Racial Passive Suggestions

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

I've put a lot of thought into the new racial changes coming with Wrathstone. In another discussion I did a complete breakdown of racial passives, and correlated them to set bonuses for comparison. For the most part, I like the direction being taken here. In some cases, I don't feel like the new racial passives go far enough. Some races are still forced into certain builds to be effective, and others are a little lackluster even after the changes. After reading many suggestions I liked on these forums, and coming up with a few of my own, I have come up with a very long list of suggestions for each race. I feel like these will add more variety and flavor to the races, keeping each one different from the others. Another goal I had was to make sure that every single race had at least one passive for damage, sustain, defense, and utility. I also wanted to remain lore-friendly, and not deviate too far from the bonuses races have had prior to this rebalance. The result of this effort is the following list, I hope you enjoy it and welcome any comments below.

Altmer (High Elf)

Highborn

Increases Destruction Staff experience by 15%
Increases all experience gain by 1%

Spellcharge

150 Magicka Recovery ♦♦
Increases weapon enchant effect by 8% ♦♦♦♦

Syrabane's Boon

2000 Max Magicka ♦♦
Damage taken to shields is reduced by 10% ♦

Elemental Talent

258 Spell Damage ♦♦
Increases Heavy Attack damage by 20% ♦♦

The ability to have a large magicka pool and refill it as needed is important to the Altmer’s identity. Their defensive ability is not inherent and they can't take hard hits passively (a true glass cannon, unlike Nords or Orcs for example), but increasing their active defense makes sense since there are no mages more skilled in casting defensive spells. Since most shields now scale with health, even tanky builds can benefit from shielding, and this passive will keep their shields up a little longer. Their raw proficiency with destruction magic is now a spell damage boost, which is nice since it applies to Magic damage as well as Elemental types. The boost to heavy attacks demonstrates the amount of power that comes out after an Altmer takes a moment to charge up an attack (and hopefully revitalizes some of the old heavy attack based Sorcerer and Dragonknight builds). Altmer are also known to be the best enchanters, which means that their weapon enchants are slightly more effective than most other races.

Argonian

Amphibian

Increases Restoration Staff experience by 15%
Increases swimming speed by 50%

Resourceful

Restore 3600 Health, Magicka, and Stamina when you drink a potion. ♦♦♦♦
1487 Spell Penetration ♦

Argonian Resistance

2640 Disease Resistance + Immunity to the Diseased status effect ♦
1250 Max Magicka + 1000 Max Health ♦♦♦

Life Mender

8% Spell Critical ♦♦
5% Healing Received ♦

Argonians have a reputation of surviving in difficult conditions (disease immunity and extra health), while also excelling at some forms of magic and stealth combat (see shadowscale). I wanted to open up the race a little more to these various roles, in addition to maintaining their ability to heal and tank well. Spell crit is applicable to the assassin side of their lore, and it benefits both heal strength and damage. However, the effectiveness of spell crit is heavily biased toward end-game optimized PVE groups (with good warhorn uptimes). Spell crit is less useful in PVP (with crit resistance) and in less organized PVE groups. To balance this I gave them a small spell penetration bonus (which also makes sense from the assassin side of the lore). The spell pen is less useful in end-game PVE and doesn’t make healing any more powerful, but it benefits PVP damage dealing and a PVE environment without debuffs like Crusher and Alkosh. Their tri-stat resource return on potion consumption and bonuses to healing done (for healers, represented by spell crit) and received (for tanks) have been so defining for the race, they should absolutely remain with nearly the potency they have on the live server.

Bosmer (Wood Elf)

Dextrous

Increases Bow experience by 15%
Increases chance to pickpocket by 5%

Y’ffre’s Endurance

1500 Max Stamina and 800 Max Magicka ♦♦♦
129 Magicka Recovery + 129 Stamina Recovery ♦♦♦♦

Resist Affliction

2640 Poison Resistance + Immunity to Poisoned status effect ♦
25% Reduced dodge roll cost ♦

Hunter’s Eye

258 Weapon Damage ♦
Critical Damage increased by 5% ♦♦

Bosmer are quick and nimble, which is why they need a good stamina pool, stamina recovery, and reduced dodge roll cost. The dodge roll cost reduction also synergizes well with using a bow, since they will get a speed boost from the bow passive. Their small hands are certainly be better at pickpocketing than Khajiit, so I swapped their passives. The magicka sustain, and small magicka pool bonus, originate from their elven roots. These play into their stealthy and mobility side, since no other stamina build will be able to utilize things like cloak, streak, and other utility skills as frequently. Their unmatched abilities with a bow are represented by the significant amount of weapon damage and extra critical damage. Both of these also help to maximize their ability to ambush enemies and kill quickly. Bosmer may not be quite as diverse as some other classes in terms of healing and tanking synergy, but they can definitely perform stealth and damage roles well, both in PVE and PVP, and they have a nice mix of stamina and magicka bonuses.

Breton

Opportunist

Increases Light Armor experience by 15%
Increases Alliance Point gain by 1%

Gift of Magnus

1750 Max Magicka + 300 Max Health ♦♦♦
3% Healing Done ♦

Spell Attunement

Increases Light Attack damage by 10% ♦♦
3960 Spell Resistance ♦

Magicka Mastery

7% Magicka and Ultimate Cost Reduction ♦♦♦♦
150 Magicka Recovery ♦♦♦

Bretons are the best magicka users among the human races. This is most evident from their incredible sustain, granted by a large magicka pool, magicka cost reduction, and strong magicka regen. This sustain benefits damage, healing, and tanking capability. Breton’s talent for restoration is embodied with 3% healing done, which should bring their heal strength on par with Altmer and Argonian, despite their lacking a spell power or crit passive. The spell resistance is another key characteristic of Bretons, and synergizes well with tanking, or any role where survivability is useful. Bretons are the magicka race that can best sustain a light attack rotation, and therefore are well suited to a light attack damage bonus. This also ensures that classes with good sustain (like nightblade) can still get some synergy out of Breton racial bonuses. The justification for this bonus is that Bretons value quick practical spells (light attacks) while Altmer focus on flashy charged-up spells (heavy attacks).

