I would prefer if they would just allow us to choose passives regardless of char's race.
Sure, they could keep the "flavour" passives such as argonian swim speed, but they could allow players to choose which stats they would like to boost.
That would create more visual diversity... It would be cool to see more nord or khajiit mages, for example. Not just elves.

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

It won't lead to "build diversity". It will just lead to a different meta and a different small handful of best-in-slot sets.

Currently, nearly every set in the game is identical.

Armor of the Lazy Dev
2 - Gives you more damage
3 - Gives you more damage
4 - Gives you more damage
5 - Gives you lots more damage

These armor sets come in mainly two colors, green and blue. There are some red armor sets that only tanks and PVPers use. There are multi-color armor sets that no one uses in PVE. The game already doesn't promote build diversity. It promotes farming Vicious Ophidian. Build diversity cannot and will never exist while set creation is restricted by the game mechanics because they can create ingeniously clever sets that will never get used.

I too remember when recovery was everything but these problems happened because base stats like stamina and its recovery were on the armor itself. That's not even how an Elder Scrolls game works, the vast majority of your stats come from the enchantments and level up attributes. You might see a few extra points of magicka or stamina on a piece of gear but it was ultimately 2% of what your other stat sources were.

This is what you could expect to see on Elder Scrolls armor and sets:

- 25% stronger Resist Frost enchantments
- 5 Poison damage per second to nearby enemies, Muffle - Ebony Mail part only
- +25 Armor when full set worn; +20 Stamina, +15% Resist Frost (cuirass); Muffle (boots); 15% Lockpicking, +15% One-handed damage (gloves); -12% Illusion spell cost (hood)
- +25 Armor when full set worn; Immune to Poison (cuirass); Muffle (boots); +35% Bow damage (cowl); 2x Sneak attack damage from one-handed weapons (gloves)

95% of such bonuses are useless to "Every Stamina Player Ever Made" unlike more damage. Diversity comes from allowing options that benefit and promote alternate playstyles, not from number crunching which playstyle is the grand daddy of them all and booting everyone from the raid who isn't a stam Nightblade. To promote alternate playstyles, you have to have gear that makes alternate choices a tempting option over using the same build as everyone else. Presently, gear doesn't offer options at all. It just gives you More Damage. There's always going to be a set that gives more More Damage.

What promotes build diversity is sacrifice. There is no sacrifice to picking the statistically most optimal Stamina-player gear set and using it to the exclusion of all others. If there were set variety, there would be build variety.

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

And hybrid builds will still be subpar because while you could now run, for example, 25k magicka and 25k stamina without being punished for smaller pools, how are you going to find enough set bonuses and passives and CP and whatnot to max out spell/weapon damage, spell/weapon crit, spell/armor penetration, magicka/stamina recovery, etc.?

There are still too many stats you need to worry about maximizing to allow hybrid builds to compete with magicka or stamina focused builds. You would not need to unhinge just max stat from damage. You would need to unhinge nearly everything from damage if you want hybrid builds to work.

Most hybrids wouldn't work, in fact, this has been a fact of life since Ultima Online and EverQuest. However, the very concept of a hybrid means they aren't going for maximum anything. Maximizing implies focus, hybrid implies compromise for other benefits. Hybrid doesn't mean two sources of dmg, but rather that the effects themselves don't scale according to the stats. There's no need for penetration, crit, or even recovery if they want magicka benefits that are unpenalized. Access to magicka buffs or heals in a stamina build that aren't horrendous due to stat scaling. Stamina players sporting shields. Werewolves actually being able to heal themselves. PVP benefits for sure if anyone understands anything about RPGs and hybrids in general. PVE is always dominated by purists, even among games where there are over 20 classes there will only be 2-3 that are top DPS and everyone else is a hybrid with different mechanics. Sometimes they'd rather have the medium armor druid over the light armor wizard because while it deals less damage it also survives a lot better and can act as an offhealer. With CP, due to how CP scales, spreading points around results in a few percent drops here and there in exchange for large boosts elsewhere; PVPers already do this and it's quite effective.

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

The game is not built for that. And, while not perfect, combat is about as close to balanced as it has ever been. I don't want to see ZOS upend a combat system that, after four years.

ZOS will break the game again sooner or later, as they have done in the past. Rebalancing some things now may even stop them from repeatedly nerfing things like Blocking or recovery. Players seem to just get weaker over time because they can't balance their game, heck next patch is smacking the raiders with even more changes to how damage is dealt. No more off-balance status buffing the raid. Players adapt and move on regardless of how much ZOS breaks the game or shifts the meta. It's also not the first time they upended the game to try to balance it, heck One Tamriel did a lot of that.

Yes. you can't make a good hybried as long as damage come from the pools.