Concerning Hybrid Builds and the Pelinal set

ShurikenSky · April 2020

I am looking into the builds for this game, and it is clear for me that the most compromising/difficult choice to make, is Stamina vs Magicka.
I think this is not a choice that was intently thown at us by the devs, but rather a consequence of the natural tendencies of players to min/max and find the optimal parameters.
I don't like that ultimatum, but I understand that it is so, and I am at peace.

So, I plan on finishing the PvE content with a 50/50 stam/mag build, wich i know will be fun and totally viable, and it will give me a good idea of what skills I prefer to use and what way I want to go after exploring the various possibilities. Anyway fun, is the most important thing. And I'm sure a very good player, could finish the game with the worst possible build, so freedom of builds is a real thing for me... standard PvE wise.

But. I'm also looking at the future, and as much as I would like to be able to play PvP and elite Endgame content using both my stam and my magicka equally, I know that the reality asks for a compromise. Well I'm not shocked, reality always asks for a compromise, doesn't it... I know I'll have to choose between stam and magicka, and I know I'll have fun copying a top min/maxed build that suits my playstyle, maybe with a little twist. But I'm also currently looking at the best options for hybrids, because I'm want to understabnd exactly the why and the how, so that I'm truly at peace letting go of stam or mag eventually.

So, in my investigation, I found info about the Pelinal set being a good option for hybrid builds. I have a specific question, it's coming. I looked at the Pelinal set's perks, and surely, the last one is the one that would justify the set being a good "hybrid buils set" : "(5 items) Your weapon and your spell damage both become the ighest of the two values"

So here is my question, or rather it's not a question but please if you know the specific mechanics of the thing just confirm or correct me.
Does this mean that I still have to choose between stamina and magicka, because The higher one of them is, the better the other one will scale up because of Pelinal ?
So if I choose to max Stamina, my class)magicka) abilities will have good numbers, because of the set's perk, but I will still lack the resource to use them often ?

So the Pelinal set actualy allows you to focus on one ressource (stam or mag), and use maybe one or two abilities of your other ressource, without those having to be utility abilities ?
In that way, the Pelinal set implies that you are not doing a half/half build. It only allows you to include a few non-utlity abilities from your secondary ressource to your build, wich you will be able to use just a little because of the lack of resource, but they will be wirth it because the output result will scalw with your primary resource.

Am I missing something ?

Stx · April 2020

After all that I'm still not entirely sure what your question is but I'll break it down for you.

The challenge of a hybrid build isnt getting the proper damage or crit or penetration, it's that you have no way to build up both magicka and stamina which means all your abilities will hit lower.

Depending on your class, Pelinals might be the way to go but it might not be. There are a lot of good hybrid sets now like New Moon acolyte, ancient dragonguard, or even clever alchemist.

Iskiab · April 2020

I’ve experimented some with pelinals builds. First time I tried it, the build was a disaster but I’ve come back to it with some experiments and did okay.

There are a bunch of issues that make a hybrid difficult, first here’s some basics:

Abilities scale off the resource the ability costs, either weapon or spell damage, both crit stats (crit is huge in pve and you’ll need two crit stats), plus you’ll have to sustain both resources to use both ability pools.

Can it be done? Yea, no problem, I’ve even used some in pvp with success. For PvE outside trials yea it will be really easy to come up with something good.

What I did was pretty simple, use pelinals and then go for the highest weapon damage possible (stamina have higher weapon damage than mag) so used 5 medium. Your weapon doesn’t matter too much, probably best to use a 2H or staff. I tried it on a magblade so was squishy so stuck to destro/resto, magblade’s don’t do well in melee.

Where I ran into problems was magicka sustain. The armour passives of light give a lot of mag cost reduction, medium give stam cost reduction and heavy gives sustain from being hit. You could try 5 heavy - 1m - 1L but I went 5M-2L or 5m-1L-1H. Always use tri stat food.

Then the tricky part is what set to pair with pelinals. I went bright throat or Darloc Brae as a magblade but it will need to be a strong sustain set. Maybe shacklebreaker, amber plasm or something like that.

