What are your thoughts on these possible changes to the armor skill lines?

ianangelospreub18_ESO · July 2014

So I have been testing the various armor skill lines for a few months now. I have heard several people say Light armor is all you can even use at Vet ranks, Destr Staff Light Armor DK = Win etc etc etc. Now this isn't necessarily true many different setups have worked for me in the veteran ranks but light armor does seem to have a bit of an edge.
Before I begin a little background about me to assure everyone that I am not just some random noob that is suggesting drastic changes to the game, I have played MMO's for a good 14 years, I have always loved theory crafting and Maxing gear finding the most efficient methods of doing things etc and I have a decent background in both Video Game Design and Programming, am I an expert(begins laughing frantically) not in any way shape or form lol but I do love games and only want them to become more enjoyable.

To get started I will list first the current passive effect as well as the number of skill points that can go into it for the skill line and then I will offer my suggestion of how I think the skill could maybe be rebalanced/changed.

Medium Armor Line:
Passive 1 - Dexterity: 0/3
Currently the first passive is Dexterity, it increases your crit rate with physical attacks. This is a pretty good skill that I wouldn't want to see gone but as the first skill in the line I think there is a better choice. Essentially a copy of the Light armors first skill Evocation but for Stamina.

My Suggestion: At 1/3 for every piece of medium armor equipped reduce the Stamina cost of skills by 1%. At 3/3 it would be 3%. Would hopefully breathe a bit more life into physical weapons as well.

Passive 2 - Wind Walker: 0/2
OK this one I understand but I don't understand why the devs did this, they could have easily kept the symmetry of the light armor line but instead added a second effect. Take off the second effect since New medium armor Passive 1 would now have a better effect and simply go with Stamina Regen at the same rate as Recovery from the Light armor skill line.

My Suggestion: Copy of "Recovery" but for stamina, at 0/2 2% stamina recovery leading up to the same regeneration as "Recovery" but for stamina at 2/2. It works and would be automatically balanced due to the symmetry.

Passive 3 - Improved Sneak: 0/2
Currently this skill reduces the detection area size as well as the cost of sneaking.

My Suggestion: Leave it how it is this skill seems fine to me. I have seen players use this to sneak by things that realistically they probably shouldn't be able to but this is a game so realism isn't a must and its a good skill that isn't causing any major issues to my knowledge.

Passive 4 - Agility: 0/2
This skill currently increases your weapon attack speed which is nice and unique but you could easily add symmetry in from the light armor line instead for a better effect.

My Suggestion: Take the previous crit rate of physical attacks from Old medium armor Passive 1 and place it here at the same scaling as light armors skill Prodigy. The idea that medium armor makes you attack faster is a bit iffy for me as if anything would its light armor, thinking in terms of weight. Now things don't have to be all logical and realistic, but I don't want to lose that crit rate as I am sure many other players don't either making this a good spot for it in my opinion.

Passive 5 - Athletics: 0/2
Currently this reduces sprint speed and dodge roll cost but there are a few other effects it could have instead such as: Bypass armor similar to light armors Concentration, but this skills current effect seems to work well and I would be hesitant to change it.

My Suggestion: If you really want to change this skill to make it more balanced, remove the sprint speed increase since in my opinion not many people waste the stamina on sprint during a fight it has its uses but saving the stamina for dodging generally works better Sprinting as far as world travel is generally less effective than using a Horse, once again it has its uses but I think another effect could be more beneficial. Instead of a sprint speed increase, add in armor ignoring similar to Concentration possibly a little lower in order to keep the roll dodge stamina reduction effect along with it.

OK so those are my ideas for medium armor. Please keep in mind they are just my own opinions and thoughts towards re-balancing the skill lines after playing with each armor type on various classes at various levels. I would love to hear both your criticism and your own ideas about any of these suggestions as well, as I only want to make the game better.

Heavy Armor:
Passive 1 - Resolve: 0/3
Currently this skill increases armor and spell resistance per piece of heavy armor equipped.

