New player Question: Why is it all STAM or all MAG?

marshill88

Ok I'm new only lvl 30 and have had this game 3 weeks,
What I don't understand is why everyone seems to be either "put all points in STAM" or "put all points in MAG".

I play a Necro and I had all my points in MAG and I found that my Magika would run out quickly. My Stamina would never drop by much since I was going for all MAG.
So I morphed my "skull" into a "venom skull" which uses Stamina. Now I find a nice balance in that I can rattle off consecutive skills for longer because I'm using both MAG and STAM. Is this a valid strategy for end game characters or am I doing it wrong?

Faded

In this game, some of the damage your abilities do is calculated based on the pool they draw from. So big magicka pool means magicka abilities do more damage.

marshill88

Faded wrote: »

In this game, some of the damage your abilities do is calculated based on the pool they draw from. So big magicka pool means magicka abilities do more damage.

I have observed as a new player is that when I put points into MAG, for example, my pool only goes up very slightly. I already have like 20k stamina doing nothing so might as well tap it in addition to using MAG. But what you say is very intriguing, it makes me wonder about the math behind the damage.

Once I get to lvl 50, I'm going to spend the gold to reset my attributes and I'll see the exact numerical amount of damage an ability does from a larger pool vs a smaller one. It seems logical that there is something to be said about utilizing both pools in order to maximize the number of consecutive uses of skills without recharging.

Faded

marshill88 wrote: »

I have observed as a new player is that when I put points into MAG, for example, my pool only goes up very slightly. I already have like 20k stamina doing nothing so might as well tap it in addition to using MAG. But what you say is very intriguing, it makes me wonder about the math behind the damage.

Once I get to lvl 50, I'm going to spend the gold to reset my attributes and I'll see the exact numerical amount of damage an ability does from a larger pool vs a smaller one. It seems logical that there is something to be said about utilizing both pools in order to maximize the number of consecutive uses of skills without recharging.

I don't know the state of play now that they've returned the stats that were locked behind 300 CP for a while, but players under 50 have some hidden buffs on them (to level you to the world, which is at cp 160, so you can go do whatever you want) that will give you weird reads on your character sheet.

The best use of your off-stat pool is for utilities. On a stamina spec you use it to cast class skills that don't scale (cloak on a NB for example) and on a magicka spec you use your stam pool for dodging and block, both of which will be extremely important in high level combat, and for sprinting. Managing your off-stat pool well gets really important later, particularly in PVP.

For damage abilities, look at it this way: it's better to manage your regen well and only throw damage abilities from the pool that will get you good damage than to waste a cast on an ability that won't do much for you anyway. If you're running dry of your main resource, heavy attack more, or use a food that gives you extra regen, or get a mundus boon for regen, or use glyphs or poisons that return resources to you, or some combination of these.

Nagastani

So ok, it goes like this see:

The larger resource 'pool' you have, the more damage you do with skills based from it. This is a confirmed 'thing' in eso. Look at it like this.

If you're in like Light Armor and are a Spell Caster, then not only do you need as much magicka as possible, the more you have, the stronger your skills are. Among other things, such as Sorc with alot of health and magicka gain stronger shields because the shields now scale off health and magicka.

Now with that said, regen is a thing too. However, in every main build where you're using magicka or stamina abilities, there is a happy medium where you have a high ceiling for magicka or stam and enough regen as well. So you really need both, especially if you're in a support role.

It also depends on how your skills are being used. Like if you're a stam blade with Bow and DW or 2H, etc, you need lots of stam, think 35k to 40k and enough stam regen, 1.8k, 2k or 2.5k. My stamblade gains nothing by having extra magicka unless I can work it out on the side to get a little extra magicka for cloak or healing.

Others could probably explain it better however your main abilities should be magicka or stamina and with that said, your secondary abilities like vigor or resto staff, will heal you just fine without a ton of extra resources put into them. Although for secondary abilities, like if your a MagSorc, I would have no less than 18k or 20k in Stamina for sprinting and roll dodge as well as 35k to 40k+ in Magicka. While I'm sure some might argue for different numbers and that's ok, these values have always proven necessary and successful to operating in PvP. Anything less leads to problems, which has proven itself time and again for situations I've been in, especially with Cyrodiil PvP.

Cirantille

If you want to do dps you would want all in one pool

For stam stam for mag for mag

Fennwitty

Attributes by themselves are only a small part of your max.

100% of a level 30 character's attributes one way or the other isn't huge.

But you combine that with your food buffs, gear enchants (higher quality the better), Mundus stone boosts, a few character skills and your max attribute pool becomes substantial.

