Does damage scaling off max stats doom hybrid builds?

StarOfElyon

Playing an Altmer magplar "Spellsword", I feel the need to boost stamina to survive the CCs. But I can't find a solution to boosting stamina that doesn't doesn't cause the spell damage to drop with max magicka.

It got me thinking about true hybrid builds and why they don't appear to be used much. Does damage scaling with max stats doom hybrid builds?

I think the Dunmer will make great bases for hybrid builds going forward. Maybe Necromancers will be the perfect hybrid class. But are they still doomed unless they stack with a heavy bias into either magicka or stamina due to the way damage scales?

Skelfish

*Weapon* damage scaling is one of the biggest issues holding back hybrid builds. If swords were to scale off either weapon or spell damage (whichever is higher) instead of just weapon damage then you'd see a return of hybrids for sure. As it stands, light attacks are also much stronger than they were before and are a large source of damage, which widens the hybrid divide.

As far as your particular stamina needs are concerned, CP allocation in the Warlord and Shadow Ward will significantly reduce the amount of stamina you'll spend to block and Break Free. If you haven't already I would recommend taking another look at the Tower and the Shadow CP stars.

StarOfElyon

Right now, I'm stacking a lot into warlord and befoul. It doesn't do much in BG though.

SammyFable

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Right now, I'm stacking a lot into warlord and befoul. It doesn't do much in BG though.

BGs are no CP, that's why.

Turelus

I've always felt it's a contributing factor personally.

Although I dislike that max stat give more damage any way. I am in that camp that thinks stats should be for resource pools and damage stats should be for damage.

DeadlyRecluse

Doom? No.

Heavily disadvantage? Yeah.

NBrookus

Tri-stat glyphs and tri-une jewelry traits give more raw stats compared to their single stat equivalents. But generally yes, you will have to give something up to shuffle stats around.

Arkangeloski

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Right now, I'm stacking a lot into warlord and befoul. It doesn't do much in BG though.

U mean it does 0 on bg's

Raammzzaa

From a purely min/max standpoint, hybrid builds will generally be at a disadvantage. You can still play them and have fun - many do.

Recently, Krotha (streamer) has been running a hybrid DK that looks pretty effective.

StarOfElyon

Arkangeloski wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Right now, I'm stacking a lot into warlord and befoul. It doesn't do much in BG though.

U mean it does 0 on bg's

Yes, I assumed people would interpret it that way.

validifyedneb18_ESO

No, 5set armor bonuses doom hybrids.

GrumpyDuckling

Turelus wrote: »

I've always felt it's a contributing factor personally.

Although I dislike that max stat give more damage any way. I am in that camp that thinks stats should be for resource pools and damage stats should be for damage.

Unfortunately I could only click the "agree" button once. It would make me very happy if resource pools were only for resources.

Krayl

What should it scale off of that wouldn't doom hybrids that also wouldn't be game-breaking? Because having all skills just scale off of "max resource" for example would be game breaking.

StarOfElyon

Krayl wrote: »

What should it scale off of that wouldn't doom hybrids that also wouldn't be game-breaking? Because having all skills just scale off of "max resource" for example would be game breaking.

It's possible to give weapons and spells fixed values that don't scale at all. What enchantments you wear and the grade of your weapons could affect the damage output instead. Spells that don't require weapons could be buffed to keep up with the weapon spell damage.

That way, people could allocate attributes based on what they actually use and how they want to play without feeling like they're handicapping themselves.

Liww

i've thought about this before but what if 48 attribute points would scale the same as 64 would. in turn we could invest 16 points into another attribute, which would still retain 33% of it's power/scaling.

going 32/32 would result in 66% bonus in both attribute trees, which is atleast better then 50/50! Hybrids cant be too strong, the hybrids power should lie in its extensive utility.

Taloros

Turelus wrote: »

I've always felt it's a contributing factor personally.

Although I dislike that max stat give more damage any way. I am in that camp that thinks stats should be for resource pools and damage stats should be for damage.

This.

Dagoth_Rac

I think scaling off max stats is a factor in hybrid builds, but just the tip of the iceberg. Max stamina/magicka, weapon damage/spell damage, weapon critical percentage/spell critical percentage, weapon critical damage multiplier/spell critical damage multiplier, stamina recovery/magicka recovery, armor penetration/spell penetration. There are probably a dozen different stats in the game where going hybrid will make you mediocre at both and good at neither.

That is kind of the point of hybrid builds, though. They are good at everything and great at nothing. But difficult content is never balanced around being good. The only way hybrid builds would work in difficult content is if they were great at everything. If that became the case, though, why would anyone play anything but a hybrid build? And then players are just as pigeon-holed into certain builds as they are now, maybe even more so.

The limited weapon choices and skill slots in ESO also favor min/max builds. In another game, a hybrid build might be able to stack 12 different good DoTs on a boss, which might be just as effective, if not better, than the 3 or 4 great DoTs that a min/max build applies. But with limited bar space, you really can't mess around with anything but your hardest-hitting skills. And you need to make those handful of skills hit as hard as possible.

tl; dr = There are many, many places in ESO that disfavor hybrid builds, not just max stamina/magicka. You would practically need to rebuild the game from the ground up to make hybrid builds effective in endgame content.

