Racial Passive Overhaul

Roylund

Yes, another one of those. Hear me out guys: there's two ways we can go through with this. One is that racial passives become cosmetic so that balance is forever achieved and the other is that some balancing is done so races have certain niches over others. I'm going to attempt to address the second one since I'm a fan of racial passives giving each race a different identity. I'm saddened by the state of Wood Elves and Redguards where they feel pretty underwhelming compared to the other races. Wood Elves especially since at least Redguards found a niche in tanking but our smol elves lag behind. I don't think the game has to stray as far from current racial passives to make them more balanced. I also won't try to shoehorn certain races into certain builds by giving Dark Elves a fire bonus or Khajiits a sneak attack bonus EXCEPT for Wood Elves since bows are core to the Wood Elf identity.

So here's what I will do. I will balance the races so they have a clear role in mind that is consistent with their inclinations in the lore. I will make concessions whenever their lore inclinations would break the game. I will expect tradeoffs of some kind for being good at one thing (e.g. if you have damage and sustain you're not tanky, if you're tanky with damage you lack sustain, if you're tanky with sustain you lack damage, etc.). I will keep stat bonuses at 4k maximum and will provide some other benefit to races that do not reach this threshold. I will make each race warrant usage over others in some way (no Bosmer/Redguard/Argonian scenario). I'll highlight changes. Here goes.

Altmer
Best wizard race according to lore. Racials should reflect them leaning towards destruction magic.

• Spell Recharge - Same as live but now recovers your non-hp stat with the lowest % (so can now recover main stat). If this ends up dropping performance then it should just apply to your main stat.
• Syrabane's Boon - Same as live.
• Elemental Talent - Same as live. Ideally this would just be spell damage but I don't think ZOS is ever going back on hybridization.

Argonians
Guerilla warriors, resilient, good with spears (rip Morrowind spears). Healing subculture (lore life menders and Skyrim hitskin) but I think ESO is going a bit too ham on that. Dunno how much players like that.

• Resourceful - Same as live,
• Argonian Resistance - Same as live.
• Life Mender - How about giving them an additional line of crit. Shadowscales and An-Xileel? Give Argonians some physical proficiency to reflect their warrior and assassin cultural inclinations. Otherwise, if we're going to make Argonians healers then they better warrant being run over Khajiit/Altmer/Dunmer so their healing passive should be increased or be given some crit chance that only applies to healing.

Bosmer
Sneaky, most proficient race at using bows, nimble in combat, rarely confront enemies head-on.

• Y'ffre's Endurance - Same as live but stealth passive makes a comeback here.
• Resist Affliction - Same as live. Ideally would be poison and disease resistance bc lore but it's not a big deal.
• Hunter's Eye - Movement speed increased by 5%, physical and spell pen increased by 950, 5% increased damage with ranged attacks. Effects double for 12 seconds after performing a dodge roll. The old rolly-polly Wood Elf passive fit their fighting style well, I think this is a more balanced approach to what they used to have and what they have now. Increased ranged damage applies to both bows (core Bosmer identity) as well as giving Bosmer mage builds trying to lean into their Spinner cultural identity something to work with. Bosmer need something that differentiates them from Redguards as a sustain race (outside of the pen passive).

Bretons
Most magically-inclined human race. Adept at resisting magic.

• Gift of Magnus - Same as live.
• Spell Atunement - Same as live. Tbh I would like to see this act like Dragonskin in Skyrim and Redguard's Adrenaline Rush but I think this is fine as it is.
• Magicka Mastery - Reduces the Magicka cost of your abilities by 10%. I think the gap between Imperials and Bretons should be wider when it comes to Magicka reduction. Imperials become battlemages because of their military training, they are not as naturally inclined to magic as Bretons are and sustain passives should reflect that imo.

Dunmer
Versatile race, magic and might (ALMSIVI), flame resistance. Great assassins, warriors, and wizards. Buffing their fire damage would be nice because of the lore but would warp builds too much.

• Dynamic - Increases Max Magicka and Max Stamine by 2000. If we want High Elves to stand out as wizards over Dark Elves we should do it with other passive bonuses, not by having Dark Elves trail them with a measly 90 points in Magicka.
• Resist Flame - Same as live.
• Ruination - Same as live.

Khajiit
I don't know when we decided Khajiits would be Dark Elves with fur and tails but people like this direction so I wouldn't take it away from them. In the lore they are great thieves and assassins.

• Robustness - Increases Health, Stamina, and Magicka Recovery by 100. I don't know the formula for calculating health vs offensive stat equivalencies but I don't think rounding out the stats breaks the race. I'm ok with this staying as it is live if this doesn't make sense.
• Lunar Blessings - Increases your Max Health, Magicka, and Stamina by 1000. See above.
• Feline Ambush - Increases your Critical Hit Damage and Healing by 8%. This bonus ignores the crit damage cap. I think from a design standpoint it doesn't make sense that a race with extra sustain and tankiness matches up in damage with races that don't have those benefits. In a world where Khajiits, Dark Elves, and High Elves all hit the same DPS numbers, there would be no reason to take the latter when the former has higher hp and sustain. Yeah right now Khajiits underperform in trials but they outperform in all other content. I just don't want Khajiits to outheal Argonians and outdamage damage races (in most content). Their tankiness and sustain should come with steeper tradeoffs. This way Khajiits should be better in trials where they underpeform and be toned down a bit in 4 man and solo content where they overperform.

Nord
The hardiest human fighters, always saving the Empire. Often forgo shields in favor of two handed weapons. Don't believe the Shalidor psyop, they stopped caring about magic a while ago so they're all in on martial prowess for the foreseeable future.

• Stalwart - Same as live.
• Resist Frost - Increases your Max Health by 1500 and Frost Resistance by 4620. They are the beefiest human race. Their health should show it (why would a Nord squaring off against an Imperial have less health? Resistance notwithstanding.)
• Rugged - Needs a nerf so other races can step up to tank but I am not familiar with tanking so I don't know what that value should be.

Orsimer
The strongest warrior race of elves. Tough in combat and thrive being in the thick of it. Proficient with heavy armor.

• Brawny - Increases your Max Stamina by 2000. 1000 is too low, yeah I would hate to see Orcs be great tanks/dps/healers but I think this is fair. Dark Elves are not as tanky but they have an offstat they can lean to (especially now that we have hybridized builds) and now we have two races that are optimal for stam dps. If it's still overpowered, I'm okay lowering this to 1500.
• Unflinching Rage - Same as live.
• Swift Warrior - Increases your weapon damage by 258. Reduces the cost of Sprint by 12% and ignores the speed penalties of heavy armor. Ideally this would be weapon damage only but we know how it goes. Sprint cost reduction makes sense since they can lug heavy armor with ease but the sprint speed buff does not. They have historically been one of the slowest races, it makes sense that heavy armor doesn't take away from their base speed (hence ignoring the heavy armor sprint penalties) but it doesn't make sense that they're straight up faster than other races.

Redguards
Ahh what have they done to you. Arguably the most skilled and fearsome warriors in the lore. Incredible warrior culture that leads to martial mastery and discipline. Are we really going to make the race that got so good at using swords that they nuked Yokuda strictly inferior to every other race that has a damage bonus?

• Martial Training - Reduces the cost of weapon abilities by 12% Doubles the bonuses obtained from weapons when using weapon skills. Weapon cost reduction is far more specific than magicka or stamina reduction. The bonus should be much higher than what Bretons and Imperials have. If Redguards are martial masters and fearsome warriors then they should also have bonuses tied to how destructively they wield those weapons. Do sword swings just feel lighter to them or are they actually employing their expertise to deal more damage? Doubling weapon bonuses like mace pen, sword dmg, dagger crit, etc. I think is fair in light that Redguards have ZERO defensive bonuses (no resistance of any kind, no health passive), that the bonus is lost upon switching to a different weapon, and that the bonus only applies to weapon skills. The number itself could be tweaked but the idea should remain.
• Conditioning - Same as live.
• Adrenaline Rush - Same as live.

Imperials
An interesting fusion of wizarding (Nibenese) and martial (Colovian) cultures brought together to create a people that have subjugated every corner of Tamriel (with Bretons and Nords leading the charge but don't tell them that). They become proficient mages and warriors through discipline and practice without necessarily being as naturally inclined to either of those paths as other races are.

