So about flare and major protection

DrSlaughtr

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Why not make it passively give both Major Prophecy and Savagery? That makes it more comparable to the other skills but also gives it a distinct advantage when looking at hybrid builds who don't get comfortable access to a lot of buffs for both magicka and stamina.

This would be perfect. Plus you already get 10% recovery buff which is huge.

Ratzkifal

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Why not make it passively give both Major Prophecy and Savagery? That makes it more comparable to the other skills but also gives it a distinct advantage when looking at hybrid builds who don't get comfortable access to a lot of buffs for both magicka and stamina.

This would be perfect. Plus you already get 10% recovery buff which is huge.

I vaguely remember something about PvP passives only being active in PvP, but it would be neat if it would work like that, since you get huge benefits from having Mages/Fighters Guild passives slotted, which needs to be accounted for if we want to make it a viable alternative to the other skills.

DrSlaughtr

Ratzkifal wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Why not make it passively give both Major Prophecy and Savagery? That makes it more comparable to the other skills but also gives it a distinct advantage when looking at hybrid builds who don't get comfortable access to a lot of buffs for both magicka and stamina.

This would be perfect. Plus you already get 10% recovery buff which is huge.

I vaguely remember something about PvP passives only being active in PvP, but it would be neat if it would work like that, since you get huge benefits from having Mages/Fighters Guild passives slotted, which needs to be accounted for if we want to make it a viable alternative to the other skills.

99% certain the passives work outside of pvp, except for the ones contingent on pvp procs, like rezzing faster near keeps.

WrathOfInnos

Jierdanit wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

This is exactly the problem. People will run it for the buff, not the actual skill.

So, like mage light and expert hunter...

Change mage light and expert hunter to minor prophecy and minor savagery

In seriousness, nobody would use Flare if it gave Minor Protection. That is too easy to obtain other ways, better ways. It would be entirely useless on Templar and Warden, and I doubt many would choose to slot it over Temporal Guard (easier to fit since you only need one active ult and it also gives the shield while blocking).

There is a huge difference between major prophecy / savagery and major protection in terms of how easy it is to get though.

You can get get major prophecy on 4 and major savagery on 5 different skills, you have a set that passively grants the buff for both and you can easily get either by using a potion.

major protection on the other hand you can get on 3 ultimates, 2 of which are barely used at all and on 1 skill that requires you to have corpses around and still only gives you 1 second of major protection per corpse.

So while it is absolutely normal to see someone having a 100% uptime on major prophecy or savagery even without running mage light or camo hunter, major protection is rare to see at all and if you have it its nearly always only for a short time.

And to all the people who say that flare wont be run because you cant afford to waste the bar space for it, people are running mage light or camo hunter on their builds right now, even though it is really easy to get it in other ways, why do you think they would not just put flare on their backbar for 10% less incoming dmg?

You’re right about the availability of these buffs on skills, but that is not due to their current power level. Several years ago, when skills like Veil of Blades and Permafrost were designed, Major Protection gave 30% mitigation and was a very powerful tool for the user and their allies. It made sense for them to have low uptimes.

Contrast that with the old Major Prophecy/Savagery, which was 10% crit chance in a time when crit damage was much lower. You’d see maybe 5-6% damage increase from these buffs. Obviously this is far from being balanced or countering Major Protection, but the answer at the time was to allow easy uptime of the weaker Major buffs.

After the rebalancing of the Major/Minor buff system, all of the names buffs ended up similar in power level. Prophecy/Savagery increased to 12% crit chance, and with the high crit damage these days that can result in a 7-9% damage increase. At the same time Protection was reduced from 30% to 10% mitigation. It no longer made sense to limit this buff to a few classes with low uptime, its not that powerful, and could be just as accessible as Major Resolve/Breach/Sorcery/Brutality/Prophecy/Savagery etc. without any balance problems.

Seems like the devs know this and are finally getting around to making it more available. Personally I think it’s a great move to add it to a useless skill like the old flare.

DrSlaughtr

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

This is exactly the problem. People will run it for the buff, not the actual skill.

So, like mage light and expert hunter...

Change mage light and expert hunter to minor prophecy and minor savagery

In seriousness, nobody would use Flare if it gave Minor Protection. That is too easy to obtain other ways, better ways. It would be entirely useless on Templar and Warden, and I doubt many would choose to slot it over Temporal Guard (easier to fit since you only need one active ult and it also gives the shield while blocking).

There is a huge difference between major prophecy / savagery and major protection in terms of how easy it is to get though.

You can get get major prophecy on 4 and major savagery on 5 different skills, you have a set that passively grants the buff for both and you can easily get either by using a potion.

major protection on the other hand you can get on 3 ultimates, 2 of which are barely used at all and on 1 skill that requires you to have corpses around and still only gives you 1 second of major protection per corpse.

So while it is absolutely normal to see someone having a 100% uptime on major prophecy or savagery even without running mage light or camo hunter, major protection is rare to see at all and if you have it its nearly always only for a short time.

And to all the people who say that flare wont be run because you cant afford to waste the bar space for it, people are running mage light or camo hunter on their builds right now, even though it is really easy to get it in other ways, why do you think they would not just put flare on their backbar for 10% less incoming dmg?

You’re right about the availability of these buffs on skills, but that is not due to their current power level. Several years ago, when skills like Veil of Blades and Permafrost were designed, Major Protection gave 30% mitigation and was a very powerful tool for the user and their allies. It made sense for them to have low uptimes.

