At least in PvE, stamina only became top dog last year. Before that it was like 2 years of magicka dominance.

group pvp is mag and has been forever. think maybe late 2018 was the last time magblades were great which was before the spider silk synergy became useable and then got nerfed twice. not as long as mag dominance at the start of ESO lol.

Would be nice if they would put in some effort to balance instead of making either stam or mag completely OP

Jayroo wrote: »

pvp need their own nerfs. magicka classes getting the short end of the stick every time there's a nerf is getting old

My advice would be to delete your dps meter addon and just play a character that you enjoy.

Correction: ignore the target dummies. Real mobs won't stand there and let you beat on them indefinitely. There's mechanics involved and if you're clearing the content with a good group, then there's no need to worry about "topping the charts", or whatever.

Range safety vs close range higher damage. It’s only fair.

FearlessOne_2014 wrote: »

rotaugen454 wrote: »

Range safety vs close range higher damage. It’s only fair.

Even MagMelees are falling far behind and Stamina Bow/Bow builds are better than Mag. It's already at the point, mag is not at all viable for anything competitive, PvP or PvE. And it keeps getting worst and worst each update.

At this point one has to say, Magicka specs have no place in ZOSes vision of ESO. If you want to play a competitive caster. YOU WILL HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER MMO DEV TEAM THAT SUPPORT SUCH. Because ZOS clearly don't want to.

My mag builds are doing just fine. So are my Stam builds. You have to step outside the meta box. If you spend too much time there you'll go crazy.

Fact is, there are viable builds for every class, mag or stam, that perform very well if you use them correctly.

Cavedog wrote: »

Except mag dot's are super super strong right now, and they can be applied from more than 32 meters away.....making mag classes very strong, and from range.

Until U 24 its monday i think, then all dots are nerfed

I've played Stam builds for years but age related problems make it difficult to weave properly so I fail.... Often. I tried tanking but found it boring and my main became a Templar healer. For the last event I decided to try a sorcerer build (one of my mules) and I'm absolutely converted. I can do content I failed in as a Stam blade/DK and currently working though Craglorn.
I used to struggle with world bosses but they're just cheese now. So it's horses for courses is it not?

Eh.

I've been playing MMORPGs for as long as they've existed and have come to learn that these things are always changing. Play what you want, you'll do better with a class you enjoy.

Right now Stamcros are "tops" but five minutes ago it was Magblade. Tomorrow it will be something else.

Ri_Khan wrote: »

I know this isn't for pvp but... https://www.esologs.com/zone/rankings/10/#class=DPS&boss=-1

The top 4 there are mag builds.

What you have linked is not a ranking of damage but of some strange points system that seems to be based on how many dungeons people do and such. You have also linked something based on 4 man dungeons. These are not scored things in game with leaderboards and so people don't really min / max there.

What you might be looking for to give an indication of dps is more like this:

https://www.esologs.com/zone/rankings/12#boss=44

This is the stack and whack Yol boss in vSS. The top 100 scores are ALL stam. There are 6 that aren't necros though. LOL.

As for the OP's question of how long stam has been so dominant in DPS. It has been a long time, probably at least two years. However, much of the new content the badasses were doing in those years was very unfriendly to melee toons with low health and no shields to use for unavoidable damage phases. vCR and vAS do not go so well with no shields or range on the harder modes. So, the higher numbers stam could do didn't show up so obviously since the top hard mode runs didn't have stam in them. Instead, you had mag toons that did lower dps but fit better with the content and the dps they did looked super high to most people because the best players, who also run the best cheats, were running those builds to best fit with the mechanics. Certainly stam is more dps dominant now than it was most of that time abut it has been higher dps since at least summerset when reliquin came out. Now you can just see this because Sunspire is basically all stack and whack.

As for PVP, there are so many different builds and play styles that there is still some role for both. The primary dps's in groups have been stam for a couple years now though. Since the nerfing of mag shields it has become very one sided mag got relegated pretty much to healers and resto / destro half healer purge spammer builds. Back in the 1.X and 2.X days mag was more the mainstay with stam being relegated to niche things like snipers and ambush builds. Stam always had good offense but not much defense. It has been a steady march in the reverse for years now. Now stam has much stronger offense and defense.

As for the future. Who the heck knows. ZOS doesn't even seem to know what they want combat to look like. First more DOT's, now less DOT's. They also seem to want to continue to ignore cheats dominating PVP and PVE so any balance is pretty much forgotten by the dudes doubling their dps and more than doubling their resistances and sustain with cheats.