• Tough - Increases your Max Health by 1000. Maybe change the name because 1000 hp doesn't sound all that "tough" lol. Still, Imperials aren't naturally hardier than Orcs or Nords, they become better soldiers through training.
• Imperial Mettle - Increases your Max Stamina and Magicka by 1000. Max stam and mag go up to reflect Colovian and Nibenese heritage. Imperials don't have a specific resistance and their total health pool is going down so I think higher stat density is warranted.
• Red Diamond - Reduces the cost of all your abilities by 6%. Increases your highest offensive stat by 1000. Now here is where the "are you a battlemage or a warrior" part of the Imperial life comes in. Imperials are known both for being great battlemages and soldiers because they have what it takes to become either, a player's choices should be reflected here.

I think my ideas for the passives make sense but the balancing could be fine-tuned a lot better, especially with regards to efficiencies and whether certain bonuses are exceeding the power budget of each race. I tried sticking to the lore as much as I could without breaking the game and without ruining the fantasy for any lover of a particular race. I do not like the direction of Khajiits and Argonians in ESO but I want you guys to be able to play your race and have it excel over others in specific ways. People's choices should come with tradeoffs so that they become more meaningful and so that no race becomes suboptimal in every scenario. All criticism is welcome.

FluffWit

Some cool ideas.

Redguard especially is crying out for some changes because right now they're just awful for anything really. That reduced cost of weapon abilities passive is straight garbage as it is right now.

I fear ZOS doesn't want to touch these again because the first time they overhauled them they ended up giving away a lot of race change tokens to placate people who didn't like the changes. It really isn't neccesary to do that again.

Ratzkifal

Ooh yes please! Another one of those! I am actually serious.

Altmer

• Spell Recharge - love the intention, probably going to negatively affect performance if it has to keep recalculating which your lowest % resource is

Argonian

• Resourceful - I think you might want to check out what that passive does currently, because this is no change from live. Yes, they get a bonus to stamina too. Something I would like is giving them a bonus to alchemical poisons that puts the potion effect on cooldown, so you have a choice between more damage or more sustain.
• Argonians could also use a stealth bonus because I would want to have more options for stealth than just Khajiit. Also I do not consider stealth as a item set bonus for the item set bonus calculation because it does not make you more lethal to have it for free, but it does make you less lethal to have it over something else. It's a flavor passive and Argonians could use more flavor.

Bosmer

• Yffre's Endurance - love that Bosmer get their stealth back! Hunter's Eye is their first passive though, so I think I would put the stealth back on that still.
• Resist Affliction - I don't have strong feelings about this. There is actual lore precedent for Bosmer having neither lol. ESO has a quest where a lot of Bosmer are being poisoned after eating the poisoned corpses of the fallen who had taken poison before and the reason the Bosmer joined the Dominion is because so many of them died to the Knahaten Flu.
• Hunter's Eye - I like that Bosmer are getting a damage boost to bows, but the reason I personally never asked for it is because it sucks to push Bosmer only towards one weapon. We wanted to get away from that when the elemental damage boni were removed from Altmer and Dunmer. I propose that this gets changed to "ranged abilities" because that includes skills that aren't just from bows and satisfies the people who want to play unconventional/magicka.

Bretons

• Spell Attunement - Agreed but that is probably a pain to code for an MMO, so oh well. As a flavor thing I was thinking about giving them a boost to damage shields, because I feel that is thematic. I would also prefer if they got more spell resistance than Nords and not a conditional effect that only sometimes gives them more resistance.
• Magicka Mastery - only 1% increase, but every bit helps I guess.

Dunmer

• Dynamic - agreed, but also, why not give them Stealth as well? Dunmer are great at being assassins and if Orcs and Altmer are basically exactly the same as Dunmer in every way, let them be the stealth version of that, to give them something that is a unique combination again.

Khajiit

• You forgot to mention their stealth in the passives
• Feline Ambush - I get your reasoning behind it, but I prefer not nerfing a race that can currently be somewhat equal with the best when it comes to damage. Ideally we want all races to be dealing this kind of damage so that nobody ends up feeling bad about their choice.

Nord

• Stalward - sad you didn't buff the amount of stamina to 2000.
• Resist Frost - not sure about the health buff if the new resistance value is not mentioned.
• Rugged - I can get behind making Nord the toughest human race, but I really would have liked to see Nord evolve from a pure tanking choice. They had a bonus to twohanded and medium armor after all. Orcs were always those with the bonus to heavy armor. It would make more sense if Nords were the dps option and Orcs the tanks - now I would want to see them be equal at both with each offering something unique that other doesn't have.

Orsimer

• Swift Warrior - love it. Orc ironically used to be the slowest race and now they are somehow the fastest. Changing them to ignore the speed penalty of heavy armor is very thematic. Since this is a bit more niche now, I would be comfortable giving Orcs 2000 max health to make them at least as tough as Imperials so that is a bit more lore friendly. Orc tanks used to be popular so I think many people who still have their Orc tanks would appreciate this without it becoming too much of an issue in PvP. The extra speed was honestly a bit overpowered.

Redguard

• I think I get what you are going for, you want to double the weapon passive bonus for having a weapon of a certain type equipped. This is not going to work well because you will end up with higher bonuses than the other races. Take a twohanded sword for example, you'd instantly have more weapon and spell damage than Dunmer get in addition to the reduction to weapon skill cost. I would just add weapon and spell damage that only applies to your weapon abilities, since everyone needs to equipe a weapon this wouldn't be too much of a problem and mimic what Bosmer get for bows/ranged abilities.
• The snare resistance is just gone, right? It isn't all that useful in the first place so it won't be missed if we can give them more power I think

Imperial

• Tough - the reason I am against lowering their health (and why I think ZOS ultimately didn't either), is because Imperials are a separate purchase and people bought Imperials back then for what they were offering 10% more max health. They were being sold/marketed as having the highest bonus to max health. I can live with them not having the highest max health bonus anymore, but I would at least want them to be a good choice for builds that are trying to get as much health as possible. More than just a measily 1000 health please.
• Imperial Mettle - I like giving them extra max magicka since they are famous for their battlemages
• Red Diamond - giving them extra max stats based on which of their resources is higher is certainly unique and elegantly solves the issue of stat density. If a buff to health is out of the question for you, I would wish that we could incorporate health into this variable bonus so that you can choose to increase stamina, magicka or health. As for how? I have no idea. Perhaps simply giving it to the highest attribute, since damage dealers commonly have more stamina/magicka than health, but tanks often end up with more health than stamina/magicka.

Over all, I like where you are going with this and I think in most cases people would accept these changes without going on strike and demanding race change tokens. Khajiit and Nord in particular could use more attention and Redguard and Orsimer would probably need some testing to be done for us to figure out what works and what is too strong.

Ratzkifal

FluffWit wrote: »

Some cool ideas.

Redguard especially is crying out for some changes because right now they're just awful for anything really. That reduced cost of weapon abilities passive is straight garbage as it is right now.

I fear ZOS doesn't want to touch these again because the first time they overhauled them they ended up giving away a lot of race change tokens to placate people who didn't like the changes. It really isn't neccesary to do that again.

Agreed, I don't think we need race change tokens this time since we are not trying to completely upset the balance like they were the last time. We are just tweaking it to be a bit more fair and hopefully without making anyone unhappy with the result. So far I think this is a promising proposal that I hope ZOS will take a look at.

ArchMikem

As a guy with three Khajiit, I kinda only ever think about them, so that's where my ideas are limited. That said, I agree that the Races should have niche identity Racials, but to the extent that they affect general gameplay more than they'd ever be helpful in end game content. Like;

Feline Familiarity: All hostile Senche varieties in the world become neutral to you, no longer attacking on sight.

When it comes to combat buffs, I appreciated ZOS giving Khajiit bonuses to both Stamina and Magicka builds simultaneously. Previously, I believe Khajiit used to have this one passive that gave only Weapon Critical Chance? There was no point unlocking that on a MagSorc back then. Now both my StamBlade and MagSorc Khajiit can make use of all three Passives because of the sort of hybridization they've done.

phaneub17_ESO

I want Argonians to gain major expedition for 4 seconds after leaving deep water. Like an alligator leaping out of the water to attack prey on the river banks.

Bosmer take part in the Green Pact and able to eat dead bodies to restore 50% of max health, magicka, and stamina over 5 seconds; 60 second cooldown.

Roylund

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Ooh yes please! Another one of those! I am actually serious.

Thank you so much for the in-depth responses! I definitely should have put a bit more thought into some races, particularly the ones I haven't played with as much. I think it shows that I have never ever built an Argonian since I used an outdated page to look at the passives and did not notice they now had a stamina buff lol.