Contrast that with the old Major Prophecy/Savagery, which was 10% crit chance in a time when crit damage was much lower. You’d see maybe 5-6% damage increase from these buffs. Obviously this is far from being balanced or countering Major Protection, but the answer at the time was to allow easy uptime of the weaker Major buffs.

After the rebalancing of the Major/Minor buff system, all of the names buffs ended up similar in power level. Prophecy/Savagery increased to 12% crit chance, and with the high crit damage these days that can result in a 7-9% damage increase. At the same time Protection was reduced from 30% to 10% mitigation. It no longer made sense to limit this buff to a few classes with low uptime, its not that powerful, and could be just as accessible as Major Resolve/Breach/Sorcery/Brutality/Prophecy/Savagery etc. without any balance problems.

Seems like the devs know this and are finally getting around to making it more available. Personally I think it’s a great move to add it to a useless skill like the old flare.

Once more...

You can get prophecy and savagery from pots. It isn't remotely the same to get 12% extra crit CHANCE vs 10% free damage mitigation.

This isn't remotely the same.

IF the reveal on lighter and hunter is WAY BETTER (already was but now it will not even be close) AND the buffs you get are just as good as protection AND you get more mag or minor brutality, then why would you ever run revealing flare?

But people will BECAUSE major protection is better than all that combined, especially since you can get prophecy and savagery through other means. The 5% extra mag is not that great. The minor brutality for 5 seconds with camo hunter only applies if you crit from flank. Not reliable.

So you took the crappier reveal skill that's even crappier on the pts and slapped what is still one of the best buffs in the game to passively apply.

If all you want is a reveal skill that works and gives you some non world breaking freebies, you have light and hunter.

The only reason to pick revealing flare is for the major protection, and anyone who says they'll run it is admitting major protection is still op, because the skill itself is not remotely as good as the new light and hunter.

WrathOfInnos

TheEndBringer wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

This is exactly the problem. People will run it for the buff, not the actual skill.

So, like mage light and expert hunter...

Change mage light and expert hunter to minor prophecy and minor savagery

In seriousness, nobody would use Flare if it gave Minor Protection. That is too easy to obtain other ways, better ways. It would be entirely useless on Templar and Warden, and I doubt many would choose to slot it over Temporal Guard (easier to fit since you only need one active ult and it also gives the shield while blocking).

There is a huge difference between major prophecy / savagery and major protection in terms of how easy it is to get though.

You can get get major prophecy on 4 and major savagery on 5 different skills, you have a set that passively grants the buff for both and you can easily get either by using a potion.

major protection on the other hand you can get on 3 ultimates, 2 of which are barely used at all and on 1 skill that requires you to have corpses around and still only gives you 1 second of major protection per corpse.

So while it is absolutely normal to see someone having a 100% uptime on major prophecy or savagery even without running mage light or camo hunter, major protection is rare to see at all and if you have it its nearly always only for a short time.

And to all the people who say that flare wont be run because you cant afford to waste the bar space for it, people are running mage light or camo hunter on their builds right now, even though it is really easy to get it in other ways, why do you think they would not just put flare on their backbar for 10% less incoming dmg?

You’re right about the availability of these buffs on skills, but that is not due to their current power level. Several years ago, when skills like Veil of Blades and Permafrost were designed, Major Protection gave 30% mitigation and was a very powerful tool for the user and their allies. It made sense for them to have low uptimes.

Contrast that with the old Major Prophecy/Savagery, which was 10% crit chance in a time when crit damage was much lower. You’d see maybe 5-6% damage increase from these buffs. Obviously this is far from being balanced or countering Major Protection, but the answer at the time was to allow easy uptime of the weaker Major buffs.

After the rebalancing of the Major/Minor buff system, all of the names buffs ended up similar in power level. Prophecy/Savagery increased to 12% crit chance, and with the high crit damage these days that can result in a 7-9% damage increase. At the same time Protection was reduced from 30% to 10% mitigation. It no longer made sense to limit this buff to a few classes with low uptime, its not that powerful, and could be just as accessible as Major Resolve/Breach/Sorcery/Brutality/Prophecy/Savagery etc. without any balance problems.

Seems like the devs know this and are finally getting around to making it more available. Personally I think it’s a great move to add it to a useless skill like the old flare.

Once more...

You can get prophecy and savagery from pots. It isn't remotely the same to get 12% extra crit CHANCE vs 10% free damage mitigation.

This isn't remotely the same.

IF the reveal on lighter and hunter is WAY BETTER (already was but now it will not even be close) AND the buffs you get are just as good as protection AND you get more mag or minor brutality, then why would you ever run revealing flare?

But people will BECAUSE major protection is better than all that combined, especially since you can get prophecy and savagery through other means. The 5% extra mag is not that great. The minor brutality for 5 seconds with camo hunter only applies if you crit from flank. Not reliable.

So you took the crappier reveal skill that's even crappier on the pts and slapped what is still one of the best buffs in the game to passively apply.

If all you want is a reveal skill that works and gives you some non world breaking freebies, you have light and hunter.

The only reason to pick revealing flare is for the major protection, and anyone who says they'll run it is admitting major protection is still op, because the skill itself is not remotely as good as the new light and hunter.

For the record, the 7-9% damage increase I stated from Major Prophecy/Savagery does not fully counter Major Protection's 10% mitigation. It would take an 11% damage increase to do that (because 0.90 x 1.11 = 1.00), which is where the additional effects from Hunter/Light come into play.