I saw there are some mythic items that would help a ton too. There’s one that increases damage but you can’t crit, that would be great as a hybrid because it would let you tank the crit modifier CPs. Crit as a hybrid is pain point because one is the strongest CP allocations increases the size of either mag or stam crit, plus you need to figure out how to get weapon and spell crit. That item would solve both problems... but crit is crazy important for healing, I don’t know off that item would be good in pvp.

Anyways, I was healing a lot with my build in pvp using pelinals, and hit 1.4m healing in one BG using echoing vigor and radiating regen but I felt the lack of pen in pvp made me hit like a wet noodle.

Come to think of it, for PvE I’d try maybe pelinals + 5m + stuh ( or whatever that new set is that gives pen is called) + that mythic item that gives a damage boost but you can’t crit. Then play with jewellery glyphs until you get the sustain where you want it.

tsaescishoeshiner · April 2020

No, Pelinal's makes your Weapon Damage and Spell Damage equal to the highest of the two — it has nothing to do with Max Stamina or Max Magicka. Just Weapon Damage and Spell Damage. Skills scale based on all four of these traits, but Pelinal's only affects your Weapon & Spell Damage

So you can have as much Magicka and Stamina as you want, but a Pelinal's build only needs to pick Weapon Damage or Spell Damage.

I think Weapon Damage is easier to stack because of the 15% bonus from Medium Armor, but some classes have Weapon Damage bonuses, as well. Side note, Dual Wielding or Two-Handed offer higher Weapon + Spell Damage than staves, bows, or shields

MartiniDaniels · April 2020

What class do you plan to play?
How many CP do you have?

Iskiab · April 2020

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

No, Pelinal's makes your Weapon Damage and Spell Damage equal to the highest of the two — it has nothing to do with Max Stamina or Max Magicka. Just Weapon Damage and Spell Damage. Skills scale based on all four of these traits, but Pelinal's only affects your Weapon & Spell Damage

So you can have as much Magicka and Stamina as you want, but a Pelinal's build only needs to pick Weapon Damage or Spell Damage.

I think Weapon Damage is easier to stack because of the 15% bonus from Medium Armor, but some classes have Weapon Damage bonuses, as well. Side note, Dual Wielding or Two-Handed offer higher Weapon + Spell Damage than staves, bows, or shields

Yea, this is all super important.

Mag is balanced around applying status effects and penetration from light armour (crit a bit too). Stam is balanced around higher weapon damage but lacks penetration and is mainly melee.

I didn’t explain it well, but the reason for that Stuhn set would be both stat penetration. Medium armour plus 2H because using that plus pelinals you can get higher spell damage than is normally possible as mag.

Come to think of it, think I’m going to try a vampire heavy armour with 2H build using pelinals. Like a Death Knight if you’ve played EQ.

Medium is great for higher weapon damage but the crit passive would go to waste. I’m thinking:

Pelinals + Stuhn (potatoes back bar) + 1 piece domihaus (the one that gives mag and stam) + mythic item so you can’t crit but gain a large damage bonus in 5 heavy 1L 1M + tri stat food. Maybe with 2H and Resto.

Should end up around 25K health in no CP, and that vampire ability to sustain with vigor and radiating regen.

fred4 · April 2020

The short of it is that Pelinal's builds don't work. Show me a YouTuber who made it their main build and didn't merely play it for a few days to produce another piece of content. I've tried many times. The closest you can probably come is on a DK, because they have Major and Minor Brutality as well as Flames of Oblivion, which gives you both types of crit. The problems with Pelinal's hybrids are numerous.

Translating weapon damage to spell damage tends to be preferred, because weapon damage gets a 15% multiplier from medium armor. Also a DK gets a 30% multiplier from Major and Minor Brutality. However, you're competing with light armor for your magicka skills and the extra pen and crit passives from that armor type are very good. Result: Your magicka skills may have good tooltips on paper, but don't hit hard in reality, due to missing crit and pen. Crit and pen are two of the main stumbling blocks. There are some sets which give both, but you always end up with less than on a pure magicka or stamina build. You have to spread your CP and that's not good.