Dunmer (Dark Elf)

Ashlander

Increases Dual Wield experience by 15%
Reduces damage taken from lava by 50%

Dynamic

Increases Max Magicka by 1500 and Max Stamina by 800 ♦♦♦
Restores 330 Magicka and Stamina when dealing direct damage, can occur every 4 seconds. ♦♦♦♦

Flame Shield

2640 Flame Resistance and Immunity to Burning ♦
10% Reduced Block Cost ♦

Destructive Ancestry

258 Spell Damage ♦♦
Critical Damage increased by 5% ♦♦

With a reputation as a hybrid of destruction damage and physical skill, they need some passives for each. The extra Magicka, Spell Damage, and magicka return reinforce their spellcaster side, while the stamina and stamina return show their agility and speed in battle. The critical damage passive boosts all of their attack types slightly, including weapon enchants (which are not affected by spell damage or max resources). It serves to bring their PVE DPS up to similar levels as other races, while not doing as much in PVP (where crit is often mitigated, and hybrids already perform well). The block cost reduction plays into their hybrid nature, as no other mage will be able to block-cast as long. It also gives a little synergy to Dunmer tanks, since they don’t benefit much from the damage passives.

Imperial

Diplomat

Increases One-Hand and Shield experience by 15%
Increases your gold gained by 1%

Tough

2000 Max Health, 1000 Max Magicka, 750 Max Stamina ♦♦♦♦
2640 Physical Resistance + 2640 Spell Resistance ♦

Imperial Mettle

Deal 10% more damage to enemies under 25% health ♦♦
Take 5% less damage while blocking ♦

Red Diamond

Restore 720 Magicka and 720 Health when you take damage. This effect can occur every 8s. ♦♦♦
The effect of your Mundus Stone is increased by 60% ♦♦♦♦

Imperials are the most diverse human race, including multiple sub-groups that specialize in different skills. Taking inspiration for the Nibenean culture, and from Imperial Battlemages, Imperials got a sizable amount of magicka and magicka return, while their stamina pool is nearly as impressive. The steadfast Imperial soldier was the driving reason for the health, resistances, block, and self-healing bonuses. Since Imperials can perform any role well, I thought it would be fitting to give them a very flexible passive. By increasing the potency of their Mundus Stone buff(s) any player can effectively choose one of their racial passives. The value 60% works out to 142 weapon or spell damage (with Warrior or Apprentice), 4.2% critical chance (with the Thief), etc. Another interesting side effect is that this could create some niche builds that use Twice Born Star. The additional boost to the 5-piece would balance the useless mixed resource bonuses on the 2-4 piece set. Their main damage bonus comes from a passive execute (like Bloodthirsty jewelry), which is derived from the Imperial practice of publicly removing the heads of their captured enemies.

Khajiit

Acrobat

Increases Medium Armor experience by 15%
Decreases fall damage taken by 10%

Nimble

1250 Max Stamina + 1000 Max Health ♦♦
Reduces area of effect damage taken by 10% ♦

Stealthy

100 Magicka Recovery + 100 Stamina Recovery + 100 Health Recovery ♦♦♦♦
Reduces your detection radius in stealth by 3m

Carnage

8% Weapon Critical ♦
1487 Physical Penetration ♦

Khajiit are known for their agility and stealth. I gave them the fall damage passive from Bosmer because cats always land on their feet. They get a moderate boost to stamina and a small health bonus to show their robustness. Their reflexes in combat result in higher weapon crit and physical penetration, which complement each other in various aspects of gameplay (see description in Argonian spell crit and spell penetration). Since evasion has become area damage reduction, and no race can evade attacks as well as Khajiit, they should have some amount of area damage protection.

Nord

Reveler

Increases Two-Handed experience by 15%
Increases drink duration by 15 minutes

Stalwart

Deal 10% more damage to enemies over 75% health ♦♦
While in combat, gain 5 ultimate every 10 seconds ♦♦♦

Resist Frost

2640 Frost Resistance + Immunity to the Chilled status effect ♦
2640 Physical Resistance + 2640 Spell Resistance ♦

Rugged

2000 Max Health, 1000 Max Stamina, 750 Max Magicka ♦♦♦♦
Increases heavy attack damage by 20% and Stamina Recovery by 129 ♦♦

Nord is probably the race I am suggesting the least changes to. Everyone knows their background well from Skyrim. Mainly I would like to see their ability to deal damage increase slightly. I don’t believe Nords are typically more heavily armored or skilled at defensive combat than Redguards or Imperials, so I reduced their Physical and Spell Resistance slightly. This is made up for by their shear toughness, represented by a larger health bonus. The ultimate passive seemed too one-dimensional for tanks, when healers and damage dealers would also benefit from it, so I think it should apply whenever in combat, not only when taking damage (more like a passive Shalk set than a Werewolf hide set). The final aspect of Nord that seemed to be missing was their skill with large weapons. Outside of leveling two-handed faster it was not represented. I added a 20% heavy attack bonus to help correct this. Nords do not have great stamina sustain, so they will probably need to heavy attack more than other races, this will help mitigate the DPS loss from doing so. They should also have a little stamina sustain (although less than Reguard and Orc), so I added 129 stamina recovery. By using the stamina recovery stat (instead of a proc return like redguard), this will be halted while blocking, meaning it will not make Nord tanks any more powerful, but will benefit stamina damage dealers. Their other damage passive is a reverse execute, granting them more damage during the beginning of a fight. This represents the Nord tendency to rush into battle with no hesitation, often catching their opponent off-guard.

Orsimer (Orc)

Craftsman

Increases Heavy Armor experience by 15%
Increases crafting Inspiration by 10%

Brawny

2000 Max Stamina ♦
Increases weapon enchant effect by 8% ♦♦♦♦

Unflinching

Restore 634 stamina when you deal direct damage. This effect can occur every 6s. ♦♦
2640 Shock Resistance and Immunity to Concussion ♦

Swift Warrior

258 Weapon Damage ♦
Sprint cost reduced by 12% and sprint speed increased by 10%

The weapon damage and maximum stamina demonstrate the Orc’s ability as a warrior. Their toughness is shown by the increased health and ease of healing. The shock resistance demonstrates their resistance to magic (present in Oblivion as a generic magicka resistance, but I’ve made it more specific here to allow immunity to a status effect, and concussion resistance seems fitting for their thick skulls). They maintain the speed and stamina that has really given them their niche in ESO, with an added bonus to stamina recovery so that they can maintain that speed longer. Orcs are also known to be some of the finest enchanters, which is why they share the same weapon enchant bonus with Altmer.

