Do not buff heavy armor.

LegacyDM · April 2016

Heavy armor is pretty good currently. It mitigates a lot of damage. It does what it suppose to do. Mitigates damage and provides tanking. If you buff it everyone will rock ha and become unkillable and la will become obsolete. I think it's pretty balanced. Think about it. What incentive would anyone have to wear la if dps is mitigated beyond what it is now? Everyone will just run ha with regen eq and it now become a resource/sustainability yawn fest because dps had been nuetralized. Why does ha need a buff? Hell I only use 5/2 la/ha/ pieces and damage mitigation is night and day compared to 7/0 la. That's with 2 pieces!

karakondzula · April 2016

Cool story bro.

Liofa · April 2016

Are we talking about the same game ? Where even the hardest dungeons can be tanked with medium armor and Medium Armor users are more tanky in PvP due to huge difference in sustain ? That 2 piece HA is providing you %2-3 mitigation at most . Please consider all topics. [snip] If you don't want people to think like this , look at the topic from all angles. I didn't even say anything about insane Penetration values you can get .

[edit for flame]

Sharee · April 2016

[nevermind]

Vangy · April 2016

My sorc with 7/7 LA --> *** tons of damage, crit and spell pen --> 10k phy resist & 16k spell resist
My DK tank with 5/1/1 H/M/L --> hits like wet noodle, 20% crit ,3k wep damage --> 19k armour and 21k spell resist.
Looking at spell pen, the difference between my DK and Sorc is a meagre 5k.

Night and day??? You be tripping dude. People can negate around 70-90% of your current armour/spell res values. Just a nirhnorned staff gives you 18% spell pen. Not even considering passives from LA or CP we have;

My sorc spell becomes --> 13.12k
My DK spell res becomes --> 17.22k
Now the difference becomes barely 4k. About difference in damage taken of around 6%...

The more penetration one has, the less heavy armor is worth... Most builds also run 5 light which penetrates about 4.9k spell res..... That means my DK will effectively have ard 12k spell res which means about 17% damage reduction.. Abilities in this game have tooltip values of ard 15k which means about 7.5k in PvP. 17% of 7.5k damage reduction is a 6.2k hit.... This isnt even considering CP. I might as well be running around in 5 Medium for PVP than be in heavy lol....

This is just looking at spell pen but if we look at mauls/maces for phy resist vs spell pen, the results are just as abysmal for heavy armour lol....

If someone is wearing 5 heavy and full impen, they barely have 3k+ weapon damage and ard 2k spell damage. In other words they doing jack *** damage. That means no DPS is supposed to be able to burst them down in 5 seconds. Heavy armor is in need of HUGE buffs.

Greydir · April 2016

Oh i see, this must be a try at reverse psycology. We just do not understand. Since to some users it look like ZOS is doing the opposite of what they want, they think this might be worth a try

Sunburnt_Penguin · April 2016

Unless you're using them for Undaunted Mettle, I don't think it's as night and day as it seems.

From using two heavy pieces you're adding what, 3400 extra armour (~700 from resolve + ~2700 which is the armour difference between your two heavy pieces compared to light).

Let's use the below example:
You have 50 points in Hardy = ~15% mitigation (can't confirm but it does seem ballpark) but no other CPs related to mitigation or heavy armour because you're DPS.

Say someone dishes out 5k physical damage, the damage you receive is ~4.3k. Damage shields would usually nominally reduce this figure first, but as this is zero the armour mitigates the full brunt and your resistance is ~11k.

iirc, you divide your resistance by ~65k to get the actual mitigation % of incoming damage. That gives you 17% damage mitigation which on 4.3k is 731. Meaning that you take 3.6k damage

However, the two heavy pieces are only adding 5% mitigation which works out to be 215 damage on the 4.3k to be mitigated.

Given that you're sacrificing two light pieces which means you're losing 6% Magicka cost reduction and 8% Magicka recovery (note you are gaining 2% increase to health and 8% recovery): the benefits don't seem worth it to me.

You may be better off going 7 light and sacrificing an ability for a damage shield on your bar (such as Immovable) to nominally reduce the damage before the mitigation which would render the attack void and not suffer a loss to DPS.

andy_s · April 2016

Vangy wrote: »

If someone is wearing 5 heavy and full impen, they barely have 3k+ weapon damage and ard 2k spell damage. In other words they doing jack *** damage. That means no DPS is supposed to be able to burst them down in 5 seconds. Heavy armor is in need of HUGE buffs.

