s a typical magplar rotation and the AvCost of it.

You can see that a magplar has relatively high cost, especially when compared to a nightblade using funnel health. This gets offset a little by the cast time of 1.1 seconds from puncturing sweeps and biting jabs that slows down the weaving speed in general. Also, magplars often use dual wield and can’t restore resources on their main bar and can’t use drain magicka poisons.

6.2.1. Channeled Focus

Channeled Focus (Morph of Rune Focus) is a skill that grants you both Major Resistance Buffs and Restores 120 Magicka per 0.5 seconds for 18 seconds. To calculate the return per second we need to take into account the initial cost of 1080, which gets reduced by Cost Reduction bonuses just as siphoning attacks did:

Cfpersecond=(-1080+SumFlatCost)*(1-Sum%Cost)/26+120*2

You cane see here that as with siphoning attacks, the cost reduction barely affects the overall sustain bonus. Also, Siphoning Attacks gives about a 60-70 return per second more than channeled focus. This is again assuming a recast on expiration, so ideal conditions.

6.2.2. Repentance

This skill returns Stamina and Health for every dead body (in other terms, enemies killed) in a 28m radius. For a stamplar, this is a very strong tool to sustain, as they can recast this in trash mobs and sustain infinitely as long as you keep getting bodies to use, and a very useful tool in veteran maelstrom arena and add-heavy boss fights. With morrowind, this skill was changed to keep.the heal to allies, but the Stamina restoration is now restricted to the casting templar to make the skill not overpowered in endgame content. The negative side of it is that if you have another templar using this, may it be a healer or a stamplar, you most likely do not get any sustain in a lot of situations. The Stamina return from this skill is very hard to simulate. You can count the number of adds in a boss fight, use the usual duration of the fight and then calculate the stamina return by

Repentance1=2970*Bodies/Duration

So for example on a 240 second Rakkhat Fight with three Hulks, we get

Repentance1=2970*3/240=37,125

It also grants you minor endurance while slotted, so it is

Repentance2=2970*Bodies/Duration+(BaseReco+SumFlatReco)*0.1/2

On the same Rakkhat fight with one recovery glyph it is

Repentance2=37.13+(514+174)*0.05=37.13+34.4=71.53

This skill is largely depending on the number of adds that you have. Taking for example a Zhaj’Hassa fight with 14 Panthers and a 240 second duration, we have

Repentance2=2970*14/240+34.4=207,7

6.3. Sorcerer

Sorcerers have similar skill cost to templars, but they have a 5% cost reduction and a 10% magicka and 20% stamina recovery buff. So compared to templars, they have 1% more cost reduction and a recovery bonus that is even stronger than the 15% nightblade bonus on a stamina Sorcerer, but it is bound to the condition to have a certain skill line slotted. Let’s take a look at a classic force pulse sorcerer rotation:

The cost is comparable to a templar, but a sorcerer does not have a sustain skill without a cast time. Dark Deal/Conversion has a 1.2 second cast time and therefore takes out a good time of your rotation and a skill slot to use frequently within a fight. But Sorcerers have access to a third bar, through overload. So they can use more skills than other classes between fights and rounds.

6.3.1. Dark Deal/Dark Conversion

This skill exchanges either magicka for stamina on a stamina sorcerer (Dark Deal) or stamina for magicka on a magicka sorcerer (Dark Conversion). It gives 4696 magicka/stamina on cast, so to simulate it, we have

Dark1=4696*CastPerRotation/Duration

So if we cast it once every 20 seconds and our rotation is 10 seconds long, we get

Dark1=4696*0.5/10=234.8

As Dark deal doesn’t deal damage and sorcerers synergise greatly with heavy destruction staff attacks, we will take another look at them in the heavy attack section.

6.4. Dragonknight

Dragonknights have a lower skill cost than sorcerers, wardens and templars, higher skill costs than nightblades with funnel health and lower skill costs than nightblades with force pulse. They have more strong damage over time skills than all other classes, but they are cheaper than the other classes' DoTs.

