Balancing magicka vs stamina builds in pvp

LadyNalcarya · September 2018

So according to class rep notes, they want to balance light vs medium armor survivability.
There's one thing, though... A lot of stamina builds these days use heavy armor, since there's a ton of awesome heavy+weapon damage sets and you get a lot of survivability without sacrificing anything.
This is a very important thing devs seem to overlook...
I mean, those specific sets might be nerfed, but still its not light vs medium, it's light vs medium vs heavy.

Elwendryll · September 2018

I don't play in heavy armor in pve. Magicka classes can still achieve the same thing as stamina classes, but with more survivability, and less risks.

My point is... Heavy armor is an other problem.

Galarthor · September 2018

Devs meant the survivability in PvE, not PvP.
PvP is just get screwed over b/c of that.

John_Falstaff · September 2018

@Galarthor , if you mean shields, then their announcement said "...counterplay against shields", implies that it's PvP-driven change.

Galarthor · September 2018

"The gist of ZOS’s explanation to us what that they wanted to even the survivability between Stamina and Magicka (the specific example that a Magicka build could spam shields without paying attention to a Boss [...]"

That sounds pretty PvE-ish to me!

Turelus · September 2018

Galarthor wrote: »

"The gist of ZOS’s explanation to us what that they wanted to even the survivability between Stamina and Magicka (the specific example that a Magicka build could spam shields without paying attention to a Boss [...]"

That sounds pretty PvE-ish to me!

What if it's BIG BOSS THE DARK PHOENIX?

John_Falstaff · September 2018

...we have made a series of broad changes to ESO’s combat that are designed to help balance sustain across all Classes, provide counterplay opportunities for Damage Shield Abilities, and improve the effectiveness of Light and Medium Armor Passives.

That sounds pretty PvP-ish to me, and that's official announcement, not from ad-hoc discussion with reps (as much as I respect the reps).

Biro123 · September 2018

Turelus wrote: »

Galarthor wrote: »

"The gist of ZOS’s explanation to us what that they wanted to even the survivability between Stamina and Magicka (the specific example that a Magicka build could spam shields without paying attention to a Boss [...]"

That sounds pretty PvE-ish to me!

What if it's BIG BOSS THE DARK PHOENIX?

In that case, you don't need shields anyway!

jcm2606 · September 2018

Damage isn't the reason why people go heavy in PVP, as you said. Survivability is. Medium does have higher damage, but conversely it has lower survivability, far lower than it should. Nerfing sets that grant damage won't in any way make medium more enticing from a survivability perspective.

Mayrael · September 2018

jcm2606 wrote: »

Damage isn't the reason why people go heavy in PVP, as you said. Survivability is. Medium does have higher damage, but conversely it has lower survivability, far lower than it should. Nerfing sets that grant damage won't in any way make medium more enticing from a survivability perspective.

It's not that medium has to low survivability, it's that heavy has to high damage, because you can be tanky and dangerous at the same time. Take away damage from heavy and you'll see what happens

The_Brosteen · September 2018

Mayrael wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Damage isn't the reason why people go heavy in PVP, as you said. Survivability is. Medium does have higher damage, but conversely it has lower survivability, far lower than it should. Nerfing sets that grant damage won't in any way make medium more enticing from a survivability perspective.

It's not that medium has to low survivability, it's that heavy has to high damage, because you can be tanky and dangerous at the same time. Take away damage from heavy and you'll see what happens

They did that. And then people kept using heavy. So you'd need to nerf individual sets. But then those sets could become useless. Which is not what they want I guess.

usmguy1234 · September 2018

Mayrael wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Damage isn't the reason why people go heavy in PVP, as you said. Survivability is. Medium does have higher damage, but conversely it has lower survivability, far lower than it should. Nerfing sets that grant damage won't in any way make medium more enticing from a survivability perspective.

It's not that medium has to low survivability, it's that heavy has to high damage, because you can be tanky and dangerous at the same time. Take away damage from heavy and you'll see what happens

Exactly this. There are currently more heavy sets that give over 500 weapon damage than medium. Either that or you can get proc sets in heavy and literally not have to use resources to do anything but survive. Those are the two biggest balance issues in the game imo.

