PTS Update 29 - Feedback Thread for Armor Bonuses & Penalties

tomofhyrule

I like the ideas people are throwing out about light armor having buffs to damage shields. And I'm still really disappointed that they're not even acknowledging that making heavy take increased magic damage will mean that a PvE tank in full heavy will basically be unable to stand up to a fair number of trial/dungeon bosses. With the ring of the Pale Order, are they just expecting all PvE group content to be cleared by all-DPS teams now?

Come on, there are already enough complaints about a lack of PvE support roles, and now they're making it even harder to do anything but attackattackattack. And you thought queue times/fake tanks were a problem in the dungeon finder before...

I know they've said that the goal is to make the armors end up as a rock-paper-scissors situation so that heavy has an advantage over medium, medium over light, and light over heavy. However, this doesn't seem to be working as intended:

• This only considers PvP content. It really seems like nobody thought about how this might affect the PvE side.
• They're trying so hard to encourage hybrid builds, but this rock-paper-scissors effect still assumes that light will win over heavy specifically because light armor users are wielding staves. So it's not really "light beats heavy" as much as "staves beat heavy." If the armor types are still going to be connected to weapons, as in light = staff, medium = stam weapons, heavy = tank (which is not a bad thing!), then commit. I know the idea is to let people do whatever they want, and I'm all for adding more options. But I also don't see the problem with saying that a standard build (mag in light, stam in medium, tank in heavy) is easiest and will work best, while an off- or hybrid-build will be tougher to play until you get the hang of it. They do after all have the level-up advisor suggesting the standard routes...and you're not required to take any of those skills. I know as a tank I use the 'wrong' morph of Low Slash just because it's about the only AoE I have for overland content.
• Again, 90+% of ingame sets drop in a specific weight. Between a monster set and a arena weapon, there aren't many ways to wear a full 5-piece set of [set XYZ] without having to use the armor type it drops in. Whether that's a good thing or not. Or, you just don't get any 5-piece set bonuses. And it does look like they intend PvE roles to wear their proper sets as well - Alkosh has been tweaked again and again over the fact that StamDPS aren't wearing it nearly as much as tanks. If you want off roles to use off sets, why make Alkosh worse for tanks with low weapon damage if you're expecting us to avoid wearing heavy?
• This is designed to shake up the meta... except it mixes up the off-meta stuff, not the on-meta. PvP is full of tanky builds with SnB and 2H in heavy armor. With the changes as written, these characters would receive bonus damage from magicka attacks (of which there aren't too many, with the possible exception of bombers), but would do increased damage to anyone wearing a robe (which would be the few characters who could damage them, but they're also weak to stam weapons so they'd get wrecked in a hit or two). In addition, they now receive reduced damage from everyone with a stam weapon (so most characters since it's a stam meta). Granted I haven't tested much, but just in writing this looks like it'll make people in PvP even more tanky and basically get them to commit even harder to the current meta.
• And in addition, there's a damage reduction when immune to CC... which is mostly found in PvP since PvE is more a game of staying out of the red. As such, PvP will further favor heavy since many parts of PvP involve being CC immune due to immo pots or resisting CC, but the dodge roll will make it harder for PvE tanks to get out of the red.

I'm not against penalties at all. I just think that, in a game as big as ESO with two very different playstyles, both need to be looked at when making sweeping changes. I can see the point of these changes from a PvP persepective, but this doesn't seem to affect PvP as much as it's designed to but will have much larger effects on the PvE crowd - and it seems like those problems aren't being addressed in any way besides 'use your CP' (which itself is a problem since that effectively means that PvE tanks need to have almost maxed out CP to be viable while DPS is viable at practically any CP).

By all means add penalties to heavy armor: increased sprint cost, increased sneak cost, decreased detection radius, make jumping cost stamina, decreased damage... But the increased mag damage is tough to mitigate when you're building a character as a PvE tank because of all of the incoming magic damage in PvE content (of which we get 4 dungeons and a trial a year, so it's not like they 'forgot' it exists). It almost seems like they want to discourage building as a support role with this system.

