PvP hp should be hard capped around 30-35k

xylena_lazarow

With power creep as it is, putting 64 points into hp gives you around 25% more EHP in exchange for losing around 10% damage and healing. The damage loss is only really an issue for dedicated solo/smallscale damage dealers, everyone else is better served running 64 hp so now not only will you never be pressured down thanks to Undeath and HoT stacks, but now you can't even be bursted either because you have mid 40k range hp.

This is the #1 tank meta balance problem, stacking hp is simply too easy and efficient. If we cap hp you can still be super tanky, you'll just have to give up significantly more damage and healing in your build for armor and block mitigation, pure troll tanks that don't heal or do damage are fine, viable 55k hp healers are not, viable group dps with 40k hp are not.

Edit: I don't actually care much whether it's a hard cap, soft cap, or just making it really hard to stack hp. Being passively tanky needs to have a much higher cost.

Bashev

And that brings us back to the soft caps. It was so much better back in the days.

xylena_lazarow

Bashev wrote: »

And that brings us back to the soft caps. It was so much better back in the days.

For that matter, Sorc's broken healy shield would probably be fine too if max stats were soft capped.

JerBearESO

Just gonna point out:

The logic on EHP (effective health points) is more than seems to be understood here. EHP refers also to the fact that healing the actual HP pool is effectively increased as well, so EHP inherently implies effective healing increases as well.

Flat HP increase does NOT carry effective healing with it, except in the case of HP scaling abilities which are designed in power budget around this scaling anyway. So for non HP scaling builds, that 10% healing in exchange for 25% HP, as you say, can be a loss in the long run.

Anyway, I don't think HP caps are a good solution, nor is the HP of players the reason for the tank meta problem. It is, in fact, the amount of healing we can achieve while having enough HP to stay out of burst range. So it SEEMS like HP is the problem, but if healing, and shielding, were cut drastically across the board, we would have a much better solution

katorga

Training wheels. Because everyone is capped the same builds used today would perform the same as they do today, with everyone having lower tooltips. Plus you have to cap _everything_ not just stats, or you get imbalances. That means crit rate, crit damage, armor, penetration, everything.

Better solution is to match proc set scaling. Then player are forced to give up healing and tankiness to be good at damage and vice versa.

Weapon/Spell damage is the ONLY stat that damage scales with.

Max Mag/Stam is the ONLY stat that healing scales with.

Max Health is the ONLY stat that shields, block percentage, block cost, dodge roll cost, scale with

xylena_lazarow

JerBearESO wrote: »

EHP refers also to the fact that healing... So for non HP scaling builds, that 10% healing

No it doesn't, EHP only refers to HP and DR, and nobody is having trouble healing on high hp builds.

HP scaling ally heals like Polar are completely degenerate, viable 55k hp healers should not be.

React

Totally agree. Being capped at 35k, which is still a very high value, would go a long way towards alleviating the tank meta.

People pointing out that there are other issues - yes, there are. But to imply that max HP isn't one of them is just wrong. I'd say it's top 3 alongside HOT stacking and sustain being far too easy.

Polar wind in particular is disgustingly broken and needs to be adjusted. I'm so frequently seeing wardens these days with 50-55k hp who are literal untouchable gods that are healing themselves and their ally for a 15-20k burst heal with a 4-5k HOT attached to it every time they press polar wind. They are straight up tanks, and also the most effective healer in the game, with almost 0 effort. It makes no sense whatsoever. If polar wind is going to continue giving these healing values, it should only be a self heal. I understand the argument that PVE tanks need a self heal, and thats fine, but there is absolutely no reason that a tank in PVP should have the best cross healing in the entire game.

mrLuckyCat

I agree too,

If i could, I would switch health scaling heals to armor scaling heals to keep it viable for pve tank.
It's too easy and not restrictive enough to push health up.

JustLovely

Capping HP would just mean mythics like Death Dealers Fete became useless, or would allow people to stack their resources in other ways and be just as annoying in other ways.

The biggest issue by far in Cyrodiil is the insanely low population caps. The super low population cap is the only issue we should be complaining about until they bring the caps back up to at least double what they are now.

xylena_lazarow

JustLovely wrote: »

would allow people to stack their resources in other ways and be just as annoying in other ways

That's fine, that's the whole point, when you have degenerately tanky 40k+ builds that also heal allies, you need a degenerately high amount of damage to kill them, now your meta becomes "broken checking broken" where casual builds have absolutely no chance against broken minmax builds, they're getting trolled on the roof for an hour, or immediately annihilated. Cap hp and nobody is tanky unless they give something up.

Necrotech_Master

the funniest thing is that capping hp to 35k would also be another necro nerf for those few necro tanks running goliath form (+30k max hp) lol

xylena_lazarow

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the funniest thing is that capping hp to 35k would also be another necro nerf for those few necro tanks running goliath form (+30k max hp) lol

That's fine, PvP needs fewer defensive ults, more Dawnbreakers and Colossussesses. Necro needs a rework anyway.

Udrath

This is all from UPDATE 29:

Characters now also take 10% reduced damage at base, to reduce the loss of the mitigation from the Champion Point system.

