Light Armor's problem is that it reduces the cost of spells by 21%

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

It certainly won't surprise many people, but in light of the developers mild nerf to light armor's spell penetration, this needs to be said (because it seems the developers either don't know it or are not willing to accept it):

The central problem with light armor is that it can reduce the cost of all spells up to 21%.

Nothing in the other armor lines even comes close to this.

The problem with Light Armor being superior to heavy will not be solved until this is addressed. This is why you can wear light armor and have not just greater DPS and healing, but greater survivability too (since you have more mana for defensive shields and buffs and self-heals).

My suggestion: reduce the spell cost reduction from light armor from 1/2/3 % per piece to 0.5/1/1.5 % per piece. Either that, or give medium and heavy a 0.5/1/1.5 % increase.

Then we might see some real choice on types of armor. Until that issue is addressed, light will still be superior to heavy.

Maverick827 · August 2014

Medium doesn't have as high of a cost reduction because most (all?) of the stamina weapon lines have passives that already reduce the cost of abilities.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

Medium doesn't have as high of a cost reduction because most (all?) of the stamina weapon lines have passives that already reduce the cost of abilities.

Unfortunately, though, that doesn't do anything to help heavy armor users with the cost of their spells... which is the reason why light is still better than heavy for class skills and in general.

Soloeus · August 2014

Nerfing something that works how it should by reducing its potency instead of correcting the problems in the other sets is lazy "fixing" and actually doesn't fix anything. It doesn't make you have more fun but it makes others have less fun. A good fix is one that doesn't cause Light Armor users to have less fun but instead makes the other choices more fun.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

Also, I think you need to consider which weapon lines actually have cost reductions, and how much they give. 1-Handed and shield can only get 10% reduction maximum. Destro and Resto staff don't have any passives that reduce cost.

Again, this is part of the sticks and skirts problem:
--A light armor user can put 3 skill points into a passive and get a 21% cost reduction on all class skills and all staff skills.
--A heavy armor user has to put 2 points into each weapon line (say 4 points total) and still can't get any reduction on class skills.

In short, the heavy armor user has to spend more points for dramatically less of an advantage (given that class skills are more numerous, have ultimates, generally do better damage and don't delete from the same pool that you use to run/block/dodge).

If light armor had less of an advantage, I think balance would be easier to achieve.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

Soloeus wrote: »

Nerfing something that works how it should by reducing its potency instead of correcting the problems in the other sets is lazy "fixing" and actually doesn't fix anything. It doesn't make you have more fun but it makes others have less fun. A good fix is one that doesn't cause Light Armor users to have less fun but instead makes the other choices more fun.

That's why I suggested the alternate of buffing the other armor types' cost reduction to 0.5/1/1.5 as an alternative method of addressing the problem.

Jermu73 · August 2014

I think they should not nerf anything but give a decent buff for others.

sethman75 · August 2014

Mate i think you need to worry about your own character and less about what others are doing.

ZOS please dont listen to whiny players because they cant learn to play their class and nerf a perfectly fine skill tree.

Samadhi · August 2014

david.haypreub18_ESO wrote: »

Also, I think you need to consider which weapon lines actually have cost reductions, and how much they give. 1-Handed and shield can only get 10% reduction maximum. Destro and Resto staff don't have any passives that reduce cost.

Again, this is part of the sticks and skirts problem:
--A light armor user can put 3 skill points into a passive and get a 21% cost reduction on all class skills and all staff skills.
--A heavy armor user has to put 2 points into each weapon line (say 4 points total) and still can't get any reduction on class skills.

In short, the heavy armor user has to spend more points for dramatically less of an advantage (given that class skills are more numerous, have ultimates, generally do better damage and don't delete from the same pool that you use to run/block/dodge).

If light armor had less of an advantage, I think balance would be easier to achieve.

The larger issue is that Heavy Armour does not provide enough increase to survivability for it to have actual appeal in terms of tanking.
Heavy shouldn't be about spamming skills, it should be about soaking damage.

Reducing Light Armour's ability to spam skills isn't going to fix that. If anything it sounds more like a case of being unsatisfied with an armour choice and wanting other players to suffer because of it.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

I persisted in wearing full heavy armor (except for one piece of medium or light to level up the skill) from beta till two days ago.