Redguard

Wayfarer

Increases One-Handed and Shield experience by 15%
Increases the duration of food by 15 minutes

Conditioning

1750 Max Stamina + 300 Max Health ♦♦
Reduces effectiveness of snares by 15% and cost of breaking free by 20%. ♦

Exhilaration

Increases Light Attack damage by 10% ♦♦
3960 Physical Resistance ♦

Adrenaline Rush

7% Stamina and Ultimate Cost Reduction ♦♦♦♦
Restore 792 stamina when you deal damage with a weapon ability. This effect can occur every 6s. ♦♦

Redguard is the stamina counterpart to Breton. They have the best stamina sustain of any race. I do not feel like their best passive (cost reduction) should be tied to weapon skill lines, since that limits their usefulness to certain classes. I do like that it has the ability to decrease the cost of some ultimates on PTS, so I have extended this to all ultimates. I see no reason why Redguards couldn't see more casts of Warhorn, making them more desirable as tanks or healers in PVE. Their abilities as warriors are shown by their increased light attack damage (which also synergizes well with being able to sustain a light attack rotation) and their large stamina pool. Their combat training also makes them better at parrying or deflecting blows from physical weapons, which is represented by a flat value of physical resistance. It is difficult to stop an determined Redguard, which is why they have reduced snare magnitude and the ability to more easily break from from various effect. It’s worth nothing for tanks that the main source of Redguard stamina regen is fully functional while blocking. The flat stamina return is now tied to weapon abilities (not necessarily melee, but class skills won’t work), maintaining the original vision that they are experts with tools of combat.

If you made it through that wall of text I am truly impressed. I'm sure that there will need to be some tweaks to the numbers I have above, this is just a guess at what seemed reasonably balanced. Thanks for reading, and please leave your thoughts below. Let's make this a lively discussion.

Edit: Added color coding to indicate how each passive benefits a build. There is some subjectivity here, but I want to have a quick visual indicator how well-rounded each race is.
♦ = Increases magicka damage
♦ = Increases physical damage
♦ = Increases healing
♦ = Increases survivability
These correspond to the main 4 roles in PVE, while in PVP there is more hybridization between these. In PVE a build rarely benefits from having passives outside their color, but in PVP they all contribute to a well-rounded build. In general, I don't feel like each race needs to be equally good at magicka or stamina DPS, but they should be able to do at least one or the other reasonably well. Each race should also receive some benefit to either healing or tanking, preferably both wherever it makes sense.

Edit 2: Adjusted a few passives, based on comments below.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Here is all the same info from above, listed in an order to highlight the Magicka-Stamina mirroring between races.

To summarize, we have Altmer (high elves) vs Orsimer (corrupted elves) as the purest stamina and magicka builds, both sharing an affinity for dealing damage, sustaining their primary resource, and enchanting weapons.

Breton and Redguard are the next on the list, both human races sharing the ability to sustain nearly endlessly. While still primarily focused on their respective magicka/stamina, both of these also have a little defense mixed in.

Dunmer (dark elves) and Bosmer (wood elves) are the next pairing, and are a little more of a hybrid when it comes to resources. Dunmer are primarily casters, with some athleticism and warrior abilities. Bosmer on the other side, are primarily skilled with bows and blades, but have enough magic in their ancestry to cast a few more spells than other stamina races.

Next are the beast races, Argonian and Khajiit, both skilled in stealth combat and ambushing their enemies, which is why both get bonuses to critical chance and penetration. They are also fairly robust, getting a moderate health bonus and other regeneration and defensive passives.

Imperial and Nord are the final pairing, both human races, and both focused primarily on health, but with a couple of damaging passives as well. Nords are slightly more focused on weapons given their warrior background, while Imperials lean a little toward magic, both have excellent defenses.

Gryph13 · February 2019

The bias is strong in this post.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Gryph13 wrote: »

The bias is strong in this post.

How so? Is something above too weak or too powerful compared to the others?

Gryph13 · February 2019

You gutted Dunmer and khajit and clearly put them behind altmer for mag builds and then gave them some fluff as if it was making up for taking away higher stats. It also appears that aside from altmer bias, you like the status quo on the live server and are looking to restore the same exact hierarchy for both Stam and magica. Boring and just reestablishing what already exists. All but altmers and a buff to nords.

The one that bothers me the most is that Dunmers with your stats would be junk as magica or stamina.

ezio45 · February 2019

Needs work. I like some off the passives tho... Not that zos everything listens to player suggestions

At best they just identify what we hate and try on there own to fix it

Silver_Strider · February 2019

Dear sweet baby Jesus, where do I begin.

Ok, as an Argonian only player, I'll be the 1st to admit, your suggestions for us is brokenly OP. I get that you wanted them to be a sort of antithesis of Khajiit, giving similar passives for both but the potion passive+Spell Pen+Spell Crit+4% Healing Received and Done is just overkill in every single regard and would completely destroy any attempt at PvP balance. Remove the Spell Pen, make the potion passive only restore Health/Magic or Health/Stamina, depending on larger resource, instead of being a Tri-Stat restore, reduce the Healing received+done down to 2% each and lower the Spell Crit to 6%. Maybe then it would be more balanced (I only put the maybe because people would still complain it's OP)

The Imperial change is essentially just changing them from a stamina race into a Magic race when lore wise, they should be both. Split the stat into 1500 Magic and Stamina. Also, 60% Mundus Buff? That's ridiculous by any stretch of the imagination. That needs to go entirely, there's just no defending it. I'd reduce the restore value on Red Diamond as, even with the proc condition, would be extremely powerful and again, Imperial should have some stamina restore as well so I'd drop it down to 500 of each resource every 7 seconds upon hit.