The difference between then and other classes is that they do not have a recovery bonus or a cost reduction bonus, but they have different ways to sustain.

6.4.1. Battle Roar

Battle Roar is a passive that returns all three resources whenever you cast an ultimate, 46 per point of cost of the ultimate. So their sustain depends to a certain level on their ultimate generation. Their ultimate generation mostly ranks between 3 and 4 (depending on synergies used), so assuming an ultimate generation of 4, we get a resource gain per second of

Battle Roar=(46*CostofUltimate)/(CostofUltimate/UltiGen)

So using Standard of Might we have

BattleRoar=(46*250)/(250/4)

Simplified we get

BattleRoar=46*4=184

So BattleRoar=46*UltiGen

So the return from Battle Roar is always 46*UltiGen per second per resource when you cast the ultimate as soon as it’s ready. In many fights, timing ultimates right is an important aspect and you will not cast them when ready, so this will mostly be less than that.

The span of Battle Roar is usually between 128 and 184, depending on your ultimate generation.

6.4.2. Flame Lash

Flame Lash is a skill that turns into Power Lash, a much stronger version of whip against off-balance enemies and that is free to cast. Most trial groups are set up to have as much off-balance uptime through lightning damage and blockade of storms as possible. Let’s see how much cost we can spare when assuming a 100% off-balance uptime:



As Molten Whip was responsible for half our skill cost, using Flame Lash halves AvCost. So if you have a coordinated group providing you with off-balance, you can use flame lash to sustain. You can also use a lightning staff and a charged staff with a shock enchantment. I can sustain a regular target dummy without elemental drain by myself using that.

6.5. Warden

Wardens were introduced with the Morrowind expansion, and they have two sustain passives: one for 12% stamina and Magicka recovery when ab Animal Companion agility is slotted, and one that restores 250 Magicka or stamina whenever you heal an ally with a Green Balance Ability. The first one is comparably weak, as it is only 12% that also comes with a condition that forces you to have two abilities slotted to get the full benefit. The second one is very hard to predict, as it requires you to have a target to heal. Also depending on the skill used and the amount of healing ticks per second you dish out, the passive will become more effective. On top of those, wardens have the Betty Netch that gives a major spell or weapon damage buff and grants a flat amount of resources over 25 seconds. Let’s take a look at a typical Warden rotation:

You could squeeze out a little less cost of skill when you used one more cliffracer and ditched one scorch, but you will most likely want to use scorch at least twice as it has a higher tooltip in single target and is an AoE ability. The skill cost is higher on a Warden than on Dragonknights and Magicka Nightblades, but lower than on Sorcerers and templars. It is exactly in between those.

6.5.1. Betty Netch (Blue Betty/Bull Netch)

This skill returns 4099 Magicka or Stamina over 25 seconds and has 0 cost. So the per second calculation is fairly easy here:

Betty=4099/25=163,96

This is less than channeled focus and siphoning attacks, but it is unconditional as the netch can not die, follows you and can not be interrupted.

6.5.2. Nature’s Gift

This passive returns 250 Stamina or Magicka to the Warden whenever you heal yourself or an ally with a green balance ability. In a trial, this will help you a lot. Thus is not implemented in the calculator, as it requires to much input and is largely depending on the group and how many allies you heal with how many skills ticking per second. So if we wanted to predict the return of this passive, we’d have

NatureGift=250*(LivingTrellisTick*LTActive+Lotusblossom*SkillSpeed+SoothingSporesCastpersecond*SStargetshit+NatureEmbrace)

We’d also need to insert another IF-Conditional function to check whether the stamina or magicka is higher. So it’s very hard to predict. In trials, this is a very potent sustain tool (especially in combination with the warden’s healing ultimate), and in solo, it gives you back a good portion of skill cost when you keep taking damage.

6.6. Summary Tables of Classes

This section is aimed at providing a summary of the before mentioned findings as well as additional data examples.