Next are the resource pools, as you've noted. A true hybrid will have around 20K of each, which is low, and tends to perhaps work best with a dual regen drink. One of the benefits is that, if your skills are balanced right, you may be able to pull from either pool in any given situation, but that is actually not that easy to play. Both pools are low and can end up under pressure. Both pools being low also means your damage will be low and it's really hard to come up with a build that stacks enough weapon and spell damage to adequately compensate for that. Doing so typically shoehorns you into a particular way of building with just OK sustain, infused jewelry and anything and everything that gives you weapon damage. No room for Swift. No room for the high magicka / shields a light armor build would use and no tankiness from heavy armor. You will most likely end up with a squishy, movement-focused medium armor build, which is not the easiest thing to play.

The most devastating argument against hybrids is that there is no good reason to make one. You only have 10 skill slots and there are so many skill lines in the game now, you're not really missing anything in either flavour. Want to use Vigor and Rapid Regen? No you don't. You don't have room for two similar skills. In PvP getting one of the magicka-based ranged executes (Radiant, Impale, Mage's Fury) could be nice on a stam build - because ranged executes are just nice - but the problem is always that hybrids don't quite have the power to make that worthwhile.

Now if you're talking about a build with hybrid aspects, that's something else. I play a PvP magblade with relatively high stamina regen, resulting in a more stamina-like playstyle that includes some dodge rolls. I've also seen a mag DK build with Pelinal's once, but wearing light armor and speccing for max magicka. I've just never been able to make a true hybrid that really worked. The damage was always lacklustre.

Iskiab · April 2020

fred4 wrote: »

The short of it is that Pelinal's builds don't work. Show me a YouTuber who made it their main build and didn't merely play it for a few days to produce another piece of content. I've tried many times. The closest you can probably come is on a DK, because they have Major and Minor Brutality as well as Flames of Oblivion, which gives you both types of crit. The problems with Pelinal's hybrids are numerous.

Translating weapon damage to spell damage tends to be preferred, because weapon damage gets a 15% multiplier from medium armor. Also a DK gets a 30% multiplier from Major and Minor Brutality. However, you're competing with light armor for your magicka skills and the extra pen and crit passives from that armor type are very good. Result: Your magicka skills may have good tooltips on paper, but don't hit hard in reality, due to missing crit and pen. Crit and pen are two of the main stumbling blocks. There are some sets which give both, but you always end up with less than on a pure magicka or stamina build. You have to spread your CP and that's not good.

Next are the resource pools, as you've noted. A true hybrid will have around 20K of each, which is low, and tends to perhaps work best with a dual regen drink. One of the benefits is that, if your skills are balanced right, you may be able to pull from either pool in any given situation, but that is actually not that easy to play. Both pools are low and can end up under pressure. Both pools being low also means your damage will be low and it's really hard to come up with a build that stacks enough weapon and spell damage to adequately compensate for that. Doing so typically shoehorns you into a particular way of building with just OK sustain, infused jewelry and anything and everything that gives you weapon damage. No room for Swift. No room for the high magicka / shields a light armor build would use and no tankiness from heavy armor. You will most likely end up with a squishy, movement-focused medium armor build, which is not the easiest thing to play.

The most devastating argument against hybrids is that there is no good reason to make one. You only have 10 skill slots and there are so many skill lines in the game now, you're not really missing anything in either flavour. Want to use Vigor and Rapid Regen? No you don't. You don't have room for two similar skills. In PvP getting one of the magicka-based ranged executes (Radiant, Impale, Mage's Fury) could be nice on a stam build - because ranged executes are just nice - but the problem is always that hybrids don't quite have the power to make that worthwhile.

Now if you're talking about a build with hybrid aspects, that's something else. I play a PvP magblade with relatively high stamina regen, resulting in a more stamina-like playstyle that includes some dodge rolls. I've also seen a mag DK build with Pelinal's once, but wearing light armor and speccing for max magicka. I've just never been able to make a true hybrid that really worked. The damage was always lacklustre.

Don’t be such a negative Nancy! Dude just wants to mess around, I get that, plus it’s not like he’s going for difficult content. I like tinkering and off meta too.

By the way, I was tinkering in the UESP editor and the build I was looking at would work well. Wouldn’t work well as a NB though, too many passives locked around slotting and using abilities.

I was thinking sorc ... moreso stamsorc... maybe stamwarden. I’ll plug it into the editor on my PC and post the build. These things have to be play tested for skill setup though:

Stage 4 vamp + 5 piece pelinals + 5 piece Stuhn (for the pen with back bar potentates resto) + 1 piece domihaus + Mythic band of malcath (no crits but + 25% damage) + tri stat food.

