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ZOS, I have a question about LA Concentration Passive?

Sahidom
Sahidom
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With all the changes to standardize combat mechanics. Do you have plans in the future to change the LA Concentration passive to mirror the DW Twin Blade & Blunt and 2H Heavy Weapons passives in which wearing 5 pieces of LA will ignore 10/20% Spell Resistance of the target?

You have already removed the flat rate penetration from the Nightblade's Surprise Attack skill. So I was wondering whether you will continue to move forward with this standard and cascade the changes to all flat rate penetration sources outside Major or Minor Breach and Fractures.
  • WrathOfInnos
    WrathOfInnos
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    Sahidom wrote: »
    With all the changes to standardize combat mechanics. Do you have plans in the future to change the LA Concentration passive to mirror the DW Twin Blade & Blunt and 2H Heavy Weapons passives in which wearing 5 pieces of LA will ignore 10/20% Spell Resistance of the target?

    You have already removed the flat rate penetration from the Nightblade's Surprise Attack skill. So I was wondering whether you will continue to move forward with this standard and cascade the changes to all flat rate penetration sources outside Major or Minor Breach and Fractures.

    The change to Surprise Attack is strange, since the general direction of the game has been to move away from % modifiers and toward flat values (which I fully support). This was largely demonstrated by the change in racial passives from % resource modifiers to flat values, and is intended to make bonuses rewarding for all builds, not just those stacking a particular stat.

    Your example doesn’t make any sense though. The DW and 2H passives you bring up (which are exclusive to maces) are already mirrored by the Penetrating Magic passive in the Destruction Staff skill line: “Allows your Destruction Staff spells to ignore 10% of an enemy's Spell Resistance.” In reality, the staff version is significantly weaker because it has half the magnitude and only applies to Destruction Staff abilities. IMO all 3 of these passives should be converted to a flat value, something just under 4k Penetration would be about right (or <2k per mace for DW). And all 3 of these passives should apply to all damage sources, not limited to a handful of skills.

    I’m not sure why you are bringing up the Light Armor concentration passive, it has nothing to do with the weapon skill lines. If anything, concentration should be seen as mirroring the medium armor passive Agility (15% increase to weapon damage).

    Edit: I’d like to add a little more detail about converting the % values to flat values on Twin Blade and Blunt, Heavy Weapons, and Penetrating Magic. Dual Maces or a 2H Maul should be approximately balanced with dual daggers. This can easily be converted using the factor 393 Penetration = 1% Crit Chance, which can be verified by looking at standard set bonuses (3.8% crit = 1487 pen), Mundus Stones (Thief 7% crit = Lover 2752 Pen), and weapon traits (Precise 7% crit = Sharpened 2752 pen). So we can find that each mace should give the equivalent of 5% crit, which is 1965 pen. To make this a little cleaner, we can round to the nearest multiple of 660 (the number by which player armor is divided to get % resistance, based on the effective level cap of 66, or 50 + v16/cp160), which gives 1980. As an aside, these multiples of 660 are commonly used in other buffs and debuffs, with Minor Breach/Fracture/Ward/Resolve being 2 x 660 = 1320, Major Breach/Fracture/Ward/Resolve being 8 x 660 = 5280, Nord racial passive being 6 x 660 = 3960, and Templar and Dragonknight Spell Resistance passives being 4 x 660 = 2640. Continuing on, the 1980 per mace would result in 3960 Physical pen from Dual Maces or a single Maul via the Heavy Weapons passive. It’s debatable whether the Destruction Staff passive should be equally powerful, but given the current underperformance of Magicka compared to Stamina DPS at the moment, I would be in favor of treating it the same as a 2H stamina weapon. Therefore the Penetrating Magic passive could provide 3960 Spell Penetration (ideally as a flat value, not tied to only Destruction skills). This would not have much impact in optimized group boss fights, since really only about 1k pen is needed to reach the cap, but it would be helpful for trial trash, pug groups, solo content, and in PVP against tanky players.
    Edited by WrathOfInnos on September 9, 2019 6:10PM
  • Sahidom
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    I understand and apologize that it may not come across clear cut question about the LA concentration passive. However, allow me to expand more rationale behind the question.

    When they changed Surprise Attack to remove the built-in Major Fracture it communicated they wanted to separate this mechanic component out of the class skill; and more into a dedicated class skill (and non-class skills). The %fracture from surprise attack simply supports the original design even though the overall effectiveness was adjusted by the change.

    The Weapon skills (DW/2H) passives have a conditional clause to lower the target's physical resistance; Hence, the character must wield maces. This %penetration applies to all damaging skills that are mitigated by physical resistance. This is notably different than penetrating magic from the destruction staff, which only applies its %penetration to destruction staff skills. It's restrictive in context that it does not apply %penetration to all damaging skills mitigated by spell resistance. Whereas, LA concentration passive does and accumulative with penetrating magic.

    There is no conditional clauses to LA concentration or penetrating magic i.e. The character must wield a specific weapon. In an abstract way, LA concentration then becomes comparable without condition to the weapon skill passives. So, I was curious whether ZOS had plans to change the LA passive into a %percentage penetration to lower the target's spell resistance.

    Again, I understand and apologize that the question may not have been very clear on the OP. The assumed standard to separate Fracture/Breach from combat skills into dedicated skills had me question this. LA concentration offers 4884 of 5280 spell penetration of Major Breach. Hence, will they change this passive to separate the near-equivalent Major Breach from the LA passive.
    Edited by Sahidom on September 10, 2019 2:32PM
  • WrathOfInnos
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    Sahidom wrote: »
    The Weapon skills (DW/2H) passives have a conditional clause to lower the target's physical resistance; Hence, the character must wield maces. This %penetration applies to all damaging skills that are mitigated by physical resistance. This is notably different than penetrating magic from the destruction staff, which only applies its %penetration to destruction staff skills. It's restrictive in context that it does not apply %penetration to all damaging skills mitigated by spell resistance. Whereas, LA concentration passive does and accumulative with penetrating magic.

