ZOS the tank problem comes from % mitigation sources, not armor.

Wing

major protection
minor protection
BS unlisted % damage reduction
potentates
CP
block %
etc.

it cannot be penned

maybe look at those numbers or bring more things in line with the major minor system

SHOW

This. Obviously this... wtf how can they not see this, it's like I'm taking crazy pills or something lol

Qbiken

Imagine thinking it's that simple lmao

Dracane

Maybe they could reduce the potency of these effects... by a lot.
Or make it harder to obtain these.

YandereGirlfriend

Absolutely right, OP.

Tank meta has little to do with the actual properties of gear but has everything to do with the easy, stacking availability of OP mitigation and healing done/received bonuses.

Is it weird that we have Heavy Armor sets like Fury that give ultra-high Weapon Damage? Yes. But simply tanking damage and building those stacks would be much more difficult without all of the non-Armor mitigation sources slicing down damage to minuscule amounts. Did Bloodspawn provide a nice Armor buff as well as ultimate generation? Of course, but that wouldn't help you much against Onslaught.

IMO, Major Protection should simply be eliminated from the game or at the very least reduced to 15% to match Major Aegis. Minor Protection could be reduced to 5% and/or merged with the 5% found on certain PvP sets in order to prevent stacking and give more build flexibility.

Then all you have to do is convert all PvP to non-CP (I kid... sort of) and the final mitigation domino would fall (and you would have marginally better performance).

Galarthor

Passive mitigation in general is the issue. It is outperforming active mitigation while not really carrying any risk (i.e. activating at the right time or having consider whether to sacrifice a global cooldown, etc.) and not costing any resources.

Heavy Armor sets with lots of damage potential are part of the issue but by far not its biggest contributor.

The issue with CPs is that they offer Cost Reduction on Dodge Roll and Block without any counter CPs. Pretty much all other CPs have at least some sort of counterpart that offsets the bonuses granted. Another one of these is Sprint Cost Reduction.
That's also part of the reason why stamina builds are doing so much better than magicka builds in pvp.

katorga

Groups healing each other....
Players healing themselves....
Groups stacking damage....
Players doing their own damage....
Groups mitigating damage....
Players trying to build in defense...
Players communicating and coordinating...Unfair
Damage is too damned high...Yikes
Blocking reduces damage OMG
Dodge rolling prevents all damage...VAPORS

Lol, the entire game is just OP.

Logically major protection should be 25% just like major berserk.
Minor protection is already 8% like minor berserk
And so on. That about as far of a nerf as I think is fair for protection.

Ranger209

I say cap mitigation at 80-85%. This gives multiple ways achieving the maximum without having to use all mitigation forms to achieve max mitigation. Of course people could still build for more than that to reduce effects of penetration, but everyone no matter how they build would be subject to 15-20% of tooltip damage.

John_Falstaff

Separate PvP and PvE already - and let the PvP people arrange whatever they want there, any kind of bloody circus, any nerf galore, long as it doesn't affect PvE. Time to actually have someone on the team who cares about PvE side of things, it's long overdue.

wheem_ESO

I think a lot of it comes down to CP, really. While some builds (mostly Stam with 1h/shield blocking and high damage, heavy armor sets) are a bit too durable for the amount of damage that they're capable of in no-CP, it's not on the same level as CP-enabled Cyrodiil.

At least some damage mitigation sources probably shouldn't stack (like Potentates + Swift, for example), but it's not like a Magicka Necromancer suddenly becomes a super-tank just due to the buggy Spirit Healer providing 10% damage mitigation. Immobile classes need to have some durability options, but it's actually the much more mobile Stamina classes that tend to be able to tank damage the best.

That seems to mostly come down to 2 things in no-CP; being able to block a lot with 1h/shield, and being able to wear heavy armor sets while still having incredibly powerful offense and good mobility. While the Stuhn's set will indeed counter Stam builds' advantage of being able to wear heavy armor while still having high damage, it ultimately counters Magicka builds far more. Magicka can't block or dodge nearly as much as Stamina can (especially in no-CP), has lower base-level resistances, and generally isn't able to trigger the Stuhn's 5 piece via their spammable.