I think heavy armor should provide natural crit resist, because in 5 heavy impen your damage and heal is just screwed. With 5x heavy divines it's at least possible to get decent regens while don't worry about 10k crystal frags crits.

Rylana · April 2016

Vangy wrote: »

My sorc with 7/7 LA --> *** tons of damage, crit and spell pen --> 10k phy resist & 16k spell resist
My DK tank with 5/1/1 H/M/L --> hits like wet noodle, 20% crit ,3k wep damage --> 19k armour and 21k spell resist.
Looking at spell pen, the difference between my DK and Sorc is a meagre 5k.

Night and day??? You be tripping dude. People can negate around 70-90% of your current armour/spell res values. Just a nirhnorned staff gives you 18% spell pen. Not even considering passives from LA or CP we have;

My sorc spell becomes --> 13.12k
My DK spell res becomes --> 17.22k
Now the difference becomes barely 4k. About difference in damage taken of around 6%...

The more penetration one has, the less heavy armor is worth... Most builds also run 5 light which penetrates about 4.9k spell res..... That means my DK will effectively have ard 12k spell res which means about 17% damage reduction.. Abilities in this game have tooltip values of ard 15k which means about 7.5k in PvP. 17% of 7.5k damage reduction is a 6.2k hit.... This isnt even considering CP. I might as well be running around in 5 Medium for PVP than be in heavy lol....

This is just looking at spell pen but if we look at mauls/maces for phy resist vs spell pen, the results are just as abysmal for heavy armour lol....

If someone is wearing 5 heavy and full impen, they barely have 3k+ weapon damage and ard 2k spell damage. In other words they doing jack *** damage. That means no DPS is supposed to be able to burst them down in 5 seconds. Heavy armor is in need of HUGE buffs.

Penetration was nerfed severely with the champ revamp a month ago. You literally have to be in 5 LA + 100 champ points into the pen star + sharpened/nirn + destro staff to even get close to the spell pen we had just four weeks ago with no investment to CP at all.

Thats a huge investment, AND still wont be enough to fully blast through a 5/1/1 HA spec, not even close actually, even with ele drain and an armor debuff applied. Currently HA users when buffed (not including bretons where it gets even more ridiculous) are sitting at ~30k spell resist. 15k pen in best case scenario still gives them ~33 percent mitigation

An LA user on the other hand, would be totally naked to the same penetrator build. (LA typically tops out around 15-18k in the best of circumstances, non breton)

The same is also true for physical damage, though there are more armor breakers in weapon lines for this, even with dual maces getting armor pen ratings for physical damage above the 20k threshold unbuffed most HA users will have, is complete impossible. I know this for sure because my stamblade used to be a total armorbreaker, and it simply doesnt work anymore. Only full LA users need fear the wimpblade now.

Also your figures for nirn and how it is calculated are wrong. Its not 18% of their armor rating, its an 18% increase of your own focus rating, which you can see with Harvens Extended Stats. Right now with a nirn weapon, the maximum spell pen I have been able to generate with max champ investment and all the bells and whistles is approx 14k. The nirn component of that factors for about 2k (which is about right at 18%). This means vs a Breton Templar 5HA user with Channeled Focus up (mine for example) youd be able to get through about 40 percent of their spell resistance (14k of about 33k). Thats no 70-90%. You, with all that penetration active, would be slamming into a net 19000 spell resistance. This is why my templar is almost immune to spell damage right now. Especially while blocking (seriously, frags hit me for 3k when i DONT block)

Id also point out the same templar has 1600 crit resist, 38k magicka, 28k health, 17k stamina, 1800 magicka regen and buffed 2400 spell damage (its a healtank, so damage is secondary). The damn thing is as close to unkillable as I have ever seen, and requires multiple bursts + a stunlock or fears to even pressure it.

Not bragging either, its just a ridiculous spec that takes total advantage of penetration being weak as hell right now. Especially now that most FOTMers and guild groups have switched back to spell damage. Stam builds are still somewhat dangerous, but nowhere near as bad as they used to be before sharpened got nerfed.

Sidenote: Where are people getting the idea that penetration values are good right now? They are godawful, the worst they have ever been. if anything, this last balance change made HA even MORE attractive than it was before.