The following table presents a detailed class comparison as it would occur on the calculator. I used dunmer to rule out dilution from racial passives which will be regarded in the next section. I activated all buffs and one recovery glyph to reach positive numbers on the NetResourceLevel numbers. The rotations used are the ones from the examples in the prior class paragraphs as they represent typical light attack rotations that would be used on the respective class.



Starting above with the average Base cost, we can see the average Base cost from highest to lowest, in descending order: Sorcerer, Templar (very close to each other), Warden, Dragonknight, Nightblade. To that Average Base cost, skill speed is applied to simulate the usual delay on global 1 second cooldowns. The flat and percentage cost reduction ate then reducing that value to determine the actual resource drain per second. This is the value you need to counter with recovery and flat resource return in order to have a fully sustainable rotation and build.



So when applying the respective cost reduction bonuses on top of the basic 18% (14% Light Armor + 4% Worm Cult), the overall drain per second is similarly high on wardens, templars and sorcerers, followed by dragonknights and nightblades as the lowest.

When looking at the resource gain from the recovery class passives and comparing them to the impact on cost reduction passives, it is visible that in a regular PvE build, recovery covers a similar part of sustain as cost reduction does, but buffs are affecting it a lot less, so in order to effectively maximise the recovery return, you need to stack a lot of buffs. This is due to the Base value being very low, and to achieve a higher Base value, you need to sacrifice a lot of damage. The maximum difference of sustain per second in the above table is observed between a nightblade and a templar/dragonknight with a value of 52. Of course this is based on a flat recovery value of 688. With more, the difference is going to increase. But even with 3 recovery glyphs we have a flat value of 1036=514+174*3, so the difference in sustain per second from recovery is 78 between a nightblade and a templar.

This leads us to a source of imbalance between wardens the classes: their skills are relatively expensive, but they do not have a cost reduction passive and the Betty Netch does not restore as much resources as channeled focus and siphoning attacks.

But overall, all classes seem to be in pretty balanced sustain field. Only Nightblades stand out due to the cheap Funnel Health.

7. Comparison of Racials and their Impact on Sustain

Another source of additional sustain (and damage) are racials. So you will have different sustain depending which rate you choose. But how much of an impact on sustain do racials actually have?

I’ll try to determine that in the following section by going through races that affect sustain and doing a comparison afterwards.

We basically have five categories of races giving sustain: Redguard, Argonian, Breton, Recovery Races and Races without a Bonus. Until the examples, I’m going to treat races in those categories and test the recovery Races individually afterwards.

7.1. Redguard

Redguards have strong passives for Stamina, with a 9% recovery, 10% additional Stamina and a flat Stamina restoration on inflicted melee damage. The 9% recovery is implemented in the Sum%Reco variable to additively increase your recovery. The flat restoration's maximum return can be calculated as

Redguard=792/5=158,4

This is just as strong as the warden’s Bull Netch, so this gives you quite a lot of Stamina sustain for free.

Useful for: Stamina Damage Dealers, Tanks

7.2. Argonian

Argonians have the resourceful passive, which grants you 4620 Stamina every 45 seconds when you drink a potion and 3% more maximum Magicka. So in order to assess the return, we can simply divide

Resourceful=4620/45=102.67

This is weaker than the redguard passive, but it affects all three resources.

Useful for: All Roles.

7.3. Breton

Bretons are the only race that gets a cost reduction, 3%. The Breton Passive only applies to Magicka Skills, so it doesn’t do anything for Stamina Specced Characters.

The effectiveness of the Breton Passive can be calculated as follows:

Breton=(AvCost-SumFlatCost)*0.03

Useful for: Healers, Tanks, Damage Dealers

7.4. Recovery Races

Recovery races are basically all that have a passive that boost recovery, namely Altmer (9% Magicka), Bosmer (21% Stamina), Khajiit (10% Stamina), and Redguard (9%). Redguard is a special example as it also has a flat restoration bonus.