About hybrids - the single player TES games always gave a pretty free choice between light and heavy (and medium for Morrowind) rather than coupling damage to armor. But that was because there were other penalties - heavy armor encumbered you a lot faster than light, light was more available, and Skyrim even made the perks such that heavy could reflect and light was more roguelike. In a game like ESO, connecting armor to weapon type (staff/stam/tank) makes sense so I don't mind being railroaded into one or the other. I believe that they could make it so a light/stam build would be viable, but I'd think that it should naturally not be as easy to play as a standard role until you really build for it, not making the standard builds the ones that require a specific allocation.

If this is all designed to affect PvP, a damage or crit resist penalty on heavy would be best to shake up the PvP meta without crippling PvE tanks. As it is now, I'm scared that when the update lands, I (as a 700-800 CP tank who is decent but definitely still has things to learn) will not have the CP or resistances I need to deal with the vet dungeons I'm doing now.

Mauin

tomofhyrule wrote: »

As it is now, I'm scared that when the update lands, I (as a 700-800 CP tank who is decent but definitely still has things to learn) will not have the CP or resistances I need to deal with the vet dungeons I'm doing now.

Dude, I'm at 1500 and I'm having the same concerns. It's not just the armor changes, though that plays a pretty big part in it. CP changes + armor changes combined means we can't mitigate the damage we used to (magicka side as of last PTS cycle), and top of that, we've got an increased block cost (from CP changes - the overall bonus granted in new CP is lower than old CP), the increased dodge cost, and it's just...

Slap the DPS loss on top and I'm not sure how guild events are going to work.

Overall, I'm still very much unhappy that armor was even changed this way, since it was an attempt to end the heavy armor meta in PvP, but all it seems to be doing is reinforcing it. I'm concerned that, down the road, this is just going to lead to even more PvE tank nerfs.

GrimTheReaper45

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.

to be honest magsorc doesnt even want to use them. We just have to because we have not great heals in pvp and cant sustain in heavy.

Syrpynt

Edit: Wrong thread

Rungar

Upon some time to digest I think the armor changes are really not bad at all. The only things i would actually change are (edit!):

all armor
1) change the 5 piece requirement to 4 pieces for the active armor skills.

light armor
1) Add a shield duration bonus to light armor .2 seconds per piece ( 1.4 seconds in 7 pieces).

medium and heavy: take away the "when you are immune to cc" aspect and apply it more specifically:

1) heavy: when you are immobilized ( it will work in pvp or pve) but bring down the bonus to 1% piece (7% max).
2) heavy: reduce the duration of stuns by .2 seconds per piece.

1) medium: I would remove the cc bonus altogether.
2) Reduce the duration of off balance instead by .2 seconds per piece.

honey_badger82

I have a Imperial templar tank who with 5 medium and 2 heavy pieces of armor (warrior poet, twice born + selene), nothing is reinforced not even the shield on his tank bar. Right now with our current system when standing in his rune has just over 30k physical resistance and 27k on his dps bar.
He is very durable with about 40k dps WITHOUT parse food. With these new armor penalties and champion system I know I will not be able to achieve these numbers in one package. I will forced to be a tank or dps which will significantly take the fun out of this build.
This is literally my favorite character to play, the 2nd one I ever made and went through 3 identity crisis before settling where he is now. Once he is relegated to wet noodle tank I will quit playing tanks. From what I have read on this forum many PvE tanks will stop playing over all these changes. This is unhealthy for the game and completely avoidable if for one time ZoS actually listens to its players.

Sahidom

ZOS needs do a review of class kit spammable skills combined with a CC effect e.g. NB surprise attack or conceal blade because their spammable would constantly activate the Heavy Armor -% damage mitigation under CC effect. For this class their spammable skill in PVP becomes useless, the sunder effect won't be enough to off set the upwards to 14% damage reduction from CC immunity.

delkurz

From an PVE tank perspective I feel like the armor changes will just confuse new tanks. I'm sure we PVE tanks can get by with them of course, but they feel bad. PVE tanks already have a bit of an identity crisis as we are really half tank, half buff bots for the DPS, but we mostly wear heavy armor on the body aside from a few rare cases. Sure we wear med or light DPS sets such as alkosh or worms etc for our other slots but our body sets tend to be **tanky** such as Yolns. With these armor changes I'm looking at vCR which is all magic damage and some sprinting by the tank and wondering if I'm supposed to wear light armor. 7 heavy has a +7% magic dmg increase and a sprint speed reduction which is exactly what I don't want in vCR. Light has -7% magic damage and benefits to sprint. So should I be tanking it in light body pieces? If the message to PVE tanks is that we are sort of tanks, sort of buff bots, and we should be wearing maybe heavy armor, or maybe light or maybe DPS sets like worms or alkosh, you see the confusion? It really starts to hit the core identity of a tank that most new tanks come in with. I know currently there is a PVP issue with tanks but think about what you are doing to PVE tank identity to **maybe** fix that PVP issue.

