Magic/Stamina/Health

One_ofMany

What is all this about builds being one or the other and what difference does it make?

Beardimus

Depends what you want to achieve. Just here for fun, do what you want! Many people play hybrids and enjoy the game.

In general however you need to stack your primary resource Magika or Stamina on the whole. (some tank roles stack health)

People say hybrids don't work, but its all about requirement. And I argue all magika toons end up part hybrid in Cyro as you need more stamina, but Tri Pots / Food don't really qualify as hybrid.

VaranisArano

So in this game, your weapon damage scales from how much stamina you have. Your spell damage scales from how much magicka you have. How hard your spells/weapons hit depend on those max stats, and you can see whether those abilities cost magicka or stamina. A few abilities scale from max health, but not many.

There's a marked benefit to going (mostly) all magicka or all stamina. This usually depends on whether you want to use weapons or staffs and to a certain degree, what racial passives your character has. Some races have better passives for stamina and others for magicka. Race choice really doesn't make a huge difference outside of top tier DPS and somewhat in PVP, but it can make your life easier. Matching Race choice to preferred attribute makes likfe a little easier but isn't necessary. For example, I've got a Breton (magicka race) Stamina Sorceror who uses stamina and she does fine, but a Redguard (stamina race) stam sorcerer would be slightly easier to play and pull better DPS numbers in a top tier test.

All classes have a magicka and stamina version. If magicka, that character will take the morphs of class abilities that cost magicka and focus most or all of their attribute points into magicka. For weapons, they probably use a frost, fire, or lightning staff. Sometimes, you'll see them use One Hand and Shield for tanking or Dual Wield swords for extra damage from a passive.

If stamina, that character will take morphs of class abilities that cost stamina. There often aren't a lot of these and they'll all start off costing magicka, because stamina builds really weren't a thing when the game started but they been developing steadily.They'll use weapons like Bow, One Hand and Shield, Two-handed, and Dual Wield, and a lot of their skills will come from the weapons and less from class skills.

To give you an idea of some of the differences, let's look at the Dragonknight. Both Stam and Mag Dragonknights have a bunch of damage over time abilities, but they look very different. Magicka Dragonknights are all about FIRE! They've got fire strikes, fiery armor, fire breath, all of it. They'll benefit from anything that boosts fire damage such as elemental damage increases, fire damage increases, and inferno staffs. Stamina Dragonknights are all about poison, since several of their morphs change a fire ability to a poison ability. They've got poisoned weapons and poison breath. They'll benefit from anything that increases or uses poison damage (like several Bow abilities) as well as anything that buff their weapon damage, since they'll rely on weapon skills as well as class skills.

The exception to the "stack stamina or magicka" is the high health tank build. Now, your average tank has about 30-35k health, and does this with most of his/her attribute points in Stamina or Magicka. My magicka DK tank has her points in magicka and gets her health from her armor sets. But remember that a few abilities scale from max health? At truly high amounts of health, 65-75K health, those abilities get very interesting indeed - ZOS had to nerf Igneous Shields, a DK group shield ability because high health tanks were using it to give incredible shields to their group members. It takes certain gear set ups plus all attributes in health to get super high health numbers, but its not really worth it if you aren't trying for one of those builds.

Now, technically, you can play a hybrid where your attributes are split between stamina and magicka and you swap from stamina abilities to magicka when your attribute pool runs low. The problem with doing so is that none of your abilities will hit as hard as they could if you had stacked one way or the other. So if you want to really be effective, its much better to go all stamina so all your abilities hit hard or all magicka for the same. Hybrid options:

• The crafted set Pelinal's Aptitude makes your weapon and spell damage equal, so hybrid builds can use it to stack weapon damage (slightly easier to get) and get equal spell damage. The effectiveness of this really varies based on build, and its hard to make this ass effective as someone going all stamina or all magicka without using a 5-piece set bonus. Its still an option for someone who really wants to be a hybrid.
• Many of the new sets, dropped and crafted, are now giving both stamina and magicka set bonuses. Sets like Shacklebreaker give both weapon and spell damage, stam and mag recovery, and max stam/magicka.
• Food/Drink will allow you to boost certain stats. When I'm in Cyrodiil on my MagDK healer, I use a tri-food, a purple food that boosts all three stats. Even though my spell damage would be greater if I just ate food that gave me more magicka, I need the greater amount of stamina in order to be able to run, roll dodge, and block more effectively. This isn't really a hybrid, since I'm just adding a tiny bit of stamina, but its worth mentioning.

However, while these make hybrids more viable, they still aren't the most effective options. Its hard for a hybrid to match the damage output of a fully stamina or full magicka DPS who can afford to use all their gear sets for DPS. For example, on my MagDK tank, I accept that my stamina taunt hits like wet noodles in exchange for my magicka Burning Embers hitting much harder. On my Stam Sorcs, I accept that my magicka skills are weak in exchange for hitting like a truck with my stamina AOEs like hurricane. However, hybrids are more viable in roles that don't worry so much about DPS and can make for effective tanks and healers with much less difficulty.

I realize that's a really long post about the state of stamina, magicka and hybrids in the game and I probably missed something in there. Nevertheless, I hope it helps!

One_ofMany

TY