Rapid Mending (heavy armor passive) - slight buff to compensate for Wrath removal

TheYKcid · October 2017

From the developer comments on the 3.2.4 heavy armor nerf:

"We want each of the three armor types to have unique trade-offs. Heavy Armor’s main advantage is its increase to survivability, while the disadvantage is its lower damage and healing power. To emphasize this distinction, we’ve removed the Wrath passive."

I'm totally fine with heavy armor becoming entirely "defensively themed", to distinguish it more from medium and light. I support the removal of Wrath in this context, as it removes the offensive aspect of heavy armor.

However, the abovementioned design philosophy (that heavy should possess lower healing power) is simply illogical. Healing power IS an aspect of survivability. Removing Wrath means that heavy armor provides less weapon/spell damage, which translates to lower tooltips on healing abilities, which ultimately reduces the survivability of the user. This is not consistent with the design goal stated by the developers.

For that matter... if heavy armor is supposed to have lower healing, then it contradicts the existence of the Rapid Mending passive in the first place.

I feel that the current values of Rapid Mending (4%/8% at levels I and II, respectively) are no longer sufficient to distinguish heavy armor as the "survivability" choice, given the removal of Wrath. Here are some numbers to illustrate the point:

Let's take the example of a character, in 5 pieces of medium armor, with 30,000 stamina and 3000 weapon damage (after a 132% multiplier from major brutality + the Agility passive). Very reasonable stats. Agility, in this scenario, is providing 272 weapon damage.

This raises the tooltip of Resolving Vigor, a common Stamina healing ability, from 10872 to 11401 (using the calculator at https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php). This represents a healing boost of 4.87%, not that far behind Rapid Mending.

In a more realistic scenario, this difference between Agility and Rapid Mending will become even narrower, due to the concurrent application of other healing bonuses (major/minor mending, Blessed & Quick Recovery CP stars, class passives, set bonuses, etc.). Additionally, if a certain build were to stack more weapon damage than the figure I used above, the healing effectiveness derived from Agility would be even greater still.

I feel a slight buff to Rapid Mending would be reasonable.

It would firstly compensate heavy users for the loss of an entire passive (without ANYTHING added in its place, as of the 3.2.4 iteration). Furthermore, it would be consistent with the design goal of distinguishing heavy armor as the "survivability" choice, and medium armor as the "damage" choice.

I'm thinking 5%/9% wouldn't be too game-breaking.

Thoughts?

GeorgeBlack · October 2017

Nobody likes heavy attacks. Zos doesn't listen

PathwayM · October 2017

I like zos's current change... RIP heavy armor

TheYKcid · October 2017

PathwayM wrote: »

I like zos's current change... RIP heavy armor

The larger issue is that both armor choices available to Stamina builds now kinda suck (Medium already did before this patch, and now Heavy does too).

This is going to disproportionately favor light armor users.

KingJ · October 2017

They should give heavy minor mending ontop of the healing received.

Rex-Umbra · October 2017

I have never used any of those op HA sets so am being forced to give up HA. I think ill be just as tanky with more burst switching to LA with one tanky set and one dps set and s/b.

GaunterODim · October 2017

Does someone remember when the Wrath passive came out, was it just added on top of it or did it replace something else? Only thing I can remember is that it was there to support more of a "beserker playstyle".

TheYKcid · October 2017

GaunterODim wrote: »

Does someone remember when the Wrath passive came out, was it just added on top of it or did it replace something else? Only thing I can remember is that it was there to support more of a "beserker playstyle".

It happened in the Dark Brotherhood update. From PC/Mac Patch Notes v2.4.5:

Bracing:
Renamed this passive ability to Wrath.
Redesigned this passive ability so it now increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 10/20 for 6 seconds after taking damage at Ranks I/II respectively, stacking up to 10 times.

The old Bracing passive used to reduce block cost:
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Bracing

dirtykdx · October 2017

TheYKcid wrote: »

GaunterODim wrote: »

Does someone remember when the Wrath passive came out, was it just added on top of it or did it replace something else? Only thing I can remember is that it was there to support more of a "beserker playstyle".

It happened in the Dark Brotherhood update. From PC/Mac Patch Notes v2.4.5:
Bracing:
Renamed this passive ability to Wrath.
Redesigned this passive ability so it now increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 10/20 for 6 seconds after taking damage at Ranks I/II respectively, stacking up to 10 times.