Altmer

• Spell Recharge - love the intention, probably going to negatively affect performance if it has to keep recalculating which your lowest % resource is

Yeah that's fair. The idea here is that they should be incentivized to keep casting spells like they were with Highborn in Skyrim and that, in general, they should be the most magically offensively focused race. I'm not sure how else to implement this change without bringing down performance other than having your main stat be the one you recover but that could be too direct (I avoided giving any race weapon/spell damage + unconditional sustain). Then again I'm not sure how big of a hit this would be to performance as it would only require a calculation when the Spell Recharge passive fires. Surely that wouldn't be too costly?

Argonian

• Resourceful - I think you might want to check out what that passive does currently, because this is no change from live. Yes, they get a bonus to stamina too. Something I would like is giving them a bonus to alchemical poisons that puts the potion effect on cooldown, so you have a choice between more damage or more sustain.
• Argonians could also use a stealth bonus because I would want to have more options for stealth than just Khajiit. Also I do not consider stealth as a item set bonus for the item set bonus calculation because it does not make you more lethal to have it for free, but it does make you less lethal to have it over something else. It's a flavor passive and Argonians could use more flavor.

Yeah oof sorry Argonians about the stam. At least I know I'm going in the right direction since they were handed the nice 1k bonus sometime ago. A bonus to poisons would be a cool way to keep with the theme of Resourceful. A stealth bonus would be nice too. I don't think it's a problem if more races have it since, like you said, it's just for flavor.

Bosmer

• Yffre's Endurance - love that Bosmer get their stealth back! Hunter's Eye is their first passive though, so I think I would put the stealth back on that still.
• Resist Affliction - I don't have strong feelings about this. There is actual lore precedent for Bosmer having neither lol. ESO has a quest where a lot of Bosmer are being poisoned after eating the poisoned corpses of the fallen who had taken poison before and the reason the Bosmer joined the Dominion is because so many of them died to the Knahaten Flu.

Wood Elves resist disease in Oblivion and both Poison and Disease in Skyrim so I thought it would be okay to keep the passive here. I'm fine with them having either or neither tbh.

[*] Hunter's Eye - I like that Bosmer are getting a damage boost to bows, but the reason I personally never asked for it is because it sucks to push Bosmer only towards one weapon. We wanted to get away from that when the elemental damage boni were removed from Altmer and Dunmer. I propose that this gets changed to "ranged abilities" because that includes skills that aren't just from bows and satisfies the people who want to play unconventional/magicka.

I LOVE that idea, it's so brilliant. I was wondering how to bring in the Spinner identity of Wood Elves without giving them a Magicka bonus or off-resource sustain but couldn't come up with anything. I ended up thinking the pen was good enough but this is such an elegant solution to the problem. I was always sad that peak ESO fantasy would be to play a Wood Elf Warden but they were just worse versions of Dark Elf, Orc, and Khajiit Wardens and this should give them a fantastic way to play the game that fits their lore. Imagine a Wood Elf Warden that uses a bow + staff and pelts you from afar and it's actually optimal. Ranged Wood Elf builds coming soon to a trial near you.

Bretons

• Spell Attunement - Agreed but that is probably a pain to code for an MMO, so oh well. As a flavor thing I was thinking about giving them a boost to damage shields, because I feel that is thematic. I would also prefer if they got more spell resistance than Nords and not a conditional effect that only sometimes gives them more resistance.

The shield idea is interesting. Maybe it's too tricky to balance but something like +8% shield strength would be nice. It would also help differentiate them from Nords.

• Magicka Mastery - only 1% increase, but every bit helps I guess.

Dunmer

• Dynamic - agreed, but also, why not give them Stealth as well? Dunmer are great at being assassins and if Orcs and Altmer are basically exactly the same as Dunmer in every way, let them be the stealth version of that, to give them something that is a unique combination again.

Again, no problem with me here. This reminds me of the meme where every race is explained in relation to how good of a stealth archer they are. Stealth for everyone.

Khajiit

• You forgot to mention their stealth in the passives
• Feline Ambush - I get your reasoning behind it, but I prefer not nerfing a race that can currently be somewhat equal with the best when it comes to damage. Ideally we want all races to be dealing this kind of damage so that nobody ends up feeling bad about their choice.

Hmm okay, I respect your opinion on this. I just see it from the PoV of: if Khajiits and Dark Elves deal the same damage, why would I ever pick a Dark Elf? They shouldn't just be better Dark Elves whenever their parsing matches up. Khajiits will be tankier barring some content maybe where there's more fire. I just want some sort of tradeoff in exchange for the sustain and tankiness they get. If it comes in the form of lower damage, that's fine with me but if you have some other idea for how to do that then I'll listen.

Nord

• Stalward - sad you didn't buff the amount of stamina to 2000.

I took some pause over how to distribute stam and hp for Nords. 2000 stam would be okay with me but I was worried they would be overwhelmingly good tanks if that was the case. If 2000 stam isn't too much then that's fine with me. I also wanted them to be the beefiest race with the highest health pool so I wanted to keep stam low since they would still be getting resistances on top of that.

• Resist Frost - not sure about the health buff if the new resistance value is not mentioned.

This is from the "Nords are the hardiest human race" standpoint. I think their hp should reflect that so their hp should be higher than that of Imperials. Like, if I saw a Nord and an Imperial standing next to each other with the same build I'd be wondering why the big, strong warrior has less health.

• Rugged - I can get behind making Nord the toughest human race, but I really would have liked to see Nord evolve from a pure tanking choice. They had a bonus to twohanded and medium armor after all. Orcs were always those with the bonus to heavy armor. It would make more sense if Nords were the dps option and Orcs the tanks - now I would want to see them be equal at both with each offering something unique that other doesn't have.

I also had a lot of thoughts regarding that. What does it mean to be a warrior race? Does it mean that you deal more damage in combat or that you're so tough you get to live longer and fight continuously? It feels like Nords and Orcs are on both ends of that spectrum and since Nords are already setup to be the tanking race I wouldn't want to swing in and give them a buff to 2H and destroy their armor in exchange. I think it wouldn't be fair to players. Orcs with their Berserker's Rage do feel like they're more of a "thrive in the thick of it" kind of warrior so I respect their healing while in combat and Nords do the same but through just being beefy. If I were designing racial passives from the ground up I would consider giving Nords something to play with regarding 2H damage but here's how I rationalize this: since Nords gain extra resistances they can afford to go medium armor in encounters where other races might prefer a bit of heavy armor (think PvP, solo, and even some 4 man content). They indirectly get some damage that way.

The other route to take is to remove the resistances straight up so that it doesn't become a balancing issue. Give them 2k hp and 2k stam, frost resistance, and ult gen and have them be the beefy warriors they're meant to be. Imperials and Orcs can achieve the hardy warrior fantasy in different ways. But maybe players are really attached to the +resistance nature of their Nord characters and wouldn't like to see them replace Imperials in hp stacking. I think it makes sense but I'd like to hear what others have to say.

Orsimer

• Swift Warrior - love it. Orc ironically used to be the slowest race and now they are somehow the fastest. Changing them to ignore the speed penalty of heavy armor is very thematic. Since this is a bit more niche now, I would be comfortable giving Orcs 2000 max health to make them at least as tough as Imperials so that is a bit more lore friendly. Orc tanks used to be popular so I think many people who still have their Orc tanks would appreciate this without it becoming too much of an issue in PvP. The extra speed was honestly a bit overpowered.

Yeah this was the change I was most proud of lol. Had to do some digging around in the wikis to see what would fit Orcs best. I think they nailed the flavor surrounding being beefy, having durability, being strong fighters that thrive in combat but went overboard with the sprint bonuses. Tbh I wouldn't mind Nords and Orcs matching up in terms of hp since I see them as two sides of the same coin in a way. Both are beefy but Orcs are allowed to remain in combat through health return on hit while Nords do so with added resistances.

Redguard

• I think I get what you are going for, you want to double the weapon passive bonus for having a weapon of a certain type equipped. This is not going to work well because you will end up with higher bonuses than the other races. Take a twohanded sword for example, you'd instantly have more weapon and spell damage than Dunmer get in addition to the reduction to weapon skill cost. I would just add weapon and spell damage that only applies to your weapon abilities, since everyone needs to equipe a weapon this wouldn't be too much of a problem and mimic what Bosmer get for bows/ranged abilities.
• The snare resistance is just gone, right? It isn't all that useful in the first place so it won't be missed if we can give them more power I think

That's fair. My reasoning behind the change despite knowing the doubling would be stronger than what damage races have was that Redguards have zero additional tankiness from their passives. Something extra was warranted because of that but I acknowledged that the amount itself was up for debate. I also considered giving them weapon/spell damage on their weapon skills but that seemed a bit boring. How about combining our ideas and have them double the benefit of the weapon they hold but only for weapon skills? So Dizzy Swing with a maul would gain twice the amount of pen mauls give but only for 2H skills. And yeah I didn't even bring up the snare resistance because it's so inconsequential and hardly a defining characteristic of the race. I don't think anyone would care if they removed it tomorrow outside of being annoyed at Redguards receiving a nerf.

