Hybridization Ruined Every Aspect of the Game for Me

Stamicka

At this point I think it is safe to say that hybridization was a bad idea. There have been many changes that have made me unhappy with the game in recent years, but I think that hybridization might be one of the worst of them. Worst of all, hybridization hasn't just ruined PvP for me, it also ruined PvE. Let's look at how.

1. Fewer Choices Than Ever
This sounds contradictory I know. On paper, hybridization was supposed to open the door to many different types of playstyles, but in actuality, it has made the game more homogenous than it has ever been. This applies to both PvE and PvP. In PvE the rotations are stale and don't differ very much between the classes. In PvP, most builds use a mixture of medium and heavy armor, dual wield and ice staff, and even the same skills like vigor and ele sus. I used to have at least 2 of each class, one for stam, and one for mag. They often used to play differently from each other as well. Now I only need one of each class cause there's usually only one effective way to play the class. I essentially lost half of my characters because they became so boring or useless.

2. Balance Issues
The original game was built around the idea that magicka characters and stamina characters were separate and could not effectively use each others skills. There were trade offs which sometimes fundamentally changed how the classes were played. If players can have the best of both worlds, THEY WILL, which is exactly what hybridization has allowed. For a long time, vigor has been the best HoT in the game by a long shot. Since it only used to scale off of stamina/weapon damage, magic builds couldn't use it effectively. This resulted in magic builds having to rely on other HoTs (which were weaker). The trade off was that magic builds had access to spammable burst heals or shields to supplement their weaker HoTs. Meanwhile, stamina builds had a burst heal locked behind a 31 second ability (rally, later reduced to 20 seconds). So stamina builds had the strongest HoT, but they didn't have a spammable burst heal. Magicka builds had weaker HoTs, but access to shields or a spammable burst heal. With hybridization, there's no choice to be made, just use it all. Now we can throw on vigor AND a spammable burst heal AND 1 or 2 supplemental HoTs. Not only does this factor into the homogenization issue (cause virtually anyone will now slot vigor in PvP), but it also contirbutes to the tank meta in PvP in a HUGE way.

Trade offs are important. Not only because they make the game easier to balance, but because they create new playstyles as well. Hybridization took away trade offs, now you just slot the best skills whether they cost magicka or stamina.

3. It is Janky and Incomplete
The original game wasn't built for hybrids so there's still a lot of outdated stats, sets, and buffs in the game. For example, why is weapon damage and weapon crit separate from spell damage and spell crit? This seems like such a pointless separation with hybridization and only leads to confusion. Major and minor buffs still reflect this separation which makes choosing potions very awkward. For example, spell potions only give you Major Sorcery and Major Prophecy. Meanwhile, most other sources of these buffs come with its counterpart. Ability cost is another thing. Light armor still reduces magicka skill costs and medium armor still reduces stamina skill costs. This all seems out of place for a hybrid system and makes hybridization even less enjoyable than it already is.

Summary
In summary, hybridization killed many playstyles, led to homogenization, caused balance issues by getting rid of trade offs, and made the game less enjoyable because of it's incompleteness. It really is one of the worst choices ever made.

moderatelyfatman

I pretty much agree with most of what you said.

However, I would have supported partial hybridisation where certain class skills scaled off the higher of weapon/spell damage. It always struck me as strange that the pre-hybridisation stamsorc could not use most of their class skills.

dinokstrunz

It's undeniable at this point. Combat has become boring & stale because of it. But lets be real given the current state of the games recent updates it's pretty clear to see combat isn't really a concern for ESO devs.

Alaztor91

Imo hybridization should have been applied only to Class skills/passives. Other stuff like Fighters/Mages Guild, Weapons/Armor, etc should be there to enhance your Class kit and the specific build you are aiming for, each one having their own pros and cons.

Kikazaru

Ruined!?!? You don't like fighting 35k - 40k health players with good damage, defense, burst heals, heals over time, and movement speed that has little to no draw backs? What!!!!!

