Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Solid write-up. Food for thought: with the change from light attack weaving to heavy attack weaving, will this help bridge the gap between DW DPS, and 2H DPS considering the Follow-up passive of the 2H?

casparian wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Solid write-up. Food for thought: with the change from light attack weaving to heavy attack weaving, will this help bridge the gap between DW DPS, and 2H DPS considering the Follow-up passive of the 2H?

That passive and Forceful might compensate for the longer heavy attack charge times. Combine this with a buff to Carve/Brawler (please ZOS) and 2H might be worth trying out again.

Asmael wrote: »

With a partial lifting of the NDA, it's now possible to discuss the balance and sustain changes to the existing classes. Right on time, as I spent my time trying out all the possible stamina variations for said patch (including the Warden, but that's still under NDA, so another time perhaps) against the target dummy and the new trial (both normal and veteran).

Before going in about each specific class, I'd like to comment on the general state of stamina DDs in the competitive raiding scene in the current patch (Homestead), which turns out to be pretty much as expected. You can find a comment I made on the matter right before Homestead drops (which was basically a way to say that the last remaining stamina characters would be RIP).

I can absolutely understand the reasoning behind the changes, but I don't agree with the changes themselves, as there are quite a few collateral victims.

I'll be blunt: there isn't a single reason to bring a stamina damage dealer (DD) in a trial next patch. Not. A. Single. One. We have 0 buffs to look forward to, only nerfs, while magicka gets the extra 8% STDPS (single target DPS) or AoE DPS based on staff used, so they have some nice theorycrafting going on for next patch. For stamina, the change to bow simply won't work. The current best stamina setup will not change, and it doesn't benefit from this change at all.

That being said: I want to go over the current PvE balance of stamina / magicka in the current patch, and how things will change with the PTS, and most importantly: why.

DDs can be evaluted thru multiple angles: survivability, AoE potency, single target potency, cleave damage, melee / ranged, sustain, utility and survivability. I'll go through each of these points for both stamina and magicka.

AoE potency

In the current patch, we have 2 main stamina DDs seeing competitive use: DKs and sorcerers, who happen to the stamina DDs with the highest AoE potency of all stamina classes. This is a first point, because it defines your capability of destroying packs of mobs, which is critical to a group, since it represents approximately 50%~ of a trial's opposition.

• Stamina DKs rely on Standard to buff up their AoE capabilities. It is getting nerfed with next patch.
• Stamina sorcs rely on Hurricane as well as strong damage dealing passives. Hurricane is getting nerfed patch.
• Stamina nightblades have only passives, as Power Extraction is a weaker version of Steel Tornado.
• Stamina templars have only passives, as Biting jabs has a very small AoE.

Clearing tactics for trash packs rely on the careful use of ultimates and positioning to minimize the time required. The introduction of the Destro ult has increased magicka's potential in this regard, as you'll not always get the opportunity to stack up mobs in an efficient enough manner to make Meteor worthwhile (at least not as much as the destro ultimate).

As it currently stands, for a pack burn, magicka DPS is overall higher than stamina. The strongest stamina option is stam DK with Standard and caltrops, which can actually compete with magicka options as it currently. Seeing a 25% nerf to Standard's damage buff (15% = 20% * ( 1 - 0.25 )) is going to increase the gap in terms of maximum AoE potential between the specs.

Other point: caltrops see its use limited due the stacking made impossible. I'm absolutely aware of how messed up things would be in PvP if this were to be stackable again, so I'm not going to suggest that.

For short: the next patch is a rather small nerf to stamina potency, magicka will remain on a rather similar ground. This is not what I'd consider the most critical, since stamina builds are not currently used for their AoE potency anyway.

Single Target potency

THIS, is why stamina is no more competitive next patch. Preliminar tests of magicka single target DPS has shown either similar results or an increase. Stamina is taking a pretty huge hit in this regard, as there is no extra 8% single target option coming for them. One Tamriel already reduced the gap quite a bit, next patch will remove it completely.

To go over the current stamina options:

• Stamina DKs currently have the highest single target DPS ingame. This is going to be reduced both the overall stamina nerf, but also the Standard nerf.
• Stamina sorcerers and stamina nightblades are on a rather even ground. Excluding the overall nerfs, sorcerers will do very slighty less with the Hurricane change (nothing significant otherwise for NBs)
• Stamina templars... with no significant class ultimate, passives outclassed by sorcerers, jabs being an "overall good, master of none" ability, they are lacking if they solely use Biting Jabs. Drastically lacking.

This is the most critical part, as Single Target DPS is currently stamina DDs' niche. If you remove it, you remove the last reason to have stamina DDs in competitive groups.

Single target DPS is required, as it allows groups to help skipping mechanics. Their (stamina DDs) sole purpose in raid is to shorten boss fights.

If you want to remove the gap between magicka and stamina, you'll need to change something else. If you don't, I hope you invested a few skill points in role playing for your stamina sorc.