The old Bracing passive used to reduce block cost:
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Bracing

Yep, those were the days...then...pvp qq blanket nerf hammer.

brtomkin · October 2017

"We want each of the three armor types to have unique trade-offs. Heavy Armor’s main advantage is its increase to survivability, while the disadvantage is its lower damage and healing power. To emphasize this distinction, we’ve removed the Wrath passive."

If the developer wants to make heavy armor the choice for "suvivability", then put evasion into the passives. "0.5% dodge chance per heavy piece" sounds about right... or, "1% dodge chance per heavy piece while blocking" would work, too.

Another alternative would be to simply revert the constitution nerf and return it to its previous values.

paulsimonps · October 2017

KingJ wrote: »

They should give heavy minor mending ontop of the healing received.

Rather they just buff the healing received bonus and let us get Minor mending on our own if we want to stack on top of it.

But just like OP I was disappointed that we didn't get anything in return for the nerf. Just split one passive we already had in two and called it a day.

kojou · October 2017

paulsimonps wrote: »

KingJ wrote: »

They should give heavy minor mending ontop of the healing received.

Rather they just buff the healing received bonus and let us get Minor mending on our own if we want to stack on top of it.

But just like OP I was disappointed that we didn't get anything in return for the nerf. Just split one passive we already had in two and called it a day.

I don't care that Wrath was removed. Disappointed that this was an outright nerf instead of a re-alligning of passives. I agree that healing received amount should be increased, but its not that big of a deal.

I was hoping they would put a block cost reduction back in...

Fuxo · October 2017

paulsimonps wrote: »

KingJ wrote: »

They should give heavy minor mending ontop of the healing received.

Rather they just buff the healing received bonus and let us get Minor mending on our own if we want to stack on top of it.

But just like OP I was disappointed that we didn't get anything in return for the nerf. Just split one passive we already had in two and called it a day.

It's called incremental changes. If they changed a lot of things at once, it would be difficult to tell the impact of each change.

Now, they just need to tone down weapon damage bonus from heavy sets like 7th legion, fury, etc. so it's in line with the new design.

dirtykdx · October 2017

Fuxo wrote: »

paulsimonps wrote: »

KingJ wrote: »

They should give heavy minor mending ontop of the healing received.

Rather they just buff the healing received bonus and let us get Minor mending on our own if we want to stack on top of it.

But just like OP I was disappointed that we didn't get anything in return for the nerf. Just split one passive we already had in two and called it a day.

It's called incremental changes. If they changed a lot of things at once, it would be difficult to tell the impact of each change.

Now, they just need to tone down weapon damage bonus from heavy sets like 7th legion, fury, etc. so it's in line with the new design.

Incremental changes? You must be new here.

Xvorg · October 2017

brtomkin wrote: »

"We want each of the three armor types to have unique trade-offs. Heavy Armor’s main advantage is its increase to survivability, while the disadvantage is its lower damage and healing power. To emphasize this distinction, we’ve removed the Wrath passive."

If the developer wants to make heavy armor the choice for "suvivability", then put evasion into the passives. "0.5% dodge chance per heavy piece" sounds about right... or, "1% dodge chance per heavy piece while blocking" would work, too.

Another alternative would be to simply revert the constitution nerf and return it to its previous values.

Evasion has 2 effects

1- Avoid 100% dmg of a given attcak
2- Make attacker lose resources in a unsuccesful attack.

So if we combine that 2 options with current HA tools (blocking/mending) we should have that HA no only gets 0 dmg in some situations, but also depletes faster enemy resources, gets reduced dmg when blocing and has increased healing received.

Currently that can be done with the combination of HA and evasion, and on top of it, it has dmg increased on hits.

Cinbri · October 2017

It should 100% get compensation for this, something like make Rapid Mending from 4/8% into 6/12%.
Simply from Templar PoV:
New Rapid Mending 8% self-heal is equal to Minor Vitality buff, and that lead to:
1. HA 5pc bonus has minor buff as passive while LA has major buff as passive, MA has double bonuses in 1 passive in return of each bonus to be situative.
2. Minor buff is too weak. That the reason why sets that have their 5pc as minor buff are not usable by anyone.
And zos did treated this problem some partially back in time: when Restoring Focus lost its major vitality buff and became minor vitality buff - everyone stoped using this morph coz as skill to have 1 minor buff didn't worth it and as morph to have 1 minor buff is uncomparable to effect of other morph or effects of defensive skills of other classes.
That's why in addition to Minor Vitality it was added Minor Protection.