Imperial

• Tough - the reason I am against lowering their health (and why I think ZOS ultimately didn't either), is because Imperials are a separate purchase and people bought Imperials back then for what they were offering 10% more max health. They were being sold/marketed as having the highest bonus to max health. I can live with them not having the highest max health bonus anymore, but I would at least want them to be a good choice for builds that are trying to get as much health as possible. More than just a measily 1000 health please.

Hmm... That seems like an unfortunate corner ZOS backed themselves into. So Imperials can never-ever have an hp stat lower than the other races? I think it makes more sense for Nords to have the highest hp for those health stacking builds. Even Orcs would make more sense for that thematically. I guess here is where some concessions have to be made for gameplay but I'm not happy with Imperials ending up with more health than those races. It just seems wrong from a lore standpoint.

• Imperial Mettle - I like giving them extra max magicka since they are famous for their battlemages
• Red Diamond - giving them extra max stats based on which of their resources is higher is certainly unique and elegantly solves the issue of stat density. If a buff to health is out of the question for you, I would wish that we could incorporate health into this variable bonus so that you can choose to increase stamina, magicka or health. As for how? I have no idea. Perhaps simply giving it to the highest attribute, since damage dealers commonly have more stamina/magicka than health, but tanks often end up with more health than stamina/magicka.

I think you could do it by giving the 1k bonus to whichever stat line has the highest allocation of attribute points. That would make sense. It would bring about some interesting constraints for PvP potentially where you want to lean into stamina/mag but have to put 33 points into health because you want the health bonus. But I guess that's just another choice you have to make for your build, it wouldn't make the race worse.

Over all, I like where you are going with this and I think in most cases people would accept these changes without going on strike and demanding race change tokens. Khajiit and Nord in particular could use more attention and Redguard and Orsimer would probably need some testing to be done for us to figure out what works and what is too strong.

Thank you so much for the in-depth responses! I definitely should have put a bit more thought into some races, particularly the ones I haven't played with as much. I think it shows that I have never ever built an Argonian since I used an outdated page to look at the passives and did not notice they now had a stamina buff lol. Your suggestions were great and I appreciate you giving your feedback.

Auzsi

If you want argonians to compete against bretons and some other race as healers you need to about double the healing passive and then you got a broken race in pvp. If anything they must be moved away from healing and not pushed further into it, otherwise you just double down on an already exsiting problem. They either broken in pvp or completeley useless everywhere there is no middle ground. Their core problem is how zos artifically forcing them to be healers, thats why people avoid using them, thats why people who using them are unsatisfied. Forcing a race into a single support role will never be a good design. Besides "natural healers" where is this coming from? Main games definitely not but even eso's own lore not supporting it. It's the artifical creation of the combat devs. I would say replace healing done with crit chance. Nice bonus for healers, nice bonus for dd, nice for pvp, and tanks still have the drinking passive. Or reduce the healing done and give them a bit of spell and weapon damage. That would be alone a huge improvement. This forum is heavily fixated on redguards, but argonians are hardly in a better spot. They also deserve some atention, 3 years of struggling and being laughed at was enough.

Nords should also moved away from tanking to allow other races to tank and nord players to play in other roles as well. Ulimate generation should work on damage done and maybe give them a small boost when they pop their ult.It's somewhat capture their ability to use thu'um. In exchange nerf rugged i agree. Maybe take away the magic resist completely since bretons already having that.

Bosmers shouldn't be forced into using bows. If bows are meta then everyone wil be forced to switch into bosmers (paying real money) and if bows are out of the meta you can throw your bosmer into the rubbish bin. The dodge roll stuff thematically cool but it was unfun to utilize. Reason they removed it. The cap on penetration is another problem of it's own i know no solution besides replacing the stat.

Khajiit shouldn't be nerfed. If you goes into an organized trial group they are almost as useless as the poor lizard sitting next to them because of the crit cap. The more crit damage introduced into the game the worse they will be. Maybe reduce it to 9% or something but let them gain the benefit even if they at the cap. That way they always crit a bit harder than others.

Rest are fine, i like you making imperials a "jack of all trades" race, but dunmer don't deserve any buffs at this point.

It it would be me i would eliminate all combat related passives which effects your raw performance. And replace them with flavor and niche utility stuffs like unflinching rage or resourceful. Players should pick race based on lore and their preference and not based on stats. That's how it was in the main games and that's how it should be here.

Ratzkifal

Roylund wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Ooh yes please! Another one of those! I am actually serious.

Thank you so much for the in-depth responses! I definitely should have put a bit more thought into some races, particularly the ones I haven't played with as much. I think it shows that I have never ever built an Argonian since I used an outdated page to look at the passives and did not notice they now had a stamina buff lol.

Altmer

• Spell Recharge - love the intention, probably going to negatively affect performance if it has to keep recalculating which your lowest % resource is

Yeah that's fair. The idea here is that they should be incentivized to keep casting spells like they were with Highborn in Skyrim and that, in general, they should be the most magically offensively focused race. I'm not sure how else to implement this change without bringing down performance other than having your main stat be the one you recover but that could be too direct (I avoided giving any race weapon/spell damage + unconditional sustain). Then again I'm not sure how big of a hit this would be to performance as it would only require a calculation when the Spell Recharge passive fires. Surely that wouldn't be too costly?

Argonian

• Resourceful - I think you might want to check out what that passive does currently, because this is no change from live. Yes, they get a bonus to stamina too. Something I would like is giving them a bonus to alchemical poisons that puts the potion effect on cooldown, so you have a choice between more damage or more sustain.
• Argonians could also use a stealth bonus because I would want to have more options for stealth than just Khajiit. Also I do not consider stealth as a item set bonus for the item set bonus calculation because it does not make you more lethal to have it for free, but it does make you less lethal to have it over something else. It's a flavor passive and Argonians could use more flavor.

Yeah oof sorry Argonians about the stam. At least I know I'm going in the right direction since they were handed the nice 1k bonus sometime ago. A bonus to poisons would be a cool way to keep with the theme of Resourceful. A stealth bonus would be nice too. I don't think it's a problem if more races have it since, like you said, it's just for flavor.

Bosmer

• Yffre's Endurance - love that Bosmer get their stealth back! Hunter's Eye is their first passive though, so I think I would put the stealth back on that still.
• Resist Affliction - I don't have strong feelings about this. There is actual lore precedent for Bosmer having neither lol. ESO has a quest where a lot of Bosmer are being poisoned after eating the poisoned corpses of the fallen who had taken poison before and the reason the Bosmer joined the Dominion is because so many of them died to the Knahaten Flu.

Wood Elves resist disease in Oblivion and both Poison and Disease in Skyrim so I thought it would be okay to keep the passive here. I'm fine with them having either or neither tbh.

[*] Hunter's Eye - I like that Bosmer are getting a damage boost to bows, but the reason I personally never asked for it is because it sucks to push Bosmer only towards one weapon. We wanted to get away from that when the elemental damage boni were removed from Altmer and Dunmer. I propose that this gets changed to "ranged abilities" because that includes skills that aren't just from bows and satisfies the people who want to play unconventional/magicka.

I LOVE that idea, it's so brilliant. I was wondering how to bring in the Spinner identity of Wood Elves without giving them a Magicka bonus or off-resource sustain but couldn't come up with anything. I ended up thinking the pen was good enough but this is such an elegant solution to the problem. I was always sad that peak ESO fantasy would be to play a Wood Elf Warden but they were just worse versions of Dark Elf, Orc, and Khajiit Wardens and this should give them a fantastic way to play the game that fits their lore. Imagine a Wood Elf Warden that uses a bow + staff and pelts you from afar and it's actually optimal. Ranged Wood Elf builds coming soon to a trial near you.

Bretons

• Spell Attunement - Agreed but that is probably a pain to code for an MMO, so oh well. As a flavor thing I was thinking about giving them a boost to damage shields, because I feel that is thematic. I would also prefer if they got more spell resistance than Nords and not a conditional effect that only sometimes gives them more resistance.

The shield idea is interesting. Maybe it's too tricky to balance but something like +8% shield strength would be nice. It would also help differentiate them from Nords.

• Magicka Mastery - only 1% increase, but every bit helps I guess.

Dunmer

• Dynamic - agreed, but also, why not give them Stealth as well? Dunmer are great at being assassins and if Orcs and Altmer are basically exactly the same as Dunmer in every way, let them be the stealth version of that, to give them something that is a unique combination again.