master_vanargand

Please eliminate the conditions for activating Movement Speed of Medium Armor Bonuses.
I need it to be Movement Speed by 2% unconditionally.
Movement Speed is required for Medium Armor to survive in PvP.

stefj68

medium armor have 2 sneak cost reduction wish they swap one for something more beneficial... like more movement speed

YandereGirlfriend

echo2omega wrote: »

Incentivize don't penalize:

Example. heavy armor is slow

Light armor +2% move speed per piece.
Medium armor +1% move speed per piece.
Heavy armor +0% move speed increase.

now wearing heavy armor makes the wearer slow. Not via a debuff or penalty but by the other armor weights providing a more substantial bonus.



Example: Light armor is strong vs spell damage weak vs martial damage (resistance values of armor weights may need readjusted)

Light armor +2%[or flat number] damage resistance vs spell damage per piece
Medium armor +1%[or flat number] damage resistance vs martial and spell damage per piece
Heavy armor +2%[or flat number] damage resistance vs martial damage.

In this form light armor will provide more significant protection vs spell damage than heavy armor. Heavy armor provides maximum protection vs martial damage but is "weak" against spell damage. Again, this is done by not penalizing players for making choices.



Example: Diversified bonuses.

Light armor provides +3% dodge cost reduction per piece.
Medium armor provides +3% break free cost reduction per piece.
Heavy armor provides +3% block cost reduction per piece.



Unified bonuses: (for example)
Light armor provides 768 spell AND martial damage penetration per piece.
Medium armor provides 768 spell AND martial crit chance per piece.
Heavy armor provides +1% healing received per piece.



And of course the BIG hurdle that would also need bridged is item sets need to come and all 3 weights.

"easy" fix. Allow crafters to fortify or unburden armor.
Fortify allows a crafter to increase the armor weight ( light -> medium -> heavy )
Unburden allows a crafter to decrease the armor weight (heavy -> medium -> light )

This is probably the best revision that I've seen yet.

LonePirate

It is simply laughable how someone at ZOS thought these changes would bring "balance" to the armor types because these changes will make no difference in PVP and nobody cares about their impact in PVE.

Due to the insane amounts of Stamina and Weapon Damage which players can achieve, Heavy Armor will still dominate and destroy anybody wearing Light Armor. The Concentration passive as well as these Bonuses\Penalties to Light Armor and Heavy Armor do little to level the damage output between armor types due to the high levels of Stamina, Weapon Damage and base damage of the Stamina weapons.

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Here is how ZOS has configured the armor classes for PVP:

Light Armor: Low damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: High damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: High damage and high resistance

The concept is simple but ZOS sure has trouble understanding and implementing it in PVP.

Mayrael

echo2omega wrote: »

Incentivize don't penalize:

Example. heavy armor is slow

Light armor +2% move speed per piece.
Medium armor +1% move speed per piece.
Heavy armor +0% move speed increase.

now wearing heavy armor makes the wearer slow. Not via a debuff or penalty but by the other armor weights providing a more substantial bonus.



Example: Light armor is strong vs spell damage weak vs martial damage (resistance values of armor weights may need readjusted)

Light armor +2%[or flat number] damage resistance vs spell damage per piece
Medium armor +1%[or flat number] damage resistance vs martial and spell damage per piece
Heavy armor +2%[or flat number] damage resistance vs martial damage.

In this form light armor will provide more significant protection vs spell damage than heavy armor. Heavy armor provides maximum protection vs martial damage but is "weak" against spell damage. Again, this is done by not penalizing players for making choices.



Example: Diversified bonuses.

Light armor provides +3% dodge cost reduction per piece.
Medium armor provides +3% break free cost reduction per piece.
Heavy armor provides +3% block cost reduction per piece.



Unified bonuses: (for example)
Light armor provides 768 spell AND martial damage penetration per piece.
Medium armor provides 768 spell AND martial crit chance per piece.
Heavy armor provides +1% healing received per piece.