If ZOS goes through with implementing a non-trivial baseline amount of Crit Resistance, without making significant changes/nerfs to the Stuhn's set, we're probably going to see the most Stamina-favored patch we've had in quite some time (and that's saying a lot, to be honest). The only way(s) to survive will be, 1) dodge spam, 2) blocking a lot, 3) having good mobility, or 4) stacking every % damage reduction source you can find. Stamina builds completely dominate numbers 1, 2, and 3, with the only potential exception being Magicka Sorcerer's mobility (which is still outdone by the Stamina version of their same class). Most Magicka builds will either need to try and stack % damage reductions and end up with no offense, or just go full glass cannon and accept the fact that they're going to get 2-shotted pretty frequently. The problem with going glass cannon, is that the combination of baseline Crit Resistance and armor mitigation being so unattractive is that Stamina builds will be encouraged to switch to Medium Armor + the Well-Fitted trait, which means all of your cannon's shots are going to fail to land, while you can't say the same for what's coming your way.

Edit: Can't believe I forgot to mention the on-demand Major Protection from Black Rose Dual Wield. For Stam builds it's always either that or 1h/shield blocking on back bar, and both are overly effective on builds that are capable of achieving such high damage while in heavy armor.

Brrrofski

Yeh, flat damage mitigation % is the problem

Psijic ult
Potantes
Buffer of the Swift
Black dose dual wield (I know that's getting changed, but will still be 10% reduced damage)
Spirit guardian on Necro
The healing tether on Necro

Crazy amount of easy to access damage mitigation.

Nagastani

But wait guys. The problem is the more sources of mitigation you remove the more you force everyone into a bottleneck.

So they nerfed Protective trait on jewelry, they are planning to nerf Chudathan and other monster helms with a similar Armor buff on the (1) piece. Ok so the more sources of mitigation they eliminate the more it forces ppl into doing anything in order to stay alive and not die in one or two hits.

If I want to design like a light armor healer, again "Play my Way" then light armor itself has very little mitigation. Ok protective helps some, wearing Chudathan or using the class Major resolve skill (if it has one) helps make that character playable. But it has been my experience that if I forget to turn on Major Resolve, if I want to wear something other than Protective on the jewelry than I am basically a 1 shot target. Even in impen.

Think about this. My build choices are to build for the character I envision and want to play, vs being forced to scrap that and build with all these other weird sources of mitigation and/or scrap the concept altogether and just wear Heavy Armor, which itself has been nerfed.

I have seen lots of ppl heal thru dmg, but can you really blame them? If anything, the mitigation should be improved and the healing should be less.

Here's my solution

The damage itself should be curbed on the backend against a single target. Healing reduced, work should be done to make mitigation a reasonable flat value and penetration should also be reworked to be less effective against weaker targets. There should never be any over penetration, ever. Each player should only be allowed to heal so much at a time. Protective should be removed from jewelry totally and Heavy Armor should be reworked to make it more resource generation friendly. Med and Light armor should be reworked to make them more mitigation friendly without these armor types crossing the streams.

We should work to get away from the one size fits all mitigation and re-define mitigation based on armor type with the use case being each armor defends in a different way. This would not be hard to do and a very simple system could be set in place that will fix these issues.

validifyedneb18_ESO

Yes, but also largely to do with some of the heavy-armor or craftable sets that pile on damage abilities. Fine to take no damage if you do no damage either.

OWLTHEMAD

Mishaxki wrote: »

We should work to get away from the one size fits all mitigation and re-define mitigation based on armor type with the use case being each armor defends in a different way. This would not be hard to do and a very simple system could be set in place that will fix these issues.

Oh, you mean like how it was to begin with?
I seem to recall when i first started the game thats how it was already.

Light armor defended with shields 50% and the other 50% was class specific. Sorcs doubled down on shields, Blades had cloak and passive dodge, templars made up the difference with superior healing. Dks had over all best passive mitigation and outright facetanking ability.

Medium armor relied on dodge roll and class specific defense

Heavy armor had over all best damage mitigation and tanking ability at the cost of sustain and to a lesser degree damage.

The game was a lot of fun back then. There was imbalance, but not opressively so and gameplay and strategy evolved around that.

Im not sure when those frogs finally boiled but, i dont think going back to that will be possible without wiping the slate completely clean. So many half measures over the years and development decisions made without consideration for consequence or long term viability i think have burned that bridge.

Even now with new trial sets we see the results of those half measures.

