There is absolutely nothing wrong with stamina builds. The fault lies in the magicka design. ALL (and I do mean ALL) class skills are magicka. That render stamina builds completely worthless, because you cripple your class.

For example, my Nightblade use medium armor (for boosting weapon damage and sneaking) and dual wielding as primary, but I am forced to enchant everything for magicka because all I use is class skills. I only have 5 skill slots because I play on the EU server - weapon swapping does not work in the heat of battle, especially not in PvP. I need the stealth, I need the backstabbing, I need the teleport, I need finisher. That's 4 out of 5 class skills. The 5th, granted I sometimes take the dagger throw for that. But I cant base my entire build around having 1 stamina skill.

In theory nothing is wrong.

ESO was designed as a group game, so that different classes work together to accomplish a common goal. My experience tells me that a group of 4 different classes works best, but you can also pick 1 NB, 2 Templar and 1 Sorcerer if you like.

VR´s in general were never meant to be soloed, while some Ranger & Rogue like Chars could solo VR mobs during Beta, the aim was that you look for a group there.

Unfortunately do many players think that the game should always be a solo game, so they attempt VR mobs alone and then of course die. The blame then always goes to the Devs for making their class not strong enough, just because some other class somehow managed to do the quest where they failed.

Another aspect is, that ZO made the mistake and allowed DPS meters. As soon people have those in their hands they will abuse them and either kick those with less or complain that their own DPS is not as high as for instance of a Mage.

MMO´s are never balanced like a shooter or an arcade RPG. They are supposed to offer different Chars and those of course are not all as strong as the other, but will give a benefit in a specific situation while they need help at another.

When I play with my Tank, then I do know that having a DPS and a Healer is crucial as I don't do high DPS and also can´t heal myself good enough. For others however a Char must be god like and like He-Man. I think its a shame that it has come down to this in MMO´s, but I guess that's just how it is.


The only concern that I have and this now is the practical part, are the Stamina eating mechanics.

In my opinion as a tank, you just need to much of it. To dodge is crucial and if you do it 4 times then you are a sitting duck plus you also need to consider that your attacks need stamina. This definitely needs a fix, while using Stamina should require basic knowledge and timing, it should not cripple a Char as much as it does now.

But as I said, this isn't about damage or solo VR - this is about being a reliable tank in a group and there that role has issue´s due the lack of Stamina.

It is the fundamental system of class skills being magicka that make stamina builds broken.

If you have a magicka build your armor enhance your class abilities and it enhance your weapon attacks too at the same time and it leaves your stamina free to defend or sprint.

If you have stamina build then your armor does not work with your class abilities and you become much weaker since class abilities are overall much much stronger than stamina abilities. In addition you must share the same resource between attacks and defense leaving you out of the resource all the time while still being overall weaker in the offense than magicka builds.

Now if armors gave a decent survive ability things could be said to balance out but the things is that most high damage in the game comes from magic where only light armor give any protection and medium or heavy armor offers NO protection what so ever.

So you have a system where light armor/magicka builds have better damage, better resource available and better defense.

Adding 10% damage here and a bit of stamina cost reduction there does nothing to fix that the entire fundamental magicka/stamina system is BROKEN.

Only thing that will fix it is a redesign: Instead of the current 3 stats have power (that increase damage output), health and endurance (which is a universal resource) and all rely on ONE universal crit chance.
THEN you will have balance between the concepts and armor types, light being pure dps, medium being sneak/crit and heavy being survival (and spell warding should be moved to heavy).

Main problem is that dodge, block, sprint, all cost stamina. All of these things are essential in VR content and most content in general. If your build revolves around stamina, then you are having to use stamina for two things-mitigation and dps.

So with a magicka build, your entire resource pool is for dps.
With a stamina build, your resource pool is being used for both dps and mitigation. Therefore stamina gets used up much faster.

babylon wrote: »

They should remove stamina skills entirely and make weapon skills use magicka, then we'd never have to hear all this crap again.