Vangy · April 2016

@Rylana

Short of exploiting, if you run a 5/1/1 build in heavy with 30k spell res and 20k+ armor its safe to say you are going to have a hard time even killing NPCs. I expect a full 30 second battle to just kill 1 NPC...... I could run immovable on my DK to hit ard 26k/22k spell/phy resist but I prefer shuffle.

Ive never heard anyone to date say that heavy armor dosent need buffing. First im hearing of this is from the OP and you. Personally I eat about 5-7k frags and wbs unblocked. Compared to my DPS spec which eats about 9-11k. With a health pool of 25k my tank spec would take about 4-5 frags to kill while my DPS spec would take take about 3-4. I wonder if that justifies me giving up SO much damage and regen for....

I only run the heavy armor spec for duels and small scale where it matters. In large scale with 20v20s heavy armor does jack. You probably will last a few seconds longer because you have no mobility and no regen. Or personally thats what ive experienced.

I have however noted some crazy hard to kill templars. But they normally go down pretty fast when I get some decent players to focus them.

Armitas · April 2016

My biggest Gripe about heavy armor is the penetration.

If I wear light armor I get a ton of dps passives and sustain passives and even if all my armor is penetrated I still have those passives giving me a huge boost. The same is not true for heavy armor because it's passives are minor while primarily deriving it's advantage from the armor rating itself. This means that when you get all of your armor penetrated you are left with nothing but a disadvantage.

I would like to see the armor rating on heavy armor reduced and replaced with a passive damage reduction to represent a stop gap measure to penetration. So even if the person can penetrate your entire armor rating you will still have the passive damage reduction which cannot be penetrated. This way you cannot be effectively stripped of an armor class advantage.

Note: Defending trait will need to be buffed to reflect the armor loss because it is % based on armor value.

Zanen · April 2016

I think heavy should generate ultimate when hit, per piece.

Bring some limited dynamic ultimate gain back into the game and give HA some sustain.

The bigger problem though is all the strong builds in the game derive their defense from the same stats as their damage. Sorc wards, magblade siphoning, stam dodge, everyone's utility, defensive and healing abilities cost primary resource and often scale with the same things that scale damage.

There isn't any benefit to not stacking everything into damage as a result, so we get this really restrictive meta where building a genuine tank is only useful in trials.

Oompuh · April 2016

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

Heavy armor is pretty good currently. It mitigates a lot of damage. It does what it suppose to do. Mitigates damage and provides tanking. If you buff it everyone will rock ha and become unkillable and la will become obsolete. I think it's pretty balanced. Think about it. What incentive would anyone have to wear la if dps is mitigated beyond what it is now? Everyone will just run ha with regen eq and it now become a resource/sustainability yawn fest because dps had been nuetralized. Why does ha need a buff? Hell I only use 5/2 la/ha/ pieces and damage mitigation is night and day compared to 7/0 la. That's with 2 pieces!

Why does heavy armor need a buff? Lets start with medium armor and its passives.

Passive 1 Dexterity
Dexterity – Increases your critical strike rating with physical attacks for each piece of medium armor equipped.

Passive 2 Wind Walker
Wind Walker – Increases stamina regeneration by 4% per piece of medium armor equipped. Also reduces the stamina cost of abilities by 3% per piece of medium armor equipped.

Passive 3 Improved Sneak
Improved Sneak – Reduces the cost of sneaking by 7% per piece of medium armor equipped. Also reduces the size of your detection area by 5% per piece of medium armor equipped.

Passive 4 Agility
Agility – With five or more pieces of medium armor, increases your weapon damage by 12%.

Passive 5 Athletics
Athletics – Increases your movement speed while sprinting by 3% and reduces the stamina cost of dodge rolling by 4% per piece of medium armor equipped.

Regen, damage and dodge roll. All things I would like to have on a tank while also mitigating 75% of what heavy armor can.

Now lets take a look at heavy armor passives

Passive 1 Resolve – Increases your armor and spell resistance for each piece of heavy armor equipped.

Passive 2 Constitution
Constitution – Increases health regeneration by 4% per piece of heavy armor equipped. Also restores magicka and stamina each time you are hit, but only once every 4 seconds. Amount restored is increased per piece of heavy armor equipped.

Passive 3 Juggernaut
Juggernaut – Increases max health by 1% per piece of heavy armor equipped.

Passive 4 Bracing
Bracing – With five or more pieces of heavy armor equipped, decreases stamina cost of blocking by 20%.