It sounds like you recognize there are pros and cons of all 3 reveal skill options. Anyone who has looked at it objectively sees they're close to balanced, and I don't feel the need to convince the rest. Like it or lump it I guess.

ealdwin

I'm not objected to the Major Protection for slotting. But if we're looking for alternative suggestions, why not ditch the Major Protection and allow Flare to provide Major Sorcery and Brutality for slotting.

itscompton

TheEndBringer wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

itscompton wrote: »

UnassumingNoob wrote: »

I don’t see any issue with it. I can’t find a character that could actually run it. The opportunity cost is bar space - which is at a premium.

Maybe for your builds and playstyle, but there will be tons of tanky high recovery Necro trolls that have plenty of room to slot it with DB, Boneyard, and Blastbones being all that's needed for offense. They can have spirit guardian, flare, and the Psijic ult on the back bar for huge mitigation as they kite and once they've let people run all their resources out futilely chasing they flip bars and drop their 3 move AOE burst combo for the kills. If anyone chasing is still alive they just flip to the defensive bar and start kiting again.
This is already a thing on the live servers but it's going to be much easier to do successfully in the next patch with the extra mitigation from flare and battle spirit allowing Necros to shift builds towards even more sustain or upping their own damage.

Thank you for mentioning Spirit Guardian. That is a skill that gives 10% mitigation to the user, in addition to its primary function of healing. Sure you have to cast it every 16s, but it applies to both bars while being slotted only on one. SG is the perfect example of why Major Protection on Flare is fine.

Actually it's the opposite. Except for Necro troll players everyone acknowledges how ridiculous they are to kill because of skills like spirit guardian. The answer isn't to give everyone the same mitigation, it's to nerf it from guardian.

Not even really nerf it, just change it to the named buff so it can't stack with flare and give the ability 10% more healing as compensation.

Ratzkifal

ealdwin wrote: »

I'm not objected to the Major Protection for slotting. But if we're looking for alternative suggestions, why not ditch the Major Protection and allow Flare to provide Major Sorcery and Brutality for slotting.

So far Major Brutality and Sorcery have yet to be given out just for slotting a skill (excluding the one from werewolf, since they need to make due with just 5 skills total), so I am not sure if we should start with that.
I think we should keep it simple and stick to Prophecy and Savagery since that's what Expert Hunter and Mage Light provide as well. If what these skills offer is comparable, then you can pick your favorite among them. Otherwise people might end up slotting more than one...
You prefer revealing enemies around you? Pick Mage Light or Expert Hunter depending if you're stam or mag.
You prefer revealing enemies from afar and sweeping large areas off hidden enemies? Pick Flare.
If you just want the stats, pick any of them depending on whether you are magicka, stamina or hybrid.

DrSlaughtr

ealdwin wrote: »

I'm not objected to the Major Protection for slotting. But if we're looking for alternative suggestions, why not ditch the Major Protection and allow Flare to provide Major Sorcery and Brutality for slotting.

Because that's not what this is about unfortunately. If the buffs on lighter and hunter are so great then applying them to flare would actually let you decide which reveal to run.

The issue is light and hunter are far away more effective reveals and if the benefits of those skills are so great you wouldn't run flare with major protection.

But because you can get the crit buffs with a potion, you can ditch light or hunter for major protection.

Ergo, every Stam DD will be running this for only the buff. It will lead to more tankiness that 3 months from now people will be screaming over.

Abyssmol

Since we are talking about mitigation and some people think 10% base damage reduction is too strong, how about Evation? How come this one skill gives stamina users 20% damage reduction against AOE (Templar main spammable). If 10 % is too strong, 20% is over the top then. I don't see any stamina use complaining that ZOS should change major evation to major something else, or reduce the damage mitigation to less than 10%. Let's give evation major brutality ah. I guess everyone defend their main class. That's why ZOS should dtop listen to this forum and make changes based on data.

Larcomar

Feels in about the right place to me. Sensible change. I get why the NBs here aren't thrilled - I mean, people might actually slot flare now, and they're going to have to work a bit harder for kills on squishies and deal with some form of counter play. But if we're honest, a bit of counter play is prob a good thing for the health of Cyrodiil. With the cooldown on pots, shade+cloak is too often a free pass.

If major protection was still 30%, sure, that wd be too much. But 10%? That's hardly unbalanced. As other's have pointed out, people are perhaps misunderstanding how mitigation stacks - or doesn't. Cutting it to minor, or replacing it with major prophecy / savagery etc - noone would run it. Those buffs are already widely available and the latter isn't that desirable in pvp anyway.

Xahran

Due to damage mitigation from major protection being multiplicative, and that they are multiplied with Battlespirit, your resistances and buffs like minor protection, you won't ever get the 10 damage reduction in the tooltip. I will test it later but I am sure with just a good 20k resistances and minor protection you will get like 5% on average damage reduction out of it. On the other hand, the buffs from hunter and light aren't affected by diminishing returns and they improve the more important component of your build which is damage, not to mention that unlike flare, their reveal moves with you. So yeah it isn't that bad when you think about it.

Jierdanit

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

This is exactly the problem. People will run it for the buff, not the actual skill.

So, like mage light and expert hunter...

Change mage light and expert hunter to minor prophecy and minor savagery

In seriousness, nobody would use Flare if it gave Minor Protection. That is too easy to obtain other ways, better ways. It would be entirely useless on Templar and Warden, and I doubt many would choose to slot it over Temporal Guard (easier to fit since you only need one active ult and it also gives the shield while blocking).

