HA, LA, MA comparison, how can they all be desirable?

SirSilverMask · April 2016

@Wrobel I heard that you prefer to see numbers to help make educated decisions. I worked on this to see exactly how armors compared in the new patch, and I hope this helps and that you decide to do something with the information, I can provide more info as requested.
If each armor type is supposed to serve a particular purpose, MA focuses more on stamina and weapon damage and LA focuses more on magicka and spell damage. LA is slightly more effective then medium armor at causing damage, though the extra passives on medium armor may be seen to make up for the 1-2% difference in damage. HA then should probably be focused on mitigating damage, however it only mitigates 5% more damage than the other armors. It loses resources 5% faster (with constitution being activated every 4 seconds). HA provides 10-15% less damage (with wrath fully charged). Healing is actually 5% less then LA wearers, and medium armor has the decreased cost of dodge roll, which mitigates 100% of damage (really not sure how to calculate that into the scenario). Now with the deletion of bracing, HA doesn’t even help tanks that have to block a lot in trials (it would be more effective to wear LA or MA depending on what type of skills the tank activates most often). Now before you complain about anything, I’ve provided a little more information on numbers below.
A common setup includes 5 piece of the chosen armor type, plus one of the other two providing maximum benefit from the undaunted line (I know not everyone does this, but a lot do). For this example, no nirnhoned traits and also no set item bonuses as those provide the same increase no matter what armor type is used, the one trait that could cause a change would be reinforced.
All gold equipment, defending 1 hand weapon, shield, plus major and minor ward active, also all passives are active for armor. Note that the differences in mitigation only stem from the armor chosen as all other values are constant.
HA provides 40.4% physical mitigation and 40.9% spell mitigation.
MA provides 35.3% physical mitigation and 35.8% spell mitigation.
LA provides 32.4% physical mitigation and 35.2% spell mitigation.
With this setup heavy armor provides about 5% more mitigation then the other armors which stems from about a 3300 higher armor rating.
So taking out common benefits,
So 5 piece LA provides 12% reduced spell costs, 16% magicka recovery, 2191 spell crit, and 4884 spell penetration.

5 piece MA provides 1640 weapon critical, 12% reduced stam costs, 16% stam recovery, reduced sneaking 28%, reduce detection 20%, increase damage 12%, 12% increased speed, 16% reduced dodge roll cost.

HA provides 16% health recovery, 744 magicka and stam every 4 seconds if hit (equals 372 recovery in combat), increase max health 8%, increase healing received 8%, increase magicka or stam recovery by 50% on fully charged heavy attacks (which equates to about 500 per heavy attack I believe), Increase weapon and spell damage by up to 200.

So LA and MA provide more recovery only if you’re at or above 2325, however this is significantly offset by the reduced costs of about 287 if the skill normally cost 2394 (what some of the common instant cast abilities cost) and that would be per second, so that is about 574 recovery during combat of one resource plus about 210 if you are using a recovery food and nothing else to boost recovery. So overall LA and MA provide about 784 recovery for magicka or stamina respectively. In other words LA and MA provide more than twice the recovery of HA during combat of whatever you normally use.

Now looking at damage, only basing the differences on the armor type worn and recognizing that normal weapon/spell damage is in the 3000s for v16s on live, so it will be similar after the new patch. Final assumption the target has more than 4884 armor and less than or equal to the armor needed to cap out mitigation. LA does the most damage over a given time period, with MA doing about 98.5% of the damage of LA, and HA doing about 89% of the damage of LA (the HA assumption is if wrath is providing the full 200 additional damage throughout the entire fight) with the range being from to 88.9%-90.4% varying weapon damage from 3000-4000. However without wrath active, HA only does 84.7% of the damage of LA. If the enemy either has less than 4884 armor or more than the armor needed to provide maximum mitigation, LA wearers do slightly less damage as compared to MA wearers.

Heavy Armor therefore provides a 5% increase in protection at a cost of 10%-12% damage and actually provides less resource recovery even if the new constitution activates whenever possible. To make Heavy Armor more viable the new wrath would need to increase damage by 1.25% per hit stacking 10 times up to 12.5% and that would still have heavy armor hitting at 95% of the damage of light armor. The percentage is better to increase then the straight value and causes the end result to stay consistently at 95% of the damage of LA. Though that also means that the heavy armor wearer has to be hit at least once every 6 seconds.
It appears that ZOS wants all armor to be viable in almost the exact same way, so wrath would need a significant boost up from 200 to 500 to be 5% below the damage of LA and MA. So when wearing HA you have 5% less resource recovery based on one action per second and that is with being hit every 4 seconds, so constitution needs about a 5% boost from the current 186 per piece of armor to have similar recovery to LA and MA, though the developers say they want HA to provide more recovery. HA provides about a 5% boost in mitigation, which if that is all they want fine, however HA causes a decrease of 10-15% damage (15% for the top players that min-max and about 10% for everyone else).
If someone is stacking health and health recovery to gain those benefits from heavy armor, then the new passive of wrath does not help at all compared to the previous bracing as the game currently focuses more on damage than anything else, to the point of the more damage you cause the more healing you receive, so those LA wearers who use skills such as burning embers or funnel health actual receive about 5% more healing then someone wearing HA even with the healing bonus of heavy armor. The healing bonus for heavy armor would need to move up to 13% just to match LA wearers. As for heavy attacks, in PvP good luck getting a fully charged heavy attack against anyone decent. And if you are the tank and pulling aggro of bosses and dangerous mobs in trials, again no heavy attacks for you unless you are very lucky and never have any lag.
A few ways to fix the problem, if you want HA to actually provide similar protection to what is being lost damage wise add these numbers into the passives, increase armor values of all heavy armor by 15% and reduce the cost of blocking by 20% for 5 piece of HA. Increase Constitution by 5% if you want resource recovery to match the recovery/savings of other armors else increase the value more if you want HA to actually recover resources faster than the other armor types, and finally increase healing received by 5% to at least match the healing of LA dps, otherwise more if you want HA to feel different. If you want to use the same type of cookie cutter model to keep the dps and mitigation similar between the armors then wrath must increase damage by 12.5% in increments of 1.25% or if you want to use values then increase by 50 per hit up to 500 to still keep HA 5% below the damage of LA & MA which matches mitigation (though this value would need to be increased when the level cap of gear is increased, percentage would probably be able to stay the same).

DDuke · April 2016

Good research, but you've left out a couple of things:

Light Armor only grants more damage vs people without a dmg shield, and that damage isn't even close to being "10-15% as you claim". 4884 Penetration=7.4% damage and the benefit you gain from Light Armor's 10% crit depends on target's impenetrable & your crit modifier.

For the record, Wrath passive=250 spell/weapon dmg when buffed with Major/Minor Sorcery/Brutality. 250 Spell/Weapon damage=3%~ damage.

So in the end, you either deal 3% more damage when wearing heavy armor or some 5-6% less damage compared to a light armor user (while gaining about 6.5% more mitigation).

