The "balance" between light armor and medium armor

Vizirith

Stam gives more mitigation than light (see below), more speed than light (7Med gets up to a 35% sprint speed bonus if cc immune), more healing than light (weapon dmg affects stam heals unlike spell pen), lower cost dodgerolls (4% per medium piece vs 3% per light piece) that also give 2% reduced aoe dmg per medium piece, medium bonuses are more useful (4/5- reduce sneak cost is not particularly useful) than light (3/5- reduced bash cost and reduced sneak speed penalty) but also don't come with the penalties for some reason. Although I was fairly amused at the fact that having light armor gloves and belt makes me take more physical damage then if I didn't wear anything at all, as if it actually sharpened a sword while being stabbed so it could impale me further.

In 7 light with the armor cp and major resolve up you sit at 15180 phys resist or 23% dmg reduction. With the pen cp, 2H sharpened maul with pierce armor you get 16198 phys pen. That's easy enough to get, now that you penned completely you do an extra 7% more phys dmg because why not.

But at least light armor has a lot of spell resist to make it much better against magicka builds right? Not really, in 7 medium with the armor cp and major resolve you get 18878 (28%) sp resist, only 1384(2%) less than 7 light. But 7 med does get you 3698 (5%) more phys resist, and of course without the extra 7% more phys dmg taken.

But even the pen is partially offset by stamina's easy access to minor fracture (3kpen or the equivalent of wearing 3 light armor pieces) by it being attached to both pierce armor and the sundered status effect, meanwhile mag gets magickasteal off its procced status effect which is basically redundant because most run elemental drain due to the fact that only magblades (mark) and magdens (deep fissure) have any other way of getting major fracture and nobody besides magplars running PotL (stam morph) have access to minor fracture. I left magcro's unnerving boneyard morph (maj fracture instead of self synergy) out because nobody besides ball groups run with it.

Speed counts for alot in pvp when dealing with multiple enemies. 2 stam based races have movement speed bonuses, 0 mag do. In 5 Medium/2 Heavy and sprinting while cc immune and having the 4% sprint speed cp, you sit at 167% movement speed. In 5 Light/2 Heavy and sprinting while cc immune and having the 4% sprint speed cp, you sit at 142% movement speed. Add in a source of major expedition from [elude+forward momentum], [shuffle+bow dodge roll] or RAT and a stam character would sit at 197% (3% short of cap) and mag at 172%. Of course if that stam toon is an orc or wood elf then they are already over movement speed cap, forget swift.

Medium armor gets major evasion which is amazing now that there is no generic cp for dmg reduction, and is worth double the dmg reduction of the cp now. Coupled with the 10% aoe dmg reduction if wearing 5 medium after dodgeroll and you are set. It is very effective against both stam and magdens reducing dawnbreaker and sub assult/deep fissure. Even more effective against both stam and magplars reducing their spammable, ults, and pretty much every other mag used offensive ability. Effective against both stam and magcros reducing dawnbreaker/colossus, magcro bombing, and blastbones. Not very effective against stam and magdk's reducing noxious breath/engulfing flames and leap. Pretty much useless against nbs and sorcs except for magblade bombers.

Lughlongarm

Ya, medium armor is top tier this patch. The armor bonuses need to go. The sneak and sprint reductions can stay, mostly for thematic reasons.

master_vanargand

This is rock-paper-scissors.
Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor.
Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor.
Want to make Light Armor the strongest? It's a nightmare.

Lughlongarm

master_vanargand wrote: »

This is rock-paper-scissors.
Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor.
Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor.
Want to make Light Armor the strongest? It's a nightmare.

1)Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor - No it doesn't. Medium is better at blocking, better at aoe damage reduction, much better at movement, better at healing and sustain. Not to mention damage and proc damage.
Medium is the stam meta right now, almost no one is going for heavy as a stam toon.

