PTS Update 29 - Feedback Thread for Armor Bonuses & Penalties

StarOfElyon

Dracane wrote: »

The logic of light armor taking more physical damage than being naked on top of having the lowest physical resistance, is widely deemed non sense. And so is the one that heavy takes more magic damage. I however tend to disagree.

Heavy armor would reduce the initial velocity of a magic projectile as is fullfilled by its high spell resistance. But since my partner is a metal worker, I know that metal stores and conducts heat and cold very efficiently, as well as electricity. (As do most people)

So while heavy armor would shelter you from the direct fireball, lightning bolt or ice spike; the metal would expose you to prolonged suffering by allowing shock to travel across your entire body and flame and frost prolonging the heat and cold.
Clothing makes sense to have extra magic mitigation. I make most of my clothes myself at home and know that cloth is very terrible at storing thermal energy or energy in general. Additionally the assumption that thread used in ESO, has certain magical properties to amplify this effect.

What does make sense, is that light armor would offer close to no protection against critical strikes.
I am not a fan of giving light armor either weakness though, as it already is weak defensively. I fear any light armor user who does not have cloak, shade and bolt escape next patch, will meet a swift and bitter end like this.

The effectiveness of damage shields should be based on the number of light armor pieces worn, not max magicka. That way, you wouldn't need 40 or 50k magicka to get a decent sized shield. But heaven help you if you get caught with your shield down. It's bad enough as it is now without a damage shield.

Dracane

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

The logic of light armor taking more physical damage than being naked on top of having the lowest physical resistance, is widely deemed non sense. And so is the one that heavy takes more magic damage. I however tend to disagree.

Heavy armor would reduce the initial velocity of a magic projectile as is fullfilled by its high spell resistance. But since my partner is a metal worker, I know that metal stores and conducts heat and cold very efficiently, as well as electricity. (As do most people)

So while heavy armor would shelter you from the direct fireball, lightning bolt or ice spike; the metal would expose you to prolonged suffering by allowing shock to travel across your entire body and flame and frost prolonging the heat and cold.
Clothing makes sense to have extra magic mitigation. I make most of my clothes myself at home and know that cloth is very terrible at storing thermal energy or energy in general. Additionally the assumption that thread used in ESO, has certain magical properties to amplify this effect.

What does make sense, is that light armor would offer close to no protection against critical strikes.
I am not a fan of giving light armor either weakness though, as it already is weak defensively. I fear any light armor user who does not have cloak, shade and bolt escape next patch, will meet a swift and bitter end like this.

The effectiveness of damage shields should be based on the number of light armor pieces worn, not max magicka. That way, you wouldn't need 40 or 50k magicka to get a decent sized shield. But heaven help you if you get caught with your shield down. It's bad enough as it is now without a damage shield.

Light armor certainly needs to boost shield strength in a way. Either by direct %s or max magicka.
Shields will become even weaker this patch in comparison. Heals scale with magicka/stamina and spell/weapon damage and will receive a massive boost, shields only scale with magicka and I have already looked into this in private and can say with confidence, shields will scale very poorly into the coming update.

Not to mention that everyone will have much more damage. Heals scale equally to damage to compensate; shields do not. Something really needs to be done.

Perhaps it is time to finally have them scale with spell damage too.

Dracane

A little comparison to show how poorly shields will scale into the new meta:

I assume 40k magicka and 3k spell damage to have an easy to understand basis and values.
Harness Magic (Annulment) would be 6200 shield size.
In the coming patch, you lose 20% magicka from CP and instead gain 4k magicka. You will not see a significant bonus to this on any class. Especially with 7 light bringing you a considerable loss of 4% magicka from undaunted mettle. (One reason I consider 7 light a very pointless, ill advised idea.)

With 44k magicka, annulment will sit at 6800 shield size next patch. So a lousy 600 size increase.

