[Balance] Reduction to Physical Damage

jrkhan · December 2015

My primary question is, does Zenimax want players reducing the amount of physical damage they take in PVE.
It's possible that pvp was an afterthought in this regard.

Secondary question, does a stamina build have drawbacks that magika builds do not have?

Tertiary question, do stamina builds have a unique roll in the pvp ecosystem, that ~20% damage reduction would cause them to be unable/much harder to fill?

I do not know (nor does it sound like you have considered) the answer to the first.
I believe the second is debatable.
Burst stamina builds are the most viable solo ganker builds presently (maybe Crown would disagree?)- which some players enjoy playing - so I think the answer to the third is definitely, yes.

So, I think there's at least one, and possibly several reasons they left physical damage out.
I don't think those reasons are going to change with the introduction of Thieves guild DLC.

mr_wazzabi · December 2015

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Sithisvoid wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

Stamina builds have other cons too. It's not like they are equal to magicka in everything else.

What do you mean? Stamina pvp builds have heals and insane burst...

Where as magika builds have stronger heals and more sustain.. Each has it's strong points. Not really what Nifty's thread is about though. He's talking champion points and balancing those benefits and it makes sense because you can reduce magika damage taken and not Physical through champion points. Why shouldn't champion point passives be balanced?

A lot of people think stamina is OP and has "insane burst" but honestly, isn't this most likely why? The lack of mitigation. Imagine reading all the "I got killed in 0.7 seconds" threads and reading instead "I lacked proper physical damage mitigation"

I'm sorry, but Rally and Vigor combo is very strong, and only templar's breath of life is better than it. Also there are builds with very high regen and survivability.
And yeah, there are ways to greatly reduce magicka burst, but you cant really reduce physical dmg burst. That's why the latter is so strong, and I do think that we need to balance things a bit (so stamina wont be so op in pvp and magicka wont be the only top notch option in pve).
Also, "I lacked proper physical damage mitigation" sounds like its a player's fault for not getting said "proper" mitigation while its not possible even with heavy armor.

I disagree. Rally and vigor need to be constantly recasted, stopping you from dps'ing.

Take a stamina nb vs magicka nb.

Magicka nb can spam funnel health and sap essence, killing everything and healing at the same time.

Templars can do the same with sweep.

There's a reason why stamina builds struggle in VMA while magicka builds get the highest scores.

Strider_Roshin · December 2015

Magicka has the strongest heals and damage shields in the game. Create a champion passive that reduces physical damage, and even with a healing debuff I wouldn't be able to out do their heals and damage shields. Magicka builds have so many advantages in this game. This is one of the few situations where stamina has an advantage and you whine about it. How about this, create the physical damage champion passive, but make harness magicka scale off of health, and create physical damage morphs for every magic damage one.

LadyNalcarya · December 2015

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Sithisvoid wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Jura23 wrote: »

Stamina builds have other cons too. It's not like they are equal to magicka in everything else.

What do you mean? Stamina pvp builds have heals and insane burst...

Where as magika builds have stronger heals and more sustain.. Each has it's strong points. Not really what Nifty's thread is about though. He's talking champion points and balancing those benefits and it makes sense because you can reduce magika damage taken and not Physical through champion points. Why shouldn't champion point passives be balanced?

A lot of people think stamina is OP and has "insane burst" but honestly, isn't this most likely why? The lack of mitigation. Imagine reading all the "I got killed in 0.7 seconds" threads and reading instead "I lacked proper physical damage mitigation"

I'm sorry, but Rally and Vigor combo is very strong, and only templar's breath of life is better than it. Also there are builds with very high regen and survivability.
And yeah, there are ways to greatly reduce magicka burst, but you cant really reduce physical dmg burst. That's why the latter is so strong, and I do think that we need to balance things a bit (so stamina wont be so op in pvp and magicka wont be the only top notch option in pve).
Also, "I lacked proper physical damage mitigation" sounds like its a player's fault for not getting said "proper" mitigation while its not possible even with heavy armor.

I disagree. Rally and vigor need to be constantly recasted, stopping you from dps'ing.

Take a stamina nb vs magicka nb.

Magicka nb can spam funnel health and sap essence, killing everything and healing at the same time.

Templars can do the same with sweep.

There's a reason why stamina builds struggle in VMA while magicka builds get the highest scores.