You're exactly right though, having a resource pool and doing nothing with it's wasteful.

Even at higher level levels, using utility skills like buffs or even a few attack skills which might scale 'with your highest stat' is valuable for resource management. Probably the most common is for Stamina characters to include Soul Magic's Soul Trap line, because it's a magicka attack which automatically scales to your stamina's max values.

Magdalina

marshill88 wrote: »

Faded wrote: »

In this game, some of the damage your abilities do is calculated based on the pool they draw from. So big magicka pool means magicka abilities do more damage.

I have observed as a new player is that when I put points into MAG, for example, my pool only goes up very slightly. I already have like 20k stamina doing nothing so might as well tap it in addition to using MAG. But what you say is very intriguing, it makes me wonder about the math behind the damage.

Once I get to lvl 50, I'm going to spend the gold to reset my attributes and I'll see the exact numerical amount of damage an ability does from a larger pool vs a smaller one. It seems logical that there is something to be said about utilizing both pools in order to maximize the number of consecutive uses of skills without recharging.

Another thing to take into consideration is that you're currently affected by something called battle leveling which immensely buffs new character in order to bring them somewhat on par with higher level one. Since at low level you have so few skills, the game 'compensates' for it by buffing up all of your base resources - a level 3 has MUCH higher base health, mag, stam and all regenerations than a level 50. At level 30 you're still somewhat affected by that. At level 50 your default stamina pool will be something like 10k so you'll need quite a few points in there to make any use of it. You'll also need this stam, even as a mag character (if you choose to go down that route), to block/dodge/breakfree sometimes.

Far as regeneration goes, between the CP (which you don't have yet but you did mention endgame), the potions (which endgame players chug on cooldown), the food (which endgame players always run) and, most importantly for group content, all the buffs a good group can provide, running out of resources is no longer an issue so it makes sense to go the max dps route. Heck, even in an unoptimized group or a solo build you're still generally better off swapping a couple enchants to regeneration, using a higher regeneration food and running a couple buffs yourself (like there are skills which apply Magickasteal to enemies, returning you some magicka whenever you hit them. There're also skills which restore quite noticeable amounts of mag/stam (your highest resource) if you synergize them, such as templar shards or orbs from Undaunted skill tree, but this is obviously a group thing) will generally let you never run OOM even if you run full damage sets, let alone if you run something like Seducer (a sustain-oriented magicka set).

Long as you're in open world, you can generally play however you want (you won't be as effective as some players you might run across but eh, who cares), but for endgame content you really want to go either all in mag or all in stam unless you wanna tank (which is a whole other story). There're some hybrid sets such as Pelinal's Aptitude and I know there're people who made hybrids somewhat viable, but that took a lot of work and even then they were unfortunately still subpar compared to 'pure' builds.

MerguezMan

Basically, it depends on your playstyle, race and class.

Light and heavy attacks scale with their relevant ressource - MAG for staves, STAM for swords/bow.

Skill damage scales with the relevant ressource, unless their description tells otherwise (as in "scales with higher damage" or "scales with health").

Armor passive bonuses scale with either physical OR magic damage, not both.

Some classes have innate access to both major brutality/sorcery (damage) and savagery/prophecy (critical), while others have to rely on weapons and guilds skill lines, or potions.

You can build up an hybrid character that uses both pools, and benefits all major buffs, and you should do fine in overland content. But if you try to min-max damage, or get into veteran content, you will probably have troubles if you don't choose 1 dominant stat.

Vhozek

Because if your skill does 100 dmg +1 per point of magicka and you spread 50/50 stam/mag, then your skill will do less damage.

joerginger

Just FYI, you won't need to spend any gold to change your attributes. One of the last level up rewards before/when you get to level 50 is a character-bound attribute respec scroll/token.
In addition, right now, during the "Heroes Reforged" non-event, re-allocating your attributes might even be free by default due to the recent champion points makeover. Changing skill points and champion points is free right now, but since I haven't had to change attribute points, I can't confirm that this is also free - although I certainly expect so.

Scardan

marshill88 wrote: »

it makes me wonder about the math behind the damage.

https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php?id=33963&level=66&health=20000&magicka=20000&stamina=20000&spelldamage=2000&weapondamage=2000&display=summary&version=29

Here is your math.

Scardan

MerguezMan wrote: »

Basically, it depends on your playstyle, race and class.

Light and heavy attacks scale with their relevant ressource - MAG for staves, STAM for swords/bow.

Skill damage scales with the relevant ressource, unless their description tells otherwise (as in "scales with higher damage" or "scales with health").

Armor passive bonuses scale with either physical OR magic damage, not both.

