Vet10 stamina users vs. Vet10 Magicka users

SuicidalCereal · April 2014

So, the issue I found is that when you equip a level 1 bow, then a vet1 bow, the bow abilities that deal damage go up, as intended. When you equip a level 1 destro staff and Vet1 destro staff, the destro staff abilities that do damage also go up. Here is where I find the issue. My class abilities (templar magicka user) dont go up after hitting Vet1. My ability Puncturing sweep has done 56 damage since I hit Vet1 and hasn't changed as I continue to level and equip more powerful weapons. Where as all the weapon abilities (bow, staff, 2handed etc..) DO scale. This would be fine if magicka users had more to choose from for damage other than just the destro staff.

So simply put, All class abilities at Vet10 will technically be Vet1 abilities, where as all Weapon abilities will actually scale to Vet10 as you equip Vet10 weapons, So stamina user will have 4 different weapons to choose from that will scale with them. Magicka users have 2, and 1 of them is for healing. So my issue is that for a person who relies on Magicka to do damage, they will funneled in a very narrow build (if there is one even possible)

Before you guys cry out and flame, please go test it, equip a level 1 weapon and a vet 1 weapon, then use a class ability that does damage, then use a weapon ability that does damage and let me know if you see a difference.

Also going off of this, it would mean that a stamina user, that only uses their class abilities for utility, and only uses weapon abilities for damage will be way better off then any other build. If you don't get why I stay stamina users, go look at the destruction staff (the ONLY weapon magicka users would have for damage that actually scales to Vet10) abilities and tell me how you are going to build anything other then a spam AoE build.

If I am wrong (and I hope I am just stupid and missing some part of this) please correct me, if not let me know if you guys see the same thing.

Stx · April 2014

Magicka abilities scale off of spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage. There are soft caps for both of these if I am not mistaken, so I fail to see any real problems.

What you are experiencing is an increase in weapon damage between vr1 and vr10, but not a whole lot of magicka increase between 1 and 10.. (probably because your magicka is capped already).

Aimeryan · April 2014

How do you increase spell power from vet1 to vet10 and is it significant? Is the weapon damage increase significant from vet1 to vet10?

Ignoring destruction staves, if:

There is no way significant way to increase spell power from vet 1 to vet10
The weapon damage increase from vet1 to vet10 is signficant
These are both balanced compared to each other at vet1

Well, the weapon damage/stamina skills will be stronger than spell power/magicka skills at vet10.

That is a lot of ifs, but each can probably be answered. Well, the balance one will likely be quite difficult to answer, but presumably possible.

As for destruction staves, as the OP said, they are pretty much catered exclusively to utility and AoE damage. It would be nice to get a magicka weapon that was single-target focused, but this would still make it so that the weapon skills would be more powerful than the class skills in terms of damage.

One suggestion is for vet weapons to increase spell power too.

Armitas · April 2014

Stx wrote: »

Magicka abilities scale off of spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage. There are soft caps for both of these if I am not mistaken, so I fail to see any real problems.

What you are experiencing is an increase in weapon damage between vr1 and vr10, but not a whole lot of magicka increase between 1 and 10.. (probably because your magicka is capped already).

Magic abilities scale off magic and spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage and stamina. Which allows Weapon abilities to scale with Vet rank, but not magic abilities because spell power is not increasing with vet rank.

The problem is enemies are scaling upward, Weapon skills are scaling upward to match those enemies, however there are no comparative sources to scale our magic damage. We get access to higher enchant glyphs but the increase per vet rank is not even enough for 1 point of extra dmg. In addition anything that we could use to give us more magic damage can also be used to give us more stamina based damage. However the reverse is not true, and so magic based damage lags behind.

Like Aimeryan said I think the easiest fix for this would be to include weapon damage into our class skill calculators. That way they both scale comparatively with vet rank. Or to prevent back scaling magic skills they can have it tie into vet rank.