Actually I was talking about pvp and not vMA.

In pvp, magicka builds damage can be reduced with various racial passives, cp, ninrhoned weapons (my breton with nirnhoend weapons has over 20k magical resist in light armor) etc. While stamina burst cant really be reduced.
P.S. I'm not "crying for nerfs" or whatever, I have 2 stam characters. But I do think that stamina and magicka shoudl be balanced in both pve and pvp... More viability for stamina builds in pve and same resistance options in pvp.

eliisra · December 2015

Yes, it's needed. Especially in PvP but also for PvE content like vMA where you have archers nuking you for 6-7k physical dmg.

Let players choose what type of dmg they want to mitigate, there's going to be a cap on CP for a long time, after all.

However, making a change like this cant be done without rebalancing skills and stamina/magicka again. Giving stamina builds access to multiple ultimates doing physical dmg, would be one of those crucial things. Stamina dps also needs buffing in PvE.

CyrusArya · December 2015

If it's really balance that all you Harry Potter fans are after, surely you have considered some other factors in magicka vs stamina balance? Like how stamina play necessitates being in the thick of battle, exposing yourself to way more damage and challenging play in melee range? Or how stamina builds have way less options for damage mitigation and healing? Whereas in contrast, magicka builds can sit back at range dealing just as impressive damage, while being able to make use of all the utility their classes offer. Not to mention, healing ward. Before you utter "vigor", understand that these two skills more or less cancel each other out. This is a skill all magicka builds have access too that stacks on top of their already superior class options for healing and mitigation.

Stamina is a more risky and less forgiving play style. As such it is only fair that they do more damage and have other means of mitigating damage that magicka builds do not. Because the opposite is also most assuredly true: magicka builds have means of mitigation that stamina builds do not. Giving magicka builds cp physical resistance will tip the scales too far in their favor.

LadyNalcarya · December 2015

CyrusArya wrote: »

Like how stamina play necessitates being in the thick of battle, exposing yourself to way more damage and challenging play in melee range?

Its kinda funny to hear that from a person who has a "fire dk" char...

Nifty2g · December 2015

CyrusArya wrote: »

If it's really balance that all you Harry Potter fans are after, surely you have considered some other factors in magicka vs stamina balance? Like how stamina play necessitates being in the thick of battle, exposing yourself to way more damage and challenging play in melee range? Or how stamina builds have way less options for damage mitigation and healing? Whereas in contrast, magicka builds can sit back at range dealing just as impressive damage, while being able to make use of all the utility their classes offer. Not to mention, healing ward. Before you utter "vigor", understand that these two skills more or less cancel each other out. This is a skill all magicka builds have access too that stacks on top of their already superior class options for healing and mitigation.

Stamina is a more risky and less forgiving play style. As such it is only fair that they do more damage and have other means of mitigating damage that magicka builds do not. Because the opposite is also most assuredly true: magicka builds have means of mitigation that stamina builds do not. Giving magicka builds cp physical resistance will tip the scales too far in their favor.

You need to realise that PvP isn't the only problem, PvE has a huge issue regarding Physical Damage. To balance it out though, @Wrobel you should buff Sharpened to the same level as Nirn, but they might have that in mind already

ryanborror · December 2015

@Nifty2g where would you like to see this implemented? Putting it into hardy would be too much giving players resistance to both physical and magicka damage. Putting in elementalove defender is similarly flawed. I can see maybe putting it into thick skinned but it more than likely would need to be its own thing. Or maybe remove something or consolidate things like quick recovery and nourishing although putting it into the Lord unfairly favors heavy armor users somewhat. Idk something should be done. Champion system currently offers spell resistance and reduced damage from elemental and magic and almost no defense from physical attacks. Do you have any ideas on how to implement it?

ryanborror · December 2015

Actually combing nourishing and quick and e lputting in something for physical damage in the Lord wouldn't unfairly favor heavy armor any more than hardy and elemental defender being in the same tree as light armor. The question is do put in something like spell shied that gives resistance or something like hardy that reduces damage?

oibam · December 2015

Give all nerf-criers a new spell: THE I-WIN-BUTTON

and put them all in one extra campaign, where they can "compete".

timidobserver · December 2015

I agree. If the champion system is going to offer damage reduction there should be an option for each type of damage.

