Hard CCs, Break Free, and Sprint – Why managing these three mechanics are paramount for balance

fred4

To the OP: Oh my, what a long post. I only had time to read half of it right now - and so many thoughts on that first half - I only want to talk about the hard CC. I broadly agree with your premise that mechanics which doom you to die a few seconds later are bad. If you feel you can only put down the controller, because you are already doomed, that's bad.

I am generally a fan of fast-paced, reactive gameplay. You should always have a move in hand, that you can at least try, until the very last second. Unfortunately ZOS disagree. There are proactive gameplay elements that they have very much doubled-down on, for example with the Morrowind sustain nerfs.

It seems you are having issues with your magicka-based characters. I can understand that, because I started out with a stamina character and was shocked when I switched to magicka in PvP. These days I virtually only play magicka, though.

My first tip would be to take stamina sustain seriously. You really have to plan for it. You can't go into PvP with 10K stamina and base sustain. That's what leads to your problems. I find your discussion about what skills are too strong based on the length of the CC quite irrelevant. If you can't break free in this game every 7 seconds, you are rightfully doomed, because you didn't build correctly. Unless maybe you are a shield-stacking sorc, or a tank, able to wait it out.

Gap closers with CCs tend to be weak skills. As the attacker you want the CC on a burst skill, such as Dizzying. You don't want to give away CC immunity with your gap closer, unless you have somehow found a combo where that works. I don't find that I am commonly attacked with such combos.

Let's go over some tips on how I and others deal with CC on magicka characters:

(1) Stamina sustain via gear. I am not a fan of outright speccing into that with jewelry or mundus, but sets like Shacklebreaker, Amber Plasm and Blood Spawn give you a lot of overall stats and utility, including stamina sustain. The general problem I have with this approach is that, short of wearing all 3, I don't find it enough to really become free of stamina issues. Things change for the better with heavy armor passives, but who wants to wear heavy on a magicka character .

(2) Stamina sustain via drinks. This is the solution I use on my melee magblade and I absolutely love it. With NB passives Fisheye Rye yields 1.3K stamina sustain, enough for break free and throwing in some dodge rolls. The combination with cloak makes it possible on NB. On other classes I would be more conservative with dodge rolls.

(3) Stamina sustain via skills. Everyone: Use the magicka morphs of your skills, right? WRONG! Bull Netch, Leeching Strikes, Restoring Focus, Dark Deal (although the sorcs I know prefer Conversion), DK Earthen Heart skills and ultimates. The benefit of these skills is that they continue to yield stamina while blocking or sprinting. Believe me, it's great. I use the Bull Netch on my magden and Amber Plasm + Restoring Focus on my magplar. Forget the Betty Netch purge, Bull is so much better.

(4) Deep Thoughts. Better yet, google the Phalanx magplar build and find out how to get stamina via Deep Thoughts, followed by a free cast of Mist Form, by wearing Cyrodiil's Light. Which leads us to:

(5) Being a vampire. Passive sustain increase and Elusive Mist.

(6) If you are not a vampire, then Race Against Time is a strong contender for inclusion in every magicka PvP build.

(7) Potions. Either tri-pots or Immovability + Detection + Magicka pots. That's about all I use on magicka PvP characters.

(8) Escapist's Poison or return stamina enchants. Will ease your overall stamina requirements, while locking others down with the poison.

(9) Monster sets. Engine Guardian and others. Domihaus, if using single pieces.

(10) Tri-stat gear enchants. Essential when using double-regen drinks, to get your stamina to at least 12.5K in CP. In no CP you may need more. Triune jewelry is also an option (albeit my personal preferences have been Swift and Protective).

(11) If you're not going the drink route, then tri-food or possibly Spring Loaded Infusion to combine with Bright Throat's.

(12) If you are a beginner or a tank: Reactive Armor.

These are examples. I've probably omitted a lot of stuff. Point is, you have to have a plan to manage your stamina. You should never be caught not being able to break free. As an experienced magicka player that just doesn't happen, because you can only be hard CCd every 6 or 7 seconds (I forget exactly). You use RAT for roots and snares and keep your dodge rolls in check. You shade, cloak, streak, heal or shield for defense. Your blocking and dodge rolls must be selective. The fact that you even mention the length of CCs, other than in the context of lag, tells me you are a magicka noob or your've just never come to grips with magicka playstyles and builds.