And now situation that was happened with Restoring Focus repeating with HA passive..

P.S.: Its new passive is works only on heavy attacks, i.e. unlike other armor types it too situative and work rare. But still it is fair since by default HA grant more mitigation than other types.

Soris · October 2017

Since you decided to make it a full defensive armor type and since given passives are not enough for this a crit reduction passive would be cool

Azurya · October 2017

No I say NO! NERF THIS TOO!
NO WAY anyone will wear heavy armour anymore!
NERF IT!
NOW!

Liofa · October 2017

Heavy Armor is supposed to be defensive . Self Healing is a form of defense . When they take away Wrath , they also take away some healing because Weapon/Spell Damage not only increases damage but also increases Healing Done . So , removal of Wrath is not only a damage nerf . It is also a nerf to survivability of Heavy Armor users .

Buffing Rapid Mending a bit is only logical .

Qbiken · October 2017

I don´t think buffing the 8% extra healing received is a good idea. There´re already so many ways to buff your healing done/received at the moment it´s ridiculous. I would rather see a weaker version of Bracing making a return.

Old Bracing for those who aren´t familiar with it:
•Decreases Stamina cost of blocking by 20%. (This is with 5 or more heavy armor pieces equipped)

brtomkin · October 2017

Xvorg wrote: »

brtomkin wrote: »

"We want each of the three armor types to have unique trade-offs. Heavy Armor’s main advantage is its increase to survivability, while the disadvantage is its lower damage and healing power. To emphasize this distinction, we’ve removed the Wrath passive."

If the developer wants to make heavy armor the choice for "suvivability", then put evasion into the passives. "0.5% dodge chance per heavy piece" sounds about right... or, "1% dodge chance per heavy piece while blocking" would work, too.

Another alternative would be to simply revert the constitution nerf and return it to its previous values.

Evasion has 2 effects

1- Avoid 100% dmg of a given attcak
2- Make attacker lose resources in a unsuccesful attack.

So if we combine that 2 options with current HA tools (blocking/mending) we should have that HA no only gets 0 dmg in some situations, but also depletes faster enemy resources, gets reduced dmg when blocing and has increased healing received.

Currently that can be done with the combination of HA and evasion, and on top of it, it has dmg increased on hits.

But, heavy armor users cannot use the evasion skill anymore because it is now restricted to medium armor users (must have 5 piece of medium armor equipped). This idea was simply a way to give a small dodge chance back to heavy armor users as a replacement for the lost damage from Wrath. When something is simply removed it is most definitely a "nerf", however if something is replaced... it could be considered balance.

Asardes · October 2017

Since they completely removed Wrath, which had replaced Bracing, Heavy Armor is now worse off than it was 1.5 years ago, before DB patch even for PvE. They should at least buff one of the remaining passives, if not both. IMO 5/10% healing received and 15/30% more resource return from heavy attacks will keep it balanced. It would also help PvE tanking, for which Wrath did absolutely nothing. Tanks were left in a very bad spot after Morrowind, after being hit by multiple nerfs: increased block cost, shortening of major mending from ingenous shield, fixing the amount of resource restored by helping hands and battle roar, removal of CP cost reduction. At least give them something back.

Morvane · October 2017

TheYKcid wrote: »

From the developer comments on the 3.2.4 heavy armor nerf:

"We want each of the three armor types to have unique trade-offs. Heavy Armor’s main advantage is its increase to survivability, while the disadvantage is its lower damage and healing power. To emphasize this distinction, we’ve removed the Wrath passive."

I'm totally fine with heavy armor becoming entirely "defensively themed", to distinguish it more from medium and light. I support the removal of Wrath in this context, as it removes the offensive aspect of heavy armor.

However, the abovementioned design philosophy (that heavy should possess lower healing power) is simply illogical. Healing power IS an aspect of survivability. Removing Wrath means that heavy armor provides less weapon/spell damage, which translates to lower tooltips on healing abilities, which ultimately reduces the survivability of the user. This is not consistent with the design goal stated by the developers.

For that matter... if heavy armor is supposed to have lower healing, then it contradicts the existence of the Rapid Mending passive in the first place.