Let us take Honor the Dead as an example. Most heals would scale similiarly if not better in some cases.
5000 healing right now. Though we can not ignore mending and vitality which nearly every class relying on heals has access to. In the case of templar that would be roughly 6% (on average) from Mending II and 8% minor mending. I will ignore major mendings and vitalities from malubeth etc as well as % healing from heavy armor. This is about light armor, though most people use heavy.

So more like 5700 heal.
Now you get 4k magicka and at least 1200 spell damage. Templars always have minor sorcery, but to make it more realistic for other classes, I will leave that out.
With 44k magicka and 4,2k spell damage, honor the dead will heal for 6200, though at least 7k in reality. And this does not include that heals can crit whereas shields can not. Health can be protected with blocking, shields can not and heals get you out of execute ranges, shields do not.

So that is at least a 1.3k increase in healing as opposed to only 600 more shield size for annulment. Heals will scale more than twice as well next patch as shields do.

And this is a very merciful and naive look at heal scaling. Most people would have more healing %s than this. For example by being Argonian, being in heavy armor or having some source of major vitality and mending.

Revokus

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

StarOfElyon

@ZOS_GinaBruno the devs should carefully consider that light armor (1) already has the lowest armor value and is now (2) going to be even more vulnerable to stamina attacks with its penalties, on top of (3) being able to be sundered. These 3 things equal light armor wearers getting their wigs split against stamina classes even more than before.

Dracane

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Firstmep

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

Dracane

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

Major Ward would be a simple solution indeed. Active shields become Major Wards, where as smaller wards like shield enchant,Ice Heart or Concentrated Barrier become Minor Ward.

This can not be hard to do. I do not want to spread false truth. Though I vividly remember during the Wrobel Era after 1.6 when shields were in their Renaissance, it was said they can not do anything about shieldstacking. It would be impossible technically. So instead they nerfed them many times and introduced counters like shieldbreaker and shattering blows.

A major minor system should be possible though.

katorga

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

Dracane

katorga wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

But why bow to it? We should at least point out flaws and hope something improves.

Firstmep

katorga wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

For this pts cycle perhaps, but the recent armor changes, in my opinion at least, warrant a discussion.
I don't like the direction the devs are pushing light armor in, I don't like the dodgeroll cost reduction bonus being introduced, it feels like they simply didn't have a better idea as to what to do.
On top of that were seeing a major overhaul over the last year, now is as good a time as any to bring this up.
Also we never know what ideas, if any get picked up by the devs.

Faulgor

Dracane wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Medium armor gets no penalties so why wouldn't people also just load up on medium armor and stack health and weapon damage. Again, light armor is going to be the worst type of armor to wear. It would only be advised for a MagSorc with massive shields and the ability to stay at range to use light armor. At that point, you might as well just rename it Sorc Armor. So there needs to be some more defensive bonuses to light armor against martial attacks for all those magicka classes that can't use shields as effectively.

Absolutely true. I am under the impression they balance light armor only with MagSorc in mind.
How any other class is supposed to manage wearing this, is beyond me.
What is expected of someone wearing light armor? How do they expect you to survive? You will get rolled over with no chance to escape or retaliate.

The only thing keeping light armor alive is streak and nightblade shade.
Light armor needs a survival strategy. Though neither does it buff heals nor shields, since it gives no spell damage, magicka or % buffs to either. If light armor is about moving fast, then replace this atrociously useless slow "reduction" passive and replace it with straight up movement speed per piece worn.

What I'd love, thematically, is a bonus to armor enchantments for Light Armor, like the Infused trait. That makes a lot of sense to me as a defensive bonus for magical armor. Better shields and a bonus to healing done are other obvious options, which is why I find it so strange that ZOS chose to copy bonuses from Medium Armor instead. IMO the armor types should be more distinct than that.

This sounds like the perfect idea. Would make sense that magical linen can hold stronger magic.
This reminds me of a skyrim mod that added an enchantment perk that made enchants applied to robes stronger.
Would be cool if they did that here. Sounds only logical.

Replacing that useless bash cost reduction with 2% enchantment value per piece worn, would be interesting. Not very impactful, though it has flavor. With 7 light armor and full magicka enchants, that would only be around 550 magicka. Not really impactful at all outside of a good feeling. So maybe more like 4% per piece.