Skills: Rally, executioner, vamp spammable that costs health, dark conversion, vigor, radiating regen, minor expedition armour buff, vamp stun + 1 flex spots. Front bar Vamp ultimate, back bar temporal guard.

emsuperman24 · April 2020

Not a true hybrid per se, but a dk with a frost staff/dw weapons. It utilizes magicka as much as stamina and is ultra competitive in pvp.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/522133/non-meta-meta-killing-stamdk-hybrid-build-for-real

MartiniDaniels · April 2020

fred4 wrote: »

The short of it is that Pelinal's builds don't work. Show me a YouTuber who made it their main build and didn't merely play it for a few days to produce another piece of content. I've tried many times. The closest you can probably come is on a DK, because they have Major and Minor Brutality as well as Flames of Oblivion, which gives you both types of crit. The problems with Pelinal's hybrids are numerous.

Translating weapon damage to spell damage tends to be preferred, because weapon damage gets a 15% multiplier from medium armor. Also a DK gets a 30% multiplier from Major and Minor Brutality. However, you're competing with light armor for your magicka skills and the extra pen and crit passives from that armor type are very good. Result: Your magicka skills may have good tooltips on paper, but don't hit hard in reality, due to missing crit and pen. Crit and pen are two of the main stumbling blocks. There are some sets which give both, but you always end up with less than on a pure magicka or stamina build. You have to spread your CP and that's not good.

Next are the resource pools, as you've noted. A true hybrid will have around 20K of each, which is low, and tends to perhaps work best with a dual regen drink. One of the benefits is that, if your skills are balanced right, you may be able to pull from either pool in any given situation, but that is actually not that easy to play. Both pools are low and can end up under pressure. Both pools being low also means your damage will be low and it's really hard to come up with a build that stacks enough weapon and spell damage to adequately compensate for that. Doing so typically shoehorns you into a particular way of building with just OK sustain, infused jewelry and anything and everything that gives you weapon damage. No room for Swift. No room for the high magicka / shields a light armor build would use and no tankiness from heavy armor. You will most likely end up with a squishy, movement-focused medium armor build, which is not the easiest thing to play.

The most devastating argument against hybrids is that there is no good reason to make one. You only have 10 skill slots and there are so many skill lines in the game now, you're not really missing anything in either flavour. Want to use Vigor and Rapid Regen? No you don't. You don't have room for two similar skills. In PvP getting one of the magicka-based ranged executes (Radiant, Impale, Mage's Fury) could be nice on a stam build - because ranged executes are just nice - but the problem is always that hybrids don't quite have the power to make that worthwhile.

Now if you're talking about a build with hybrid aspects, that's something else. I play a PvP magblade with relatively high stamina regen, resulting in a more stamina-like playstyle that includes some dodge rolls. I've also seen a mag DK build with Pelinal's once, but wearing light armor and speccing for max magicka. I've just never been able to make a true hybrid that really worked. The damage was always lacklustre.

I had nice stamDK hybrid in U23. It was really good - noxious spam to build up molten whip (noxious was extremely cheap + had buffed damage), then obsidian shard for stun + heal in same GCD (almost nobody blocked it because it is extremely rare skill) > onslaught > molten proc into executioner. FOO hanging for extra pressure. Shacklebreaker+BS+pelinal front+master's bow back. ~6k SD/WD with master's bow. Squishy but tons of fun. Unfortunately it was literally butchered in U24 (noxious nerfed literally 2 times in times of cost/damage, obsidian shard removed, onslaught nerfed).
Also PVP hybrids imo are only for no-CP. In CP disadvantage from points spread will be too high. I agree that in current meta true hybrids (i.e. both pools used for damage) have no place at all. ZOS nerfed to the ground everything with exception of fury+nma dizzy spam.

Iskiab · April 2020

Yea, that build that was linked is good. I just need more transmutation stones to try it out.

CP's are jacked, and sustain who knows if it'd work, but this looks okay to me. With that 4k streak cost there's no way you'll be streak spamming though.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=186721

I don't think the morph that auto crits on the vamp spammable will work with malcath, if it does it'd be pretty awesome.

Edit - switched to warden, looks stronger to me.