Weapons

Grimtooth · August 2014

Since using a two-handed weapon is slower than a one-handed one, shouldn't a larger weapon cause more damage? I might be wrong but it seems to me that all weapons of equal level do the same amount of damage. If I'm attacking someone in full plate armor with a dagger I probably wouldn't do much damage at all, but if I hit them with a warhammer/maul I would definitely cause some serious damage.

Rune_Relic · August 2014

2h > 1h > dagger....is how it should be. Agreed.
...as long as you hit them....and hit them accurately.
Otherwise you wont do full damage.

Alas heavy = slow and gives you more time to dodge and/or block.
where light = fast and gives less time to block or dodge...but does less damage anyway.

So damage should be mitigated if countered in the right way.
Heavy armour should simply absorb the damage and negate the need for block/dodge.

AlexDougherty · August 2014

A two handed weapons does do more damage, but not much more, and when combined with the slowing down, it does less damage per second.

Someone at Zenimax mucked up the calculations, two handed weapons need to do more damage.

Srugzal · August 2014

The damage value of the weapon is not the whole story. The actual damage scales to your stamina value, any enchants you have, armor passives, food, potions, and all that jazz. It's never just about the weapon.

And that's not even considering weapon traits (especially the ones that make them faster), the quality (white, green, blue...), your opponents armor, blocking, magic shields perhaps, bunches of things. Vulnerability to crushing... lots of things.

This is true of just about anything in the game; the numbers are never simple. I'd assert that nothing is more desirable in combat than the complexity of the model, and ESO has got that in good measure.

2h is slower... in the absence of buffs, passives and enchantments that make them faster.

2h might seem to be lower DPS, but you're never just whacking away with one weapon, are you? You've got a whole skill bar full of death dealing fury. You have to look at the whole picture, not just one data point.

"Balance," on the other hand, is when you can arrive at a certain desired level of performance using a variety of weapons and builds. Min/Maxers aren't looking for balance; they're looking for superior levels of performance. Race cars are hardly what you would call "balanced" designs, are they? So the Min/Maxer standard of excellence (sustained DPS > 1k) is hardly a universal goal.