Cleave damage

Cleave damage can be defined as "damage dealt around a target while specifically focusing this target". To make this clear: If a magicka sorcerer focuses a boss, he's going to use Liquid Lightning, Elemental Blockade, Velocious Curse ( ), Force Pulse and Crystal Fragments.

The "Cleave" damage part is the damage dealt to adds by using Liquid Lightning, Elemental Blockade and Velocious curse.

The interesting part is that, when comparing magicka vs stamina parses, stamina has highly "focused" damage. Their cleave damage is extremely low (for a 56k parse as a stam DK, my cleave damage was 4k, which means 52k DPS was done on the boss).

When looking at current stamina builds:

• DKs have extremely low cleave damage. They can help it a bit with Caltrops and Noxious Breath, altho due to their role in a trial, it is recommended to favor Rending Slashes of Noxious Breath.
• NBs have the lowest cleave damage possible. Endless Hail. Caltrops if they slot it, Rend / Dawnbreaker as ultimates, and that's it.
• Sorcerers have the highest cleave damage of all stamina builds due in big part to Hurricane.
• Templars have either extremely bad cleave damage (maelstrom daggers setup) or good cleave damage (jabs setup)

Current trial tactics favor focusing the boss as much as possible to shorten the fight (and push higher scores), which is why having the necessary cleave damage to kill the adds without having to focus them at any point has become a strong point of magicka.

That being said, I don't think this is the most critical point.


Melee / Ranged

This is going to vary a lot depending on content, but in literally all cases, you won't be able to have 8 melees without taking unecessary risks:

• At least 1 ranged DD is required on Mantikora
• Zhaj, the first boss of vMoL, is notorious for severely punishing groups with a majority of melees. It is possible to have up to 6 melees with extremely good positioning (tank included), but you're shooting yourself in the feet by not picking as many ranged DDs as possible, as they also get the least DPS downtime from curses
• The Mage in AA will grow harder the more melees you have due to chain lightnings, as you need to clear the minimages (reflections).
• The Warrior have a few "Cleave" moves which represent a risk of one shot for melees.

There are other cases, just wanted to give a few.

Why is it related to stamina / magicka? Stamina has currently no good pure ranged options. Their lack of efficient class ranged options means they need to rely on a bow / bow build which currently doesn't compete with the more classic DW / Bow setup.

Because a bow / bow setup is not effective enough, stamina is either forced to be either underperforming or melee. Those trial conditions make competitive full stamina DDs raid inexistent.

The change to the bow passive is a good first step in this regard, so well done, but it's not going to be enough. I'd honestly don't want to see trials change to make it possible to have only 8 melees at all time, since the DDs also have to adapt to a given situation. Changing trials accordingly could also limit the mechanics in play, "a trial must be doable by 8 melees or bust it" isn't exactly great.

This is not a critical point, but an extremely nice addition.

Sustain

This is actually a strong point of stamina for all content. A stamina DD is almost self sustainable, as in they might only need a shard once in a while if a healer is using a Master restoration staff. There are no changes to stamina sustain in the next patch as it currently, only magicka with the introduction of Minor magickasteal. To go over the classes:

• Stamina DKs have the Earthen Heart passives, between Battle Roar and Helping hands (used either thru Igneous shield or Molten Armaments), they are in a very good spot.
• Stamina sorcerers have Dark Deal, a reduction to stamina cost with Unholy Knowledge and an extra 20% stam recovery.
• Stamina NBs have Siphoning Strikes.
• Stamina templars, you are the exception in a bad way. They do get 4% cost reduction, but Biting Jabs is an extremely expensive ability to spam (2903 stamina), and they don't have a good active way to recover stamina.

For magicka, their sustain comes from their healers in the current patch: Siphon Spirit, Worm's Cult set, Elemental Drain and Orbs. Next patch, Worm's Cult is probably going to be mandatory on a healer, and Orbs will need to pop all the time.

Stamina's strong point, heavy reliance on healers for magicka. Only change I would ask for is to slighty reduce the cost of Biting Jabs for templar (from 2903 to 2700 for instance). For magicka, the reliance on the healers make random groups an absolute PITA for magicka DDs, as you're not guranteed to get enough group support, and will likely spend a pretty large amount of time heavy attacking if you're a templar, DK or sorc, especially next patch.

Utility

Stamina provides completely different utility from magicka, and it's going to vary a lot depending on the class:

• Magicka templars provide the Spear synergy and Purify, they also have Nova if required for the mitigation.
• Magicka NBs can provide extra offhealing with Funnel Health (sees little use as Force Pulse is favored) and Veil of Blades for the mitigation if there's no Nova Available.
• Magicka DKs provide a damage boost thru Engulfing Flames and control with Chains, Deep Breath (interrupt) and snares / roots (Eruption / Burning Talons if used, altho Talons tend to see less play due to the cost and "meh" range)
• Magicka sorcerers provide the Conduit Synergy, Negates, and general OPness at doing MoL backyard (nurf! :O)

Stamina utility comes from constant snares from caltrops, access to some of the utility of magicka (chains for DKs, tho to a less extent due to the limited magicka pool) and backup group healing with Echoing Vigor which helps for dangerous trash pulls (Overcharge / Poison / constant damage)

Not a critical point, they both provide different utility. Bringing the extra group healing might be underrated, but that does make a difference in some situations.