Again, no problem with me here. This reminds me of the meme where every race is explained in relation to how good of a stealth archer they are. Stealth for everyone.

Khajiit

• You forgot to mention their stealth in the passives
• Feline Ambush - I get your reasoning behind it, but I prefer not nerfing a race that can currently be somewhat equal with the best when it comes to damage. Ideally we want all races to be dealing this kind of damage so that nobody ends up feeling bad about their choice.

Hmm okay, I respect your opinion on this. I just see it from the PoV of: if Khajiits and Dark Elves deal the same damage, why would I ever pick a Dark Elf? They shouldn't just be better Dark Elves whenever their parsing matches up. Khajiits will be tankier barring some content maybe where there's more fire. I just want some sort of tradeoff in exchange for the sustain and tankiness they get. If it comes in the form of lower damage, that's fine with me but if you have some other idea for how to do that then I'll listen.

Nord

• Stalward - sad you didn't buff the amount of stamina to 2000.

I took some pause over how to distribute stam and hp for Nords. 2000 stam would be okay with me but I was worried they would be overwhelmingly good tanks if that was the case. If 2000 stam isn't too much then that's fine with me. I also wanted them to be the beefiest race with the highest health pool so I wanted to keep stam low since they would still be getting resistances on top of that.

• Resist Frost - not sure about the health buff if the new resistance value is not mentioned.

This is from the "Nords are the hardiest human race" standpoint. I think their hp should reflect that so their hp should be higher than that of Imperials. Like, if I saw a Nord and an Imperial standing next to each other with the same build I'd be wondering why the big, strong warrior has less health.

• Rugged - I can get behind making Nord the toughest human race, but I really would have liked to see Nord evolve from a pure tanking choice. They had a bonus to twohanded and medium armor after all. Orcs were always those with the bonus to heavy armor. It would make more sense if Nords were the dps option and Orcs the tanks - now I would want to see them be equal at both with each offering something unique that other doesn't have.

I also had a lot of thoughts regarding that. What does it mean to be a warrior race? Does it mean that you deal more damage in combat or that you're so tough you get to live longer and fight continuously? It feels like Nords and Orcs are on both ends of that spectrum and since Nords are already setup to be the tanking race I wouldn't want to swing in and give them a buff to 2H and destroy their armor in exchange. I think it wouldn't be fair to players. Orcs with their Berserker's Rage do feel like they're more of a "thrive in the thick of it" kind of warrior so I respect their healing while in combat and Nords do the same but through just being beefy. If I were designing racial passives from the ground up I would consider giving Nords something to play with regarding 2H damage but here's how I rationalize this: since Nords gain extra resistances they can afford to go medium armor in encounters where other races might prefer a bit of heavy armor (think PvP, solo, and even some 4 man content). They indirectly get some damage that way.

The other route to take is to remove the resistances straight up so that it doesn't become a balancing issue. Give them 2k hp and 2k stam, frost resistance, and ult gen and have them be the beefy warriors they're meant to be. Imperials and Orcs can achieve the hardy warrior fantasy in different ways. But maybe players are really attached to the +resistance nature of their Nord characters and wouldn't like to see them replace Imperials in hp stacking. I think it makes sense but I'd like to hear what others have to say.

Orsimer

• Swift Warrior - love it. Orc ironically used to be the slowest race and now they are somehow the fastest. Changing them to ignore the speed penalty of heavy armor is very thematic. Since this is a bit more niche now, I would be comfortable giving Orcs 2000 max health to make them at least as tough as Imperials so that is a bit more lore friendly. Orc tanks used to be popular so I think many people who still have their Orc tanks would appreciate this without it becoming too much of an issue in PvP. The extra speed was honestly a bit overpowered.

Yeah this was the change I was most proud of lol. Had to do some digging around in the wikis to see what would fit Orcs best. I think they nailed the flavor surrounding being beefy, having durability, being strong fighters that thrive in combat but went overboard with the sprint bonuses. Tbh I wouldn't mind Nords and Orcs matching up in terms of hp since I see them as two sides of the same coin in a way. Both are beefy but Orcs are allowed to remain in combat through health return on hit while Nords do so with added resistances.

Redguard

• I think I get what you are going for, you want to double the weapon passive bonus for having a weapon of a certain type equipped. This is not going to work well because you will end up with higher bonuses than the other races. Take a twohanded sword for example, you'd instantly have more weapon and spell damage than Dunmer get in addition to the reduction to weapon skill cost. I would just add weapon and spell damage that only applies to your weapon abilities, since everyone needs to equipe a weapon this wouldn't be too much of a problem and mimic what Bosmer get for bows/ranged abilities.
• The snare resistance is just gone, right? It isn't all that useful in the first place so it won't be missed if we can give them more power I think

That's fair. My reasoning behind the change despite knowing the doubling would be stronger than what damage races have was that Redguards have zero additional tankiness from their passives. Something extra was warranted because of that but I acknowledged that the amount itself was up for debate. I also considered giving them weapon/spell damage on their weapon skills but that seemed a bit boring. How about combining our ideas and have them double the benefit of the weapon they hold but only for weapon skills? So Dizzy Swing with a maul would gain twice the amount of pen mauls give but only for 2H skills. And yeah I didn't even bring up the snare resistance because it's so inconsequential and hardly a defining characteristic of the race. I don't think anyone would care if they removed it tomorrow outside of being annoyed at Redguards receiving a nerf.

Imperial

• Tough - the reason I am against lowering their health (and why I think ZOS ultimately didn't either), is because Imperials are a separate purchase and people bought Imperials back then for what they were offering 10% more max health. They were being sold/marketed as having the highest bonus to max health. I can live with them not having the highest max health bonus anymore, but I would at least want them to be a good choice for builds that are trying to get as much health as possible. More than just a measily 1000 health please.

Hmm... That seems like an unfortunate corner ZOS backed themselves into. So Imperials can never-ever have an hp stat lower than the other races? I think it makes more sense for Nords to have the highest hp for those health stacking builds. Even Orcs would make more sense for that thematically. I guess here is where some concessions have to be made for gameplay but I'm not happy with Imperials ending up with more health than those races. It just seems wrong from a lore standpoint.

• Imperial Mettle - I like giving them extra max magicka since they are famous for their battlemages
• Red Diamond - giving them extra max stats based on which of their resources is higher is certainly unique and elegantly solves the issue of stat density. If a buff to health is out of the question for you, I would wish that we could incorporate health into this variable bonus so that you can choose to increase stamina, magicka or health. As for how? I have no idea. Perhaps simply giving it to the highest attribute, since damage dealers commonly have more stamina/magicka than health, but tanks often end up with more health than stamina/magicka.

I think you could do it by giving the 1k bonus to whichever stat line has the highest allocation of attribute points. That would make sense. It would bring about some interesting constraints for PvP potentially where you want to lean into stamina/mag but have to put 33 points into health because you want the health bonus. But I guess that's just another choice you have to make for your build, it wouldn't make the race worse.

Over all, I like where you are going with this and I think in most cases people would accept these changes without going on strike and demanding race change tokens. Khajiit and Nord in particular could use more attention and Redguard and Orsimer would probably need some testing to be done for us to figure out what works and what is too strong.

Thank you so much for the in-depth responses! I definitely should have put a bit more thought into some races, particularly the ones I haven't played with as much. I think it shows that I have never ever built an Argonian since I used an outdated page to look at the passives and did not notice they now had a stamina buff lol. Your suggestions were great and I appreciate you giving your feedback.

I think our main disagreement here is that you are looking at balance purely from a PvP perspective, where survivability matters. But in PvE it doesn't matter what defensive passives your race has when you are a damage dealer. It's not going to protect you from a one-shot, the healer will keep you alive and your food and red CP give you enough max health. Sustain in PvE is also very plenty which is why Bosmer and Redguard are so bad currently - their main strengths are just not needed in PvE.
In PvP the races are pretty much balanced right now already as even Redguard can make use of their sustain passive there and some of the most useful ultimates in PvP are weapon ultimates which Redguards get a 8% cost decrease towards.

As for the issue of who should be the tankiest, I always saw it as Nords and Orcs being the toughest to kill, while Imperials stay alive through their superior strategy, technique etc. That's why I love the universal cost reduction Imperials have, since that applies to block cost, dodge cost and so on. I think when it comes to health and resistances, maybe we need to view resistances as "effective health" and just close our eyes and pretend that the Nord tank has more health than the Imperial, since they do have more effective health. Orcs with their healing also have more effective health than Imperials, but the 2k definitely won't hurt if they can't run 12% faster anymore (just 12% cheaper).