As far as sustain goes... you cannot really compare ability costs with regeneration. Regeneration happens all the time, where as abilities aren't used all the time. Also, you get both magicka and stamina when hit, not only one of the two.

Another thing is that there are abilities in the game that actually benefit from having a high cost. I suggest you look at the Templar skill "Honor the Dead" & see what it does.

Also, increased healing received and health regen add a lot of "mitigation" which you don't necessarily realize while playing. This is especially true for a magicka templar using sweeps, for whom 8% healing received is a huge boost to survivability.

TLDR: I don't think heavy armor is as bad as you make it sound. In fact, it is in my opinion best armor to use as a magicka templar at the moment & hopefully it'll be good for other builds too after next patch's buffs.

One thing I agree on is that the mitigation differences should be much larger between the armor types. Though that would probably make heavy armor op, if everything else were to remain the same.

VaxtinTheWolf · April 2016

Here I am again, planting my tiny sugestion for damage reduction. Either 0.5% per rank of quality onto sturdy with the block reduction, or add it to one of the heavy armor passives in a [1/2] or [1.5/3] percentile per piece of heavy armor equip.

SirSilverMask · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

Good research, but you've left out a couple of things:

Light Armor only grants more damage vs people without a dmg shield, and that damage isn't even close to being "10-15% as you claim". 4884 Penetration=7.4% damage and the benefit you gain from Light Armor's 10% crit depends on target's impenetrable & your crit modifier.

For the record, Wrath passive=250 spell/weapon dmg when buffed with Major/Minor Sorcery/Brutality. 250 Spell/Weapon damage=3%~ damage.

So in the end, you either deal 3% more damage when wearing heavy armor or some 5-6% less damage compared to a light armor user (while gaining about 6.5% more mitigation).

As far as sustain goes... you cannot really compare ability costs with regeneration. Regeneration happens all the time, where as abilities aren't used all the time. Also, you get both magicka and stamina when hit, not only one of the two.

Another thing is that there are abilities in the game that actually benefit from having a high cost. I suggest you look at the Templar skill "Honor the Dead" & see what it does.

Also, increased healing received and health regen add a lot of "mitigation" which you don't necessarily realize while playing. This is especially true for a magicka templar using sweeps, for whom 8% healing received is a huge boost to survivability.

TLDR: I don't think heavy armor is as bad as you make it sound. In fact, it is in my opinion best armor to use as a magicka templar at the moment & hopefully it'll be good for other builds too after next patch's buffs.

One thing I agree on is that the mitigation differences should be much larger between the armor types. Though that would probably make heavy armor op, if everything else were to remain the same.

To make sure that you understand, I accounted for wrath with the buff, so all those numbers are when buffed. Also I noted that the LA numbers are only valid when armor is between certain values, and you are correct that it does not take into account shields, and I tried to make that clear when I posted. If the armor is so high that the penetration doesn't decrease below the 50% modifier or if they have a shield or no armor at all then LA actual provides the exact same advantage as HA (with wrath fully activated), so LA still provides a little more damage during the first 6 seconds.
I purposely left out crit modifiers besides what armor provides because beside what the armor provides any character can technically get the exact same modifiers so that doesn't matter.
As for regeneration, I compared them in combat, out of combat, LA and MA provide more gains while HA provides none, so it was actually best case scenario for the HA based on stam and magicka. To make numbers easier to read, HA currently provides an additional 47.5 magicka and 47.5 stamina while LA and MA provide 100 stamina or magicka respectively in the same period of time. Outside combat HA provides an additional 0 magicka and stamina while LA and MA provide about 16 magicka or stamina. So my point was if HA is supposed to provide more resources recovery in combat then LA and MA the percentage needs to be increased.
I realize that some abilities cost more or less and some benefit from higher costs, so not everything fits and you can always find outliers from any data. That is again why I pointed to in combat with average cost skills, realize that you can use skills more or less expensive but there is still an average.
As for the healing benefit, in the scenario presented LA actually provides more healing for those using skills which heal based on damage done, because they are doing more damage, so LA is actually provides more healing then HA, while MA has the additional mitigation of dodge rolls (again this only applies given the parameters as previously defined). Only after the first 6 seconds of combat and only if the enemy has shields (common in PvP)/excessive/minimal armor (not so common anywhere) does LA provide less heals. Given the presented constraints, magicka Templars, DKs, and NB actually all heal more wearing LA then HA.
@DDuke, I know that you prefer to bring up these changes in context of PvP, and I realize that impen and shields change the numbers quite a bit. I'm sorry that I did not include that information. I tried to take the most common type of enemy, and if you look at all the PvE content then my example works (except for a few times that bosses get shields), and any player that doesn't happen to have a shield or impen gear (I realize that this is extremely rare for people that PvP on a regular basis to not have either of those), and I'm not even going to hazard a guess at the number of Players that don't use impen gear or don't have shields up 100% of the time.
Overall though this goes to show that there is a massive disconnect between balancing PvE and PvP. In PvE, heavy armor as shown in my scenario, which should be the most common scenario seen in the game enemy armor between 5000-33000 and no shields, is underpowered. So now in PvE, HA really doesn't provide a purpose to dps or tank or heal.

So for you in PvP the real question is if you only fight people wearing impen gear and having shields up would you rather have about 1900 more magicka every 4 seconds then HA and (damage jumping by 12% if they don't have shields/enough imjpen) or for HA 900 more stam (every 4 seconds), 5% more mitigation, and 8% more healing (about 224 health per second, and if they don't have shields you actually get less healing per second with HA). Realize that the discussion around impen only involves a difference of 10% crit chance due to armor differences, so it only accounts for about a 5% difference in damage. On the other hand for those that are using MA, just switch the aforementioned magicka and stamina, and then MA does 13% additional damage until wrath is fully activated and then MA only does 9% more damage, with HA again providing 5% more mitigation and 8% more healing, though MA users have a cheaper dodge roll to make up for the health difference.

Arthg · April 2016

SirSilverMask wrote: »

@Wrobel I heard that you prefer to see numbers to help make educated decisions. I worked on this to see exactly how armors compared in the new patch, and I hope this helps and that you decide to do something with the information, I can provide more info as requested.
If each armor type is supposed to serve a particular purpose, MA focuses more on stamina and weapon damage and LA focuses more on magicka and spell damage. LA is slightly more effective then medium armor at causing damage, though the extra passives on medium armor may be seen to make up for the 1-2% difference in damage. HA then should probably be focused on mitigating damage, however it only mitigates 5% more damage than the other armors. It loses resources 5% faster (with constitution being activated every 4 seconds). HA provides 10-15% less damage (with wrath fully charged). Healing is actually 5% less then LA wearers, and medium armor has the decreased cost of dodge roll, which mitigates 100% of damage (really not sure how to calculate that into the scenario). Now with the deletion of bracing, HA doesn’t even help tanks that have to block a lot in trials (it would be more effective to wear LA or MA depending on what type of skills the tank activates most often). Now before you complain about anything, I’ve provided a little more information on numbers below.
A common setup includes 5 piece of the chosen armor type, plus one of the other two providing maximum benefit from the undaunted line (I know not everyone does this, but a lot do). For this example, no nirnhoned traits and also no set item bonuses as those provide the same increase no matter what armor type is used, the one trait that could cause a change would be reinforced.
All gold equipment, defending 1 hand weapon, shield, plus major and minor ward active, also all passives are active for armor. Note that the differences in mitigation only stem from the armor chosen as all other values are constant.
HA provides 40.4% physical mitigation and 40.9% spell mitigation.
MA provides 35.3% physical mitigation and 35.8% spell mitigation.
LA provides 32.4% physical mitigation and 35.2% spell mitigation.
With this setup heavy armor provides about 5% more mitigation then the other armors which stems from about a 3300 higher armor rating.
So taking out common benefits,
So 5 piece LA provides 12% reduced spell costs, 16% magicka recovery, 2191 spell crit, and 4884 spell penetration.

