Stamina vs Magicka

Xithian

I've played ESO since beta and most of my current veteran character's build was done on the fly. I've played with different skills and found what I like, etc. Now that I'm actually looking at the numbers though, I wonder what the point of stamina is outside of tanking. Even melee attacks from class skills are boosted by magicka and not stamina.

There aren't a whole lot of weapon skills that I'd place above the plethora of magicka based skills. Even when you do get one, unless it's your bread and butter button mashing skill, chances are you have more magicka abilities on your bar and would gain a lot more damage using magicka.

Outside of tanking and a few niche builds, are you really better off leaning towards magicka? I'm not criticizing the system or asking for changes. I genuinely am curious, as I'm playing with different builds in the skill calc.

leandro.800ub17_ESO

Its gives a small room for stamina based builds. Almost all is magika.
I am a DK and still i get more tank duration if i use magika and skill and actually block
Stamina is good on bow and some dw but in the end you use 1 of those stamina based slotted and all 4 others are magika so...

Xithian

That's kind of the conclusion I was coming to. I have one dual wield build in mind that can go almost pure stamina with no repercussions. Outside of that, doesn't seem worth it.

You need enough stamina to not run out with your build/play style, and that's it. Magicka on the other hand you can never have too much of as it boosts your damage for most things.

Just more things to think about when I horde potions and food.

Aphilas

Stamina builds suffer from two things - need of stamina for cc and root breaks, but more importantly way too low soft caps. Low weapon damage soft caps makes stamina based build to have considerably lower DPS due to inability to fully utilise important buffs both from skills and gear.

Flawless Dawnbreaker (increases melee by 13% while slotted)
Molten Weapons (increases weapon damage by 22)
Continuous Attack (10% weapon damage buff)
Momentum (up to 24% weapon damage)
Armour set Hundings Rage (which is buffed in Craglorn to give 18% melee buff instead of current 5%)
Enchants with +weapon damage

Basically, there already is everything that's needed to make stamina builds shine on live server. However we are being held back by stupidly low soft cap on weapon damage. For example - my vet 10 DW DK is hitting weapon damage soft cap in Cyrodiil _without_ any buffs. Almost soft capped with 2hander as well, to the level where I get only 8% buff from Momentum instead of 20% by the end of it's duration. Why would I waste a precious skill slot for something that will increase my overall dps by averagely 5% and costs stamina that I need to DPS?

Yes, devs mentioned that they are increasing the soft caps in Craglorn. But I somehow doubt they are increasing it by 30-40% which is the needed amount to stop stamina builds from being handicapped. I could easily drop at you at least 5-6 very viable and fun stamina builds from top of my head if weapon damage soft cap would be increased at least by 20%. Instead, now we are stuck with only one way to scale as a stamina user - crit chance and armour penetration/reduction.

leandro.800ub17_ESO

The game forces you a bit to do balanced instead of one way (soft caps should be increased on all stats)

theyancey

Fighters guild quests use stamina. Sneaking and running do too. Outside of that, yeah, it is all about magica. Probably one of the balance issues that will be looked at in the coming months. When they finally do this we need to have a free respec due to our previous builds being nerfed.

Bromburak

I wonder what the point of stamina is outside of tanking. Even melee attacks from class skills are boosted by magicka and not stamina

Wrong, some of the "procs" that are triggered by a stamina based attack, boosted by magicka but not the attack it self.

As well there are heavy attacks , sneak attacks with bonus damage. Not all of the openers are magicka based.

Another advantage are your overall resources and cost of skills.

Lets say you prefer spamming silver bolt. The overall damage is higher when you could spam it more times like with a stamina strong build.
A magicka strong build would raise the spell damage and your burst, you would run out of stamina real quick and not able to use the stamina skill on a long run.

While on NB it would make more sense to play a magicka strong build with light armor because the most advantage comes from the class lines. (As well a question of preference regarding play style)

However dealing more damage is not the only thing in TESO and if you dead you don't make any damage ...