Rake

Major_Lag wrote: »

Rake wrote: »

what

What "what"? In solo/smallscale PvP, the player is expected to constantly CC break on cooldown and/or be using abilities which provide CC immunity.

Every competent player builds around that requirement - if you don't then you are just a potato, plain and simple.

U said ppl who know to pvp are cc immune 100% of time
Unless speedpot glyph argonian that aint the case.
Or u wanna present viable build that has 100% cc immunity

Trancestor

dude learning to play or getting a proper build would've probably been faster than writing all that bs.
100% l2p/build issue.

Taleof2Cities

Trancestor wrote: »

dude learning to play or getting a proper build would've probably been faster than writing all that bs.
100% l2p/build issue.

Though the delivery of this post is a little abrasive, it is factually sound.

Bullseyebudx

Trancestor wrote: »

dude learning to play or getting a proper build would've probably been faster than writing all that bs.
100% l2p/build issue.

Because these’s no possible reason to make a post if it’s not complaining about not knowing how to make a build or play.

Jesus Christ.

FYI anyone that hasn’t already figured it out yet I don’t still run into these issues, I changed how I play Magicka characters in pvp long before I made this post.

Must be a L2read issue.

idk

Bullseyebudx wrote: »

This has probably happened to everyone at some point. You get CC’d for a few seconds, which means you literally can’t do anything for the duration of the stun if you can’t break free.

Besides the OP being far to long and overly wordy I stopped skimming when I reached the paragraph with this sentence. Six paragraphs before even trying to get to the point.

But for that sentence above. OP gives no reasoning why they cannot break free and as such the rest of that point is without merit. They could have a bad build or are still learning combat in ESO and neither are justifications for changing how the game is played.

One other sentence popped out, OP suggest making break free cost nothing. With that you might as well just remove CCs altogether as they would be pointless with anyone other than a really poorly skilled players.

idk

aaisoaho wrote: »

You are correct with the statement "not being able to play is worse than losing" and it is the reason why there needs to be counterplay to hard CCs - and we do have in ESO: CC immunity (immovable buff[?]).

You get the immovable buff from ending of hard CC (either the CC timer runs out or you break free), from some skills or from potions. CC immunity lasts 6 seconds if I recall correctly, which means you have 6 second window where you can't be hard CCd and which means you can play and control your character in fights. Also, many skills have counterplay, be it blocking, dodging or movement (Getting out of line of sight or getting out of AoE, do keep in mind the location where you fight).

By forcing the opponent to break free, you are buring either their off-resource (magicka players) or their primary resource (stamina players). In the case of primary resource it means they have less resources to cast their skills and if the stamina player is constantly blocking, dodging, running and breaking free it means they have no resources to deal damage, cast vigor etc. they are not pressuring you at that point. If a magicka player is blocking, dodging, running and breaking free, the player can still use their primary resource to fight back and cast their skills.

As a stamina player, I rarely use sprint. This is because I need the main resource to fight. If I use 50% of my stamina pool to run, I have a lot less stamina to fight and for such, engaging in a fight starts with a setting where I already need to regen to be able to sustain a longer fight.

This.

We get CC immunity when we break free but we are also able to get immovable buff via potions and maybe more. However I really have to say kudos on pointing out it is wise to not waste stamina frivolously.

I would add that if one is running out of stamina breaking free/blocking they could use tri-stat food to buff their stam pools. However, there is probably more counter play they can do such as move, CC the attacker back. As one that has spent more hours in PvP on a magicka character I have not had the issues OP seems to be having. A review of their build and playstyle might help.

Major_Lag

Rake wrote: »

U said ppl who know to pvp are cc immune 100% of time
Unless speedpot glyph argonian that aint the case.
Or u wanna present viable build that has 100% cc immunity

It was more feasible before the Immovable (skill) change, when you could still actually move at full speed while using it.
I have no idea how they were doing it exactly, but I ran into several non-CC-able players back then, mostly stamDKs, none of whom were Argonian.
To clarify: by "non-CC-able" I mean that it was impossible to CC them for more than about one second at best, unless you somehow managed to drain all their stamina first.