Even though I suggest more or less the same above it would destroy my current character since there is ways to build around the current system and not use light armor staffs.

The key is to make a spec slightly towards magicka and then put in one or two stamina abilities on each bar. What you then do is to have your class attacks as main dps and the stamina as backup while magicka regens.

With my current build which is dw/assassin/shadow/vamp I pull around 12-1300 burst dps and 5-600 sustained and again around 1100 at the last stages of a boss fight and I remove 40% of my targets armor so everyone do more damage to it.

But it is a magicka with stamina backup spec just without staffs or light armor and it works within the current system. If I had been stamina spec it would not work which is wrong.

Alphashado wrote: »

Main problem is that dodge, block, sprint, all cost stamina. All of these things are essential in VR content and most content in general. If your build revolves around stamina, then you are having to use stamina for two things-mitigation and dps.

So with a magicka build, your entire resource pool is for dps.
With a stamina build, your resource pool is being used for both dps and mitigation. Therefore stamina gets used up much faster.

Yes, this is the biggest problem by far. I'm a magicka build. I do use Rapid Manoeuvre and Razor Caltroops for groups in PvP. Immovable to help myself. Fighters guild skills in PvE. So I try to keep my stamina soft capped as well.

Still, roughly 95% of my healing or dps'ing comes from my magicka pool. I should be swimming in stamina right?

Yet the massive amount of blocking, dodging and cc-breaking needed, makes the green bar disappear in seconds. I'm often out of stamina before I'm oom in combat.

Do the developers even play their own game? How can they expect anyone to actively dps with stamina based abilities? You already run out of stamina without touching a single skill.

"Ranged casters don't need to block"

Someone's a comedian.

The fix to stamina is easy - double the pool and cut the expense. If you double the cap the weapon damage increases (I believe) and if you cut the expense of stamina based abilities by 50% I would bet they get used a lot more. This would get the stamina bonuses on medium armor used..stamina based builds where magicka is secondary..

(Long post, summary at the end )

The problem is one of Stamina Weapon skills vs. Magicka Weapon skills and of Light Armor passives vs. Medium and Heavy Armor passives.

Stamina vs. Magicka Weapon skills:

You would assume that Stamina skills have the advantage of using a different ressource pool and so, by alternating Magicka and Stamina skills, the player can benefit from the Recovery of 2 Ressources instead of just one and be more efficient.

However, there are just so many passives from skills and items that increase the efficiency of Magicka skills (greatly reduced cost, sets and skills that let you regain Magicka, lower cost in comparison to Stamina Weapon skills from the start) that using only one ressource for all your skills is just as efficient if not more so.

Add to that the fact that all Class skills cost Magicka as well and are almost exclusively Magicka based. That means they benefit from the same resource cost reductions and refills, also become more powerful if you have more max Magicka and almost all of them use the same Critical stat (Spell Critical) and benefit from Spell Damage as Magicka Weapon skills do (all damage over time effects from Class skills that I've tested use Spell Critical and benefit from Spell Damage) whereas Stamina Weapon skills, in general, use their own Critical stat (Weapon Critical) and only benefit from Weapon damage. So characters with Stamina weapons can either boost their Class skills with Spell Critical and Spell Damage or boost their Weapon skills with Weapon Critical and Weapon Damage. Characters with Magicka weapons can simply boost their Spell Critical and Spell Damage and all their skills will benefit from it.

Add to that another problem of Stamina Weapon builds: Stamina is also the survival ressource of the game. You need it to block, to dodge roll, to sprint, to interrupt and to break free from crowd control effects. So using Stamina Weapon skills will take away from your Stamina pool and thus reduce your suvivability in dangerous situations.

Light Armor passives vs. Medium and Heavy Armor passives

Then there is another problem with the passives of different Armor types. Light Armor reduces the cost and increases the power (with Spell Critical and by ignoring part of the enemy Spell Resistance) of almost all Class skills and Magicka weapon skills at the same time. It also increases Spell Resistance and Magicka Recovery.