Passive 5 Rapid Mending
Rapid Mending – Increases healing received by 1% per piece of heavy armor equipped.

Resolve = its the point of heavy armor, more armor is ok, but if im wearing all heavy armor im probably going over the cap in resistance already with a mitigation build.
Constitution = Health Recovery? Really? Unless youre an orc or nord wearing orgnum scales this is useless.
The Magicka and Stamina you receive is so minimal i never notice it.
Juggernaut = I can get the same bonus by using Armor Master or Entropy but nevertheless, its ok. at 30k get 1500 health, doesnt make or break me.
Bracing = the only passive i like
Rapid Mending = 5% extra heals? i can get this with a couple cp.

More Damage, More Regen, Only lose a little mitigation, while being able to still tank all the content in the game in medium armor. Oh yeah, Heavy is fine. There is a reason people tank in Powerful Assault

and Light Armor?

15% magicka cost reduction
20% magicka recovery
1.8k spell resist
10% spell pen
10% spell crit?

I dont need to explain these, best passives in the game. Light Armor has many bonuses over heavy OP. But it is 4/20 so one might ask, are you high?

leepalmer95 · April 2016

My imperial mag dk with 5l/1m/1h has 32k spell resist, 25k phyical resist, full impen.

Thats with bloodspawn though, it's usually up near 80% of the time.

Why would i even think of going heavy armour? I'd give up

15% magicka cost reduction
20% magicka recovery
1.8k spell resist (counter the ha passive armour bonus)
10% spell pen
10% spell crit?

For what a bit more armour, bit of healing received, Hp recovery (lol), bit of max hp (isn't too bad) and 20% decrease cost of blocking

Nah, keep your 5% max hp and reduce block cost, i'll make up for the reduce block with cp + glyph's.

Tell me again how HA doesn't need buffing?

Autolycus · April 2016

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

Heavy armor is pretty good currently. It mitigates a lot of damage. It does what it suppose to do. Mitigates damage and provides tanking. If you buff it everyone will rock ha and become unkillable and la will become obsolete. I think it's pretty balanced. Think about it. What incentive would anyone have to wear la if dps is mitigated beyond what it is now? Everyone will just run ha with regen eq and it now become a resource/sustainability yawn fest because dps had been nuetralized. Why does ha need a buff? Hell I only use 5/2 la/ha/ pieces and damage mitigation is night and day compared to 7/0 la. That's with 2 pieces!

That's not how it works. I... honestly don't know how to respond to this. It's just inaccurate. For starters, you're clearly only considering pvp and completely ignoring pve. Second, you've paid no mind to the battle spirit nerfing of heavy armor in cyrodiil. Third, in no way, shape, or form, will a magicka dps ever be able to sustain in full heavy. Ever. It makes no sense, it doesn't cater to the stats you need as a dps... I don't think you even thought this through.

Wing · April 2016

I'm at a loss for words. . .

Joy_Division · April 2016

Heavy armor passive are terrible outside of the block cost reduction given by bracing.

Zeg0ta · April 2016

Lol

Rylana · April 2016

Vangy wrote: »

@Rylana

Short of exploiting, if you run a 5/1/1 build in heavy with 30k spell res and 20k+ armor its safe to say you are going to have a hard time even killing NPCs. I expect a full 30 second battle to just kill 1 NPC...... I could run immovable on my DK to hit ard 26k/22k spell/phy resist but I prefer shuffle.

Ive never heard anyone to date say that heavy armor dosent need buffing. First im hearing of this is from the OP and you. Personally I eat about 5-7k frags and wbs unblocked. Compared to my DPS spec which eats about 9-11k. With a health pool of 25k my tank spec would take about 4-5 frags to kill while my DPS spec would take take about 3-4. I wonder if that justifies me giving up SO much damage and regen for....

I only run the heavy armor spec for duels and small scale where it matters. In large scale with 20v20s heavy armor does jack. You probably will last a few seconds longer because you have no mobility and no regen. Or personally thats what ive experienced.

I have however noted some crazy hard to kill templars. But they normally go down pretty fast when I get some decent players to focus them.

Damage is seriously not everything. Healers, especially, that cant be easily focused down benefit so much from the extra survivability. LA templars get absolutely obliterated in PvP by stam monkies.

Heavy elsewhere? Notsomuch, though I can make an argument for sappyblades and batdks that just want to tag things and stay alive.