Altmer is also a bit in the extreme spectrum, as 10% reduced shield damage is extremely powerful, especially if you build for resistances, and 8% ultimate reduction seems a bit much. I'd remove the shield effect and drop the Ultimate reduction down to 3% at most. The current reduction on channeled abilities is fine enough as is that I don't see a need to remove it, other than lore reasons but that's a nitpick really.

Dunmer's 15% block cost reduction and Bosmer's 25% reduced dodge cost also seem a bit on the heavy handed side of things. I'd drop the reduction down to 7% for Dunmer and 10% for Bosmer.

Sadly, even with these adjustments, I don't believe the suggestions would be as evenly balanced in terms of overall performance and some races would be extremely powerful but at least I tried.

Vapirko · February 2019

Cool ideas but way OP.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Gryph13 wrote: »

You gutted Dunmer and khajit and clearly put them behind altmer for mag builds and then gave them some fluff as if it was making up for taking away higher stats. It also appears that aside from altmer bias, you like the status quo on the live server and are looking to restore the same exact hierarchy for both Stam and magica. Boring and just reestablishing what already exists. All but altmers

That’s is certainly not the intent. Are we talking PVE DPS? Let’s dive into specifics:

Altmer vs Dunmer
Comparing to the latest PTS patch I made the following changes:

Altmer
- 108 Magicka return per second
- 20% heavy attack damage (no significant effect on end-game DPS, only for niche heavy attack builds)
- 8% ultimate cost reduction (about 0.5% DPS increase)
- Shield boost that’s equivalent to about about 700-800 shield strength for PVE DPS

Dunmer
- Restore 83 Magicka and Stamina per second
- 5% crit damage (about 2.5% DPS increase)
- Lost 375 Max Magicka (less than 1% DPS loss)
- Lost 1125 Max Stamin (doesn’t affect DPS)
- Gained 330 flame resistance
- Gained block cost reduction

If anything I’d say that on my version Dunmer outparses Altmer in burst, and it would take a very long fight for the difference in mag regen to change that. On the current PTS, they are close, but Altmer beats Dunmer DPS every time.

For Khajiit, I removed them as a Magicka DPS and shifted those passives to Argonian. Khajiit is still very competitive for stamina.

Gryph13 · February 2019

No one would pick a Dunmer for Stam or magica as they are depicted in your build unless they want fire resist. So basically Dunmer if you want nothing but darker skin. And they would be useless as a Stam build. It just shows you are favouring some races over others and further pigeonholing some races into limited roles. It’s boring and will make race selection and builds less diverse and more homogeneous than already exists in the live server.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

@Silver_Strider Ok, let’s talk details. What makes Argonian more OP than Khajiit? Do you consider both to be too powerful in PvP? The tri-stat resource return is similar for both, as are the max resources, crit bonus, and penetration bonus. I can agree that the healing done and received is often better than Khajiit’s stealth bonus. What would be an acceptable value here to ensure that Argonian tanks and healers don’t feel like one of their key passives is being removed?

For Altmer shield strength, I would compare it to Breton spell resistance. If building for resistance then the Breton 3960 spell resist can decrease damage taken by up to 11%. And once the ~8k shield is gone this continues to reduce the damage to their health bar. The suggested Altmer passive is only 10% damage reduction in the shield, and 0% to the remaining health bar. It does also apply to physical damage, so I’d be open to reducing it maybe down to around 8%. Either way, Altmer would be the most vulnerable race when caught without their shield up.

As for 8% ultimate reduction, we can compare it to the Nord passive. 5 ultimate every 10s is 0.5 ult per second. Most builds have about 3.5 ult per second already, so this is a 14% increase in ultimates used. The 8% Altmer passive is relatively weak in comparison, and only becomes similar in value if stacked with other ulti cost reduction sources (like Akaviri Dragonguard set). I think this passive would have the most benefit for healers, giving them a Magicka race option that would help them keep up with Nord tanks in a Warhorn rotation.

The current damage reduction while channeling if pretty useless. It is a low amount of mitigation, and how often is anyone really channeling or casting? IMO it also doesn’t make sense from a lore perspective. If anything, a caster would be the most vulnerable while trying to channel or cast something.

I’d have to see how they played to comment on the dodge and block cost reduction bonuses worked out. I based those values on Sturdy and Well-Fitted. Each racial passive equivalent to 2.5 armor traits (and armor traits individually are quite weak compared to set bonuses).

Now for Imperial, I know the Mundus increase looks like a lot at first glance, but try a few examples and it’s really not enough to overpower them. If we try to make an Imperial more like Altmer we’d choose Apprentice, so they’d add 60% x 238 = 143 Spell damage. Compare that to Altmer’s 258. Now if that imperial wore TBS they could maybe get 143 Spell damage + 4.2% crit chance, but they’re giving up other stats to use that set. If the bonus was much below 50% I don’t see it as impactful enough, since it would give less than 1 standard set bonus to the chosen Mundus stat.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Gryph13 wrote: »

No one would pick a Dunmer for Stam or magica as they are depicted in your build unless they want fire resist. So basically Dunmer if you want nothing but darker skin. And they would be useless as a Stam build. It just shows you are favouring some races over others and further pigeonholing some races into limited roles. It’s boring and will make race selection and builds less diverse and more homogeneous than already exists in the live server.

@Gryph13

Nobody would pick a Dunmer for a stamina build on live server either. They have been primarily a Magicka race for the entirety of this game’s history. On PTS they were briefly looking OK as a stamina race, but since then have been completely overshadowed by Orc. So they are again a useless Stamina race. My goal above was to bring them back to viability for Magicka, while retaining their hybrid lore. I also wanted room for Bosmer to be useful, since they are pretty low on the stamina list on both live and PTS.

I am open to suggestions though. Dunmer could easily get another 258 weapon damage and maybe even increase their stamina from 750 up to 1500. Would this solve the problem you describe? I think it would make them very similar to Bosmer.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Vapirko wrote: »

Cool ideas but way OP.