My magDK friend, who as of late was frequently at or near the top of scoreboard on PC-EU Kaal, relied heavily on RAT for mobility. I did not inquire about the details of it further, because solo/smallscale play is quite a bit more than what I can comfortably handle anyway.

Bullseyebudx

fred4 wrote: »

To the OP: Oh my, what a long post. I only had time to read half of it right now - and so many thoughts on that first half - I only want to talk about the hard CC. I broadly agree with your premise that mechanics which doom you to die a few seconds later are bad. If you feel you can only put down the controller, because you are already doomed, that's bad.

I am generally a fan of fast-paced, reactive gameplay. You should always have a move in hand, that you can at least try, until the very last second. Unfortunately ZOS disagree. There are proactive gameplay elements that they have very much doubled-down on, for example with the Morrowind sustain nerfs.

It seems you are having issues with your magicka-based characters. I can understand that, because I started out with a stamina character and was shocked when I switched to magicka in PvP. These days I virtually only play magicka, though.

My first tip would be to take stamina sustain seriously. You really have to plan for it. You can't go into PvP with 10K stamina and base sustain. That's what leads to your problems. I find your discussion about what skills are too strong based on the length of the CC quite irrelevant. If you can't break free in this game every 7 seconds, you are rightfully doomed, because you didn't build correctly. Unless maybe you are a shield-stacking sorc, or a tank, able to wait it out.

Gap closers with CCs tend to be weak skills. As the attacker you want the CC on a burst skill, such as Dizzying. You don't want to give away CC immunity with your gap closer, unless you have somehow found a combo where that works. I don't find that I am commonly attacked with such combos.

Let's go over some tips on how I and others deal with CC on magicka characters:

(1) Stamina sustain via gear. I am not a fan of outright speccing into that with jewelry or mundus, but sets like Shacklebreaker, Amber Plasm and Blood Spawn give you a lot of overall stats and utility, including stamina sustain. The general problem I have with this approach is that, short of wearing all 3, I don't find it enough to really become free of stamina issues. Things change for the better with heavy armor passives, but who wants to wear heavy on a magicka character .

(2) Stamina sustain via drinks. This is the solution I use on my melee magblade and I absolutely love it. With NB passives Fisheye Rye yields 1.3K stamina sustain, enough for break free and throwing in some dodge rolls. The combination with cloak makes it possible on NB. On other classes I would be more conservative with dodge rolls.

(3) Stamina sustain via skills. Everyone: Use the magicka morphs of your skills, right? WRONG! Bull Netch, Leeching Strikes, Restoring Focus, Dark Deal (although the sorcs I know prefer Conversion), DK Earthen Heart skills and ultimates. The benefit of these skills is that they continue to yield stamina while blocking or sprinting. Believe me, it's great. I use the Bull Netch on my magden and Amber Plasm + Restoring Focus on my magplar. Forget the Betty Netch purge, Bull is so much better.

(4) Deep Thoughts. Better yet, google the Phalanx magplar build and find out how to get stamina via Deep Thoughts, followed by a free cast of Mist Form, by wearing Cyrodiil's Light. Which leads us to:

(5) Being a vampire. Passive sustain increase and Elusive Mist.

(6) If you are not a vampire, then Race Against Time is a strong contender for inclusion in every magicka PvP build.

(7) Potions. Either tri-pots or Immovability + Detection + Magicka pots. That's about all I use on magicka PvP characters.

(8) Escapist's Poison or return stamina enchants. Will ease your overall stamina requirements, while locking others down with the poison.

(9) Monster sets. Engine Guardian and others. Domihaus, if using single pieces.

(10) Tri-stat gear enchants. Essential when using double-regen drinks, to get your stamina to at least 12.5K in CP. In no CP you may need more. Triune jewelry is also an option (albeit my personal preferences have been Swift and Protective).

(11) If you're not going the drink route, then tri-food or possibly Spring Loaded Infusion to combine with Bright Throat's.

(12) If you are a beginner or a tank: Reactive Armor.

These are examples. I've probably omitted a lot of stuff. Point is, you have to have a plan to manage your stamina. You should never be caught not being able to break free. As an experienced magicka player that just doesn't happen, because you can only be hard CCd every 6 or 7 seconds (I forget exactly). You use RAT for roots and snares and keep your dodge rolls in check. You shade, cloak, streak, heal or shield for defense. Your blocking and dodge rolls must be selective. The fact that you even mention the length of CCs, other than in the context of lag, tells me you are a magicka noob or your've just never come to grips with magicka playstyles and builds.

