In-Practice Testing Results Wanted: How Much Does Race Affect Output (DPS)?

rb2001 · September 2015

Hi all,

AKA: "Are my characters rubbish"?

I'm interested to know, for example, how much, say a Breton Nightblade really does fall short of what a Khajiit or Bosmer NB (that stealth damage bonus) can do in terms of DPS, in terms of real testing results with a focus on maximizing and optimizing both pathways.

Stamina, or Magicka, or comparisons between both, etc.

Also please consider an Imperial NB for healing versus other healing combinations.

How much difference in DPS actually exists in practice? How much do the percentages and racials really affect things at "end game"?

A lot of the time we talk about matching race and class, and what is viable or not, but I want to know how much difference, in numbers, or in capability (soloing things, what can and cannot be achieved and why) is actually made.

If anyone has any solid info on this, I'd love to hear what you folks have figured out.

Thanks for reading.

bigereard · September 2015

This will be very hard (and very long) to answer...

I once use excel (and some actual testing of course) to calculated optimum dragon blood healing. I make ton of comparison between race, armor sets, enchant, mundus, food, etc.

is the pure max hp imperial win? or argonian that have max hp and healing? or nord that have max hp and damage mitigation (the effective health is higher than other race)?

and the one that's make simulation so long is not the number of the healing per dragon blood, but rather than how much survivability i can generate every sec and for how long. This will include magicka, magicka regen, magicka cost reduction, armor, damage resistance, and many other variable to the whole equation. Choosing right armor sets and slotted passive is quite hard.

so after we armor, etc (exclude the racial) the result will something like this (rough version):

dragon blood heal at 30% health (below 30% have risk of increased damage) = 15k health

> imperial, argonian, nord, will be better than other race

Effective health : actual health = 2.5 : 1 (from armor, damage resistance, etc)

> nord better

dragon blood cost = 2k magicka

> breton better

magicka gain (average from regen, potion, and any other source) = 1k magicka per sec

> high elf better

max magicka = 20k

> breton & high elf better

from this we know that we can generate 18.75k (7.5k health/sec*2.5) effective health every second
and can do burst for 37.5k effective health every sec for 20 sec.

after that I made other build in excel and compare them 1 by 1. every build i have pessimist, normal, and optimist scenario. for example pessimist scenario is when I fight enemy that have major minor defile (healing debuff) with max champion passive in defile and also have pulsar (max health debuff).

And all that calculation is only for optimizing 1 skill

the DPS in NB is the same actually. there's DPS and there's DPS uptime. How many damage you can generate every sec and for what sec?
So we must include so many combination of skill, and calculated it one by one with so many variable.

I suggest you to focused on what skill you wanna use? or at least how will you play?

TLDR;
racial do matter in optimizing build, but you must choose first, what build will you optimize?

hardcore_gmr · September 2015

I think you are thinking about this the wrong way. This is actually a common question and often it assumes one style of play over another rather than a difference in raw dps. For example, you brought up a Breton nightblade vs a Bosmer or Khajit. Each race will play slightly different because of the racial bonus. Whereas one race may provide a slight dps boost, the other may have better sustainability. The Breton has that natural cost reduction passive that makes it possible to spam magic attacks, the Khajit and Bosmer have the stealth bonus in common but Khajit does more crit damage with its crit passive where as Bosmer has high stam regen. With racial bonuses it's all about playing to the strengths of the race. The imperial has good health passives, high elf has more magic...and so on....it's all about how you play that will determine which is "better". My suggestion is imagine how you intend to play the class then or decide which bonus will give you the most bang for your buck

13igTyme · September 2015

To add to that, it also depends on how you spec your character. Breton NB vs Bosmer NB, are you going to go stamina or magicka, and if you go magicka are you going to use cloak? I've seen some Magicka NB never use cloak in PvE.

rb2001 · September 2015

hardcore_gmr wrote: »

I think you are thinking about this the wrong way. This is actually a common question and often it assumes one style of play over another rather than a difference in raw dps. For example, you brought up a Breton nightblade vs a Bosmer or Khajit. Each race will play slightly different because of the racial bonus. Whereas one race may provide a slight dps boost, the other may have better sustainability. The Breton has that natural cost reduction passive that makes it possible to spam magic attacks, the Khajit and Bosmer have the stealth bonus in common but Khajit does more crit damage with its crit passive where as Bosmer has high stam regen. With racial bonuses it's all about playing to the strengths of the race. The imperial has good health passives, high elf has more magic...and so on....it's all about how you play that will determine which is "better". My suggestion is imagine how you intend to play the class then or decide which bonus will give you the most bang for your buck

Thanks. This is what I've been doing, and I do fine, but I wanted to see actual comparison numbers between two maximized builds.

rb2001 · September 2015

13igTyme wrote: »

To add to that, it also depends on how you spec your character. Breton NB vs Bosmer NB, are you going to go stamina or magicka, and if you go magicka are you going to use cloak? I've seen some Magicka NB never use cloak in PvE.

The idea was to see numbers between maximized opposite builds, and so the Breton would be Magicka, and the Bosmer Stamina with all of the stealth attack goodness Stamina brings.

BlueGreenMikey · September 2015

As a console player, I can tell you that with some races, I knock down some enemies a little sliver, and with some races, I knock down other enemies a little bigger sliver.

hardcore_gmr · September 2015

For raw

rb2001 wrote: »

13igTyme wrote: »

To add to that, it also depends on how you spec your character. Breton NB vs Bosmer NB, are you going to go stamina or magicka, and if you go magicka are you going to use cloak? I've seen some Magicka NB never use cloak in PvE.

The idea was to see numbers between maximized opposite builds, and so the Breton would be Magicka, and the Bosmer Stamina with all of the stealth attack goodness Stamina brings.

a raw damage comparison is going to be difficult to pull off. So many factors can change your outcome, things like are you maximizing for pve or pvp, are you measuring a long fight or a short one. Are you going max magic/stamina or are you building for reduce cost/regen. Are you min/maxed for group content or solo. We haven't even talked about gear. That's a whole different story. Are you talking about a base character (no champion points) or a 300+ CP character. Etc... A lot of players get so caught up in this min/max meta game that they overlook that there are many different factors that go into what constitutes what the minimum and maximum potential for a character.

All this goes back to my previous comment. When you min/max you are min/maxing a playstyle not just the raw numbers. Race plays into playstyle, but it's one of many factors and one that can be overcome through other means. In base characters race gives you a bit of an edge, but once you bring CP into the mix all bets are off, because you can either enhance that edge or supplement areas where that race might be weak. I know it seems like telling you to focus on playstyle is not answering your question but trust me, it's much more important overall than raw numbers, especially for endgame. What race you pick is entirely arbitrary, play style matters much more.

rb2001 · September 2015

Alright, thanks everyone.

It seems that combined with all the other answers, and with bigereard's numbers analysis, that it's what I've been hearing (i.e. that it matters, but isn't everything and there are more ways to skin a cat to make the goal meet).

If there's no clearly demonstrable large margin win, where it's outright "wrong" to try another combo, then I think I can close this question.

MrGrimey · September 2015

I would love for someone to do a 30 second dps test with a 10% max stamina or max magicka passive, then do the same test on the same character with the same gear. Ir would be nice to see in dps what those passive a contribute

The Elder Scrolls Online

In-Practice Testing Results Wanted: How Much Does Race Affect Output (DPS)?

Best Answer