Medium Armor in PvP needs a buff!

Joy_Division · August 2017

Some changes that don't involve reinventing a new combat system.

The new Soul Assault is unsatisfying. There's hardly any counterplay and as much as I want to feel super-powerful when playing a game, clubbing baby seals, shooting fish in a barrel, or otherwise attacking my opponent who is pretty much incapable of doing anything goes against the very competition I seek when playing games such as this one. If the idea was to give magicka a cheap burst ultimate that hits dodge-rolls, that could have been better accomplished.
Cliff racer undodgeable spam was not a necessary mechanic. Have the birds hone in faster and give the skill some other benefit besides hitting dodge rollers. My PvE warden whose DPS stinks would love this.
The is no CP star that augments dodge rolling defense, yet there are stars that increase the strength of healing and shielding. While there is one that reduces the cost for dodging, I think the block cost reduction is a more powerful star since the dodge progression mechanic acts as a natural limitation to how much you can take advantage of the tumbling star, whereas a blocker get constant use of Shadow Ward. Would I rather have a star that decreases the damage done when dodging than the meh Medium Armor Focus? Absolutely, always, make it so.
As long as the "beserk" sets that increase a users damage + healing whenever they get hit come in strictly heavy armor (sets like 7th legion and fury), people who want to melee will probably be better off using these heavy sets. This arrangement pigeonholes medium to ganking. There is no reason "berserk" sets should be limited to heavy - indeed the stereotypical "berserker" did not even wear heavy,

Araviel2 · August 2017

SodanTok wrote: »

Araviel2 wrote: »

I like to wait and see, both heavy and medium is going to get a indirect boost to their survivability thanks to the sharpen nerf.
and there are currently some medium armor configurations that are just strong af, mainly involving the Impregnable set with Well-fitted/Reinforced. there will also be a boost to crit chance in the upcoming patch that means medium armor builds easily could get up to 99% crit.

but if i was to throw out an idea i would suggest a boost to movement speed of the Athletics passive with 1%, as the current 3% is not that significant, a slight boost to this could also maybe make 7/7 builds viable instead of the current norm of 5/1/1

Indirect boost indeed, but valued worst.

(Supposed) Damage output
Medium armor >= Light Armor > Heavy Armor
Penetration increases your damage output by some %. For every lost % the one with highest damage output lost the most damage. (Not to mention proc sets that are scaling just with penetration and CP) => Medium loses most.

(Supposed) Resistance (counter to penetration)
Heavy armor > Medium Armor > Light Armor
Losing penetration increases survivability the more resistance you had => Heavy gets most;
Light loses most, but they get to have shields.
Plus if you were over penetrating light or medium and now you aren't you simply deal similar damage to them while losing damage versus heavy.

(Supposed) value of penetration (how much is penetration worth given access to sources and their size)
Light Armor > Medium Armor > Heavy Armor
Light armor has passive that is the only penetration (other than trial medium armor set TFS) with high value. That value relatively increased by nerfing all other sources

Regarding crit, who cares about 99% crit. The more is not the better. You need to have damage and crit damage first to do good critical hits. Guess what is not critting? Proc sets. Guess what needs stacking weapon damage to get damage? Agility passive. And what is best? Light armor is getting the most crit anyway. Medium has to slot 7! (meaning all) medium armor pieces to get 0.47% more crit chance. It is losing 1% over 5pieces of light when slotting just 6.

tl;dr
Medium gets the least or is middle of the pack with these changes to crit and penetration. Overall strength of the armor types remains same, because the numbers are small. But there was no buffs. At best medium got the same out of it as everyone, at worst it lost the most.

of course, you have a very valid argument.
but since the main complaint i see about medium armor is the survivability and not the damage output i still consider this to be kind of a boost, and imho its a good balance change in the spirit of eating the cake while not keeping it too.

I also think that heavies deserves more of that cake as they took a heavier hit from the sustain nerf.

xxVARLEYxx · August 2017

New medium armour passive?

Reduce the effect of healing debuffs by ~% per piece of medium armor equipped..

-would help with counter play after being incapped from a nightblade running 71 points in befoul, reverbed by a heavy S+b user etc..

Just a thought of course!

xxVARLEYxx · August 2017

Oh and the fassalas + Duroks builds that do nothing but walk near you to be effective basically

Hexys · August 2017

Editting first post now

Glamdring · August 2017

Extra crit resist while wearing 5 piece or more medium is a great suggestion. Since medium is all about avoiding damage and a crit will hit you bad. as it should be.

Killset · August 2017

How about medium users take reduced damage from DOTs?

br0steen · August 2017

the increase weapon damage passive is a healing buff.
the increase to crit rating per armor piece is also a healing buff.

survivability in medium armor comes from maneuverability, dodging, and hots.

you have increased healing passives for stam dk, templar, and warden. Stam sorcs and nbs have higher mobility.

medium armor is fine.