Zer0oo · September 2018

This patch stam was already much stronger than all other mag classes open world. Next patch the gap will be even bigger. Also you can survive pretty well in medium if you build for it, just saying.

Stibbons · September 2018

Light armor needs some buffs in pvp. Only magsorc shieldstackers could wear it, full divines offcourse...

LonePirate · September 2018

John_Falstaff wrote: »

...we have made a series of broad changes to ESO’s combat that are designed to help balance sustain across all Classes, provide counterplay opportunities for Damage Shield Abilities, and improve the effectiveness of Light and Medium Armor Passives.

That sounds pretty PvP-ish to me, and that's official announcement, not from ad-hoc discussion with reps (as much as I respect the reps).

That's true until you dig into the details and discover the light armor changes are pretty much worthless. Those patch notes you quoted are nothing but a marketing bait and switch.

NBrookus · September 2018

It's the heavy damage sets, specifically for stam. As long as Fury/Ravager/Seventh exist stam will have heavy mitigation without giving up any damage or sustain for it while stacking speed and being nearly untargetable, which is the best mitigation of all. And with no comparable heavy magicka sets nor magicka speed pots, melee magicka is for the masochistic.

The reality for PVP is unless you are magblade ganking/bombing or healbotting for a typical stamdens/stamblade group with maybe the odd stamDK or stam sorc, you are operating at a significant disadvantage.

BigBadVolk · September 2018

usmguy1234 wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

Damage isn't the reason why people go heavy in PVP, as you said. Survivability is. Medium does have higher damage, but conversely it has lower survivability, far lower than it should. Nerfing sets that grant damage won't in any way make medium more enticing from a survivability perspective.

It's not that medium has to low survivability, it's that heavy has to high damage, because you can be tanky and dangerous at the same time. Take away damage from heavy and you'll see what happens

Exactly this. There are currently more heavy sets that give over 500 weapon damage than medium. Either that or you can get proc sets in heavy and literally not have to use resources to do anything but survive. Those are the two biggest balance issues in the game imo.

Agree + the Swift and Forward Momentum also helps heavy with destroying the speed penalty of heavy, so atm we have Tanks who goes faster then light and almost as fast or maybe faster then med

ak_pvp · September 2018

Actually, its even more different.

Its light v med v Heavy stam v Heavy mag.
Mag heavy has no where near the speed, (No mag/speed pots, no mag FM) sustain (Mag HAs suck) or damage (No sets like ravager/fury) vs a heavy stam build.

LadyNalcarya · September 2018

Well... I personally dont want anything nerfed, I'm just concerned that they try to bring light armor on par with medium to balance magicka and stamina, but then we have heavy stam dps sets that are often better than existing magicka sets.
They nerfed shields and dodge... But heavy armor is already a meta, and I think it's not very good if magicka builds are gimped and stamina builds are pigeonholed in wearing heavy sets.

ak_pvp wrote: »

Actually, its even more different.

Its light v med v Heavy stam v Heavy mag.
Mag heavy has no where near the speed, (No mag/speed pots, no mag FM) sustain (Mag HAs suck) or damage (No sets like ravager/fury) vs a heavy stam build.

Good point! I personally wouldnt mind if they would at least add magicka versions of these sets to make things more fair.

Elsterchen · September 2018

@LadyNalcarya not sure if you've seen it, but this thread might be of interest for you, too

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5480464#Comment_5480464

Imo balancing magica and stamina has to take offensive as well as defensive abilities into consideration... and the ability to sustain ones main ressource pool. Taking a more detailed look at the 3 armor types and how they affect builds is imo a good start to balance.

CritsTheBed · September 2018

Imo the one skill change that could reset and rebalance a lot of pvp is forward momentum. 8 seconds immunity of snares and immobilizations is a huge reason people favor heavy armour and choose it over medium(shuffle vs forward momentum and heavy vs med), its a no brainer really especially with sets like 7th legion and fury. Sure forward momentum isnt a heavy armour skill but im pretty possitive 100% of players running heavy in pvp are using it and thats a huge tell. If you want players to appreciate the medium armour passives without adding anything, a start would be to give them a reason to run it and not heavy. 8 seconds immunity to snares and immobilizations is so hard to choose against that a lot of magicka classes are running 2h simply because the snares and roots are what get you killed.

