Is dividing your attribute points evenly between magic, health, and stamina frowned upon?

ixmike · October 2021

Just wanted to get a general idea on what the community thinks.

I'm a casual player--Imperial Stamina nightblade--level 570, and mostly do PVE but occasionally venture into PVP.

The only magicka ability I use is Shadowy Disguise. I've been playing since launch and currently have my attributes set at Magicka 12, Health zero, and Stamina 52.

The reason I set my health to zero is because I almost always have a full tummy with food. And I think I read somewhere that the higher your stamina, the higher your damage?

Is there any scenario where just dividing your attribute points evenly is an optimal choice?

Sheezabeast · October 2021

Your damage scales off your highest attribute. You want your focus to be that stat. You can make up the difference in enchantments and armor.

Ratzkifal · October 2021

Tanks usually divide their attribute points, depending on what they need more of and what they already have.
Damage dealers need at least 18k health and should invest everything else into their main attribute as that, indeed, increases your damage output. It's a similar story for healers. If you are looking to complete veteran dungeons, especially the harder ones and the associated achievements, you should probably focus on only one attribute as a damage dealer or healer.

From the look of things we might still get to a point where dividing your resources could be considered optimal, but that isn't yet the case and also won't be the case in the Deadlands update either, despite the upcoming hybridization changes.

That being said. If you have more fun having some points put in max magicka, when stamina is your main attribute, more power to you. Especially in PvP you are free to do whatever as long as you are satisfied with your experience.

ixmike · October 2021

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Your damage scales off your highest attribute. You want your focus to be that stat. You can make up the difference in enchantments and armor.

So if I was only interested in raw damage output and decided to respec ALL of my attribute points into, say, Magicka (for whatever bizarre reason, since I'm a Stamina Nightblade), it would result in the same baseline damage had I decided to reinvent all my points into Health or Stamina?

Ratzkifal · October 2021

ixmike wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Your damage scales off your highest attribute. You want your focus to be that stat. You can make up the difference in enchantments and armor.

So if I was only interested in raw damage output and decided to respec ALL of my attribute points into, say, Magicka (for whatever bizarre reason, since I'm a Stamina Nightblade), it would result in the same baseline damage had I decided to reinvent all my points into Health or Stamina?

No. Skills that cost magicka increase their base damage with your spell damage stat and your max magicka stat. The same goes for skills that cost stamina and max stamina and weapon damage. There are only a handful of skills left that increase their value only with your max magicka/stamina stat and even fewer that have a health scaling (usually the ability will tell you if it scales with max health).

Amottica · October 2021

My dps builds are pure magicka builds. What I have been advised for PvE is all attributes and enchantments into magicka (it would be stamina for a stam build). If I have trouble surviving them put some into health and fortunately I have not had trouble surviving.

This makes complete sense because the stat increases my damage but if I was dying often, especially in group content, then I clearly would need more health until I figured out how to play well enough to deal with less health.

Nagastani · October 2021

ixmike wrote: »

Just wanted to get a general idea on what the community thinks.

I'm a casual player--Imperial Stamina nightblade--level 570, and mostly do PVE but occasionally venture into PVP.

The only magicka ability I use is Shadowy Disguise. I've been playing since launch and currently have my attributes set at Magicka 12, Health zero, and Stamina 52.

The reason I set my health to zero is because I almost always have a full tummy with food. And I think I read somewhere that the higher your stamina, the higher your damage?

Is there any scenario where just dividing your attribute points evenly is an optimal choice?

I would say no. When I setup my builds I look at this in terms of thresholds. So I know a character needs a certain amount of health, mag or stam, regardless of what they do. And so, the values you set for these will change depending on that characters role. I have tried setting my attributes up your way, however doing so almost always results in a sub-optimal build which wastes your potential in areas of the build rarely used. While areas that need the points more go under-powered, and that's a no-no.

Sheezabeast · October 2021

Ratzkifal wrote: »

ixmike wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Your damage scales off your highest attribute. You want your focus to be that stat. You can make up the difference in enchantments and armor.

So if I was only interested in raw damage output and decided to respec ALL of my attribute points into, say, Magicka (for whatever bizarre reason, since I'm a Stamina Nightblade), it would result in the same baseline damage had I decided to reinvent all my points into Health or Stamina?

No. Skills that cost magicka increase their base damage with your spell damage stat and your max magicka stat. The same goes for skills that cost stamina and max stamina and weapon damage. There are only a handful of skills left that increase their value only with your max magicka/stamina stat and even fewer that have a health scaling (usually the ability will tell you if it scales with max health).

Yes, this.

The only time it is advised to put points into health is when your character, with food, is under 15k health. Having a damage dealer with 14k health is a bad thing, and people will put 15 or so points into health to put their character over into 15k health for survivability. That is really the only exception to splitting your stats.

Vylaera · October 2021

https://alcasthq.com/eso-dps-damage-dealer-beginner-guide/

virtus753 · October 2021

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

ixmike wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Your damage scales off your highest attribute. You want your focus to be that stat. You can make up the difference in enchantments and armor.

So if I was only interested in raw damage output and decided to respec ALL of my attribute points into, say, Magicka (for whatever bizarre reason, since I'm a Stamina Nightblade), it would result in the same baseline damage had I decided to reinvent all my points into Health or Stamina?

No. Skills that cost magicka increase their base damage with your spell damage stat and your max magicka stat. The same goes for skills that cost stamina and max stamina and weapon damage. There are only a handful of skills left that increase their value only with your max magicka/stamina stat and even fewer that have a health scaling (usually the ability will tell you if it scales with max health).