Their effectiveness can be calculated by

RecoRace=(514+SumFlatReco)*RacialReco

With RacialReco being 0.09, 0.21, 0.10 and 0.09 for Altmer, Bosmer, Khajiit and Redguard, respectively.

Useful for: Damage Dealers, Healers

Now that we covered the Basic Sustain Passives from Races, I’m going to show tables of each racial sustain category so you see how much of a Difference it will make in practice.

7.5. Magicka Racial Sustain Comparison

When comparing the different racial categories, we see that Argonian gives the overall best sustain under the above conditions. The effectiveness of Breton is based on your drain, so as long as you have a certain drain level, you will get the most out of Breton and iif not, Argonian has the highest sustain. It is interesting to see where the break-even points between Argonians, Bretons and Altmers are.

To calculate the break-even point between Argonians and Bretons, we need to use the following formula, with X being your AvCost:

X*0.9*(1-0.21)=X*0.9*(1-0.18)+103 <=> X*0.79=X*0.82+103/0.9 <=> X*-0.03=114.4 <=> X=-3800

So you’d need a resource drain of 3800 (assuming SkillSpeed=0.9) to reach the same result on a Breton as on an Argonian. This is fairly unrealistic, so Argonian will most likely be the best race for sustain.

To calculate the break-even point between Argonians and Altmer, we need to use the following formula, with Y being your recovery:

103=X*0.09/2 <=> X=2289

So in order to make Altmer better than Argonian, you need a (BaseReco+SumFlatReco) of 2289 to equal the net return on sustain from Argonian on a per second basis.

There is no definite calculation method to determine the break-even point between Altmer and Breton, as both variables depend on different values that do not directly influence each other, AvCost and Skill Speed for Breton and (BaseReco+SumFlatReco) for Altmer. I will set Skillspeed to 0.85 for this example. The following graph shows the AvCost, and then the Recovery that is needed to break even with Breton as an Altmer Character.

7.6. Stamina Racial Sustain Comparison

To be included.



Feel free to post any constructive Feedback and help out if you discover errors or oversights. This is a work-in-progress thread and I will constantly update it.

To-do-List:

Include Food Buffs (even though they are easy to assess as they simpy, add in flat recovery)

Add the Net Imapct of Race and Class in the Calculator.

You can find the current version of the calculator free to download here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5rszf39l3mj6nlw/Sustain Analyser.xlsm?dl=0

Masel

Updated. Give it a read!

Minno

Thanks!

My quick notes:
- is there currently no way to add a line to tackle sets like Prisoners that converts Stam via sprint into Magicka? Or can there be a flex slot for sets like this one?
- finding skills is confusing. It appears to be grouped first by weapons then by classes. It would be cool to add a way to separate each by the class/weapon they belong to. Or make the skills alphabetical order.

Masel

Minno wrote: »

Thanks!

My quick notes:
- is there currently no way to add a line to tackle sets like Prisoners that converts Stam via sprint into Magicka? Or can there be a flex slot for sets like this one?
- finding skills is confusing. It appears to be grouped first by weapons then by classes. It would be cool to add a way to separate each by the class/weapon they belong to. Or make the skills alphabetical order.

Those issues are on my agenda, especially the skills are annoying me too, I will adjust their description to be classified as you said. Had that in mind already

I already added a row below the additional bonuses where you can enter any other additional flat bonuses like prisoners with the right formula. For prisoners you'd ofc just need to enter 1000.

Killset

Wow

Masel

I also have an example of why i think that the Sustain Reduction with Morrowind is way over the top:



This is a regular parse done on a Magicka Warden build that I use right now, BUT I used the Ghastly Eye Bowl drink to actually be able to sustain it without using any heavy attacks. You see that i have a 1891 Magicka Drain per second and get 1583 magicka back every second. As I was interested how that would've looked in Homestead and with only the Elemental Drain change and Light Armor change reverted, I simulated the setup in the calculator and adjusted the values in two columns so that they match the Homestead update.