I really dont get where this mentality came from that damage stats are all that matters in the game, because frankly its dumb. Sure go smack some NPCs in a trial, id never say HA has any use there besides the tank, but in PvP? Especially GROUP PvP, glass cannons spend more time getting rezzed than doing anything meaningful.

Furthermore, there is zero good reason to go full 7LA fullstop. Between undaunted mettle and the AR gained from a large heavy and large medium, even a dress wearer ought not pass 5 (including sorcs), theres just no point to maxing out those tiny few percents to damage/pen that return absolutely nothing meaningful. Meanwhile gaining large chunks of health and stam, plus a couple passives out of the LA line, offsets any meager "loss" one would take to magic recovery cost and damage.

Its one of the many reasons I scoff at so many builds out there, especially PvE builds brought into PvP, because they get wrecked, hard. (and usually literally - wrecking blowed 7LA sorcs or 7LA templars just make my skin crawl)

Autolycus · April 2016

Rylana wrote: »

Vangy wrote: »

@Rylana

Short of exploiting, if you run a 5/1/1 build in heavy with 30k spell res and 20k+ armor its safe to say you are going to have a hard time even killing NPCs. I expect a full 30 second battle to just kill 1 NPC...... I could run immovable on my DK to hit ard 26k/22k spell/phy resist but I prefer shuffle.

Ive never heard anyone to date say that heavy armor dosent need buffing. First im hearing of this is from the OP and you. Personally I eat about 5-7k frags and wbs unblocked. Compared to my DPS spec which eats about 9-11k. With a health pool of 25k my tank spec would take about 4-5 frags to kill while my DPS spec would take take about 3-4. I wonder if that justifies me giving up SO much damage and regen for....

I only run the heavy armor spec for duels and small scale where it matters. In large scale with 20v20s heavy armor does jack. You probably will last a few seconds longer because you have no mobility and no regen. Or personally thats what ive experienced.

I have however noted some crazy hard to kill templars. But they normally go down pretty fast when I get some decent players to focus them.

Damage is seriously not everything. Healers, especially, that cant be easily focused down benefit so much from the extra survivability. LA templars get absolutely obliterated in PvP by stam monkies.

Heavy elsewhere? Notsomuch, though I can make an argument for sappyblades and batdks that just want to tag things and stay alive.

I really dont get where this mentality came from that damage stats are all that matters in the game, because frankly its dumb. Sure go smack some NPCs in a trial, id never say HA has any use there besides the tank, but in PvP? Especially GROUP PvP, glass cannons spend more time getting rezzed than doing anything meaningful.

There's a lot of truth to this. However, and I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, LA Templars and glass cannons who get squished that easily are not doing everything they can to prevent it. I have a LA templar and a glass cannon and I do not spend more time getting rezzed than doing something meaningful. I would suggest that these players need to work on their survivability a bit as it pertains to class skills and non-class passives outside of HA.

While physical/spell resist is more important than block mitigation in pvp, it's still not the end-all, be-all of survivability. There are a dozen other ways for any class and build to stay alive without switching to HA. And frankly, the biggest factor in survivability is player skill and experience. Timing is key, attention to detail and "raid" awareness is critical for any player to survive in Cyrodiil. HA is not going to save you if you weren't paying close enough attention. It might buy you time, but HA alone will not keep you alive.

dodgehopper_ESO · April 2016

Liofa wrote: »

Are we talking about the same game ? Where even the hardest dungeons can be tanked with medium armor and Medium Armor users are more tanky in PvP due to huge difference in sustain ? That 2 piece HA is providing you %2-3 mitigation at most . Please consider all topics before you post a thread about something . I can't help myself to think that you just got rekt by a HA user and QQing about it here . If you don't want people to think like this , look at the topic from all angles . I didn't even say anything about insane Penetration values you can get .

