I assume that you don't want to remove damage from this game, but allow tanky builds (in pvp) as a secondary option that actually makes sense.

• remove the battle spirit shield/healing debuff for skills scaling off of health (blazing, igneous, gdb)
• buff heavy armor
• maybe re-introduce softcaps
• revert health stat to the old 1.5:1 scaling
• maybe tune down battle spirit

The point is that stacking damage should still be a viable option, if you prefer to do this.

However, playing tanky should also be viable, but the current game does not favour this at all. Imo, the reason for that is that you sacrifice damage and sustain (and healing) for... what? You can block a bit more (20% reduced cost) - but don't regen enough stamina to keep this up. Your armor/spell resist is slightly higher - but armor is the worst defensive stat; passive defence does not keep you alive, at all. A lot of your resistance is being negated anyway (spell/armor pen being a passive for light armor, destro staves, dw maces, nirnhorned weapon trait, sharpened trait, debuffs).

You also deal less damage: reduced crit chance; reduced weapon damage (compared to medium); reduced spell pen (compared to light); less sustain from the armor passives, so you have to get it elsewhere.

There are also NO drawbacks in stacking stat + weapon/spell damage, because every single of your offensive AND defensive skill scales off of them. Plus, you get nice sustain as a side effect.

So, what to do?

In my opinion, as a first step you need to shift the sustain from medium/light to heavy armor, and leave only damage increasing passives. This would actually give players that prefer the tanky route an option to outlast their opponents. They could still be bursted down (as it SHOULD be; tankyness != immortality, you still need to put in effort), but actually have a chance to outlast their opponents and wear them down. Additionally, increase the passive damage mitigation from heavy armor slightly in a way that could not be countered with spell/armor pen; for example 1% reduced damage from players per piece of heavy armor (when wearing 5 or more pieces).

Just to make sure: removing burst specs is NOT the solution. But if you decide to be bursty, you MUST face a trade-off, and sustain seems to be the most logical route. Players would still deal great damage, but won't be able to keep this damage output up indefinitely.

Mag temp can tank on ps4 live right now. Just Need the right build. Not sure about other classes, but mag temp can opt out of this

i disagree with your premise. if you look at most great players, they are rather survivable and achieve their damage by combining many abilities for bursts. damage stacking is either cheese (actually valid but also somewhat situational, e.g. heavy attack dk's etc, full deto NBs) or done by those sitting in a huge zerg (not talking about group blobs here but also ungrouped players sticking around their own alliance - don't get me wrong, it's a valid thing to do. I'd just say that peopel overestimate their strength. There are countless 1vX videos where enemies are busy with something that isen't exactly the "1" from "1vX"...).

At blob-scale the best thing that could have been done was nerfing barrier. It was the number one source of survivability for high offence blobs.

the typical palyer who immediately mentions a spell/weapon damage stat when talking about a pvp build is usually a free kil for someone competent.

Bring back fkin roll dodge with no cost. Magicka classes can heal without a care in the world.

Stamina either has to roll or block to heal since we only have vigor and rally. these are not enough in most situations.

give stamina back roll dodge. no stam regen isnt that bad but roll dodge is stupid. this is not bolt escape.

Removes the additional 5,000 hit points to force the player to itself to invest more in life. This ensures that these have less stamina points and magic points. This reduced the Damage. And constitutes damage reduction and healing reduction back to 20 % or equal to 0 %.


Sorry for my bad english but battle spirit sucks.

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

I assume that you don't want to remove damage from this game, but allow tanky builds (in pvp) as a secondary option that actually makes sense.

• remove the battle spirit shield/healing debuff for skills scaling off of health (blazing, igneous, gdb)
• buff heavy armor
• maybe re-introduce softcaps or separate resources from damage.
• revert health stat to the old 1.5:1 scaling
• maybe tune down battle spirit
• Reverse nerfs to blocking, streaking and dodging. Lets get back to reactive defense being viable.

THIS. My addition in bold.

Id rather they decouple offensive and defensive stats. People should be able to go full burst dps builds if they want to, but at the same time they must pay the trade off of not being able to get huge shields or heal well. Soft caps kind of forces everyone to build balanced builds and I dont want that. You should be able to play however you want as long as each and every build has a trade off.

Also heavy armor needs a buff =( to help with the mitigation and actually do more in PvP. Right now its only any use in small scale or solo builds. Even there, the benefit is marginal.

Not only would restoring soft caps get the damage-mitigation-buff-nerf yo-yo under control, but people could actually play the race they wanted to play without knowing full well they'll be gimping themselves if they do so.

I didn't vote for any of them because I like to think out of the box. Lately I've been combating high damage with charging maneuvers and mist form. No one ever expects a VR16 to pull out spells given to people on the first week they play.

Of course my second bar is set up so I can do 40k magic and 3000 spell damage so I'm just as guilty.

Reduce the potency of offensive abilities and separate healing and damage scaling.

Even without softcaps, the game is balanced with lower numbers. Passive defense has not changed since the sweetspot found in 1.5, offense (and healing by scaling with the same resource) has gone off the charts. This stacking meta has also created a gaping power gap, making hybrid builds unviable. Reducing the increases over base character and gear stats achievable by sets and enchantments will reduce the power gap. The Champion System will need as many passives as feasible converted to flat values or low percentages to eliminate the power creep from this system. Separating healing from damage will resolve the long standing issue of mitigation (armor) being the only focus requiring sacrifice.

That's the gist of what balancing needs to be done.