Please reconsider the 20% nerf to max-resource sets!

YandereGirlfriend · February 2021

Lephrel wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Can't believe you noticed it only in week 4

I was hoping ZOS would see the mistake and correct it on their own, but they didn't. Imagine my surprise.

To get anything out of ZOS you need to be out-front and LOUD about a change from the moment the first PTS notes go up.

It doesn't guarantee anything but it's the only chance you have for making an impact.

katorga · February 2021

Max stat sets have been consistently nerfed for a while now. I think Necropotence used to have 4K mag as the 5th bonus. All of them have been whittled down to equal to or less than entry level sets like Julianos/Hundings. Removing the 20% stat bonus from CP is just another nail in the coffin. Oh well.

It will further tilt the pvp field toward stamina builds as it is an indirect nerf to magicka-based damage shields.

Cuddler · February 2021

The CP and base stat changes will have a much greater impact than simply making some sets less effective.

For instance, any skills that do not scale with Spell or Weapon Damage will be noticeably worse off. These are mainly shields that scale with max magicka or health, and also some heals like Dark Conversion.

It is not just because the 20% bonus is being removed, but also thanks to the upcoming SD/WD buff being far greater than the buff to the max stats. Anything that scales with SD/WD will just be a lot stronger in comparison.

katorga · February 2021

Cuddler wrote: »

It is not just because the 20% bonus is being removed, but also thanks to the upcoming SD/WD buff being far greater than the buff to the max stats. Anything that scales with SD/WD will just be a lot stronger in comparison.

Oh just wait. Flat max mag, 1000K spell damage, spell damage on swords, spell damage on orcs, combined weapon/spell damage cp. You will see stamina builds with 4-5K spell damage by default. None of the healing CP need to be slotted. That put class magicka heals in play for stamina builds.

BattleAxe · February 2021

I wouldn’t necessarily say these sets are being nerfed as much as they are becoming more irrelevant than before. With the flat increases to base totals as in 16 k health and 12k both mag and stam I highly doubt we will see them go back on the removal of 20% modifier for stats however with the new champion system it’s possible that modifier may return in the future as a slottable champion star.

Firstmep · February 2021

katorga wrote: »

Cuddler wrote: »

It is not just because the 20% bonus is being removed, but also thanks to the upcoming SD/WD buff being far greater than the buff to the max stats. Anything that scales with SD/WD will just be a lot stronger in comparison.

Oh just wait. Flat max mag, 1000K spell damage, spell damage on swords, spell damage on orcs, combined weapon/spell damage cp. You will see stamina builds with 4-5K spell damage by default. None of the healing CP need to be slotted. That put class magicka heals in play for stamina builds.

Pelinals on suicide watch.

Olupajmibanan · February 2021

Well, I won't talk about 5pc bonuses.

However, 1096 magicka/stamina need a change. (Just to be on the same page, 1 spell damage increases your damage by +- same amount as 10,5 magicka.) 129 WD/SD was already a stronger set bonus before scaling (129 SD equals to 1354 magicka), and scaling coeificient was very similar - 1,3 for spell damage (Major/Minor sorcery you have pretty much active all the time), 1,36 for magicka (provided you have Horn active all the time).

With the crit nerf on light armor, 7 light is basically a new meta so the multiplier for magicka went from 1,36 to 1,12 during horn, while SD multiplier remained unchanged.

For comparison
Live:
Magicka bonus after Horn - 1490 (or 142 effective SD)
SD bonus after Sorcery buffs - 167

PTS:
Magicka bonus after Horn - 1227 (or 117 effective SD)
SD bonus after Sorcery buffs - 167

ExistingRug61 · February 2021

Another related indirect effect is that changing to adding base stats has a differing outcome in terms of power gain for classes or builds depending on whether they have more weapon/spell damage multipliers or max mag/stam multipliers or neither.

This is because the additional base stats are more heavily skewed toward weapon and spell damage than max stat.

So builds that have things like the fighters guild weapon damage passive, or sorcs weapon/spell damage passive get a higher proportional benefit from the base stats than say max magicka passive from mages guild or nightblade, and both are obviously better than a class or build that gets neither.

