Racials need a rework badly.

Drekor · April 2014

So right now the majority of racials more or less suck and are little more than flavour. However there are a few gems in there that are awesome. The ones that get that strong are ones that basically do something fantastic and circumvent soft caps. Every race has one of these(except nords apparently).

Breton: Reduce magicka costs
Orcs: Reduce sprint cost + Faster Sprint
Redguard: stam on hit
High Elf: Elemental damage
Wood Elf: Better stealth + more damage on stealth attacks
Khajit: Wood elf bonus + more melee crit
Argonian: Increase swim speed + increased potion effectiveness + increased incoming healing
Dark Elf: Fire resist* + Increased fire damage done
Nord: Nothing
Imperial: Health on hit

* - I included fire resist since vamps are so prevalent that it's actually worth mentioning.

I've seen people argue on that Imperial are the best because they get so many free stats but in the grand scheme of things it's garbage. If you are in a keep fight for 10 minutes and end up taking 50k damage how much did that 200 extra HP(likely 100 HP due to softcaps)? compared to say Argonians heal buff netting them 3000 extra HP? Even in a shorter 2 minute boss fight those stats are insignificant at best.

The ones that always stand out are the ones that don't get hit by soft caps and are constantly relevant from beginning to end. Unfortunately some races "unique" bonuses are awful.

Orcs: This bonus is garbage, how many people sprint around these days instead of charging, using speed buffs or horses? In the grand scheme of things it saves you a tiny amount of stamina and the speed boost is so low it's barely noticeable with how little people sprint.
Nord: They don't even have anything good.

We have some that are decent but hardly noticeable:

Breton: It's nice to have but in most cases the only time this is ever going to really matter is when running sims not in the actual game.
High Elf: Minor elemental damage... so you can't use physical or magical attacks which basically leaves you with destruction staff or a few class elemental skills and the bonus is tiny. Will it make a difference? Maybe if you're running a DK ardent flame build outside that? Noooooooope.
Wood Elf: Basically gets to be used once per fight unless your a NB and even then it's not a deal breaker

So at this point you might be thinking well none of these make much difference and that's great you can pick any race for aesthetics and not be gimped! I'd agree that would be nice but the last few break that idea to pieces.

Redguard: If you a running a stamina build these guys can poor in huge amounts of stamina, like using evil hunter and silver bolts on vamps? Stam builds require massive amounts of resources that neither siphoning nor battle roar can keep you up (a templar buddy could but that's cheating!) and this makes a big impact on that.
Khajit: They have wood elf bonus which is not a big deal however they also have a 6% crit buff that's just always on. It's basically a free damage buff to a huge array of abilities. Unlike high elf bonus it's significantly less restrictive.
Argonian: SWIM SPEED! HAIL SITHIS!! Joking aside... these guys power comes from potion effectiveness and more incoming healing. At first class no big deal but when you start getting into the big boy potions that give 700+ magicka and 30% crit and you start stacking things with potion cooldown reduction the game changes significantly. I guarantee you as things are now you will see non-stop potion chugging in a month or two by nearly every high level pvp'er and pve'er. Oh but it doesn't end there they also have a heal buff. Unlike raw HP like other races this doesn't hit a soft cap and isn't useless after the first hit. In fact it's orders of magnitude more powerful than raw HP especially once you start accounting for resists and blocking.
Dark elf: Are you a vampire? How does halving the downside to being a vamp sound? Good? Excellent! pick this race. Not enough? Are you a DK or do you have an uncontrollable need to spam impulse? Pick this race! What's the current FOTM? DK Vamps you say? Dear Dairy... Jackpot.
Imperial: Red diamond... health on hit. Works out to pretty much having a permanent HoT on you for free. It provides ridiculous amounts of healing. Seeing some people getting 60+ per second.

If you haven't picked one of those 4... you've gimped yourself significantly. I'd rather they nerf these and leave races mainly to aesthetics as rerolling takes way to much time but if they decide they want it to be significant the other races need serious buffs (buff orcs please and thank you!).

/endrant

knaveofengland · April 2014

well you can say with any staff they have a guided missile, it hardly ever misses unlike the bow, the racial traits in time will balance and I would say they are in
line of the series. also the game is new so most things will change you have to give it time, I dont see many issues you can play as you see fit

The_Sadist · April 2014

I agree the racials need to be worked with and whatnot, I myself made a post about feeling gimped going one race over another.

I disagree with imperials, the ability to self heal is handy I suppose.

My suggestion was to make a pool of racials per class (like 10 or so) with differing lore-friendly bonuses (e.g. frost for Nord, fire for Dunmer, poison for Argonian etc etc) and upon creation you get to choose 4.