5 piece MA provides 1640 weapon critical, 12% reduced stam costs, 16% stam recovery, reduced sneaking 28%, reduce detection 20%, increase damage 12%, 12% increased speed, 16% reduced dodge roll cost.

HA provides 16% health recovery, 744 magicka and stam every 4 seconds if hit (equals 372 recovery in combat), increase max health 8%, increase healing received 8%, increase magicka or stam recovery by 50% on fully charged heavy attacks (which equates to about 500 per heavy attack I believe), Increase weapon and spell damage by up to 200.

So LA and MA provide more recovery only if you’re at or above 2325, however this is significantly offset by the reduced costs of about 287 if the skill normally cost 2394 (what some of the common instant cast abilities cost) and that would be per second, so that is about 574 recovery during combat of one resource plus about 210 if you are using a recovery food and nothing else to boost recovery. So overall LA and MA provide about 784 recovery for magicka or stamina respectively. In other words LA and MA provide more than twice the recovery of HA during combat of whatever you normally use.

Now looking at damage, only basing the differences on the armor type worn and recognizing that normal weapon/spell damage is in the 3000s for v16s on live, so it will be similar after the new patch. Final assumption the target has more than 4884 armor and less than or equal to the armor needed to cap out mitigation. LA does the most damage over a given time period, with MA doing about 98.5% of the damage of LA, and HA doing about 89% of the damage of LA (the HA assumption is if wrath is providing the full 200 additional damage throughout the entire fight) with the range being from to 88.9%-90.4% varying weapon damage from 3000-4000. However without wrath active, HA only does 84.7% of the damage of LA. If the enemy either has less than 4884 armor or more than the armor needed to provide maximum mitigation, LA wearers do slightly less damage as compared to MA wearers.

Heavy Armor therefore provides a 5% increase in protection at a cost of 10%-12% damage and actually provides less resource recovery even if the new constitution activates whenever possible. To make Heavy Armor more viable the new wrath would need to increase damage by 1.25% per hit stacking 10 times up to 12.5% and that would still have heavy armor hitting at 95% of the damage of light armor. The percentage is better to increase then the straight value and causes the end result to stay consistently at 95% of the damage of LA. Though that also means that the heavy armor wearer has to be hit at least once every 6 seconds.
It appears that ZOS wants all armor to be viable in almost the exact same way, so wrath would need a significant boost up from 200 to 500 to be 5% below the damage of LA and MA. So when wearing HA you have 5% less resource recovery based on one action per second and that is with being hit every 4 seconds, so constitution needs about a 5% boost from the current 186 per piece of armor to have similar recovery to LA and MA, though the developers say they want HA to provide more recovery. HA provides about a 5% boost in mitigation, which if that is all they want fine, however HA causes a decrease of 10-15% damage (15% for the top players that min-max and about 10% for everyone else).
If someone is stacking health and health recovery to gain those benefits from heavy armor, then the new passive of wrath does not help at all compared to the previous bracing as the game currently focuses more on damage than anything else, to the point of the more damage you cause the more healing you receive, so those LA wearers who use skills such as burning embers or funnel health actual receive about 5% more healing then someone wearing HA even with the healing bonus of heavy armor. The healing bonus for heavy armor would need to move up to 13% just to match LA wearers. As for heavy attacks, in PvP good luck getting a fully charged heavy attack against anyone decent. And if you are the tank and pulling aggro of bosses and dangerous mobs in trials, again no heavy attacks for you unless you are very lucky and never have any lag.
A few ways to fix the problem, if you want HA to actually provide similar protection to what is being lost damage wise add these numbers into the passives, increase armor values of all heavy armor by 15% and reduce the cost of blocking by 20% for 5 piece of HA. Increase Constitution by 5% if you want resource recovery to match the recovery/savings of other armors else increase the value more if you want HA to actually recover resources faster than the other armor types, and finally increase healing received by 5% to at least match the healing of LA dps, otherwise more if you want HA to feel different. If you want to use the same type of cookie cutter model to keep the dps and mitigation similar between the armors then wrath must increase damage by 12.5% in increments of 1.25% or if you want to use values then increase by 50 per hit up to 500 to still keep HA 5% below the damage of LA & MA which matches mitigation (though this value would need to be increased when the level cap of gear is increased, percentage would probably be able to stay the same).

Thank you for the detailed research.
May I add something about the cost of HA?
Upgrading a single piece to legendary costs 66K+, as opposed to 44K for LA and MA (at least on EU servers).

Frankly, wearing HA is more a philosophy or a calling than a rational choice...

DDuke · April 2016

SirSilverMask wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Good research, but you've left out a couple of things:

Light Armor only grants more damage vs people without a dmg shield, and that damage isn't even close to being "10-15% as you claim". 4884 Penetration=7.4% damage and the benefit you gain from Light Armor's 10% crit depends on target's impenetrable & your crit modifier.

For the record, Wrath passive=250 spell/weapon dmg when buffed with Major/Minor Sorcery/Brutality. 250 Spell/Weapon damage=3%~ damage.

So in the end, you either deal 3% more damage when wearing heavy armor or some 5-6% less damage compared to a light armor user (while gaining about 6.5% more mitigation).

As far as sustain goes... you cannot really compare ability costs with regeneration. Regeneration happens all the time, where as abilities aren't used all the time. Also, you get both magicka and stamina when hit, not only one of the two.

Another thing is that there are abilities in the game that actually benefit from having a high cost. I suggest you look at the Templar skill "Honor the Dead" & see what it does.

Also, increased healing received and health regen add a lot of "mitigation" which you don't necessarily realize while playing. This is especially true for a magicka templar using sweeps, for whom 8% healing received is a huge boost to survivability.

TLDR: I don't think heavy armor is as bad as you make it sound. In fact, it is in my opinion best armor to use as a magicka templar at the moment & hopefully it'll be good for other builds too after next patch's buffs.

One thing I agree on is that the mitigation differences should be much larger between the armor types. Though that would probably make heavy armor op, if everything else were to remain the same.

