I want to preface this idea, and hopefully subsequent discussion, with a few points. For one, I am not an expert or intimately acquainted with all the popular builds in the game, past or present. I am aware that the Meta is not the Be All End All for all players, and some excellent players make nonMeta builds work well for them, and that the Meta has changed repeatedly. Nor am I claiming that the specifics of my suggestions which follow are the best way forward for the game, but I do hold that the division between Magicka and Stamina hurts the game and class diversity. Finally, while I am aware that a player can use any weapon they want and have fun, an effective player in Vet Dungeons and Trials utilizes appropriate weapons for their build.



My Proposal

• A complete overhaul of existing abilities to remove Stamina as a combat resource.
• All abilities and morphs would consume Magicka instead, including all weapons, with the exception of several utility or some defensive focused abilities like Dark Exchange and Rapid Maneuver.
• Stamina becomes used primarily for Sprinting, Dodge Rolling, Breaking Free, Blocking, and sneaking.
• Resource scaling would be removed from all damage oriented abilities, remaining in use exclusively for some utility type abilities.
• All damage oriented abilities scale off Spell Damage or Weapon Damage, with most class and mages guild scaling off spell damage, and weapon abilities scaling off Weapon Damage.
• An alternate to the above point would also be the removal of Spell Damage and Weapon Damage, replaced by a single stat like Attack Power. Separating Weapon and Spell damage while removing Stamina could just lead to the same situation as we currently have with Magicka vs Stamina, but builds and classes would just be divided by Weapon or Spell.
• All armor sets in the game would need to be adjusted for the removal of Stamina.

Why?

On paper and ingame, Elder Scrolls Online appears to have significant build diversity, with 6 different weapon skill lines, broken down even further into 13 different weapons (counting shields here). This is further compounded by the division of Magicka and Stamina as major resources for combat.
I understand that an immediate reaction is probably negative. How could reducing options possibly be good for the game? Wouldn't that reduce variety? I get it, first glance that doesn't make sense. However, there aren't a lot of options already. Like I said at the beginning, on paper it looks good, but because all weapon skills excluding restoration and destruction staves use stamina, a magicka focused character is mostly restricted to those 2 weapons because they lack the stamina to use weapon abilities from the other trees. In effect, there are far fewer choices than first appears if you want to be an effective character. If you use 2H you almost certainly need to be a Stamina character thereby restricting what skills/morphs you can use; likewise if you want to run Destruction staves you have to be Magicka.
For the Warden, Nightblade, Sorcerer, and DragonKnight Damage builds by Alcast, all of them use destruction staffs, fire and lightning specifically. Templar DD does as well, with an option to use dual wield. While no player is restricted to only using specific weapons, a magicka Nightblade can't effectively use a 2H axe in vet dungeons (at least not without it being a very specific build).


What this could do:

It would simplify combat while providing more options. By removing Stamina from the equation, it opens every weapon skill tree and weapon type to every class while allowing them to remain effective.
Another effect of separating ability use from Stamina, would be giving players more free use of the attribute and possibly increasing combat mobility. While I have only once tried out a stamina sorcerer, I hear from my guild frequently how their stamina characters have a hard time with places like Vet Direfrost, where they frequently need to use big chunks of stamina to break free.



I am hoping this becomes a discussion which the community and Zenimax could engage in.