Characters now also start with 1000 Weapon and Spell Damage regardless of your level.

All characters have had their base Health increased to 16,000, up from 8744 and their Magicka and Stamina has increased to 12,000, up from 7958.

Also factor in the changes to armor passives during this update. This was really the patch that laid the ground work for all tank metas, as well the tank meta into what we have now. Update 29 was when they reworked CP.

katorga

Udrath wrote: »

This is all from UPDATE 29:

Characters now also take 10% reduced damage at base, to reduce the loss of the mitigation from the Champion Point system.

Characters now also start with 1000 Weapon and Spell Damage regardless of your level.

All characters have had their base Health increased to 16,000, up from 8744 and their Magicka and Stamina has increased to 12,000, up from 7958.

Also factor in the changes to armor passives during this update. This was really the patch that laid the ground work for all tank metas, as well the tank meta into what we have now. Update 29 was when they reworked CP.

ZOS could easily tweak this just tuning battle spirit - reduce the damage reduction, increase the healing reduction.

That said, 40 health + 7000 spell damage + 20K mag/stam is easily done and offers zero tradeoffs. Regen and passive sustain is so high now, tiny resource pools are never an issue.

Aznox

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

With power creep as it is, putting 64 points into hp gives you around 25% more EHP in exchange for losing around 10% damage and healing.

Caps are boring, caps are an easy but bad way to fix a complex problem with a lazy solution.

I run 64 into health myself, because yes, I consider it a more efficient way to cover my burst defense (note it doesn't increase sustained defense on my build) while running a full damage build.

Force me to 64 into stamina, no problem, what will you achieve ? I'll get the same burst defense from somewhere else in the build and I'll be left with lightly less damage than before.

Only significant result is a drop in build options, further reducing diversity.

It's very similar to item set balance, if you are not competent enough to properly balance ALL outliers, nerfing half of them will give you half the build diversity with the balance problem untouched.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

This is the #1 tank meta balance problem, stacking hp is simply too easy and efficient. If we cap hp you can still be super tanky, you'll just have to give up significantly more damage and healing in your build for armor and block mitigation, pure troll tanks that don't heal or do damage are fine.

I don't understand, to me tank meta is about no one dying and fights being boring, what does this have to do with people having damage or not ? Those who complain about "players who are immortal AND deal insane damage" are just players who don't understand PvP builds yet, but I'm pretty sure you do. So why would a player with X DPS and Y eHPS be healthier for the game than a player with 2X DPS and Y eHPS ?

SkaraMinoc

If we're capping max health at 35k then the scaling on Hardened Ward needs to be capped at 35k max magicka as well.

xylena_lazarow

Aznox wrote: »

Only significant result is a drop in build options, further reducing diversity.

What exactly do 40k hp damage dealers and 55k hp healers bring to the meta that's worth preserving?

Aznox wrote: »

Force me to 64 into stamina, no problem, what will you achieve ? I'll get the same burst defense from somewhere else in the build and I'll be left with lightly less damage than before... So why would a player with X DPS and Y eHPS be healthier for the game than a player with 2X DPS and Y eHPS ?

Fewer stalemates without nerfing skills, no effect on PvE. Yes, make burst defense something you aren't getting passively without sacrificing a lot of power, or something you must develop the necessary active defense skills for. I chose the latter and haven't regretted it. Not sure exactly where you're going with the 2x dps thing but maybe the concept of stat squish would help explain where I'm going.

Jsmalls

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

If we're capping max health at 35k then the scaling on Hardened Ward needs to be capped at 35k max magicka as well.

Or you could Cap Total Health Plus Ward to the mentioned 35k. This would hurt the proactive side of the skill while not really effecting the current reactive capabilities of the ability. And it would be more in line with Templar passives and DragonBlood etc.

@StaticWave @xylena_lazarow
That might actually be a fair balance to the shield as currently it's really strong Proactively AND Reactively.

Also 100% on board with a Max Health Cap of 35k. Also fix HoT stacking from multiple sources.

jaws343

Caps end up doing more harm than good. The crit damage cap is a great example of this. It was done to try to reduce crit damage stacking, and in turn reduce DPS. Instead, players used that new found "freedom" by hitting their crit cap, and then stacking other damage values, overall increasing DPS at the time.

The same would happen here. 30K health cap, would free CP slots or gear traits, or other values that players are relying on to increase health, and instead allow them to stack other defensive or offensive stats.

Once you have a cap, you have a target. Which ultimately stifles any kind of freedom of building within the system because you are almost forced to always hit that cap target if it is a reasonable number. And 30-35K is reasonable and pretty much anyone not hitting that cap would be crippling their ability to compete. And overall, it doesn't remove the actual problem of health stacking, because it just shifts the stack somewhere else. And then it is spell damage stack, stam stack, mag stack, impen stack, resistance stack, etc.

xylena_lazarow

jaws343 wrote: »

The same would happen here. 30K health cap, would free CP slots or gear traits, or other values that players are relying on to increase health, and instead allow them to stack other defensive or offensive stats

Yes that's the point. None of those are as efficient as a low opportunity cost 25% buff to passively face tanking damage, most other tools are more reasonable numbers and attached to some sort of active skill like blocking, dodging, or healing.