There is a huge difference between major prophecy / savagery and major protection in terms of how easy it is to get though.

You can get get major prophecy on 4 and major savagery on 5 different skills, you have a set that passively grants the buff for both and you can easily get either by using a potion.

major protection on the other hand you can get on 3 ultimates, 2 of which are barely used at all and on 1 skill that requires you to have corpses around and still only gives you 1 second of major protection per corpse.

So while it is absolutely normal to see someone having a 100% uptime on major prophecy or savagery even without running mage light or camo hunter, major protection is rare to see at all and if you have it its nearly always only for a short time.

And to all the people who say that flare wont be run because you cant afford to waste the bar space for it, people are running mage light or camo hunter on their builds right now, even though it is really easy to get it in other ways, why do you think they would not just put flare on their backbar for 10% less incoming dmg?

You’re right about the availability of these buffs on skills, but that is not due to their current power level. Several years ago, when skills like Veil of Blades and Permafrost were designed, Major Protection gave 30% mitigation and was a very powerful tool for the user and their allies. It made sense for them to have low uptimes.

Contrast that with the old Major Prophecy/Savagery, which was 10% crit chance in a time when crit damage was much lower. You’d see maybe 5-6% damage increase from these buffs. Obviously this is far from being balanced or countering Major Protection, but the answer at the time was to allow easy uptime of the weaker Major buffs.

After the rebalancing of the Major/Minor buff system, all of the names buffs ended up similar in power level. Prophecy/Savagery increased to 12% crit chance, and with the high crit damage these days that can result in a 7-9% damage increase. At the same time Protection was reduced from 30% to 10% mitigation. It no longer made sense to limit this buff to a few classes with low uptime, its not that powerful, and could be just as accessible as Major Resolve/Breach/Sorcery/Brutality/Prophecy/Savagery etc. without any balance problems.

Seems like the devs know this and are finally getting around to making it more available. Personally I think it’s a great move to add it to a useless skill like the old flare.

I know that the availability is because of the buffs being different in the past.

That still doesnt change that imo its a bad idea to put major prot on a skill passively.

Firstly, because it makes the other skills that offer major protection currently pretty much useless, except to some extent perma and pretty much deletes any reason to still use a set like steadfast hero, pirate skeleton, etc.

And Secondly, because in my opinion a passive 10% less incoming damage is still too strong, its pretty much like permanently getting Swift on 1 bar without using a set for it or more than 3 times what potentates offers you as a backbar option.

Larcomar

Its not 10% less incoming damage though. It's nowhere near as has been pointed out. Hence why hardly anyone runs stuff like pirate skellie anymore. As someone else said way back, zos is just bringing the availability of the buff in line with it's diminished status. And creating some sort of reason to run stuff like flare...

Jierdanit

Larcomar wrote: »

Its not 10% less incoming damage though. It's nowhere near as has been pointed out. Hence why hardly anyone runs stuff like pirate skellie anymore. As someone else said way back, zos is just bringing the availability of the buff in line with it's diminished status. And creating some sort of reason to run stuff like flare...

Yeah it is creating a reason to run flare, while at the same time pretty much deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection at the moment.

Abyssmol

Jierdanit wrote: »

Larcomar wrote: »

Its not 10% less incoming damage though. It's nowhere near as has been pointed out. Hence why hardly anyone runs stuff like pirate skellie anymore. As someone else said way back, zos is just bringing the availability of the buff in line with it's diminished status. And creating some sort of reason to run stuff like flare...

Yeah it is creating a reason to run flare, while at the same time pretty much deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection at the moment.

Would it make it better that instead of giving major protection, the skill would give 10% mitigation? Lol 😆 or the issue is not about having a "...deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection..." anymore. 😁

Jierdanit

Abyssmol wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

Larcomar wrote: »

Its not 10% less incoming damage though. It's nowhere near as has been pointed out. Hence why hardly anyone runs stuff like pirate skellie anymore. As someone else said way back, zos is just bringing the availability of the buff in line with it's diminished status. And creating some sort of reason to run stuff like flare...

Yeah it is creating a reason to run flare, while at the same time pretty much deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection at the moment.

Would it make it better that instead of giving major protection, the skill would give 10% mitigation? Lol 😆 or the issue is not about having a "...deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection..." anymore. 😁

That would just make the skill absolutely OP
as it would be stackable with major protection.

Abyssmol

Jierdanit wrote: »

Abyssmol wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

Larcomar wrote: »

Its not 10% less incoming damage though. It's nowhere near as has been pointed out. Hence why hardly anyone runs stuff like pirate skellie anymore. As someone else said way back, zos is just bringing the availability of the buff in line with it's diminished status. And creating some sort of reason to run stuff like flare...

Yeah it is creating a reason to run flare, while at the same time pretty much deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection at the moment.

Would it make it better that instead of giving major protection, the skill would give 10% mitigation? Lol 😆 or the issue is not about having a "...deleting all reasons to run nearly any of the other stuff giving major protection..." anymore. 😁

That would just make the skill absolutely OP
as it would be stackable with major protection.

Agree 😁. Do you think Evation from medium armor skill line is OP? 20% mitigation to AOEs. Most hard hitting skills and Ultimates are AOE. Should this absolutely OP skill exist at all based on what you said. 10% mitigation on a skill vs 20%. I don't know...

Abyssmol

@ZOS - since some players have a problem with Flare having major protection, please consider giving Flare Major evation instead.