Kyoma · December 2015

Haven't read the whole thread so maybe this was already said but we do have such CP passives: the increase armor % of type X/Y/Z. Indirectly that affects incomingh physical damage. Now, as for it being balanced in comparison to the more direct magic damage reduction passives I have no idea. Probably not and they should indeed revamp those passives to fix this imbalance.

Edit: Another problem with those existing armor passives is that you often mix different types, making it very inefficient to use those to increase your overall armor.

Xantaria · December 2015

Nifty2g wrote: »

So the Thieves Guild Major Update is coming, and during the Imperial City PTS I mentioned this
When will we see a reduction to physical damage in Champion System
Part of the whole Wrecking Blow spam and one shots in Cyrodill resolve around people not being able to properly mitigate Physical Damage in their Champion System as they are with Magic Damage (Hardy and Elemental Defender for instance)

So my question is, is this finally being added with the balance update? It would solve a lot of issues and balance a lot of skills out being clearly abused.

To quote myself a few months back

I don't understand, if we have reduction to Poison, Disease, Magic, Flame, Frost, Shock and Damage over Time effects why was Physical Damage left out of the Champion System and still is. It just doesn't make sense, and Physical Damage builds will continue to get stronger and stronger because you can't mitigate any of the damage output against Mighty (Increase your physical damage by x%), Piercing (Increase the amount of Armor your physical attacks ignore by x%) and Precise Strikes (Increases the critical damage of your physical attacks by x%).

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @Wrobel
Any thoughts, or confirmation from ZOS folk?

made the exact same thread ... so far 0 replies from zos

Nifty2g · December 2015

Xantaria wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

So the Thieves Guild Major Update is coming, and during the Imperial City PTS I mentioned this
When will we see a reduction to physical damage in Champion System
Part of the whole Wrecking Blow spam and one shots in Cyrodill resolve around people not being able to properly mitigate Physical Damage in their Champion System as they are with Magic Damage (Hardy and Elemental Defender for instance)

So my question is, is this finally being added with the balance update? It would solve a lot of issues and balance a lot of skills out being clearly abused.

To quote myself a few months back

I don't understand, if we have reduction to Poison, Disease, Magic, Flame, Frost, Shock and Damage over Time effects why was Physical Damage left out of the Champion System and still is. It just doesn't make sense, and Physical Damage builds will continue to get stronger and stronger because you can't mitigate any of the damage output against Mighty (Increase your physical damage by x%), Piercing (Increase the amount of Armor your physical attacks ignore by x%) and Precise Strikes (Increases the critical damage of your physical attacks by x%).

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert @Wrobel
Any thoughts, or confirmation from ZOS folk?

made the exact same thread ... so far 0 replies from zos

It's because you need 5 stars
@Wrobel already sent me a mail after 5minutes of making thread that this is being added and to expect a cp thread very soon, hopefully he posts in here though

Tankqull · December 2015

JDar wrote: »

What I'm saying is sorcs are stupidly OP and so is stamina damage. I think we are all pretty sick of this stagnant situation.

There is no way to nerf physical damage without making sorcs even more stupidly OP. Unless you also nerf Hardened Ward, which is the strongest way of mitigating physical damage in the game.

actually healing is the strongest way of mitigating physical dmg - as BoL heals for more than hardend can cover without a crit, and the hp it refills were effected by dmg reduction beforehand(effectivly +15-30% of already mitigated dmg) wich isnt the case in terms of shields.

Aunatar · December 2015

ryanborror wrote: »

@Nifty2g where would you like to see this implemented? Putting it into hardy would be too much giving players resistance to both physical and magicka damage. Putting in elementalove defender is similarly flawed. I can see maybe putting it into thick skinned but it more than likely would need to be its own thing. Or maybe remove something or consolidate things like quick recovery and nourishing although putting it into the Lord unfairly favors heavy armor users somewhat. Idk something should be done. Champion system currently offers spell resistance and reduced damage from elemental and magic and almost no defense from physical attacks. Do you have any ideas on how to implement it?

NOURISHING.
Come on.

ontheleftcoast · December 2015

Peekachu99 wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

Peekachu99 wrote: »

They just need to change the 50% hard cap on physical resistance. Raise it to 75% or something, so that there's an actual benefit to wearing heavy armour. They need to tweak the whole heavy armour/physical resist line/ concept, really. If someone wants to play a 40k HP turtle with no real offence and caltrops/CC skills, let them. The best thing about this game are its build and gear diversity. I don't like the path of homogenization it's going down.