My Suggestion: OK....I have loved playing a tank so far in this game, but I very rarely actually use heavy armor for it. My reason being is this, for several classes Sorcerer especially you can VERY EASILY reach the soft cap in both Spell Resistance and Armor by using magika based skills and Light armor. Now here's the thing, full light armor is basically going to put you in the soft cap of spell resistance by itself thanks to one of its passives. As for armor Sorcers have Bound Aegis among others, DKs have Razor Armor you start to get the picture. So if using skills based on magika gets your stats into the soft caps of both anyway why would you use heavy armor over light which reduces the magika cost of those skills + any others you might want to cast. This is why I personally have just tanked in Light armor quite a lot even at the vet ranks it really does work and works well too. I want to tank in heavy though it fits, you then gain the health boost from Passive 5, and then your not spamming those skills for the armor boosts. So the change I thought of is this. At 1/3 for every piece of heavy armor you have equipped reduce all incoming damage by 1%. OK now 1% per piece going to 3% per piece at 3/3 may be a bit too strong, I have no idea without being able to test it out so those numbers might need reduced, but then you can use it without worry about a soft cap in armor, making it so that using only 1 armor boosting magika skill and then using all heavy armor could end up being the better choice. Remember heavy armor has quite a lot more armor then Light as it is you probably would not even need an armor boosting skill. This change is my favorite and the idea of it may make every tank that reads this drool a little at the idea of it but like I said that might be too strong it would need tweaking and testing. Also may require a change on one of the passives coming up for Spell Resistance.

Passive 2 - Constitution: 0/2
Currently increases health recovery, make it the same as the light armor passive 2 but for health. Same scaling as light armor passive 2, works good and has good symmetry.

Passive 3 - Juggernaut: 0/2
OK here is where that change comes in

Currently this increases melee damage by .5% at 1/2 per piece of heavy armor equipped.

My Suggestion: The increase is not high enough to be worth it right now.(my opinion only) My first thought was just a simple buff then I looked at the other two armor passive 3's and they buff defense of a sort. One is sneak and one is spell resistance. Why not give this a spell resistance boost as well, heck even rename the skill to Runed Armor or something along those lines. It would make sense like a protective ward over the metal. I would not make it nearly as strong as spell warding on the light armor line as that sort of spell resistance needs to be reserved for light armor users, though maybe 1-2% per piece of heavy armor? I am not sure on the numbers but this would make sense to me as then heavy armor would get some nice spell resistance to help after losing some from the change to Heavy passive 1.

Passive 4 - Bracing: 0/2
This skill decreases the cost of Blocking, I am perfectly fine with this it works well.

Passive 5 - Rapid Mending: 0/2
Currently increases the amount of healing you receive per piece of heavy armor equipped. Tbh there are times to me this almost seems too strong of an effect but hey it works and isn't so over powered I would change it.

So those are the main changes I wanted to share as I said above they are only my opinions and by no means "Great" ideas or facts. Props to anyone who read this entire thing I do appreciate it. Let me know your thoughts on any of these ideas as well as your own ideas for changes to the armor skill lines. I wanted to mention I did not include anything on the Active skills of each line since for now they seem fine to me and fairly well balanced although I have not used the medium one very much yet and did not want to comment on it without proper experience. I also did not suggest any changes to the Light armor line as in my opinion right now the light armor line is the most balanced overall (not compared to the other lines but just in general) and wanted to use it as a reference for the changes to the other two lines. Thank You.

ianangelospreub18_ESO · July 2014

I am actually surprised no one has commented on this yet. Feel free I really would like to hear the thoughts of other players on any of these changes.

Gokmak · July 2014

Too long. My mouse finger got tired scrolling down to the end, to type this

Kalann_Pander · July 2014

I read everything

Still, you should put a "tl;dr" section at the end of your post

Passive 1 : Good idea - great idea in fact, it would be a powerful argument to return heavy armor as the n°1 tank armor. I was actually thinking your version might have been too powerful, then I checked up Light/Medium passives, and no, it isn't, it's perfectly in line.

Passive 2 : (IMO) Should be boosted because base health regen is miserably low. Maybe 1.5% - 2% per armor piece.

Passive 3 : No, passive 1 already covers spell resist. The current passive is actually OK, although I dare say improving it slightly, 0.75% - 1% per armor piece, certainly wouldn't hurt.

dcincali · July 2014

These aren't possible changes unless its coming from a dev.. So its really just a bunch of "what ifs".

ianangelospreub18_ESO · July 2014

Kalann_Pander wrote: »

I read everything Still, you should put a "tl;dr" section at the end of your post

Passive 1 : Good idea - great idea in fact, it would be a powerful argument to return heavy armor as the n°1 tank armor. I was actually thinking your version might have been too powerful, then I checked up Light/Medium passives, and no, it isn't, it's perfectly in line.

Passive 2 : (IMO) Should be boosted because base health regen is miserably low. Maybe 1.5% - 2% per armor piece.

