It's been my assumption for a while that this is the intention, it has already been applied to proc sets.

I asked Rich the other day on his stream if this is the intent and he said something along the lines of 'it's something we're looking at, but there are a lot of balance issues and we need to make sure it won't break everything first'

I mean, just looking at it how does it affect food and the max resource / health / regen balance? If max stat doesn't matter, then only regen matters. DD would run 30 points in health and run a stam and mag regen drink. How does it affect trials when everyone can have more than 30k max health with no downside? How does this affect sets that max a stat like necropotence or bone pirate?

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

The current trend towards hybridization is great and will open up a lot of new build options that will keep the game engaging and fun to explore. However, the hard limiting factor will still be sustain: specifically that you will need to split points into stamina and magicka to use both types of skills consistently in a rotation, and that doing so will inevitably lower your overall effectiveness as everything still scales off your max resource pool.

This is the next problem to be solved, and the easiest way to solve it is with additional homogenization.

It will be interesting to see if they can do it without resorting to that.

Back to the OP's ideas...

As @Tannus15 pointed out, they are interested in finding a way to make this work, but I think the balance issues are a greater difficulty with the Magicka vs. Stamina Resource pools than what @WhyMustItBe seems to be thinking about.

In the damage calculations, the base resource pool is used to help determine the damage of any skill that uses that resource. So in that sense, they can be thought of, at least simplistically, as "contributing to Weapon Damage or Spell Damage", as it were (that's in quotes in order to group it as a thought concept, not because I'm quoting anybody). But simply allowing each resource pool to directly affect *both* damage types, that is, to contribute equally to both Weapon Damage and Spell Damage as though it were a gear bonus, would require re-working *how much* they contribute. This is where the balance problem comes in.

Take, for example, a typical pure Magicka or pure Stamina DPS build. Depending on a number of factors (race, class, specific gear choices) they typically have a primary resource pool in the range of 25k-35k with the other pool in the range of 10k-15k, and a Health pool of typically around 20k (rough values), and the higher one is (including Health), the lower the others are. A full hybrid, on the other hand, can easily run 25k in all 3 pools as a Moderate-Crit to High-Crit build (I know because I'm working on fleshing out and testing just such a build on the PTS at the moment). If a pure Stamina build is running, say, 20k Health, 10k Magicka, and 30k Stamina (because they're running some crit, for example), then their total of Magicka plus Stamina is 40k. On the other hand, a *current* hybrid style build like the one I just mentioned could run a combined total of over 50k resource pools.

In addition to that particular issue, there is also the problem of the fact that the resource pools (especially Stamina, much to my annoyance) are used for other purposes as well, such as Sneak, Sprint, Block, Bash, etc.

I had another point of complication to mention, but my ADHD brain has completely forgotten what it was, so I'll leave it there for now.

One possible solution might be to count only part of the secondary resource pool. For example, the damage calculations could determine the smaller of the two pools (if both are equal, then pick one), add 40% of it to the value of the larger pool, and use that combined value for the calculation. Taking my pure DPS vs Hybrid build stats mentioned above, that would be 25k+10k for the Hybrid, coming to 35k while the Stamina build would get 34k. But even this approach would end up slightly increasing overall damage, and that damage increase would need to be addressed. Also, as this is only a single comparative example, there could be the possibility of drastically changing the meta in other ways, and only going through multiple possible examples across the spectrum of min-maxing would reveal them.

One other possibility might be to make it so that you combine the full values of both pools, but make it so the combined value has diminishing returns on damage increase. That might, perhaps, be the easiest way to go about it, as all it really would require is changing the damage calculations themselves. But determining the right equation to use instead of the current ones would be a time-consuming endeavor in order to achieve balance without screwing things up.

I would love to see hybridization continue to make Hybrid builds more viable. In no small part because ever since the very beginning of the game I have always wanted to play a Bow/Lightning hybrid Sorcerer and have it be perfectly viable. But hybridizing the resource pools while maintaining reasonable game balance is likely going to be a lot more complicated than simply adding the two pools together to determine their damage contribution.

In any case, I'm glad @Tannus15 told us what Rich said, because I love hearing that they're still working on it.

Lynx

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

EntropicLynx wrote: »

In any case, I'm glad @Tannus15 told us what Rich said, because I love hearing that they're still working on it.

This has me more excited than almost anything else going on with the game right now TBH.

With regard to your concerns, it really isn't an issue if you run the numbers. It helps to visualize the bonus damage as the part of your offense bar that is added by attributes and gear above baseline. The only difference is you are adding EITHER magicka or stamina, rather than stacking just one, but the total damage bonus available from increasing total offensive resources through stat buffs and itemization would remain the same as it is now.

Since you only have 64 total attribute points, it wouldn't matter if you put all into one stat, or half into each. If the blue and green bars were counted as one offensive pool, the added power would be the same regardless. All that would matter in terms of power would be how much you added to health, as this would take away from what you had to put in offense, just like now.

The same goes for stats from sets. There would be no difference between adding a total of 4000 more magicka strictly from sets or 2000 magicka and 2000 stamina, and since you have a fixed number of set slots there is no difference in how much is available.

The only outlier would be wearing stats like Draugr Hulk and Bright-Throat's Boast or Necropotence together. However even this is not really any different than now as 1) you can already wear Bright Throat and Necropotence together to boost magicka (and the damage bonus from magicka) super high, and 2) you still have to sacrifice other offensive stats to get the resource pool that high, just like it is now.

In terms of the overall damage boost potential however, combining the bars would result in zero change from a current pure magicka or stamina minmax build.

There are a number of things that would lead to an overall damage boost or other benefit under this system. Primarily this is because with the current stat valuation, off stat is almost not considered in a set or passives worth, so is often tacked on for free. Examples are dark elf stats and also all the sets that give a boost of both stam and mag in a single line (ie: domihaus 1pc) which would suddenly be contributing double what they were to damage. Shacklebreaker 5 piece would be worth almost 400 damage on its own, way above standard. Plus you have tri glyphs and triune, which would effectively now give free health for no damage loss.

Not saying it’s a bad idea, just that the balance issues are wider reaching than you are currently indicating.