SodanTok · August 2017

br0steen wrote: »

the increase weapon damage passive is a healing buff.
the increase to crit rating per armor piece is also a healing buff.

survivability in medium armor comes from maneuverability, dodging, and hots.

you have increased healing passives for stam dk, templar, and warden. Stam sorcs and nbs have higher mobility.

medium armor is fine.

0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% increase to healing is healing buff too

Your argument has no value if you have no idea what impact these things have compared to others or how the passives synergy with them

Killset · August 2017

Aedaryl wrote: »

I personally think about few fix that would make MA competitive again :

- 5 pieces medium armor should give : Minor mending for 1.5s when you dodge roll. For Shuffle, make it bound to medium armor.

- Remove the 100% critical HoTs chance form shadowy disguise to not make NB OP.

- A soul assault ticks nerfs : It will be the same damage, but it will drain less stamina when you block it.

What do you think ?

Nerf NB's to buff medium?... No thank you. The class has directly and indirectly been nerfed more than enough as of late. Doesn't need any more.

Killset · August 2017

br0steen wrote: »

the increase weapon damage passive is a healing buff.
the increase to crit rating per armor piece is also a healing buff.

survivability in medium armor comes from maneuverability, dodging, and hots.

you have increased healing passives for stam dk, templar, and warden. Stam sorcs and nbs have higher mobility.

medium armor is fine.

You either play a magic class, run in a zerg, or have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe all three.

ak_pvp · August 2017

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

You may disagree with me but there are two mechanics that changed that drastically effected 1 play-style more then all of the play-styles in the game.

-No Block Regen
-No Sprint Regen

Any time a medium armour player wants to reposition, use a well timed block we stop our stamina regen. Well this is a huge problem. I personally tend to re-actively block and sprint a lot and this ends up costing me a lot of resources compared to just healing through the damage which i don't think is right.

I could have 3000+ regen and if i try to sprint and utilise what my armour skill-line excels at i just end up losing regen ticks in the process. This is completely counter productive.

How to fix these issues:

Change Sprint and Blocking to exponential cost stacking instead of preventing stamina regen. The problem with sprinting and blocking is with people who do it forever. People who use sprint and block pro-actively are just playing smart and should not be punished for it.

These exponential cost increases should be on a 4-second cool-down just like roll-dodge. That way you still retain your stamina regeneration ticks but if you don't give your self a 4 second break you will end up destroying your stamina pool, just like spamming dodge roll like a dummy.

Just to comment on blocking. The S+B ultimate would count as blocking towards this cool-down. This prevents people from perma-blocking with ult regen builds and just trolling. I would much rather see people play smart then abuse ult-regen stam dk's with s+b ult.

I see the problem, but that fix would *** over other builds and in PvE. Instead make it a stacking stamina regen penalty. I.e. 4 sec of block or sprint then the recovery starts lowering down to zero. Would buff stam without changing much else.

IcyDeadPeople · August 2017

Hexys wrote: »

(Supposed) value of penetration (how much is penetration worth given access to sources and their size)
Light Armor > Medium Armor > Heavy Armor
Light armor has passive that is the only penetration (other than trial medium armor set TFS) with high value. That value relatively increased by nerfing all other sources[/spoiler]

^This! I think there should be more of a tradeoff in this game between high damage and sustain or tankiness. There is a place for high burst damage builds that are also somewhat squishy, a place for extremely tanky builds that hit like wet noodles, and a place for everyone else somewhere in between.

I find the problem is more that heavy armor provides excellent sustain and decent damage potential even while being close to resistance cap. And certain light armor builds can be rather tanky with very large shields scaling on their offensive stat pool.

Medium armor's mitigation is more limited to either roll dodge, evasion or blocking, though s&b build doesn't seem to work as well as it does with heavy (resistances) or light (using magicka abilities to restore stam).

It would be more enjoyable if there were more of a tradeoff, a reason for choosing all three armor types. For example light and medium the best choice to go with for high damage or high recovery build with limited mitigation and heavy the best choice if you simply want the best damage mitigation.

I'd suggest:

require equipping 5piece medium type to use shuffle / 5pc light to use harness magicka / dampen magic,
add phys penetration passive to medium / spell damage passive to light
slightly reduce resource return of constitution
reduce base value of shields so the largest one (hardened ward) caps around 10-12k PVP / 20-24k PVE
adjust well fitted trait so it reduces cost of both roll dodge and break free
perhaps add some way to get minor evasion

sneakymitchell · August 2017

You get crit and weapon damage so easily. Heavy armor needs to stack in order to do things. You just need to use witch mothers set that helps give you stam and Heath by 30 points pre ultimate point. Or if not some other things. It's not like medium armor is supposed to be high burst. If you get a lot bursts you get squishy when running around end of story and NBs are too easy when wearing medium armor cause you ambush and stun the target and do a combo and run. And also I see players running around below 20 to 22k health. And also why not add reniforced as well on the big pieces? Reduce crit damage is easy to get.

Zeromaz · August 2017

Make dodge % a 5 set passive and give us a better active ability