Sorry I know it’s long, I gave fair warning and there’s even a knuckle dragging ape version for those that need it.

Honestly I suspect I’ll have an easier time even more so once I max out a stamina character and play that. Still enjoying magnecro though and want to play with it U23, so not sure when or which stamina class I’m going to try out.

I really never ran into many issues with stamina on my magblade to be honest, dark elf, so never took it seriously like you’ve mentioned.

Honestly I just figured I didn’t run into stamina issues because I’d either burst down players so fast I’d never have to worry about stamina expect running to the next victim or getting bursted down myself in which case a big stamina pool also isn’t that needed.

When I started playing magnecro with like base stamina I was like wtf is going on, so I switch over to tri stat food and that solved most of the issues.

I want tri stat food with stamina regeneration, or magic regeneration, health regeneration is nice but... I’m considering stamina regeneration glyphs on a Magicka character, which just seems crazy to be honest.

I really like your suggestion about using the alternative stat restore skill, I thought about it on my magblade but it just didn’t seem so valuable at the time. On magnecro I’m sure it’ll be nice once the regeneration is actually free, minus a corpse.

Why don’t you want to give the CC immunity away early? Don’t you want to maximize resource drain over time if the battle goes long?

If how long the CC lasts is irrelevant then why is it in the game? It should be removed.

I run into issues most frequently in no CP tbh.

I stayed away from being a vampire this time around, I might try it again though, but fire damage is real, and undying doesn’t save you from a burst stack of damage, so ehh. My survivability on magnecro is pretty high though so it could be a benefit, especially for those looooonnnngggg drawn out battles.

fred4

So, a couple of things:

Regards taking stamina sustain seriously on magblade: If you strictly limit yourself to ganking and bombing, then I guess you don't have to do that. You quaff your Immovability potion and aim to be back in cloak by the time it runs out. That gets a little boring. I like being able to stay in prolonged duels and brawls, without them deteriorating into a series of ganks. I never fully achieved that with my open world build, but stamina sustain helps. It's a question of fun. I like the dodge rolling medium armor (stamblade) style. Ramping stamina regen to 1.3K with dual-regen food gets you close to that. If I wasn't doing that, I'd probably wear something like Buffer of the Swift and use the Shade and Merciless to become tankier, but I find dodge rolling more fun and more effective in outnumbered situations.

"Why don’t you want to give the CC immunity away early? Don’t you want to maximize resource drain over time if the battle goes long?"

I want chances to burst people with a combo. Fossilize them into a Meteor combo. Stun them when Purifying Light is about to pop. Fear them into Assassin's Will. Stun them with Concealed from Cloak into a Caluurion proc, and so on. I'd rather have my gap closer and stun as separate skills. Yes, if it's a sorc who shields, shields, shields, then you might want to relentlessly attack their stamina and you are correct, but it depends.

"If how long the CC lasts is irrelevant then why is it in the game? It should be removed."

Well, it is relevant in the second case, e.g. for when you are trying to run down someone's stamina in a prolonged fight. It's one way the fight will end. In practice I don't find that happens much in an open world 1v1 between experienced players, at least not in CP.

"I run into issues most frequently in no CP tbh."

Yes, very much so. I mostly play in CP. In no CP you almost want more stamina than in CP, because the break free cost is so high, yet you get less. This tends to push you towards foods or at least something like Shacklebreaker. I find a higher stamina pool almost more important than the regen, e.g. prefer Shackle to Amber Plasm. On my NB, with the high regen from dual food and cloak, I can get away with an 11K pool, but it's a bit risky. I don't play no CP all that often. Deep Thoughts is a good option for NB, but tends to result in a very cloak / ganky playstyle as you frequently hide away to recover.

Stapes

Interesting post and while see what you are getting at, I don’t believe what you are trying to put forward is the real source of the issue here. Being someone that has played the game since the final server stress tests in beta, (5 and a half years, all with PvP focus) I’ve seen the game change a hell of a lot. I do believe there is a strong imbalance within the game (always has been), but both sides still have strengths and weaknesses.