Survivability

This is why stamina sees very little competitive play. In an environment where every single death costs a lot of time and points, staying alive has never been so critical, for the absolute best scores, if even a single person dies, the raid has to restart from the beginning.

Deadly Cloak has become pretty much mandatory due to the amount of AoEs in trials, Vigor is mostly for those situations where you take constant damage and have no guarantee to be saved by your healer. Damage shields are also important, as they allow you to limit repeated health damage and potential one shots.

The main point about staying alive in trials is that you'll almost always die because of burst damage due to a combination of mechanics, which means that the most important is to survive burst damage. Vigor helps little in this regard.

I'll go over stamina survivability:

• Stamina DKs have the best survivability of all classes: between Deadly Cloak, Standard's mitigation, many defensive passives, Igneous Shield and thus stronger Vigor healing, they can stay alive about as well as magicka in pretty much all circumstances.
• Stamina sorcerers have good mitigation thanks to Hurricane and Bound Armaments, they can also use Surge and have a full bar of survivability-oriented abilities with Overload. They do miss a few slots without Overload to slot as much as they need, between Bone Shield, Surge and Dark Deal.
• Stamina templars do have Radiant Ward if they want a shield that doesn't use their stamina pool, which is a nice plus, and a few decent mitigation-oriented passives.
• Stamina nightblades have it hard. No easy way to keep Shadow Barrier up, you can get minor Ward & Resolve with Mirage, as well as the extra dodge chance, and... that's it. You do have Deadly Cloak and the (meh) Bone Shield to prevent burst damage, but be prepared to bring in your A+-game if you want to stay alive.

Magicka can be summed up in two words: Annulment morphs. Harness Magicka and Dampen Magic provide shields at the very least twice as big as stamina ones, allowing them to limit the risks by a very large margin.

If someone asks in the forum whether he should bring a stamina or magicka DD for vMoL (especially HM), the answer is going to be universally magicka. Especially on the Rakkhat fight, your health as a stamina DD will drop extremely low multiple times (platform change, Unstable Void Projectile, execute phase, Lunar Phase...).

So yes, this is a critical point, since it is the number #1 reason stamina isn't used.

---

TL;DR:

• Survivability issues make magicka a better pick for difficult / risky content
• The trials mechanics and stamina being pretty much forced into being melee is an artifical limit to the maximum number of stamina DDs
• Stamina DDs' niche - single target DPS - is getting nerfed. This is the only real reason to bring stamina DDs in a trial right now. There's no such niche in the current PTS, and means stamina DDs total extinction in competitive 12-men trials.
• Currently: the part of stamina DDs in a trial group (8 DDs) is less than 25% overall. You'll have either 0, 1 or 2 stamina DDs.
• This post took 1h 12mn 07s to write, so I'm going to make some coffee right now if you don't mind.

To sum up the current state of Homestead: the gap in single-target DPS between stamina and magicka based DDs has been drastically reduced, removing the main reason why stamina DDs were used in the first place. With vastly superior AoE and cleave (with the exception of magicka NB) as well as buffs to the pet sorcerer made it the absolute best DD in terms of raw damage, bringing range, massive single target DPS, massive cleave, massive AoE and survivability in one package. The raiding group composition basically asked for 1 or 2 magicka DKs (since they still provide a massive group DPS increase with Engulfing flames and control with chains and Deep breath for some fights) and as many magicka sorcerers as possible. Bye bye stamina.

At this moment, the only stamina specs seeing play are stamina DKs, first because they have the highest single target DPS of all stamina specs, secondly because tanks can switch to a DD spec mid-run, and the most popular tanks is are DKs.

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Morrowind is here, so what now? Are the sustain changes changing the actual balance between both the classes and their stamina / magicka variations? The short answer is yes, and it tends to favor stamina a bit more than before. Magicka will probably still be the main squeeze, but stamina might actually earn its spot back - albeit to a limited extent.

One of the many reasons why this could happen can be found in the existing raid and the following patch note:

Necrotic Orb: The synergy from this ability and its morphs now restore Stamina or Magicka to the synergy-user, whichever percentage is lower. The amount restored is now based on your character level instead of your Max Resource. The synergy also has a shared cooldown with the Spear Shards synergy.

I bolded the most significant part - currently, orbs regenerate magicka to all users in range, and not only the character using the synergy. It is a pretty huge change in the sense that magicka DDs have a higher base cost for all their abilities and rely almost exclusively on group support to sustain themselves. With a few orbs popping left and right, you could passively recover magicka fast enough to sustain a fight for a very long time (1% of your magicka pool per second due to orbs, as well as a flat 400 from minor magickasteal), and you could actively synergize orbs to recover even more resources. With this aspect partially removed (orbs) and nerfed (minor magickasteal now restores 300 magicka per second instead of 400), the need to use either sustain sets, heavy attacks and / or recovery glyphs made itself clear, naturally lowering the overall magicka DPS - rather unequally.