I_killed_Vivec

Doesn't seem too balanced to me. I think some of your unconscious prejudices might have found their way into your suggestions

As an example, Khajiit get health, stam and magica in one bonus, when Imperials get the same increase but at the cost of two of their bonuses. " their total health pool is going down so I think higher stat density is warranted", OK but nothing more than a cat...

There's a reason why Imperials are in charge, and it isn't because they are weak.

Mesite

I'd just give Argonians a buff for weapon damage instead of healing. Argonians are the race that makes ESO unique when compared to other games so they should be buffed to make the whole game more attractive to new players.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

I mostly want bosmer to get their stealth back as passives go.

They could also get the pickpocket bonus, which only khajiit has now. Which doesn't make much sense when bosmer are more known for stealth and stealing than khajiit are. Having a second option is also nice.

Stncold

Roylund wrote: »

[*] Martial Training - Reduces the cost of weapon abilities by 12% Doubles the bonuses obtained from weapons. Weapon cost reduction is far more specific than magicka or stamina reduction. The bonus should be much higher than what Bretons and Imperials have. If Redguards are martial masters and fearsome warriors then they should also have bonuses tied to how destructively they wield those weapons. Do sword swings just feel lighter to them or are they actually employing their expertise to deal more damage? Doubling weapon bonuses like mace pen, sword dmg, dagger crit, etc. I think is fair in light that Redguards have ZERO defensive bonuses (no resistance of any kind, no health passive) and that the bonus is lost upon switching to a different weapon. The number itself could be tweaked but the idea should remain.
[*] Conditioning - Same as live.
[*] Adrenaline Rush - Same as live.
[/list]

Weapon ability cost is still not that good and would still exclude redguards from a bunch of stam builds. They need either stam cost reduction(10% at LEAST to widen the gap between what imperials have), especially because there is no race with stam cost reduction. Or some kind of damage bonus like the bonuses one you said.
The race as a whole just needs something and it is criminal ZOS has let them languish for this long. It is insane I can hang around a populated area for a while and see a dozen of every race yet maybe one redguard if that.

emilyhyoyeon

Auzsi wrote: »

If you want argonians to compete against bretons and some other race as healers you need to about double the healing passive and then you got a broken race in pvp. If anything they must be moved away from healing and not pushed further into it, otherwise you just double down on an already exsiting problem. They either broken in pvp or completeley useless everywhere there is no middle ground. Their core problem is how zos artifically forcing them to be healers, thats why people avoid using them, thats why people who using them are unsatisfied. Forcing a race into a single support role will never be a good design. Besides "natural healers" where is this coming from? Main games definitely not but even eso's own lore not supporting it. It's the artifical creation of the combat devs. I would say replace healing done with crit chance. Nice bonus for healers, nice bonus for dd, nice for pvp, and tanks still have the drinking passive. Or reduce the healing done and give them a bit of spell and weapon damage. That would be alone a huge improvement. This forum is heavily fixated on redguards, but argonians are hardly in a better spot. They also deserve some atention, 3 years of struggling and being laughed at was enough.

Totally agree here. I love a lot of these racial ideas but I am so over the argonian = heal/tank that ESO created.


I compiled a list of all argonian racials from the TES games. They are:

''intelligence, agility, and speed, any art involving the arcane, or involving thieving and sleight of hand, reduced Fatigue loss while swimming, +5 alchemy, +15 athletics, +5 illusion, +5 medium armor, +5 mysticism, +5 spear, +5 (light) armor, +5 alchemy, +10 athletics, +5 blade, +5 hand to hand, +5 illusion, +5 mysticism, +10 (lockpicking), +5 alteration, +5 (medium) armor, +5 pickpocketing, +5 restoration, +5 sneak, +10 lockpicking''

There's a clear emphasis on being ''damage'' oriented. Kind of like the ''magicka'' version of khajiit.

Roylund

Auzsi wrote: »

If you want argonians to compete against bretons and some other race as healers you need to about double the healing passive and then you got a broken race in pvp. If anything they must be moved away from healing and not pushed further into it, otherwise you just double down on an already exsiting problem. They either broken in pvp or completeley useless everywhere there is no middle ground. Their core problem is how zos artifically forcing them to be healers, thats why people avoid using them, thats why people who using them are unsatisfied. Forcing a race into a single support role will never be a good design. Besides "natural healers" where is this coming from? Main games definitely not but even eso's own lore not supporting it. It's the artifical creation of the combat devs. I would say replace healing done with crit chance. Nice bonus for healers, nice bonus for dd, nice for pvp, and tanks still have the drinking passive. Or reduce the healing done and give them a bit of spell and weapon damage. That would be alone a huge improvement. This forum is heavily fixated on redguards, but argonians are hardly in a better spot. They also deserve some atention, 3 years of struggling and being laughed at was enough.

Nords should also moved away from tanking to allow other races to tank and nord players to play in other roles as well. Ulimate generation should work on damage done and maybe give them a small boost when they pop their ult.It's somewhat capture their ability to use thu'um. In exchange nerf rugged i agree. Maybe take away the magic resist completely since bretons already having that.

Bosmers shouldn't be forced into using bows. If bows are meta then everyone wil be forced to switch into bosmers (paying real money) and if bows are out of the meta you can throw your bosmer into the rubbish bin. The dodge roll stuff thematically cool but it was unfun to utilize. Reason they removed it. The cap on penetration is another problem of it's own i know no solution besides replacing the stat.

Khajiit shouldn't be nerfed. If you goes into an organized trial group they are almost as useless as the poor lizard sitting next to them because of the crit cap. The more crit damage introduced into the game the worse they will be. Maybe reduce it to 9% or something but let them gain the benefit even if they at the cap. That way they always crit a bit harder than others.

Rest are fine, i like you making imperials a "jack of all trades" race, but dunmer don't deserve any buffs at this point.

It it would be me i would eliminate all combat related passives which effects your raw performance. And replace them with flavor and niche utility stuffs like unflinching rage or resourceful. Players should pick race based on lore and their preference and not based on stats. That's how it was in the main games and that's how it should be here.

Argonians with crit chance would be cool. Would lean into their lockpicking/thieving proficiency while still differentiating them from Khajiits with crit chance. I just didn't want to stray too far from the current passives because I thought Argonian players liked their healer identity. I agree that it came out of nowhere and it's not reflecting how Argonians were presented in mainline games (outside of maybe the healing taken increase being a reference to resto bonuses and Hitskin).

What kind of bonus are you talking about with Nord ults? Something like a Balorgh's effect or a % damage increase? Either is fine with me as long as Rugged is rebalanced in exchange.

Regarding Bosmer, Ratzkifal made a great suggestion to increase their ranged damage rather than just their bows. I thought that was great as that way they can lean into bows but people that want to run a Bosmer Spinner can still go down the magicka route. I see what you mean about Bosmer and bow builds coming and going based on the meta, I felt like if it would be appropriate to tie any one race to a weapon it would be Bosmer to bows but the "increase ranged damage" solution gets around that problem. The doubling of effects on dodge roll is just gravy, if people don't roll then they're not losing out on anything compared to live but on the off chance you do you get that small increase. I made it 12 seconds so there was actually some damage you could squeeze out of it in PvE.

Khajiits are better in all other content where the crit cap isn't reached. I don't think it would be fair for them to be better than damage races in all content except trials and still on par with them in trials. I would be fine with their crit damage/healing going down by some % in exchange for that boost ignoring the crit cap. Passives should be future-proofed imo so ignoring the crit damage cap would be the way to go in exchange for lowering their crit damage. It would potentially make them match up in trials while toning them down in other content, I'm liking the idea more and more.

It's just a 180 stat buff to Dark Elves. It feels like their stats are artificially being kept under 2000 just so High Elves are still BiS. Not a huge deal imo.

In the main games the races still affected your builds. In Skyrim the actives they received definitely affected your gameplay, a High Elf with Highborn was a much more effective wizard than a Wood Elf with Command Animal. I think it's okay to bring in some of that flavor here. Each race should have something unique they bring to the table while still feeling good to play. Re: passives affecting performance, maybe my High Elf suggestion should just be main stat return then? That way it can be calculated ahead of time.

Thanks for the comments.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Ooh yes please! Another one of those! I am actually serious.

I think our main disagreement here is that you are looking at balance purely from a PvP perspective, where survivability matters. But in PvE it doesn't matter what defensive passives your race has when you are a damage dealer. It's not going to protect you from a one-shot, the healer will keep you alive and your food and red CP give you enough max health. Sustain in PvE is also very plenty which is why Bosmer and Redguard are so bad currently - their main strengths are just not needed in PvE.
In PvP the races are pretty much balanced right now already as even Redguard can make use of their sustain passive there and some of the most useful ultimates in PvP are weapon ultimates which Redguards get a 8% cost decrease towards.