2)Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor - quite a big one. a medium armor toon can easily have impen that basically cover all the light armor physical resistances, on top it will get up tp 7% boost to damage vs light armor toon.

3)You forgot to write light has advantage over heavy, well it kinda does but not really as heavy already got base highest resistances.

Medium armor new bonuses should be dropped.

Vizirith

master_vanargand wrote: »

This is rock-paper-scissors.
Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor.
Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor.
Want to make Light Armor the strongest? It's a nightmare.

But see light and medium are essentially just stam and mag versions of what should be the same thing. Many of the medium armor passives reflect light armor almost perfectly, except for the differences I listed. I understand that for rp purposes light should be less protective than medium but it's not even debatable.

Stam in heavy is better than mag in heavy. Stam in medium is better than mag in light. But stam in medium can be comparable to mag in heavy.

shrekt4303

Light armor should recieve increased shield strength per piece of light like 2%. Snare reduction should be 5% same with sprint cost. Reduced magicka cost at 3%. Give them better resource management so they can build into more damage or better defences.

alberichtano

master_vanargand wrote: »

This is rock-paper-scissors.
Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor.
Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor.
Want to make Light Armor the strongest? It's a nightmare.

What advantage does heavy armor have towards medium? Heavy has penalties to pretty much everything of value, including 7% magic damage (a completely ridiculous penalty for weight-class intended for tanks, honestly), costlier roll dodge and whatnot. Heck, medium armor has bonuses to blocking that heavy does not!

I don't think that the OP wants to make light armor the strongest, but it IS ridiculously unbalanced towards the medium armor. It is hard to not feel that the devs harbor hate towards healers and tanks, honestly (though I of course don't think they do, really).

If I had a say, I would say that the damage taken-penalty of heavy armor should be changed to penalties for, say, crit chance or crit damage. But for a tank to take extra damage on purpose? That's redonc!

YandereGirlfriend

master_vanargand wrote: »

This is rock-paper-scissors.
Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor.
Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor.
Want to make Light Armor the strongest? It's a nightmare.

That's the idea that ZOS went for (that's based upon the traditional RPG model of counters) but the implementation was a failure.

Light and Medium should counter each other and Heavy should have a reduction to damage output.

That is the best possible balance for all roles and it gets PvE tanks out of the doghouse with their unnecessary and unhelpful penalty to Magic attacks.

SkaraMinoc

Vizirith wrote: »

Although I was fairly amused at the fact that having light armor gloves and belt makes me take more physical damage then if I didn't wear anything at all, as if it actually sharpened a sword while being stabbed so it could impale me further.

This proves that light armor needs to be fixed.

Ragnaroek93

Vizirith wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

This is rock-paper-scissors.
Heavy Armor has an advantage over Medium Armor.
Medium Armor has an advantage over Light Armor.
Want to make Light Armor the strongest? It's a nightmare.

But see light and medium are essentially just stam and mag versions of what should be the same thing. Many of the medium armor passives reflect light armor almost perfectly, except for the differences I listed. I understand that for rp purposes light should be less protective than medium but it's not even debatable.

Stam in heavy is better than mag in heavy. Stam in medium is better than mag in light. But stam in medium can be comparable to mag in heavy.

Tbh, you can't really compare stam and mag anymore. Can't say that stamplar is doing better than magcro or magsorc for example. Going 5-7x light armor seems rather bad on most builds (except magsorc because they're extremely good at avoiding damage in the first place) but you can get pretty good results by going 3 heavy, 3 light and 1 medium for example. The two balance outliers are cleary stamcro and stamden and they don't represent the other stam classes imo.

I agree that light armor needs some buffs but I'm heavily against buffing heavy armor. We just came out of a heavy armor Malacath meta and experience shows that light and medium armor metas are usually far more enjoyable than a heavy armor heavy attack meta (I also still remember very well how awful the patch was where everybody used the Black Rose set with Viper and the sandworm proc set). And it's not like there aren't any builds using heavy armor, it only became more situational instead of the go to choice.