Passive 3 : No, passive 1 already covers spell resist. The current passive is actually OK, although I dare say improving it slightly, 0.75% - 1% per armor piece, certainly wouldn't hurt.

If you change Passive 1 to reduce damage rather then increase armor and spell resist then your spell resistance is gone meaning it needs to be added on another passive.

Kalann_Pander · July 2014

ianangelospreub18_ESO wrote: »

If you change Passive 1 to reduce damage rather then increase armor and spell resist then your spell resistance is gone meaning it needs to be added on another passive.

ianangelospreub18_ESO wrote: »

So the change I thought of is this. At 1/3 for every piece of heavy armor you have equipped reduce all incoming damage by 1%.

No. Reduce ALL damage = Reduce weapon damage + Reduce Spell damage.

Spell Resistance IS covered.

Akhratos · July 2014

I dont agree with most of your heavy armor thoughts except for the first one (resolve). Imho:

- Bracing 20% block cost reduction VS 28% ALL MAGICKA cost reduction. Seems a bit unfair, doesnt it?

- Rapid Mending 1%/piece extra heal income. So 7% extra heal at best. Id say this is pure garbage. Even more in a game where there are no big raw heals but hot stacking. Not fit for a 5th armor passive imho.

- Juggernaut, 1%/piece extra WEAPON DAMAGE only for MELEE ATTACKS. Your "increases melee damage" is misleading. It only increases weapon damage, wich is only a part of the total damage stamina skills and melee/ranged swings do.

So a 7% increase in such stat, wich may be only a 40% of the total damage of melee swings and sta skills (simple figure), would mean 0.07*0.4=0,028. A 2,8% damage boost only for melee swings. Garbage passive again.

- Constitution. 4%/p Health Regen bonus vs 4%/p Stamina Regen & 2%/p STA cost reduction. Deja vú. Seems heavy armor is the slow cousin of the family. The buff that the devs gave to this medium armor passive is ludicrous.

- Resolve. I think most of tanks dont need so many garbage armor % modifiers. Everybody can get a stupid 1000 armor bonus simply using Bone Armor. What about a critical damage resistance (-x% crit damage received)? Not fit for the slow cousing I guess.

Right now heavy is far from being the best tanking choice, and dps oriented is just incredibly lackluster. All of the passives are pure garbage compared to their light/medium counterparts (why should wearing a robe make you strong against a fireball?).

ianangelospreub18_ESO · July 2014

Your bring up some good points Archaeon, idk if you could compare the light armor passive 1's magika cost reduction to the heavy's block mitigation though symmetry wise the heavy armor passive 1 is meant to provide the 21% extra defense essentially. So comparing those 2 against each other I feel like 21% more armor and spell resistance is at least a little more fair then say 20% block reduction, it still isn't [perfect to me hence the suggestion but assuming there were no skills to boost your armor in the game then it would actually have use and probably be fair.

As for the rapid mending it could certainly be higher, saying its garbage compared to what light and medium have though eh I don't think I can agree 7% is still 7%, yes the healing benefit doesn't get as large of a boost from a giant spike heal but your HOT's will still be boosted on all instances of them, taking it up a bit to maybe 14-20% boost would probably help but I am hesitant on any change because it "could" become over powered very easily.

for Jugger ya its weapon damage so I will probably fix that so that it doesn't cause confusion about how much damage it is actually increasing. Regardless I think it should be buffed or changed, like you even said its only a small part which makes that buff to your damage get pretty small when you actually look at what it does. Doesn't necessarily need to be Spell Resist I just wanted to provide a way to buff against spells more. Technically damage reduction reduces both yes, but if you leave it how it is your physical defense is going to be much higher then your magic resistance. I wanted to give the player the option of becoming a more well balanced tank like the original Passive 1 tried to do.

for constitution your looking at it the wrong way. Compare it to the magika recovery on light armor and its the same. This isn't a problem with the heavy passive being too weak its a problem with the Medium armor passive that should only be like a 4% boost per being too strong because they didn't keep their same pattern which I mentioned changing above.

I like the idea of a resistance to crit, currently the only way to do that is the impenetrable trait I believe and possibly a set affect or a few skills.

OK I agree that heavy is far from being the best tanking or dps choice atm, I don't think it is useless but if I thought it was perfect I wouldn't suggest so many changes. The heavy armor is not the only one though, the medium armor line is just as bad, the only difference being a few of its skills have a few added effects put into 1 passive. as for the robe thing its not so much cloth protecting against it but just metal causing more pain from the heating etc and they chose to show this by increasing the light's resistance rather then decreasing the heavy's.