For example there are certain builds where light armor is not required.
If you prefer playing a Sorc Dual wield with crit surge for self heals on hits, you might would go for medium armor. Not only because of whirlwind and stamina but for the attack speed giving you more hits what results in more crits and heals during combat. And yes when using storm calling abilities while playing strong melee builds you lose storm calling damage peaks due to missing magicka.
But you need to optimize those nuances and adapt them to your play style. Because it makes no sense playing builds that are not fun to play.

Another example, if you are going to play a last man standing Templar. He would go for a magicka strong build, not because of damage but he is able to stay alive with outstanding "oh ***" heals and great passives while never running out of magicka. Shortly you wouldn't mind to make less damage in exchange to decide any challenge on a long run.

crislevin

Unless I can bash towards all directions and hit 6 target simultaneously, I am not putting more than 5 points into stamina.

smercgames_ESO

My main issue with stamina builds (which I really rather do over magicka) is that magicka has 1 use, use skills. Stamina is used for soo many other things, I rarely start a fight at 100% due to sneaking, when catching a mage who is blinking around I need to sprint, I need to block, I need to roll out of roots, I need to CC break, I need to attack.. Usually my fight seems to go like this if I'm running melee, sneak up to the guy, hit him, use a stamina attack or two, then (cuz 95% of the time it's a DK or Sorc) if it's a Sorc they blink away and now I have to use stamina on my bow or sprint and then I get CC'd and I can't break it.. If it's a DK I get broken talon rooted, roll out, CC'd.. now I have no stamina to break the CC or if I do I'm left with 0 to use to attack or block with after.

Whenever I have seen a Stamina bar for melee attacks and dodge/blocking/sprinting Mages have always had the advantage because they can use their entire stamina bar for utility without a drop in dmg where as a Stamina build has to blow through it doing both.

So until stamina builds are fixed to either do a heck of alot more dmg to compensate for not being able to defend themselves after or Stamina regen and max stamina are increased for people who put points stamina attacks.. or atleast some advantage given to Stamina builds then magicka builds are pretty much going to be far superior.

EnOeZ

I just agree to everything all of you said.

Another way to buff stamina builds could be by enchants or stuff. When I see Warlock Set's proc (+300-600 Magicka every minute), I just wonder how the heck, we - melee stamina players - do not have something just plain equivalent at least !

Or... considering we have 5 ability slots add the following feature to game mechanics and call it "Euphoria" :

- by breaking CC, blocking or dodging, gain bonus (Nbr of Stamina abilities/5)% ie (0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%) stamina regeneration during 10s

Enrage-like / Second Wind-like mechanism are always really enjoyable to have and play, fits perfectly in the reaction-based (melee) combat system.

To me this would be a very welcome extension to the "Finesse" System design, adressing the very well described issues stated above by the OPs.

superfluke

Thats why my stamina is set to 0 in attributes. However if you are a magicka based build you should always try to find something useful for your stamina in case you run out of magicka and are in a tight spot. Early on it was silver bolts, later it was dark exchange.
Make your stamina work for you if your build allows it.

Ardeki

In my mind, they already have exactly what they need to fix this issue.

When mounted, we already have the separate stamina bar meant to represent the horse's stamina. Why not make that active at all times? Have it grow at the same rate as the primary bar, but have it used exclusively for blocking, dodging, and such so we have the primary bar just for skills, putting it on par with magicka.

I'd assume the mounts' stamina bar would replace it while mounted. Or heck, just do away with the mount stamina bar entirely and make us fall off if we're hit x times within y seconds, or what have you. Feeding for stamina would increase the number of hits and decrease the number of seconds in which they would need to land.

reggielee

I put some stamina points in for my fighters guild which has saved my arse many a time when my majicka ran out, but predominately its health now as my magicka is always soft capped with just some food

Natjur

(Mortal Combat Music)
Stamina vs Magicka
FIGHT!!!!
Magicka WINS!
Flawless victory!

Wifeaggro13

Aphilas wrote: »

Stamina builds suffer from two things - need of stamina for cc and root breaks, but more importantly way too low soft caps. Low weapon damage soft caps makes stamina based build to have considerably lower DPS due to inability to fully utilise important buffs both from skills and gear.