And of course the BIG hurdle that would also need bridged is item sets need to come and all 3 weights.

"easy" fix. Allow crafters to fortify or unburden armor.
Fortify allows a crafter to increase the armor weight ( light -> medium -> heavy )
Unburden allows a crafter to decrease the armor weight (heavy -> medium -> light )

Hire to this guy. Seriously.

Bergzorn

Maybe this has already been discussed (didn't really monitor the forums lately), but what if the coming test shows that set calculations have a considerable impact on server performance? From that perspective, putting a bunch of Seducer-like passives on every piece of armor can't be good.

Starlight_Whisper

Bash Cost Reduction on Heavy would give Tanks option not to have to use staff for off balance

phantasmalD

LonePirate wrote: »

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Very much this. Decouple resource types for armor weights, so light isn't tied to magicka and medium to stamina.

Like for example make Evocation give both stam and magicka recovery OR increases the recovery for your highest resource.

It's honestly silly to have them tied to specific resources in the first place since melee magicka and ranged stamina builds exist. So you can't say that "stamina needs more protection because stamina skills have lower range" because DKs exist and most of their (magicka included) skills have 5-8m range.

I mean considering that DW/2hander passives are getting hybridized I fail to see why armor should be left in this state.

Restore the very old drop system where every set could drop in any weight. And, in order to avoid making the grind for set pieces worse, add an extra rule to set collection so that getting heavy chest also unlocks the light and medium version for the purposes of recreation.

I hope this issue will be more throughly discussed and explored by the balance team for U30.

tomofhyrule

Wait...that's it?

This is the first patch that did anything to the armor bonus/penalty system, and we got:

• Light armor had a tooltip fixed
• Medium had a single bugfix
• Heavy got nerfed

Are they going to seriously do anything here? It really seems like the devs have made up their minds about these specific bonuses/penalties, and yet I've rarely seen the community so united in saying that these passives are really hurting PvE and only reinforcing the current PvP meta. Almost everyone is saying that the heavy should have a damage penalty instead of a mag resist/dodge roll penalty so it'll help PvE and shake up the PvP meta.

This reminds me of the thing with Thrassians - the whole community said it was overtuned, it went live anyway, and then the devs were shocked to see it was overtuned and it was nerfed into oblivion the next patch. Is that what we're going to see here? Update 30's patch will have some dev notes along the lines of "We noticed the armor system didn't match our expectations of reducing the number of heavy-armor builds in PvP. Also we noticed the clear rate for a lot of veteran-level PvE content decreased quite a bit due to tanky builds not being able to stand up to bosses anymore..."?

Maybe I'm just blowing this out of proportion right now and it'll be better once it goes live, but right now it looks like there's no way anyone can tank high-level bosses in PvE without having maxed CP to make up for the armor penalties anymore. And as someone who doesn't have max CP, I'm looking at a grind of over 1000 CP to get to maybe counteract some of these penalties? It'd be really nice to hear someone confirm that tanking will be doable by mere mortals in the upcoming patch, not that you have to be CP3600 or a literal god at this game to be able to do the content...

Faded

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Wait...that's it?

Are they going to seriously do anything here? It really seems like the devs have made up their minds about these specific bonuses/penalties, and yet I've rarely seen the community so united in saying that these passives are really hurting PvE and only reinforcing the current PvP meta.

Probably. No. Yes, it does.

deathbytiki

"The above changes were done to help increase the effect that Armor plays on your build, by augmenting your Core Combat Mechanics... in ways that are not already apparent in the paradigms."

The "rock, paper, scissors" dynamic ZOS is trying to achieve in this most recent update is a step in the right direction for the somewhat “meta” stagnation that has long plagued the ESO community. Simple builds with staple sets and abilities have become the bane of the online experience as players wishing to express their creativity are incessantly reminded of the guardrails that have become the limitation of character diversity in ESO. Simply stated, the current mechanics of ESO favor only the top tier builds which concentrate power, survivability, or evasion at their core, making it harder for constructs outside of this “norm” to challenge players in the PVP environment. While changes to the champion point system and implications of armor passives constitute a step in the right direction, I would argue (leveraging 6 years of ESO experience) that current approach focuses too heavily on the tactical implications of character damage and ability rather than the theater/strategic level implications of PVP at large. Needless to say, this argument concerns ONLY PVP as this is the far more contentious discourse when looking at player disparity.