When I saw that the developers' most recent attempt to fix the problem (which has been going on for months now, seriously!) is to slightly reduce light armor's spell penetration, I saw the writing on the wall--that the problem is not going away anytime soon-- and decided to switch to full light. Since then, I've come to realize the full scope of the problem. In heavy, magicka was a scarce resource I constantly had to manage. In light, it is something I only occasionally notice after spamming skills without care for long periods of time.

Are people really going to argue that heavy is as good as light? There's a reason most people in Cyrodiil and almost everyone in trials is using it, no?

Obscure · August 2014

There is no single problem with the Light Armor skill line, it has multiple best options which makes it the best option.

•It increases magicka recovery which primarily contributes to sustain.
•It increases spell penetration which primarily contributes to overall DPS.
•It increases spell resistance which primarily contributes to survivability.
•It decreases the cost of magicka skills (all class skills) which primarily contributes to efficiency and overall resource optimization.

Add in the concepts that:
•The overwhelming majority of skills use magicka.
•The overwhelming majority of magicka skills are simply better than stamina alternatives or have no stamina alternative.
•The gear support for magicka vastly outweighs the gear support for stamina (I.E. no stamina equivalent to Warlock, or Syrabane, or Magicka Furnace, etc.)
•Magicka does not have an opportunity cost of losing the ability to use CC Break, Dodge, Block, Bash, Sprint, or Sneak if skills are used to consume it and alternatively the loss of ability to use skills if those features are used (only Stamina faces this constraint).

So to say the entire problem with light armor is due to any singular element is fundamentally short sighted and logically flawed. There's a much bigger problem with the game balance than any one passive in one skill line.

ThisOnePosts · August 2014

Jermu73 wrote: »

I think they should not nerf anything but give a decent buff for others.

It's the price to pay for less protection, and rightfully so! Medium armor has some great benefits to sneaking, speed, and stamina. I know, I have a VR12 NB. As far as heavy armor goes, all but 1 of my characters has heavy armor mixed in for some of the passives. Stop crying people, the only thing that needs a nerf are whiners.

Soliss · August 2014

How about rebalancing all magicka ability costs down by about 10% and then halving the Light Armor reduction to 0.5%/1%/1.5% (for a max of 10.5%). This would still leave the 21% overall reduction in place, but create less dependency on light armor to get it.

At the same time, stamina-based skill costs should be slightly revised also to make them perform slightly better as an additional incentive to use more stamina abilities.

Obscure · August 2014

ViciousWayz wrote: »

Jermu73 wrote: »

I think they should not nerf anything but give a decent buff for others.

It's the price to pay for less protection, and rightfully so!

Light armor will cap spell resist and a pair of resist physical harm enchants will cap armor while wearing it. No sacrifice on protection. Additionally plenty of resources to use armor skills, reflect skills, damage shields, and healing, all at large cost reductions.

No price is paid wearing light armor. The fact that it does not have any trade off is part of the reason it's optimal.

david.haypreub18_ESO · August 2014

Obscure wrote: »

There is no single problem with the Light Armor skill line, it has multiple best options which makes it the best option.

•It increases magicka recovery which primarily contributes to sustain.
•It increases spell penetration which primarily contributes to overall DPS.
•It increases spell resistance which primarily contributes to survivability.
•It decreases the cost of magicka skills (all class skills) which primarily contributes to efficiency and overall resource optimization.

Add in the concepts that:
•The overwhelming majority of skills use magicka.
•The overwhelming majority of magicka skills are simply better than stamina alternatives or have no stamina alternative.
•The gear support for magicka vastly outweighs the gear support for stamina (I.E. no stamina equivalent to Warlock, or Syrabane, or Magicka Furnace, etc.)
•Magicka does not have an opportunity cost of losing the ability to use CC Break, Dodge, Block, Bash, Sprint, or Sneak if skills are used to consume it and alternatively the loss of ability to use skills if those features are used (only Stamina faces this constraint).

So to say the entire problem with light armor is due to any singular element is fundamentally short sighted and logically flawed. There's a much bigger problem with the game balance than any one passive in one skill line.