Comaetilico · April 2014

here are the formulas for skill damage...

magika based non weapon ability:
[(magika/20) + spellpower] * skill coeeficent

Magika based wepon abilities (staves):
[(magika/20) + (weapon damage/1,9)] * skill coefficent

Stamina based non weapon abilities (fighter guild/AvA assault)
[(Stamina/20) + spellpower] * skill coefficent

Stamina based weapon abilities (all weapon but staves)
[(Stamina/20) + (weapon damage/1,9) * skill coefficent

those are formulas deducted by players during the final beta stages.. whie something may have been changed this should at least give you an idea of what makes a skill damage scale...

as you can see weapon abilities are based on weapon damage that increase trough vr 1-10 and also scale trough the rarity of the weapon... but the factor is also under an additional operation in comparison with spellpower... so such an increase is mitigated (if you consider that the difference in weapon damage between a vr1 and vr10 weapon of the same rarity is just 20 point once you apply the "/1,9" you get already half of it... also it should be noted that many weapon abilities start less powerfull than class abilities...

khele23eb17_ESO · April 2014

Has anyone actually done testing and the math necessary to compare physical weapon damage with magical weapon damage? I see how things not scaling can be annoying but that doesnt automatically mean a buff is required. You dont want to end up with aoe weapons dealing as much damage to every single target in the aoe area as single target weapons to just 1 enemy.

Armitas · April 2014

Well 20 weapon dmg is about 16 points worth of weapon skill damage. It's also 20 points of regular attack damage.

While that doesn't sound like much on paper, it's quite a bit in respect to our total weapon damage. iirc my weapon has 120 damage on it. Another 20 damage is a 17% increase to weapon damage. That is pretty big.

More comparison
Momentum is 24 more dmg (for my listed weapon)
Ashen Grip forge is 15 dmg
Ice furnace set is 18 dmg
Vet rings add 8 weapon dmg (still v3)

In reference to other damage increases in the game 20 damage is pretty significant.

dumbo · April 2014

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Has anyone actually done testing and the math necessary to compare physical weapon damage with magical weapon damage?

AFAIK, the problem is simply that:
- weapon skills scale up to VR10. (most of these are stamina based)
- class skills only scale properly up to 50. (for no obvious reason, these are all magicka based)

So it's not that stamina>magicka, but that weapon>class. (separately destro staff is considered a 'weaker' weapon, and most magicka builds are based around class abilities).

khele23eb17_ESO · April 2014

What I meant was that Id like to see some numbers showing whether the weapon/class skill damage is currently balanced for vet 1 or for vet 10. Only after that would I like Zeni to either increase class skill damage through scaling at v10 or reduce it at v1.

*Edited to respond to Dumbo's post.

Yelgis · April 2014

I was noticing this and am curious about it as well. I am in the process of leveling all the stam weapons to 50 and working my way to Vet 10. I intend to test this when I cap out to determine which way ends up being better for my class (NB).

It is true that any gear based way to boost spell power also exists for weapon damage for stamina builds, but that the reverse isn't true (spell power has no weapon slot to gain from).

The things that make it less clear is other incidental buffs. For instance things like Mages guild passives offering 20% spell power boost, Flawless dawnkbreaker offering 14% weapon attack damage. The resto staff 10% damage boost. Drain Power and Momentum and other buffs all make figuring the end result out much more difficult.

Class skills could tip the balance one way or another and the result could be different for each class.

Also remember stamina seems to be the hardest resource to manage. Most buffs to stamina are in the form of regen bonuses and that is capped. Whereas magicka has the destro staff passive, Resto staff heavy attacks restoring 10%, the Magicka Furnace set, Sorc's Dark Exchange and various other ways to restore magicka more effectively than stam and magicka isn't used for CC breaks, blocking, sprinting or dodging.

Lots of variables to be considered and testing to be done.

Nazaan · April 2014

Armitas wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

Magicka abilities scale off of spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage. There are soft caps for both of these if I am not mistaken, so I fail to see any real problems.

What you are experiencing is an increase in weapon damage between vr1 and vr10, but not a whole lot of magicka increase between 1 and 10.. (probably because your magicka is capped already).

Magic abilities scale off magic and spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage and stamina. Which allows Weapon abilities to scale with Vet rank, but not magic abilities because spell power is not increasing with vet rank.