    There is no conditional clauses to LA concentration or penetrating magic i.e. The character must wield a specific weapon. In an abstract way, LA concentration then becomes comparable without condition to the weapon skill passives. So, I was curious whether ZOS had plans to change the LA passive into a %percentage penetration to lower the target's spell resistance.

    I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at with the conditional clause point. Concentration has a conditional clause of requiring 5 pieces Light Armor, it’s not just a free passive to any Magicka user (this may not sound very restrictive, but it has a big impact on heavy armor Magicka damage builds in PVP, primarily DK and Templars). Additionally, I would say that the nature of Spell Penetration is itself limiting, since half the Light Armor users (healers) don’t gain anything from this stat. Something like Spell Damage (mirroring the Weapon Damage on Medium Armor) would certainly be more universal, but I’m not pushing for more homogeneity.

    The Destruction Staff passive Penetrating Magic is also conditional. It requires using a specific weapon type just like the similar passives for Mace and Maul. Are you saying that it should only apply to one elemental type of staff, like Frost for example? If that were the case, what bonus would the passive give to the other 2 Destruction Staff types? Penetrating Magic is also far more restrictive than the bonus from Twin Blade and Blunt or Heavy Weapons because it only applies to Destruction Staff skills (typically less than half of damage dealt), and the magnitude is half (10% vs 20%).

    I really don’t support the idea of making more things % based. The flat values are a better way to handle these types of passives, since they are universally beneficial. The problem with % based armor debuffs is that they apply after all of the flat value reductions. This is why Maces, Mauls, Penetrating Magic, and Surprise Attack are largely considered useless. For example a typical PVE enemy has 18.2k resistance, so the 20% from dual Maces could be 3640 Physical Penetration (which would make them close to balanced with Daggers, Swords, and Axes), but in organized groups the enemy’s resistance is reduced with coordinated debuffs (Fracture, Alkosh, Crusher) down to 5849. At this point dual Maces only give 1169 Physical Penetration combined, making them less than 1/3 as effective as other weapon types.
  • WrathOfInnos
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    Applying the example above, it’s clear that making Concentration a % based modifier would have a significant negative effect on the viability of Light Armor and Magicka builds (or to keep its current value of 4884 of the 5849 I mentioned above it would need to remove a ridiculous 83% of enemy’s remaining resistance, which would be very overpowered for solo builds or when facing PVP tanks).

    Rather than doing that, wouldn’t it be better to make Maces and Mauls useful by adding what I suggested in my first post: 1980 Physical Penetration per Mace, 3960 per Maul. Then extend a similar philosophy to Destruction Staves (either 1980 or 3960, depending on what the devs feel would be more balanced). Also make a similar change to Surprise Attack, have it reduce enemy’s Physical Resistance by maybe 990 or 1.5%(could also remove the positioning requirement), which would encourage optimized groups to bring at least one Nightblade instead of all Necromancers.
  • crazywolfpusher
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    Correct me if im wrong but there is no aoe major breach source. Thats probably one of the reasons light armor gives spell penetration.
    Change it would imply a major balance issue.
  • Sahidom
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    I was not arguing for/against any changes; it was just a straight up question for ZOS.

    While I agree wearing 5 pieces is a requirement; it also brings us back to whether they may or may not consider changing the passive to a %penetration to be aligned to similar passives. Or, would they decide to change the penetrating magic passive to a %penetration that effects all damaging magicka skills?

    IF the later is done, how will they audit the LA concentration passive then?

    I get any changes would be dramatic and adjusting for magicka builds; but ZOS has done dramatic before.
    Edited by Sahidom on September 10, 2019 8:47PM
  • WrathOfInnos
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    Correct me if im wrong but there is no aoe major breach source. Thats probably one of the reasons light armor gives spell penetration.
    Change it would imply a major balance issue.

    @crazywolfpusher Warden’s Deep Fissure and Necromancer’s Unnerving Boneyard both give AoE Major Breach.

    I used to think Concentration was balanced with Stamina having access to 4300 Penetration with the Twice-Fanged Serpent set (previously 5000). However that set has largely fallen out of use. Instead Stamina builds rely on sets with smaller penetration bonuses (like Tzogvin’s or Kraghs) and often use Sharpened dual wield weapons (since infused is now weak on one-handed weapons). This meta has proven very effective, but would not work on a Magicka build since they have no good options for smaller Spell Penetration bonus (no monster sets exist with this, and all the 5pc sets with it are weak proc sets like Flame Blossom or Icy Conjurer). Magicka builds are also more reliant on Precise (less crit from sets, and no Dagger equivalent) or Infused weapons (with full strength Enchants, and more important status effects) so they would be giving up more to use Sharpened.
    Edited by WrathOfInnos on September 10, 2019 10:41PM
  • ESO_Nightingale
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    Magicka builds are also more reliant on Precise (less crit from sets, and no Dagger equivalent

    The frost staff could totally be the dagger equivalent, provided we had a proper tanking staff in it's place.

    PvE Frost Warden Main and teacher for ESO-U. Frost Warden PvE Build Article: https://eso-u.com/articles/nightingales_warden_dps_guide__frost_knight. Come Join the ESO Frost Discord to discuss everything frost!: https://discord.gg/5PT3rQX
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