Hard to say how much of a difference this will cause is hard to say. Probably just wait and rather than preemptively try to change anything to account for it. But it is something that will change the relative balance between classes and builds in the background.

Faulgor · February 2021

This should hold true for all sources of attribute bonuses - 2-4 pc set bonuses, armor enchantments, jewelry traits, food, racial passives. They all got relatively weaker by not receiving a 20% increase from champion ranks.

Sure, ultimately we might make up the difference with the increase to our base attributes, but these bonuses have to compete with other bonuses that did not receive a similar relative decrease, e.g. stat food vs sustain food. Many of the sets listed in the OP have been undesirable for a while, and they will only slip further behind.

BTW, maybe this might be a good time to add Minor/Major buffs for magicka and stamina, analogous to Minor Toughness for health.

amir412 · February 2021

Have you even checked PTS? you will have the same if not more max stats in most cases.

Brrrofski · February 2021

amir412 wrote: »

Have you even checked PTS? you will have the same if not more max stats in most cases.

I think the OP's point is though, that these sets are effectively less potent than before.

Yes, base stats may be higher on PTS, but you're getting a lot of that from elsewhere.

Previously, these sets were good because the CP boosted them a lot, which contributed a lot to max stats.

Next patch, OP is saying you may as well go for something spell/weapon damage based as those sets give you more power. You get a lot of max stat elsewhere.

Dracane · February 2021

I am surprised to see that so many people did not know, that all magicka/health/stamina you get from any source, are also affected by all % increases you get.

Undaunted Mettle and the current CP % do boost all sources. Including sets, base stats and enchants. I believed this to be common knowledge.
With that being said, I agree that a compensation is warranted.

BattleAxe · February 2021

amir412 wrote: »

Have you even checked PTS? you will have the same if not more max stats in most cases.

A lot of people aren’t realizing with base stats going up especially with health going up you can invest more into main stat and regen food or drink. Overall from what I’ve been seeing of people on pts resources are about the same or slightly higher. So the sets like necro and crafty are going to keep you about where you are now if not give you slightly more than you have on live.

If baseline goes up you’ll get bigger returns on the per engage modifiers still in the game. Example 7 light would give you 2% more stats from undaunted so 2% of 12000 versus 2% of 8000. (rough rounding of current base stats) The stated goal if I recall correctly is players to make choices and with choice comes sacrifice you can build for something but gotta sacrifice something to get there.

In the grand scheme of the current changes it appears they are trying to get build diversity to a point where most builds on most classes should be around similar levels of dps output.

Olupajmibanan · February 2021

BattleAxe wrote: »

amir412 wrote: »

Have you even checked PTS? you will have the same if not more max stats in most cases.

A lot of people aren’t realizing with base stats going up especially with health going up you can invest more into main stat and regen food or drink. Overall from what I’ve been seeing of people on pts resources are about the same or slightly higher. So the sets like necro and crafty are going to keep you about where you are now if not give you slightly more than you have on live.

If baseline goes up you’ll get bigger returns on the per engage modifiers still in the game. Example 7 light would give you 2% more stats from undaunted so 2% of 12000 versus 2% of 8000. (rough rounding of current base stats) The stated goal if I recall correctly is players to make choices and with choice comes sacrifice you can build for something but gotta sacrifice something to get there.

In the grand scheme of the current changes it appears they are trying to get build diversity to a point where most builds on most classes should be around similar levels of dps output.

You seem to not understand this discussion. This is not about your max stats, this is about relative power of stat set bonuses.

It doesn't matter how much magicka or spell damage you have (don't forget that magicka and SD is the same stat, conversion ratio 1:10,5), relative power of set bonuses have changed and 1096 magicka set bonus, which was already weaker than 129 SD on live, is now even more weaker relatively to 129 SD set bonus. This makes magicka oriented sets much less desired. And this is what we are discussing here.

By your grand scheme, if you were using magicka oriented sets such as Necropotence (which weren't even close to meta btw), you'll see a diminish in their power relatively to SD sets and you'll likely switch to some non-magicka set. This is causing exactly the opposite of what we want - diversity. By driving out non-meta sets they reinforce current meta even more.