First of all, I play CP pvp and mained a mag Templar for the last 2 years, a mag dk, and a mag nb before that. I’ve also played stam dk and i’m currently enjoying levelling a stam warden. I generally won’t have less than 15k stamina on my magicka builds and don’t struggle with resources because usually when my stamina gets low, I can use a potion. I achieve that by using a tri stat food. My CP does add a fair bit with cost reductions across the mentioned areas and I health bar tank on my Templar by building around the tools I have. I generally don’t use a shield either and run 5 x light armor.. I believe the main issues around the imbalance you speak of are hidden in stamina healing and heavy armour sets.

Firstly, let’s define what stamina is and should effect. In the elder scrolls games of the past (Skyrim, oblivion, etc) stamina is physical and basically your strength and dexterity attributes. So this is you’re ability to run, jump, dodge, block, swing a heavy sword accurately and with power, draw back a bow, the speed of your attacks and sprint. All physical traits. In the elder scrolls games, you need to learn restoration spells and staves to heal yourself. So this means that healing and shields are conjured from magicka, not physical abilities. How should the game be balanced around that then? Use heavy armor and sword & board. Need a heal? Use a potion. I’m sure you see where this is going.

Abilities
Now that’s established, there are numerous skills that don’t follow this rule set, I’m looking at you Vigor & Rally... with vigor getting up to 4K per tick and rally providing a burst heal, how do they fit within the previously mentioned definition of stamina? but while these 2 abilities are quite strong and used on a majority of pvp stamina builds, dual wielding abilities such as flurry and twin slashes also carry strong heals over time. A bit strange for a set up that should be high risk damage.

Armor
The biggest culprits here are set bonuses. I actually don’t think heavy armor is strong enough in its current state, at least with what I mentioned before. In my humble opinion, sets like fury, seventh legion and ravager shouldn’t be in the game. They break the rules of what heavy armor should be. Not just because they make for great pvp burst damage, allowing heavy armor to builds to achieve over 5k weapon damage in some cases, but that also buffs your healing, so stamina heals go through the roof. So now you can effectively out damage, out heal while tanking an opponent with superior defenses... Now I know each class was designed to be able to perform the classic trinity of tank dps and healer but doing it all at once surely suggests something isn’t right, and it’s not just the cp system...

I actually also believe there should be a greater risk vs reward system in the game around combat. An example is the vampire skill line. You have to be stage 4 vamp to get the most out of the undeath passive yet by being in stage 4 your health recovery is penalized and you take more fire damage. An example for heavy armor could be a movement speed penalty of -5% per large piece worn and -3% per small piece worn. But by wearing heavy armor you gain the extra resistance and damage reduction.. something that should be associated with heavy armor. Light armor (cloth) should also have less resistance, because you are wearing it for the magic enchantments and bonuses that it grants. That’s the risk vs reward.

In summary, the game has come a long way from where it began and I believe achieving a balance in the game needs to start with looking at some of these core principles and should be adjusted accordingly. And while I have pointed out mainly stamina issues, that doesn’t mean magicka builds are free from this either as there’s definitely some issues there, but this is about stamina and it’s uses in the pvp arena.

ChunkyCat

If you read it all, clap your hands. Once.

fred4

@Stapes: Fury, 7th, Ravager, yep, still meta and better than ever, as far as I can see.

As someone who uses Steed and Swift and who appreciates the difference that makes, I think your proposed heavy armor speed nerfs - at those values - would be extremely harsh, although logical from a lore perspective. Not to mention that many people wear 5/1/1 light or medium for the Undaunted passive. I certainly wouldn't cancel the above sets and impose speed nerfs in one fell swoop as ZOS would be prone to do, should they agree with you.

red_emu

Anyron wrote: »

Choosing magicka or Stamina based playstyle, each have its own advantages and limitations.

While stamina has better Damage, movement and utility options (like mentioned sprinting, dodging and blocking) magicka has shields and healing.

This alone can tell you which is better. Stamina. Even bigger issues, as magicka, you have in noCp where this Gap between magicka and stamina is even bigger. One CC break and you are out of stamina - as magicka.
Forget about using block or sprint. Do it in duel and its sure death

Wrong. My stamina chars in nonCP have a 16-20k vigor tooltip.

Also, please show me how to use shields and heals when stunned and with no stamina to break free. Thank you.