Medium Armor increases the power of Stamina Weapon skills (Weapon critical) and the Stamina Recovery (+ adds a very small bonus for sneaking and increases movement speed and attack speed).

Heavy Armor increases Armor and Spell Resistance, Health Recovery (which has a lower soft cap than Magicka and Stamina Recovery), the damage with Melee attacks, and Healing received. And it reduces the cost of blocking.

Light Armor users can easily reach the soft cap of the Armor stat with glyphs and any character may use the Heavy Armor skill Immovable (and its morphs) to have a greatly increased Armor and Spell Resistance for 8 seconds and become immune to most crowd control effects for that time.

It's easy to see why so many people now prefer Light Armor over Medium and Heavy in both PvE and PvP. The announced change to the Wind Walker passive for Medium Armor is a step in the right direction, but I think it won't be enough to shift the balance and make Medium and Heavy Armor just as viable in most situations as Light Armor is now.

Solutions:

The Light vs. Medium and Heavy Armor imbalance is only part of what causes the Stamina weapon skills vs. Magicka weapon skills imbalance. An imbalance that becomes most apparent when it comes to sustained damage in group dungeons and trials*. So just balancing the Armor passives won't be enough to fix that problem.

I personally see only two ways how this larger imbalance can be fixed (without changing how skills or item sets work and without changing very basic principles of the game):

a) Convert the Destruction Staff and the Restoration Staff to be Stamina Weapons. Make all their skills Stamina based and the let them benefit from Weapon Damage and Weapon Critical instead of Spell Power and Spell Critical.
This solution might feel wrong background wise (since the staves really are "magic" weapons) but it would add some balance to the game.

b) Weaken the Destruction Staff and Restoration Staff skills (especially Impulse**) and boost most Stamina Weapon skills by increasing their damage and slightly decreasing their cost.
This solution will very likely lead to some balancing problems, especially in PvP where Stamina skills could be too strong after the change. In PvE, Stamina Weapon builds would probably still be less efficient than Magicka weapon builds when it comes to sustained damage.

((c) Convert about half of all the Class skills and Ultimates to be Stamina based (their damage over time effects would be based on Weapon Damage and Weapon Critical as well).
This would obviously be a big change and possibly would introduce new balancing issues. Everyone would have to get a free respec, etc.))


* In solo quests and PvP, Stamina Weapon builds can do fine (though Staff builds will always be faster and easier to play for questing).

** The worst skill in the game (balance wise) right now is Impulse. If an easy to use area of effect spell with a large radius (8 meters) that requires no target and can be spammed is the most efficient skill to use on single targets for sustained damage, something in the balancing process went very wrong...


Summary:

1.1. Magicka skills benefit from very powerful passives that make them more efficient and make it hard for a character to run out of Magicka
1.2. Class skills mostly benefit from the same stats and passives as Magicka Weapon skills (Stamina Weapon skills benefit from separate stats and passives that have no influence at all on most Class skills)
1.3. Using Stamina skills reduces the survivability of a character since Stamina is also the survival ressource.

2.1. The passives of Light Armor in most situations are much more beneficial than those of Medium and Heavy Armor.
2.2. The main disadvantage of Light Armor (lower Armor stat) can easily be circumvented by wearing items or using skills that increase Armor.

3. There are two solutions how to add more balance to the game (without changing its basic principles): Either convert all Weapon skills to be Stamina based or weaken Magicka Weapon skills while making Stamina Weapon skills slightly stronger.

Jimm_ay wrote: »

The fix to stamina is easy - double the pool and cut the expense. If you double the cap the weapon damage increases (I believe) and if you cut the expense of stamina based abilities by 50% I would bet they get used a lot more. This would get the stamina bonuses on medium armor used..stamina based builds where magicka is secondary..

The problem with that solution is that stamina builds would then be OP in situations where no mitigation is being used.

They need a different resource pool for mitigation. Call it fatigue or energy or whatever. Then have the exact same costs, dmg, glyphs, set bonus's for stamina as magicka.

