Magicka Spell Dmg Scaling with Regards to Proc sets

Sedare38 · June 2021

It is entirely too easy to hit the 6500 threshold on a stamina build even when 1 set is magicka based to get to that threshold for proc damage prior to U30. it is much harder to reach that threshold , and let me be clear in PVP and in No-CP, for magicka users--particularly for magblades from my POV. I can get close, maybe 6k-6100 but not without all the scrolls, Continuous attack AND vamp stage 2 coming out of stealth buff, and this is while using a damage set to coincide with the proc set. On my stamblade I don't need to stretch that hard at all. Either lower the threshold specifically for Magicka users or increase the base damage to be on par with stam users.

I suppose you could mark that or have the condition being what stat is dumped into for the majority? I don't know, since every class can be either stam or mag based. Point being is it's much more difficult to reach the threshold for mag toons. I don't know if this is by design or what, but it feels like a damn punishment.

Jameson18 · June 2021

Why they didn't directly place physical damage procs with weapon damage and magical damage procs with spell damage is confusing.

I understand the "hybrid" freedom attempts etc., but given the direction the system has gone, it doesn't seem to be productive.

ealdwin · June 2021

Yeah, their implementation wasn't the most elegant of ones. And that was pointed out plenty of times on the pts forums, but the way of ZOS is to not change directions once on the path. They could have just had procs scale similar to skills, from both max mag/stam and sd/wd. For instance:

As of now, Way of Fire scales with an equation of Y = 0.6X where Y is the tooltip damage and X is the amount of weapon/spell damage one has (whichever is higher). This means, where tooltips are concerned (not counting the effects of penetration vs armor since that adds another level to what the final damage is), that generally builds that spec around Stamina and WD will have a higher tool time than those that spec for Magicka and SD.

If instead, the equation was more similar to how skills work, where the tooltip damage was calculated as Y = 0.6 * (A + 0.1 * B ), where Y is the tooltip damage, A is the amount of weapon/spell damage one has (whichever is higher), and B is the Max Magicka/Stamina one has (whichever is higher). The coefficient of 0.6 may need adjusted down.

It would also be reasonable to implement caps on the potential tooltip damage as well.

hundergrn · June 2021

Still trying to figure out why they didn't have mag procs go off of total magicka instead of spell damage.

Historically:
Stamina users have ease of stacking Weapon Damage instead of Stamina by gear - Wep Dmg > Stam
Magicka users have ease of stacking max Magicka instead of Spell Damage by gear - Magicka > Spell Dmg

My guess is that since Wep DMG and Spell DMG is that same now outside of passives, they kept it the same for proc scaling. One math equation is easier to calc than pulling logic if then else for damage.

Theory time:

What if proc set scaling calculated with both spell/wep damage and primary resource... similar to how health based ones function off of max health and resistances? That would balance the disparity between mag and stam... mostly.... it might push for a ww/vamp meta for resources and make sorcs even more op. It would allow for more gear variety for the harder hit classes though (and give more reason to why sorcs shouldn't have a higher spell dmg multiplier than everyone else)

Sedare38 · June 2021

hundergrn wrote: »

Still trying to figure out why they didn't have mag procs go off of total magicka instead of spell damage.

Historically:
Stamina users have ease of stacking Weapon Damage instead of Stamina by gear - Wep Dmg > Stam
Magicka users have ease of stacking max Magicka instead of Spell Damage by gear - Magicka > Spell Dmg

My guess is that since Wep DMG and Spell DMG is that same now outside of passives, they kept it the same for proc scaling. One math equation is easier to calc than pulling logic if then else for damage.

Theory time:

What if proc set scaling calculated with both spell/wep damage and primary resource... similar to how health based ones function off of max health and resistances? That would balance the disparity between mag and stam... mostly.... it might push for a ww/vamp meta for resources and make sorcs even more op. It would allow for more gear variety for the harder hit classes though (and give more reason to why sorcs shouldn't have a higher spell dmg multiplier than everyone else)

You can't nerf sorcs . . . ever. It's in the ZOS by-laws.

Great post. Thankyou for your input.

WrathOfInnos · June 2021

hundergrn wrote: »

Still trying to figure out why they didn't have mag procs go off of total magicka instead of spell damage.

Historically:
Stamina users have ease of stacking Weapon Damage instead of Stamina by gear - Wep Dmg > Stam
Magicka users have ease of stacking max Magicka instead of Spell Damage by gear - Magicka > Spell Dmg

My guess is that since Wep DMG and Spell DMG is that same now outside of passives, they kept it the same for proc scaling. One math equation is easier to calc than pulling logic if then else for damage.