BattleAxe · February 2021

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

BattleAxe wrote: »

amir412 wrote: »

Have you even checked PTS? you will have the same if not more max stats in most cases.

A lot of people aren’t realizing with base stats going up especially with health going up you can invest more into main stat and regen food or drink. Overall from what I’ve been seeing of people on pts resources are about the same or slightly higher. So the sets like necro and crafty are going to keep you about where you are now if not give you slightly more than you have on live.

If baseline goes up you’ll get bigger returns on the per engage modifiers still in the game. Example 7 light would give you 2% more stats from undaunted so 2% of 12000 versus 2% of 8000. (rough rounding of current base stats) The stated goal if I recall correctly is players to make choices and with choice comes sacrifice you can build for something but gotta sacrifice something to get there.

In the grand scheme of the current changes it appears they are trying to get build diversity to a point where most builds on most classes should be around similar levels of dps output.

You seem to not understand this discussion. This is not about your max stats, this is about relative power of stat set bonuses.

It doesn't matter how much magicka or spell damage you have (don't forget that magicka and SD is the same stat, conversion ratio 1:10,5), relative power of set bonuses have changed and 1096 magicka set bonus, which was already weaker than 129 SD on live, is now even more weaker relatively to 129 SD set bonus. This makes magicka oriented sets much less desired. And this is what we are discussing here.

By your grand scheme, if you were using magicka oriented sets such as Necropotence (which weren't even close to meta btw), you'll see a diminish in their power relatively to SD sets and you'll likely switch to some non-magicka set. This is causing exactly the opposite of what we want - diversity. By driving out non-meta sets they reinforce current meta even more.

The main point in removing a % modifier and giving flat values is to reduce server calculations to ideally reduce lag some players face. This is also failing to consider I believe I did mention the new cp system could bring back 20% modifier down the road

starkerealm · February 2021

Firstmep wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Cuddler wrote: »

It is not just because the 20% bonus is being removed, but also thanks to the upcoming SD/WD buff being far greater than the buff to the max stats. Anything that scales with SD/WD will just be a lot stronger in comparison.

Oh just wait. Flat max mag, 1000K spell damage, spell damage on swords, spell damage on orcs, combined weapon/spell damage cp. You will see stamina builds with 4-5K spell damage by default. None of the healing CP need to be slotted. That put class magicka heals in play for stamina builds.

Pelinals on suicide watch.

Pelinals has been on suicide watch for, like, four years at this point. That set never delivered.

honey_badger82 · February 2021

The tradeoff between sets giving a straight damage buff (129 WD) and 1096 stamina is intentional.

You get more raw damage with 1 and with the other a bit less damage (~104) but more going power. A set that gives you two lines of max stamina adds about 204 WD and another cast of a spammable. A set offering two lines of WD gives you 54 more WD to scale with all your buffs for every ability cast yet you can cast 1 less spammable.

It is up to each player to decide the balance of what he needs. With that said I do agree max resource sets are indeed a lot more lackluster now and could use some readjustment. Really with the CP 2.0 and armor changes one could say the majority of in game sets could use adjustment.

kojou · February 2021

Even on live all the "Max Stat" sets are weak relative to other types of sets. I think the problem lies in the standard that 1206 Health = 1096 Magicka/Stamina = 129 Spell/Weapon damage.

1096 Magicka translates to roughly 104 Spell damage (as mentioned), but the only modifiers to that (in live) are the CP, undaunted, and some class passives. If you consider a 20% increase then 1096 becomes 1315 Magicka and that sounds like they are somewhat balanced, but Spell Damage has 2 modifiers with Major and Minor Sorcery (weapon damage has 3 Major and Minor Brutality, and the medium armor passive so Max Stamina is even less desirable than Max Magicka) that boost spell damage and even more. So 129 Spell Damage actually becomes 167 spell damage with major and minor buffs up which is equivalent to the damage provided by roughly 1600 magicka.

In PTS, if you take away the CP modifier that then it becomes even more out of balance and Max Magicka and Max Stamina become even less of a desirable stat.

