Question about LA Damage Calculations

Darkstorne · July 2022

I drop in and out of this game every now and again, and while I have a healer who I enjoy running vet dungeons with, mostly I play solo story content with a build designed to maximise LA damage, just to casually play this game like a single player TES game. I don't weave with that character, and the only skills I tend to cast are pre-buffs.

Do the changes to LA/HA damage mean that it's now impossible to increase their damage potential through weapon/spell damage, raw stats, and even buffs like brutality/sorcery? That sounds like what ZOS are aiming for judging by the patch notes, but that seems really confusing to me and I'm hoping I just misunderstood the new design. That would mean outside of Empower and Berserk buffs, and sets specifically boosting LA/HA damage like Undaunted Infiltrator, there is literally nothing we can do to boost that playstyle? Gold gear or white gear, it's all the same?

Necrotech_Master · July 2022

that is correct

in your statement about gold vs white gear, that would matter if you were using a set that specifically boosts the power of the light and heavy attacks (since the fixed value it buffs would be scaled on gear quality)

so if you want to focus on heavy attack build, you have to really build into it again

Darkstorne · July 2022

Wow, that's really... not good game design.

I can understand wanting to nerf LAs if they think they contribute too much to overall damage. But preventing them from scaling with any of our damage dealing stats is just a confusing decision that removes a lot of gameplay customization, and places even more emphasis on crit chance and crit damage being far more important than weapon/spell damage and pure stamina/magicka.

Also, shame on them for trying to win points by claiming this is to address weaving. It does nothing of the sort. Weaving is still just as important, only LA and HA builds are further suffering as a result.

TybaltKaine · July 2022

I just see it as a way of implementing a reliable damage cap. People who still weave well won't be seriously hampered by it, and if anything, it encourages people to want to get better at weaving so that they can do more damage. If I know that every LA is doing X damage, then I can see that I need to improve that particular aspect of my playstyle to increase my damage.

The top damage dealers are still going to be the top damage dealers, they just won't be doing as much, and as a result some things may take longer to do.

Most people probably wouldn't even notice this if it was just dropped into the game and never mentioned. I mean, my weaving sucks, and will probably always suck because I physically can't do it, but at least now I can see where those numbers are coming from consistently and how I can get better (maybe two LA's between skills instead of one, I dunno, I suck at parsing and all that stuff, just spit balling here).

Necrotech_Master · July 2022

Darkstorne wrote: »

Wow, that's really... not good game design.

I can understand wanting to nerf LAs if they think they contribute too much to overall damage. But preventing them from scaling with any of our damage dealing stats is just a confusing decision that removes a lot of gameplay customization, and places even more emphasis on crit chance and crit damage being far more important than weapon/spell damage and pure stamina/magicka.

Also, shame on them for trying to win points by claiming this is to address weaving. It does nothing of the sort. Weaving is still just as important, only LA and HA builds are further suffering as a result.

the take i got from them was "reduce the effectiveness of weaving" which is true by reducing dmg on light and heavy attacks

parts that i dont understand would be like the 10% further reduction on any ranged light attack

but for an example, on live right now, my stamplar unbuffed hits a light attack at around 3250 dmg, the new light attack dmg would be 2500, so i would effectively only be losing around 750 dmg per hit

its losing more though once you take buffs into account though