Shadow vs Warrior/Apprentice.... What's the point of Shadow?

NotMemes · August 2017

Here's a quick test of a single bow light attack crit with a sharpened weapon, between the Shadow mundus and the Warrior mundus.

So, I ask you, what is the point of the Shadow mundus now? Seeing as the Warrior mundus out performs it at it's designed function...

GaunterODim · August 2017

Guess its just because it looked good before. Also sad about shadow getting destroyed.
The nerf to crit set bonuses and mothers sorrow would've been enough to balance it out, there wasnt that much of a difference to other setups.

Jamascus · August 2017

The warrior provides more base damage and outweighs the increase of crit damage from shadow. That's what it looks like, anyway.

Darkdex · August 2017

@ZOS_GinaBruno Is this intended?

Goatman2006 · August 2017

Wow, now that's funny. Guess I should try to the apprentice on my magsorc.

NotMemes · August 2017

I just don't get it, there is no situation in which the Shadow is a better choice than Warrior, as the Warrior does the same thing as Shadow, and then some.

The only time I can see Shadow ever being used, is with Twice-Born Star, being used alongside the Warrior, however, I don't see when that combination would ever be wanted.

NiclasFridholm · August 2017

Thats kinda sad and funny at once, lol

Strider_Roshin · August 2017

There isn't. Just more proof that ZOS prefers to balance this game off of feelings rather than mathematics.

DoonerSeraph · August 2017

Behold as they nerf Warrior and Apprentice...

Magdalina · August 2017

Stuff like this really makes me wonder how they do their balancing. Do they just close eyes and poke finger at random number on the num pad? I mean, obviously balancing such a huge environment with so many factors in question is far from easy but c'mon...it doesn't take a genius to figure that if there're 2 things and thing 1 does function A and thing 2 does functions A and B then there's absolutely no point in existence of thing 1 unless it does function A better than thing 2...

Anethum · August 2017

anyway it's not good zos job but,
this test was on templar/nb(+10% to crit damage) or dk/warden/sorcerer(no crit damage bonus)?

NotMemes · August 2017

This was on a stamina DK with no crit bonuses, with 6 divines gold, 1 infused purple

glavius · August 2017

You can't judge the two based on light attacks.
They scale far better with weapon damage than anything else.

Warrior is a fixed damage increase.
Shadow is a scaling damage increase based on your regular damage and crit chance.

Shadow is probably still better than warrior for high end builds, while warrior might be better for low damage non optimized builds.

DeathHouseInc · August 2017

I am really glad I already planned for this. I was currently crit and pen based but after the nerfs I just switched to flat damage and regen mostly knowing they would over nerf what they were obviously out to nerf.

casparian · August 2017

glavius wrote: »

You can't judge the two based on light attacks.
They scale far better with weapon damage than anything else.

Warrior is a fixed damage increase.
Shadow is a scaling damage increase based on your regular damage and crit chance.

Shadow is probably still better than warrior for high end builds, while warrior might be better for low damage non optimized builds.

Do you have testing to back that up? All the testing I have seen shows Warrior and Apprentice are far better for top-tier builds than the other stones.

Joy_Division · August 2017

Shouldn't you hit the same target to eliminate variables?

rhapsodious · August 2017

Shouldn't the mundus stones be showing up in your buff panel? Or did that change with the latest patch/addon update?

NotMemes · August 2017

Here's a side by side of 2 proper parses, i would like to think that I can be considered high end DPS.

I chose to do light attacks, because the crit values are variant on a whole lot of buffs/debuffs, as you can see some max crits are higher on one and on the other

kojou · August 2017

NM...

NotMemes · August 2017

That was my bad, you must have got in before i fixed it, i copied two warrior parses instead of the shadow one

kojou · August 2017

NotMemes wrote: »

That was my bad, you must have got in before i fixed it, i copied two warrior parses instead of the shadow one

Lol... sorry... I looked at it again and saw you fixed it.

Gamanoid · August 2017

Don't worry, Warrior and Apprentice will be adjusted™ to be equally as pointless

Tonnopesce · August 2017

I'm not going to change my shadowscale argonian mundus stones for a 3% increase in damage.

PS4_ZeColmeia · August 2017

I'd like see the apprentice specifically. Warrior in medium armor takes the 12% buff. Obviously that will make the warrior out perform the other 2, apprentice or warrior in HA does not get buffed and I think the performance would be more in line.

Also la is a poor test as weapons scale off of the character sheet weapon or spell stat 40x and almost no magicka/stamina while skills scale 10.5x weapon/spell and then equally with magicka/stamina. For these reasons you should perform the test again.

humpalicous · August 2017

glavius wrote: »

You can't judge the two based on light attacks.
They scale far better with weapon damage than anything else.

Warrior is a fixed damage increase.
Shadow is a scaling damage increase based on your regular damage and crit chance.

Shadow is probably still better than warrior for high end builds, while warrior might be better for low damage non optimized builds.

Gilliam basically confirmed OP's test as well, and he does a far better job at looking at the mathematics behind it all than ZOS ever will.