Yes, I should have been more careful in the title of the thread; I hope my comments made it clear that I think this problem with LA's 21% reduction is not the sole problem. What I meant to say is that unless this specific problem is addressed, I doubt that any of the other problems are going to be solved. Or to put it in philosophical terms, solving the problem of LA giving a 21% reduction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for solving the problem of LA's overall superiority to heavy.

philip.ploegerb16_ESO · August 2014

Things should imo go the right way, so buff Stamina builds, then more people will wear Medium. Buff heavy armor, it's generally too weak compared to the other 2 possibilities. Fix resi-pierce-mechanics so it's not possible to reduce the enemies resists to 0%, don't nerf resi-pierce. Fix armor-pierce-mechanics, fix armor mechanics, so higher armor actually has an effect.

Samadhi · August 2014

Obscure wrote: »

ViciousWayz wrote: »

Jermu73 wrote: »

I think they should not nerf anything but give a decent buff for others.

It's the price to pay for less protection, and rightfully so!

Light armor will cap spell resist and a pair of resist physical harm enchants will cap armor while wearing it. No sacrifice on protection. Additionally plenty of resources to use armor skills, reflect skills, damage shields, and healing, all at large cost reductions.

No price is paid wearing light armor. The fact that it does not have any trade off is part of the reason it's optimal.

This is pretty much the core of the issue.

Light Armour can build to tank effectively as Heavy Armour with little sacrifice.

Heavy Armour should be substantially better at reducing damages than Light Armour is, but it isn't.

The issue isn't that DPS-gear is doing DPS too well; it's that DPS gear is doing survivability as well as Survivability gear.

Obscure · August 2014

david.haypreub18_ESO wrote: »

Obscure wrote: »

There is no single problem with the Light Armor skill line, it has multiple best options which makes it the best option.

•It increases magicka recovery which primarily contributes to sustain.
•It increases spell penetration which primarily contributes to overall DPS.
•It increases spell resistance which primarily contributes to survivability.
•It decreases the cost of magicka skills (all class skills) which primarily contributes to efficiency and overall resource optimization.

Add in the concepts that:
•The overwhelming majority of skills use magicka.
•The overwhelming majority of magicka skills are simply better than stamina alternatives or have no stamina alternative.
•The gear support for magicka vastly outweighs the gear support for stamina (I.E. no stamina equivalent to Warlock, or Syrabane, or Magicka Furnace, etc.)
•Magicka does not have an opportunity cost of losing the ability to use CC Break, Dodge, Block, Bash, Sprint, or Sneak if skills are used to consume it and alternatively the loss of ability to use skills if those features are used (only Stamina faces this constraint).

So to say the entire problem with light armor is due to any singular element is fundamentally short sighted and logically flawed. There's a much bigger problem with the game balance than any one passive in one skill line.

Yes, I should have been more careful in the title of the thread; I hope my comments made it clear that I think this problem with LA's 21% reduction is not the sole problem. What I meant to say is that unless this specific problem is addressed, I doubt that any of the other problems are going to be solved. Or to put it in philosophical terms, solving the problem of LA giving a 21% reduction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for solving the problem of LA's overall superiority to heavy.

Agreed. Though substantial changes are a long way away, the steps to reconciling the imbalance should be additive (buffing) not subtractive (nerfing). Improvement of less optimal options will result in more variety and build experimentation. Nerf light armor you also Nerf hybrid armor configurations that use less of it reducing viable variety. It would actually create more full light armor specialization as alternatives are further and further diminished.

danno8 · August 2014

Obscure wrote: »

There is no single problem with the Light Armor skill line, it has multiple best options which makes it the best option.

•It increases magicka recovery which primarily contributes to sustain.
•It increases spell penetration which primarily contributes to overall DPS.
•It increases spell resistance which primarily contributes to survivability.
•It decreases the cost of magicka skills (all class skills) which primarily contributes to efficiency and overall resource optimization.

Add in the concepts that:
•The overwhelming majority of skills use magicka.
•The overwhelming majority of magicka skills are simply better than stamina alternatives or have no stamina alternative.
•The gear support for magicka vastly outweighs the gear support for stamina (I.E. no stamina equivalent to Warlock, or Syrabane, or Magicka Furnace, etc.)
•Magicka does not have an opportunity cost of losing the ability to use CC Break, Dodge, Block, Bash, Sprint, or Sneak if skills are used to consume it and alternatively the loss of ability to use skills if those features are used (only Stamina faces this constraint).