It would also indirectly buff shields a bit, either by increasing your max magicka pool or raising the cap by increasing your health. Another source of stamina would also help a lot in PvP.
I'm not sure what the magnitude should be, but honestly I think even 8-10% per piece wouldn't be insane as long as it only affects enchants on Light Armor pieces (meaning, wearing a heavy chest with 6 light wouldn't buff the enchantment on the heavy chest). The most valuable enchantments are on head, chest and legs, and using light armor in those places comes with the greatest cost to resistances.
Or they could just bake it into a passive instead of a "per piece" bonus.

ExistingRug61

Firstmep wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

For this pts cycle perhaps, but the recent armor changes, in my opinion at least, warrant a discussion.
I don't like the direction the devs are pushing light armor in, I don't like the dodgeroll cost reduction bonus being introduced, it feels like they simply didn't have a better idea as to what to do.
On top of that were seeing a major overhaul over the last year, now is as good a time as any to bring this up.
Also we never know what ideas, if any get picked up by the devs.

Personally I don't mind the dodge roll and break free cost reductions - but that's from a PvP perspective and on the builds I played I always worked in a little stam sustain for these so the changes potentially mean I can drop that and focus more on mag stuff. This may be a minority though, so I understand these sort of passives might not be particularly useful for other cases.

It does sort of look to me like heavy and medium got passives that further enhance their respective defensive specialisations and also provide additional conditional mitigation, whereas light got passives that take in in a bit of a different direction from how it normally plays, so it might not synergise as well in many cases.

I think partially this is because ZOS was trying to keep the passives on armour to being related to the "core" defensive abilities (block, dodge, bash, sprint etc), which are all stamina based so inherently aren't as synergistic with light armour.

The lack of a conditional mitigation tool also doesn't help.

Personally I would like to see the above limitation on relating to "core" abilities be expanded to include something more relevant to light magicka builds. Looking at past TES games (even though this isn't always a good idea when considering ideas for ESO) would suggest to me that light armour should synergise with using active buffs or enchantments.

So something like the extra enchant strength as previously mentioned would be cool.
Or an increase in effectiveness of minor/major buffs by a little per piece of light armour. Probably limited to just the defensive ones, so Resolve, Protection, Aegis and maybe Vitality and Expedition or something. Not sure if the current major/minor system would allow for variable values of the buffs though.
Or if the want to add a conditional mitigation tool we could have something like reducing damage over time taken by X% per piece of light armour while under the effect of a major defensive buff (Aegis, Protection or Resolve, maybe others?)"

Also, thinking along those lines I think a possible appropriate change to the heavy conditional mitigation that applies when immune to CC would be to limit this reduction to direct damage only. In combination with the above this would give each armour type the ability to conditionally have a defence against one specific type of damage (dots for light, aoe for medium, direct for heavy), but importantly this means an opponent still has a weakness to exploit for each type.

Firstmep

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

For this pts cycle perhaps, but the recent armor changes, in my opinion at least, warrant a discussion.
I don't like the direction the devs are pushing light armor in, I don't like the dodgeroll cost reduction bonus being introduced, it feels like they simply didn't have a better idea as to what to do.
On top of that were seeing a major overhaul over the last year, now is as good a time as any to bring this up.
Also we never know what ideas, if any get picked up by the devs.

Personally I don't mind the dodge roll and break free cost reductions - but that's from a PvP perspective and on the builds I played I always worked in a little stam sustain for these so the changes potentially mean I can drop that and focus more on mag stuff. This may be a minority though, so I understand these sort of passives might not be particularly useful for other cases.

It does sort of look to me like heavy and medium got passives that further enhance their respective defensive specialisations and also provide additional conditional mitigation, whereas light got passives that take in in a bit of a different direction from how it normally plays, so it might not synergise as well in many cases.

I think partially this is because ZOS was trying to keep the passives on armour to being related to the "core" defensive abilities (block, dodge, bash, sprint etc), which are all stamina based so inherently aren't as synergistic with light armour.

