We are now at the point that on the recent spree of vDSA runs I did I did not allow a single mag dps and accepted only stam dps's with vMA weapons. This is the first time I have ever been so inflexibly restrictive of resource type and gear but it is simply not worth it to do content of this difficulty any other way. During these runs I played with a variety of different skill level stam dps's. Some, ironically, are some of the finest mag dps players on the server and only recently started playing stam toons. They got their vMA dual wield weapons ages ago on mag toons and only recently switched to stam. They may have sucked for stam (were often almost 10k behind experienced stam players) but they were still often 10k higher in dps than on their top of the heap perfectly practiced magica toons. That is how far from any kind of parity we now are and how exclusionary, in terms of both gear and build, but not so much in terms of skill, it is now beneficial to be. I am dropping this all here on PTS now because I think PTS is the place, and this is the time most beneficial to get developer attention right before the balance portion of a content development cycle.

Table of contents
Content scaling and to buff mag or nerf stam
Utility, the red herring
Deeeeeps
Gear the biggest culprit
vDSA destro staff as an answer to lack of two vMA mag weapons
Vicious vs. Infallible:
Intrinsics, relics of a very different past
Skills, the silver lining
Stepwise summary of stam vs magica

Other unrelated bugaboos
Dps dummies:
Single cast ground skills
General vDSA weapon weakness
Friends list whisper command
Groupfinder

Content scaling and to buff mag or nerf stam:
I don't think any one will argue that stam is doing too much dps and mag not enough. It is more complicated than this. Some content, vMA and vSO, for instance, are scaled for around 20k and are well suited for mag dps, some content, pledges, are scaled for 10k and not suited for anything, others, vAA hard mode, are scalled for 35k and well suited for stam dps, and still others vDSA, are so unevenly scaled that they don't work for anything since high enough dps to down the final bosses adds on schedule also allows you to dps them down so fast that you can actually prevent their even spawning (not sure why you guys screwed all this up so much by scaling up the adds health many times more than the bosses.) I understand that I am oversimplifying somewhat as you intend for anyone breathing to be able to do pledges, that scaling is not wrong or an accident, but I do think you intended vMA and vDSA to be on similar levels as well as vAA and vSO. In fact they are not and, in the case of vDSA, they are obviously not even on the same level as themselves. I really don't think it takes an unreasonable amount of time or intelligence to get this stuff right and I think it should be fixed.

Utility, the red herring:
Now lets talk about stam vs magica regarding utility. It has long been said that magica has more utility and stam does more dps. It was speculated that this was intended and for a long time it was at least true. Most endgame players continued to be mag despite knowing full well that stam was higher dps because the utility, usually in the form of passive NB heals, breath on bar templars who also had shards, dk's that could slot chains or the AOE interupt, or sorcs with a massive shield, was deemed worth it. Well, NB passive heals have been massively nerfed (fewer, they don't double crit, and the aoe one dosen't scale) as has the templar breath (half as many heals), everybody, stam or magica, now has a universal sheild, and the DK skills are, except for the second boss in vMOL, just run by the tank. Sure there is still some utility but it is not what is was. From the other direction, stam has been given a sheild, vigor for personal and group heals, and has a weapon major expedition / damage mitigation. Stam sorc has even more utility with a universal heals for damage (shared with mag) and a major expedition / massive AOE (not shared.) Realistically I do not consider mag toons to have any more utility than stam at this point unless you consider the other two roles (healer and tank) in a group to be the utility. The only thing that mag toons have is range and, realistically, only NB's, sorcs, have this with their full dps as the highest maglar and magdk builds are melee.

Deeeeeps
Realistically, even if magica still had great utility relative to stam I don't think anybody would favor it because the dps is just not in the ball park any more. Back when I favored utility mag over higher dps stam I would often be beaten by 5-10k on perfectly stationary stam friendly bosses and win by 5k on ones that had a lot of mechanics and movement. It was a trade off, utility and better performance on more involved bosses for massively lower AOE (it was lower even before removing magica det and nerfing NB's funnel) and performance on less involved bosses. Now, on a vDSA boss I might be at 23k and a comparably skilled stam player at 45k or even a new convert with vMA weapons at 35k. It's not ball park and magica is soundly beaten even on the most stam unfriendly bosses. Furthermore, most of the things that make a boss stam unfriendly do not come into play anymore as all such mechanics long ceased to even be done. In the case of the vDSA final boss, perhaps the best case in point, the second adds do not even spawn for high dps stam groups. That boss is one of the hardest fights in the game to beat with mag dps right now and it is trivial for stam users. This despite the fact that older methods of doing it decidedly favored ranged players. While I realize that a few, I would call them esoteric, mag builds do not quite suffer the same magnitude of deficiency and are still used in some trials. These being splash sorc and dk builds. Probably less than 10 total players exist on the NA server who both have the equipment and have mastered these builds which are still, I might add, significantly lower in damage output than comparably skilled stam builds. Not only are these players and builds the exception to the rule of magica being uncompetitive but they are also comparing apples to oranges as players of this skill, on stam, would still gain 10k or more. Magica is simply too far in dps from stam for the utility that it doesn't have anyway to make up the ground.
We will divide the reasons for of this into 3 main categories. Gear, intrinsics, and skills. Unlike the past, skill balance is actually in the best place it has even been (bravo by the way) and with the exception of stam DK is really pretty good.