@Vapirko Thanks. Do you mean OP in an absolute way (like power creep) or do you think there is significant imbalance between races above? If it’s a power creep issue, I suspect we’re going to see some changes (or even removal) of CPs in the future, so maybe stronger racials could help balance that change. If it’s about some of the races above over or underperforming I’d like to talk about it in more detail.

Edit: I’d have to run all the numbers in more detail, but I think the racials I listed above work out to about 8-9 standard set bonuses. Some of the races on PTS have up to 7 standard set bonuses so this isn’t far off. I would also argue that my version has more varied bonuses that would be hard for any one build to fully utilize.

Kulvar · February 2019

I think racials should aim to balance races in a lore-friendly way for both Stam & Magicka. So people can play either.

Vapirko · February 2019

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Cool ideas but way OP.

@Vapirko Thanks. Do you mean OP in an absolute way (like power creep) or do you think there is significant imbalance between races above? If it’s a power creep issue, I suspect we’re going to see some changes (or even removal) of CPs in the future, so maybe stronger racials could help balance that change. If it’s about some of the races above over or underperforming I’d like to talk about it in more detail.

Edit: I’d have to run all the numbers in more detail, but I think the racials I listed above work out to about 8-9 standard set bonuses. Some of the races on PTS have up to 7 standard set bonuses so this isn’t far off. I would also argue that my version has more varied bonuses that would be hard for any one build to fully utilize.

OP in an absolute way. It’s just too much especially raw stats, damage and sustain for almost all races, plus some sort of specialized mitigation.

martijnlv40 · February 2019

Vapirko wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Cool ideas but way OP.

@Vapirko Thanks. Do you mean OP in an absolute way (like power creep) or do you think there is significant imbalance between races above? If it’s a power creep issue, I suspect we’re going to see some changes (or even removal) of CPs in the future, so maybe stronger racials could help balance that change. If it’s about some of the races above over or underperforming I’d like to talk about it in more detail.

Edit: I’d have to run all the numbers in more detail, but I think the racials I listed above work out to about 8-9 standard set bonuses. Some of the races on PTS have up to 7 standard set bonuses so this isn’t far off. I would also argue that my version has more varied bonuses that would be hard for any one build to fully utilize.

OP in an absolute way. It’s just too much especially raw stats, damage and sustain for almost all races, plus some sort of specialized mitigation.

Yeah this. I do like most of the changes, but almost all of them are direct (big) buffs compared to live and pts. Power creep already is a problem, and these changes will only work is cp is removed entirely (plus 20% resource bonus). Also, this gives too big of a change between races which puts a very heavy emphasis on chosing the right race (at the start of the game for new players who do not know anything about them (if they didn't look it up)), which in my opinion is a bad thing.

eso_nya · February 2019

i like those a lot more than what zos did. might need some tweaks here and there, the overall idea is good.

Letho2469 · February 2019

You have put much work into it, thx for that! Still there is the balancing problem. Imo removing all racials would be the best approach so everybody can play/look the way he/she wants.

Silver_Strider · February 2019

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

@Silver_Strider Ok, let’s talk details. What makes Argonian more OP than Khajiit? Do you consider both to be too powerful in PvP? The tri-stat resource return is similar for both, as are the max resources, crit bonus, and penetration bonus. I can agree that the healing done and received is often better than Khajiit’s stealth bonus. What would be an acceptable value here to ensure that Argonian tanks and healers don’t feel like one of their key passives is being removed?

For Altmer shield strength, I would compare it to Breton spell resistance. If building for resistance then the Breton 3960 spell resist can decrease damage taken by up to 11%. And once the ~8k shield is gone this continues to reduce the damage to their health bar. The suggested Altmer passive is only 10% damage reduction in the shield, and 0% to the remaining health bar. It does also apply to physical damage, so I’d be open to reducing it maybe down to around 8%. Either way, Altmer would be the most vulnerable race when caught without their shield up.

As for 8% ultimate reduction, we can compare it to the Nord passive. 5 ultimate every 10s is 0.5 ult per second. Most builds have about 3.5 ult per second already, so this is a 14% increase in ultimates used. The 8% Altmer passive is relatively weak in comparison, and only becomes similar in value if stacked with other ulti cost reduction sources (like Akaviri Dragonguard set). I think this passive would have the most benefit for healers, giving them a Magicka race option that would help them keep up with Nord tanks in a Warhorn rotation.

The current damage reduction while channeling if pretty useless. It is a low amount of mitigation, and how often is anyone really channeling or casting? IMO it also doesn’t make sense from a lore perspective. If anything, a caster would be the most vulnerable while trying to channel or cast something.

I’d have to see how they played to comment on the dodge and block cost reduction bonuses worked out. I based those values on Sturdy and Well-Fitted. Each racial passive equivalent to 2.5 armor traits (and armor traits individually are quite weak compared to set bonuses).

Now for Imperial, I know the Mundus increase looks like a lot at first glance, but try a few examples and it’s really not enough to overpower them. If we try to make an Imperial more like Altmer we’d choose Apprentice, so they’d add 60% x 238 = 143 Spell damage. Compare that to Altmer’s 258. Now if that imperial wore TBS they could maybe get 143 Spell damage + 4.2% crit chance, but they’re giving up other stats to use that set. If the bonus was much below 50% I don’t see it as impactful enough, since it would give less than 1 standard set bonus to the chosen Mundus stat.

What makes the Argonian suggestion OP is that the potion passive is very strong in PvP because it comes in as a single burst but when coupled with the Spell Pen, Spell Crit (for healing at least), increased Magic and 4% Healing Received/Done, they just blow all magic races away in terms of PvP performance.

Altmer's shield passive is much stronger than Breton's Spell Resistance because, not only does it block physical damage but you can have multiple shields on you, so it would only take 2 shields to really provide more defense than Breton's spelll resistance alone could ever hope to offer. Then, we have to consider the results of combining this with classes, like Sorc, that abuse shields and have natural Ultimate cost reduction. It starts to blur the lines between balanced and OP fairly quickly.