Uvi_AUT

Agreed. Its especially noticeable with the Arcanist. The class has no variety in gameplay. Its just 1 playstyle with the same skills.
I guess its less work for the Devs?

SkaiFaith

Kikazaru wrote: »

Ruined!?!? You don't like fighting 35k - 40k health players with good damage, defense, burst heals, heals over time, and movement speed that has little to no draw backs? What!!!!!

Well, those are actually all things a Solo player needs, otherwise he couldn't solo hard content.
Yes, it's an MMO technically, but it's clear the focus on helping solo players coming from the classic TES games. And I'm not against it, not at all.

Edit: how could anyone solo Arc5 and above of Infinite Archive without those builds? It would simply be impossible, and people already complain they find it to be too hard content even way below that.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

Stamicka wrote: »

At this point I think it is safe to say that hybridization was a bad idea.

Is wasn't a bad idea. It allowed variation in this game to be closer to Elder Scrolls.

It was a change which I truly love. Mainly because I don't have to carry staff while having magicka based builds. I can mix medium & light armour for better utilities. Abilities are based on highest stat/resource allowing classes like Templar to utilize their whole skill set not half of them. It also allowed Stamina sorcerers access to the powerful magicka based skills that were underused.
Look at Dragonknights right now. They can go full Fire even if having WP/Stamina as primary and not have to worry about resources. Similarly a Magicka DK can go full poison if wishes to do so.

Look at a stam Warden, which now can use 1/3 of the skill set that was off. How about stamina Necromancers?

Have you forgotten that many of the existing classes were forced to weapon skills for primary damage because their good class skills were on different Damage type than their build?

I say hybridization brought freedom of choice and variety in the game as a true Elder Scrolls game should.

LukosCreyden

Hybridization was one of the best choices they have made for the game and I am glad it is here to stay

OsUfi

I'm fine with hybridization, but I'm not a meta chaser. I can put out 70k DPS on my one bar necro with no real effort. That's more than enough for me.

It has made people work towards a more homogeneous lump of builds and gear sets though, which is unfortunate. That's what we get when so many people follow YouTube guides instead of doing more fun and individual stuff though I guess.

Kikazaru

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Kikazaru wrote: »

Ruined!?!? You don't like fighting 35k - 40k health players with good damage, defense, burst heals, heals over time, and movement speed that has little to no draw backs? What!!!!!

Well, those are actually all things a Solo player needs, otherwise he couldn't solo hard content.
Yes, it's an MMO technically, but it's clear the focus on helping solo players coming from the classic TES games. And I'm not against it, not at all.

Edit: how could anyone solo Arc5 and above of Infinite Archive without those builds? It would simply be impossible, and people already complain they find it to be too hard content even way below that.

I'm fine with that! Really. I mean have no problems with them making the game be more accessible to a wider audience. I just wish hybridization didn't come with the unintended side effects of tipping the already delicate state of balance in PvP as a whole. I know well that balancing PvP and PvE is very much a tall order for ZoS.

And about the Arcs, well if we didn't have hybridization, what we had before it, they would designed it in way for people to get into arc 5 or later and match the difficulty to whatever meta we used to have.

colossalvoids

Whilst there were enjoyable parts of it at first the whole game's shift is indeed a thing and to the worst overall, also lots of people don't want to watch the balance and finish of hybridisation coming ten years from when it's started to see "whole picture", if ever. So can only agree here.

SkaiFaith

Kikazaru wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Kikazaru wrote: »

Ruined!?!? You don't like fighting 35k - 40k health players with good damage, defense, burst heals, heals over time, and movement speed that has little to no draw backs? What!!!!!

Well, those are actually all things a Solo player needs, otherwise he couldn't solo hard content.
Yes, it's an MMO technically, but it's clear the focus on helping solo players coming from the classic TES games. And I'm not against it, not at all.

Edit: how could anyone solo Arc5 and above of Infinite Archive without those builds? It would simply be impossible, and people already complain they find it to be too hard content even way below that.