Here are the results:



you see that even with about 2000 recovery, i can NOT sustain a full light attack rotation infinetely. I didnt have vampire leveled yet, so i lost 10% recovery, but it's pretty frustrating to stand in front of the dummy and sacrificing so much to actually be able to sustain a regular rotation. I dont have alchemy leveled yet so i only got an uptime of 57% on the major intellect.

In Homestead i wouldve had no sustain issues at all. My drain/regeneration wouldve been positive.

I have heavy attack builds around, as you might know, and I also like that playstyle because it's easy and still feels powerful. But it is still awful that i do mouch more damage with a simpler rotation without havin to care about sustain. Why would I cripple myself by using something more complex, just to net a lower or at least the same result. Now this does not hold for all classes of course, but for magicka, i found this to be the case.

So @ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_RichLambert , please consider at least reverting the light and medium armor changes and the reduction to elemental drain. It can't be that you have to use more than 2000 recovery to be able to sustain a rotation.

SanTii.92

This is simply amazing. Thank you very much for your work.

Masel

SanTii.92 wrote: »

This is simply amazing. Thank you very much for your work.

Thanks! It is still work in progress so it'll become better

Minno

Masel92 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Thanks!

My quick notes:
- is there currently no way to add a line to tackle sets like Prisoners that converts Stam via sprint into Magicka? Or can there be a flex slot for sets like this one?
- finding skills is confusing. It appears to be grouped first by weapons then by classes. It would be cool to add a way to separate each by the class/weapon they belong to. Or make the skills alphabetical order.

Those issues are on my agenda, especially the skills are annoying me too, I will adjust their description to be classified as you said. Had that in mind already

I already added a row below the additional bonuses where you can enter any other additional flat bonuses like prisoners with the right formula. For prisoners you'd ofc just need to enter 1000.

Thanks! Also, some of the macros don't work. I copied your file and tried to copy the mag class loadouts across the three examples (to test my Templar on the different scenarios using the same skill rotations) and after clicking the "copy across load outs" button it said something along the lines of "macros are not working....blah blah blah". I'll take a screenshot later on.

Otherwise very good calculator to test different Regen setups! Not entirely sure how accurate it is, but I was told to swap my Regen enchant for cost reduction and noticed better sustain which is what the calculator told me would happen.

Masel

Minno wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Thanks!

My quick notes:
- is there currently no way to add a line to tackle sets like Prisoners that converts Stam via sprint into Magicka? Or can there be a flex slot for sets like this one?
- finding skills is confusing. It appears to be grouped first by weapons then by classes. It would be cool to add a way to separate each by the class/weapon they belong to. Or make the skills alphabetical order.

Those issues are on my agenda, especially the skills are annoying me too, I will adjust their description to be classified as you said. Had that in mind already

I already added a row below the additional bonuses where you can enter any other additional flat bonuses like prisoners with the right formula. For prisoners you'd ofc just need to enter 1000.

Thanks! Also, some of the macros don't work. I copied your file and tried to copy the mag class loadouts across the three examples (to test my Templar on the different scenarios using the same skill rotations) and after clicking the "copy across load outs" button it said something along the lines of "macros are not working....blah blah blah". I'll take a screenshot later on.

Otherwise very good calculator to test different Regen setups! Not entirely sure how accurate it is, but I was told to swap my Regen enchant for cost reduction and noticed better sustain which is what the calculator told me would happen.

Did you activate macros before you started it?
Because for me they work fine


I did rotations (including heavy attack rotations) on all classes back on the pts to assess how accurate it is. Ofc you'll always have a certain standard deviation around your drain, but that's why I implemented the automatic skillspeed adjustment around your combat metrics drain. It was always around a 100 net drain/gain of the combat metrics value (as you can see above in the example I listed in the later comment). So if combat metrics is accurate, then the calculator also is

Minno

Masel92 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Thanks!