Now the thought that more Max Magicka gives more casts of a skill holds true unless we are able to increase resource sustain so that we don't ever empty the magicka pool and then it is irrelevant as a benefit, and in most cases it is. We tend to stack what ever gives us the most damage then figure out how to sustain the rotation.

I personally think that 1096 standard should be increased to roughly 1200 (and other relevant 5 piece bonuses with it). That would at least keep the Max Stat sets somewhat relevant even if they are not statistically the best.

Lephrel · February 2021

@kojou Exactly! I mean I really hope that ZOS just kind of missed this, and didn't intentionally nerf max resource sets by 20%. They've been on a crusade to destroy resource stacking for a long time now, but this would definitely be the last nail in the coffin for necropotence and co.

Lephrel · February 2021

Also this extends wayyy beyond sets. The arcane, robust jewellery traits will be even more useless, infused trait on armour will be worse, even buff food will become less powerful compared to drinks. It will be an unmitigated disaster if this goes live.

sabresandiego_ESO · February 2021

This is intentional, they rebalanced the game with the new base stats. No compensation is needed because they are not trying to keep the game the same. They intentionally swing the meta around every couple patches to keep the game new and interesting. A static game would be boring. I suggest adapting to whatever you find to work best in the upcoming patch. Cheers

kojou · February 2021

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

This is intentional, they rebalanced the game with the new base stats. No compensation is needed because they are not trying to keep the game the same. They intentionally swing the meta around every couple patches to keep the game new and interesting. A static game would be boring. I suggest adapting to whatever you find to work best in the upcoming patch. Cheers

Of course we are going to adapt to whatever the state of balance ends up being, nobody is suggesting otherwise.

My point is that I would like to see the choices be balanced, so we don't just stack weapon and spell damage and call it a day. One of the big things the combat team has always tried to support is individual choice and this change takes (hopefully inadvertently) some of that away.

honey_badger82 · February 2021

I disagree that in live that sets that give you resources instead of damage or crit are weak. Here is why: I refuse to play the game with a timer constantly ticking over my head (food or drink buff). I have had guild members who build for damage stacking and are like oh... my tri stat food ran out I only have 10k health and like 22k magicka/ stamina.

All my builds currently are able to have 16k health and 28-32k in their primary damage resource without any food. I use food for vet DLC content. With very crappy rotations I can maintain over 40k dps on my templar tank hybrid. When I have parse food it goes up of course

kojou · February 2021

honey_badger82 wrote: »

I disagree that in live that sets that give you resources instead of damage or crit are weak. Here is why: I refuse to play the game with a timer constantly ticking over my head (food or drink buff). I have had guild members who build for damage stacking and are like oh... my tri stat food ran out I only have 10k health and like 22k magicka/ stamina.

All my builds currently are able to have 16k health and 28-32k in their primary damage resource without any food. I use food for vet DLC content. With very crappy rotations I can maintain over 40k dps on my templar tank hybrid. When I have parse food it goes up of course

Blue food is 1 hour, and other foods are 2 hours... It is not exactly a short duration that requires a lot of management. I could do a whole post on the imbalance of food though.

I assume 40K is on the trial attronach dummy, which if that makes you happy I won't take that away from you, but some of us would like to be able to do more.

Benoftheflies · February 2021

I think in 6 months they will swing the other way. They have said for the last 2 patches or so that it is too easy to stack crit, so that keeps getting nerfed. On the PTS it will be too easy to stack weapon and spell power with no major disadvantage. So they will adjust that after sets that give spell power will be even more meta, and probably nerf that and buff something else in 6 months to a year.

Also, one benefit to stacking max magicka is you can cast more skills in quick succession. On paper, if you have the option between 1029 mag or 129 damage, even if mag is only the equivalent to 104, there are benefits to having exta mag pool, esp for magsorc for shields and bound aegis

itscompton · February 2021

Lephrel wrote: »

laksikus wrote: »

Im pretty sure the 20% were for base stats and dont include set stats.

@Sgrug
@laksikus
I have just tested this on live. Magicka bonuses are affected by a 1.34x multiplier (tested using magblade, crafty alfiq set). That's 6% from undaunted, 8% from siphoning and 20% from champion points. Feel free to double check.