I'm fine with that! Really. I mean have no problems with them making the game be more accessible to a wider audience. I just wish hybridization didn't come with the unintended side effects of tipping the already delicate state of balance in PvP as a whole. I know well that balancing PvP and PvE is very much a tall order for ZoS.

And about the Arcs, well if we didn't have hybridization, what we had before it, they would designed it in way for people to get into arc 5 or later and match the difficulty to whatever meta we used to have.

Fair and legit, I admit

MashmalloMan

Hybridization is great in concept, but they've done little follow up to A] complete the changes they've started, and B] make morphs feel impactful instead of simply picking green or blue. There are so many morphs in the green vs blue category, where 1 just out performs the other, making it the obvious pick.

The next step they need to take is focusing on introducing playstyle choices among the morphs as you find on classes like Sorc.

You take a pillar skill like Curse and separate the morphs into "pet" vs "no pet". Now the decisions become more nuanced, you have a passive that interacts with it. You have pet and no pet damage, healing, and tanking options, even sets get improved by Daedric Prey. Haunting Curse while not outright saying it yet, is such a strong skill, that it is technically the "no pet" decision if you choose it over Prey.

The stam vs mag aspect comes down to preference and I find that quite interesting.

Looking at other classes, you can kind of see them take a crack at it for Necro this patch via Grave Lords Sacrifice... although to a pretty poor effort. In theory, you have Blighted Blastbones for a higher skill ceiling playstyle with a short minigame and better payoff, lets call this the summoner route. GLS implies a dot playstyle which should be easier to manage, but outputs a lower dps ceiling. Again, both in theory, they didn't really nail this yet because GLS is hot dog water. The point is for me at least, it shows promise, the morphs are no longer stam vs mag, it's playstyle x vs playstyle y.

For Warden, it's obvious to me it should have a similar "pet" vs "no pet" playstyle introduced like Sorc. Wardens have expressed for a long time that they hate being forced to rely on Bear for dps. It's also a huge problem because you can't simply nerf bear without making warden worse than it already is. Lastly, stam Warden identity is non existent with many of the improvements for frost that have overtaken the class. Easy solution: Add a passive for bleed status effects, reduce bear damage by -30% but then add +30% pet damage done to stam flies, improve mag flies, introduce a pet vs no pet passive. This would be a good start.

So that's 3/7 classes, how do you do that with the rest? Well you could look at options like melee vs ranged as an example for classes like DK, Templar, and NB. Add a passive, improve their ranged kit options, maybe give them bonuses for ranged vs melee, idk.

Arcanist is just a complete mess right now with 3 damage skills being exactly the same on every single build, there is no reason to choose their spammable because of Cephaliarch's Flail doing 7 things at once. At first glance before release I really thought they meant the class to have 2 playstyles. Playstyle 1 as the traditional option without beam where you spend 2-4 GCD's buiding crux, then spending it via Tentacular Dread, kinda like Necro's 3s rotation. Playstyle 2 being the beam playstyle we see now, minus Cephaliarch's Flail being this weird spammable/execute/heal/debuff/cc that it currently is. I think it's only a matter of time before these options become a reality.

As a supporter of hybridization, I just think they've done very little work to improve upon the original vision they introduced.. what.. 3 years ago at this point?

Like someone please tell me why the 4 original classes still have only spell or physical, minor group buffs. What is so difficult about hybridizing 2 of them (eg. DK and Sorc), then giving something new to the other 2 (eg. Templar and NB). I'm tired of being forced to use mag pots like the rest of you as a stam user and vise versa.

moo_2021

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Well, those are actually all things a Solo player needs, otherwise he couldn't solo hard content.

Aren't hard contents meant for groups not solo?

Back then few would solo DLC dungeons, even on normal difficulty.


I do solo too but isn't MMO supposed to encourage grouping..? Since I came back last year I suddenly found myself capable of soloing most world bosses without the pale ring and without any risk of dying.

Kalle_Demos

I agree with the OP. Hybridization did the game no favors. This might be easier for the devs. Especially the ones with no RPG experience... But much less fun for us.