Bullseyebudx

Stapes wrote: »

I generally don’t use a shield either and run 5 x light armor.. I believe the main issues around the imbalance you speak of are hidden in stamina healing and heavy armour sets.

I totally agree.

Firstly, let’s define what stamina is and should effect. In the elder scrolls games of the past (Skyrim, oblivion, etc) stamina is physical and basically your strength and dexterity attributes. So this is you’re ability to run, jump, dodge, block, swing a heavy sword accurately and with power, draw back a bow, the speed of your attacks and sprint. All physical traits. In the elder scrolls games, you need to learn restoration spells and staves to heal yourself. So this means that healing and shields are conjured from magicka, not physical abilities. How should the game be balanced around that then? Use heavy armor and sword & board. Need a heal? Use a potion. I’m sure you see where this is going.

Abilities
Now that’s established, there are numerous skills that don’t follow this rule set, I’m looking at you Vigor & Rally... with vigor getting up to 4K per tick and rally providing a burst heal, how do they fit within the previously mentioned definition of stamina? but while these 2 abilities are quite strong and used on a majority of pvp stamina builds, dual wielding abilities such as flurry and twin slashes also carry strong heals over time. A bit strange for a set up that should be high risk damage.

Armor
The biggest culprits here are set bonuses. I actually don’t think heavy armor is strong enough in its current state, at least with what I mentioned before. In my humble opinion, sets like fury, seventh legion and ravager shouldn’t be in the game. They break the rules of what heavy armor should be. Not just because they make for great pvp burst damage, allowing heavy armor to builds to achieve over 5k weapon damage in some cases, but that also buffs your healing, so stamina heals go through the roof. So now you can effectively out damage, out heal while tanking an opponent with superior defenses... Now I know each class was designed to be able to perform the classic trinity of tank dps and healer but doing it all at once surely suggests something isn’t right, and it’s not just the cp system...

I actually also believe there should be a greater risk vs reward system in the game around combat. An example is the vampire skill line. You have to be stage 4 vamp to get the most out of the undeath passive yet by being in stage 4 your health recovery is penalized and you take more fire damage. An example for heavy armor could be a movement speed penalty of -5% per large piece worn and -3% per small piece worn. But by wearing heavy armor you gain the extra resistance and damage reduction.. something that should be associated with heavy armor. Light armor (cloth) should also have less resistance, because you are wearing it for the magic enchantments and bonuses that it grants. That’s the risk vs reward.

In summary, the game has come a long way from where it began and I believe achieving a balance in the game needs to start with looking at some of these core principles and should be adjusted accordingly. And while I have pointed out mainly stamina issues, that doesn’t mean magicka builds are free from this either as there’s definitely some issues there, but this is about stamina and it’s uses in the pvp arena.

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying.

You have to remember armor used to have weight, and that was actually a really important aspect they removed from the game.

Sprinting while wearing heavy armor required an enormous amount of stamina, because your sprint cost while in heavy armor was higher than light.

Now there’s no sprinting penalty and you have gap closers; so what’s the fundamental draw back for heavy armor if your weapons already do more damage than magic weapons?

You have no movement penalty, which means no offense penalties now because there no stamina tax to get to your target, which means Magicka no longer benefits from being at range as often.

In comes armor cap at 50%. Heavy armor is very underpowered IMO, but it’s like that because there’s no offensive draw back, but oh wait... break free hey wait there’s break free now, so that’s okay.

The only issue is break free taxes non-heavy builds that aren’t supposed to have a stamina tax at all.

Lol @ medium armor... WHAT ARE YOU?!

I think you actually got a sprint reduction in light tbh but I don’t remember.

I thought about criticizing a bunch of the armor sets but it seemed kind of pointless, it won’t solve the underlying issues, it’s just going to offset the imbalance not fix it.

And then you have this strange abomination called Battle Spirit...

scirocco2

The Imbalance probably exists becous they balance for cp pvp, in non cp and battlegrounds magicka chars almost never get to break cc, and no there is no way of of slotting stamina gear without sacrificing too mutch mutch offense/defense the balance is so delicate, in cp you can make up for it with cp points and get break free really cheap.

Rikumaru

Do not mess with the CC system in this game. It's one of the few things which ZOS has actually nailed. It just sounds like you don't understand how to manage your stamina.