So to say the entire problem with light armor is due to any singular element is fundamentally short sighted and logically flawed. There's a much bigger problem with the game balance than any one passive in one skill line.

Yah I'm actually pretty sure that if they obliterated the 21% reduction passive the majority of people would STILL use light armour. That's how much better it is.

PBpsy · August 2014

All Armor types should have resource management options.
Heavy 1%Magicka 3%Stamina cost reduction
Medium 2%Magicka 2%Stamina cost reduction
Light 3%Magicka 1% Stamina cost reduction

All 5 piece bonuses should be removed and replaced with similar per piece bonuses.The 5 piece bonuses are truly restrictive. This would would really encourage more hybrid and mixed armor builds.
Buffing survivability of Heavy should be done after this since it would be very risky in term of pvp balance.

At VR12 resource management is the game. The 21% reduction from light helps but it is still not enough to remove resource management from the calculations. This is why every good magicka dps build still uses Spell Symmetry at endgame.
So Yes Buff Heavy and Medium for beter sustain. Don't nerf light armor sustain.

Taonnor · August 2014

When will these nerv light armor threads end? When all run with medium armor?

smeeprocketnub19_ESO · August 2014

I'm honestly not a big proponent of buff everything, nerf nothing. Everything becoming over the top powerful is just dumb. Makes the game less challenging.

Venereous44 · August 2014

Lets not break the one armor that works right. The extra buffs help equal the low armor rating...

Just keep complaining about the other armor types instead.

WebBull · August 2014

Taonnor wrote: »

When will these nerv light armor threads end? When all run with medium armor?

Not until heavy armor actually provides at least some benefit over light armor.

HomerSamson · August 2014

How about making armor relevant to damage mitigation so people running around in underwear are as squishy as they should be

cromica81_ESO · August 2014

Venereous44 wrote: »

Lets not break the one armor that works right. The extra buffs help equal the low armor rating...

Just keep complaining about the other armor types instead.

Except as people have already stated you can hit armor cap while wearing full light armor, so there is zero negative except for how ugly it is.

PBpsy · August 2014

cromica81_ESO wrote: »

Venereous44 wrote: »

Lets not break the one armor that works right. The extra buffs help equal the low armor rating...

Just keep complaining about the other armor types instead.

Except as people have already stated you can hit armor cap while wearing full light armor, so there is zero negative except for how ugly it is.

You sacrifice 26 spell power or one or two skill slots that you may not want to use.on top of the 2 slots you sacrifice on freaking balls since you can't get spell crit worth crap from gear that you don't get in trials.

Soliss · August 2014

PBpsy wrote: »

All Armor types should have resource management options.
Heavy 1%Magicka 3%Stamina cost reduction
Medium 2%Magicka 2%Stamina cost reduction
Light 3%Magicka 1% Stamina cost reduction

All 5 piece bonuses should be removed and replaced with similar per piece bonuses.The 5 piece bonuses are truly restrictive. This would would really encourage more hybrid and mixed armor builds.
Buffing survivability of Heavy should be done after this since it would be very risky in term of pvp balance.

At VR12 resource management is the game. The 21% reduction from light helps but it is still not enough to remove resource management from the calculations. This is why every good magicka dps build still uses Spell Symmetry at endgame.
So Yes Buff Heavy and Medium for beter sustain. Don't nerf light armor sustain.

I really like this idea.

michaelb14a_ESO2 · August 2014

Um when the champion system is released they will be REMOVING softcaps and hardcaps. It'll be a whole new ballgame anyways, so till then....just reeeelax

silascb · August 2014

There are so many options in the game for you to build something great. If you're so concerned about not having the best armor then why don't you just wear light armor yourself? It makes no sense. You should wear what makes the most sense for your build and/or what seems to be the most fun for you. Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way but you're comparing apples to oranges. Each armor class has its benefits and the great part about it is that you can change your armor class at any point in time. If you feel that heavy and medium armor needs some work, then fine, say that. But don't complain about something that works relatively well for those who choose to use it. Suggesting that we make other classes weaker because your class isn't as strong as you want it to be is really selfish and does nothing to improve the game. You should focus on your class, and your class only.

BrassRazoo · August 2014

Sorcerers and Templars are the only classes that should be allowed to wear light armour in the first place.