TaSheen

I like it personally MUCH better than the way it was before. I've always played hybrids - at least now it's somewhat more flexible to do so.

I really disliked the "choose only stam or mag" setup. Then again, I don't really like combat at all anyway. THAT is what's not fun in this game.

moo_2021

You can always play hybrid without hybridization. But there have to be trade-offs.

Dagoth_Rac

moo_2021 wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Well, those are actually all things a Solo player needs, otherwise he couldn't solo hard content.

Aren't hard contents meant for groups not solo?

Back then few would solo DLC dungeons, even on normal difficulty.


I do solo too but isn't MMO supposed to encourage grouping..? Since I came back last year I suddenly found myself capable of soloing most world bosses without the pale ring and without any risk of dying.

There is difficult endgame content that is solo-only or, like Infinite Archive, can be run in duo but is intended to also be solo-able (IA even has separate leaderboards for solo versus duo/companion). And just in general there is a strong demand for difficult solo content from a lot of legacy TES players.

moderatelyfatman

moo_2021 wrote: »

You can always play hybrid without hybridization. But there have to be trade-offs.

Um yeah, but that would mean you end up doing about 6% of the total party damage as a dps and not getting invited to do any vet content!

Bear in mind that with hybridisation, a number of skills have also been nerfed to prevent dps running out of control. So on a traditional non-hybrid build you will be doing less damage than before.

Sakiri

SO basically make me run all weapon skills again and ignore my class abilities.

No thanks.

Urzigurumash

Sakiri wrote: »

SO basically make me run all weapon skills again and ignore my class abilities.

No thanks.

Why are you Stam then

What even do we call this idea of Stamina magic

Maybe.. Stamicka?

StarOfElyon

Stamicka wrote: »

At this point I think it is safe to say that hybridization was a bad idea. There have been many changes that have made me unhappy with the game in recent years, but I think that hybridization might be one of the worst of them. Worst of all, hybridization hasn't just ruined PvP for me, it also ruined PvE. Let's look at how.

1. Fewer Choices Than Ever
This sounds contradictory I know. On paper, hybridization was supposed to open the door to many different types of playstyles, but in actuality, it has made the game more homogenous than it has ever been. This applies to both PvE and PvP. In PvE the rotations are stale and don't differ very much between the classes. In PvP, most builds use a mixture of medium and heavy armor, dual wield and ice staff, and even the same skills like vigor and ele sus. I used to have at least 2 of each class, one for stam, and one for mag. They often used to play differently from each other as well. Now I only need one of each class cause there's usually only one effective way to play the class. I essentially lost half of my characters because they became so boring or useless.

2. Balance Issues
The original game was built around the idea that magicka characters and stamina characters were separate and could not effectively use each others skills. There were trade offs which sometimes fundamentally changed how the classes were played. If players can have the best of both worlds, THEY WILL, which is exactly what hybridization has allowed. For a long time, vigor has been the best HoT in the game by a long shot. Since it only used to scale off of stamina/weapon damage, magic builds couldn't use it effectively. This resulted in magic builds having to rely on other HoTs (which were weaker). The trade off was that magic builds had access to spammable burst heals or shields to supplement their weaker HoTs. Meanwhile, stamina builds had a burst heal locked behind a 31 second ability (rally, later reduced to 20 seconds). So stamina builds had the strongest HoT, but they didn't have a spammable burst heal. Magicka builds had weaker HoTs, but access to shields or a spammable burst heal. With hybridization, there's no choice to be made, just use it all. Now we can throw on vigor AND a spammable burst heal AND 1 or 2 supplemental HoTs. Not only does this factor into the homogenization issue (cause virtually anyone will now slot vigor in PvP), but it also contirbutes to the tank meta in PvP in a HUGE way.

Trade offs are important. Not only because they make the game easier to balance, but because they create new playstyles as well. Hybridization took away trade offs, now you just slot the best skills whether they cost magicka or stamina.

