Let's Get Healthy (LA/HA)

Skjaldbjorn

So, while we know the proposed changes at least got shelved, I don't think there's any question we're eventually going to see a variant of those changes pushed through. With that in mind, I wanted to get out ahead of them to a point and offer up an alternative i've been working on for a while that is significantly healthier for the game, bring actual play style mechanics that players can interact with, gives players a legitimate choice and brings something new and inventive to the game, instead of attacks solely functioning as a source of flat damage.

Heavy/Light Attack Balance Reimagined

The central problem with the heavy/light attack issue isn’t necessarily the “skill gap”, or even a “damage gap”. That much I’ve repeatedly addressed in the forums and attempted to highlight that the actual gap existed moreso through sustain and because spamming attacks wasn’t viable, even if you buff them crazy hard.

I think I might have struck a balance between making heavy attacks required and making them legitimately balanced by of course retooling the base damage of both light and heavy attacks somewhat, but also creating new interactions for heavy attack users that will be useful both in PVE and PVP, while balancing some of the more “overtuned” aspects of weapon passives. So, here we go.

• Light Attack Damage reduced by 20%.
• Heavy Attack Damage increased by 30%
• Light Attacks restore 30 magicka/stamina
• Heavy Attacks restore 300 magicka/stamina

This is step one. A flat, across-the-board buff to heavies with a mild nerf to LAs that we’ll compensate for in other ways.

• Consecutive Light Attacks within 2 seconds apply a stacking buff, increasing both damage and resource return of further Light Attacks by 10% per stack, stacking up to five times. Casting a skill drops all stacks.

This change means if you want to sustain heavily, you can spam LAs for a bit, OR pop a heavy. Your choice. It puts choice and control in the player’s hands. Which do you value more? The flat damage of spammed lights, or the additional effects offered by the new heavy attack mechanics?

Heavy Weapons
• Swords increase damage done and critical strike chance by 3%. Landing a fully-charged heavy attack with a sword increases your weapon damage and spell damage by 5% for 3 seconds.
• Axe bleed left unchanged. Landing a fully-charged heavy attack applies a buff to you, increasing your bleed damage done by 15% for 4 seconds. This effect stacks up to two times.
• Mace pen reduced to 15% per mace, but applies before flat penetration. Landing a fully-charged heavy attack stuns the target for 2 seconds, or staggers/interrupts them if they are CC immune.

Here we see adjustments to the 2h weapon passives to coincide with our new LA/HA balance system. By upping the damage as well as giving an additional benefit to heavy attacks, you make them significantly more attractive without being game-breaking. It’s not a monstrous DPS loss to heavy attack once or twice with an axe, for example. Through a system like this, we can bring players up who are more comfortable doing a HA rotation. Consider this, if using a 2h sword, it’s feasible that weaving between heavies means your 5% Weapon Damage increase is up full-time. That’s a reasonably significant buff for a build that some players do genuinely run.

Obviously the numbers aren’t set in stone, or even the effects, and could be adjusted further, but it’s a baseline concept idea to push through heavy attack viability without making them inherently game-breaking, or forcing people to transition away from light attacks.

Twin Blade and Blunt
• Dagger crit unchanged. If wielding a dagger in the main hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack increases crit damage by 6% for 3 seconds. If wielding a dagger in the off hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack increases crit damage by 3% for 3 seconds.
• Axe bleed unchanged. If wielding an axe in the main hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack applies a buff to you, increasing your bleed damage done by 8% for 4 seconds. This effect stacks up to two times. If wielding an axe in the off hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack increases bleed proc chance by 25%.
• Sword damage buff unchanged. If wielding a sword in the main hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack increases weapon damage and spell damage by 3% for 3 seconds. If wielding a sword in the off hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack increases weapon damage and spell damage by 2% for 3 seconds.
• Mace pen reduced to 7.5% per mace, but applies before flat penetration. If wielding a mace in the main hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack stuns the target for 1 second, or staggers them if they are CC immune. If wielding a mace in the off hand, landing a fully-charged heavy attack increases the damage of the heavy by 5%.

Here again we’re working off giving players a choice. Each weapon combination gives different results. Each weapon feels remarkably different and the ability to combine them to fill holes in your kit further pushes the already decent weapon variety.

Hawk Eye
• Your successful light attacks increase the damage of your bow abilities and heavy attacks by 5% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
• Your successful heavy attacks reduce the channel/cast time of your next bow heavy attack by 35%.

Here we’re breaking into a “ranger” build, where using LAs to stack up the passive allows you to weave not just abilities, but a few heavy attacks for higher damage ramp and at faster speeds, kind of a “momentum” mechanic where an archer left alone unmolested can pump out significant damage over time.

The only aspect of weapon changes I haven’t had any real ideas for is staves. They lack meaningful variety and their passives are difficult to work with. It’s likely better to simply ramp the already existing effects for staff heavies, but I am concerned that could be game-breaking to some extent, so someone more familiar with magicka DPS than I am would likely be a better flag carrier for changes to their core mechanics.

JinMori

I would rather have the proc effects on rng than heavy attacks, at least i don't have to stop the rotation to heavy and get the buff.

By itself though, the ideas are not bad, but rather i would rather if they were like, if you heavy attack it's guaranteed that you will get the buff, while with light attacks you have a chance for the buff, this way you would not feel forced to heavy attack and get the buff.

