Autolycus wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

These changes are great for Stamina UNDER THE CONDITION that Magicka Sorceror does not remain in it's current form and is brought back down to levels associated with the other mag DPS classes. The last few posts have been a giant vaccum of "STAM GOT NERFED LIKE MAG, STAM STILL USELESS" without really looking more into what all was balanced.

First and foremost, stamina is significantly less reliant on Warlord than magicka is on Magician. Don't believe me? You can EASILY test on live, remove all potions and resource return mechanics and see how long you can beat on a dummy before you run out of resources on stam and mag. This is a net balance gain in favor of stamina. The orbs and shards change also slants strongly towards stamina, another net buff in favor of stamina.

Overall, stamina in trials should only be noticeably affected using current builds with some rotation reworking being required to maintain functional resource management. This alone will put stamina squarely into the "sustained DPS" category, wherein mag will not be able to compete due to the excessively poor sustain they are going to feel come next patch. Mag will fulfill burst AOE and nuking capabilities.

The only thing I've seen that will help stamina with sustained dps in trials is the change to Orbs, which can now restore stamina if the lowest resource by percentage. But stamina builds were already struggling to sustain in trials, I know stamDKs and stam Sorcs that have been consistently having resource troubles since the last update. So the complete removal of Warlord, while it may be more punishing to magicka to lose Magician, is still a major hit to stamina sustain. Couple that with the inability to survive basic mechanics, like raid-wide stomps, even while blocking, and the case for stamina still looks extremely bad imho.

Furthermore, survivability for stam builds was decreased substantially as well. They took 10% DR off of Hardy and Elemental Defender, chances are most people won't even get the full 15% on it now anyway because of the severe diminishing returns. Even if you have a Warden in group giving everyone Major Ward and Resolve, you won't make up half of that loss in DR. Stam builds look extremely bad on paper still imho. Of course, my opinion may change with more testing and if there are changes to these notes, but I sincerely doubt it.

Autolycus wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

These changes are great for Stamina UNDER THE CONDITION that Magicka Sorceror does not remain in it's current form and is brought back down to levels associated with the other mag DPS classes. The last few posts have been a giant vaccum of "STAM GOT NERFED LIKE MAG, STAM STILL USELESS" without really looking more into what all was balanced.

First and foremost, stamina is significantly less reliant on Warlord than magicka is on Magician. Don't believe me? You can EASILY test on live, remove all potions and resource return mechanics and see how long you can beat on a dummy before you run out of resources on stam and mag. This is a net balance gain in favor of stamina. The orbs and shards change also slants strongly towards stamina, another net buff in favor of stamina.

Overall, stamina in trials should only be noticeably affected using current builds with some rotation reworking being required to maintain functional resource management. This alone will put stamina squarely into the "sustained DPS" category, wherein mag will not be able to compete due to the excessively poor sustain they are going to feel come next patch. Mag will fulfill burst AOE and nuking capabilities.

The only thing I've seen that will help stamina with sustained dps in trials is the change to Orbs, which can now restore stamina if the lowest resource by percentage. But stamina builds were already struggling to sustain in trials, I know stamDKs and stam Sorcs that have been consistently having resource troubles since the last update. So the complete removal of Warlord, while it may be more punishing to magicka to lose Magician, is still a major hit to stamina sustain. Couple that with the inability to survive basic mechanics, like raid-wide stomps, even while blocking, and the case for stamina still looks extremely bad imho.

Furthermore, survivability for stam builds was decreased substantially as well. They took 10% DR off of Hardy and Elemental Defender, chances are most people won't even get the full 15% on it now anyway because of the severe diminishing returns. Even if you have a Warden in group giving everyone Major Ward and Resolve, you won't make up half of that loss in DR. Stam builds look extremely bad on paper still imho. Of course, my opinion may change with more testing and if there are changes to these notes, but I sincerely doubt it.

@Autolycus

Regarding survivability, seems like you're ignoring the change to the Ironclad CP. We should end up with more survivability due to CP than we had previously since Ironclad will buff mitigation for all Direct Damage be it physical or elemental. Same goes for damage output with the new Master-at-Arms CP.