I agree with the multitude of posts stating that the current DE-buffs to light armor (LA) are contrary to the effect desired. I use the term “theater” to refer to the wider military view of combat in this application because I believe it is aptly suited to distinguishing the intended effects ZOS is trying to achieve and what is most likely to occur given the individual player’s desire to “win.” By and large, most players running LA are already heavily susceptible to the attacks wrought by other players, primarily due to their lack of resistance and the often fledgling amount of health they have compared to other players. I will also assert that the majority (anywhere from 51% to 75%) of DPS focused players use stamina builds combined with medium (MA) or heavy armor (HA) which put them at a significantly higher advantage in defeating LA users; applicable in 1v1 instances as well as tactical outcomes where players deliberately target LA users. To add physical damage multipliers to this already disparate dynamic would not only frustrate magicka users (given LA passives) but make them far more susceptible to the very counters they already face in the PVP environment. Couple this retrograde with the reductions in penetration, critical chance, and survivability and you create a very poor incentive to use LA armor. For those who choose to use it, they will either experience greater difficulty in serving or be forced to find a build which utilize other armors to reduce the impact.

YandereGirlfriend

Bergzorn wrote: »

Maybe this has already been discussed (didn't really monitor the forums lately), but what if the coming test shows that set calculations have a considerable impact on server performance? From that perspective, putting a bunch of Seducer-like passives on every piece of armor can't be good.

This is such a fantastic point to raise.

Having these all by new %-based calculations in an era when ZOS is actively trying to eliminate %-based calculations makes absolutely no sense.

ExistingRug61

LonePirate wrote: »

It is simply laughable how someone at ZOS thought these changes would bring "balance" to the armor types because these changes will make no difference in PVP and nobody cares about their impact in PVE.

Due to the insane amounts of Stamina and Weapon Damage which players can achieve, Heavy Armor will still dominate and destroy anybody wearing Light Armor. The Concentration passive as well as these Bonuses\Penalties to Light Armor and Heavy Armor do little to level the damage output between armor types due to the high levels of Stamina, Weapon Damage and base damage of the Stamina weapons.

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Here is how ZOS has configured the armor classes for PVP:

Light Armor: Low damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: High damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: High damage and high resistance

The concept is simple but ZOS sure has trouble understanding and implementing it in PVP.

Technically, both Light and Medium will deal more damage than Heavy against the same target (otherwise we would see Heavy armour on dps characters in PvE). The issue becomes apparent when you start thinking about matchups, as the increased resistance and mitigation that medium and especially heavy get is a greater effect than the damage bonus of Light so in things like a Light vs Heavy matchup Light deals less damage to Heavy than Heavy deals to Light. (For example - for the average build the base resistance Heavy gets simply from its armor pieces themselves and the resistance passive actually mitigates more damage than Light gains from both its Pen and Crit Passives combined)

But, part of the difficulty with the above concept is that it also needs to work in PvE, and that this gives conflicting design goals for Light and Medium. The above concept with differing damage potential between Light and Medium doesn't meet the needs of PvE.

ie:

For PvE:
Light and Medium must have equal damage potential and sustain, otherwise there will be an imbalance between Mag and Stam dps. This will be the case as long as the armor types are coupled to a damage type, ie: Light = Magicka, Medium = Stamina.

For Lore/Conceptually:
Light should offer less protection than Medium

For PvP:
Light and Medium need to be balanced in terms of potential performance vs the total PvP population.

If the Light and Medium passives are designed around the first two of the above only, it results in an imbalance for PvP. ie: Light and Medium do the same damage but Light takes more damage. This seems to be what has been the case historically.

So then there has to be some other benefit that light gets, which doesn't break the above conditions (ie: can't just simply be more damage for light), but somehow levels the playing field in a PvP context.
Generally, this is what doesn't seem to have been addressed.
To a degree the new cost reduction on dodge roll and break free Light gets kind of work toward this, as they are more relevant defensive passives for Light in PvP without affecting PvE dps. But I'm not sure it is enough. And I'm not sure what else it could be, healing done buff maybe? Some other way of increasing damage against a heavy player in PvP that doesn't increase PvE damage?