And don't bother nerfing light, just buff heavy.

30 mag and stamina is honestly... Don't even bother, it's nothing even if it stacks up to 5 times. just make it 100, and that';s it. for heavy, what we have right now is fine. Especially since the return drops back to 30 after you casted a skill.

Heavy do a lot of damage, and restore a lot, light attacks, do less damage, and restore less.

I would also, change the bow effect, it's not that great, i like dual wield and two handed much more, and we still lack destro, resto and sword and board.

There was also an idea floating around about making your damage scale from your highest stats, that was a good idea, that would allow for more build variety.

Skjaldbjorn

JinMori wrote: »

I would rather have the proc effects on rng than heavy attacks, at least i don't have to stop the rotation to heavy and get the buff.

By itself though, the ideas are not bad, but rather i would rather if they were like, if you heavy attack it's guaranteed that you will get the buff, while with light attacks you have a chance for the buff, this way you would not feel forced to heavy attack and get the buff.

And don't bother nerfing light, just buff heavy.

Requiring heavies to get these effects is 100% by design. Even with the ~82% nerf we saw to LAs on the PTS last time, experienced DPS were still pulling higher numbers with a LA rotation than a HA rotation. That shows just how rough HAs actually are, and why they need immense help.

Conversely, LAs are in a great spot and arguably too strong. Bringing down their numbers are a touch is necessary to help move HAs up. If you straight buff HAs too hard, the PVP community will rage because HAs are already strong there, making them too strong would be detrimental.

30 mag and stamina is honestly... Don't even bother, it's nothing even if it stacks up to 5 times. just make it 100, and that';s it. for heavy, what we have right now is fine. Especially since the return drops back to 30 after you casted a skill.

Heavy do a lot of damage, and restore a lot, light attacks, do less damage, and restore less.

As I said in the thread, the numbers are just examples. Zos would obviously have their own take on scale. I just wanted to give minimalist examples of what I see as a better compromise to make heavies attractive enough to be used without dismantling LAs.

I would also, change the bow effect, it's not that great, i like dual wield and two handed much more, and we still lack destro, resto and sword and board.

There was also an idea floating around about making your damage scale from your highest stats, that was a good idea, that would allow for more build variety.

The bow change was just something I thought of that fits a "motif" of bow users. It's more a side idea that is totally different from most things in the game atm.

I would 100% be in favor of EVERY attack in the game scaling off your max offensive stat, and only costs being different. I know that sounds outlandish, but it would actually create a ton of balance and open avenues all over the place.

Bherdani

Really interesting ideas and could add some variety in playstyles. Thank you for putting this information together and sharing!

llBlack_Heartll

The issue with your proposed changes are - End game players will work out the best way to weave Light and Heavy attacks to maximise DPS output, by utilising the HA bonuses and the skill gap will still be there.
So players like me, will watch what end game players come up with and practice what they do doing, low skilled players won’t.

Skill gap is impossible to close because every person has a different threshold to what they can achieve without practice and skills can only be improved with practice.

It’s no different to giving players VMA weapons via normal, it’s not going to raise the skill gap, because weapons are only as good as the user.
The issue is, players don’t learn mechanics, even if there is a DPS check, the player won’t reach it because they keep dying or they just don’t have the skills to problem solve to get the job done.

This week I have tried 10 DLC randoms dungeons, completed 2 of them. I have high patience and I hang around, try and teach mechanics but its all about practice. So even if these players, had access to VMa or VDSA weapons still nothing would have changed, same goes to your suggested changes.

I’m all for buffing HA damage and there were some good changes, like movement speed, but it definitely need to retain the resource gain.

JinMori

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

The issue with your proposed changes are - End game players will work out the best way to weave Light and Heavy attacks to maximise DPS output, by utilising the HA bonuses and the skill gap will still be there.
So players like me, will watch what end game players come up with and practice what they do doing, low skilled players won’t.

Skill gap is impossible to close because every person has a different threshold to what they can achieve without practice and skills can only be improved with practice.

It’s no different to giving players VMA weapons via normal, it’s not going to raise the skill gap, because weapons are only as good as the user.
The issue is, players don’t learn mechanics, even if there is a DPS check, the player won’t reach it because they keep dying or they just don’t have the skills to problem solve to get the job done.

This week I have tried 10 DLC randoms dungeons, completed 2 of them. I have high patience and I hang around, try and teach mechanics but its all about practice. So even if these players, had access to VMa or VDSA weapons still nothing would have changed, same goes to your suggested changes.

I’m all for buffing HA damage and there were some good changes, like movement speed, but it definitely need to retain the resource gain.

That's not even a problem, i don't think this post was even about closing the skill gap.

It was purely from a gameplay prospective.

Now there are some thing i like and some things i do not, but if they want to make heavy attacks stronger, just do what they proposed without the whole light attack nerf and heavy attacks not restoring resources.

So, higher heavy attack damage, and less cast time.

I really like the prof effect ideas, but they should not be relegated only to heavy attacks, a heavy attack should guarantee it, but you should also get it from light.

At the end of the day, better players will be better, no matter what they try to do. They could dumb down the game into oblivion, and better players would still find a way to be better.

Charon_on_Vacation

i'd rather have a solution that doesn't stress the servers even more.

Vevvev

As much as I didn't like ZOS's LA/HA stuff I did like their ideas for medium attacks scaling with how long they had been charged. Makes sense for the attacks to do that.