This. Obviously this... wtf how can they not see this, it's like I'm taking crazy pills or something lol

Maybe they could reduce the potency of these effects... by a lot.
Or make it harder to obtain these.

Passive mitigation in general is the issue. It is outperforming active mitigation while not really carrying any risk (i.e. activating at the right time or having consider whether to sacrifice a global cooldown, etc.) and not costing any resources.

Heavy Armor sets with lots of damage potential are part of the issue but by far not its biggest contributor.

The issue with CPs is that they offer Cost Reduction on Dodge Roll and Block without any counter CPs. Pretty much all other CPs have at least some sort of counterpart that offsets the bonuses granted. Another one of these is Sprint Cost Reduction.
That's also part of the reason why stamina builds are doing so much better than magicka builds in pvp.

I say cap mitigation at 80-85%. This gives multiple ways achieving the maximum without having to use all mitigation forms to achieve max mitigation. Of course people could still build for more than that to reduce effects of penetration, but everyone no matter how they build would be subject to 15-20% of tooltip damage.

I think a lot of it comes down to CP, really. While some builds (mostly Stam with 1h/shield blocking and high damage, heavy armor sets) are a bit too durable for the amount of damage that they're capable of in no-CP, it's not on the same level as CP-enabled Cyrodiil.

At least some damage mitigation sources probably shouldn't stack (like Potentates + Swift, for example), but it's not like a Magicka Necromancer suddenly becomes a super-tank just due to the buggy Spirit Healer providing 10% damage mitigation. Immobile classes need to have some durability options, but it's actually the much more mobile Stamina classes that tend to be able to tank damage the best.

That seems to mostly come down to 2 things in no-CP; being able to block a lot with 1h/shield, and being able to wear heavy armor sets while still having incredibly powerful offense and good mobility. While the Stuhn's set will indeed counter Stam builds' advantage of being able to wear heavy armor while still having high damage, it ultimately counters Magicka builds far more. Magicka can't block or dodge nearly as much as Stamina can (especially in no-CP), has lower base-level resistances, and generally isn't able to trigger the Stuhn's 5 piece via their spammable.

If ZOS goes through with implementing a non-trivial baseline amount of Crit Resistance, without making significant changes/nerfs to the Stuhn's set, we're probably going to see the most Stamina-favored patch we've had in quite some time (and that's saying a lot, to be honest). The only way(s) to survive will be, 1) dodge spam, 2) blocking a lot, 3) having good mobility, or 4) stacking every % damage reduction source you can find. Stamina builds completely dominate numbers 1, 2, and 3, with the only potential exception being Magicka Sorcerer's mobility (which is still outdone by the Stamina version of their same class). Most Magicka builds will either need to try and stack % damage reductions and end up with no offense, or just go full glass cannon and accept the fact that they're going to get 2-shotted pretty frequently. The problem with going glass cannon, is that the combination of baseline Crit Resistance and armor mitigation being so unattractive is that Stamina builds will be encouraged to switch to Medium Armor + the Well-Fitted trait, which means all of your cannon's shots are going to fail to land, while you can't say the same for what's coming your way.

Edit: Can't believe I forgot to mention the on-demand Major Protection from Black Rose Dual Wield. For Stam builds it's always either that or 1h/shield blocking on back bar, and both are overly effective on builds that are capable of achieving such high damage while in heavy armor.

Mishaxki wrote: »

We should work to get away from the one size fits all mitigation and re-define mitigation based on armor type with the use case being each armor defends in a different way. This would not be hard to do and a very simple system could be set in place that will fix these issues.

Oh, you mean like how it was to begin with?
I seem to recall when i first started the game thats how it was already.

Light armor defended with shields 50% and the other 50% was class specific. Sorcs doubled down on shields, Blades had cloak and passive dodge, templars made up the difference with superior healing. Dks had over all best passive mitigation and outright facetanking ability.

Medium armor relied on dodge roll and class specific defense

Heavy armor had over all best damage mitigation and tanking ability at the cost of sustain and to a lesser degree damage.

The game was a lot of fun back then. There was imbalance, but not opressively so and gameplay and strategy evolved around that.