3. It is Janky and Incomplete
The original game wasn't built for hybrids so there's still a lot of outdated stats, sets, and buffs in the game. For example, why is weapon damage and weapon crit separate from spell damage and spell crit? This seems like such a pointless separation with hybridization and only leads to confusion. Major and minor buffs still reflect this separation which makes choosing potions very awkward. For example, spell potions only give you Major Sorcery and Major Prophecy. Meanwhile, most other sources of these buffs come with its counterpart. Ability cost is another thing. Light armor still reduces magicka skill costs and medium armor still reduces stamina skill costs. This all seems out of place for a hybrid system and makes hybridization even less enjoyable than it already is.

Summary
In summary, hybridization killed many playstyles, led to homogenization, caused balance issues by getting rid of trade offs, and made the game less enjoyable because of it's incompleteness. It really is one of the worst choices ever made.

We need to go back to when skills didn't scale with the highest stat. That's when hybridization was in a nice spot.

dmnqwk

On my Warden I recently did a parse that made me chuckle:

Frontbar Ice Staff, Backbar Two Handed.

Seems normal, right? Well - the reason for the chuckle was the fact I am 'technically' Magden on it, but out of the 10 slots on my bar... 5 were Stamina, 4 Magicka and 1 free (staff skill).
The drain was 1350 magicka, 810 stamina with a 2 light 5 med setup, which is very close considering I'm 'magicka'.

Being able to use abilities from both morphs is a positive, and being able to choose which weapons is great - any feeling of homogenization is down to you reading BIS and feeling you can't enjoy the game if you don't play that.

I tested parsing on 2h/2h and on Staff/Staff and they're all over 100k (no perfected gear, and I'm Imperial) and so whether you're magicka or stamina, there are options (though warden sustain suuuuuucks)

I have two Nightblades and two Dragonknights, and whether it's before or after hybrid they still didn't have the variety you believe you had. Now, however, they can choose cross resource skills and have more fun!

Sakiri

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

SO basically make me run all weapon skills again and ignore my class abilities.

No thanks.

Why are you Stam then

What even do we call this idea of Stamina magic

Maybe.. Stamicka?

Because it's an option, and it's fun?

No class should have to ignore class abilities.

moo_2021

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

You can always play hybrid without hybridization. But there have to be trade-offs.

Um yeah, but that would mean you end up doing about 6% of the total party damage as a dps and not getting invited to do any vet content!

Bear in mind that with hybridisation, a number of skills have also been nerfed to prevent dps running out of control. So on a traditional non-hybrid build you will be doing less damage than before.

Hybrid was somewhat useful in pvp. There were obsecure cool builds published by someone here and on youtube.

The issue is mostly about pvp. In pve nobody would mind more damage and more healing

AcadianPaladin

PvE solo here. I love hybridization and it has made things more fun and creative for me.

Galeriano2

@Stamicka one correction. Original game was built with hybrids in mind to the point weapon damage and weapon crit were affecting dmg and healing of only weapons including both magicka and stamina based weapons. Being hybrid was actually one of the more effective ways to play in certain parts of the game especially with soft caps in place. Only after major overhaul over one year after game release it became more beneficial to just invest fully into being either mag or stam based setup and many people complained about the fact being hybrid became noticably suboptimal at that point.

ItsNotLiving

A thousand percent agree.

AlterBlika

I mainly solo pve, and hybridization is good for me. For instance, having a burst heal as a stam spec helps a lot. So what that I have vigor? It doesn't crit heal me for about 20k instantly. Why should magickas be allowed to use that and staminas not? And vice versa.

ItsNotLiving

AlterBlika wrote: »

I mainly solo pve, and hybridization is good for me. For instance, having a burst heal as a stam spec helps a lot. So what that I have vigor? It doesn't crit heal me for about 20k instantly. Why should magickas be allowed to use that and staminas not? And vice versa.

Back in the day Stamina was better for PvP and solo arenas because break free and dodge were stam but they had a higher skill ceiling because they didn’t have an on demand burst heal (Rally takes time to build but it was usually better than class heals after some time had passed).