HEY I DIDN'T SAY IT WAS PERFECT.

Crescent · April 2014

You forgot to mention Imperial's red diamond, which is the most OP racial in the game.

A 5% HP heal every 4-5 seconds meleeing will give them health returns far better than any other race.

And 10% stamina/health allows them to dump a lot of their points on magicka and resists among other alternative stats.

Bosmer, Nord, and Argonians are on the crap pile of racials. Stealthy is among the most situational of skills, it contributes such a minuscule portion of your overall DPS in PvP (in PvE it's a DPS loss as sneaking to a target to do the attack is a downtime detracting from the DPS) in a fight as it's used once.

There's a reason why everyone went Imperial, Breton, and to a lesser extent Redguard/Dunmer.

Malediktus · April 2014

How much does the Imperial red diamond passive heal at max lvl?
Also I doubt its 5% every 4-5 seconds. At least with greatsword I cant attack 10 times in 4 seconds

Crescent · April 2014

It is at 5% hp. At 2k hp you're looking at a substantial heal everytime it procs.

And 2h is garbage it's your own fault for using a subpar weapon. You should be using dual wield or 1h/shield.

AshTal · April 2014

I Personally think the Argonian Racials suck, the 15% bonus to potions really doesn't seem all the good to me, maybe that will change with Vet 5 and Vet 10 potions. The health bonus is 1/4 of the Imperial and quick to mend doesn't seem to help much. They originally said Argonian and Bosmer racials would be improved and the Altmer one would be reduced.

Drekor · April 2014

AshTal wrote: »

I Personally think the Argonian Racials suck, the 15% bonus to potions really doesn't seem all the good to me, maybe that will change with Vet 5 and Vet 10 potions. The health bonus is 1/4 of the Imperial and quick to mend doesn't seem to help much. They originally said Argonian and Bosmer racials would be improved and the Altmer one would be reduced.

Yea red diamond, which I apparently forgot to elaborate on in my post, is very good but the potion bonus on argonians is actually a big deal for v5 potions provided you use them liberally. People aren't really abusing them now because there aren't many alchemists and people are generally too lazy to farm mats. However as people get there and start using them you'll either have to jump on the band wagon to compete or get stomped on. Won't be as bad as DK vamps but you will have a massive disadvantage.

The_Sadist wrote: »

I agree the racials need to be worked with and whatnot, I myself made a post about feeling gimped going one race over another.

I disagree with imperials, the ability to self heal is handy I suppose.

My suggestion was to make a pool of racials per class (like 10 or so) with differing lore-friendly bonuses (e.g. frost for Nord, fire for Dunmer, poison for Argonian etc etc) and upon creation you get to choose 4.

HEY I DIDN'T SAY IT WAS PERFECT.

That's not a bad idea but I think it's a little late to have things change like that since it's likely programming entirely new tech for the game instead of just altering abilities.

Still_Mind · April 2014

@‌OP
I do agree that racial powers don't seem to be on par with eachother, as it stands.

I disagree that Breton racials are weak, though. In my opinion, they're some of the most powerful in the game (for non-Stamina builds, I suppose), given the fact that spell cost reduction stacks infinitely, and doesn't seem to have an overcharge cap (unlike magicka regen, which caps out VERY fast). 10% max magicka is Akatosh-sent, and spell resistance is never a bad thing.

I also do believe that you're overstating the value of Dunmer racials. They have a very niche bonus damage talent (which I admit to enjoying a little too much on my Fire DoT-stacking DK), and vam(OP)ires easily manage to hardcap on fire resistance by sacrificing just 1 jewelry slot for a fire res enchant (combining with standard SR).

Either way, my 2c.

Malediktus · May 2014

Crescent wrote: »

It is at 5% hp. At 2k hp you're looking at a substantial heal everytime it procs.

And 2h is garbage it's your own fault for using a subpar weapon. You should be using dual wield or 1h/shield.

Why is 2h garbage? Please tell

Reykice · May 2014

It would be a disaster to change the Imperial racials now... people payed for it no way in hell they can change it now without getting everyone to ask for refunds and so on.
As for the other races they are balanced imo as in they each have a thing, sure for some builds some are better than others but they are all decent and changing them will *** more players than it might possible please.

ChampionSheWolf · May 2014

I dunno if I would call the Nord Racials crap. They work well for me as I play primarily as a tank and the increased natural health that Nords get is actually quite useful. They also get natural armor and their frost resistance against a lot of later frost wielding mobs is quite useful. So if you dumped all your attributes into health at cap, like most people seem to have, that will give a Nord about 600 extra health, and with increased natural armor just a bit more freedom in mixing and matching armor pieces instead of being all heavy armor for tanking for instance.