In general you are right tho, stamina seems to be ahead on average but I disagree that it's because of armor. Imo magicka struggles because it usually has worse heavy attacks, worse sustain, a weaker spammable (Dizzy pretty much beats all magicka spammables) and no good executes while stamina has an extremely strong one which makes it really difficult for magicka to finish off people in a Pariah + vampire stage 3 meta.

Edit: Forgot to mention that proc scaling is another which favours stamina because stam is more wpndmg focused while magicka is more max magicka focused. While I don't care much about this since I don't use procs on any of my classes for personal reasons it's definitely something which needs to be looked at.

divnyi

This game doesn't need rock-paper-scissors. Damage% penalties must go. Damage% advantages can stay.

Just that - and I won't even mind this whole armor system. Heavy is still usable, just not as easy as in proctank meta.

Tommy_The_Gun

Hypothetical question:

What if, just what if, medium & light armor would provide bonus to highest offensive stat ?

So you could have magicka builds that run medium and have spell dmg % boost & sneak boost or stamina builds that run light and have phisicall penetration boost etc.

YandereGirlfriend

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Hypothetical question:

What if, just what if, medium & light armor would provide bonus to highest offensive stat ?

So you could have magicka builds that run medium and have spell dmg % boost & sneak boost or stamina builds that run light and have phisicall penetration boost etc.

That's the dream, IMO. It would require a big restructuring of the current item sets though to really open up build diversity. That could be accomplished simply by allowing you to reconstruct sets in any weight after you collect them, however.

MerguezMan

Hi,

Silly question, why should you absolutely wear 5 pieces of light armor ?

Assuming you feel squishy, why wouldn't you try 3 light - 3 heavy - 1 medium,
to fully benefit passive perks and balance the penalties ?

Adding health will make you shields stronger, and heavy has its own benefits.

Sluggy

MerguezMan wrote: »

Hi,

Silly question, why should you absolutely wear 5 pieces of light armor ?

Assuming you feel squishy, why wouldn't you try 3 light - 3 heavy - 1 medium,
to fully benefit passive perks and balance the penalties ?

Adding health will make you shields stronger, and heavy has its own benefits.

Because sets are tied to specific weight classes. Allow sets to drop in any weight and then this would be a perfectly viable solution.

Anyron

They should rework armor completely.
This system kinda makes sense, but i dont know why they added damage received on certain types of armor. That should be reflected by ammount of armor/spell resistance, flat increase to damage by % is flawed.

What could be better is to rework armor completely.

Why should stam have medium and mag light? It doesn't make any sense.

Make light to be resource type or armor (regen, cost decrease for sprint/dodge/skill cost etc) while medium gives you offensive (penetration, damage, crit etc) and heavy gives health and health regen.

Then it is up to you how you wanna make your build.

Zabagad

Vizirith wrote: »

7Med gets up to a 35% sprint speed bonus if cc immune

Coupled with the 10% aoe dmg reduction if wearing 5 medium after dodgeroll and you are set.

Can you (short) explain why med has more then 7*3% (from athletics passive) + what is this "cc immune" part + where is the 10% dmg after dodge coming from?

ty in adv. from a light armor only player who agree to your post even without these 2 unknown facts

Lughlongarm

Zabagad wrote: »

Vizirith wrote: »

7Med gets up to a 35% sprint speed bonus if cc immune

Coupled with the 10% aoe dmg reduction if wearing 5 medium after dodgeroll and you are set.

Can you (short) explain why med has more then 7*3% (from athletics passive) + what is this "cc immune" part + where is the 10% dmg after dodge coming from?

ty in adv. from a light armor only player who agree to your post even without these 2 unknown facts

Medium Armor Bonuses
Each piece of Medium Armor does the following: Reduces the cost of Sprint by 1% Reduces the cost of Sneak by 5% Reduces the cost of Block by 3% Reduces damage taken from Area of Effect attacks by 2% for 2 seconds after you use Roll Dodge Increases Movement Speed by 2% while immune to crowd control

Elo106

Change Light Armor to give magical and physical pen, change medium to give spell and weapon damage.