The lack of a conditional mitigation tool also doesn't help.

Personally I would like to see the above limitation on relating to "core" abilities be expanded to include something more relevant to light magicka builds. Looking at past TES games (even though this isn't always a good idea when considering ideas for ESO) would suggest to me that light armour should synergise with using active buffs or enchantments.

So something like the extra enchant strength as previously mentioned would be cool.
Or an increase in effectiveness of minor/major buffs by a little per piece of light armour. Probably limited to just the defensive ones, so Resolve, Protection, Aegis and maybe Vitality and Expedition or something. Not sure if the current major/minor system would allow for variable values of the buffs though.
Or if the want to add a conditional mitigation tool we could have something like reducing damage over time taken by X% per piece of light armour while under the effect of a major defensive buff (Aegis, Protection or Resolve, maybe others?)"

Also, thinking along those lines I think a possible appropriate change to the heavy conditional mitigation that applies when immune to CC would be to limit this reduction to direct damage only. In combination with the above this would give each armour type the ability to conditionally have a defence against one specific type of damage (dots for light, aoe for medium, direct for heavy), but importantly this means an opponent still has a weakness to exploit for each type.

Depends, look at medium armor and its active skill evasion, they complement each other so well.
Medium armors core defensive mechanic is dodgeroll and evasion provides a reduction aganist undodgeable aoe attacks.
Even the morphs reinforce the agile, mobility based medium armor feel, both providing mobility in some way.

Now look at light armor, which already has the lowest amount of armour, it has annulment as its active skill, but there is 0 synergy there. In fact most damage shield skills are better done in heavy armor due to health scaling or hp cap, and the extra resistances make those dmg shields last longer as well.

Giving light armor a passive which increases dmg shield size per piece of light armor worn would already be a big a help.
It would have to come with a rework to damage shields, to avoid the same scenarios that lead to their nerfs in the first place.

I also like the breakfree cost reduction to light armor, but I don't feel the dodgeroll one is appropriate for a robe wearing mage, and even from a balance perspective there are better ways to go about givhjng light armor some defensive options.

ExistingRug61

Firstmep wrote: »

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

For this pts cycle perhaps, but the recent armor changes, in my opinion at least, warrant a discussion.
I don't like the direction the devs are pushing light armor in, I don't like the dodgeroll cost reduction bonus being introduced, it feels like they simply didn't have a better idea as to what to do.
On top of that were seeing a major overhaul over the last year, now is as good a time as any to bring this up.
Also we never know what ideas, if any get picked up by the devs.

Personally I don't mind the dodge roll and break free cost reductions - but that's from a PvP perspective and on the builds I played I always worked in a little stam sustain for these so the changes potentially mean I can drop that and focus more on mag stuff. This may be a minority though, so I understand these sort of passives might not be particularly useful for other cases.

It does sort of look to me like heavy and medium got passives that further enhance their respective defensive specialisations and also provide additional conditional mitigation, whereas light got passives that take in in a bit of a different direction from how it normally plays, so it might not synergise as well in many cases.

I think partially this is because ZOS was trying to keep the passives on armour to being related to the "core" defensive abilities (block, dodge, bash, sprint etc), which are all stamina based so inherently aren't as synergistic with light armour.

The lack of a conditional mitigation tool also doesn't help.

Personally I would like to see the above limitation on relating to "core" abilities be expanded to include something more relevant to light magicka builds. Looking at past TES games (even though this isn't always a good idea when considering ideas for ESO) would suggest to me that light armour should synergise with using active buffs or enchantments.

So something like the extra enchant strength as previously mentioned would be cool.
Or an increase in effectiveness of minor/major buffs by a little per piece of light armour. Probably limited to just the defensive ones, so Resolve, Protection, Aegis and maybe Vitality and Expedition or something. Not sure if the current major/minor system would allow for variable values of the buffs though.
Or if the want to add a conditional mitigation tool we could have something like reducing damage over time taken by X% per piece of light armour while under the effect of a major defensive buff (Aegis, Protection or Resolve, maybe others?)"