Some classes have innate access to both major brutality/sorcery (damage) and savagery/prophecy (critical), while others have to rely on weapons and guilds skill lines, or potions.

You can build up an hybrid character that uses both pools, and benefits all major buffs, and you should do fine in overland content. But if you try to min-max damage, or get into veteran content, you will probably have troubles if you don't choose 1 dominant stat.

Light attacks scale with highest ressource.

Tandor

joerginger wrote: »

Just FYI, you won't need to spend any gold to change your attributes. One of the last level up rewards before/when you get to level 50 is a character-bound attribute respec scroll/token.
In addition, right now, during the "Heroes Reforged" non-event, re-allocating your attributes might even be free by default due to the recent champion points makeover. Changing skill points and champion points is free right now, but since I haven't had to change attribute points, I can't confirm that this is also free - although I certainly expect so.

It is free.

GimpyPorcupine

Welcome to Tamriel and the forums.

As others have said, your damage with Magicka abilities scales off of your Spell Damage and Max Magicka, so putting all of your points into Magicka will give you better damage output. And your Stamina will be used for Break Free, Roll Dodge, Block*, Sprint, and Sneak, especially as you start getting into harder fights, so save it for that.

I would recommend that you work on your sustain, since your main complaint seems to be how quickly your Magicka pool is depleted.

Pay close attention to the skills you use, how frequently, and in what order. Area of Effect (AoE) Damage Over Time (DOT) skills such as Boneyard (Necro class skill) or Wall of Elements (Destruction Staff) are expensive to cast, so put them down early in your rotation and don't recast them too early. You should start seeing better sustain quickly if overcasting these skills was your problem.

Another fast way to fix sustain issues is to get someone to craft you a 5 piece set of Armor of the Seducer, which reduces your Magicka costs by 10% across the board. You can also make sure you have Absorb Magicka glyphs on your weapons, and Magicka Recovery glyphs on your jewelry. If you're on Xbox/NA, you can in-game mail me (GT same as Forum handle) and I'll craft it for you.

ArcVelarian

Because ZeniMax hasn't figured out yet how to Hybrid DPS a thing.

FrancisCrawford

marshill88 wrote: »

Faded wrote: »

In this game, some of the damage your abilities do is calculated based on the pool they draw from. So big magicka pool means magicka abilities do more damage.

I have observed as a new player is that when I put points into MAG, for example, my pool only goes up very slightly. I already have like 20k stamina doing nothing so might as well tap it in addition to using MAG. But what you say is very intriguing, it makes me wonder about the math behind the damage.

Once I get to lvl 50, I'm going to spend the gold to reset my attributes and I'll see the exact numerical amount of damage an ability does from a larger pool vs a smaller one. It seems logical that there is something to be said about utilizing both pools in order to maximize the number of consecutive uses of skills without recharging.

Attribute resets are free this week only (more precisely, for a two-week period that's already half over). The same goes for skill point and CP resets.

Dojohoda

Tanks use Health for obvious reasons.

Stam characters use Stamina for optimal damage to stam skills - If applicable to the build, stam characters use magicka for mag skills that have nothing to do with damage, such as dragonknights' mag skills for healing and enhancing defense.

Mag characters use Magicka for optimal damage to mag skills. - Mag characters use stamina for defense: roll dodging; blocking; and sprinting.

Vevvev

I'd also like to add magicka builds can slot Mage's Guild abilities along with the Magicka Controller passive to boost max magicka by 2% per slotted skill. Inner light, a morph of Magelight, boosts max magicka by another 5% making that skill alone come with a 7% boost. Since magicka costing abilities and abilities dealing flame, ice, lighting, or magic damage scale off magicka it's a nice way to boost your damage and healing output.

Also as a magicka character your only use for stamina should be blocking, sprinting, breaking free, dodge rolling, bashing, and sneaking. Its typically a bad idea to have abilities that cost stamina on your bar unless you're doing DPS parses and slot that beast trap ability from the Fighter's Guild.

Also doing a heavy attack with a Destruction staff or Restoration staff restores magicka to you. Restoration staff has a passive that boosts this magicka restored by a pretty large amount which is why I have one back barred for most content except pure DPS in trials.

Jerkica

FYI, you get a free respec by the time you hit level 50. I think you get it at like Level 45 or something? Or maybe at level 50, I don't remember exactly. So you don't need to worry about what you've spent it on while leveling your toon to level 50, because you get to change it for free later.

Most people who want to make a tank, for example, will run with a DPS set up until they hit level 50, because it sucks to try to grind levels on a tank (which has the lowest DPS of all classes). Then they'll use the free respec to change their skills from DPS to tank.