Zabagad

Lughlongarm wrote: »

Zabagad wrote: »

Vizirith wrote: »

7Med gets up to a 35% sprint speed bonus if cc immune

Coupled with the 10% aoe dmg reduction if wearing 5 medium after dodgeroll and you are set.

Can you (short) explain why med has more then 7*3% (from athletics passive) + what is this "cc immune" part + where is the 10% dmg after dodge coming from?

ty in adv. from a light armor only player who agree to your post even without these 2 unknown facts

Medium Armor Bonuses
Each piece of Medium Armor does the following: Reduces the cost of Sprint by 1% Reduces the cost of Sneak by 5% Reduces the cost of Block by 3% Reduces damage taken from Area of Effect attacks by 2% for 2 seconds after you use Roll Dodge Increases Movement Speed by 2% while immune to crowd control

Ty
Maybe this side needs an update then?
UESP

Any better source to read about these bonuses, bc. for example if OP is right, it must be "Reduces the cost of Sprint by 2%" ...
Or I have to remember when they introduced that (U27 or U28?) and to read the patch notes?

Edit: Holy sh... it was in U29:
Medium Armor Bonuses
Reduces the cost of Sprint by 1% per piece worn
Reduces the cost of Sneak by 5% per piece worn
Reduces the cost of Block by 3% per piece worn
Reduces your damage taken from Area of Effect Attacks by 2% for 2 seconds after you Roll Dodge
Increases your Movement Speed by 2% while immune to crowd control

So you were right, and as far as I can see it, OP was wrong? It must be 7*3% + 7*1% = 28% instead of 35%???

ty again - I will check your link

Lughlongarm

Zabagad wrote: »

Lughlongarm wrote: »

Zabagad wrote: »

Vizirith wrote: »

7Med gets up to a 35% sprint speed bonus if cc immune

Coupled with the 10% aoe dmg reduction if wearing 5 medium after dodgeroll and you are set.

Can you (short) explain why med has more then 7*3% (from athletics passive) + what is this "cc immune" part + where is the 10% dmg after dodge coming from?

ty in adv. from a light armor only player who agree to your post even without these 2 unknown facts

Medium Armor Bonuses
Each piece of Medium Armor does the following: Reduces the cost of Sprint by 1% Reduces the cost of Sneak by 5% Reduces the cost of Block by 3% Reduces damage taken from Area of Effect attacks by 2% for 2 seconds after you use Roll Dodge Increases Movement Speed by 2% while immune to crowd control

Ty
Maybe this side needs an update then?
UESP

Any better source to read about these bonuses, bc. for example if OP is right, it must be "Reduces the cost of Sprint by 2%" ...
Or I have to remember when they introduced that (U27 or U28?) and to read the patch notes?

This one is the best by far.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor

Digiman

Honestly ZoS favors stamina and Medium armor.... its not hard to add spell damage to light... but they won't so users suffer

Digiman

I mean what kind of armor has no penalties and is dangerous with its combined resources

alberichtano

Anyron wrote: »

They should rework armor completely.
This system kinda makes sense, but i dont know why they added damage received on certain types of armor. That should be reflected by ammount of armor/spell resistance, flat increase to damage by % is flawed.

What could be better is to rework armor completely.

Why should stam have medium and mag light? It doesn't make any sense.

Make light to be resource type or armor (regen, cost decrease for sprint/dodge/skill cost etc) while medium gives you offensive (penetration, damage, crit etc) and heavy gives health and health regen.

Then it is up to you how you wanna make your build.

"Why should stam have medium and mag light? It doesn't make any sense."

