lets do what i did during the pts. calculate the end of vertical progression on a stam dk.

Slottable passives:
Must have slottable passives:

Deadly aim 50 points: single target buff, strongest cp points allocated on boss fights.
Thaumaturge 50 points: dot buff, very strong, not as strong as deadly aim, but a must have.
Backstabber 50 points: as strong as thaumaturge, backstabber is a must have for many situations, trials, and dungeons. the problem is, it requires you to flank the target, which is not always possible. you will want to have this passive for any fight that lets you have it, and remove it for those that dont.
Fighting finesse, wrathful strikes and biting aura, 2 of them minimum, for 100 points total: strong slottable dmg passives, when u can slot backstabbers you will slot the one which is stronger (probably biting aura for aoe setup, and fighting finesse for everything else), when you cant use backstabber you will slot both of them.
Total points used on slottable blue cp: 250.

Must have passives:
Precision 40 points: crit. speaks for itself.
Tireless discipline 40 points: max stamina = more damage.
Piercing 40 points: while penetration is easily capped right now, with all dds with full points into piercing you can use other buffs in group, freeing a precious support set, not to talk about dungeons where you need all the pen you can get.
Battle mastery 40 points: total of 60% points chance increase of applying status effects of the new stamina status effects, which all, you guessed it, deal damage.
Flawless ritual 40 points: total of 60% points for mag status effects, most stam classes wouldnt benefit from it much. stam dk's on the other hand, already have almost 1% of their damage done as a burning dot, adding 60% chance for it to proc is effectively adding 0.5%+ of damage. and as we know from min maxing, up till the point where we dont get anything anymore, it is still vertical progression.
Mighty 30 points: 100 weapon damage to physical damage attacks. speaks for itself.
War mage 30 points: "add 100 weapon and spell damage to magical attacks, affects: magic, flame, frost, and shock damage" well. stam dk's have over 10% of their damage made from magical sources. so ye. must have.
Quick recovery 10 points: 1% healing taken, this one is not as important. but sadly, it is a requirement for the next one.
Preparation 40 points: 8% reduced damage taken from pve sources, this one, no matter what they believe or say, is a must have in the harder pve content, because it is huge. it is like "10% more health and 10% more healing taken" together. can save you so many times. making runs much easier, and even ebon less required, can be slotted out for a different support set.
hardy and elemental aegis 40+40 points: more mitigations. see comment on previous mitigation passive
total points used on passive blue cp: 390

it is much much much better than the pts version I had for this (which was 2160 cp for those who ask, i did add new passives in this version though, but only because after running with the new CP for a while, I understood that those are CP that I want), but it is still 1920 cp. notice that it is above the "soft cap" of progression zos made (1800 CP). lets add that for pvp, you will need additional 110 passives CP, and 200 active CP's, so to "maximize" a PvP+PvE main stam dk, you will need a total of 2850 cp. it is much much much better than the previous "not being able to optimize a PvP and PvE build on 1 character of 3600 CP"


very sadly, that "reduction in optimization point" was mostly nerfs, like WrathOfInnos have feared in my original post .

I still believe that costs of passives, at least in the blue tree, should be cut down further in a half without being nerfed to lower the amount of points needed for reaching horizontal progression.

I am not ok with combat effectiveness being anywhere near soft cap. and I am very annoyed that at 1300 CP, all my characters are lacking passives (vertical progression) that will make them more effective at their 1 role when ZOS have advertised horizontal progression starting at 1200 CP.

side note: few of the green tree actives should become passives.

Renegader wrote: »

Scardan wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

IntenseRenegader wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

You don't have to reach 1800.

And that's not the cap. 3600 is. But after 1800 it gets harder to get CP again.

Soft cap to get every combat passive is 1800.

But soft cap to be effective at your role is lower than that. 1200, I believe?

Bbbbbbut Alcast said 1800 - 2000+ xD

dont know who that is. i am a pvper and i need the healing, magicka, stamina, damage, mitigation i can get.

at 1800 i can finally be as "min-maxed" compared to the others as i used to be when the soft cap was 810. its ridiculus.

I am also a pvper and I don't agree. Once you have all your slottables you are missing 4% mitigation(which is closer 1-2% when applied with your other sources of mitigation) and 8% healing done. It's hardly make or break IMO. I haven't been beaten yet and thought it was a cp difference. I could analyse my own performance and know I could have played better.