Theory time:

What if proc set scaling calculated with both spell/wep damage and primary resource... similar to how health based ones function off of max health and resistances? That would balance the disparity between mag and stam... mostly.... it might push for a ww/vamp meta for resources and make sorcs even more op. It would allow for more gear variety for the harder hit classes though (and give more reason to why sorcs shouldn't have a higher spell dmg multiplier than everyone else)

This makes a lot of sense. If procs are going to scale with stats (debatable if this is a good change), then why would they scale differently than skills? Years of balancing has gone into skill scaling, and the 10.5:1 ratio seems to work pretty well at the moment. Unclear why that approach was abandoned for one that is obviously not balanced.

Benzux · June 2021

Everyone was pointing out during PTS why this was such a terrible idea, but ZoS being ZoS went ahead and did it anyway.

I haven't done any DPS tests yet, but based on the tooltips I'm getting on my Mag characters, it's going to be a lot less than what I've tested previously.

Kind of ironic how this patch was all about promoting Solo play with the new Companions system, and yet at the same time they absolutely killed off Solo Magicka characters, since 6k Spell Damage is very hard to reach without every group buff in existence and/or Blood Frenzy cheese.

ArgoCye · June 2021

They could have light armor give a spell damage bonus like medium. Not sure where else Stam users get the WD from - but ZoS could look for parity here. That said, it would be easier to just drop the SD threshold to under 6k

Ippokrates · June 2021

ArgoCye wrote: »

They could have light armor give a spell damage bonus like medium. Not sure where else Stam users get the WD from - but ZoS could look for parity here. That said, it would be easier to just drop the SD threshold to under 6k

2h & Dual have more basic dmg (around 200) and of course you have whole FG tree with 3% wd bonus per skill.

Gilvoth · June 2021

No. thats an unfair advantage.
i vote No.
why?
magicka damage does Far more than stamina damage. everyone knows this.
it has allways been this way since early beta days. and still exists even in the most recent patch.
what you are asking for in this thread, is to give magicka builds an advantage.
yes, i have seen all the reasoning and explinations why and the fact remains that this will give an unfair advantage to magicka builds.

and no im not joking and no im not being sarcastic.
just giving honest feedback.

ealdwin · June 2021

ArgoCye wrote: »

They could have light armor give a spell damage bonus like medium. Not sure where else Stam users get the WD from - but ZoS could look for parity here. That said, it would be easier to just drop the SD threshold to under 6k

The alternative (and what I personally would prefer) is to hybridize the offensive stats provided in the armor passives for each weight.

Light Armor would provide Offensive Penetration (combined Spell and Physical Penetration) and Critical Chance (combined Weapon and Spell Critical) per piece.

Medium Armor would provide Critical Chance (combined Weapon and Spell Critical) and Weapon & Spell Damage per piece.

They did this with the passives for DW, 2H, and Bow, so why not Armor (and by extension the other weapons)?

Syrpynt · June 2021

The next step for Zenimax will be to decouple magicka and stamina from "damage", Magicka and stamina should be for longer sustain, heals, and damage shields strength.

The reason: Prevent healers and dps from being the same person. It's annoying when someone can heal THROUGH your onslaught of attacks, then somehow have the strength to kill you.

I'm happy if this is what Zenimax does next.

You
can't
have
your
cake
and
eat
it
too.

karekiz · June 2021

You have Pen bonus in LA tho, its balanced.

Firstmep · June 2021

karekiz wrote: »

You have Pen bonus in LA tho, its balanced.

Its pretty much offset with maces having extra pen tbh.
Also most mag toons in pvp run trifood to have decent stam sustain, whereas on stam you can get away with stam recov food so you don't have to run reduced cost or recovery glyphs.
They should made procs scale as skills do, this mono stat scaling just screams laziness to me from the devs.

Sedare38 · June 2021

karekiz wrote: »

You have Pen bonus in LA tho, its balanced.

not with regards to the procs it's not. 12k+ on my stamblade with a hit while getting 4k on my magblade. that's not balanced.

gariondavey · June 2021

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

Firstmep · June 2021

gariondavey wrote: »

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

And what proc set?

gariondavey · June 2021

Firstmep wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

And what proc set?

Zaan, vate destro can work nicely with those 2

Syrpynt · June 2021

But you just said to use Balorg for the remaining spell damage.