What about stamina? The interesting thing is that stamina didn't need as much support in a raid situation, especially as a redguard. this change has been partially mitigated, but its actual impact is not that significant compared to other changes:

Stamina abilities are now universally 15% cheaper than their Magicka counterparts, originally being 20% cheaper. This includes class abilities that morph into Stamina abilities, in addition to the Weapon Skill Line passive abilities which reduce the cost of abilities in that Skill Line (Balanced Blade, Controlled Fury, etc.)

This on top of the other changes make spamming downright not possible, unless you use heavy attack builds, and this is where things get interesting. It takes roughly 1 second to do a heavy attack (HA) with dual wield (DW) and a lot more on a magicka spec. HA can also be weaved perfectly into an ability, allowing you to still have good sustain AND retain more than decent damage.

The following parses have been done on the live server, just in case you are unsure about how strong these builds currently are:

So the answer for ALL stamina specs became rather clear:



In a standard HA setup with DW / Bow (which are still the most competitive weapon options 'cause no changes to them), the rotation will go along the lines of:

LA > Endless Hail
LA > Poison Injection (swap)
HA > Trap (lightweight / rearming)
HA > Razor Caltrops (the new one since it only lasts 12s)
HA > [DoT 3]
HA > [DoT 4] (swap)

By the time you cast the last ability, the first one is about to run out, rinse & repeat. It's simple, it's effective, it allows you to run 3 weapon damage glyphs and no sustain sets, but it gives the best results, so HA just became the new spammable for all stamina specs.

The variations between the existing stamina classes is a matter of how well they can fill the remaining 2 DoTs, be it with Power of the light, Hurricane, Venomous claw or else, and this is what I'll cover right meow. Do note that these comparisons are considered in a competitive PvE raiding environment (so no "hey but it gives Major <insert already used buff> to the group it's great!", sorry buddy, but everyone is already using potions...).

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Dragonknight

• DW
  • Rearming / lightweight trap
  • Razor caltrops
  • Venomous claw
  • Rending slashes / Noxious breath
  • Steel tornado / Deadly cloak
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker
• Bow
  • Endless Hail
  • Poison injection
  • <flex>
  • Resolving / Echoing Vigor
  • Molten armaments
  • Standard of Might / Corrosive armor

Flexible options

Damage shields such as Igneous shield or Bone shield. Deadly cloak is favored for those AoE heavy fights where you want to mitigate the risk of getting technically one-shotted due to a combination of mechanics. You can also use Chains if no magicka DK is available (althought you're not going to be the chaining king / queen with a grand total of 3 chains before being OOM).

Sustain

Venomous claw is a cheap DoT, and the passive resource returns from Helping hands (with Molten armaments and Igneous shield if you use it) as well as ultimates is enough to allow you to continue your rotation without any issue. Very good sustain overall.

Group utility / support

Chains if no is using it, Igneous shield (althought it overwrites your own tank's so be careful with that one). Major defile isn't exactly great utility and simply doesn't work most of the time. Overall pretty limited, but that's not what we use a DK for anyway.

Damage potential

Highest single target DPS, not surprising in a patch where HA builds are going to be dominating for a class that is naturally going at doing HA. Their AoE / Cleave potential is however pretty low, and their passives are not that great to buff your existing tools (deadly cloak / steelnado).

Survivability

Extra blocking mitigation, spell resistance, access to a shield that uses your magicka instead of running you dry, 2 ultimates that give you either extra mitigation or allow you to be near immortal (Corrosive armor is situational, but it's still ok-ish if people are dying left and right), pretty tanky for a stamina spec.

OVERALL POTENTIAL

Shouldn't be a surprise, was the best pick in Homestead, still a top pick. The DK doesn't care about sustain changes, and with the number of issues magicka specs have sustaining their rotation, it might become once more the highest single target DPS of all classes. It's probably still a bad idea to bring a raid full of stamina DKs to a trial, but at least you're not taking too many risks with one.

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Sorcerer

• DW
  • Rearming / lightweight trap
  • Razor caltrops
  • Bound armaments
  • Hurricane
  • Rending slashes
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (if Ballista backbar) / Rend (if Flawless Dawnbreaker backbar)
• Bow
  • Endless Hail
  • Poison injection
  • Bound armaments
  • <flex>
  • <flex>
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (if Rend frontbar) / Ballista (if Flawless Dawnbreaker frontbar)

Flexible options

Technically, you could slot Overload on your backbar to have all the tools you want, but you can't weave attacks while on this bar, and we don't really need to have more than 2 flexibles slots in most situations. What you use depends on the fight: Dark deal if you need sustain, Critical Surge if you want to keep your HP high... You can even use caltrops or Hurricane on your backbar and add Deadly cloak on your front bar if you need the mitigation, or use Resolving Vigor for healing that does not rely on hitting something.

