Hi everyone,

Iam currently playing more AvA than most of the time to have some degree of fun with my mDK before the off-balance and power lash nerfs will make him my craftbot only. By the way, this is mainly for no-CP. CP creates all kinds of balance problem and power creep as we know.Iam max CP but still favor no-CP PvP.

I also do not want to talk about class balance or any other combat mechanics. In fact there is sooooo much cheese and cancer going on, more than ever before imho and even with Power Lash could be spammed without any prerequisite it could never even compare to most of the other stuff that seems to be "meta" these days.

However on my mDK (as my main) I got plenty of skillpoints and various armor sets to switch between different roles and playtypes by a click or two (with gear and skillchanger addons). Thus depending of type of action (small scale / solo / roaming / warband / keep take / whatever) I can switch to heavy armor with monster set, heavy armor mixed with light, 2 light armor sets without monster set and so on. I have all LA and HA passives and skills unlocked.

So many people still after multiple nerfs to HA (and now more HA sets getting adjusted to remove their outstanding performance, e.g. seventh legion) use it in PvP and I for my part on a mDK can understand them because whenever I run LA I basically get instagibbed especially by Nightblades, but also everyone else except maybe other DKs as soon as they look at me.

HA gives: more resists, more health, more incoming healing, more HA resource return (important for DKs) and minor resource return on taking damage (already nerfed), Wrath was removed too
LA gives: some spell resist, (nerfed) reduce magicka cost, magicka regeneration bonus, spell crit, bonus magic penetration

the risk versus reward is not really balanced here. Spellcrit is basically an off-stat in PvP because everyone runs impregnable armor. You can theoretical get your crit resists that high that a crit will deal less damage than a normal hit. Also procs no longer crit so it only affects your true skills. penetration is ok. The reduced cost is not really that good anymore, you could get similar reduction with the seducer set if you want. The magicka regen is problematic because it only helps if you have magicka regen to begin with. If you do not have any regen on your gear the increase from LA is not noticeable.

The most important thing however is that you simply die to quickly. The loss in survívability does not compare to the slightly improved damage by penetration. Medium armor is actually better here cause the weapon damage bonus also applies to your heals where penetration only helps when you actually hit something with a spell

Without CPs a harness magicka absorbs maybe 5000 damage in PvP. That is not even 1 snipe or sub. assault. even spamming the skill will not save you. the situation is a bit better for Sorcs (double/triple shield) and NBs (cloak) of course, but everyone else will not survive. Also if you get surprise-bursted from stealth you will hardly be able to get the shield up.

I do not run any meta build. Iam not elite either. But I see such a huge difference to enjoyment of PvP switching from LA to HA, it simply makes no sense. Yet I still remember the Elder Staffs Online time and am unsure myself what happened. Well procsets and monster sets happend, but is that the real difference?
Of course you can get similar defence in LA armor too. There are plenty sets to find or craft in LA that help with surviving. Question is, why try to make LA more defensive for yourself when you can go HA and make that more offensive too? (example: my power lash hits for maybe 5000 damage in LA, and for close to 4000 damage in HA). Obviously especially DKs who only have melee range skills LA is a problem...

a couple things Id suggest:

for LA:
- the penetration bonus should be reworked. Maybe a split mixture of spell damage and penetration (instead of 4 K penetration make it 2 K penetration and 200 spell damage?)
- the crit chance needs to be adapted for PvP: either make it also ignore part of the targets impregnable rating or add a bonus to crit spell damage to overcome some of the targets impregnable value (best would be to remove impregnable anyway from gear, maybe give part of it as a passive to wearing 5 HA and rebalance crit/damage in PvP)
- the damage shield should be changed as follow:
- > casting it outside of combat will keep the shield up until combat started, The 6 second countdown only starts in combat. Thus you will have the shield right from the start even when beeing jumped from stealth. This should not include class specific shields

as for HA:
- as mentioned impregnable/crit resist could be made HA-specific (at a way lower rate than currently available).
- the Juggernaut/HA active skill should get a magicka morph

my goal is not to make LA best in slot again, but to allow both styles to work. staff-casters are already at a disadvantage due to 1 item less for set purpose...

comments and suggestions are welcome.

p.s.
I also have stamtoons in medium, but medium has its own issues ^^