My quick notes:
- is there currently no way to add a line to tackle sets like Prisoners that converts Stam via sprint into Magicka? Or can there be a flex slot for sets like this one?
- finding skills is confusing. It appears to be grouped first by weapons then by classes. It would be cool to add a way to separate each by the class/weapon they belong to. Or make the skills alphabetical order.

Those issues are on my agenda, especially the skills are annoying me too, I will adjust their description to be classified as you said. Had that in mind already

I already added a row below the additional bonuses where you can enter any other additional flat bonuses like prisoners with the right formula. For prisoners you'd ofc just need to enter 1000.

Thanks! Also, some of the macros don't work. I copied your file and tried to copy the mag class loadouts across the three examples (to test my Templar on the different scenarios using the same skill rotations) and after clicking the "copy across load outs" button it said something along the lines of "macros are not working....blah blah blah". I'll take a screenshot later on.

Otherwise very good calculator to test different Regen setups! Not entirely sure how accurate it is, but I was told to swap my Regen enchant for cost reduction and noticed better sustain which is what the calculator told me would happen.

Did you activate macros before you started it?
Because for me they work fine


I did rotations (including heavy attack rotations) on all classes back on the pts to assess how accurate it is. Ofc you'll always have a certain standard deviation around your drain, but that's why I implemented the automatic skillspeed adjustment around your combat metrics drain. It was always around a 100 net drain/gain of the combat metrics value (as you can see above in the example I listed in the later comment). So if combat metrics is accurate, then the calculator also is

Yea that could work lol. I only use Excel to count light fixtures and trick rich people like Trump to buy expensive LED lighting (I'm not really an advanced user lol).

I'll also have to get my combat metric to work, for some reason it won't record my fights. I'll figure it out soon haha.

DPShiro

Masel92 wrote: »

Updated. Give it a read!

Very impressive and well done, really great work!

Musclemagic

Thanks for all this, it's what this thread is made for! Good job! Any idea the formula on Bash price? Reduced feat cost glyph is over-performing on it by a large amount.

Qbiken

Bookmarked. Another reason why Masel92 is my favourite theorycrafter in this game

Masel

Musclemagic wrote: »

Thanks for all this, it's what this thread is made for! Good job! Any idea the formula on Bash price? Reduced feat cost glyph is over-performing on it by a large amount.

For that you'd need to know the Base cost of Bashing and then apply cp reductions and glyphs on it. I plan to include dodge rolls, bashing, blocking etc in the guide. Some things such as the stamina restore on earthen heart skills are also still missing. But this is mostly a simulation of damage dealers and healers, as they tend to have more fixed rotations than tanks usually have.

Masel

Qbiken wrote: »

Bookmarked. Another reason why Masel92 is my favourite theorycrafter in this game

Thank you sir!

the_man_of_steal

This is fantastic work and highly in depth. I have not been able to analyze it thoroughly but I cannot wait to delve into it!

Thank you!

liviogc

thanks, great work.

I see that sorcerer has the worst turnaround in terms of resource management.

Muttsmutt

@Masel92
good stuff, thanks for sharing
don't mean to necro but, this is good, do you plan to update it further?

TazESO

Qbiken wrote: »

Bookmarked. Another reason why Masel92 is my favourite theorycrafter in this game

Agreed.

Masel

Muttsmutt wrote: »

@Masel92
good stuff, thanks for sharing
don't mean to necro but, this is good, do you plan to update it further?

Yes i do just have to find the time for it.

kaithuzar

Has this been updated for 2018/summerset?
Would love to see an update including infused reduce cost. Also how does Breton + light armor + alteration mastery scale?

Brutusmax1mus

Id like to see heavy armor passives for resources and it's impact on resto heavies, ulfnors favor, etc.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

any way to update this very informative post @Masel ? especally the high elf v breton part?

Masel

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

any way to update this very informative post @Masel ? especally the high elf v breton part?

Wouldnt really make sense when thinking about upcoming racial changes. Will do one in the Damage dealing guide once they go live