StarOfElyon

If ZOS is making the Dunmer into a perfect fit for a hybrid build, I'm guessing they have to be aware that the game isn't built for hybrids. So I can't help but think they are cooking something up to remedy it.

Seraphayel

I don't even know why we have builds/skills scaling if max stat pools.

It would be so much easier if skills scaled always with your highest stat pools - would remove the necessity of Stamina/Magicka morphs for skills.

And the focus on weapon/spell damage would be better overall. Or just combine Weapon + Spell damage and Weapon + Spell Crit into "Damage" and "Crit" to enforce hybrid builds.

Gorrest

Way back in the time machine, pre 1.5 era Hybrids were actually pretty common mainly because of how weapon skill lines and class skill lines were calutated.

Back then, all weapon skill lines were scaled with Max Stam/Weapon Damage/Weapon Crit. So stuff like Crushing Shock scaled with Max Stam/Weapon Damage/Weapon Crit. Then tie in that there were soft caps, so you usually had alot of extra points that would be been wasted people would dump into Stam and others would've slotted Evil Hunter for damage procs and that weapon damage %increase and %weapon crit would increase your Destro/Restro damage/healing.

The only way for Hybrids to be viable would be soft caps so people wouldnt be able to stack into one damage type without consequences.

Chilly-McFreeze

StarOfElyon wrote: »

If ZOS is making the Dunmer into a perfect fit for a hybrid build, I'm guessing they have to be aware that the game isn't built for hybrids. So I can't help but think they are cooking something up to remedy it.

Could be, I hope so but I also doubt it. Probably, and with their stated intentions in mind also obviously, they aren't turning Dunmers into Hybrids and Hybrids into a viable spec but rather stop forcing certain races into specific resources.

Now your Dunmer is equally bad/good for mag and stam and not superior for mag but inferior for stam (compared to itself). Doesn't mean they shake up the whole build system along with it. They just grant you a little more freedom of choice as far as either/or goes.


But OT, really viable endgame hybrids need more than just a change to max stat damage. It's already mentioned that even if you take max stats out of the formula, you'd still have to split so many other stats. And with the very "basic" resistance design + bar space limitations it also wouldn't make much sense to invest into a broad arsenal of different but a tad weaker offensive elements (physical, fire, lightning etc.) to be prepared for more than a true build could be. I never was a hardcore raider but as far as I know there's little to no occurances where an NPC is weaker to one dmg type than another anyway. Only thing this could be an advantage is in PvP but even then pen/res ratio is far more basic and important than mixing physical dmg with element X.

The mentioned "extensive utility" more often than not comes from buffs/debuffs anyway and those don't scale on max stats. Your personal utility comes from mag most of the time anyway, no matter what resource you use offensively.

Tl;dr: Offensive utility, as mentioned just above, fizzles out bc of secondary stats (crit chance/modifier, etc), especially through penetration and the resistance system that mainly knows physical and magical. Elemental weakness or resistance are, except for vamps and stat immunity via racials, negliable.

So what gives?

Uryel

Turelus wrote: »

Although I dislike that max stat give more damage any way. I am in that camp that thinks stats should be for resource pools and damage stats should be for damage.

Indeed. Would even be ALOT better if we removed the distinction between stamina and magicka entirely. Have one ressource pool called "energy", and suddenly every skill and morph becomes valid for everyone.

Instead of HP, Stamina and Magicka, we could have eitherHP and energy, or even better, HP, energy, efficiency. The "efficiency" stat would increase, well... Efficiency of skills. That stat would govern what is currently associated to ressource pool size, namely the "if you have more, you deal more damage or heal for more".

Energt would allow you to cast skills more often. Efficiency would make each cast more significant. However you mix them is then up to you. Would you rather have the ability to cast often and sustain esily, or would you rather have high magnitude effects ? A mix of both, maybe ?

Bu hey, I'm no fool, we'll never see that for real.

LordTareq

Best you can do atm hybrid-wise is focus on 1 stat, then get shacklebreaker, 3-stat glyphs and use the food that gives health, stamina and magicka. That way your lesser stat will get buffed without much cost for your main stat. For skills focus mostly on the skills that scale of your main stat, but add 1 or 2 skills per bar that use the other stat but preferably don't scale of stats or are more about utility rather than damage

For my stamina focused 'hybrid' melee night blade for example those skills can be cloak, the AOE fear, shadow image and lotus fan (lotus fan does do less damage than the stamina morph, but I find the AOE snare more important than the damage in pvp). Using some magicka-cost abilities helps take the pressure off stamina, meaning you could potentially focus less on stamina generation which partially compensates the loss of main stat damage..

If melee, the other way round is more annoying since your light/heavy attacks will suck when focusing on magicka. I tried a 'spellsword' type character but never felt happy with it.