The new trial sets were very clearly designed with new light/heavy attack system in mind, but when that flatlined, they didnt completely rework the sets in to something relevant. In fact i would wager much of the new gear and nerfs and buffs were developed and planned around that new system. So much has been done its too late in the game to go back on all of it.

I would love too see things return to that old design philosophy, im just not sure zos (not necessarily the dev team per se) is either willing to invest in the task, or up for the challenge.

olsborg

Agree. % mitigation is a big contributor to tankmeta. It needs rework.

MartiniDaniels

ZOS just needs to add total mitigation cap. For example, no matter what you do, you can't receive less then 10% of tooltip. But in practice it will just destroy solo or smallscale play, since in any outnumbered situation you will receive a lot of guaranteed damage. So be careful about what you are asking.

Kurat

Do you all realize that mitigation is needed in pve endgame? Pvp is only small part of the game and yet it dictates the rest of the game. This is bs. If the balancing cant be separated from pve then pvp should be removed from the game. Only nerf after nerf.

LeHarrt91

Kurat wrote: »

Do you all realize that mitigation is needed in pve endgame? Pvp is only small part of the game and yet it dictates the rest of the game. This is bs. If the balancing cant be separated from pve then pvp should be removed from the game. Only nerf after nerf.

Spoken like an entitled PvE'er, there have been many things that have been nerfed due to PvE.

But the % Mitigation wasnt the only issue, as combined with HA and Resistances it made killing people harder, while they could in return deal a lot of damage. Though i agree the armor nerfs seem heavy handed.

MincVinyl

Everyone knows that feeling when you are fighting a stamcro (which already has 40% uptime on major prot) and he swaps to his backbar to pop blade cloak into vigor. You know where that fight is going and it isn't worth the pots and poisons. Hmmmm it must be his healing taken that makes him tanky, it couldnt possibly be anything else.

---

Imo

brpdw should just give minor prot and berserk off of a tick
necros should only get minor prot from deaden pain(longer duration per corpse)
the 5% buffs tossed around in the game should just be armor so that there is counterplay of sorts
buffer of the swift could be minor prot+ a line of regen or something extra to compensate
spirit guardian should be a target able pet if it is going to take damage, otherwise it should just be a heal

---

to get major prot up 100% of the time you should be dropping two 5 piece sets just for that, but as it stands necro can reach it without dropping anything really.

iaminc

Just scrap PvP in general 😉

Seriously though , the OP is exactly right , unbelievable how the devs can’t see it.

Limit healing in groups as well , I’m sure the server could benefit from not having to calculate x amount of rapid regen ticks , hots and self heals every 5 secs.

leepalmer95

All these passive % buffs didnt exist years ago. Pvp was also a lot fun.

Zos can't help but bring in the these stupid buffs despite the fact the community has been saying for a long times they're to strong.

Anything to sell the p2w classes/ gear I guess.

Sordidfairytale

Swap Protection and Aegis buffs. More protection from Aegis in PVE doesn't affect PVP. Reducing the Protection buff in PVP will affect PVE but Aegis can cover the difference.

Moonsorrow

Most people sadly not realize the effects of touching the mechanics that has been here since from the start. Many has tried to explain how big of a mess it would make this game in both pvp and pve if people who got no clue would get their wishes through.. too tired these days to explain them once again.

Just hoping Devs still understand that the base mechanics are fine and people die mostly in seconds in pvp, it is only the ones with BAD damage on bad gear/setup that has trouble on killing others. Simple as that. I know someone now reads this and gets ego hurt and tries to explain i am wrong on this, go ahead. We been in burst meta for a while now and will be even more soon.

No need to make more overkill random nerfs here and there just because someone cannot kill that experienced player or someone in a troll tank build (with low dmg). What i see in reality in BGS, IC & Cyro is just people with bad combo/skills/setup trying to kill others with mosquito damage on 40k hp builds themselves.

I run around with 24k hp (with 5k Battle Spirit included in CP pvp) and demolish people in seconds, even the "tanky" ones. And it is not a ganker setup, just a regular brawler with high damage and not trying to build myself to avoid death at all cost. But most wanna build like tanks themselves and then complain no one dies to their poor damage lol.