Same gear (Bright throats and Spinners with mismatched monster sets), same food, same mundus my 810 template Sorc on PTS winds up with just about 2K more max magic than on live. The build also has 1200 more SD on PTS. The extra stats make up for most of the loss of the bigger buffs from CP 1.0 on regular abilities. The only thing that took a sizable nerf damage wise was my LA's which hit for about 20% less now.

honey_badger82 · February 2021

kojou wrote: »

honey_badger82 wrote: »

I disagree that in live that sets that give you resources instead of damage or crit are weak. Here is why: I refuse to play the game with a timer constantly ticking over my head (food or drink buff). I have had guild members who build for damage stacking and are like oh... my tri stat food ran out I only have 10k health and like 22k magicka/ stamina.

All my builds currently are able to have 16k health and 28-32k in their primary damage resource without any food. I use food for vet DLC content. With very crappy rotations I can maintain over 40k dps on my templar tank hybrid. When I have parse food it goes up of course

Blue food is 1 hour, and other foods are 2 hours... It is not exactly a short duration that requires a lot of management. I could do a whole post on the imbalance of food though.

I assume 40K is on the trial attronach dummy, which if that makes you happy I won't take that away from you, but some of us would like to be able to do more.

As a tank 40k is pretty good, my DK tank does less than half of that, there are 810CP dps players that get less damage than I do while maintaining 32k health without food and 27k resistance on my dps bar, over 30k on tank bar.

Lephrel · February 2021

itscompton wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

laksikus wrote: »

Im pretty sure the 20% were for base stats and dont include set stats.

@Sgrug
@laksikus
I have just tested this on live. Magicka bonuses are affected by a 1.34x multiplier (tested using magblade, crafty alfiq set). That's 6% from undaunted, 8% from siphoning and 20% from champion points. Feel free to double check.

Same gear (Bright throats and Spinners with mismatched monster sets), same food, same mundus my 810 template Sorc on PTS winds up with just about 2K more max magic than on live. The build also has 1200 more SD on PTS. The extra stats make up for most of the loss of the bigger buffs from CP 1.0 on regular abilities. The only thing that took a sizable nerf damage wise was my LA's which hit for about 20% less now.

@itscompton Zeni have increased every characters base stats, to offset the 20% stat loss. What they didn't do is buff all max resource sets, jewellery/armour traits and foods by an appropriate amount.
So even though you may have higher stats on the pts, max resource sets are still substantially weaker than they are on live. Without the 20% multiplier, those sets will become utterly useless. A 20% nerf is huge, and max resource sets weren't particularly strong to begin with.

itscompton · February 2021

Lephrel wrote: »

itscompton wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

laksikus wrote: »

Im pretty sure the 20% were for base stats and dont include set stats.

@Sgrug
@laksikus
I have just tested this on live. Magicka bonuses are affected by a 1.34x multiplier (tested using magblade, crafty alfiq set). That's 6% from undaunted, 8% from siphoning and 20% from champion points. Feel free to double check.

Same gear (Bright throats and Spinners with mismatched monster sets), same food, same mundus my 810 template Sorc on PTS winds up with just about 2K more max magic than on live. The build also has 1200 more SD on PTS. The extra stats make up for most of the loss of the bigger buffs from CP 1.0 on regular abilities. The only thing that took a sizable nerf damage wise was my LA's which hit for about 20% less now.

@itscompton Zeni have increased every characters base stats, to offset the 20% stat loss. What they didn't do is buff all max resource sets, jewellery/armour traits and foods by an appropriate amount.
So even though you may have higher stats on the pts, max resource sets are still substantially weaker than they are on live. Without the 20% multiplier, those sets will become utterly useless. A 20% nerf is huge, and max resource sets weren't particularly strong to begin with.

After reading a few more of the posts I get what you're trying to say now. Making a move like replacing Bright Throats's with Caluurions loses a fair amount less Max Mag in CP 2.0 v 1.0 because of the way the boost works.