Imperial Mundus bonus is strong because of the combination of Thief and Shadow Stones that was so prominent before they were nerfed, back when Twice Born Star was one of, if not the best DPS set in the game. With the Shadow stone having been returned to full power, and the 60% buff outstriping the nerf to the Thieves Stone, even before we account for Divine traits, Imperial becomes a powerhouse in terms of DPS due to having superior crit and critical damage than the other races, not to mention the sustain buff you suggested would make them much too potent in a trial setting to not have.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Silver_Strider wrote: »

What makes the Argonian suggestion OP is that the potion passive is very strong in PvP because it comes in as a single burst but when coupled with the Spell Pen, Spell Crit (for healing at least), increased Magic and 4% Healing Received/Done, they just blow all magic races away in terms of PvP performance.

In your opinion, what values would result in balance? 3600 resource return on potion use, 2% healing done and received? The spell crit would solve the long-time issue that Argonian's do not perform well at PVE DPS, and crit generally doesn't do as much in PVP. The spell penetration wouldn't help their ability to take damage or heal at all, but does give a little more damage in most PVP scenarios (2-3%).

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Altmer's shield passive is much stronger than Breton's Spell Resistance because, not only does it block physical damage but you can have multiple shields on you, so it would only take 2 shields to really provide more defense than Breton's spelll resistance alone could ever hope to offer. Then, we have to consider the results of combining this with classes, like Sorc, that abuse shields and have natural Ultimate cost reduction. It starts to blur the lines between balanced and OP fairly quickly.

I haven't really seen much shield stacking lately, it seems like most have gone to a single shield. Even in the scenario you describe the 2 largest shields (hardened ward and dampen magic) can still only add up to same strength as your health (50% + 50%). So best case for Altmer we'd be looking at 10% mitigation on half their effective health, vs Breton's 11% mitigation on all of their effective health. Breton's still appears about twice as strong, but is balanced because it only applies to half the damage types. You seem to dislike sorcs though, so I'm probably not going to convince you on this one.[/quote]

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Imperial Mundus bonus is strong because of the combination of Thief and Shadow Stones that was so prominent before they were nerfed, back when Twice Born Star was one of, if not the best DPS set in the game. With the Shadow stone having been returned to full power, and the 60% buff outstriping the nerf to the Thieves Stone, even before we account for Divine traits, Imperial becomes a powerhouse in terms of DPS due to having superior crit and critical damage than the other races, not to mention the sustain buff you suggested would make them much too potent in a trial setting to not have.

I still don't think the numbers work out to anything overly powerful here. Let's look at it in detail, best possible case for Imperial. Let's say that the new Shadow stone works out to the best Mundus option, that's 13% crit damage base, which goes up to 19.8% with 7 divines. Most races would not benefit from using the Thief stone with TBS, because this would give 10.7% crit chance, while sets like Mother's Sorrow or Advancing Yokeda give 16.4% to 16.7%. Now if you were Imperial you could get 14.9% crit from TBS+Thief and the crit damage from the Shadow mundus stone would be 27.6%. Comparing the 2, the Imperial in TBS would have 1.8% lower crit chance, and 7.8% higher crit damage. Assuming crit chance and crit damage are roughly equivalent, their net gain is 6% crit damage from this racial passive. It is not far from the 5% crit damage I had on 2 other races, and is only that value if using a specific set that synergizes with the passive, otherwise the benefit is half of this.

Again I would ask, what value do you think would be balanced? 50% increase to mundus stone? That would be 3.5% more crit chance from the Thief and 6.5% more crit damage from the Shadow. This would put the passive at about 4% crit dmg in the best case scenario above, and make it worth a little under 1 set bonus for more typical scenarios. I don't think I would want to go lower than this at a minimum.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

martijnlv40 wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Cool ideas but way OP.

@Vapirko Thanks. Do you mean OP in an absolute way (like power creep) or do you think there is significant imbalance between races above? If it’s a power creep issue, I suspect we’re going to see some changes (or even removal) of CPs in the future, so maybe stronger racials could help balance that change. If it’s about some of the races above over or underperforming I’d like to talk about it in more detail.

Edit: I’d have to run all the numbers in more detail, but I think the racials I listed above work out to about 8-9 standard set bonuses. Some of the races on PTS have up to 7 standard set bonuses so this isn’t far off. I would also argue that my version has more varied bonuses that would be hard for any one build to fully utilize.

OP in an absolute way. It’s just too much especially raw stats, damage and sustain for almost all races, plus some sort of specialized mitigation.

Yeah this. I do like most of the changes, but almost all of them are direct (big) buffs compared to live and pts. Power creep already is a problem, and these changes will only work is cp is removed entirely (plus 20% resource bonus). Also, this gives too big of a change between races which puts a very heavy emphasis on chosing the right race (at the start of the game for new players who do not know anything about them (if they didn't look it up)), which in my opinion is a bad thing.

@martijnlv40 Thanks for the feedback. I don't want to get too caught up in absolute power. Let's look at my original post as relative power between races, and discuss if the passives are fitting to the character of each race. In the end, it would be easy to do something like globally reduce every number I have there by 25% (a guess) to bring them all to the desired power level, whatever that may be.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Added color code for a quicker visual analysis of each race. Most are pretty diverse, but I feel like Orc and Redguard are lacking synergy with the healer role. Any lore friendly suggestions to correct this without making them any more powerful as PVE DPS, tanks, or PVP builds?

CurvedSwords123 · February 2019

Awesome, I agree with a lot for your thoughts here!

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Made a few slight adjustments to values based on checking numbers and comments. Keep them coming!

Silver_Strider · February 2019

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

What makes the Argonian suggestion OP is that the potion passive is very strong in PvP because it comes in as a single burst but when coupled with the Spell Pen, Spell Crit (for healing at least), increased Magic and 4% Healing Received/Done, they just blow all magic races away in terms of PvP performance.

In your opinion, what values would result in balance? 3600 resource return on potion use, 2% healing done and received? The spell crit would solve the long-time issue that Argonian's do not perform well at PVE DPS, and crit generally doesn't do as much in PVP. The spell penetration wouldn't help their ability to take damage or heal at all, but does give a little more damage in most PVP scenarios (2-3%).