Sustain

Pretty good, the changes to Dark deal means it's a rather clumsy ability to use, it also cannot be block-cast. For situations like vAA HM, there's better, but there's also worse.

Group utility / support

Negate. And that's all. Yes it's good for Hel Ra, or some of those rounds in DSA, or simply if you want the AoE healing (if you use the morph). Very limited otherwise.

Damage potential

Still right behind stamina DK in a raid situation when it comes to single target, still the top pick when it comes to cleave and AoE compared to the existing classes.

Survivability

Between Hurricane, mitigation from Bound armaments, (usually) constant healing from Critical surge and (why not) deadly cloak, it survives sustained damage extremely well, so your HP pool will always be high as long as you keep DoTs up (which you should do anyway).

OVERALL POTENTIAL

With Homestead, stamina sorcerers no longer had better single target DPS than magicka specs, when his cleave was a bit lower, basically making it non-competitive in terms of damage in all aspects. The changes to sustain allow them to finally be able to come to a pre-Homestead state where they can offer more focused damage at the cost of slightly lower cleave. A strong pick that might make a comeback on the competitive scene.

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Nightblade

• DW
  • Rearming / lightweight trap
  • Razor caltrops
  • Killer's blade
  • Rending slashes
  • Deadly cloak
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (if Ballista backbar) / Rend (if Flawless Dawnbreaker backbar)
• Bow
  • Endless Hail
  • Poison injection
  • Relentless Focus / Mirage
  • Resolving Vigor
  • Silver shards / [Assassination ability] (passive only) / Bone shield morph
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (if Rend frontbar) / Ballista (if Flawless Dawnbreaker frontbar)

Flexible options

Nothing outside the listed options.

Sustain

I'll be honest: of all the sad things I have seen, stamina NB is probably it. They went from being the most sustainable with Siphoning strikes to being a pain to sustain. Siphoning strikes costing stamina on top of a very situational resource return which is extremely weak - plus the ability itself providing an extremely bad and unreliable healing made Siphoning strikes one of the worse ability possible.

Group utility / support

Group mitigation with Consuming Darkness morphs, althought very limited range. Has access to Minor main with Dark shades, but I would not recommend using it (plus the tank already uses Heroic slash usually).

Damage potential

One thing to note is that the bar setup listed is the actual raid setup - on a target dummy, Surprise attack and Relentless focus got me the best results, but both eventually becomes unnecessary as we already get Minor berzerk from combat prayer and Major fracture is already provided by the tank. One of the weakest damage potential overall, bringing no enemy debuff.

Survivability

Stamina NB is well-known for not being tanky. No changes in this regard, as you get very limited mitigation from your passives (cannot keep a good uptime on Shadow barrier) and your self-healing is just *average*.

OVERALL POTENTIAL

This deserves a wall of text. I had high hopes for nightblades to make a comeback with Morrowing since sustain was their forte, but this is downright murder right here.

On a thread asking what class is the most popular in PvE, I made a little test that you can find in the spoiler below:

Asmael wrote: »

Taking a look at esoleaderboards.com's HTML source code and doing ctrl+f, we can find for each page (trial) how many times each word appears:

Aetherian Archives

• DK - 324
• NB - 104
• Templar - 335
• Sorcerer - 357

Hel Ra Citadel

• DK - 353
• NB - 117
• Templar - 343
• Sorcerer - 430

Sanctum Ophidial

• DK - 459
• NB - 157
• Templar - 405
• Sorcerer - 434

Maw of Lorkhaj

• DK - 317
• NB - 74
• Templar - 265
• Sorcerer - 291

Dragonstar Arena

• DK - 181
• NB - 56
• Templar - 181
• Sorcerer - 169

We're excluding vMA since they have their own leaderboards per class.

Now this is done regardless of spec (stam / magicka) or role (tank / DD / healer), but the total count is:

TOTAL

• DK - 1,634
• NB - 508
• Templar - 1,529
• Sorcerer - 1,681

TL;DR: DK and sorcerers are about as popular, templar just a tiny bit behind, and NB is... Welp.

Ok, DKs are known for being very good tanks, templars for being very good healers, sorcerers for being very good DDs. And NBs? Nothing. Nada. Niet.

Why? Because nightblades had very good sustain due to Siphoning strikes, it allowed them to sustain the Kena set pretty easily, or sustain their rotation even without Elemental drain, but this is unnecessary in a competitive environment in the current patch due to how strong group support is.

Nerfing their sustain to this level removed the last incentive to ever bring a NB in a trial. There is absolutely 0 point bringing one compared to the existing classes. Your have less single target, AoE and cleave damage, less survivability and less sustain. The new siphoning strikes is a joke, and the resource return - taking into account that it now costs stamina - means this ability's use is only to get a very bad healing on light / heavy attacks.