Im not sure when those frogs finally boiled but, i dont think going back to that will be possible without wiping the slate completely clean. So many half measures over the years and development decisions made without consideration for consequence or long term viability i think have burned that bridge.

Even now with new trial sets we see the results of those half measures.

The new trial sets were very clearly designed with new light/heavy attack system in mind, but when that flatlined, they didnt completely rework the sets in to something relevant. In fact i would wager much of the new gear and nerfs and buffs were developed and planned around that new system. So much has been done its too late in the game to go back on all of it.

I would love too see things return to that old design philosophy, im just not sure zos (not necessarily the dev team per se) is either willing to invest in the task, or up for the challenge.

Kurat wrote: »

Do you all realize that mitigation is needed in pve endgame? Pvp is only small part of the game and yet it dictates the rest of the game. This is bs. If the balancing cant be separated from pve then pvp should be removed from the game. Only nerf after nerf.

Spoken like an entitled PvE'er, there have been many things that have been nerfed due to PvE.

But the % Mitigation wasnt the only issue, as combined with HA and Resistances it made killing people harder, while they could in return deal a lot of damage. Though i agree the armor nerfs seem heavy handed.

Swap Protection and Aegis buffs. More protection from Aegis in PVE doesn't affect PVP. Reducing the Protection buff in PVP will affect PVE but Aegis can cover the difference.

We need more active defenses. And Armor Types should play a major role in your capabilities, something along the lines of this (with X and Y being sufficiently large - e.g. 25%):

Light Armor:
- Increase Magicka types of damage by X% per piece of Light Armor
- Increase Size of Shields and Burst heals by Y% per piece of Light Armor (both are essentially a form of a Burst Heal)
- Decrease Cost of magicka abilities by Z% per piece of Light Armor

Medium Armor
- Increase Stamina types of damage X% per piece of Medium Armor
- Increase healing done by HoTs by Y% per piece of Medium Armor
- Decrease Cost of Stamina abilities Z% per piece of Medium Armor

Heavy Armor
- Decrease Damage dealt by 2*X% per piece of Heavy Armor
- Decrease Damage taken Y% per piece of Heavy Armor
- Increase Healing Received by Y%per piece of Heavy Armor
- Decrease Cost of Blocking by W% per piece of Heavy Armor

This will end current tank meta. You can still play a tank, but you are not going to deal tons of damage anymore. No matter the set you are wearing (unless sets are broken). It also gives back identity to the different armor types and builds.

Another idea:
Make dodge cost increase exponentially in a way that the first 2 dodge rolls within 4 seconds of each other cost the same as they do now, but making any dodge rolls beyond that sharply increase in cost. Medium Armor in turn lows the debuff via medium armor passives, so that they can dodge as much as they currently do on live.

That way there won't be another perma-dodge meta, and PvE and magicka won't really be affected b/c you can still do your occasional dodge rolls without having to stack heavily into stamina.

Edit: clarified damage bonuses

Ranger209 wrote: »

I say cap mitigation at 80-85%. This gives multiple ways achieving the maximum without having to use all mitigation forms to achieve max mitigation. Of course people could still build for more than that to reduce effects of penetration, but everyone no matter how they build would be subject to 15-20% of tooltip damage.

That is kinda where it is today in nocp . With diminishing returns on reduction you never get to 100%, and getting over 80% approaches the point where you are wasting you time. But cap it at 80%; why invest anything at all in damage reduction? You can get that from block or dodge roll with zero effort.

And then we are right back where we started. We've been through this with the "perma block" nerfs, the perma roller nerfs, the swift nerfs, the damage shield nerfs, (and upcoming healing nerfs). After watching this dynamic since release, no matter how many training wheel nerfs they put in, it doesn't help. Every single class and build video is "OP", "Unkillable", with "Insane Damage"...that doesn't mean it really is.

I can probably count on two hands the number of things in this game that truly rated as "OP", vampire dks at release, early bash builds, that templar skill that blinded you, rune cage, the resto staff passive that gave 10% to all damage all the time, the necro goliath bash build, pre-nerf streak, and the ultra high speed builds that came out with the swift trait.

Just make every class inline with a nightblade. Problem solved.