Medium vs Heavy - Stamina build

Davadin

It's a classic debate, I've seen tons of it. But I feel having the passives listed in a table-like manner helps a lot of people. At least it helps me.

5x Medium with 1-medium shoulder and 1-heavy helmet

• 1968 weapon crit
• 24% stamina regen and 12% stamina cost
• 42% reduced cost of sneak and 30% reduced size of detection area
• 15% weapon damage
• 18% sprint speed bonus and 24% reduced roll dodge cost

5x Heavy with 1-medium shoulder and 1-heavy helmet

• 2172 physical and spell resistance
• 24% health recovery and 649 stamina and magicka when receiving damage every 4 seconds
• 12% max health
• 25% increase to Mag/Stam recovered by Heavy Attacks
• 8% increased healing

So for my PvP build (details in the signature) with New Moon Acolyte and 7th-Legion, here are the basic stats *AND* passive bonuses mentioned HIGHLIGHTING the differences....
Health-Magicka-Stamina

• Medium: 26.5k/17k/29.5k
• Heavy: 28.6k/17k/29.5k

Phys/spell resistance

• Medium: 19.5k/16k
• Heavy: 23.7k/20.5k

Health/Stam Recovery:

• Medium: 981/887
• Heavy: 1161/758

Wep Damage/crit:

• Medium: 4159/32%
• Heavy: 3617/24.3%

Other notable differences:

• Medium: 12% skill cost reduction, 24% roll dodge cost reduction, and sneaky...
• Heavy: 650 resource every 4 seconds under attack, 25% more resource when doing Heavy Attacks, and 8% increased healing.

Some analysis:
1. The resistances get a decent ~20 to 30% increase with heavy.
2. health recovery got a nice 20% increase with heavy, but stam only got around 17% increase with medium.
3. 8% healing is nice if you're playing tanky, but realistically, it's not even 10%. ur survavibility still depends on ur skill selection and playstyle.
4. wep crit got a nice chunky boost, and nearly 550 more wep damage with medium. for many build, that's over 10%, into 15-20% increase. And this is without buff or food or enchant proc etc.
5. sustain is nice with medium's cost reductions, but if you're doing a lot of heavy attacks, heavy's not too bad too.

Summary:
At the end of the day, you choose....
~20% resistance and 8% healing while doing heavy attacks, or 6-7% more crit with 15% more wep damage and reduced cost?

This thread is not to answer that question, that depends on the player. But I felt like having these numbers are useful for me. (no, i'm not a statistician/mathemetician/actuarial scientist/accountant...) and maybe we got a discussion going, we can propose better balance to ZOS....


Right, @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

TLDR; medium hits ~20% harder, heavy keeps you alive ~20% longer.

ketsparrowhawk

Nice write-up!

For me it's all about mobility. Medium wins every time. I wish they would add something to the sneak passive though. Totally dead passive for the majority of medium builds. Snare reduction perhaps?

Davadin

ketsparrowhawk wrote: »

Nice write-up!

For me it's all about mobility. Medium wins every time. I wish they would add something to the sneak passive though. Totally dead passive for the majority of medium builds. Snare reduction perhaps?

i like where this is going.

it's not like we already have the Thief skill-line DLC for people who's really into sneaking........

Snare Reduction AND AoE damage Reduction??

MashmalloMan

Davadin wrote: »

ketsparrowhawk wrote: »

Nice write-up!

For me it's all about mobility. Medium wins every time. I wish they would add something to the sneak passive though. Totally dead passive for the majority of medium builds. Snare reduction perhaps?

i like where this is going.

it's not like we already have the Thief skill-line DLC for people who's really into sneaking........

Snare Reduction AND AoE damage Reduction??

Too much, I think it's fair that light armor has snare reduction and sprint cost reduction to better manage their stamina.

Only 2 main things I want:

3% Sprint Speed per piece changed to 2% movement speed per piece, this helps in all combat. This isn't as huge as a deal anymore since sprint cost is down, but I'd still prefer it.

Weapon Crit changed from 328 per piece to 2191 when using 5 pieces. This is in line with Light armor that does the same thing, this pushes Heavy slightly out because it loses 328 or 656 crit which is pretty minor. This also means it's more lucrative to do undaunted 5/1/1 or 5/2 because you still get 10% crit.

Current Medium armor passive: 5 pieces = 7.5% crit, 6 pieces = 9% crit, 7 pieces = 10.5% crit.
Current Light armor passive: 5 pieces = 10% crit.

Minor changes over all, but I think it makes a big difference for quality of life.