Aznox

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

What exactly do 40k hp damage dealers and 55k hp healers bring to the meta that's worth preserving?

Nothing except the fact that HP stacking is one of several ways to increase burst defense / eHP (not to confuse with eHP/sec)

You believe it's worth sacrificing a bit of this diversity to smash what you feel is a major contributor to "tank meta" by preventing / capping HP stacking.

I don't know if you are right or not, I'm just saying that "caps" (may them be for stats, mechanics, cooldowns, etc.) feel wrong because they restrain imagination/builds too much, and that I'm pretty sure there would be ways to achieve the same result with less drawbacks.

Why not lower damage reduction from battle spirit ?

Or if you are really sure 64 into health is too good for the cost, why not lower the health per point spent ? I'm pretty sure just a 15% reduction will get all minmaxers away from it if that's what you really want.

jaws343

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

The same would happen here. 30K health cap, would free CP slots or gear traits, or other values that players are relying on to increase health, and instead allow them to stack other defensive or offensive stats

Yes that's the point. None of those are as efficient as a low opportunity cost 25% buff to passively face tanking damage, most other tools are more reasonable numbers and attached to some sort of active skill like blocking, dodging, or healing.

But that is kind of looking at those things in a vacuum. They are more reasonable NOW, because there isn't a health cap. Add a health cap and then suddenly something that wasn't worth stacking now is, and it ends up being more oppressive than the health stack. And we are back a square one. All a cap does is divert the same resources into another stack. It doesn't actually solve the problem, it just makes builds even more cookie cutter and on-rails.

xylena_lazarow

Aznox wrote: »

get all minmaxers away from it if that's what you really want

Yes. Don't care the specifics. Soft cap, hard cap, whatever. Minmaxers will adapt just fine, the meta is now less tanky.

Aznox

Ok, so do you still think a cap would be the best solution ?

xylena_lazarow

Aznox wrote: »

Ok, so do you still think a cap would be the best solution ?

Short of a massive stat squish or global soft cap rework, yeah it's good enough. Nothing of value would be lost.

Udrath

katorga wrote: »

Udrath wrote: »

This is all from UPDATE 29:

Characters now also take 10% reduced damage at base, to reduce the loss of the mitigation from the Champion Point system.

Characters now also start with 1000 Weapon and Spell Damage regardless of your level.

All characters have had their base Health increased to 16,000, up from 8744 and their Magicka and Stamina has increased to 12,000, up from 7958.

Also factor in the changes to armor passives during this update. This was really the patch that laid the ground work for all tank metas, as well the tank meta into what we have now. Update 29 was when they reworked CP.

ZOS could easily tweak this just tuning battle spirit - reduce the damage reduction, increase the healing reduction.

That said, 40 health + 7000 spell damage + 20K mag/stam is easily done and offers zero tradeoffs. Regen and passive sustain is so high now, tiny resource pools are never an issue.

Dw/ice staff build with 35k hp and 20k resources, let’s say 7k spell dmg on front bar and like 5k on back bar (where most people keep their heals).

Without update 29 update it’d be like

26-28k hp, 12-14k resource pools (depending class), and probably around 5.5k spell damage on the front bar and like 2-3k on the back. Personally I don’t think a lot of people can manage a build like that and the back bar heals would be pathetic. Minus 1k damage and 4000 resource is a giant hit on tooltips. That 1k is a lot considering all the scaling. 1k is like two nirnhoned 2h great swords with no scaling

Urzigurumash

@Udrath

So you Team HP Cap or Team Battlespirit Modifiers?

Urzigurumash

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

Ok, so do you still think a cap would be the best solution ?

Short of a massive stat squish or global soft cap rework, yeah it's good enough. Nothing of value would be lost.

I agree this is an easy argument to make, but i also attribute some of the Era of DK Domination to the nerf to HP Regen engendering a universal 13% Flame Damage Taken penalty by removing HP Regen as the counterbalance to Undeath.

There's so many variables to building. Why NOT just mess with Battlespirit? Like does anybody think the current values are ideal?

Because for sure being able to build your character however you want is a popular ideal.

Udrath

@Urzigurumash

Neither, I am pre update 29… no more free base stats, but doesn’t matter I quit this game until they make some good changes

xylena_lazarow

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Because for sure being able to build your character however you want is a popular ideal...

...until building how I want involves running damage procs ; )

I promise this wouldn't delete tanks, just balance them better, and we wouldn't have to ruin Polar Wind in PvE.

TechMaybeHic

I'm hesitant to battle Spirit blanket changes when there are outliers. I seem to recall putting shields in battle Spirit destroyed something like Templar blazing shield while the shield stacking issue remained until they health capped and limited stacking, as well as made them critable and count armor. All for them to just buff sorc shields again to be strong even after the extra nerfs while something like sun shield is now left double nerfed and dead.

Caps could have worked to begin with rather than stack nerfs