Flawless Dawnbreaker (increases melee by 13% while slotted)
Molten Weapons (increases weapon damage by 22)
Continuous Attack (10% weapon damage buff)
Momentum (up to 24% weapon damage)
Armour set Hundings Rage (which is buffed in Craglorn to give 18% melee buff instead of current 5%)
Enchants with +weapon damage

Basically, there already is everything that's needed to make stamina builds shine on live server. However we are being held back by stupidly low soft cap on weapon damage. For example - my vet 10 DW DK is hitting weapon damage soft cap in Cyrodiil _without_ any buffs. Almost soft capped with 2hander as well, to the level where I get only 8% buff from Momentum instead of 20% by the end of it's duration. Why would I waste a precious skill slot for something that will increase my overall dps by averagely 5% and costs stamina that I need to DPS?

Yes, devs mentioned that they are increasing the soft caps in Craglorn. But I somehow doubt they are increasing it by 30-40% which is the needed amount to stop stamina builds from being handicapped. I could easily drop at you at least 5-6 very viable and fun stamina builds from top of my head if weapon damage soft cap would be increased at least by 20%. Instead, now we are stuck with only one way to scale as a stamina user - crit chance and armour penetration/reduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaUsfecHEE
This is exactly why Stam Melee in general is f "d up . Any class using heavy or medium armor is at a severe disadvantage. completely and toaly screwed. it is also why DK's and sorc can solo VR dungeons if they have the skills. it also why youo see everyone using ranged magica specs for Craglorn trial runs and VR dungeons. Light armor is seriously out performing any stamina build. Melee is all but usless comapred to these builds.

alexj4596b14_ESO

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

The game forces you a bit to do balanced instead of one way (soft caps should be increased on all stats)

This^^^

SuperScrubby

This has actually sucked the fun out of my melee dk sitting at VR2. I see people spam impulse a few times and take out 5+ enemies in cloth armor. I can barely manage to take on 4 with heavy.

Being melee and stamina build basically causes more headaches than its worth. I'm slowly leveling up destro staff and swapping my heavy for light to clear content faster since questing through 2 alliances is mind numbing to me.

Aphilas

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaUsfecHEE
This is exactly why Stam Melee in general is f "d up . Any class using heavy or medium armor is at a severe disadvantage. completely and toaly screwed. it is also why DK's and sorc can solo VR dungeons if they have the skills. it also why youo see everyone using ranged magica specs for Craglorn trial runs and VR dungeons. Light armor is seriously out performing any stamina build. Melee is all but usless comapred to these builds.

It's a different issue with light armor passives + cost reduction stacking which I've realized how silly is after a week of playing. Similar to ulti issues. Duno how Zenimax developers haven't understood that in years of development. Sometimes it just feels that they have completely separate development and testing/balance/QA teams working on magica skills and on stamina skills without ever communicating with each other. "Ohh, flying blade is performing too well comapred to other stamina skills, let's increase it's stamina cost to bring it in line with the rest of stam skills" - meanwhile, in magica/ulti department... "yo, I think stuff still costs too much, let's add another set with -15 ulti cost in Craglorn".
When you see stuff like that on patch notes... I duno what to think honestly. Would be interesting what this game could become if they'd get someone with a clue to be responsible for skills balance.

However, fixing light armor + cost reduction *** would solve only one problem (which needs to be solved). It doesn't adress issues of poor stamina builds scalability and inability to benefit from skills and gear already available in the game due to weapon soft caps.

Xithian

Yeah, I've been trying to make different melee builds and it's like banging my head against a brick wall. For now I'm just going to work on a Surge melee sorc.

Which brings up... it's also easier to get high spell crit than it is to get high melee crit. 30% just for being light armor and having the Magelight morph. I had hopes for the DK skill Inferno, until I read that you don't regenerate any magicka while it's sucking down 50 per second. I was hoping that it would be a way to dump your mana regen as a stamina character, leaving just enough mana for emergency healing. Alas... back to the sorc.