Was Ironclad reworked and I missed something? Is that not reduced stun, fear, snare still?

Autolycus wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

These changes are great for Stamina UNDER THE CONDITION that Magicka Sorceror does not remain in it's current form and is brought back down to levels associated with the other mag DPS classes. The last few posts have been a giant vaccum of "STAM GOT NERFED LIKE MAG, STAM STILL USELESS" without really looking more into what all was balanced.

First and foremost, stamina is significantly less reliant on Warlord than magicka is on Magician. Don't believe me? You can EASILY test on live, remove all potions and resource return mechanics and see how long you can beat on a dummy before you run out of resources on stam and mag. This is a net balance gain in favor of stamina. The orbs and shards change also slants strongly towards stamina, another net buff in favor of stamina.

Overall, stamina in trials should only be noticeably affected using current builds with some rotation reworking being required to maintain functional resource management. This alone will put stamina squarely into the "sustained DPS" category, wherein mag will not be able to compete due to the excessively poor sustain they are going to feel come next patch. Mag will fulfill burst AOE and nuking capabilities.

The only thing I've seen that will help stamina with sustained dps in trials is the change to Orbs, which can now restore stamina if the lowest resource by percentage. But stamina builds were already struggling to sustain in trials, I know stamDKs and stam Sorcs that have been consistently having resource troubles since the last update. So the complete removal of Warlord, while it may be more punishing to magicka to lose Magician, is still a major hit to stamina sustain. Couple that with the inability to survive basic mechanics, like raid-wide stomps, even while blocking, and the case for stamina still looks extremely bad imho.

Furthermore, survivability for stam builds was decreased substantially as well. They took 10% DR off of Hardy and Elemental Defender, chances are most people won't even get the full 15% on it now anyway because of the severe diminishing returns. Even if you have a Warden in group giving everyone Major Ward and Resolve, you won't make up half of that loss in DR. Stam builds look extremely bad on paper still imho. Of course, my opinion may change with more testing and if there are changes to these notes, but I sincerely doubt it.

@Autolycus

Regarding survivability, seems like you're ignoring the change to the Ironclad CP. We should end up with more survivability due to CP than we had previously since Ironclad will buff mitigation for all Direct Damage be it physical or elemental. Same goes for damage output with the new Master-at-Arms CP.

Was Ironclad reworked and I missed something? Is that not reduced stun, fear, snare still?

@Autolycus it was completely changed, and Bow Expert was removed and replaced with Master-at-Arms. Both of them scale up to 25% with 100 CP.

Ironclad: This passive ability now reduces the damage you take from direct damage attacks, instead of reducing the duration of crowd control abilities used against you.

Bow Expert:
Renamed this passive to Master-at-Arms.
This passive ability now increases your damage done with direct damage attacks, instead of increasing your Light and Heavy Attack damage with Bows.

Ah yes, thanks for pointing that out. It's a fair point. I'm not convinced it makes up for what was lost. The benefit of this passive is highly contingent upon context with respect to pve.

I can easily see the argument for diversifying how we allocate our CP from this suggestion. I don't see how it makes up for the effective DR that was lost because the severe diminishing returns on Hardy and Ele Defender on 100 points is going to force most of us to go 50-75 instead. We go from reducing all damage of multiple types to having direct-damage and DoT reductions. It's not as good, and doesn't work everywhere. It's certainly better for pvp than pve.

Yeah, it'll need to be tested, but at a glance it seems like a resistance buff to me. A lot of PvE incoming damage is direct damage as far as I'm aware. SO is probably the exception to that, but even there some of the most dangerous attacks are direct damage (like Stonebreaker avalanche). In HRC and AA it's almost all direct damage other than the Overcharger lightning curse and Mage black holes in AA. The survivability checks in vMoL (primarily the shield explosions on the first boss) should mostly be direct damage as well.

And because Thick Skinned remains a 25% max passive, the further frontloading means you can get better DoT resistance with fewer CP.

Plus, we'll have 10 extra CP to allocate in defensive stats.

You've given me some good food for thought. I'll keep this all in mind as I continue to test. Thanks!