I feel that the current values of Rapid Mending (4%/8% at levels I and II, respectively) are no longer sufficient to distinguish heavy armor as the "survivability" choice, given the removal of Wrath. Here are some numbers to illustrate the point:

Let's take the example of a character, in 5 pieces of medium armor, with 30,000 stamina and 3000 weapon damage (after a 132% multiplier from major brutality + the Agility passive). Very reasonable stats. Agility, in this scenario, is providing 272 weapon damage.

This raises the tooltip of Resolving Vigor, a common Stamina healing ability, from 10872 to 11401 (using the calculator at https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkills.php). This represents a healing boost of 4.87%, not that far behind Rapid Mending.

In a more realistic scenario, this difference between Agility and Rapid Mending will become even narrower, due to the concurrent application of other healing bonuses (major/minor mending, Blessed & Quick Recovery CP stars, class passives, set bonuses, etc.). Additionally, if a certain build were to stack more weapon damage than the figure I used above, the healing effectiveness derived from Agility would be even greater still.

I feel a slight buff to Rapid Mending would be reasonable.

It would firstly compensate heavy users for the loss of an entire passive (without ANYTHING added in its place, as of the 3.2.4 iteration). Furthermore, it would be consistent with the design goal of distinguishing heavy armor as the "survivability" choice, and medium armor as the "damage" choice.

I'm thinking 5%/9% wouldn't be too game-breaking.

Thoughts?

what r u talking about? ZoS mean Heavy provide more DEFENSE and gives lesser OUTCOMING heal and damage. Thats all right with heavy

TheYKcid · October 2017

Morvane wrote: »

what r u talking about? ZoS mean Heavy provide more DEFENSE and gives lesser OUTCOMING heal and damage. Thats all right with heavy

I'm not sure what you mean by "outcoming", but note that Rapid Mending specifically affects healing received.

This means that your outgoing heals (that you cast on others), much the same way as your outgoing damage, is not improved by heavy armor in any way.

Incoming heals, however, are boosted. This applies to self-healing as well as heals received from an ally.

scipionumatia · October 2017

give us something, if your gonna remove a potential 200 damage it needs to be compensated. give us something for sustain, give us something for block reduction, give us something for healing, or give us something for recovery.

This splitting of a passive is ***. whats next?

"we replaced medium passive dexterity with "quick running" which increases your run speed by 3%. athletics passive still reduces roll dodge by 4% per piece of medium worn"
-We felt this change was necessary because we don't use this playstyle and don't think anyone else should either. Also we saw some videos on youtube of people having fun doing solo content and we would prefer if everyone ran in zergs, this way broken mechanics and passives/skills that don't work wont be noticed because the bigger zerg will always win!

NyassaV · October 2017

Or just increase the cost reduction light and medium gives. Then EVERYONE will be a bit happier

Darkstar101 · October 2017

I can stomach the loss of Wrath, but the splitting of Rapid Mending into two separate perks is what bothers me. We now have to spend twice as much to receive the same benefit we had previously and have nothing to compensate the loss of Wrath. It is a net loss.

If they are going to make them separate perks then at least give them each a boost and make them worth investing in to even out the loss of another perk.

"We're going to take away something you like and not replace it and then make you spend twice as much for something you already have." -ZOS

...lame.

Ragnaroek93 · October 2017

So heavy armor won't be a nobrainer go to build anymore. Good.

Chilly-McFreeze · October 2017

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

So heavy armor won't be a nobrainer go to build anymore. Good.

Technically you are right. But you know, medium armor is still in a bad spot and heavy is now worse than before.

KingJ · October 2017

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

So heavy armor won't be a nobrainer go to build anymore. Good.

It's still pretty much a no brainer i lose 200 weapon damage big deal.

Dragath · October 2017

the main problem is the inconsistency of the devs.
they want heavy armor to be the defensive choice, but instead of changing the sets that are responsible for the damage that heavy armor users can dish out, they nerf the heavy armor passives and call it a day.
with the right setup, you will still be able to burst down other players.
they have to decide what they want to do with the different type of armors. a real decision. not this nonsense.
if you want to make heavy armor the clear defensive choice, change/alter/remove the high damage sets. give heavy armor more survivability.
but they are not going to change all the HA sets because they fear the backlash and outcry.
people are crying over HA because is does too much damage.
people are crying about HA because some players seem to be invincible.
if they remove the damage, players will still cry over players being invincible, even if they don't deal any damage.
ZOS can not make up their mind, and they can't win whatever they do.
they are not smart and/or determined enough to do what has to be done.
it will always end like this.
half-assed changes that make no sense and will be altered/reversed in the next big patch.