Medium armor can get this buff easily, it last for over 20 secs, applies to both bars, and has a secondary effect (additional speed or snare removal). On the other hand if major evation is attached to Flare it would only be on one bar with no secondary effect - only stealth detection to be used against one class.

Problem solved. I think 🤔

Xahran

Just tested major protection on UESP build editor and these are my findings:

Using a all heavy pariah tanky build, I found that you get 2.5% damage reduction from major protection with just Pariah on full health. Stack more resistances and buffs like minor protection and Undeath and your gains from major protection will be reduced even more and get closer to 1% damage reduction.

Now, I also tried a light armor squishy build to see how much do those builds gain from major protection without the diminishing returns found on a heavy armour build. The gains didn't increase a lot to a humble 3%. I tried next to go for a full glass cannon build with zero mitigations buffs and the gains from major protection increased to just 4.3% damage reduction

TLDR; the damage reduction from Battlespirit alone makes stacking lots of damage reductions pretty lame if they cost you damage or sustain. Pve players will be impacted by Flare's major protection much more than us pvpers and stacking lots of damage mitigations is quite the pvp noob trap.

Abyssmol

Xahran wrote: »

Just tested major protection on UESP build editor and these are my findings:

Using a heavy pariah tanky build, I found that you get 2.5% damage reduction with just Pariah on full health full heavy build. Stack more resistances and buffs like minor protections and Undeath and your gains from major protection will be reduced even more and get closer to 1% damage reduction.

Now, I also tried a light armor squishy build to see how much do those builds gain from major protection without the diminishing returns found on a heavy armour build. The gains didn't increase a lot to a humble 3%. I tried next to go for a full glass cannon build with zero mitigations buffs and the gains from major protection increased to just 4.3% damage reduction

TLDR; the damage reduction from Battlespirit alone makes stacking lots of damage reductions pretty lame if they cost you damage or sustain. Pve players will be impacted by Flare's major protection much more than us pvpers.

Yeap sounds about right! No let's hear how powerful major protection is on Flare. Second test, anyone?

DrSlaughtr

So again I'm hearing that major protection isn't any good and the effects of light and hunter are op.

So no one will run flare, right? 🙄

If that were true people would be clamoring to have the buffs and effects copied from light and hunter.

What WILL happen is people will forgo the 5% mag increase or the 5% damage increase after flank crit from camo hunter because major protection is better than both of those. Prophecy and Savagery are then grabbed fron pots. They'll do this because the reveal of the skills doesn't really matter. If it did you'd choose the best active skill to slot which is light/hunter.

10% or 5%, whatever it is, will be enough for wardens, necros, templars, and sorcs to full heal out of damage. This isn't a NB thing. I have every class I just listed. I already eat damage on those classes as is without any extra mitigation. Now on up of that in getting a BS increase plus this buff.

Evasion got brought up for some reason even though it has nothing to do with this but gut it for all I care. It is too strong.

Abyssmol

TheEndBringer wrote: »

So again I'm hearing that major protection isn't any good and the effects of light and hunter are op.

So no one will run flare, right? 🙄

If that were true people would be clamoring to have the buffs and effects copied from light and hunter.

What WILL happen is people will forgo the 5% mag increase or the 5% damage increase after flank crit from camo hunter because major protection is better than both of those. Prophecy and Savagery are then grabbed fron pots. They'll do this because the reveal of the skills doesn't really matter. If it did you'd choose the best active skill to slot which is light/hunter.

10% or 5%, whatever it is, will be enough for wardens, necros, templars, and sorcs to full heal out of damage. This isn't a NB thing. I have every class I just listed. I already eat damage on those classes as is without any extra mitigation. Now on up of that in getting a BS increase plus this buff.

Evasion got brought up for some reason even though it has nothing to do with this but gut it for all I care. It is too strong.

But this discussion has everything to do with Evasion. People are claiming that major protection is too strong to have on Flare. So what about Major evasion then. You cannot have it both ways. If everyone here is OK with evasion the way it is now then why not put it on Flare.

It is another major buff which is way better than major protection but No one is bringing this up. When you can reduce 20% base damage to most Ultimates, even shut down magical Templars completely (think about it 40% (20% from evasion plus another 20% from CP) damage reduction to most Templar skills used now - jabs, barrage, sweep. And this 40% is not even counting battle spirit, minor and major protection, resistances, etc....

How can someone tell me that major protection on Flare is too OP when stamina player have major evasion. The way it is now, medium armor is tankier than heavy. The extra 3.5k resistance that heavy provide does not come even close to medium running major evasion.

But now that ZOS wants to increase mitigation just a little by adding a major buff to Flare (a useless skill) the forum goes up in arms. And yes light armor would get a little more mitigation than medium because of the multiplicative effect. But would never get close to the mitigation that major evasion provides. And please don't tell me that stamina would use both Evasion and Flare. It would not work! For one you would have to use two skill slots and 2) the mitigation would be way less than someone with no Evasion slotted.

Conclusion - stamina players don't what major protection on Flare, fine, then give magicka user major evasion on Flare.

Discuss away!

DrSlaughtr

Abyssmol wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

So again I'm hearing that major protection isn't any good and the effects of light and hunter are op.

So no one will run flare, right? 🙄

If that were true people would be clamoring to have the buffs and effects copied from light and hunter.

What WILL happen is people will forgo the 5% mag increase or the 5% damage increase after flank crit from camo hunter because major protection is better than both of those. Prophecy and Savagery are then grabbed fron pots. They'll do this because the reveal of the skills doesn't really matter. If it did you'd choose the best active skill to slot which is light/hunter.