Strider__Roshin · September 2018

I think the balance between light and medium is becoming a lot more healthy this update, but yeah I think most people are in agreement that heavy is too strong, and it's honestly probably due to certain sets (i.e. Truth, Fury, Seventh, Ravager, and Veiled).

Honestly it was a terrible idea to incorporate high damaging sets into heavy's arsenal.

ujimax · September 2018

Heavy has nice mitigation potential, but lacks the cost reductions to spam skills without having to weave as people were used to before the previous 'lets get creative to reduce lag' sustain nerfs (by which I don't refer to the black rose nerf). Before these Murkmire changes, 5 piece restricted armour skills made it tempting to use medium and light armour. I guess the hefty AOE reduction you get from dodge has some appeal as well now.
The main unbalance on live right now is one light armour 5 piece passive skill outshining all others in the stam-vs-mag debate: because with well-fitted trait on heavy armour, you can permadodge just fine like you can in medium, and get better heals, hit points as a bonus. After the sharpened weapon trait got nerfed, light armour has an advantage when having to fight tin-canned-(wo)men with 32k(+) resistances stacking every kind of mitigation, damage reduction, 'godmode' mechanics. When playing magsorc well... the worst that can happen is getting chased alone by a posse with shieldbreakers or different counters like the enduring ye olde fear|stun 'combo' feature.

Like some one else here mentioned, running light without damage shields is do-able for a magicka templar, but easier to counter because of the lack of mitigation when getting focus targeted for having nasty heals. But I guess that's the trade-off for wanting offensive capabilities on top of spamming purify.
If the developers go through with the shield changes (already reversed them being interruptible, big win for all the magsorc rage crowd here, keep going guys! - personally I would've preferred a change 0.5s cast time but not uninterruptible), maybe a possible boost to light armour could be 50% mitigation instead of the current 25%, that'd be OP as ***... err more balanced. Throw paper frost tanks a bone!

I don't have much experience with pve, but I always assumed the most efficient groups were not those who only followed the pasted DPS mantra obsession, whilst all using the same builds, rotations and hardware macros (shame on you feeble fingered nubs, there's an eula you agreed to you know), but stacked a little HP for healers to work with considering the incoming damage in the first place, but then again as a shieldstacker group you don't really need heals, only beneficial group-utility sustain sets on the healers and their orbs and have them throw an ultimate, so yeah then these casting delays must really fmess up your shizz.

Galarthor · September 2018

Somewhere along the way ZOS lost their sense of direction. Heavy armor has turned into a jack-of-all-trades and master of all in PvP. Tanks wear it, healers wear it, damage dealers wear it and they can with very little downsides (especially stamina DPS / tanks). We have had a heavy armor meta for what? 2 years now? Every update ZOS promises us to tackle the problem but never really do. Seems like they think it's too complicated, when it fact it is rather easy.

Add the following passives to the Armor Skill lines.

Light Armor:
1) Increase shield size by x% per piece of light armor
2) Increase healing done by x% per piece of light armor
3) Increase magicka based damage done by x% per piece of light armor (mandatory!)

Medium Armor:
Change the percentage of damage mitigated by dodge rolling to less than 100%, not the dodge of CC though!
1) Increase damage mitigated by dodge roll by x% per piece of medium armor
2) Increase the healing received / done by healing over time effects by x% per piece of medium armor
3) Increase stamina based damage done by x% per piece of medium armor (mandatory!)

Heavy Armor:
1) Reduce all damage done by x% per piece of heavy armor (mandatory!)

Cost Reductions are not included here since they already exist in the respective armor skill lines and would just require some tweaking depending on the actual x values chosen!

That way we can reduce the damage of heavy armor sets sufficiently so that heavy armor becomes primarily a survivability armor type - just the way it was intended. At the same time we can prevent them from effectively and efficiently using defensive tools that are not meant for heavy armor builds, but rather as compensation for the lack of resistences (and block) of medium armor and light armor compared to heavy armor.