The problem is enemies are scaling upward, Weapon skills are scaling upward to match those enemies, however there are no comparative sources to scale our magic damage. We get access to higher enchant glyphs but the increase per vet rank is not even enough for 1 point of extra dmg. In addition anything that we could use to give us more magic damage can also be used to give us more stamina based damage. However the reverse is not true, and so magic based damage lags behind.

Like Aimeryan said I think the easiest fix for this would be to include weapon damage into our class skill calculators. That way they both scale comparatively with vet rank. Or to prevent back scaling magic skills they can have it tie into vet rank.

Actually I'd say the best way to improve this would be to have a coefficient that took in to account player level.

Aimeryan · April 2014

Nazaan wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

Magicka abilities scale off of spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage. There are soft caps for both of these if I am not mistaken, so I fail to see any real problems.

What you are experiencing is an increase in weapon damage between vr1 and vr10, but not a whole lot of magicka increase between 1 and 10.. (probably because your magicka is capped already).

Magic abilities scale off magic and spell power. Weapon abilities scale off of weapon damage and stamina. Which allows Weapon abilities to scale with Vet rank, but not magic abilities because spell power is not increasing with vet rank.

The problem is enemies are scaling upward, Weapon skills are scaling upward to match those enemies, however there are no comparative sources to scale our magic damage. We get access to higher enchant glyphs but the increase per vet rank is not even enough for 1 point of extra dmg. In addition anything that we could use to give us more magic damage can also be used to give us more stamina based damage. However the reverse is not true, and so magic based damage lags behind.

Like Aimeryan said I think the easiest fix for this would be to include weapon damage into our class skill calculators. That way they both scale comparatively with vet rank. Or to prevent back scaling magic skills they can have it tie into vet rank.

Actually I'd say the best way to improve this would be to have a coefficient that took in to account player level.

Both stamina and magicka users would presumably get this though, which would still mean the stamina users (through weapon damage) have an extra source to scale from past Vet1.

Jeddahwe · April 2014

So we should build on weapon not class abilities? Weapon is the MAIN source of whatever it is we do while class abilities are utility/support for the weapon?

ZoM_Head · April 2014

Jeddahwe wrote: »

So we should build on weapon not class abilities? Weapon is the MAIN source of whatever it is we do while class abilities are utility/support for the weapon?

Basically, what he is saying is that any build with high stamina and uses weapons (two handed, one hand and shield, dual wield and bow users) will keep scaling at veteran ranks.

Class based skills (Anything that uses magicka), will scale but not in veteran ranks.

For the short term, class skills are, IMO, stronger than weapon skills. But end game or in the long run (veteran ranks), stamina based skills will keep scaling and the class (magicka) skills will not.

With the destruction staff being the only exception (if i understood the OP correctly).

We are talking about damage output here.

steinernein · April 2014

Resto staff. Percentile multipliers. Raised soft caps. Higher coefficients. Suffice to say that a level 50 will not be doing the same amount of damage as a v10 when it comes to skill based attacks.

Teloran · April 2014

From the vet ranked player I've seen, class skills seem to work fine. For the Sorcerer, the current optimal DPS build seems to be based on class skills. This may become a problem late though as more veteran ranks are introduced.

Halrloprillalar · May 2014

I would like to know why spellpower seems to go down as you go up in VR.

Makes no sense.

kitsinni · May 2014

While the weapon damage of Stamina based builds might scale better in VR it is still going to be weaker than non-scalign Magika based attacks at the end of the day. Also you have the huge disadvantage of having your damage resource be the same resource you need to block, dodge and sprint. If you are using Destro staff skills that should scale somewhat with the damage of your staff. If you are using all class skills and just hold a staff for basic attacks you would be better off using a Resto staff for the 10% damage passive.

I can understand your concern on paper but at the end of the day even with scaling issues the Weapon/Stamina based builds don't hold up in VR.

Think of it like this your Magika based class attacks were a bit overpowered when you got to VR content to begin with. They don't increase as much because you are already near the cap and the increase in Magika is minimal. Even with the minimal increase in Magika class skills and the higher increase in Stamina you are still going to do better with more Magika based.