Gear the biggest culprit:
Gear is the first and largest of the issues. According to the PTS notes, you are adjusting vMA dual wield for +3k wep damage to +2k and this is a start but only that. It is basic that, in order to balance stam and mag generally, their elite gear must also be balanced since otherwise to balance elite players would hamper the general populace. Alcast demonstrated that vMA dual wield weapons are worth 12k dps over crafted set weapons. Stam also gets a vMA bow whereas magica does not get a second vMA buff weapon. Together this is maybe 14k maybe 15k in total vMA buff for stam and only about 2.5k for mag. Now you have nerfed vMA dual weild so 11k total instead. Still you see that this is too big a difference. vMA dual weild must be adjusted to a max 3k in benefit (~750 weapon power buff.) Furthermore, vDSA destro staff (currently not worth running except on healer back bar) must be made around a ~2-3k buff for mag users. This could be done by any combination of making the skill and the enchant better (currently this DOT is too low to be used and the buff to it is also poor) or, by just adding to the magica pool buff (this should be done anyway as it is only half as strong as the vMA spell power buff, and being basically a standard single peice buff is rather neutral overall as it is not like you are going to leave a slot without a set peice in it.) I would not buff the vMA destro to match the dual weild. ~2-3k is really a good enough buff for an elite weapon. Having the vMA staff be best in slot is necessary for mag users as they must have elite weapon buffs on both bars just as stam users do in order to balance things. Since, unlike stam users, they have only one weapon having a vMA on one bar and a vDSA on the other is the only way to achieve this.

vDSA destro staff as an answer to lack of two vMA mag weapons:
Getting further into the problems with the vDSA staff that is not currently worth running on a dps, it really has three issues. These are it's static magica buff, the ability it buffs, and the magnitude of that buff. The static magica buff of 1k is insignificantly different than a standard strength magica set buff. In all but rare situations it will be replacing such a set item and therefore this buff is lateral and not a buff at all. As for the ability, a few players, who still magica pvp, use clench as a CC. They mostly do this with non-flame varieties of staff. Nobody uses it in PVE because, despite the attractive 8 second DOT nature of it, the DOT is far to low in magnitude. With the highest damage flame staff variety, on my NB, the DOT totals 11.3k over 8 seconds and would replace a funnel health that hits for 8k and a magelight worth 5.4% (seems like it should be 7% but tool tips are always wrong) max magica while costing 2428 magica instead of 873. Therefore, even in an ideal weave with no lost DOT time it could be expected to loose the player significant DPS at a very high cost in magica. This DOT is not even close to useful as a damage source. Realistically for a DOT to be worth sloting the bare minimum is about +2k dps. The damage from flame clench would have to be increased by more than 2x for it to be worth slotting as a DOT even on a NB for which it only would be replacing the lowly magelight on the bar. If flame clench were made viable that still would not get the vDSA staff to the +~2-3k dps increase that it would need to have to balance stam and magic as it's enchant adds only 516 total damage to this DOT. This is one of those magnitudes that is just kind of comical. For those interested it adds that damage to the initial hit and none to each tick but the effect is the same. The enchant adds a whopping 64.5 damage per second to that ability that is itself a dps loss. It therefore needs to be roughly 39 times stronger than it is after the base skill is itself buffed by more than 2x. Obviously you will want to spread that out over the DOT's a bit or it would be roughly of the damage magnitude and CC effect of a crit charge (not counting vMA two hander lol) in PVP and you know who might get killed by a magica build and nerf us all again.

Vicious vs. Infallible:
On the gear front, vMA is not the only issue as the elite 5 peice stam set vicious opidian is far better than the elite 5 peice mag set, infallible aether. both of which are BIS for their respective builds. For some reason infallible was made a group buff set that actually doesn't proc it's 5 peice group or personal buff heavy attack buff for any of the classic, ranged mag dps weave builds (which this set was originally designed for). It is still barely BIS (actually if you have a vMA staff only the 3 or 4 peice is BIS) because of the 3 piece buff but it is not impressive while VO is awe inspiring. At the very least both 5 peice buffs of Infallible should be made to proc on all light and heavy attacks in the manner of the vMA staff and then it should be evaluated to see if that is enough. I should add that interestingly, the big stam return buff on VO actually procs even on kills not made by the player wearing it so it is actually even better than it says. Lastly, though it matters not to the endgame player, there is no truly mag dps monster set amongst the new sets in the way their is now a stam dps set. by this I mean a stam dps set will have a + wep damage and a melee range dps special proc. This exists. A comparable mag would have a + spell damage and a ranged dps special proc (like mephalas used too, neraneth, or valken.) No such set exists and no + spell damage first bonus sets are slated. I might also add that because of the strength of VO it is unlikely that anyone will use a stam dps monster set whereas because of the weakness of Infallible 3 Infal, 5 TBS or Julianos, 2 monster, and 1 vMA (or buffed masters) would actually be appealing.