I agree with @Liofa , this game has never had much use for Heavy Armor in pvp, and in most pve now Heavy Armor is a liability. Does that make sense? Real warriors wear full plate. In terms of game rules though Heavy Armor is garbage. DPS specs are getting all the love, and the damage output/penetration just keeps scaling up while the mitigation in this game remains static. How can you possibly think Heavy is good in that environment? In Cyrodiil you lose the mobility of leather, or the magic potency of cloth wearing heavy. Heavy lets you block a little better. BLOCK. As in the form of mitigation that means you stand there doing nothing and moving slowly while people hit you with fear and beat on you. Block is the absolute worst form of mitigation in the long term in pvp. It might be good for meteors or laser beams, but that's it. Heavy does less damage, only marginally gives you more mitigation, and does not afford good regeneration or any kind of damage bonus. Heavy armor is not overpowered, it is excessively under-powered, and has been that way for the whole life cycle of the game.

dodgehopper_ESO · April 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Vangy wrote: »

@Rylana

Short of exploiting, if you run a 5/1/1 build in heavy with 30k spell res and 20k+ armor its safe to say you are going to have a hard time even killing NPCs. I expect a full 30 second battle to just kill 1 NPC...... I could run immovable on my DK to hit ard 26k/22k spell/phy resist but I prefer shuffle.

Ive never heard anyone to date say that heavy armor dosent need buffing. First im hearing of this is from the OP and you. Personally I eat about 5-7k frags and wbs unblocked. Compared to my DPS spec which eats about 9-11k. With a health pool of 25k my tank spec would take about 4-5 frags to kill while my DPS spec would take take about 3-4. I wonder if that justifies me giving up SO much damage and regen for....

I only run the heavy armor spec for duels and small scale where it matters. In large scale with 20v20s heavy armor does jack. You probably will last a few seconds longer because you have no mobility and no regen. Or personally thats what ive experienced.

I have however noted some crazy hard to kill templars. But they normally go down pretty fast when I get some decent players to focus them.

Damage is seriously not everything. Healers, especially, that cant be easily focused down benefit so much from the extra survivability. LA templars get absolutely obliterated in PvP by stam monkies.

Heavy elsewhere? Notsomuch, though I can make an argument for sappyblades and batdks that just want to tag things and stay alive.

I really dont get where this mentality came from that damage stats are all that matters in the game, because frankly its dumb. Sure go smack some NPCs in a trial, id never say HA has any use there besides the tank, but in PvP? Especially GROUP PvP, glass cannons spend more time getting rezzed than doing anything meaningful.

There's a lot of truth to this. However, and I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, LA Templars and glass cannons who get squished that easily are not doing everything they can to prevent it. I have a LA templar and a glass cannon and I do not spend more time getting rezzed than doing something meaningful. I would suggest that these players need to work on their survivability a bit as it pertains to class skills and non-class passives outside of HA.

While physical/spell resist is more important than block mitigation in pvp, it's still not the end-all, be-all of survivability. There are a dozen other ways for any class and build to stay alive without switching to HA. And frankly, the biggest factor in survivability is player skill and experience. Timing is key, attention to detail and "raid" awareness is critical for any player to survive in Cyrodiil. HA is not going to save you if you weren't paying close enough attention. It might buy you time, but HA alone will not keep you alive.

I'd just like to add a Light Armor user can get most of what they need out of 2 Heavy or 1H+1M. Line of sight, shuffle, and other skills can be used to mitigate, along with situational awareness and coordination. I just want to point out that you want Undaunted 10 to make this really worthwhile.

Rylana · April 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Vangy wrote: »

@Rylana

Short of exploiting, if you run a 5/1/1 build in heavy with 30k spell res and 20k+ armor its safe to say you are going to have a hard time even killing NPCs. I expect a full 30 second battle to just kill 1 NPC...... I could run immovable on my DK to hit ard 26k/22k spell/phy resist but I prefer shuffle.

Ive never heard anyone to date say that heavy armor dosent need buffing. First im hearing of this is from the OP and you. Personally I eat about 5-7k frags and wbs unblocked. Compared to my DPS spec which eats about 9-11k. With a health pool of 25k my tank spec would take about 4-5 frags to kill while my DPS spec would take take about 3-4. I wonder if that justifies me giving up SO much damage and regen for....

I only run the heavy armor spec for duels and small scale where it matters. In large scale with 20v20s heavy armor does jack. You probably will last a few seconds longer because you have no mobility and no regen. Or personally thats what ive experienced.

I have however noted some crazy hard to kill templars. But they normally go down pretty fast when I get some decent players to focus them.

Damage is seriously not everything. Healers, especially, that cant be easily focused down benefit so much from the extra survivability. LA templars get absolutely obliterated in PvP by stam monkies.

Heavy elsewhere? Notsomuch, though I can make an argument for sappyblades and batdks that just want to tag things and stay alive.