The only other (radical/sweeping change) option is to fully decouple the Light = Magicka and Medium = Stamina concept from the passives entirely and change them to have varying amounts of damage and mitigation and give everyone free choice based on what mix of damage and mitigation types they want. Or redesign the three armour types passives around the three archtypes- tank/dps/healer instead of tank/stam/mag.
But there are so probably too many good reasons not to this sort of thing, such as already existing lore, gameplay mechanics, sets only dropping in certain weights etc etc.

Firstmep

phantasmalD wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Very much this. Decouple resource types for armor weights, so light isn't tied to magicka and medium to stamina.

Like for example make Evocation give both stam and magicka recovery OR increases the recovery for your highest resource.

It's honestly silly to have them tied to specific resources in the first place since melee magicka and ranged stamina builds exist. So you can't say that "stamina needs more protection because stamina skills have lower range" because DKs exist and most of their (magicka included) skills have 5-8m range.

I mean considering that DW/2hander passives are getting hybridized I fail to see why armor should be left in this state.

Restore the very old drop system where every set could drop in any weight. And, in order to avoid making the grind for set pieces worse, add an extra rule to set collection so that getting heavy chest also unlocks the light and medium version for the purposes of recreation.

I hope this issue will be more throughly discussed and explored by the balance team for U30.

Somehow a robe wearing great axe swinging barbarian doesn't appeal to me.
Here's my take on all this:
In

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

It is simply laughable how someone at ZOS thought these changes would bring "balance" to the armor types because these changes will make no difference in PVP and nobody cares about their impact in PVE.

Due to the insane amounts of Stamina and Weapon Damage which players can achieve, Heavy Armor will still dominate and destroy anybody wearing Light Armor. The Concentration passive as well as these Bonuses\Penalties to Light Armor and Heavy Armor do little to level the damage output between armor types due to the high levels of Stamina, Weapon Damage and base damage of the Stamina weapons.

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Here is how ZOS has configured the armor classes for PVP:

Light Armor: Low damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: High damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: High damage and high resistance

The concept is simple but ZOS sure has trouble understanding and implementing it in PVP.

Technically, both Light and Medium will deal more damage than Heavy against the same target (otherwise we would see Heavy armour on dps characters in PvE). The issue becomes apparent when you start thinking about matchups, as the increased resistance and mitigation that medium and especially heavy get is a greater effect than the damage bonus of Light so in things like a Light vs Heavy matchup Light deals less damage to Heavy than Heavy deals to Light. (For example - for the average build the base resistance Heavy gets simply from its armor pieces themselves and the resistance passive actually mitigates more damage than Light gains from both its Pen and Crit Passives combined)

But, part of the difficulty with the above concept is that it also needs to work in PvE, and that this gives conflicting design goals for Light and Medium. The above concept with differing damage potential between Light and Medium doesn't meet the needs of PvE.

ie:

For PvE:
Light and Medium must have equal damage potential and sustain, otherwise there will be an imbalance between Mag and Stam dps. This will be the case as long as the armor types are coupled to a damage type, ie: Light = Magicka, Medium = Stamina.

For Lore/Conceptually:
Light should offer less protection than Medium

For PvP:
Light and Medium need to be balanced in terms of potential performance vs the total PvP population.

If the Light and Medium passives are designed around the first two of the above only, it results in an imbalance for PvP. ie: Light and Medium do the same damage but Light takes more damage. This seems to be what has been the case historically.

So then there has to be some other benefit that light gets, which doesn't break the above conditions (ie: can't just simply be more damage for light), but somehow levels the playing field in a PvP context.
Generally, this is what doesn't seem to have been addressed.
To a degree the new cost reduction on dodge roll and break free Light gets kind of work toward this, as they are more relevant defensive passives for Light in PvP without affecting PvE dps. But I'm not sure it is enough. And I'm not sure what else it could be, healing done buff maybe? Some other way of increasing damage against a heavy player in PvP that doesn't increase PvE damage?

The only other (radical/sweeping change) option is to fully decouple the Light = Magicka and Medium = Stamina concept from the passives entirely and change them to have varying amounts of damage and mitigation and give everyone free choice based on what mix of damage and mitigation types they want. Or redesign the three armour types passives around the three archtypes- tank/dps/healer instead of tank/stam/mag.
But there are so probably too many good reasons not to this sort of thing, such as already existing lore, gameplay mechanics, sets only dropping in certain weights etc etc.