I think ZOS' point in doing these changes was to NOT make proc sets as powerful as they once were without losing some other aspect of a build. This is true balancing.

The summarized message we've received:
"Either use proc sets for tiny amounts of damage, or use stat-booster sets and finally git gud."

hundergrn · June 2021

gariondavey wrote: »

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

Sounds good for pvp/1v1-2.... seems to kind of balance itself out. All the power but limited/no active resource recovery (light/heavy attack). Still youd be a 3-pump chump in anything but battlegrounds. The only reason this works is because it is using dw weps instead of staff.

Abyssmol · June 2021

Gilvoth wrote: »

No. thats an unfair advantage.
i vote No.
why?
magicka damage does Far more than stamina damage. everyone knows this.
it has allways been this way since early beta days. and still exists even in the most recent patch.
what you are asking for in this thread, is to give magicka builds an advantage.
yes, i have seen all the reasoning and explinations why and the fact remains that this will give an unfair advantage to magicka builds.

and no im not joking and no im not being sarcastic.
just giving honest feedback.

This guy is joking!

Sagetim · June 2021

The balance should be
Damage:
An all Lite armor build should be stronger then everything else
An all Medium armor build should be more balanced
An all Heavy armor build should be more health/armor

Zos has ruined magic builds in pvp right now

Syrpynt · June 2021

Sagetim wrote: »

The balance should be
Damage:
An all Lite armor build should be stronger then everything else
An all Medium armor build should be more balanced
An all Heavy armor build should be more health/armor

Zos has ruined magic builds in pvp right now

There's nothing keeping players from using heavy armor right now as either magicka or stamina... I mean, the sets have been there, it just means you have to change your build more than you're willing to, doesn't mean it isn't possible.

But as my other point: I strongly think that the heavy armor needs a damage debuff soon. Take advantage while you can.

These dps-healers and tank-dps hybrids need to disappear. That's the true problem in PvP.

Andre_Noir · June 2021

Syrpynt wrote: »

There's nothing keeping players from using heavy armor right now as either magicka or stamina...

There is a lot for magicka since it cost more, weapon is weaker and stamina poll is abysmal so you can't afford sprint and roll dodge at all or there will be no stamina for break free. On top of that you can't block since block cost stamina and the only option for magicka is an ice staff that will gimp low and costly damage even more. For mNB it's not an option at all since it gimp detection radius

itscompton · June 2021

Andre_Noir wrote: »

Syrpynt wrote: »

There's nothing keeping players from using heavy armor right now as either magicka or stamina...

There is a lot for magicka since it cost more, weapon is weaker and stamina poll is abysmal so you can't afford sprint and roll dodge at all or there will be no stamina for break free. On top of that you can't block since block cost stamina and the only option for magicka is an ice staff that will gimp low and costly damage even more. For mNB it's not an option at all since it gimp detection radius

If a mNB has a good max magic pool and decent recovery the detection penalty wouldn't matter because they can spam cloak every three seconds for a full minute before they run out of magic. Not saying I'd really run heavy armor on a Magblade just saying the detection penalty isn't so bad if you can cloak 20 times before running dry vs. being able to do it three or four times on a Stamblade.

ExistingRug61 · June 2021

itscompton wrote: »

Andre_Noir wrote: »

Syrpynt wrote: »

There's nothing keeping players from using heavy armor right now as either magicka or stamina...

There is a lot for magicka since it cost more, weapon is weaker and stamina poll is abysmal so you can't afford sprint and roll dodge at all or there will be no stamina for break free. On top of that you can't block since block cost stamina and the only option for magicka is an ice staff that will gimp low and costly damage even more. For mNB it's not an option at all since it gimp detection radius

If a mNB has a good max magic pool and decent recovery the detection penalty wouldn't matter because they can spam cloak every three seconds for a full minute before they run out of magic. Not saying I'd really run heavy armor on a Magblade just saying the detection penalty isn't so bad if you can cloak 20 times before running dry vs. being able to do it three or four times on a Stamblade.

@itscompton
But that’s just it - due to the way it seems to be coded it appears HA does affect cloak, not just sneak. See
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/567350/changes-to-invisibility-intended-or-not

Which means in a lot of cases HA is basically ruled out for a cloaking magblade.

itscompton · June 2021

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

itscompton wrote: »

Andre_Noir wrote: »

Syrpynt wrote: »

There's nothing keeping players from using heavy armor right now as either magicka or stamina...