As for the issue of who should be the tankiest, I always saw it as Nords and Orcs being the toughest to kill, while Imperials stay alive through their superior strategy, technique etc. That's why I love the universal cost reduction Imperials have, since that applies to block cost, dodge cost and so on. I think when it comes to health and resistances, maybe we need to view resistances as "effective health" and just close our eyes and pretend that the Nord tank has more health than the Imperial, since they do have more effective health. Orcs with their healing also have more effective health than Imperials, but the 2k definitely won't hurt if they can't run 12% faster anymore (just 12% cheaper).

I was still trying to balance around PvE, hence trying to give Bosmer a different edge as dps, Orcs becoming a dps option, and Dark Elves going on par with High Elves in terms of damage output. My logic regarding Khajiits came from there, not from PvP actually where the flame resistance from Dark Elves is more relevant because of vampirism. Khajiits are better in solo, dungeon, and 4 man content. Should they be made to match elves in trials too despite that and despite being tankier? I don't think that's fair. I'm balancing with all PvE in mind, not just trials. I think ~1k hp is definitely relevant in 4 man and especially solo content which is what I play in the most.

Redguards are still pretty bad. Any build with a Redguard can be made significantly better by making it an Imperial instead. Sure your weapon reduction isn't as high (only 2 percentage points lower tho) but in exchange your magicka sustain is way better and that's far more relevant now with hybridization. And you're also much tankier. Can Redguard work? Yes, but I think it's almost always inferior to the other options.

I'm okay with Imperials having the highest health. I'll pretend it's all the Cyrodiilic rice and wine just bulking them up. Orcs should have to choose between high stam or high hp if they're going to keep the weapon damage. I'd like for Orc tanking to make a return without making them too overpowered in other content.

Roylund

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Doesn't seem too balanced to me. I think some of your unconscious prejudices might have found their way into your suggestions

As an example, Khajiit get health, stam and magica in one bonus, when Imperials get the same increase but at the cost of two of their bonuses. " their total health pool is going down so I think higher stat density is warranted", OK but nothing more than a cat...

There's a reason why Imperials are in charge, and it isn't because they are weak.

Are you saying I'm making Imperials too weak? I don't think my prejudices are showing here, I love Imperials and my main is an Imperial Templar. They still end up with 4k total stats here and if they go all in on hp then they're only losing 1k stam and gaining 1k mag (sidegrade). I think the changes are fair considering they're supposed to be battlemages too.

Lykeion

I haven't played many races, but I agree with you about the feline ambush change. Khajiit is the most affected race after the introduction of critical damage cap. Critical damage source is now more and more abundant with every update, and feline ambush's disadvantage also increased. Perhaps it's time for zos to consider making changes to it.

Ratzkifal

Roylund wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Doesn't seem too balanced to me. I think some of your unconscious prejudices might have found their way into your suggestions

As an example, Khajiit get health, stam and magica in one bonus, when Imperials get the same increase but at the cost of two of their bonuses. " their total health pool is going down so I think higher stat density is warranted", OK but nothing more than a cat...

There's a reason why Imperials are in charge, and it isn't because they are weak.

Are you saying I'm making Imperials too weak? I don't think my prejudices are showing here, I love Imperials and my main is an Imperial Templar. They still end up with 4k total stats here and if they go all in on hp then they're only losing 1k stam and gaining 1k mag (sidegrade). I think the changes are fair considering they're supposed to be battlemages too.

I think that is exactly the point they were making. 4k total stats, yes, but only 3k of these are now actively factoring into your damage (if we translate health into damage). The extra off-stat resource is nice, but it does nothing to push your damage further. So it all sums to a net loss of 1k stats as you will have to compensate for the loss of health.
Looking at it this way, the Imperial situation is a lot more tricky than it appears at first.

If we left the max health at 2k, then the change from live would boil down to +1k off-stat resource, which would make it a net positive change to them that isn't going overboard yet, especially since Imperials are in the same boat as Redguards and Bosmer when it comes to offense and could use some extra power. If we also consider that we are looking to buff the stats of Nords and Orcs too, we probably won't have to worry about messing up the tanking meta either.

Ratzkifal

Lykeion wrote: »

I haven't played many races, but I agree with you about the feline ambush change. Khajiit is the most affected race after the introduction of critical damage cap. Critical damage source is now more and more abundant with every update, and feline ambush's disadvantage also increased. Perhaps it's time for zos to consider making changes to it.

The only reason ZOS didn't give crit chance last time was because they said that they wanted to change how crit works first because Khajiit have too much power the way it was back then. So they changed it to crit damage instead. Now all the changes to crit are here but Khajiit still only have crit damage.
Things like this sometimes make it hard to believe that ZOS actually has a vision for balance...

Ballermfrau

I am gonna be honest. They are a really bad designe decision for a game with pvp. They go against there motto of play how you like. One should decide upon a race based on how each individual identifies themself within the world of Tamriel.
Not what is bis for each class.
That works great for single player but if you plan to PVP and do VET trials it is questionable how many would still follow there preference over what is bis.

I would prefer that all passives are non power related.

Vetixio

They need to remove the weapon damage from Altmer and the spell damage from Orcs it makes no sense lore wise and neither of those races have ever had martial or magical bonuses in any TES game, also remove the max Magicka and Magicka recovery from Khajiits and give it to Imperials as like Orcs they have never had any magical skill bonuses in any TES game either.

Roylund

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Roylund wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Doesn't seem too balanced to me. I think some of your unconscious prejudices might have found their way into your suggestions

As an example, Khajiit get health, stam and magica in one bonus, when Imperials get the same increase but at the cost of two of their bonuses. " their total health pool is going down so I think higher stat density is warranted", OK but nothing more than a cat...

There's a reason why Imperials are in charge, and it isn't because they are weak.

Are you saying I'm making Imperials too weak? I don't think my prejudices are showing here, I love Imperials and my main is an Imperial Templar. They still end up with 4k total stats here and if they go all in on hp then they're only losing 1k stam and gaining 1k mag (sidegrade). I think the changes are fair considering they're supposed to be battlemages too.

I think that is exactly the point they were making. 4k total stats, yes, but only 3k of these are now actively factoring into your damage (if we translate health into damage). The extra off-stat resource is nice, but it does nothing to push your damage further. So it all sums to a net loss of 1k stats as you will have to compensate for the loss of health.
Looking at it this way, the Imperial situation is a lot more tricky than it appears at first.

If we left the max health at 2k, then the change from live would boil down to +1k off-stat resource, which would make it a net positive change to them that isn't going overboard yet, especially since Imperials are in the same boat as Redguards and Bosmer when it comes to offense and could use some extra power. If we also consider that we are looking to buff the stats of Nords and Orcs too, we probably won't have to worry about messing up the tanking meta either.

I thought each point of stamina and magicka was worth more than a single point of health in terms of value. That's why a set's single line of health is 1206 whereas it's 1096 for offensive stats. In this way I thought Imperials were coming out even at worst since if they built for health then they're just transferring 1k stam to their mag pool. Yeah I get that it's worse for tanking but imo Imperials should've had some magicka in the first place or all of Niben should've been retconned. I also didn't want to go over 2k in any single stat since that seemed excessive.

2k main stat and 1k on each off stat should be fair for Imperials, no? If you build as stamina dps you end up a beefier Redguard (2k stam 1k health 1k mag), if you build as mag dps you end up a beefier Breton (1k stam 1k health 2k mag), if you build health then you sidegraded your 1k stam to 1k mag (1k stam 2k health 1k stam). I'm going to edit the main post with the new ideas so people can comment on those instead.

Edit: And it's not like off stats don't matter for damage anymore. An Imperial stamplar is sure to appreciate the mag that lets them cast more rituals or purifying lights or vice versa if they become a magplar.

Auzsi

Ballermfrau wrote: »

I am gonna be honest. They are a really bad designe decision for a game with pvp. They go against there motto of play how you like. One should decide upon a race based on how each individual identifies themself within the world of Tamriel.
Not what is bis for each class.
That works great for single player but if you plan to PVP and do VET trials it is questionable how many would still follow there preference over what is bis.

I would prefer that all passives are non power related.

Indeed they are bad. Almost all other mmorpgs eliminated racials and they did it for a reason. This game still sticking to them. (race change token sales???) Eso's racials would be bad even for a single player games.