Also, thinking along those lines I think a possible appropriate change to the heavy conditional mitigation that applies when immune to CC would be to limit this reduction to direct damage only. In combination with the above this would give each armour type the ability to conditionally have a defence against one specific type of damage (dots for light, aoe for medium, direct for heavy), but importantly this means an opponent still has a weakness to exploit for each type.

Depends, look at medium armor and its active skill evasion, they complement each other so well.
Medium armors core defensive mechanic is dodgeroll and evasion provides a reduction aganist undodgeable aoe attacks.
Even the morphs reinforce the agile, mobility based medium armor feel, both providing mobility in some way.

Now look at light armor, which already has the lowest amount of armour, it has annulment as its active skill, but there is 0 synergy there. In fact most damage shield skills are better done in heavy armor due to health scaling or hp cap, and the extra resistances make those dmg shields last longer as well.

Giving light armor a passive which increases dmg shield size per piece of light armor worn would already be a big a help.
It would have to come with a rework to damage shields, to avoid the same scenarios that lead to their nerfs in the first place.

I also like the breakfree cost reduction to light armor, but I don't feel the dodgeroll one is appropriate for a robe wearing mage, and even from a balance perspective there are better ways to go about givhjng light armor some defensive options.

Yeah I had also been thinking that it would be nice if the passives somehow synergise with the active for light like it does for medium and heavy. The sort of conditional mitigation I suggested could instead be active while you have a shield.

While I do like the elegance of such a strategy a consideration to overcome which any synergy with shields is that it runs the risk of being only usable on sorcs due to their ability to shield stack (especially as some other classes in light armour rely on hots and other evasion and not shields) or if they make it viable for all classes then it will likely be op on sorcs.

Firstmep

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

Revokus wrote: »

F light in PvP ! lol. ZOS is scared of adding spell damage to Light armor ! ZOS still scared of putting magicka on par with Stam. Let's not forget how they nerfed shields because of players not able to time a burst trough damage shields. Now they want us to roll dodge and sprint like stam !

Light armor was first designed with shields in mind but no Magicka classes uses them except MagSorc cause they now suck.

They wanted magicka to get away from damage shields at one point so they buffed major minor protection over the years but now they nerfed mitigation buffs last patch ! Wow so confusing. See the pattern ?

They also buffed ice staves so magicka could block better over the years and not rely on damage shields ! Now they are going to nerf that as well.

Forum also want mist form nerfed now. The day they nerf mist form I can already hear the thousands deaths and screams of light armor users in PvP.

Anyways lol.

Sad indeed. What infuriates me above all else, is that all nerfs and counters to shields were made because of shieldstacking.
By making shields weaker, they make people rely on stacking even more because individual shields can not keep up anymore. This is all those nerfs resulted in. It was not achieved that shieldstacking is done less, but that it's the only way that kind of works.

So no one uses them anymore except Magsorcs. It was said years ago, that shieldstacking can not be removed for coding reasons. This just can not be. There must be a way and it must be found.
It's a sad state that Sorcerer is the only class that can at least make it work.

Everyone would profit from a removal of shieldstacking and a following rejuvenation of shield abilities. It would allow to run sorcerers to run something else than 2-3 shields on their bars and everyone else to make use of annulment as an alternative to heals.

Reintroduce major ward as the main damage shield buff, it even makes sense.
I don't buy the whole cannot be coded for a second.
They made far bigger mechanical changes over the years than this.
Instead they want us to be budget medium armor rolling around?
Makes no sense to me.

I think the discussion of magicka shields is moot at this point. Unless I am missing something very obvious, I don't see LA magicka builds being close to top tier next chapter. I think we will see continued and expanding dominance for stamina builds in pvp.

For this pts cycle perhaps, but the recent armor changes, in my opinion at least, warrant a discussion.
I don't like the direction the devs are pushing light armor in, I don't like the dodgeroll cost reduction bonus being introduced, it feels like they simply didn't have a better idea as to what to do.
On top of that were seeing a major overhaul over the last year, now is as good a time as any to bring this up.
Also we never know what ideas, if any get picked up by the devs.