Yes, this.

The only time it is advised to put points into health is when your character, with food, is under 15k health. Having a damage dealer with 14k health is a bad thing, and people will put 15 or so points into health to put their character over into 15k health for survivability. That is really the only exception to splitting your stats.

You cannot have less than 15k health since CP 2.0. The base health of every character in game is now 16k.

Vevvev · October 2021

Yes, and I used to do that many years ago on a nightblade that was once my main. Needless to say I was the weakest person in my guild barely pushing 7k DPS, and while part of it was understand game mechanics the other part was all my hybrid choices trying to play ESO like Skyrim and Oblivion. Fast forward to last year and I finally touched up on my Nightblade, and the first thing I did was dump all the points in stamina and it made a huge difference!

trackdemon5512 · October 2021

@ixmike

It’s not really needed to split attribute stacks (except for tanks) due to food buffs providing enough stats to balance out play. You thus max out damage by putting all points into attributes and having food adjust the health or other missing stats you have.

Remember, you don’t need health if you’re never getting hit. You don’t need magicka if all of your abilities run off stamina or vice versa.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · October 2021

This game is getting more hybridized by the minute, but general rule is that most things now scale with your highest offensive stat (which means magic or stamina plus spell damage or weapon damage). As a general rule, if you have a staff in your hands, put everything into magic and spell damage. If you have a 2H, DW, or Bow in your hand, put everything into stamina and weapon damage. Sword and boards are sort of the exception to the rule as usually that is for tanks, which do often spread their points around a little more.

I would take that philosophy one step further for PVE. Your enchants, set bonuses, and food should mirror your primary resource for the most part. In PVP, things like tri stat glyphs or tri food is much more common, because you may want a bit more of your off resource. Magic toons need to block, dodge, break free. Stamina toons may have class buffs that require magic (cloak in your case, for example).

Now of course, there are always exceptions, but as a stamblade who mostly PVEs, I would put all attributes and armor enchants into stamina. I would run food that is some combination of Max Stamina, Max Health, and Stamina regen (ALWAYS HAVE A FULL TUMMY). I would run weapon damage jewelry enchants. I would run gear stats that give Stamina, Weapon Damage, and Weapon Crit. In other words, go all in.

Now, once you get there, there is nothing wrong with adjustments. Health a little low? Switch an armor enchant to health. Stam Regen to low, maybe swap a jewelry enchant or adjust your food. Really like to spam cloak on your stamblade? Maybe run one magic recovery glyph, etc.

renne · October 2021

ixmike wrote: »

Is there any scenario where just dividing your attribute points evenly is an optimal choice?

Tanking, depending on what type of tank and skills are being used where it's usually used in conjunction with food, pots, traits and glyphs to boost and/or manage resources so those skills can be used.

MEBengalsFan2001 · October 2021

I recommend tri stat enchantment for head, chest and legs for all characters. It provides a slight boost in health and the other stat as you may need to use a magika ability as a stamina character and magika character could use the extra stamina for dodge roll or sprinting.

If you need more of the other stats make sure those pieces are infused to increase the enchantment effect.

zaria · October 2021

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

I recommend tri stat enchantment for head, chest and legs for all characters. It provides a slight boost in health and the other stat as you may need to use a magika ability as a stamina character and magika character could use the extra stamina for dodge roll or sprinting.

If you need more of the other stats make sure those pieces are infused to increase the enchantment effect.

Never ran out of magic on an stamsorc, who tend to use plenty of magic utility skills. Exceptions is negates and some mechanics like second last boss in FG 2 and the corridor runs in HoF.

On an tank lots is about managing resources, an nice buff for tanks would be that shards or balls returned the resource of the weapon you was wielding then picking it up.

etchedpixels · October 2021

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Remember, you don’t need health if you’re never getting hit. You don’t need magicka if all of your abilities run off stamina or vice versa.

If you aren't using both pools you are missing out. Yes you put 54 in stam or magicka and 10 in health until you get some CP then 64 and 0, but a lot of good builds include some skills to use the base pool of the other stat. On a mag toon for example it's sometimes smart to have a stamina heal so that when the crap hits the fan and you are out of magicka you can stay alive and heavy attack.

Tanks are a but different for harder content but for most base dungeon content you can build a tank basically as a DD with different champion points and some skill/gear tweaks.

Ippokrates · October 2021

At UESP ESO Skill Browser website you will find full list of skills with coefficiency - you will see how your stats: magicka/stamina/health or max affects your dmg.

Usually every 10,5 points of stamina/magicka is an equivalent of 1 points of weapon/spell power, so if you have 30k stam/mag your Veiled Strike have 3000 more dmg.

However, it doesn't affect your LA & HA.

EDIT: Also, i am just experimenting with NB Dunmer Hybrid with 32/32, full prismatic with Surprise Attack/Ambush & Impale/Sap Essence aaaaand... it seems that in U32 it will be possible to make also damage hybrid

phaneub17_ESO · October 2021

I like to put 32 health / 32 other on all my characters for simplicity sake. Those that are hybrids can compensate the difference with CP allocation, gear going all magicka/stamina, and then using the opposite Mundus Mage/Tower. But I'm also 1600cp so there's a lot to go around lol. Also a casual solo player most of the time so having extra health is more of a safety net when soloing dungeons.

WaywardArgonian · October 2021

Yes it is. Coming into this game from Skyrim, the biggest mistake I made in early game was distributing my points equally, which resulted in even trash mobs taking ages to die. Just pool your points into one resource and use buff food. It's a different story for tanks, but with them it really depends on the build.