Intrinsics, relics of a very different past:
Much of the problem with intrinsics is a relic of the past that has not been corrected for current conditions. An example of this is the excess weapon damage of dual wield or two handed relative to staff. Magic was far more versatile and had slightly more damage output than stam (there were actually 2 stam dps's on each of our #1 NA 1.5 runs) when this change was made. Though it was poor execution then, it made some sense. Now that stam close to doubles magic dps and has every bit the utility it makes no sense. Similarly, the passives on weapon lines are better than those on staff and medium armor passives better than light. These things were irrelevant when magica regenerated ultimate at 4x the rate of stam, had spell sym, all class skills and ultimates scaled to magica, and only magica had decent heals. None of these are now the case and so these imbalances matter bigtime. Lastly, armor should also be returned to the mirror image of medium providing more spell resistance and less physical resistance as before instead of just less resistance overall.

Skills, the silver lining:
I mention skills last because, overall, I believe these are better balanced today then they have ever been before. I know, it's hard to believe this since problems with gear sets and intrinsics have overall balance mag vs. stam the worst it has ever been but I actually don't think the skills themselves are very off. The only adjustments I would suggest prior to fixing the gear and intrinsic imbalances are a reduction in magnitude of some of the Stam DK DOT's. These were scaled back in the days when they were doing not poison but fire damage and thus were unbuffed by CP passives. They need a 20-30% reduction.

Stepwise summary of stam vs magica:
Step 1, balancing gear:
Set vMA dual weild to + 750 weapon damage
Make all 5 peice infallible buffs proc on all light or heavy attacks
I increase the damage of clench by about 2.5x, increase the masters destro staffs buff to it by probably 30x, and increase the base magica pool on the staff 2x.
Or,
Just increase the magica pool buff of the staff by enough to increase dps by the 2-3k (this would be a very big number) and forget the skill that you don't want to make useful.

Step 2, balancing intrinsics:
If step 1 still leaves your magica builds far behind the stam ones in output,
Bring staff spell power in line with that of two handed and dual weild.
Buff light armor and worthless staff passives.
Step 3, stam DK Dot's:
You really should probably nerf some of the stam DK dot's by around 20%

Other unrelated bugaboos:

Dps dummies:
Probably the first problem behind all other problems is, naturally, measuring the problem. The lack of a dps dummy will have many argue with the dps numbers I use in this post based mostly on differences in where we are considering those dps numbers derived from rather than any actual differences of opinion. That will muddy the issue here as it no doubt does inside your dev team meetings. Fix it, put dummies in every fighters guild, lore friendly, fixed. Furthermore, these dummies should be monitored to see what players are doing so that different builds could be analyzed and balanced easily by the dev's.

Single cast ground skills:
Thank you for your attempt to fix the double press ground cast skills such as healing springs and liquid lightning. However, the problem is not solved. Press healing springs twice and see what happens. Sure the first one goes off but the second actually doesn't and instead sticks at half cast with the circle but not the cast. It should never be stuck half cast as it prevents other things from going off. Presses that happen mid first cast should just que like everything else and be wiped if a different key, say breath, is pressed. People are still dying.

General vDSA weapon weakness:
Other vDSA weapons also really aren't strong enough. This is content is simalar in difficulty and time to complete to vMA. I am sure that even stam classes with a spamable such as stamplar and stamblade would like to use their spamable in concert with vDSA dual weild instead of vMA they just can't because vDSA weapons arn't much good and vMA ones are the most OP thing this game has had since batswarm at launch. Similarly, a ranged stam build with vMA and vDSA bows one on each bar is an interesting thought. right now really only the masters resto staff (BIS and basically required to return stam to all your hungry stam DPS's,) masters sword (some tanks like but others don't,) and masters greatsword (ok if you don't have a vMA one) are the only masters weapons of interest of which only resto staff is BIS.

Friends list whisper command:
Can I get a / command and color for a friends-list whisper. We have individual whispers and guild whispers but damn a friends-list one would be useful. It is just so hard to go one by one down the list trying to put together or finish filling a 12 man raid. Make it ESO plus if you have too but man would that ever be some nice functionality.

Groupfinder:
You probably already know this, groupfinder still doesn't work. Last time I got a tank who was actually offline and two players marked heals only. I am not sure why this is so hard to get right but I do know it is still a total mess. It doesn't help that it insists on pulling you into the dungeon after making these messes of a group as you can't do anything and are interrupted by travels as you try to fix the issue. Combine all this with the timeout when you leave a formed group, the difficulty of kicking players, and I would really rather just stand around grahatwood screaming my head off when I am looking to pug it.

Thanks for reading,
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