I really dont get where this mentality came from that damage stats are all that matters in the game, because frankly its dumb. Sure go smack some NPCs in a trial, id never say HA has any use there besides the tank, but in PvP? Especially GROUP PvP, glass cannons spend more time getting rezzed than doing anything meaningful.

There's a lot of truth to this. However, and I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, LA Templars and glass cannons who get squished that easily are not doing everything they can to prevent it. I have a LA templar and a glass cannon and I do not spend more time getting rezzed than doing something meaningful. I would suggest that these players need to work on their survivability a bit as it pertains to class skills and non-class passives outside of HA.

While physical/spell resist is more important than block mitigation in pvp, it's still not the end-all, be-all of survivability. There are a dozen other ways for any class and build to stay alive without switching to HA. And frankly, the biggest factor in survivability is player skill and experience. Timing is key, attention to detail and "raid" awareness is critical for any player to survive in Cyrodiil. HA is not going to save you if you weren't paying close enough attention. It might buy you time, but HA alone will not keep you alive.

3 counter responses.

1. A skilled stam player is going to catch you, no amount of LOS or positioning (especially with some 2H skills not obeying line of sight rules properly right now) is going to prevent the inevitable whack.

2. In Cyrodiil things have gotten so damn laggy (latency/ping) that movement/positioning has become somewhat unreliable in some cases.

3. Being locked down with superbombard, all you have at that point is block and mitigation. Youre not going anywhere. And its getting worse every day as more people slot it.

Autolycus · April 2016

Rylana wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Vangy wrote: »

@Rylana

Short of exploiting, if you run a 5/1/1 build in heavy with 30k spell res and 20k+ armor its safe to say you are going to have a hard time even killing NPCs. I expect a full 30 second battle to just kill 1 NPC...... I could run immovable on my DK to hit ard 26k/22k spell/phy resist but I prefer shuffle.

Ive never heard anyone to date say that heavy armor dosent need buffing. First im hearing of this is from the OP and you. Personally I eat about 5-7k frags and wbs unblocked. Compared to my DPS spec which eats about 9-11k. With a health pool of 25k my tank spec would take about 4-5 frags to kill while my DPS spec would take take about 3-4. I wonder if that justifies me giving up SO much damage and regen for....

I only run the heavy armor spec for duels and small scale where it matters. In large scale with 20v20s heavy armor does jack. You probably will last a few seconds longer because you have no mobility and no regen. Or personally thats what ive experienced.

I have however noted some crazy hard to kill templars. But they normally go down pretty fast when I get some decent players to focus them.

Damage is seriously not everything. Healers, especially, that cant be easily focused down benefit so much from the extra survivability. LA templars get absolutely obliterated in PvP by stam monkies.

Heavy elsewhere? Notsomuch, though I can make an argument for sappyblades and batdks that just want to tag things and stay alive.

I really dont get where this mentality came from that damage stats are all that matters in the game, because frankly its dumb. Sure go smack some NPCs in a trial, id never say HA has any use there besides the tank, but in PvP? Especially GROUP PvP, glass cannons spend more time getting rezzed than doing anything meaningful.

There's a lot of truth to this. However, and I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, LA Templars and glass cannons who get squished that easily are not doing everything they can to prevent it. I have a LA templar and a glass cannon and I do not spend more time getting rezzed than doing something meaningful. I would suggest that these players need to work on their survivability a bit as it pertains to class skills and non-class passives outside of HA.

While physical/spell resist is more important than block mitigation in pvp, it's still not the end-all, be-all of survivability. There are a dozen other ways for any class and build to stay alive without switching to HA. And frankly, the biggest factor in survivability is player skill and experience. Timing is key, attention to detail and "raid" awareness is critical for any player to survive in Cyrodiil. HA is not going to save you if you weren't paying close enough attention. It might buy you time, but HA alone will not keep you alive.

3 counter responses.

1. A skilled stam player is going to catch you, no amount of LOS or positioning (especially with some 2H skills not obeying line of sight rules properly right now) is going to prevent the inevitable whack.

2. In Cyrodiil things have gotten so damn laggy (latency/ping) that movement/positioning has become somewhat unreliable in some cases.

3. Being locked down with superbombard, all you have at that point is block and mitigation. Youre not going anywhere. And its getting worse every day as more people slot it.