That is the only solution I believe.

Stamina has so many advantages. Why cheapening it? The opposite is true. A stamina nerf will force interaction and in result group content!

Traditionally most melee based builds have their advantages in lower levels. Later on Mana based chars should become much more powerful. ESO is a little different.

Perhaps a mighty sorc could exchange his instable pet by something more real. There is nothing wrong in accepting a wizard as master. A kneefall do not cost stamina at all.

On the other site there are great warriors in the game. It seems they can easy handle situations where others fully focused in surviving. Perhaps they have use for a disciple?

Someone probably mentioned this already but the biggest problem with stamina builds imo is that it's the same resource you use to block, roll, CC break etc.

My current build consists of only magica skills meaning i have plenty (1600 or so) stamina to play around with for other stuff.

I do have a 2h/bow setup too that uses a lot more stamina, but i rarely pvp with it.

JoseDelgadoCub17_ESO wrote: »

I mean the complaint seems that stamina build aren't doing the same damage as magicka builds, well isn't that how it works.

They sacrifice armor in exchange for more fangs?
.


This is how I personally think builds should work.

Magicka build do a lot of damage with spells.

Stamina builds should have more click attack crits and use spells for feats

There are two core issues with stamina builds right now:

1. While they should have more defense due to medium/heavy armor than magicka builds (which use light armor), the armor caps and buffs in this game make that a nonfactor. Light armor can be just as tanky as heavy armor right now.

2. Magicka builds use one resource for damage and abilities (magicka), and have the entirety of their other resource (stamina) left over for defensive application - meaning dodging, sprinting, blocking, interrupting, cc breaking, and sneaking.
Stamina builds, on the other hand, use the same resource for all of those defensive utilities as they do for damage, so they're twice as strained on their resource pool. There are also no active abilities to regenerate stamina right now, while there are numerous abilities that regenerate magicka.

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

SO much BAD info in this thread.

Alphashado wrote: »

Main problem is that dodge, block, sprint, all cost stamina. All of these things are essential in VR content and most content in general. If your build revolves around stamina, then you are having to use stamina for two things-mitigation and dps.

So with a magicka build, your entire resource pool is for dps.
With a stamina build, your resource pool is being used for both dps and mitigation. Therefore stamina gets used up much faster.

This is VERY false. Magicka builds have to expend Magicka on stuff OTHER than JUST DPS, such as self heals, utility, CC. To say you ONLY have to spend Magicka on DPS is just plain false.

ArRashid wrote: »

Average damage on a pack of 3 mobs, during 3 seconds:

mage:
3-4x Impulse for (let's say) ~225 dmg each = 675-900 dmg

warrior:
1x heavy attack = ~350 dmg

Its a nice comparison but how about NOT comparing it to the most OP broken ability in the game or compare it to a single target ability. 350 damage is a substantial amount of damage for an attack you never run out of. Not to mention that damage is probably only at soft cap, wonder what it looks like at soft cap(see next statement).

ArRashid wrote: »

Also, it is not currently possible to go full stamina build (because all class abilities use and scale with magicka, and most non-class skills as well, just Fighter's Guild uses stamina), forcing stamina players to go hybrid, because they can't specialize so much for one stat - whereas mages can do EVERYTHING with magicka (there is even a magicka taunt, templars even have access to magicka charge).

Stamina builds DO get benefits from Magicka regardless of points in Magicka with certain abilities that every class gets such as Surge, Lighting Form, Blazing Shield, Restoring Aura.

So to say you CANT go full Stamina is just plain wrong info, you can there are plenty of Magicka abilities you can still use regardless of points in Magicka.

Just casting Critical Surge costs 560 magicka for a mere 20 second long buff (that's right, it's about 50% your magicka if you don't invest points in it or enchant it, or eat magicka food). Not to mention stamina build need at least 1 more magicka ability on their bars (either for defense, or CC, or aoe dps), which they then can cast about once per trash pack