Auzsi

Argonians with crit chance would be cool. Would lean into their lockpicking/thieving proficiency while still differentiating them from Khajiits with crit chance. I just didn't want to stray too far from the current passives because I thought Argonian players liked their healer identity. I agree that it came out of nowhere and it's not reflecting how Argonians were presented in mainline games (outside of maybe the healing taken increase being a reference to resto bonuses and Hitskin).

Players never really liked it, do some research. Maybe a few did if any at all. It's just something being enforced by zos. As someone who actually enjoy playing as healer it doesn't feel good being so heavily restricted to healing for no reason and others will always outclass them. (unless overtuned) Restricted game design is never a good design. Besides i don't want race identity. Class should bring the identity into my character not my choice of race.

What kind of bonus are you talking about with Nord ults? Something like a Balorgh's effect or a % damage increase? Either is fine with me as long as Rugged is rebalanced in exchange.

Don't know. Just a concept popped out of my head for compensation if they nerf rugged. Some kind of stat boost based on ultimate spent.

In the main games the races still affected your builds. In Skyrim the actives they received definitely affected your gameplay, a High Elf with Highborn was a much more effective wizard than a Wood Elf with Command Animal. I think it's okay to bring in some of that flavor here. Each race should have something unique they bring to the table while still feeling good to play. Re: passives affecting performance, maybe my High Elf suggestion should just be main stat return then? That way it can be calculated ahead of time.

You missunderstand me. I said replace raw performance boost passives with utility and flavor based ones, which does not forces races into roles and playstyles and not pressure players to change their race if they interested in end game stuffs. Skyrim passives were exacly like that. Starting an Altmer mage was easier than a nord mage, but once the nord learned that fireball it did exactly the same damage, in end game they were the same. Command Animal was there and equally useful (or useless) regardless of your build. Same can be said about the rest of the racials.

Ratzkifal

Roylund wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Roylund wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Doesn't seem too balanced to me. I think some of your unconscious prejudices might have found their way into your suggestions

As an example, Khajiit get health, stam and magica in one bonus, when Imperials get the same increase but at the cost of two of their bonuses. " their total health pool is going down so I think higher stat density is warranted", OK but nothing more than a cat...

There's a reason why Imperials are in charge, and it isn't because they are weak.

Are you saying I'm making Imperials too weak? I don't think my prejudices are showing here, I love Imperials and my main is an Imperial Templar. They still end up with 4k total stats here and if they go all in on hp then they're only losing 1k stam and gaining 1k mag (sidegrade). I think the changes are fair considering they're supposed to be battlemages too.

I think that is exactly the point they were making. 4k total stats, yes, but only 3k of these are now actively factoring into your damage (if we translate health into damage). The extra off-stat resource is nice, but it does nothing to push your damage further. So it all sums to a net loss of 1k stats as you will have to compensate for the loss of health.
Looking at it this way, the Imperial situation is a lot more tricky than it appears at first.

If we left the max health at 2k, then the change from live would boil down to +1k off-stat resource, which would make it a net positive change to them that isn't going overboard yet, especially since Imperials are in the same boat as Redguards and Bosmer when it comes to offense and could use some extra power. If we also consider that we are looking to buff the stats of Nords and Orcs too, we probably won't have to worry about messing up the tanking meta either.

I thought each point of stamina and magicka was worth more than a single point of health in terms of value. That's why a set's single line of health is 1206 whereas it's 1096 for offensive stats. In this way I thought Imperials were coming out even at worst since if they built for health then they're just transferring 1k stam to their mag pool. Yeah I get that it's worse for tanking but imo Imperials should've had some magicka in the first place or all of Niben should've been retconned. I also didn't want to go over 2k in any single stat since that seemed excessive.

2k main stat and 1k on each off stat should be fair for Imperials, no? If you build as stamina dps you end up a beefier Redguard (2k stam 1k health 1k mag), if you build as mag dps you end up a beefier Breton (1k stam 1k health 2k mag), if you build health then you sidegraded your 1k stam to 1k mag (1k stam 2k health 1k stam). I'm going to edit the main post with the new ideas so people can comment on those instead.

Edit: And it's not like off stats don't matter for damage anymore. An Imperial stamplar is sure to appreciate the mag that lets them cast more rituals or purifying lights or vice versa if they become a magplar.

Yes, but if you have 33k max magicka and 15k max stamina, getting +1k stamina won't increase your damage since all your skills are scaling off your highest stat only. Of course it's nice to have the extra resources, but it's not going to pump your damage numbers up any further. Your limiting factor will be your sustain so even if you could cast the a skill twice in a row now, it would still be a bad idea to do so. Getting extra max magicka in this example however would still increase the damage of all your skills. That is the issue that was being pointed out.
If you have too little health, you'll have to, for example, eat a food with max health to compensate. That could be the difference between Lava-Foot and Camoran's throne. If you don't need the health, you can always go with Lava-Foot for the better stats, which will give you more damage. That's how extra health can translate into extra damage and that is why it's relevant that Imperials lost some health, even if they have the same amount of their main resource by the end of it.
Like I said, it is tricky.
Bretons and Redguards need to surpass Imperials in their respective niche by so much that the health difference does not matter. Bretons can do that more easily because they have a recovery bonus as well as a higher cost reduction and magicka costs are generally higher, so they benefit more than Redguards. Bretons also have the generally useful spell resistance helping them out.
Redguards just got the short end of the stick on all fronts, which is why they so desperately need some changes so that the health difference simply does not matter because of what the Redguard (and only the Redguard) can bring to the table.

Ratzkifal

Vetixio wrote: »

They need to remove the weapon damage from Altmer and the spell damage from Orcs it makes no sense lore wise and neither of those races have ever had martial or magical bonuses in any TES game, also remove the max Magicka and Magicka recovery from Khajiits and give it to Imperials as like Orcs they have never had any magical skill bonuses in any TES game either.

Agreed, but hybridization is the hill ZOS chose to die on.

As for the Khajiit, the reason ESO gave Khajiit magicka buffs is because some Khajiiti furstock are more magically attuned than average, even though those Khajiit are not the ones our player characters are. But that is the reasoning behind that. Since that lore is older than ESO, I can agree with ESO changing up the status quo and giving us racial passives that the lore says (some) Khajiit should have that we never got in any previous game.

Roylund

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Vetixio wrote: »

They need to remove the weapon damage from Altmer and the spell damage from Orcs it makes no sense lore wise and neither of those races have ever had martial or magical bonuses in any TES game, also remove the max Magicka and Magicka recovery from Khajiits and give it to Imperials as like Orcs they have never had any magical skill bonuses in any TES game either.

Agreed, but hybridization is the hill ZOS chose to die on.

As for the Khajiit, the reason ESO gave Khajiit magicka buffs is because some Khajiiti furstock are more magically attuned than average, even though those Khajiit are not the ones our player characters are. But that is the reasoning behind that. Since that lore is older than ESO, I can agree with ESO changing up the status quo and giving us racial passives that the lore says (some) Khajiit should have that we never got in any previous game.

Well that's fine I guess. Some Alfiq coming through in the racial choices makes sense.

Do you know what ZOS' logic was the last time they did a racial overhaul? Was it due to community outcry or did they see a disparity in usage rates? Or something else?

ADarklore

I don't foresee ZOS returning to Racial passives anytime soon. I believe they want passives to be as least impactful as possible, because far too many people seem to believe that you have to choose a specific race to be successful, when in fact, you don't. Do they 'help', sure... but are they necessary, absolutely not. The amount you gain from a racial passive is negligible, even though some streamers and online guides continue to push the false Racial passive narrative.

Gamers are funny... you can have one skill that gets nerfed by 3%... and everyone is like, "OMG, they're gutting the skill" and then there is another skill that they don't like that gets +5% and everyone is like, "Nah bro, not worth it, it's only 5%".

Roylund

ADarklore wrote: »

I don't foresee ZOS returning to Racial passives anytime soon. I believe they want passives to be as least impactful as possible, because far too many people seem to believe that you have to choose a specific race to be successful, when in fact, you don't. Do they 'help', sure... but are they necessary, absolutely not. The amount you gain from a racial passive is negligible, even though some streamers and online guides continue to push the false Racial passive narrative.

Gamers are funny... you can have one skill that gets nerfed by 3%... and everyone is like, "OMG, they're gutting the skill" and then there is another skill that they don't like that gets +5% and everyone is like, "Nah bro, not worth it, it's only 5%".

I mean I wouldn't sweat 3-5% in most content but it sits wrong with me when races are inferior to others on all accounts. It feels bad to have something that doesn't fill any particular niche well. Are they really okay with the state of races right now? Maybe the majority of players don't care so I guess they don't either but it just feels bad man. In most Elder Scrolls games you can justify running every race.