To make sure that you understand, I accounted for wrath with the buff, so all those numbers are when buffed. Also I noted that the LA numbers are only valid when armor is between certain values, and you are correct that it does not take into account shields, and I tried to make that clear when I posted. If the armor is so high that the penetration doesn't decrease below the 50% modifier or if they have a shield or no armor at all then LA actual provides the exact same advantage as HA (with wrath fully activated), so LA still provides a little more damage during the first 6 seconds.
I purposely left out crit modifiers besides what armor provides because beside what the armor provides any character can technically get the exact same modifiers so that doesn't matter.
As for regeneration, I compared them in combat, out of combat, LA and MA provide more gains while HA provides none, so it was actually best case scenario for the HA based on stam and magicka. To make numbers easier to read, HA currently provides an additional 47.5 magicka and 47.5 stamina while LA and MA provide 100 stamina or magicka respectively in the same period of time. Outside combat HA provides an additional 0 magicka and stamina while LA and MA provide about 16 magicka or stamina. So my point was if HA is supposed to provide more resources recovery in combat then LA and MA the percentage needs to be increased.
I realize that some abilities cost more or less and some benefit from higher costs, so not everything fits and you can always find outliers from any data. That is again why I pointed to in combat with average cost skills, realize that you can use skills more or less expensive but there is still an average.
As for the healing benefit, in the scenario presented LA actually provides more healing for those using skills which heal based on damage done, because they are doing more damage, so LA is actually provides more healing then HA, while MA has the additional mitigation of dodge rolls (again this only applies given the parameters as previously defined). Only after the first 6 seconds of combat and only if the enemy has shields (common in PvP)/excessive/minimal armor (not so common anywhere) does LA provide less heals. Given the presented constraints, magicka Templars, DKs, and NB actually all heal more wearing LA then HA.
@DDuke, I know that you prefer to bring up these changes in context of PvP, and I realize that impen and shields change the numbers quite a bit. I'm sorry that I did not include that information. I tried to take the most common type of enemy, and if you look at all the PvE content then my example works (except for a few times that bosses get shields), and any player that doesn't happen to have a shield or impen gear (I realize that this is extremely rare for people that PvP on a regular basis to not have either of those), and I'm not even going to hazard a guess at the number of Players that don't use impen gear or don't have shields up 100% of the time.
Overall though this goes to show that there is a massive disconnect between balancing PvE and PvP. In PvE, heavy armor as shown in my scenario, which should be the most common scenario seen in the game enemy armor between 5000-33000 and no shields, is underpowered. So now in PvE, HA really doesn't provide a purpose to dps or tank or heal.

So for you in PvP the real question is if you only fight people wearing impen gear and having shields up would you rather have about 1900 more magicka every 4 seconds then HA and 5% more damage for the first 6 seconds of combat (jumping by 12% if they don't have shields, ) or for HA 900 more stam (every 4 seconds), 5% more mitigation, and 8% more healing (about 224 health per second, and if they don't have shields you actually get less healing per second with HA). Realize that the discussion around impen only involves a difference of 10% crit chance due to armor differences, so it only accounts for about a 5% difference in damage. On the other hand for those that are using MA, just switch the aforementioned magicka and stamina, and then MA does 13% additional damage until wrath is fully activated and then MA only does 9% more damage, with HA again providing 5% more mitigation and 8% more healing, though MA users have a cheaper dodge roll to make up for the health difference.

Except that you do not get more healing from Light Armor.

The only thing you get from Light Armor is more regen & smaller ability costs, as well as 7.4% dmg worth of penetration (on targets without dmg shield) & 10% crit.

Penetration passive obviously does nothing for your heals, where as 10% crit chance does not equal to 8% more healing received.

Of course, this doesn't mean that your healers should be wearing heavy armor, since it's healing received, not healing done.

And just to clarify...

If the armor is so high that the penetration doesn't decrease below the 50% modifier or if they have a shield or no armor at all then LA actual provides the exact same advantage as HA (with wrath fully activated), so LA still provides a little more damage during the first 6 seconds.

If the target has a shield, there is no scenario where light armor provides even the same damage as heavy armor with wrath fully activated, since both damage increasing passives from light armor are absolutely useless against shields.

DDuke · April 2016

Read the remainder of your post - your numbers are just off. There is no scenario where light armor provides 12% more damage, just as there is no scenario ever where you get less healing in heavy armor than light armor. I'd like to see the math behind that if you claim it to be true.

Akgurd · April 2016

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

DDuke · April 2016

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

SirSilverMask · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

Read the remainder of your post - your numbers are just off. There is no scenario where light armor provides 12% more damage, just as there is no scenario ever where you get less healing in heavy armor than light armor. I'd like to see the math behind that if you claim it to be true.

My apologies if that is what you understood, please remember that everything I did originally focused on no shields and no impen gear, so it is just my first reply to you that has incorrect numbers. I am pretty sure that I said Heavy armor provides 5% more damage then LA given that scenario of shields/impen gear that cancels all crit advantage in my first reply. However LA does provide more healing when there are no shields and no impen gear involved because it does in fact cause more damage and because many heals such as swallow soul, burning embers, and sweep heal based on damage done, LA wearers actually do get more heals (only based on their personal heals).
As you showed in your other post the penetration provides 7.4% more damage, so you agree with that, and the 10% crit chance provides in increase of about 5% damage over an infinite time frame which equals 12.4%. The increase from a fully charged wrath only increases the damage of HA by 5-6.7% with either 3000 or 4000 weapon/spell damage when fully charged, which actually causes HA to perform to 90% of the level.
As for the heals, if someone deals 15K dps without gear (the number doesn't actually matter because percentages are the same), the gear then changes the number and over the course of 40 seconds the heavy armor wearer deals 768K damage mitigated by say 35.8% which becomes 492.5K, while LA deals 756K damage mitigated by 28.4% becoming 540.6K damage, based on your templar heals on the sweep of 35% the LA wearer get 35% of 540.6K which is 189.2K heals while the heavy armor wearer gets 35% of 492.5 increased by 8% which comes out to 186.1K, so no it is not a lot less, only 1.7% but LA still provides more heals and if the weapon damage is on the higher end the difference increases to 3.2% more heals for the LA wearer.
On another point, I think you should be able to crit against shields.

SirSilverMask · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

I don't disagree that you can't do fine in Heavy Armor, you just need to test out the exact same gear, traits, stones and everything else, just test the difference in a controlled environment with the only difference being 5HA, 1LA, 1MA for 1HA, 1MA, and 5LA. I bet that you could tank and dps and heal better in PvE wearing the LA then the HA, especially based on the way that you say you play.

DDuke · April 2016

SirSilverMask wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Read the remainder of your post - your numbers are just off. There is no scenario where light armor provides 12% more damage, just as there is no scenario ever where you get less healing in heavy armor than light armor. I'd like to see the math behind that if you claim it to be true.