10% or 5%, whatever it is, will be enough for wardens, necros, templars, and sorcs to full heal out of damage. This isn't a NB thing. I have every class I just listed. I already eat damage on those classes as is without any extra mitigation. Now on up of that in getting a BS increase plus this buff.

Evasion got brought up for some reason even though it has nothing to do with this but gut it for all I care. It is too strong.

But this discussion has everything to do with Evasion. People are claiming that major protection is too strong to have on Flare. So what about Major evasion then. You cannot have it both ways. If everyone here is OK with evasion the way it is now then why not put it on Flare.

It is another major buff which is way better than major protection but No one is bringing this up. When you can reduce 20% base damage to most Ultimates, even shut down magical Templars completely (think about it 40% (20% from evasion plus another 20% from CP) damage reduction to most Templar skills used now - jabs, barrage, sweep. And this 40% is not even counting battle spirit, minor and major protection, resistances, etc....

How can someone tell me that major protection on Flare is too OP when stamina player have major evasion. The way it is now, medium armor is tankier than heavy. The extra 3.5k resistance that heavy provide does not come even close to medium running major evasion.

But now that ZOS wants to increase mitigation just a little by adding a major buff to Flare (a useless skill) the forum goes up in arms. And yes light armor would get a little more mitigation than medium because of the multiplicative effect. But would never get close to the mitigation that major evasion provides. And please don't tell me that stamina would use both Evasion and Flare. It would not work! For one you would have to use two skill slots and 2) the mitigation would be way less than someone with no Evasion slotted.

Conclusion - stamina players don't what major protection on Flare, fine, then give magicka user major evasion on Flare.

Discuss away!

I already said gut evasion. But these things aren't the same. You have to run the skill and spend the stamina to proc it.

Go make a "major evasion sucks" thread and I'll be the first to reply to nerf it. I'm tired of people eating seige.

Otherwise you're just trying to distract from the point. We're talking about a major buff that, until now, was protected from abuse with limited ways to get it. And just because it's not 30% anymore didn't mean it still isn't strong.

At least if it only was active while a flare is on the ground you'd have to actually proc something.

Fawn4287

TheEndBringer wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

This is exactly the problem. People will run it for the buff, not the actual skill.

So, like mage light and expert hunter...

They offer the same buff you get from potions. There's a huge difference.

Exactly this, I’ve very often just slot these as a potion if I lack the bar space, major protection is usually from a 5 piece set or an ultimate which is guarantees a downtime, can you imagine if you could get major protection for like 45 seconds from a potion? It may as well be a like that if this is how its going to be. Next update may as well drop the defensive set pick up something like deadly strike, dagon etc. and run revealing flair backbar with more defensive CP slottables. Just with that alone you have negated both penetration and damage combined massively since your mitigation is coming from raw percentages and not actual resistances meaning that damage is getting far more trashed than people actually realise. Topped off with medium loosing its useful crit passives for most builds, damage is going to struggle much harder than people realise, they may as well revert to CP 1.0 if this is how its going to play.

Abyssmol

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Abyssmol wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

So again I'm hearing that major protection isn't any good and the effects of light and hunter are op.

So no one will run flare, right? 🙄

If that were true people would be clamoring to have the buffs and effects copied from light and hunter.

What WILL happen is people will forgo the 5% mag increase or the 5% damage increase after flank crit from camo hunter because major protection is better than both of those. Prophecy and Savagery are then grabbed fron pots. They'll do this because the reveal of the skills doesn't really matter. If it did you'd choose the best active skill to slot which is light/hunter.

10% or 5%, whatever it is, will be enough for wardens, necros, templars, and sorcs to full heal out of damage. This isn't a NB thing. I have every class I just listed. I already eat damage on those classes as is without any extra mitigation. Now on up of that in getting a BS increase plus this buff.

Evasion got brought up for some reason even though it has nothing to do with this but gut it for all I care. It is too strong.

But this discussion has everything to do with Evasion. People are claiming that major protection is too strong to have on Flare. So what about Major evasion then. You cannot have it both ways. If everyone here is OK with evasion the way it is now then why not put it on Flare.

It is another major buff which is way better than major protection but No one is bringing this up. When you can reduce 20% base damage to most Ultimates, even shut down magical Templars completely (think about it 40% (20% from evasion plus another 20% from CP) damage reduction to most Templar skills used now - jabs, barrage, sweep. And this 40% is not even counting battle spirit, minor and major protection, resistances, etc....

How can someone tell me that major protection on Flare is too OP when stamina player have major evasion. The way it is now, medium armor is tankier than heavy. The extra 3.5k resistance that heavy provide does not come even close to medium running major evasion.

But now that ZOS wants to increase mitigation just a little by adding a major buff to Flare (a useless skill) the forum goes up in arms. And yes light armor would get a little more mitigation than medium because of the multiplicative effect. But would never get close to the mitigation that major evasion provides. And please don't tell me that stamina would use both Evasion and Flare. It would not work! For one you would have to use two skill slots and 2) the mitigation would be way less than someone with no Evasion slotted.

Conclusion - stamina players don't what major protection on Flare, fine, then give magicka user major evasion on Flare.

Discuss away!

I already said gut evasion. But these things aren't the same. You have to run the skill and spend the stamina to proc it.

Go make a "major evasion sucks" thread and I'll be the first to reply to nerf it. I'm tired of people eating seige.