I have no issue with nerfing the sustain from Siphoning strikes, I have an issue with turning this ability in the miserable thing it currently is. Revert it to cost magicka, and make it return twice the amount of both resources, even if it means no healing. NBs were good at one (useless) thing back then, at the very least, being able to sustain themselves more than other classes and actually use class abilities for more than the passive would be a very needed change.

Now, this is technically a PvE thread, and I could 100% understand that people did not want to buff a class that was already capable in PvP of literally one-shotting people, killing heavy armor users in less than 2 seconds from stealth and else. You nerfed stealth damage, good, now you have no excuse to buff NBs in other areas, because they seriously need it.

Until then, I'll call stamina nightblades simply "blades", because they have become glorified weapon skills users.

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Templar

• DW
  • Rearming / lightweight trap
  • Razor caltrops
  • Biting jabs
  • Rending slashes / Deadly cloak
  • Power of the light
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (if Ballista backbar) / Rend (if Flawless Dawnbreaker backbar)
• Bow
  • Endless Hail
  • Poison Injection
  • Resolving Vigor
  • Luminous shards
  • Radiant Ward
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (if Rend frontbar) / Ballista (if Flawless Dawnbreaker frontbar)

Flexible options

Not that many flexible options, I did try Crescent sweep but got worse results than with both other options. Another fancy thing is: we don't actually use Biting jabs, unless we expect the target to die within the next seconds, but we need to slot it for the passive critical damage. You could slot Repentance if you want the extra sustain for fights with adds, but you'll see why we use Luminous shards in the next section.

Sustain

This is the very nice surprise of this patch: stamina templars have become very sustainable compared to the existing specs, let's see why:

Luminous Shards (Spear Shards morph): This morph now causes the synergy to also restore an equal amount of Magicka or Stamina to the casting Templar, with a 20-second cooldown.

Luminous shards will restore resources to you (if your stamina is lower than your magicka) when allies synergize it. As it turns out, Luminous shards becomes an instant-cast Dark deal that also helps your group. Not only this, but we also have access to a damage shield that relies on magicka instead of stamina, allowing us to make good use of both resources. Last thing is: Power of the light is a cheap ability, which helps our sustain further. We don't spam jabs - we don't need to. All good to go.

Group utility / support

The winner of the current classes - restoring resources, debuffing enemies with Power of the light (PotL) - you can even offer a purify synergy for some fights that could need it (like the Twins in Maw of Lorkhaj).

Damage potential

Stamina templar doesn't have the highest damage potential, but the debuff from PotL and the extra resources if offers to allies (since it helps their sustain, thus their damage) means a part of his DPS directly increases the overall group DPS.

Survivability

Access to a good damage shield, extra spell resistance and block mitigation. We probably won't use Rune focus, since we'd only get the mitigation from it alone, and the damage shield does require you to be reactive to threats, but it's pretty nice overall.

OVERALL POTENTIAL

Finally seeing the light at the end of the road?

Playing stamina templar throught the new trial was a very pleasant surprise to say the least. You can finally play it without being laughed at as one the worse DPS spec out there. They didn't really get that much of a DPS increase with Morrowing - more like the other specs actually losing damage, but stamina templar retained most of it and its utility is a very welcomed addition to a raid.

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Warden

Currently under NDA

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Other changes

Caltrops - the new "this goes into my rotation" ability.

• Caltrops:
  • Multiple player characters can now stack this ability and its morphs in the same area and damage the same target.
  • Reduced the size of this ability and its morphs to 8 meters from 12 meters.
  • Reduced the duration of this ability and its morphs to 12 seconds from 30 seconds.
  • Reduced the cost of this ability and its morphs by approximately 50%.
  • Increased the damage of this ability and its morphs by approximately 75%.
    Developer Comments:
    The changes to Caltrops allow it to behave more like a standard ground-targeted damage over time ability, such as Lightning Splash or Volley. This will help improve Stamina builds’ sustained single target and area of effect damage in dungeons and Trials.

If you paid attention to the build setups, I actually added Caltrops as part of the normal rotation for every single spec. It's a very very strong DoT, slightly behind Venomous claw in terms of single target DPS, with the added benefit of being a very good AoE / cleave ability. The change to make it stackable also solves a major issue since Caltrops was pretty much mandatory in Homestead for the usual 1 stamina DD max who happened to find himself/herself in a competitive raid.

Overall, a very good addition to the toolkit of stamina DDs.

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Adrenaline rush - "This will be a buff is your maximum resource is below 15,840 and a nerf if it is above."

Show me a stamina redguard with less than 15,840 stamina, and I'll show you someone who forgot to assign CPs and attribute points.

An optimized stamina DDs with no racial bonuses to maximum stamina will sit on the live server around 32-34k stamina, usually around 36k for stamina sorcerer (due to Bound armaments). Adding the Redguard passives, you can get close to 38k+. This is an absolutely massive nerf (50%+ in the best case scenario). Yes, on the live server, these 4-5 seconds spent using abilities to restore stamina on non-redguard characters are a significant enough DPS loss to make Redguards the best pick, even compared to Khajiits and especially with the nerfs to critical damage with Minor / Major force (although the new CP distribution helps Khajiits quite a bit in this regard). Yes, redguards are a popular pick on the live server, but not to a point where their unique passive needs that much of a nerf, considering you already get much less of a benefit due to the other changes.