There is a lot for magicka since it cost more, weapon is weaker and stamina poll is abysmal so you can't afford sprint and roll dodge at all or there will be no stamina for break free. On top of that you can't block since block cost stamina and the only option for magicka is an ice staff that will gimp low and costly damage even more. For mNB it's not an option at all since it gimp detection radius

If a mNB has a good max magic pool and decent recovery the detection penalty wouldn't matter because they can spam cloak every three seconds for a full minute before they run out of magic. Not saying I'd really run heavy armor on a Magblade just saying the detection penalty isn't so bad if you can cloak 20 times before running dry vs. being able to do it three or four times on a Stamblade.

@itscompton
But that’s just it - due to the way it seems to be coded it appears HA does affect cloak, not just sneak. See
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/567350/changes-to-invisibility-intended-or-not

Which means in a lot of cases HA is basically ruled out for a cloaking magblade.

Looking into that it seems the only time you'd have trouble is standing still with someone right on top of you IF you're wearing 7H AND have no points in the CP to decrease your detection radius. So basically not going to affect anyone in PvP as it would be pointless to wear more than 4h since the amount of extra mitigation you gain on hands, feet and waist is not worth giving up the medium bonuses.

Tessitura · June 2021

gariondavey wrote: »

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

Where is the room for a proc set on that though? The big issue most people have is the ease at which stam can reach those numbers and still have room to have a proc benefit from it.

Now that said that is actually a setup I have been using on magblade and magcro and it is very powerful. and I highly recommend magicka builds give this a shot. But it doesn't address the issue people are having with their inability to use procs. This is probably going to be one of the least build diverse patches we have seen in a while.

ExistingRug61 · June 2021

itscompton wrote: »

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

itscompton wrote: »

Andre_Noir wrote: »

Syrpynt wrote: »

There's nothing keeping players from using heavy armor right now as either magicka or stamina...

There is a lot for magicka since it cost more, weapon is weaker and stamina poll is abysmal so you can't afford sprint and roll dodge at all or there will be no stamina for break free. On top of that you can't block since block cost stamina and the only option for magicka is an ice staff that will gimp low and costly damage even more. For mNB it's not an option at all since it gimp detection radius

If a mNB has a good max magic pool and decent recovery the detection penalty wouldn't matter because they can spam cloak every three seconds for a full minute before they run out of magic. Not saying I'd really run heavy armor on a Magblade just saying the detection penalty isn't so bad if you can cloak 20 times before running dry vs. being able to do it three or four times on a Stamblade.

@itscompton
But that’s just it - due to the way it seems to be coded it appears HA does affect cloak, not just sneak. See
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/567350/changes-to-invisibility-intended-or-not

Which means in a lot of cases HA is basically ruled out for a cloaking magblade.

Looking into that it seems the only time you'd have trouble is standing still with someone right on top of you IF you're wearing 7H AND have no points in the CP to decrease your detection radius. So basically not going to affect anyone in PvP as it would be pointless to wear more than 4h since the amount of extra mitigation you gain on hands, feet and waist is not worth giving up the medium bonuses.

In no cp pvp on a non khajiit it means 2 or more heavy pieces starts affecting cloak, depending on lag and/or proximity. I know I find myself running through people while cloaked quite frequently, given I play magblade at melee range. So in such a scenario if you want a reliable cloak you can’t really use more than one or maybe two heavy pieces.

So while not an issue I’m all environments, it does limit choice in some.

ResidentContrarian · June 2021

gariondavey wrote: »

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

That sounds pretty low...without any of that complicated stuff:

Hmmm not sure if this was even with DW or not. Too much screenshots to go through.

gariondavey · June 2021

Tessitura wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

Just a heads up - heartland conqueror dw with 1 nirn sword and 1 sharp mace + new moon is just over 6000 spell damage (with major sorcery).

Add in a balorgh or a back bar master destro and you are at the 6500.

Also, you will have 14k pen with this setup (including major breach)

Edit: to be clear, heartland on body and new moon on jewels + front bar. Also, these are both crafted sets.

Where is the room for a proc set on that though? The big issue most people have is the ease at which stam can reach those numbers and still have room to have a proc benefit from it.

Now that said that is actually a setup I have been using on magblade and magcro and it is very powerful. and I highly recommend magicka builds give this a shot. But it doesn't address the issue people are having with their inability to use procs. This is probably going to be one of the least build diverse patches we have seen in a while.

Zaan + back bar vate ice