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Altmer's shield passive is much stronger than Breton's Spell Resistance because, not only does it block physical damage but you can have multiple shields on you, so it would only take 2 shields to really provide more defense than Breton's spelll resistance alone could ever hope to offer. Then, we have to consider the results of combining this with classes, like Sorc, that abuse shields and have natural Ultimate cost reduction. It starts to blur the lines between balanced and OP fairly quickly.

I haven't really seen much shield stacking lately, it seems like most have gone to a single shield. Even in the scenario you describe the 2 largest shields (hardened ward and dampen magic) can still only add up to same strength as your health (50% + 50%). So best case for Altmer we'd be looking at 10% mitigation on half their effective health, vs Breton's 11% mitigation on all of their effective health. Breton's still appears about twice as strong, but is balanced because it only applies to half the damage types. You seem to dislike sorcs though, so I'm probably not going to convince you on this one.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Imperial Mundus bonus is strong because of the combination of Thief and Shadow Stones that was so prominent before they were nerfed, back when Twice Born Star was one of, if not the best DPS set in the game. With the Shadow stone having been returned to full power, and the 60% buff outstriping the nerf to the Thieves Stone, even before we account for Divine traits, Imperial becomes a powerhouse in terms of DPS due to having superior crit and critical damage than the other races, not to mention the sustain buff you suggested would make them much too potent in a trial setting to not have.

I still don't think the numbers work out to anything overly powerful here. Let's look at it in detail, best possible case for Imperial. Let's say that the new Shadow stone works out to the best Mundus option, that's 13% crit damage base, which goes up to 19.8% with 7 divines. Most races would not benefit from using the Thief stone with TBS, because this would give 10.7% crit chance, while sets like Mother's Sorrow or Advancing Yokeda give 16.4% to 16.7%. Now if you were Imperial you could get 14.9% crit from TBS+Thief and the crit damage from the Shadow mundus stone would be 27.6%. Comparing the 2, the Imperial in TBS would have 1.8% lower crit chance, and 7.8% higher crit damage. Assuming crit chance and crit damage are roughly equivalent, their net gain is 6% crit damage from this racial passive. It is not far from the 5% crit damage I had on 2 other races, and is only that value if using a specific set that synergizes with the passive, otherwise the benefit is half of this.

Again I would ask, what value do you think would be balanced? 50% increase to mundus stone? That would be 3.5% more crit chance from the Thief and 6.5% more crit damage from the Shadow. This would put the passive at about 4% crit dmg in the best case scenario above, and make it worth a little under 1 set bonus for more typical scenarios. I don't think I would want to go lower than this at a minimum.[/quote]

I'd be fine with 3600 resource tri-restore or a bi-restore of 4k Health and Magic/Stamina, depending on which is higher. Since tanks generally build for more Stamina anyways, the bi-restore will still provide a generous amount of sustain for Argonian Tanks, while keeping their PvP potential more in check, without largely impacting either Healers or DPS role; either way is fine. I'm also fine dropping the Healing received/done down to 2% since the racial is being nerfed for tanks anyway but the 2% of each would still be mildly more helpful than the current 6% Healing Done, since tanks get healed more often by others than just themselves using self heal that the impact shouldn't be felt much, while the extra magic + spell crit will keep Argonian Healers afloat well enough on their own before the extra 2% healing done is factored in. My only real issue at that point is the Spell Pen since Tanky Argonian Healbots get a little too much of a damage boost for PvP, which is my largest concern. I can't ignore the fact that Argonians have good sustain and tank potential that already put them in a decent PvP spot that giving spell pen on top just doesn't seem great for balance, and on the PvE side, it'll often be wasted due to the vast network of Spell Pen available to magic builds there so I'd be fine with just removing it.

I don't really have anything against Sorcs its just they're the class that would best synergize with your suggested Altmer passives that I had to bring them into the discussion when discussing balance. 23% Ultimate cost reduction is huge and when combined with Ultimates that refund part of their cost (like Reviving Barrier or Shooting star) the potential for abuse is something to take note of. Something else to note is that your reasoning that the Ultimate passive was with Healers in mind is somewhat flawed. All it would realistically do is remove all other races from the Healer role as Altmer is pretty much the complete package; it now has great sustain, great damage and have the best group utility in the form of cheaper, more frequent Warhorns. Hell, the only thing keeping all support roles from going Nord now for better Warhorn uptime is the fact that they have subpar racials for healing and that it currently requires that you take damage, something that isn't completely feasible on a healer role to accomplish with 100% certainty, not that it would matter if Altmer got the 8% cost reduction.

Speaking of Warhorn uptime, that's one of the main factors when determining how powerful TBS would be on an Imperial. How much Major Force uptime would it take for that estimated 6% to become too good to pass up? I mean with Altmer Healers and Nord Tanks, Major Force uptime would be at an all time high in trials and Imperials would be the race to benefit the most from such high uptime that it might completely eclipse all other races, regardless of the fact that its shackled to using TBS to be effective (which isn't really a huge thing considering how most meta builds are stuck on 1-2 viable sets at most anyway.)

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

@Silver_Strider We're more on the same page than I thought. I bumped the Argonian tri-stat restore down to 3600 in the OP earlier today. I had really only left it 4000 since that was the latest PTS, but I agree it is more reasonable if it averages 80 of each resource per second than 89. I also reduced the healing done and received from 4% down to 3%. I think 2% is a little too low, but your points about PVP make sense and 8% self-healing was a little too much. I could even get onboard for shifting more into healing taken and less into healing done, since the spell crit does help with healing output. I just don't like the current PTS where the healing taken was removed entirely, and Argonian tanks were affected the most.

For the Spell Pen, I think that it offers something unique that Argonian would otherwise be lacking. The Spell Crit is great in end-game PVE with perfect groups, since that is when the multiplier on Crit Damage is high enough to make a crit build better than a damage build (like Dunmer or Altmer). However, in most scenarios, the spell crit alone would make Argonians weaker than the other magicka races. In PVP especially, where everyone is in Impen, the spell crit falls short of a impactful damage increase. This is where the spell pen comes in, since it benefits PVP more than PVE. In fact, the best PVE groups will only get about half of the benefit (since they are about 800 spell pen away from the cap without investing any CP's in Spell Erosion). So the intent here is to provide a passive that makes Argonian damage competetive outside of the perfect raid group scenario. If I were to cut the value in half it would defeat the purpose, as this is intended as a "raise the floor" passive.