While I respect your rebuttal, I have to disagree. I have 2 magicka characters that wear full light, and one that utilizes 5/1/1. I've been attacked by many skilled stam players, some of which I know personally and have a great deal of respect for as players. There are extremely effective countermeasures to these players, but as I mentioned before, timing is a critical component to survivability. The current state of pvp in ESO highly undervalues the use of hard CCs, like petrify, agony, and rune prison. While many people recognize the value of these skills, they are widely underused and are the #1 method of locking down a WB spammer. While Templars have eclipse, it is not as useful in terms of hard CC. However, one well-timed javelin will do the trick. There are other alternatives, but the point is that it's doable.

If you want to thwart someone spamming bombard, wait for them to waste a few casts' worth of stamina on it, and then hard CC them. Guaranteed you will at least have enough time to close the distance, if not completely obliterate them. Combine that with the fact that many magicka users excel at ranged damage and self-healing, and a hard CC is usually all it takes for a turn of tide. I've seen countless players get completely owned simply because they got hit with agony or a crystal frags. Imho Templars and Sorcs have a great deal of protection against melee users, with mines being incredibly punishing for melee, and a Templar's ability to fortify a stack (haha, yeah I know, the "house").

The trick to taking on melee stam users is to build yourself to be formidable in CQC, rather than always trying to stay at range. This is what I've done with my magblade, which is my prized "in your face" pvper, one that does not even have cloak slotted. Most players think that steady offensive pressure will guarantee them a kill. Many of them also fail to realize that a proper combo in melee range can easily tear apart someone who is fully on the offensive. It takes one heal or shield to buy you enough time to burst someone down. It takes one hard CC to force someone on the defensive, and I believe by now, most experienced players will recognize that once someone is on the defensive, it's very difficult to come back (not impossible, of course).

Anti_Virus · April 2016

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

Heavy armor is pretty good currently. It mitigates a lot of damage. It does what it suppose to do. Mitigates damage and provides tanking. If you buff it everyone will rock ha and become unkillable and la will become obsolete. I think it's pretty balanced. Think about it. What incentive would anyone have to wear la if dps is mitigated beyond what it is now? Everyone will just run ha with regen eq and it now become a resource/sustainability yawn fest because dps had been nuetralized. Why does ha need a buff? Hell I only use 5/2 la/ha/ pieces and damage mitigation is night and day compared to 7/0 la. That's with 2 pieces!

NO heavy needs a buff, with all the armor and spell pen stacking. If you put STEEL on your chest you sacrifice all dmg and sustain for just 5% extra survivability.

Heavy Is supposed to make you a tank, but it fails at it. It better to spec for dps since high dmg = high heals.

Its funny how mage wearing a dress and holding a stick(or swords)can have 40-50K magicka melt someones face off and take a beating while wearing BATHROBES.

HoloYoitsu · April 2016

OP, do you happen to work at ZOS?

Forestd16b14_ESO · April 2016

OK seriously what game are you playing cause it surely is not ESO cause ESOs heavy armor is horribly under powered.

Vangy · April 2016

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

OK seriously what game are you playing cause it surely is not ESO cause ESOs heavy armor is horribly under powered.

^ This is pretty much my train of thought.... Dont quite know how to put it into a convincing essay here on the forums...

acw37162 · April 2016

<opens door to go outside>

Sees the storm

<closes door goes back inside>

Sharee · April 2016

Oompuh wrote: »

Rapid Mending = 5% extra heals? i can get this with a couple cp.

This is an interesting point, as it allows to actually quantify the weakness of a heavy armor passive.

With 5 pieces of heavy, Rapid mending passive gives you 5% incoming healing, which is "worth" 15 CP points (you get 5,1% healing from Quick Recovery with 15 points)

With 5 pieces of light, Recovery passive gives you 20% increased magicka regen, which is "worth" 73 CP points (you get 20.1% magicka regen with 73 points into Arcanist)

One passive is worth 15 CP the other 73(!) CP.

From purely mathematical point, for the two passives to be balanced, Rapid mending with 5 heavy pieces would need to provide at least 13.2% bonus incoming healing (that is what you get from 73 points into Quick recovery).

(Of course the bigger picture is more complicated, on one hand you need to factor in better natural mitigation for heavy, on the other the higher relative value of magicka regen compared to healing received, etc. etc.)

bloodenragedb14_ESO · April 2016

unfortunatly i cant help by disagree, many of my friends running tank builds just dont feel as though heavy armor would contribute to their 'tankyness'

i do hope there are some reasonable improvements to this skill line, because i want my meat shield to feel and look good about his build in regards to lore