Should it be adjusted to fit the overall sustain changes? Yes, since it discourages stacking max stats. To this point? Probably not. Should we still use Redguards for stamina DDs? Well, you can if you need the sustain, but you won't get that much sustain compared to before. This makes Khajiits, Imperials and Orcs a very valid choice as stamina DDs.

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Resourceful (aka "argonians, rejoice!")

"This will be a buff for each particular resource if your maximum is below 38,500 and a nerf if it is above."

I honestly think this is one of the most underrated racial passive, and that most people saying this is a bad passive didn't do the math, because even on live server, it's actually pretty good sustain. And now? Well, stacking 38k5 in one stat is a lot, and while this is going to be a nerf in some cases, the returns on your other resource pools will be quite significant (your healer argonian with 10k stamina just got almost 4 times the stamina from a potion compared to before).



I'd even go as far as to say that this might be a bit too much of a buff, but I'm afraid of having a lizard squad hunting me down so "SHHHH". Do you need to be an argonian to sustain your stamina DD? Probably not, it just becomes a slightly more valid choice. That's a way to say "if you want to pick a roleplay race" (because let's be honest, argonians are pretty bad for damage dealing), the extra sustain and HP isn't THAT bad. It's just "not as good", but with this change, it's still "better". Will argonians become a competitive race for damage-dealing? Not today, not tomorrow.

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Champion points (CP) changes

"Where do I get started..."

The CP changes are pretty big and aim to lower the gap between low and high CP characters, so let's see what this means:

The Health, Magicka, and Stamina percentage increases from investing in the red, blue, and green constellations now cap at 20%, obtained by reaching CP300 (100 in each constellation).

Honest question: did you know that investing CPs actually increased your maximum attributes? I did, before this change, but let's be honest - why is this even a thing? This isn't stated directly even on the official ingame help of the live server. Humble opinion, but the increase from CPs is already significant enough, and the 20% bonus to stats should be directly given to all characters.

Another significant change is the front-loading of CPs: which means that spending 75 points in Mighty will give you 14% bonus damage, while 100% points will only give you an extra 1% to physical / poison and disease damage, thus encouraging you to distribute those remaining points elsewhere.

That being said...

• The Steed
  • 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.
    • Note: A new antithesis to this has been created with the old Bow Expert (Master-at-Arms) passive ability.

70 points in Master-at-arms, Might and precise strikes means no less than 2 * 22.72 + 13.59 = 59.03% damage increase (I did not check the multipliers to see whether they were additive or not, so you can publicly shame for that), as opposed to 2 * 25%. So the CP changes don't really reduce the upfront burst of certain builds, while sustained builds while distribute some of those points into Thaumaturge as well, depending on class / rotation / abilities used. Same rules apply to mitigation CPs.

For short: it looks like the damage from CPs was nerfed, but not really. The addition of the Master-at-arms passive helps quite a bit, since it works with the initial tick of quite a few DoTs as well as heavy attacks.

• The Tower
  • Renamed this passive to Siphoner.
  • This passive ability now reduces the enemy’s Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery for 3 seconds when you damage them with a Light or Heavy Attack, instead of reducing the cost of your Magicka abilities.
    • Note: This is now the antithesis of Healthy, Arcanist, and Mooncalf.

This is PvP related, but...

A single star is the antithesis of 3 other ones at once. I don't think I need to explain why this is not exactly balanced.

• Warlord: This passive ability now reduces the cost of Break Free, instead of reducing the cost of your Stamina abilities.

Cost reduction is by nature stronger than recovery in trials, the reason being that you're supposed to cast abilities every second to get the most of your character. Few reasons:

• Damage dealers have low recovery, the extra % increase from CPs is actually a very low bonus
• Cost reduction works with everything, while recovery doesn't, examples being resource returns from Helping hands, Battle roar, Siphoning strikes, potions, Dark deal, heavy armor's Constitution passive, resource return from Orbs / synergies...
• Cost reduction works no matter what, it doesn't stop working because you block nor sprint.

This is a very significant nerf and the main reason why we are pushed into HA builds. 16% cost reduction down the drain, but we do get a passive that restores more resources on heavy attacks, so it's going to be a 50/50 split between stamina recovery and resource returned from HA.

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== F.A.Q ==

(all considering the existing classes only)

Can I bring a stamina DD into a trial this patch? Can I be competitive?

Out of the existing classes, as long as it's a not a Nightblade, you're pretty much good to go. They all offer their own thing: highest single target DPS, highest cleave / AoE or best group support. Can you be competitive? Yes, obviously, you won't have a 10k+ shields to save you, so you'll still rage at all the unavoidable incoming damage, but for the rest you should be fine.