So I went on PTS and looked into how this affects a max stat vs proc build a bit more. If I leave all my other sets as is and swap Bright Throat for Caluurions I lose 4821 Max Mag (with Magelight on my bar) but gain 163 SD and 5% more crit chance.

For practical purposes I compared how this affects the damage of Soul Consuming Trap. Over the course of 10 seconds a build with Caluu does 16038 and BTB does 16596. This is 3.48% more. Caluurion's tooltip is 16472. So divide by 10 it gives an extra 1647 DPS. 1647 is 3.48% of 47327.
So if we take into account the 5% less crit chance this means for BTB to outperform Caluurions you need to be able to rock >48K DPS consistently for stretches of at least 11 seconds straight and uninterrupted, which I'd argue the majority of players can't do in PvE under the new system. Even after Battle Spirit that's still nearly 27K DPS and no one can sustain that much damage in PvP for more than a 1-2 second burst, and any 1 second burst will always be stronger if Caluurion's is included vs the extra raw stats. So again it wins hands down.

I should also point out that my Hardened Ward winds up being capped at just under 15K by my 24.8K health with either set and doesn't see any benefit at all from the extra Max Mag.

Conclusion: When the test is over and proc sets work again in Cyro they will rule PvP and will be the meta for everyone except for elite PvE DD's.

Lephrel · February 2021

itscompton wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

itscompton wrote: »

Lephrel wrote: »

laksikus wrote: »

Im pretty sure the 20% were for base stats and dont include set stats.

@Sgrug
@laksikus
I have just tested this on live. Magicka bonuses are affected by a 1.34x multiplier (tested using magblade, crafty alfiq set). That's 6% from undaunted, 8% from siphoning and 20% from champion points. Feel free to double check.

Same gear (Bright throats and Spinners with mismatched monster sets), same food, same mundus my 810 template Sorc on PTS winds up with just about 2K more max magic than on live. The build also has 1200 more SD on PTS. The extra stats make up for most of the loss of the bigger buffs from CP 1.0 on regular abilities. The only thing that took a sizable nerf damage wise was my LA's which hit for about 20% less now.

@itscompton Zeni have increased every characters base stats, to offset the 20% stat loss. What they didn't do is buff all max resource sets, jewellery/armour traits and foods by an appropriate amount.
So even though you may have higher stats on the pts, max resource sets are still substantially weaker than they are on live. Without the 20% multiplier, those sets will become utterly useless. A 20% nerf is huge, and max resource sets weren't particularly strong to begin with.

After reading a few more of the posts I get what you're trying to say now. Making a move like replacing Bright Throats's with Caluurions loses a fair amount less Max Mag in CP 2.0 v 1.0 because of the way the boost works.

So I went on PTS and looked into how this affects a max stat vs proc build a bit more. If I leave all my other sets as is and swap Bright Throat for Caluurions I lose 4821 Max Mag (with Magelight on my bar) but gain 163 SD and 5% more crit chance.

For practical purposes I compared how this affects the damage of Soul Consuming Trap. Over the course of 10 seconds a build with Caluu does 16038 and BTB does 16596. This is 3.48% more. Caluurion's tooltip is 16472. So divide by 10 it gives an extra 1647 DPS. 1647 is 3.48% of 47327.
So if we take into account the 5% less crit chance this means for BTB to outperform Caluurions you need to be able to rock >48K DPS consistently for stretches of at least 11 seconds straight and uninterrupted, which I'd argue the majority of players can't do in PvE under the new system. Even after Battle Spirit that's still nearly 27K DPS and no one can sustain that much damage in PvP for more than a 1-2 second burst, and any 1 second burst will always be stronger if Caluurion's is included vs the extra raw stats. So again it wins hands down.

I should also point out that my Hardened Ward winds up being capped at just under 15K by my 24.8K health with either set and doesn't see any benefit at all from the extra Max Mag.

Conclusion: When the test is over and proc sets work again in Cyro they will rule PvP and will be the meta for everyone except for elite PvE DD's.

Hey thanks for testing this and posting your results in such detail, it's very helpful. It's not just damage proc sets that will dominate max resource sets though, anything that stacks spell/weapon damage or crit will be much stronger in comparison as well.