Yeah, this is why I've been pushing to replace the dodgeroll cost reduction on light armor with dmg shield strength.
There is nothing defensively about light armor at the moment that makes it stand out like Medium or heavy.
Heavy has increase healing and mitigation, medium has dodge, aoe reduction and mobility.
Light has err spell resist? Pretty weak IMHO, and most classes don't have the built in mobility to deal with the low physical resistance of light armor.

Syrpynt

Firstmep wrote: »

Yeah, this is why I've been pushing to replace the dodgeroll cost reduction on light armor with dmg shield strength.
There is nothing defensively about light armor at the moment that makes it stand out like Medium or heavy.
Heavy has increase healing and mitigation, medium has dodge, aoe reduction and mobility.
Light has err spell resist? Pretty weak IMHO, and most classes don't have the built in mobility to deal with the low physical resistance of light armor.

Nah, damage shields are strong enough as is. You can't just have stronger damage shields without more than just one counteractive set like Shieldbreaker. Oh wait??? they made the Malacath ring specifically to counter shields and sets that focus on critical chance defense. It's like people are supposed to have a WEAKNESS? Weird. You want to protect your cake and to eat it too. Can't have both. This also reflects the armor changes they are bringing, rock paper scissors.

If you want stronger damage shields for yourself, apply more health to your characters for survivability.

Survivability =/= damage or healing

Sure you can have a little of both, but not max for both. That's the point of balancing the game, preventing people from being immortal in PvP where it's about finding each players' weakness. If players don't have a weakness then the game is no longer fun for anyone knowing that there's some dude running around wrecking people with a "broken" build...

ExistingRug61

Firstmep wrote: »

phantasmalD wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Very much this. Decouple resource types for armor weights, so light isn't tied to magicka and medium to stamina.

Like for example make Evocation give both stam and magicka recovery OR increases the recovery for your highest resource.

It's honestly silly to have them tied to specific resources in the first place since melee magicka and ranged stamina builds exist. So you can't say that "stamina needs more protection because stamina skills have lower range" because DKs exist and most of their (magicka included) skills have 5-8m range.

I mean considering that DW/2hander passives are getting hybridized I fail to see why armor should be left in this state.

Restore the very old drop system where every set could drop in any weight. And, in order to avoid making the grind for set pieces worse, add an extra rule to set collection so that getting heavy chest also unlocks the light and medium version for the purposes of recreation.

I hope this issue will be more throughly discussed and explored by the balance team for U30.

Somehow a robe wearing great axe swinging barbarian doesn't appeal to me.
Here's my take on all this:
In

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

It is simply laughable how someone at ZOS thought these changes would bring "balance" to the armor types because these changes will make no difference in PVP and nobody cares about their impact in PVE.

Due to the insane amounts of Stamina and Weapon Damage which players can achieve, Heavy Armor will still dominate and destroy anybody wearing Light Armor. The Concentration passive as well as these Bonuses\Penalties to Light Armor and Heavy Armor do little to level the damage output between armor types due to the high levels of Stamina, Weapon Damage and base damage of the Stamina weapons.

Here is how the armor classes should be in PVP:

Light Armor: High damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: Medium damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: Low damage and high resistance

Here is how ZOS has configured the armor classes for PVP:

Light Armor: Low damage and low resistance
Medium Armor: High damage and medium resistance
Heavy Armor: High damage and high resistance

The concept is simple but ZOS sure has trouble understanding and implementing it in PVP.

Technically, both Light and Medium will deal more damage than Heavy against the same target (otherwise we would see Heavy armour on dps characters in PvE). The issue becomes apparent when you start thinking about matchups, as the increased resistance and mitigation that medium and especially heavy get is a greater effect than the damage bonus of Light so in things like a Light vs Heavy matchup Light deals less damage to Heavy than Heavy deals to Light. (For example - for the average build the base resistance Heavy gets simply from its armor pieces themselves and the resistance passive actually mitigates more damage than Light gains from both its Pen and Crit Passives combined)

But, part of the difficulty with the above concept is that it also needs to work in PvE, and that this gives conflicting design goals for Light and Medium. The above concept with differing damage potential between Light and Medium doesn't meet the needs of PvE.

ie:

For PvE:
Light and Medium must have equal damage potential and sustain, otherwise there will be an imbalance between Mag and Stam dps. This will be the case as long as the armor types are coupled to a damage type, ie: Light = Magicka, Medium = Stamina.