Personally I don't mind the dodge roll and break free cost reductions - but that's from a PvP perspective and on the builds I played I always worked in a little stam sustain for these so the changes potentially mean I can drop that and focus more on mag stuff. This may be a minority though, so I understand these sort of passives might not be particularly useful for other cases.

It does sort of look to me like heavy and medium got passives that further enhance their respective defensive specialisations and also provide additional conditional mitigation, whereas light got passives that take in in a bit of a different direction from how it normally plays, so it might not synergise as well in many cases.

I think partially this is because ZOS was trying to keep the passives on armour to being related to the "core" defensive abilities (block, dodge, bash, sprint etc), which are all stamina based so inherently aren't as synergistic with light armour.

The lack of a conditional mitigation tool also doesn't help.

Personally I would like to see the above limitation on relating to "core" abilities be expanded to include something more relevant to light magicka builds. Looking at past TES games (even though this isn't always a good idea when considering ideas for ESO) would suggest to me that light armour should synergise with using active buffs or enchantments.

So something like the extra enchant strength as previously mentioned would be cool.
Or an increase in effectiveness of minor/major buffs by a little per piece of light armour. Probably limited to just the defensive ones, so Resolve, Protection, Aegis and maybe Vitality and Expedition or something. Not sure if the current major/minor system would allow for variable values of the buffs though.
Or if the want to add a conditional mitigation tool we could have something like reducing damage over time taken by X% per piece of light armour while under the effect of a major defensive buff (Aegis, Protection or Resolve, maybe others?)"

Also, thinking along those lines I think a possible appropriate change to the heavy conditional mitigation that applies when immune to CC would be to limit this reduction to direct damage only. In combination with the above this would give each armour type the ability to conditionally have a defence against one specific type of damage (dots for light, aoe for medium, direct for heavy), but importantly this means an opponent still has a weakness to exploit for each type.

Depends, look at medium armor and its active skill evasion, they complement each other so well.
Medium armors core defensive mechanic is dodgeroll and evasion provides a reduction aganist undodgeable aoe attacks.
Even the morphs reinforce the agile, mobility based medium armor feel, both providing mobility in some way.

Now look at light armor, which already has the lowest amount of armour, it has annulment as its active skill, but there is 0 synergy there. In fact most damage shield skills are better done in heavy armor due to health scaling or hp cap, and the extra resistances make those dmg shields last longer as well.

Giving light armor a passive which increases dmg shield size per piece of light armor worn would already be a big a help.
It would have to come with a rework to damage shields, to avoid the same scenarios that lead to their nerfs in the first place.

I also like the breakfree cost reduction to light armor, but I don't feel the dodgeroll one is appropriate for a robe wearing mage, and even from a balance perspective there are better ways to go about givhjng light armor some defensive options.

Yeah I had also been thinking that it would be nice if the passives somehow synergise with the active for light like it does for medium and heavy. The sort of conditional mitigation I suggested could instead be active while you have a shield.

While I do like the elegance of such a strategy a consideration to overcome which any synergy with shields is that it runs the risk of being only usable on sorcs due to their ability to shield stack (especially as some other classes in light armour rely on hots and other evasion and not shields) or if they make it viable for all classes then it will likely be op on sorcs.

Which why me and others have suggested a rework to shields, in particular removing shield stacking as it is now.

"It would have to come with a rework to damage shields, to avoid the same scenarios that lead to their nerfs in the first place."

To give some perspective, magicka based damage shields have been nerfed for 2 main reasons:

1. Shield stacking sorcerers: Wheter we agree or not that this was an issue, ppl were very vocal about this issue for years.

2. PVE damage shield sizes: This happened a while ago so some might not remember, but there was a time where you could easily get 20k ish harness magicka in pve, which made magicka survival in pve an abosolute breeze.
This is actually the main reason health caps were introduced to Annulment and Conjured Ward.