It's following it's lore. But I dont believe it should go down this path at all.

What lore? About heavy armour? Not being contentious, but I'm struggling to understand your comment.

Edit: Do you mean the "lore" ("reality", would be a better word), that plate armour would logically offer more protection? If so, yeah, I agree. I don't know why people can dress in mostly medium and light and have the same defence as a full plate wearer. Makes no sense.

In Skyrim this was the case as well. It was pointless to wear heavy armor except for the look you got from it. This is because there was the same sort of cap on damage mitigation. It was a lot higher, 80 or 85%, but it was still easily reachable for all but the lowest quality light armors. I recall similar things in Oblivion and Morrowind. Eventually you can top out damage mitigation with every type of armor it's just a matter of when not if.

Akinos · December 2015

Tankqull wrote: »

JDar wrote: »

What I'm saying is sorcs are stupidly OP and so is stamina damage. I think we are all pretty sick of this stagnant situation.

There is no way to nerf physical damage without making sorcs even more stupidly OP. Unless you also nerf Hardened Ward, which is the strongest way of mitigating physical damage in the game.

actually healing is the strongest way of mitigating physical dmg - as BoL heals for more than hardend can cover without a crit, and the hp it refills were effected by dmg reduction beforehand(effectivly +15-30% of already mitigated dmg) wich isnt the case in terms of shields.

I disagree, so what if BoL can heal a whole hp bar, having to heal means you took damage, shields and or completely evading damage allow you to constantly stay on offense for the most part, both PvE and PvP. The strongest form of mitigating any kind of damage is not taking damage in the first place. Which is what sorcs do through shield stacking and nightblades do through cloak+dodge roll+ evasion spam. They are the best at completely avoiding damage and that is a major issue when you consider how much damage these two classes can deal.

danno8 · December 2015

Kyoma wrote: »

Haven't read the whole thread so maybe this was already said but we do have such CP passives: the increase armor % of type X/Y/Z. Indirectly that affects incomingh physical damage. Now, as for it being balanced in comparison to the more direct magic damage reduction passives I have no idea. Probably not and they should indeed revamp those passives to fix this imbalance.

Edit: Another problem with those existing armor passives is that you often mix different types, making it very inefficient to use those to increase your overall armor.

If you wear all light armour the best you'll get if you max out the star is around 3-4% more mitigation..

And since armour works linearly 1.75X and 2X for medium and heavy respectively, the best you will get for medium will be 6-8% and for heavy around 12-16%.

For magicka damage reduction though you can get all sorts of fun stuff. Spell Shield will increase your spell resistance regardless of you armour type (one star fits all), and then you can further reduce it using specific stars like Elemental or Hardy.

And for poor DK's there is even another star than can reduce DoT's.

GreenSoup2HoT · December 2015

Nifty2g wrote: »

Peekachu99 wrote: »

They just need to change the 50% hard cap on physical resistance. Raise it to 75% or something, so that there's an actual benefit to wearing heavy armour. They need to tweak the whole heavy armour/physical resist line/ concept, really. If someone wants to play a 40k HP turtle with no real offence and caltrops/CC skills, let them. The best thing about this game are its build and gear diversity. I don't like the path of homogenization it's going down.

It's following it's lore. But I dont believe it should go down this path at all.

I disagree. People should be able to turtle if they want to. It's about prioritizing your target's. If a bunch of people get wiped because they tried to down a turtle that's there fault and a part of the game's diversity that should be encouraged.

The only problem with turtle build's, is they usually win duel's which dps hate. Only really well rounded dps who can drain turtle build's stamina properly would win. This is a part of the game i would love to see though.

A whole Armour skill line is being avoided in pvp, something i hate to see.

akredon_ESO · December 2015

I really feel like this game is trying to go the route of World of warcrafts PVP system. I feel like having a Static 50% damage reduction buff in PVP is dumb. Fix classes and bring them inline With everything else and stop having inflated numbers. If i remember correctly Dark age of Camelot (this games spiritual Successor for RVR AVA ect) Does not have this mechanic, And nor do i remember it ever having it.