*shrugs*

Galarthor

We need more active defenses. And Armor Types should play a major role in your capabilities, something along the lines of this (with X and Y being sufficiently large - e.g. 25%):

Light Armor:
- Increase Magicka types of damage by X% per piece of Light Armor
- Increase Size of Shields and Burst heals by Y% per piece of Light Armor (both are essentially a form of a Burst Heal)
- Decrease Cost of magicka abilities by Z% per piece of Light Armor

Medium Armor
- Increase Stamina types of damage X% per piece of Medium Armor
- Increase healing done by HoTs by Y% per piece of Medium Armor
- Decrease Cost of Stamina abilities Z% per piece of Medium Armor

Heavy Armor
- Decrease Damage dealt by 2*X% per piece of Heavy Armor
- Decrease Damage taken Y% per piece of Heavy Armor
- Increase Healing Received by Y%per piece of Heavy Armor
- Decrease Cost of Blocking by W% per piece of Heavy Armor

This will end current tank meta. You can still play a tank, but you are not going to deal tons of damage anymore. No matter the set you are wearing (unless sets are broken). It also gives back identity to the different armor types and builds.

Another idea:
Make dodge cost increase exponentially in a way that the first 2 dodge rolls within 4 seconds of each other cost the same as they do now, but making any dodge rolls beyond that sharply increase in cost. Medium Armor in turn lows the debuff via medium armor passives, so that they can dodge as much as they currently do on live.

That way there won't be another perma-dodge meta, and PvE and magicka won't really be affected b/c you can still do your occasional dodge rolls without having to stack heavily into stamina.

Edit: clarified damage bonuses

Wuuffyy

Yea let’s nerf more things rather than buff anything!!! All aboard the nerf train! chuu, chuu!!!

katorga

Ranger209 wrote: »

I say cap mitigation at 80-85%. This gives multiple ways achieving the maximum without having to use all mitigation forms to achieve max mitigation. Of course people could still build for more than that to reduce effects of penetration, but everyone no matter how they build would be subject to 15-20% of tooltip damage.

That is kinda where it is today in nocp . With diminishing returns on reduction you never get to 100%, and getting over 80% approaches the point where you are wasting you time. But cap it at 80%; why invest anything at all in damage reduction? You can get that from block or dodge roll with zero effort.

And then we are right back where we started. We've been through this with the "perma block" nerfs, the perma roller nerfs, the swift nerfs, the damage shield nerfs, (and upcoming healing nerfs). After watching this dynamic since release, no matter how many training wheel nerfs they put in, it doesn't help. Every single class and build video is "OP", "Unkillable", with "Insane Damage"...that doesn't mean it really is.

I can probably count on two hands the number of things in this game that truly rated as "OP", vampire dks at release, early bash builds, that templar skill that blinded you, rune cage, the resto staff passive that gave 10% to all damage all the time, the necro goliath bash build, pre-nerf streak, and the ultra high speed builds that came out with the swift trait.

Dracane

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

ZOS just needs to add total mitigation cap. For example, no matter what you do, you can't receive less then 10% of tooltip. But in practice it will just destroy solo or smallscale play, since in any outnumbered situation you will receive a lot of guaranteed damage. So be careful about what you are asking.

So you can kill someone with only 10% of your tooltip damage? Are you fighting afk zombies?

nk125x

SHOW wrote: »

This. Obviously this... wtf how can they not see this, it's like I'm taking crazy pills or something lol

Think were all taking crazy pills....

The impen changes are just going to make it worse as well

Wuuffyy

nk125x wrote: »

SHOW wrote: »

This. Obviously this... wtf how can they not see this, it's like I'm taking crazy pills or something lol

Think were all taking crazy pills....

The impen changes are just going to make it worse as well

Lol right.

silky_soft

Just make every class inline with a nightblade. Problem solved.

Sneaky-Snurr

leepalmer95 wrote: »

All these passive % buffs didnt exist years ago. Pvp was also a lot fun.

Zos can't help but bring in the these stupid buffs despite the fact the community has been saying for a long times they're to strong.

Anything to sell the p2w classes/ gear I guess.

@leepalmer95
Indeed it was a lot of fun. % buffs really dumbed the game down with nerfs because bad players really don't know how to get good. People flame when they hear L2P but that's the issue till it has become some sort of a taboo word. Sad how it has come down to this.

I really hope ZOS considers my suggestion on the healing nerf tho: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/521939/so-is-everyone-going-to-ignore-battle-spirit-changes-which-is-uncalled-for/p1