It is an old fantasy trope, wizards and spellcasters running around in clothes, while thieves and hunters use leathers and such.

alberichtano

divnyi wrote: »

This game doesn't need rock-paper-scissors. Damage% penalties must go. Damage% advantages can stay.

Just that - and I won't even mind this whole armor system. Heavy is still usable, just not as easy as in proctank meta.

Agreed. Tanks taking extra damage for wearing tank armor is silly and really not helpful. Already squishy healers and mag-dds taking extra damage is also silly. And why does medium armor have no drawbacks? Hmm.

Vevvev

alberichtano wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

This game doesn't need rock-paper-scissors. Damage% penalties must go. Damage% advantages can stay.

Just that - and I won't even mind this whole armor system. Heavy is still usable, just not as easy as in proctank meta.

Agreed. Tanks taking extra damage for wearing tank armor is silly and really not helpful. Already squishy healers and mag-dds taking extra damage is also silly. And why does medium armor have no drawbacks? Hmm.

They tried to do the RuneScape thing of magic counters heavy armor, heavy armor counters blades, and medium armor counters magic.

Sadly ESO doesn't work that way because each weapon has different passives that can counter different armor weights, and some builds are forced into certain weights for sustain or damage reasons. Like a magDK uses light armor if they want enough penetration and crit to actually hurt something outside of their cleanse-able DOTs, but they're forced into melee range which means they're going to get smacked around by lots of physical attacks.

ZOS didn't implement this vision correctly at all.

Urzigurumash

Vevvev wrote: »

Like a magDK in light armor if they went enough penetration and crit to actually hurt something outside of cleanse-able DOTs, while also being in melee range so they're going to get smacked around by lots of physical attacks.

DK needs buffs to its defensive passives, and/or, DK should be balanced to play offensively in PvP in Heavy Armor better than any other class. Dragonknight.

Terribly unpopular opinions I know. "Better that DK eternally awaits some quixotic revision than we permit tanks to deal damage in PvP", is what they tell me.

Of course being a StamDK I'm doing just fine in this meta, and I've seen some MagDKs do quite well - especially when we're next to each other - but I remain resolutely convinced that, fundamentally, DK was intended to be played in Heavy Armor.

JayKwellen

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

Like a magDK in light armor if they went enough penetration and crit to actually hurt something outside of cleanse-able DOTs, while also being in melee range so they're going to get smacked around by lots of physical attacks.

DK needs buffs to its defensive passives, and/or, DK should be balanced to play offensively in PvP in Heavy Armor better than any other class. Dragonknight.

Terribly unpopular opinions I know. "Better that DK eternally awaits some quixotic revision than we permit tanks to deal damage in PvP", is what they tell me.

Of course being a StamDK I'm doing just fine in this meta, and I've seen some MagDKs do quite well - especially when we're next to each other - but I remain resolutely convinced that, fundamentally, DK was intended to be played in Heavy Armor.

I agree. Just a cursory glance at the class gives the appearance that it was meant to be in the thick of things taking damage. The real "I'm gonna stand right here and grind you into paste" class.

You have passives to healing received and health recovery, and access to mending to increase your healing done. If DKs were meant to be played elusively they wouldn't have so many healing modifiers.

They lack any sort of escape mechanism but do have a (hilarious) gap closer. They lack ranged attacks (pebble throwing aside) and everything is melee range. They don't have any instric sources of speed. Their snare removal doesn't give them extra mobility, just let's them take more damage. Even their ultimate takes them from wherever they were and puts them right up in their enemies face.

Heavy armor synergizes with this playstyle perfectly. It buffs health recovery, and total health, and mitigation. Exactly everything a DK needs. Plus, DKs can achieve higher overall damage in heavy than any other class thanks to minor brutality.

Unfortunately the bigger problem as I see it is just that ZOS has effectively killed what they were meant to be. DOTs are a shadow of what they once were and burst is king in PvP, which was not the "power fantasy" DKs were originally built around. Health recovery was gutted. Major mending was gutted. Wings were gutted. Their class spammable has been turned into some sort of eldritch horror. Heavy armor increases half of your damage taken now.