My apologies if that is what you understood, please remember that everything I did originally focused on no shields and no impen gear, so it is just my first reply to you that has incorrect numbers. I am pretty sure that I said Heavy armor provides 5% more damage then LA given that scenario of shields/impen gear that cancels all crit advantage in my first reply. However LA does provide more healing when there are no shields and no impen gear involved because it does in fact cause more damage and because many heals such as swallow soul, burning embers, and sweep heal based on damage done, LA wearers actually do get more heals (only based on their personal heals).
As you showed in your other post the penetration provides 7.4% more damage, so you agree with that, and the 10% crit chance provides in increase of about 5% damage over an infinite time frame which equals 12.4%. The increase from a fully charged wrath only increases the damage of HA by 5-6.7% with either 3000 or 4000 weapon/spell damage when fully charged, which actually causes HA to perform to 90% of the level.
As for the heals, if someone deals 15K dps without gear (the number doesn't actually matter because percentages are the same), the gear then changes the number and over the course of 40 seconds the heavy armor wearer deals 768K damage mitigated by say 35.8% which becomes 492.5K, while LA deals 756K damage mitigated by 28.4% becoming 540.6K damage, based on your templar heals on the sweep of 35% the LA wearer get 35% of 540.6K which is 189.2K heals while the heavy armor wearer gets 35% of 492.5 increased by 8% which comes out to 186.1K, so no it is not a lot less, only 1.7% but LA still provides more heals and if the weapon damage is on the higher end the difference increases to 3.2% more heals for the LA wearer.
On another point, I think you should be able to crit against shields.

I'm still very curious how you get to those numbers.

I can say that the light armor penetration = 7.4% damage because 660 armor/spell resistance=1% mitigation. 4884/660=7.4

You are saying fully charged Wrath passive gives 5-6.7% more damage, which is just not accurate at all.

How much weapon/spell damage affects your damage in terms of % depends on the following things: your base magicka/stamina pool, your weapon/spell damage & the skillcoefficient.

Now, for usual stats it's normally between 1.2-1.5%/100 weapon/spell dmg, depending on the skill.

Thus we can determine that 250 weapon/spell dmg from Wrath = 3-4% dmg, not 5-6.7% (very specific, how did you end up with those numbers?).

And yes, I'm saying Wrath gives less dmg than you think

Anyway, moving on:

Wrath is not the only thing giving less damage than you think. 10% Critical Strike chance=/=5% damage - unless you're in a raid grp with Aggressive Warhorn & you've got Minor Force from Beast Trap or vMoL light armor set and you're running with a ton of CPs in critical strike dmg.

Also, the higher your crit chance, the smaller boost to dmg adding more crit chance has.

The more likely scenario is 10% crit being about 2-3% more damage.

On the topic of heals, your numbers are off, but I wont correct them because the conclusion is right: you do get more heals if you sweep with light armor than you do with heavy armor (as long as you don't hit a single damage shield).

However, sweeps is not the only heal templars have. Honor the Dead doesn't care how much penetration you have, nor does Purifying Light or Malubeth (if you're wearing the set).

DDuke · April 2016

SirSilverMask wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

I don't disagree that you can't do fine in Heavy Armor, you just need to test out the exact same gear, traits, stones and everything else, just test the difference in a controlled environment with the only difference being 5HA, 1LA, 1MA for 1HA, 1MA, and 5LA. I bet that you could tank and dps and heal better in PvE wearing the LA then the HA, especially based on the way that you say you play.

What makes you think I haven't tested light armor?

You send any light armor templar to tank people with this build, and they get squished in 0,5 seconds.

Why? Less mitigation, less heals (most of the time), less health recovery, less health - it all compounds & makes a big difference.

There's a reason why all light armor builds run dmg shields - it's because they're squishy.

Sugaroverdose · April 2016

From my POV if they nerfing block, than they should raise the resistance hard cap and increase damage armor status of all HW pieces by something like 10%(they already boosted LA almost twice, why HW didn't changed i don't really know), or just implement penetration hard cap to something like 25% to make armor status cost something, it's not fair that people can stack penetration until your armor is nothing than a costume, and they do not need to invest much in this.

Oompuh · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

SirSilverMask wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

I don't disagree that you can't do fine in Heavy Armor, you just need to test out the exact same gear, traits, stones and everything else, just test the difference in a controlled environment with the only difference being 5HA, 1LA, 1MA for 1HA, 1MA, and 5LA. I bet that you could tank and dps and heal better in PvE wearing the LA then the HA, especially based on the way that you say you play.

What makes you think I haven't tested light armor?

You send any light armor templar to tank people with this build, and they get squished in 0,5 seconds.

Why? Less mitigation, less heals (most of the time), less health recovery, less health - it all compounds & makes a big difference.

There's a reason why all light armor builds run dmg shields - it's because they're squishy.

You've been on every HA post since @Personofsecrets posted his and all I've seen you say is HA is better than LA on my Templar in PvP. There is more to this game, a lot more. Just because you are ok with your build, doesnt mean people who dont care for your style of play have serious issues with these changes. Please open your mind about playing something other than a Heavy Armor Templar in PvP and maybe you'll be able to understand our views

SirSilverMask · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

SirSilverMask wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Read the remainder of your post - your numbers are just off. There is no scenario where light armor provides 12% more damage, just as there is no scenario ever where you get less healing in heavy armor than light armor. I'd like to see the math behind that if you claim it to be true.

My apologies if that is what you understood, please remember that everything I did originally focused on no shields and no impen gear, so it is just my first reply to you that has incorrect numbers. I am pretty sure that I said Heavy armor provides 5% more damage then LA given that scenario of shields/impen gear that cancels all crit advantage in my first reply. However LA does provide more healing when there are no shields and no impen gear involved because it does in fact cause more damage and because many heals such as swallow soul, burning embers, and sweep heal based on damage done, LA wearers actually do get more heals (only based on their personal heals).
As you showed in your other post the penetration provides 7.4% more damage, so you agree with that, and the 10% crit chance provides in increase of about 5% damage over an infinite time frame which equals 12.4%. The increase from a fully charged wrath only increases the damage of HA by 5-6.7% with either 3000 or 4000 weapon/spell damage when fully charged, which actually causes HA to perform to 90% of the level.
As for the heals, if someone deals 15K dps without gear (the number doesn't actually matter because percentages are the same), the gear then changes the number and over the course of 40 seconds the heavy armor wearer deals 768K damage mitigated by say 35.8% which becomes 492.5K, while LA deals 756K damage mitigated by 28.4% becoming 540.6K damage, based on your templar heals on the sweep of 35% the LA wearer get 35% of 540.6K which is 189.2K heals while the heavy armor wearer gets 35% of 492.5 increased by 8% which comes out to 186.1K, so no it is not a lot less, only 1.7% but LA still provides more heals and if the weapon damage is on the higher end the difference increases to 3.2% more heals for the LA wearer.
On another point, I think you should be able to crit against shields.

I'm still very curious how you get to those numbers.

I can say that the light armor penetration = 7.4% damage because 660 armor/spell resistance=1% mitigation. 4884/660=7.4

You are saying fully charged Wrath passive gives 5-6.7% more damage, which is just not accurate at all.

How much weapon/spell damage affects your damage in terms of % depends on the following things: your base magicka/stamina pool, your weapon/spell damage & the skillcoefficient.

Now, for usual stats it's normally between 1.2-1.5%/100 weapon/spell dmg, depending on the skill.

