Is this a problem (skill related)

EpicRekkoning

I've always felt like there was a discrepancy in skills between magicka and stamina, but I never knew what that discrepancy looked like, so I decided to go through each skill for every class, guild, and skill trees to see how many magicka skills and stamina skills are in the game. I pulled this information from fextralife.

To define a few terms for this post, base skill refers to the unmorphed version of that skill. When I evaluated the total skills, I included both the base skills and the morphed skills. Magicka skills refer to skills that cost magicka to use, stamina skills refer to skills that cost stamina to use, and other skills refer to skills that are either free to cast or use health when casting. I broke down these skills per class, per guild, and for other skill categories. If you don't want to look at each group, I've included a summary at the end so you can see the total number of the skills.

Classes:
Templars
Base Magicka Skills: 15
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 40
Totals Stamina Skills: 4
Total Other Skills: 1

DK
Base Magicka Skills: 15
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 43
Totals Stamina Skills: 2
Total Other Skills: 0

NBs
Base Magicka Skills: 14
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 1

Total Magicka Skills: 36
Totals Stamina Skills: 6
Total Other Skills: 3

Sorcs
Base Magicka Skills: 14
Base Stamina Skills: 1
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 41
Totals Stamina Skills: 4
Total Other Skills: 0

Wardens
Base Magicka Skills: 14
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 1

Total Magicka Skills: 39
Totals Stamina Skills: 3
Total Other Skills: 3

Fighters Guild
Base Magicka Skills: 0
Base Stamina Skills: 4
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 0
Totals Stamina Skills: 12
Total Other Skills: 0

Mages Guild
Base Magicka Skills: 3
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 1

Total Magicka Skills: 9
Totals Stamina Skills: 0
Total Other Skills: 3

Undaunted
Base Magicka Skills: 3
Base Stamina Skills: 2
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 8
Totals Stamina Skills: 7
Total Other Skills: 0

Psijic Order
Base Magicka Skills: 3
Base Stamina Skills: 1
Base Other Skills: 1

Total Magicka Skills: 10
Totals Stamina Skills: 2
Total Other Skills: 3

Soul Magic
Base Magicka Skills: 1
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 3
Totals Stamina Skills: 0
Total Other Skills: 0

Vampire
Base Magicka Skills: 2
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 6
Totals Stamina Skills: 0
Total Other Skills: 0

Werewolf
Base Magicka Skills: 1
Base Stamina Skills: 4
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 3
Totals Stamina Skills: 12
Total Other Skills: 0

Assault
Base Magicka Skills: 1
Base Stamina Skills: 3
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 3
Totals Stamina Skills: 9
Total Other Skills: 0

Support
Base Magicka Skills: 3
Base Stamina Skills: 1
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 9
Totals Stamina Skills: 3
Total Other Skills: 0

Armor
Base Magicka Skills: 1
Base Stamina Skills: 2
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 3
Totals Stamina Skills: 6
Total Other Skills: 0

2 handed
Base Magicka Skills: 0
Base Stamina Skills: 5
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 0
Totals Stamina Skills: 15
Total Other Skills: 0

Sword and Board
Base Magicka Skills: 0
Base Stamina Skills: 5
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 0
Totals Stamina Skills: 15
Total Other Skills: 0

Dual Wield
Base Magicka Skills: 0
Base Stamina Skills: 5
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 0
Totals Stamina Skills: 15
Total Other Skills: 0

Bow
Base Magicka Skills: 0
Base Stamina Skills: 5
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 0
Totals Stamina Skills: 15
Total Other Skills: 0

Destruction Staff
Base Magicka Skills: 4
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 1

Total Magicka Skills: 12
Totals Stamina Skills: 0
Total Other Skills: 3

Restoration Staff
Base Magicka Skills: 5
Base Stamina Skills: 0
Base Other Skills: 0

Total Magicka Skills: 15
Totals Stamina Skills: 0
Total Other Skills: 0

Summary
Total Base Skills: 142
Total Base Magicka Skills: 99 (~70%)
Total Base Stamina Skills: 38 (~27%)
Total Base Other Skills: 5 (~3%)

Total Skills: 426
Total Magicka Skills: 280 (~66%)
Total Stamina Skills: 130 (~31%)
Total Other Skills: 16 (~4%)

Total Class Base Skills: 75
Total Class Base Magicka Skills: 72 (96%)
Total Class Base Stamina Skills: 1 (~1%)
Total Class Base Other Skills: 2 (~3%)

Total Class Skills: 225
Total Class Magicka Skills: 199 (~88%)
Total Class Stamina Skills: 19 (~8%)
Total Class Other Skills: 7 (~3%)

My Conclusions:
The Good:
The Fighters/Mages Guilds, Vampire/Werewolf, Assault/Support, Undaunted, and Psijic skill lines seem to be well balanced with Magicka and Stamina Skill.

The Bad:
The overall ratio of Magicka to Stamina skills is 2:1. There are twice the number of stamina weapons than magicka. If you remove the weapons from the calculations, the ratio increase to 4:1. This shows an unequal distribution of magicka to stamina skills in this game.

The Ugly:
All classes are HEAVILY weighted towards magicka, in fact, one can argue that all ESO classes are inherently Magicka based. Out of the 75 total class base skills, only 3 were NOT magicka; one was stam (dark exchange - sorc, which is a skill to benefit magicka users), one used health (malevolent offering - NB), and one was free to cast (Betty natch- Warden). Given there is twice the number of stam weapons as magicka, I think it would be reasonable if the classes had a 3 or 4:1 ratio of magicka:stamina skills.  However, that is not the case and in fact, the magicka:stamina ratio for class skills is 10.5:1. This supports the common notion that stam classes rely heavily on weapon skills and no class has a real stam identity.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I'm really curious on your feedback and whether or not you feel the current magicka:stamina skill ratios are okay. I would also be curious on what our class reps think of the class ratios.

Thanks and happy hunting!

zvavi

No, the distribution is fine

Man
1. It makes sense that stamina builds rely more on weapon abilities.
2. There are more weapon choices for stamina than for magicka, therefore the skills available for a specific class are more or less balanced.

I mean, yes, I would like more class skills that are stamina. I would enjoy them. But such a thing should be allowed only after we get a weapon to use which is not a staff. (Probably spell sword, which requires you to equip 1 handed and has a passive that it counts as two pieces).

Gilvoth

this isnt our job to remake and redesign eso.
leave this stuff to the developers and lets go play eso.

EpicRekkoning

Yes, but the game is pretty balanced as is

Gilvoth wrote: »

this isnt our job to remake and redesign eso.
leave this stuff to the developers and lets go play eso.

Please don't take this poll the wrong way. I approached this out of curiosity. I've played this game since console release and I've never actually looked at the number of magicka and stam skills. I wasn't initially going to post this, but when I saw the actual numbers, I was surprised and thought it should be shared. I do have an opinion and shared that, but I'm really curious how the rest of the community feels.

The problem with the comment about leaving the game to the devs is that the devs need our feedback on performance. This is why they have public test servers for new content and have class reps. They need to know what the customer thinks so they can adapt the game for the customers. It's the same reason companies do focus groups or surveys. They want to see what the customer thinks and get the customers perspective on their product.