Everything that made DKs what they were was cheapened and nothing was ever offered in return, or it was simply taken away and given to other classes instead.

The changes to heavy were just a slap in the face at this point, but ZOS has had their hand planted pretty firmly there for ages already.

DrSlaughtr

I don't really think it's a big deal. Light builds killing people left and right. Having said that...

Heavy armor should not be weak against any damage. Instead it should have more resistances at the cost of decreased damage.

Medium should be weak to mag damage.

Light should be weak to physical damage.

Otherwise leave them how they are.

Urzigurumash

JayKwellen wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

Like a magDK in light armor if they went enough penetration and crit to actually hurt something outside of cleanse-able DOTs, while also being in melee range so they're going to get smacked around by lots of physical attacks.

DK needs buffs to its defensive passives, and/or, DK should be balanced to play offensively in PvP in Heavy Armor better than any other class. Dragonknight.

Terribly unpopular opinions I know. "Better that DK eternally awaits some quixotic revision than we permit tanks to deal damage in PvP", is what they tell me.

Of course being a StamDK I'm doing just fine in this meta, and I've seen some MagDKs do quite well - especially when we're next to each other - but I remain resolutely convinced that, fundamentally, DK was intended to be played in Heavy Armor.

I agree. Just a cursory glance at the class gives the appearance that it was meant to be in the thick of things taking damage. The real "I'm gonna stand right here and grind you into paste" class.

You have passives to healing received and health recovery, and access to mending to increase your healing done. If DKs were meant to be played elusively they wouldn't have so many healing modifiers.

They lack any sort of escape mechanism but do have a (hilarious) gap closer. They lack ranged attacks (pebble throwing aside) and everything is melee range. They don't have any instric sources of speed. Their snare removal doesn't give them extra mobility, just let's them take more damage. Even their ultimate takes them from wherever they were and puts them right up in their enemies face.

Heavy armor synergizes with this playstyle perfectly. It buffs health recovery, and total health, and mitigation. Exactly everything a DK needs. Plus, DKs can achieve higher overall damage in heavy than any other class thanks to minor brutality.

Unfortunately the bigger problem as I see it is just that ZOS has effectively killed what they were meant to be. DOTs are a shadow of what they once were and burst is king in PvP, which was not the "power fantasy" DKs were originally built around. Health recovery was gutted. Major mending was gutted. Wings were gutted. Their class spammable has been turned into some sort of eldritch horror. Heavy armor increases half of your damage taken now.

Everything that made DKs what they were was cheapened and nothing was ever offered in return, or it was simply taken away and given to other classes instead.

The changes to heavy were just a slap in the face at this point, but ZOS has had their hand planted pretty firmly there for ages already.

Well said. Many other DK mains I've talked to in-game agree very much with all of this, but year after year I've seen more and more of a slide in popularity towards the "Poison Rogue" approach over the "Stoneskin Dragon". The number of DKs I see with a bow seems to increase every patch.

I think it's telling that between the first racial revision and the Malacath meta, it seemed widely accepted that a Nord in 5 Medium with Bloodspawn was the meta for sDK. In other words, almost as tanky as you could possibly be while not in 5 Heavy. However now I think we'd find broad consensus that half-Heavy/half-Medium is all around the best and most reliable approach, which is fine by me, but by no means should we be pushed more towards 7 medium, which should remain the exclusive domain of ranged and stealth. This last clause here is the crux of my argument against a Maim on Heavy outside of the interests of DK.

We have gotten a few buffs here and there over the years, like Venomous getting the automatic Poisoned proc, but it would be nice if Venomous and Noxious were restored to their Elsweyr levels, and if Corrosive somehow buffed these skills - even if not through the return of the maximal Penetration for DoTs.