Thus we can determine that 250 weapon/spell dmg from Wrath = 3-4% dmg, not 5-6.7% (very specific, how did you end up with those numbers?).

And yes, I'm saying Wrath gives less dmg than you think

Anyway, moving on:

Wrath is not the only thing giving less damage than you think. 10% Critical Strike chance=/=5% damage - unless you're in a raid grp with Aggressive Warhorn & you've got Minor Force from Beast Trap or vMoL light armor set and you're running with a ton of CPs in critical strike dmg.

Also, the higher your crit chance, the smaller boost to dmg adding more crit chance has.

The more likely scenario is 10% crit being about 2-3% more damage.

On the topic of heals, your numbers are off, but I wont correct them because the conclusion is right: you do get more heals if you sweep with light armor than you do with heavy armor (as long as you don't hit a single damage shield).

However, sweeps is not the only heal templars have. Honor the Dead doesn't care how much penetration you have, nor does Purifying Light or Malubeth (if you're wearing the set).

You are mixing up what you believe happens and the math behind what is most likely to happen. Given a 40 second scenario with 1 action per second, the increased 10% increase crit chance causes 4 additional strikes to be critical and each one of those increases damage of their hit by 50% this ends up being a 5% increase on average, aggressive warhorn or anything else adds the same amount no matter what type of armor you wear hence the reason I left it out. Change the numbers however you want, but no matter what the 10% becomes an average of 5% increase, you can get lucky or unlucky but this thread isn't about luck. Wrath can be solid increase of 200, so based like I said earlier, with 3000 weapon damage you get an increase of 6.7% and with 4000 weapon damage you get an increase of 5% (4000 being closer to the min maxers and 3000 being more average for a v16 running around with full gold gear), again with wrath fully charged. As for other heals, you are correct, yet if I were to add those in the HA user dps decreases even further behind LA or MA. As I pointed out as well, just because it increases damage by those values does not actually mean that the dps increase by an equivalent value, that is why HA wrath would need to be up at 500 and fully charged to be at 95% of the value of LA or MA.

SirSilverMask · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

SirSilverMask wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

I don't disagree that you can't do fine in Heavy Armor, you just need to test out the exact same gear, traits, stones and everything else, just test the difference in a controlled environment with the only difference being 5HA, 1LA, 1MA for 1HA, 1MA, and 5LA. I bet that you could tank and dps and heal better in PvE wearing the LA then the HA, especially based on the way that you say you play.

What makes you think I haven't tested light armor?

You send any light armor templar to tank people with this build, and they get squished in 0,5 seconds.

Why? Less mitigation, less heals (most of the time), less health recovery, less health - it all compounds & makes a big difference.

There's a reason why all light armor builds run dmg shields - it's because they're squishy.

It is not less heals most of the time, it is only less heals when you apply the situation to PvP and only when fighting against people with shields active or enough impen gear to entirely mitigate critical strikes. You like your build, and I get that, but the numbers really do show that HA needs to be strengthened to be on an equal basis with the other armors. HA already does not actually do what the developers say it is supposed to do, it provides less resources over time then LA or MA though it does provide 5% additional mitigation, so if 5% is all they think HA deserves they still need to increase the resources that HA wearers receive from Constitution to gain more resources like they described HA as doing.

hrothbern · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

@DDuke , you say:
I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

I think all contributors and readers of this thread, as well as the thread http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/261958/restore-bracing-8-sturdy-12-5-block-cost-mitigation#latest
are keen to get a good comparison between LA, MA and HA assembled together.

There are many factors involved, which make such a comparison very difficult.
The most disturbing factors in modelling (what we try to do !), leading to confusing discussions, affecting the productive and constructive consensus, are always the hidden assumptions at the very core of a model.

From you highlighted statement I get the impression that you compare very much LA and HA in PVP.
In which case your root assumption is not identical to the root assumption of OP.
But I can be wrong. If so please correct me.

The simple question I have: Are you also doing just fine with HA in vMA ?

You showed a vid in PVP.
Can you also show a vid in vMA ?

My comparison thinking leads me to:

IF HA is comparable viable with LA, a HA build should be ok in doing vMA, be it, that it will be a "slow, but sure" build to do it, and ofc not reach the top of the weekly leaderboard.
(after all vMA is for DPS builds with the minimal sufficient Health sustain and minmal sufficient Resource to max out DPS/self-HPS)

hrothbern · April 2016

SirSilverMask wrote: »

@Wrobel I heard that you prefer to see numbers to help make educated decisions. I worked on this to see exactly how armors compared in the new patch, and I hope this helps and that you decide to do something with the information, I can provide more info as requested.
.........//............ ncrements of 1.25% or if you want to use values then increase by 50 per hit up to 500 to still keep HA 5% below the damage of LA & MA which matches mitigation (though this value would need to be increased when the level cap of gear is increased, percentage would probably be able to stay the same).

@SirSilverMask ,

You move faster than I was able to

I wanted to make a wall of Math yesterday already to make a basic comparison between LA, MA and HA on their own merits.
Without the confusing factor that HA has an advantage for Blocking by Bracing.

What you did was a "all in one go" comparison.
I think that considering the enormous complexity of this topic we have to cut the comparison in separate pieces, that can be discussed one after the other. That makes is also easier to add more Math, and get discussions on the Math details, instead of discussions that zoom in too fast to the bottom line, the conclusions.

I would treat separately:

With and without "on top" defense mechanism like Blocking, Dodge roll, Damage Shields. Starting with "without".
PVP or PVE. And for PVE without Blocking take vMA as measure.
Resource sustain, Damage buffs, vanilla defense (Armor Resists, effective health pool & Healing buffs)

A first separate discussion topice could be:
Resource sustain comparison in PVE for vMA comparison
a second discussion could be resource sustain in PVP

EDIT:
If many people are going to contribute to this thread, perhaps it is worthwhile considering to change the name of the thread into something like:
"a comparison between LA, MA and HA to get them equally desirable"

In that case we have a lasting "home thread" for this topic.
Because now we have not.
ZOS did not provide us with an "Oficial Thread on Armor changes"
The thread of @Personofsecrets is good in getting HA and the general topic in discussion, but is more aimed at Bracing, than a general comparison.
The old HA armor thread, "Heavy Armor needs buffed already" is aimed at HA buffs needed.

And I think that the game and we all benefit most when all three type of Armor get equal footing and attention.
Not only HA or LA-HA comparison.

Rylana · April 2016

OP, your math only shows slight variations in terms of "pros" and "cons" to armor weights. A few percent here and there.

This is my counter, three parts. Mathematically refute me, if you can.

1. If you are dead, you cannot do damage or healing.
2. Heavy armor increases survivability passively without the need to do anything but slot it.
3. Survivability therefore allows for more sustain.

Another point - Your conclusions only seem to take damage output into account. Not every build or every role must fall into the holy trinity. In fact, in this game, its better they do not. Especially in Cyrodiil.