For Lore/Conceptually:
Light should offer less protection than Medium

For PvP:
Light and Medium need to be balanced in terms of potential performance vs the total PvP population.

If the Light and Medium passives are designed around the first two of the above only, it results in an imbalance for PvP. ie: Light and Medium do the same damage but Light takes more damage. This seems to be what has been the case historically.

So then there has to be some other benefit that light gets, which doesn't break the above conditions (ie: can't just simply be more damage for light), but somehow levels the playing field in a PvP context.
Generally, this is what doesn't seem to have been addressed.
To a degree the new cost reduction on dodge roll and break free Light gets kind of work toward this, as they are more relevant defensive passives for Light in PvP without affecting PvE dps. But I'm not sure it is enough. And I'm not sure what else it could be, healing done buff maybe? Some other way of increasing damage against a heavy player in PvP that doesn't increase PvE damage?

The only other (radical/sweeping change) option is to fully decouple the Light = Magicka and Medium = Stamina concept from the passives entirely and change them to have varying amounts of damage and mitigation and give everyone free choice based on what mix of damage and mitigation types they want. Or redesign the three armour types passives around the three archtypes- tank/dps/healer instead of tank/stam/mag.
But there are so probably too many good reasons not to this sort of thing, such as already existing lore, gameplay mechanics, sets only dropping in certain weights etc etc.

Yeah, this is why I've been pushing to replace the dodgeroll cost reduction on light armor with dmg shield strength.
There is nothing defensively about light armor at the moment that makes it stand out like Medium or heavy.
Heavy has increase healing and mitigation, medium has dodge, aoe reduction and mobility.
Light has err spell resist? Pretty weak IMHO, and most classes don't have the built in mobility to deal with the low physical resistance of light armor.

While I don’t mind this idea conceptually, I think on all classes except Sorc I fell I would actually get more survivability from the extra dodgeroll vs a bit extra shields (due to dodge avoiding other effects entirely) unless it was a huge shield buff. Plus it doesn’t help non-shield using light armour builds. But these might be personal play style things. As I said I’m kind of at a loss as to what sort of change it could be instead though. Straight up mitigation doesn’t seem to fit, so if not shields I think it would need to be either healing, evasion or buff related.

ADarklore

What is strange... is that they are doing this... while heavy armor 'sets' don't offer anything for Magicka... etc. They want diversity and yet all uncrafted sets offer bonuses based upon their weight. So no Magicka player is going to want to equip medium sets that offer stamina bonus, so players will still be basically forced to equip their respective attribute sets regardless of these ridiculous penalties.

Tiggeh

About Spell/Physical Penetration, especially regarding soloing content.

Currently Light Armour will get a 1'700 Spell Penetration buff while both the Weapon damage and Weapon Critical is getting nerfed for Medium Armour (when wearing 7 pieces). I suggest an addition of Physical Penetration to the Medium Armour skill line, which should help with the "Rock Paper Scissors" idea, too.

For PvP: Physical Penetration would help Medium Armour against Light Armour. This would be countered by a Physical Resistance buff to Heavy Armour, which still is weak against Light Armour. Please keep in mind that im not an active pvp player.

For Group PvE: Besides not having to equip a sharpened offhand this changes absolutely nothing.

For Solo PvE: We could finally get some room to play around with builds. Currently it is way too important to hit the Penetration Cap of 18'200, which for Stamina is only possible with Lover + Sharpened + Major Fracture + 2H Maul or Dual Wield Maces. This is extremely limiting (and is not needed for Magicka Builds, hence their great advantage in soloing). Thus, adding some Physical Penetration would open up so many more possibilities.

techyeshic

I really dislike the armor changes. I feel like for PvP; I have a choice to run medium as stam, but magicka? Seems classes and races already have extra spell resists so equipping light armor just increases the difference between heavy and light even more and its just not feasible to run physical resists so low. Where is the magicka equivalent of a neutral medium armor?

Really it should not have been a mirror of heavy vs light as far as resistance. It should be a mirror of heave vs medium and light as far as damage vs tanking; which it has been, just not interesting enough.