I suggeseted light armor to be more effective with damage shields, beacuse it makes sense, from a lore and balance perspective. Also removing shield stacking shouldve happened years ago, its an issue that held back any significant rework to shields since forever.

oscarovegren

The game lacks elemental dmg burst which makes the less magical damage taken and more martial damage taken horrible in PvP.

Mag already lacks skills equal to vigor, rally, dizzy, executioner and elude/shuffle.

Light armor is already bad and the crit chance and spell pen nerf next patch with these block cost increase and martial damage taken makes it so bad for anyone not a bomber or magsorc

Rungar

Armor bonuses and penalties should only affect defensive aspects including only block/dodge/sprint, one conditional parameter reduction(snare, off balance or stun) and specific damage type bonuses in the form of specific resistance

defensive on demand

Light armor: increased block cost (3%),,
Medium armor: increased block cost (2%), increased sprint cost (1%)
heavy armor: increased dodge cost (2%), increased sprint cost (2%)

Conditional reduction ( -X milliseconds/ per piece)

light armor: decreased snare time* ( *already exists in armor line so no change)
medium armor: decreased off balance time
heavy armor: decreased stun time

specific resistance ( +200/piece)

light armor + resist shock/disease
Medium armor +resist fire
heavy armor + resist frost/ poison

way more simple.

Firstmep

Rungar wrote: »

Armor bonuses and penalties should only affect defensive aspects including only block/dodge/sprint, one conditional parameter reduction(snare, off balance or stun) and specific damage type bonuses in the form of specific resistance

defensive on demand

Light armor: increased block cost (3%), decreased sprint cost (2%),
Medium armor: increased block cost (2%), increased sprint cost (1%)
heavy armor: increased dodge cost (2%), increased sprint cost (2%)

Conditional reduction ( -X milliseconds/ per piece)

light armor: decreased snare time
medium armor: decreased off balance time
heavy armor: decreased stun time

specific resistance ( +200/piece)

light armor + resist shock/disease
Medium armor +resist fire
heavy armor + resist frost/ poison

way more simple.

Sorry there is nothing simple about what you just listed.
Also sprint cost increase for medium armor? Literally makes 0 sense.

Rungar

Firstmep wrote: »

Rungar wrote: »

Armor bonuses and penalties should only affect defensive aspects including only block/dodge/sprint, one conditional parameter reduction(snare, off balance or stun) and specific damage type bonuses in the form of specific resistance

defensive on demand

Light armor: increased block cost (3%), decreased sprint cost (2%),
Medium armor: increased block cost (2%), increased sprint cost (1%)
heavy armor: increased dodge cost (2%), increased sprint cost (2%)

Conditional reduction ( -X milliseconds/ per piece)

light armor: decreased snare time
medium armor: decreased off balance time
heavy armor: decreased stun time

specific resistance ( +200/piece)

light armor + resist shock/disease
Medium armor +resist fire
heavy armor + resist frost/ poison

way more simple.

Sorry there is nothing simple about what you just listed.
Also sprint cost increase for medium armor? Literally makes 0 sense.

put on some hockey or fireman equipment and go for a run. Makes total sense.

Firstmep

Rungar wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Rungar wrote: »

Armor bonuses and penalties should only affect defensive aspects including only block/dodge/sprint, one conditional parameter reduction(snare, off balance or stun) and specific damage type bonuses in the form of specific resistance

defensive on demand

Light armor: increased block cost (3%), decreased sprint cost (2%),
Medium armor: increased block cost (2%), increased sprint cost (1%)
heavy armor: increased dodge cost (2%), increased sprint cost (2%)

Conditional reduction ( -X milliseconds/ per piece)

light armor: decreased snare time
medium armor: decreased off balance time
heavy armor: decreased stun time

specific resistance ( +200/piece)

light armor + resist shock/disease
Medium armor +resist fire
heavy armor + resist frost/ poison

way more simple.

Sorry there is nothing simple about what you just listed.
Also sprint cost increase for medium armor? Literally makes 0 sense.

put on some hockey or fireman equipment and go for a run. Makes total sense.