Now, that questioning and rebuttal aside, I am going to give personal experience viewpoints. I currently run the following three builds (not specific sets listed or anything, just very general) - HA magicka Templar Healer, HA magicka DK DPS, and HA stamina DK Tank. None of these builds has ever failed a dungeon or trial run with a competent group, nor have they ever been complained about in said groups. They must be doing a fine job at their roles, eh? Additionally, without changing a single thing, they are some of the tankiest setups I have ever run in Cyrodiil. In fact the templar and magicka DK are insanely strong zergdivers, I can jump into 20+ people and tank them for quite a long time, even getting AoE kills because the blob underestimates me.

Theorycrafting goes beyond math and supposition, it also needs a dose of actual testing and real engagement to make a call. HA on live right now is very strong when played correctly. The version on PTS is going to be even stronger. Suffice to say, no additional changes are needed, in fact in some aspects HA is going to be damn overpowered.

Jade1986 · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

Good research, but you've left out a couple of things:

Light Armor only grants more damage vs people without a dmg shield, and that damage isn't even close to being "10-15% as you claim". 4884 Penetration=7.4% damage and the benefit you gain from Light Armor's 10% crit depends on target's impenetrable & your crit modifier.

For the record, Wrath passive=250 spell/weapon dmg when buffed with Major/Minor Sorcery/Brutality. 250 Spell/Weapon damage=3%~ damage.

So in the end, you either deal 3% more damage when wearing heavy armor or some 5-6% less damage compared to a light armor user (while gaining about 6.5% more mitigation).

As far as sustain goes... you cannot really compare ability costs with regeneration. Regeneration happens all the time, where as abilities aren't used all the time. Also, you get both magicka and stamina when hit, not only one of the two.

Another thing is that there are abilities in the game that actually benefit from having a high cost. I suggest you look at the Templar skill "Honor the Dead" & see what it does.

Also, increased healing received and health regen add a lot of "mitigation" which you don't necessarily realize while playing. This is especially true for a magicka templar using sweeps, for whom 8% healing received is a huge boost to survivability.

TLDR: I don't think heavy armor is as bad as you make it sound. In fact, it is in my opinion best armor to use as a magicka templar at the moment & hopefully it'll be good for other builds too after next patch's buffs.

One thing I agree on is that the mitigation differences should be much larger between the armor types. Though that would probably make heavy armor op, if everything else were to remain the same.

Oh god, here comes the guy who thinks HA will be fine as is in the PTS.

Move along people dont even bother reading this. This guy thinks the bracing change is fine and the traits more than make up for it.

karakondzula · April 2016

Good post OP

Would like some flat DR % (about 10/15)for wearing 5 or more peaces instead of wrath passive.

I like the idea of using heavy attacks for sustain but they are just garbage. IF Eric Wrobel can speed them up and reduce their damage a bit, that would be fair. Also melee heavy attacks are kinda missing a lot, idk why but its way harder to weave heavy attacks than light.

Xsorus · April 2016

By the way...if you plan on running Black Rose this patch...run 7/7 heavy

r.jan_emailb16_ESO · April 2016

Rylana wrote: »

OP, your math only shows slight variations in terms of "pros" and "cons" to armor weights. A few percent here and there.

This is my counter, three parts. Mathematically refute me, if you can.

1. If you are dead, you cannot do damage or healing.
2. Heavy armor increases survivability passively without the need to do anything but slot it.
3. Survivability therefore allows for more sustain.

Another point - Your conclusions only seem to take damage output into account. Not every build or every role must fall into the holy trinity. In fact, in this game, its better they do not. Especially in Cyrodiil.

Hm, he posted:

SirSilverMask wrote: »

All gold equipment, defending 1 hand weapon, shield, plus major and minor ward active, also all passives are active for armor. Note that the differences in mitigation only stem from the armor chosen as all other values are constant.
HA provides 40.4% physical mitigation and 40.9% spell mitigation.
MA provides 35.3% physical mitigation and 35.8% spell mitigation.
LA provides 32.4% physical mitigation and 35.2% spell mitigation.
With this setup heavy armor provides about 5% more mitigation then the other armors which stems from about a 3300 higher armor rating.

You recieve increased healing as a HA user, which adds survivability, correct. But apart from that, the passive mitigation is really low. You can also cast more defensive/healing skills (or dodge more often) in LA or MA. Passive mitigation alone won't keep you alive.

More sustain, that's a tricky one, and basically all has been said already. I'd like to add that the stamina regen from the HA passive is a nice addition to magicka builds.

All in all, I'm not sure how a HA build will fare in PvP end of next month. I'll most likely try it on my DK, though.

Rylana · April 2016

Tell me with a straight face that this toon isnt strong for PvP

Tell me again, with a straight face, that these stats are bad for either tanking OR healing a vet dungeon or trial.

Tell me again, how 5HA is bad.

Holygoblin will disagree all day.

DDuke · April 2016

hrothbern wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

@DDuke , you say:
I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

I think all contributors and readers of this thread, as well as the thread http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/261958/restore-bracing-8-sturdy-12-5-block-cost-mitigation#latest
are keen to get a good comparison between LA, MA and HA assembled together.

There are many factors involved, which make such a comparison very difficult.
The most disturbing factors in modelling (what we try to do !), leading to confusing discussions, affecting the productive and constructive consensus, are always the hidden assumptions at the very core of a model.

From you highlighted statement I get the impression that you compare very much LA and HA in PVP.
In which case your root assumption is not identical to the root assumption of OP.
But I can be wrong. If so please correct me.

The simple question I have: Are you also doing just fine with HA in vMA ?

You showed a vid in PVP.
Can you also show a vid in vMA ?

My comparison thinking leads me to:

IF HA is comparable viable with LA, a HA build should be ok in doing vMA, be it, that it will be a "slow, but sure" build to do it, and ofc not reach the top of the weekly leaderboard.
(after all vMA is for DPS builds with the minimal sufficient Health sustain and minmal sufficient Resource to max out DPS/self-HPS)

I've done vMSA plenty of times on my Templar. Maybe I'll do a "Magicka Templar vMSA guide", though I already have a stamblade one on my channel.

I'd say it's a lot easier on the magicka templar tank, since everything basicly just tickles you. You can stand in AoEs, you can leave certain attacks unblocked, you don't need to roll dodge some things.

All things that are doable in heavy armor, but would result in a swift death for a light armor character.

@SirSilverMask
Again, you're numbers are very detached from reality. The only ones that have been correct are the armor mitigation differences.

10% crit=/=5% damage/healing, even if you deal/heal 50% with each crit.
-
40 hits for 100 damage=4000
36 normal hits for 100 damage, 4 hits for 150 damage=4200 (5 increase, congratulations)

now, what if you don't have 0% crit chance?

50% crit chance:

20 hits for 150 damage, 20 hits for 100 damage=5000

add +10%

24 hits for 150 damage, 16 hits for 100 damage=5200

4% increase to your damage, not 5%.

Magic.
-

How about 75% crit chance?

30 crits for 150 damage, 10 hits for 100 damage=5500

add +10%

34 crits for 150 damage, 6 hits for 100 damage=5700

3.7% increase to your damage, not 5%
-

Ok, let's say you only have 30% crit chance.