Otherwise you're just trying to distract from the point. We're talking about a major buff that, until now, was protected from abuse with limited ways to get it. And just because it's not 30% anymore didn't mean it still isn't strong.

At least if it only was active while a flare is on the ground you'd have to actually proc something.

This is the last thing I would say about the Major buffs.

"But these things aren't the same."
- This things are the same. You have two major buff that offer protection. Both reduce damage by a percentage.

"You have to run the skill and spend the stamina to proc it."
- you also have to run the skill on your bar. The difference is that major evasion and the secondary effect on Evasion carries over to the other weapon bar, the buff on Flare would not. Also no secondary effects like increase speed or snare removal - Flare: major evasion on one bar with no secondary effect vs Evasion: cost stamina- 20 secs per cast, but major evasion on both bars and secondary effects. I would pick major evasion on both bars.

Distraction? How can this be a distraction when I am pointing out that stamina has a superior buff to major protection readily available in the form of Evation. But still most stamina players on the forum do not want any protective buffs on Flare; which more than likely, it would be use by magicka users. And yes I'm arguing this because the buff is not 30%; it's 10%. It may have been protected from abuse when it was 30%. But why would it be protected now. Even necro get 10% damage mitigation for using one skill. Does that sound like a buff protected from abuse to you?

Good discussion though. Take care.

ExistingRug61

To everyone commenting that stacking mitigations are diminishing returns:
( @katorga @Abyssmol @spacefracking @Larcomar @Xahran )

Stacking mitigations may look like it gives diminishing returns if you look at the absolute change in total mitigation, like you are doing.
But, the absolute change in total mitigation is NOT a good representation of what actually matters in terms of effect on gameplay - its not the best output metric to look at.
Rather, what matters is the marginal, or relative, change in damage taken. And this is not diminishing. Another alternative metric that shows this is effective HP.

Why looking at the absolute change in total mitigation isn't a good metric in comparison to marginal change

I will highlight this with the following extreme example:
Consider two builds, one that has only the base 10% total mitigation , and another that has 98% total mitigation.
Now, let’s say both adjust their build to gain +1% absolute total mitigation.
The first build changes from 10% to 11% mitigation. Survivability sees a very small increase. This corresponds to a 1.1% marginal reduction in damage taken (90% down to 89%).
The second build changes from 98% to 99% mitigation. In gameplay terms, this player has halved their incoming damage, effectively doubling their survivability, ie: a very large effect. This corresponds to a 50% marginal reduction in damage taken (2% damage taken down to 1% damage taken). .
So in the above two examples, the absolute change in total mitigation was the same in both cases, but the effect on gameplay was significantly different, so the absolute change in total mitigation doesn't really align with the gameplay change. However, the marginal change provides a value that more closely aligns with gameplay.

No because mitigation is always applied multiplicatively, the marginal change in damage taken will always be the same when you gain a new independent source of mitigation of the same value, regardless of your current total mitigation. Getting major protection will always give you a marginal reduction in damage taken of 10%.

Effective HP - an alternative metric

Another way of looking at the above is via effective HP, or eHP, where
eHP = heath/(1-total mitigation)

This is a reasonably good measure of survivability as it represents the amount of tooltip damage required to take you from full health to dead. It is a better output metric to look at in terms of the effect of stacking mitigation.

Again, lets take two cases and consider how the addition of major protection changes them. These are just fictional stats for illustrative purposes. (I picked them to give the same starting point of eHP epcifically)

Build 1: Stack health, don’t worry about mitigation. 40k Health, 70% total mitigation (say just BS + armour)
eHP = 40k/(1-0.7) = 133.3k
Build 2: Not much investment in health, instead stacks mitigations (excluding major prot). 20k Health, 85% total mitigation
eHP = 20k/(1-0.85) = 133.3k

So both have the same eHP – it would take the same burst tooltip to down both of these builds.
Now, lets add major protection. If stacking mitigations offered diminishing returns, then the second case should get less benefit right?

Build 1: Adding major protection changes total mitigation from 70% to 73%
New eHP = 40k/(1-0.73) = 148.15k
Build 2: Adding major protection changes total mitigation from 85% to 86.5%
New eHP = 20k/(1-0.865) = 148.15k

So eHP has increased by the same amount on both builds. Both got the same benefit from major protection in terms of increasing the amount of tooltip burst required to kill them.

Additionally, in the case of eHP, adding more and more sources of mitigation actually provides more and more benefit for each subsequent mitigation .

(It also works the same with effective healing, where effective healing = healing tooltip/(1-total mitigation) )

Stacking Mitigation Vs Stacking Damage Boosts

Finally, comparing mitigations to damage boosts and saying mitigations are diminishing while damage boosts are not and thus its better to stack damage boosts is also not really what happens either. To make this a bit clearer, instead of comparing flare’s major protection to say hunter’s crit and berserk (which gets a bit complicated due to multiple separate bonuses), lets just pretend that hunter instead simply gives +10% damage done. So 10% mitigation vs 10% damage done. Now, lets also pretend that these are un-named buffs, and that for some reason we can slot them multiple times just to see what happens when we stack them with themselves, to show if they are diminishing returns or not.

For the example, take two players in a duel with the same stats, say with 80% total mitigation each. I will use light attacks as a simple measure of each builds effectiveness against the other. Lets say initially they both can light attack each other and each does 2k damage after mitigation. So for each build the light attack damage before mitigation would be 10k (2k/(1-0.8)=10k).