You make a good point about Altmer ulti cost reduction possibly making them too META for healers. That is actually my current fear for Nord, and I don't think it would make sense for every healer to be running around as a tank/warrior race. I like the idea of the Nord passive in general though, it's great for tanks, and is kind of reminiscent of their mastery of shouts in Skyrim. So the real question in my eyes is: What unique and impactful support can Breton and Argonian bring to the healer role that would ensure they maintain their effectiveness? Especially if we're already considering removing the Argonian healing done for PVP reasons. Whatever is done to make these races viable healers could possibly be applied to other races that have little to no synergy with healing/support.

So to balance Altmer and Nord, I wonder what value of cost reduction would be appropriate. If it was 2% ulti cost reduction, would Altmer still be preferred because of their other magicka passives? What about 5%? It's difficult to say. Anything less than the 10-15% that Nord tanks will likely be utilizing is going to slow down the entire Warhorn rotation. I could probably be convinced to make it 6 or 7%, but anything less than that an I think it would lose its intent.

Back to Imperials, your statements would be true with the way Warhorn used to work (multiplying Crit Damage bonuses), but since they are additive now, higher Crit Damage from things like Mundus Stones actually results in diminishing return from Major Force. To get the most out of Warhorn uptime, you really want to focus on Crit chance, and invest less in Crit damage (which would be sticking with sets like Advancing Yokeda and Mother's Sorrow). I am somewhat flexible in adjusting values, so if something crazy like Imperial in TBS with Lover and Steed turned out to be the new dominant PVP build, this 60% could easily go down to 50%.

It's kinda funny discussing fine-tuning of all these values, when most of these ideas will likely never make it into the game. I do appreciate the discussion though, and bringing up scenarios I had not considered.

validifyedneb18_ESO · February 2019

Some of these changes are SO imbalanced.

20% increase to heavy damage on a racial? Do you know how many people would be 1shot by bow or inferno staves in PVP?

10% increase light attack, LA is one of the biggest damage components of mag builds.

Reduced block cost is widely considered a joke, even for tanks like imperials.

In general you're just giving each race a lot more, which is just going to feed into power creep and balancing issues.

Chelo · February 2019

Altmers Online again.... No thx....

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

validifyedneb18_ESO wrote: »

Some of these changes are SO imbalanced.

20% increase to heavy damage on a racial? Do you know how many people would be 1shot by bow or inferno staves in PVP?

10% increase light attack, LA is one of the biggest damage components of mag builds.

Reduced block cost is widely considered a joke, even for tanks like imperials.

In general you're just giving each race a lot more, which is just going to feed into power creep and balancing issues.

Light attacks are 20-25% of DPS. A lot of this comes from the Maelstrom staff effect, which would probably not be affected by the 10%. Also the 10% would most likely be additive with other % bonuses, meaning it would effectively be 6-7%. This passive should be about 1% DPS increase to Bretons and Redguards with perfect light attack weaving.

For Heavy Attacks the math is similar, a tooltip 20% increase is really about 13% more damage. To utilize this passive on a bow you would need to be a Nord, which is hardly ideal for burst damage (doesn’t have weapon damage, crit damage, or physical penetration of other races). On the Destruction Staff side, this passive is on Altmer, which IMO is the Magicka race least suited for PvP (since it is a glass cannon, and has no stamina or health passives). I haven’t seen many Inferno one-shot ganks since the nerf in heavy attack damage several months ago, but this would be something to keep an eye on if the passive causes them to return and be too powerful.

Imperials don’t have block cost, I have 5% block mitigation listed there. This means that if an attack would hit them for 200, and they blocked to make that 100, this passive would instead make it 95. Essentially it is like a weaker form of the Footman’s Fortune set.

Edit: I was thinking of an earlier version where I had block cost on Redguard, but I realized that their stamina reduction would apply to that, so moved that to Dunmer.

HatchetHaro · February 2019

Real quick, I don't agree entirely on completely overhauling races to make them this way, simply because there will be too much balancing work to do on them. Right now, it seems that your racial passives would affect whatever they do a lot, and I already think many of your values would need adjusting to balance it all out a bit more so they're not overbearing in what they do compared to no racials; basically, in my opinion, the races that are already at the top, such as Altmer, don't need buffing.

However, I really like how you've tried to give them all an identity in either Stamina or Magicka damage-dealing as well as varying amounts of utility based on each race, and you've obviously put a lot of thought and effort into this in terms of stats and balancing. You get an awesome from me.

WrathOfInnos · February 2019

Chelo wrote: »

Altmers Online again.... No thx....

Why all the Altmer hate? I don't think they would be highest DPS given the passives above. I can only estimate for a typical PVE build, but here is how they compare as far as I can tell.

Altmer
258 Spell Damage (4% DPS)
2000 Max Magicka (3.2% DPS)
10% Ulti Cost (<1% DPS)
108 Mag/s (2% DPS)
Total: 10.2% DPS

Dunmer
258 Spell Damage (4% DPS)
1500 Max Magicka (2.4% DPS)
5% Critical Damage (2.5% DPS)
83 Mag/s (1.5% DPS)
Total: 10.4% DPS

Argonian
8% Spell Crit (5% DPS)
1500 Max Magicka (2% DPS)
1487 Spell Pen (1-3% DPS)
80 Mag/s (1.5% DPS)
Total: 9.5% to 11.5% DPS

Breton
7% Magicka Cost (3.2% DPS)
2000 Max Magicka (3.2% DPS)
150 Magicka Recovery (2% DPS)
10% Light Attack damage (1% DPS)
Total: 9.4% DPS

If anything, Argonian might be slightly overperforming. Maybe I'll bump them down to 1250 Max Magicka and raise the Health to 1000. It also looks like Breton could use a small boost, so I might increase the light attack damage up to 15%. They also have the healing and defensive bonuses though, so it might be ok to leave as is.