12 crits for 150 damage, 28 hits for 100 damage=4600

add +10%

16 crits for 150 damage, 24 hits for 100 damage=4800

4.35% increase, not 5%.

As you see, the return you get from critical strike chance is subject to diminishing returns. Saying 10% crit=5% more dmg/healing is very shortsighted

By the way, what I forgot earlier is that Wrath also increases your healing by an average of 3.3% (I'm too lazy to calculate the exact number, but going by the basis that damaging abilities average 1.2% increase & heals have a slightly higher skillcoefficient). So the total amount heavy armor is going to increase your healing is somewhere in the vicinity of 11% rather than 8%.

Anyway, I invite you to prove me wrong!

Make a light armor magicka templar tank (PvE or PvP), show me it works & that you don't get instagibbed by anything and everything.

DDuke · April 2016

Rylana wrote: »

Tell me with a straight face that this toon isnt strong for PvP

Tell me again, with a straight face, that these stats are bad for either tanking OR healing a vet dungeon or trial.

Tell me again, how 5HA is bad.

Holygoblin will disagree all day.

Not bad. Here's my stats (buffed) on Live:

Missing some scroll buffs etc but oh well :P

Rylana · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Tell me with a straight face that this toon isnt strong for PvP

Tell me again, with a straight face, that these stats are bad for either tanking OR healing a vet dungeon or trial.

Tell me again, how 5HA is bad.

Holygoblin will disagree all day.

Not bad. Here's my stats (buffed) on Live:

Missing some scroll buffs etc but oh well :P

Yeah I could get way higher spell damage if I wanted to, but ive found that for what I do, 2400-2500 is just about right. If I were to go that way, id lose about 400 regen and thats toeing the line of where I like to be.

Actually your stats are pretty close to what mine would look like to get that much spelldamage.

DDuke · April 2016

Rylana wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Tell me with a straight face that this toon isnt strong for PvP

Tell me again, with a straight face, that these stats are bad for either tanking OR healing a vet dungeon or trial.

Tell me again, how 5HA is bad.

Holygoblin will disagree all day.

Not bad. Here's my stats (buffed) on Live:

Missing some scroll buffs etc but oh well :P

Yeah I could get way higher spell damage if I wanted to, but ive found that for what I do, 2400-2500 is just about right. If I were to go that way, id lose about 400 regen and thats toeing the line of where I like to be.

Actually your stats are pretty close to what mine would look like to get that much spelldamage.

That's from my DW bar though, on S&B there's way more physical resistance & 1k'ish more magicka, while spell dmg goes down to 3k'ish.

How do you survive with 600 stam regen though? Sounds dangerous

hrothbern · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

hrothbern wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

What people expect on HA : Tankiness
In realty : Weakest in every aspect

Sadly, survivability is all about Block, dodge, and shield from day one. Now that HA lost its spot for block, all we have is 5% higher mitigation which means nothing in high burst meta.

I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

In fact, this patch with all the heavy armor buffs is likely going to push it into the "ridiculously overpowered" territory.

@DDuke , you say:
I am doing just fine on a heavy armor templar that doesn't permablock, doesn't dodge much and doesn't shield at all.

I think all contributors and readers of this thread, as well as the thread http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/261958/restore-bracing-8-sturdy-12-5-block-cost-mitigation#latest
are keen to get a good comparison between LA, MA and HA assembled together.

There are many factors involved, which make such a comparison very difficult.
The most disturbing factors in modelling (what we try to do !), leading to confusing discussions, affecting the productive and constructive consensus, are always the hidden assumptions at the very core of a model.

From you highlighted statement I get the impression that you compare very much LA and HA in PVP.
In which case your root assumption is not identical to the root assumption of OP.
But I can be wrong. If so please correct me.

The simple question I have: Are you also doing just fine with HA in vMA ?

You showed a vid in PVP.
Can you also show a vid in vMA ?

My comparison thinking leads me to:

IF HA is comparable viable with LA, a HA build should be ok in doing vMA, be it, that it will be a "slow, but sure" build to do it, and ofc not reach the top of the weekly leaderboard.
(after all vMA is for DPS builds with the minimal sufficient Health sustain and minmal sufficient Resource to max out DPS/self-HPS)

I've done vMSA plenty of times on my Templar. Maybe I'll do a "Magicka Templar vMSA guide", though I already have a stamblade one on my channel.

I'd say it's a lot easier on the magicka templar tank, since everything basicly just tickles you. You can stand in AoEs, you can leave certain attacks unblocked, you don't need to roll dodge some things.

All things that are doable in heavy armor, but would result in a swift death for a light armor character.

@SirSilverMask
Again, you're numbers are very detached from reality. The only ones that have been correct are the armor mitigation differences.

10% crit=/=5% damage/healing, even if you deal/heal 50% with each crit.
-
40 hits for 100 damage=4000
36 normal hits for 100 damage, 4 hits for 150 damage=4200 (5 increase, congratulations)

now, what if you don't have 0% crit chance?

50% crit chance:

20 hits for 150 damage, 20 hits for 100 damage=5000

add +10%

24 hits for 150 damage, 16 hits for 100 damage=5200

4% increase to your damage, not 5%.

Magic.
-

How about 75% crit chance?

30 crits for 150 damage, 10 hits for 100 damage=5500

add +10%

34 crits for 150 damage, 6 hits for 100 damage=5700

3.7% increase to your damage, not 5%
-

Ok, let's say you only have 30% crit chance.

12 crits for 150 damage, 28 hits for 100 damage=4600

add +10%

16 crits for 150 damage, 24 hits for 100 damage=4800

4.35% increase, not 5%.

As you see, the return you get from critical strike chance is subject to diminishing returns. Saying 10% crit=5% more dmg/healing is very shortsighted

By the way, what I forgot earlier is that Wrath also increases your healing by an average of 3.3% (I'm too lazy to calculate the exact number, but going by the basis that damaging abilities average 1.2% increase & heals have a slightly higher skillcoefficient). So the total amount heavy armor is going to increase your healing is somewhere in the vicinity of 11% rather than 8%.

Anyway, I invite you to prove me wrong!

Make a light armor magicka templar tank (PvE or PvP), show me it works & that you don't get instagibbed by anything and everything.

I've done vMSA plenty of times on my Templar. Maybe I'll do a "Magicka Templar vMSA guide", though I already have a stamblade one on my channel.

Thanks @DDuke , that's good info. Field experience in controlled set ups, and vMA is a benchmark, are the most hard facts there are. Modelling always suffers from loose cannon arguments and from overlooking effects.

A guide is nice
but just a vid from vMA would already be great

I am especially interested in the rotations.
Focussing on the Resource sustain aspect, the average costs of abilities needed and therefore used, together with average abilities used per second in combat, are imo the key pivot for comparising sustain between the Armor types.

Armitas · April 2016

Rylana wrote: »

Dang Rylana 13k you are broke as heeeck.

Looks like we got a similar build.