Now, player A decides to slot the +10% mitigation 5 times, and player B decides to slot the +10% damage 5 times.
If mitigation gave diminishing returns, and damage gives non-diminishing returns, this should mean we end up with player B gaining an advantage, because their choice is non-diminishing, right?

So what happens?
Player A’s damage is unchanged. Player B’s mitigation is unchanged.
So Player A still does the same 2k damage to player B with light attacks.
Player B’s damage increases by 5*+10%=+50% so goes to 15k before mitigation.
Player A’s mitigation changes to 1-(1-0.8)*(1-0.1)^5 = 0.8819 or 88.19%.
So Player B now does 15k*(1-0.8819) = 1.77k to player A with light attacks.

End result: The player who stack mitigation is now at an advantage in gameplay terms. It was better to do this than to stack damage. Not the result that would be expected if stacking mitigation was diminishing but damage isn’t. And this is because stacking mitigation is not diminishing in terms of gameplay effect.

Sorry, long post, rant over.

Tl:dr Mitigations are not diminishing returns in terms of their effect on gameplay survivability. (Looking at change in absolute mitigation may give this impression but it is not the relevant metric on gameplay)

WrathOfInnos

Fawn4287 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

This is exactly the problem. People will run it for the buff, not the actual skill.

So, like mage light and expert hunter...

They offer the same buff you get from potions. There's a huge difference.

Exactly this, I’ve very often just slot these as a potion if I lack the bar space, major protection is usually from a 5 piece set or an ultimate which is guarantees a downtime, can you imagine if you could get major protection for like 45 seconds from a potion? It may as well be a like that if this is how its going to be.

Armor potions exist, and often give more mitigation than the 10% from Major Protection (if you have over 13k resistance after subtracting enemy penetration), while stacking with any named buffs and % mitigation bonuses. For high resistance builds, these potions reduce incoming damage by up to 14%.

They give 100% uptime, on both bars (unlike Flare). They’re certainly not overpowered, and are rarely used.

DrSlaughtr

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Armor potions exist, and often give more mitigation than the 10% from Major Protection (if you have over 13k resistance after subtracting enemy penetration), while stacking with any named buffs and % mitigation bonuses. For high resistance builds, these potions reduce incoming damage by up to 14%.

They give 100% uptime, on both bars (unlike Flare). They’re certainly not overpowered, and are rarely used.

I assume you're talking about Essence of Armor.

I don't know anyone who runs it because it's kinda useless. If you're a tank, you already have Major Resolve from a skill (every class has access to this buff). As a tank, you are already pushing resistance cap or over it. So you run tripots for mag, stam and health.

As a DD, you are losing too much to run that potion (you also have access to major resolve). If you aren't getting brutality/sorcery from a skill or set, you have to run weapon/spell power pots. If you ARE getting those buffs from a skill or set, you're going to run tripots just like the tank because your recovery is going to suck without Major Endurance/Intellect.

ESPECIALLY during his pariah meta, you don't need to run that pot. And Pariah isn't going anywhere even though it should be adjusted. Somehow Fortified gets nerfed but not Pariah.

I'm sure there are some people who run essence of armor but you give up a lot to do so. Now as far as the mitigation you get from 5k armor being better than 10% from Major Protection, I don't buy that for one second. You know why? Even if you're a DD @ 20 resistance so you get propped up to 25k, anyone can apply major fracture to wipe that out. You can't wipe out Major Protection. You can't cancel the buff.

I don't know how many times I need to stress this. There are three classes right now that if given the extra Battle Spirit mitigation + free Major Protection will absolutely fubar the game balance in Cyro. Those classes are Warden, Templar and MOST IMPORTANTLY Necro. These three classes right now can 1vX an entire group through a keep for 20 minutes without breaking a sweat. So now you're going to increase their battle spirit mitigation AND give them free major protection at no cost.

There are many buffs that are better for this skill. I shall list them.

Minor Protection when combined with the battle spirit change would still be strong.

Major Protection only being active WHILE USING FLARE would be much more acceptable but I assume they don't want to do this because of calculations.

Minor Evasion passively active is still a bit much but preferable to Major Protection, since it only applies to AOE (ergo a better defense from bombers without making every other fight a giant pain in the ass). Personally though I think minor and major evasion are bs buffs and should be halved.

Minor Fortitude, considering how health recover has been gutted.

Minor Intellect + Endurance, considering how recovery is getting gutted.

Minor Resolve, would still be helpful for lower resistance DDs but little help to tanks.

Now if we rolled back to before this PTS, if I suggested any of those to be added to flare there would be people who would love them and people who would hate them because of the power they would give. The only reason these don't look as appetizing now is because some players have already started theory crafting how they'll exploit a passively given Major Protection. So all those look like garbage in comparison, which is the whole point of this thread. Major Protection is too strong.

Some people replied to this talking about how Major Protection isn't good BUT at the same time defend having it on flare at all costs. If it's garbage AND the skill doesn't work as well as light/hunter, then shouldn't you be campaigning for something other than Major Protection?

If this goes through as is by next patch the forums will flood with complaints over this. People have already figured out how to run Tank DDs again in Cyro. They're all over the place. All you need is at least three 35k health tanks in a group and you can stack damage and destroy anyone you come across with malacath (yes, even still). These players will not only use flare, but some have even told me they plan to double bar it.

So when we all get tired of ring around the rosy for 10 to 15 minutes while trying to clear out a keep, we can all beg for this to be reversed, since that seems to be the only recourse.