Exept hockey equipment is not designed for agility, its designed for protection.

The whole idea of leather/medium armor is allowing for maximum movement, while still offering some protection.

Robe wearing mages are usually not the most athletic in fantasy tropes.

Duhne

I'd like to see the armor types not tied to magicka or stamina but more Distance vs CAC, DoT vs Direct Damage like it's already in most part of the skills/identities.

Some idea mentionned before would be great in this direction.
If we translate the bonuses and penalties as they are now it would be

LA : DoT resistance + Direct Damage weakness
MA : AoE resistance
HA : Direct Damage resistance + DoT weakness

I makes more sense than the current version and allow magicka class to play CAC (DK, templar) and stam to play distance (Bow)

Main defensive / healing tools should be moved to the armor skill lines and have stam and magicka version for each

LA : need improvment in shield (even if it means to nerf sorc shield and give them something else instead). Put bone shield here too
MA : move here vigor and give it a magicka equivalent (morph or other skill)
HA : health base heal


It feels a better start for me than the current version.

GreenHere

I think the whole system's just too convoluted. Between the armor passives we already had, CP nodes for wearing this or that (which I think is going away?), and now extra bonuses & penalties... It's a lot to mentally juggle when you're just trying to play a video game and make good choices for your character build, ya know?

I won't pretend I can offer up a bulletproof solution off the top of my head here, but just as a rough example I'd enjoy more as a gamer:

Light armor has [various, strong-ish] bonuses, but the least protection from damage
Medium has [other, average] bonuses, and offers a balanced amount of protection
Heavy gives the most protection (duh), but only has [lesser, maybe more tank-oriented] bonuses

Uncouple stamina/magicka builds from light/medium armor mandates. Open things up for hybrids, and for everyone. Armor should be more about protection, and less about how your build plays.

And that's literally it. No "penalties" to weigh against (opportunity costs should be the main consideration, imo); no long laundry list of bonuses that that overlap or negate choices in other ways. No "you'll play this way when wearing this armor AND YOU'LL LIKE IT!!" type of conditions. It's unnecessary and detracts from the fun and diversity in the game, as far as I can tell.

The current changes feel like they're moving the game in the wrong direction, imo.

vhagar122

make heavy armor decrease your damage done instead of increased damage taken by magicka!!!

GreenHere

vhagar122 wrote: »

make heavy armor decrease your damage done instead of increased damage taken by magicka!!!

I'm generally against penalties overall, but if there's going to be some anyway, this is the one that makes most sense to me. Assuming we're trying to balance (read: phase out or tone down) heavy armor juggernauts with more-than-adequate-damage in PvP, that is.

We're still aiming for that, right? While not kicking PvE tanks in the nuts too hard, right? RIGHT?

Firstmep

GreenHere wrote: »

vhagar122 wrote: »

make heavy armor decrease your damage done instead of increased damage taken by magicka!!!

I'm generally against penalties overall, but if there's going to be some anyway, this is the one that makes most sense to me. Assuming we're trying to balance (read: phase out or tone down) heavy armor juggernauts with more-than-adequate-damage in PvP, that is.

We're still aiming for that, right? While not kicking PvE tanks in the nuts too hard, right? RIGHT?

I think that would be an interesting change for sure.

Dracane

No changes to armor penalties and bonuses at all?
I was hopeful we did not just waste our time here.

StarOfElyon

I'm finally casting off light armor for my magplar and switching to heavy. Light armor is fine if you're mostly a caster with shields and great mobility (like sorcs), but for melee range magicka builds you must wear heavy if you don't want to get murdalized by stam weapons.

Dracane

Can we look forward to any changes before this goes lives or is this a wrap and we should cease with ideas and feedback for the next 4 months?

StarOfElyon

Dracane wrote: »

Can we look forward to any changes before this goes lives or is this a wrap and we should cease with ideas and feedback for the next 4 months?

I think the third PTS might have some changes but after that it's pretty much done.