In terms of damage, stamina is still behind magicka for AoE fights, and lightning staves HA are going to be the bread & butter of said AoE fights (which means unlimited sustain). We still have some issues sustaining AoE fights as stamina DDs, but the new caltrops is pretty sweet in terms of damage potential. For boss fights, it's definitely in a much better spot than before.

To make it clear, the main reason that stamina is in a better place compared to magicka for this patch is simply that stamina has faster HA and don't lose too much from going this path.

What about Warden?

N.D.A. Can't say anything about it, find a Zos employee and ask 'em when they intend to lift it.

Who are you?

Kitty the fluffy salmon genocider. *purr*

Also a stamina scrub silly enough to keep playing stamina throught the entirety of the Homestead patch and going for top scores in Hodor. So, no, those builds are not just good for dungeons. I main stamina DK in PvE but all the stamina classes are pretty similar due to their reliance on weapon skills, so switching between those isn't too difficult.

Favorite meal?

Salmon.

What's the best gear to use on X stamina class for Morrowind?

Pretty much the same for every spec: Two Fanged Snake if you're the only stamina DD, a monster set (Kra'gh or Velidreth usually) and a 5p set, which changes based on group debuffs. Basically, you need to know how much Physical penetration your group can sustain and change your gear accordingly. In a group, someone can wear Sunderflame and/or Night mother's gaze while the rest can wear Twice Born star, Hundings or any stamina that provides a consistent amount of weapon damage and / or critical chance & multiplier.

The good news: if the sustain changes are left as is, you don't need maelstrom daggers, but you'll still need that sweet maelstrom bow in sharpened.

Favorite drink?

Skooma.

What about offbalance?

In Homestead, the biggest issue of HA builds was that they reduce the uptime of the Offbalance effect, which allows DDs to get an extra 10% damage while it's up. This effect is obtained by using a lightning Elemental blockade (blockade of storms) against a target with the Minor vulnerability debuff applied from Concussion (chance to proc on lightning damage).

With the sustain changes, HA are going to be mandatory, and the 10% group buff isn't going to be worth the sacrifice of the entire group's sustain (at least for now).

Rend or Ballista?

Do you need more survivability and / or are you facing a boss with adds you need to kill? Go for Rend front bar and Flawless Dawnbreaker backbar. Need the damage on a single target and / or the range? Go for Ballista.

Deadly cloak on most stamina specs?

Most of the damage you'l take in trials come from AoEs - be it meteors, RCOD (Red Circles Of Doom), fire waves, poison, overchargers... 20% AoE mitigation gives you a higher chance to survive through mechanics adding up to kill you. And the DoT is still pretty good.

What about Undaunted mettle? Do I go 7/0/0 for the sustain or 5/1/1 or else?

The damage difference is so small between using 7m and 5/1/1 that the most significant difference is whether you prefer to have sustain or extra HP. I recommend to go with 6m/1h if you want the extra HP (heavy on chest if possible, helm otherwise) or 7m if you have more sustain issues. Very minor really.

Any thoughts on every build using heavy attacks?

I think the biggest issue is identity. Simply looking at (night)blades, I could run an entire trial without ever using a NB ability. Stamplars only use PotL, no more jabs. Sorcerers still have Hurricane and some buffs, DKs still have their class shields, ultimates, buffs and DoTs. Heavy attack builds limit the number of abilities you can use, and there are many "neutral" abilities that are simply too good to pass on (namely Endless hail with vMA bow, poison injection, Trap).

We can't just ask for more stamina morphs, magicka needs its diversity too, so, huh, maybe it's time for 3 morphs per ability.

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TL;DR

The sustain changes force DDs into heavy attack builds, and stamina DDs are simply put better at it, since it takes less time for them to charge up their attacks.

The change to caltrops make it a very potent DoT increasing by a nice amount the cleave of stamina builds, it also makes it easier to run multiple stamina builds in a trial.

Stamina templar can finally sustain itself without being super far behind, it's about time.

Stamina (and magicka) nightblade has (somehow) been nerfed in PvE again even thought it was seeing the least play of all classes.

Stamina DK and sorcerers will perform at a level similar to pre-Homestead, only difference is that stamplar isn't such a bad choice compared to them.

We are only getting started with the PTS changes, so the balance is subject to change.

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

This is the type of stuff I love reading, and it helps tremendously.

Great post... thanks for taking the time to write it up!

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

"By the time you cast the last ability, the first one is about to run out, rinse & repeat. It's simple, it's effective, it allows you to run 3 weapon damage glyphs and no sustain sets, but it gives the best results, so HA just became the new spammable for all stamina specs."

Isn't this boring? I mean why even have damage skills like Flurry or Force Pulse if the best way to play the game now is to hold down LMB in between reapplying your DOTs?

Flattedfifth wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

Glad we can agree that elite players in elite guilds with the very best gear will be fine in the new patch. Just thinking about the other 99 percent of the players. All is well in Morrowind... nothing to see here.

You should listen to your own sig, tbqh: "Died because of baddies on the forum. Too much qq too little pew pew.
Retired at Dark Brotherhood release"