Combat health regen, not sure on. 15% bonus looks like it, if I am reading the foundry right, an additional 4.5 per tick, so... it's useful but overall not great at all, but by that point you will probably be adding in more methods of regen elsewhere, like from heavy armor, or class specific things as well.

Crescent · May 2014

alexandru987eb17_ESO wrote: »

It would be a disaster to change the Imperial racials now... people payed for it no way in hell they can change it now without getting everyone to ask for refunds and so on.
As for the other races they are balanced imo as in they each have a thing, sure for some builds some are better than others but they are all decent and changing them will *** more players than it might possible please.

Disaster would be not fixing that pay to win scenario.

People who complain about nerfed racials deserve what they get when they thought they could just shell out extra money to get an advantage instead of buying it because they wanted to play an Imperial or liked their armor style.

golem75eb17_ESO · May 2014

I would say racial skills are in general to strong. It leads to races you "have to" play instead of those you want to play. I would say their are 2 possible solutions:

- tear down the impact (make the racials less powerfull or more situational, maybe less racials for each race in general?)

- allow to skill other races racials to be skilled by other races in any way (more difficult, maybe more skillpoints).

The last one could also be used to open class skills to other classes.

Malediktus · May 2014

cbrown15_ESO wrote: »

I dunno if I would call the Nord Racials crap. They work well for me as I play primarily as a tank and the increased natural health that Nords get is actually quite useful. They also get natural armor and their frost resistance against a lot of later frost wielding mobs is quite useful. So if you dumped all your attributes into health at cap, like most people seem to have, that will give a Nord about 600 extra health, and with increased natural armor just a bit more freedom in mixing and matching armor pieces instead of being all heavy armor for tanking for instance.

Combat health regen, not sure on. 15% bonus looks like it, if I am reading the foundry right, an additional 4.5 per tick, so... it's useful but overall not great at all, but by that point you will probably be adding in more methods of regen elsewhere, like from heavy armor, or class specific things as well.

Nord gets 3% extra health. Thats 60 HP not 600 HP if you assume 2k health before racials.
Imperials get 12% extra health. That would be 240 HP not 2400 HP if you assume 2k health before racials.
You need to become better at math

ChampionSheWolf · May 2014

Yea yea, I was half awake when I wrote that. No, Imperials need to be brought to heel and shame on people for paying $20 extra bucks for a race. That being said still don't care. Race should not be the dramatic deciding factor of what you play, imperials are just the obviously broken aspect that needs major fixing.

dodgehopper_ESO · May 2014

Imperials are not op. I actually think the redgard is better. If you like red diamond so much, get absorb health on your weapon.

Crescent · May 2014

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Imperials are not op. I actually think the redgard is better. If you like red diamond so much, get absorb health on your weapon.

This comment is so ***. There is such a thing called opportunity cost.

Red Diamond is a racial that doesn't take the place of a weapon enchant.

If it's so trivial, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if we erased the proc based regens like Red Diamond and the Redguard one and instead gave both resistance to poison/disease and stealthy, I suppose. I mean, they're equal according to people like you.

Maybe we should give nord/bosmer racials to everybody instead of the racials that currently exist, let's see the reaction.

dodgehopper_ESO · May 2014

Personally i really like the nord racials. Ad hominem arguments and unnecessary expletives aside, i dont see the problem with either redgard or imperial racials. I am pretty sure the traditional imperial traits like voice of the emperor and the extra luck would see a lot mire whining. Additionally, you are right it is odd the redgard does not have his usual poison resist, nor adrenaline rush. Neither does the orc have berserk.

If anything i think breton/altmer are op. How about dunmer vampires... Seriously. Have you ever played a tes game before? If so you would realize that your gear makes up for a lot more.

I would personally like to know how nords are somehow feeble with a massive frost res, regen, armor boost as their traits... Think about your armor choices and enchants here.

dodgehopper_ESO · May 2014

I will say one more thing. Clearly in this era, imperials and redgards are melee oriented, so are orcs, nords. Bosmer and khajit represent sneaky trending abilities, argonians i think thematically get the short end of the stick as they should have the highest regen... With potions and heals they can do this... Finally you have the more magey races altmer, bosmer, dunmer. There is no reason to be upset about it. If i could, i would make a character of each race for the fun of it. Character slots do not allow for this.

Look at it this way. If you want to minmax so badly, play the race to its theme. Bosmer make great scouts, and oh surprise surprise that is what they have always been.

The_Emproer · May 2014

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

I would personally like to know how nords are somehow feeble with a massive frost res, regen, armor boost as their traits... Think about your armor choices and enchants here.

because health regen is easily the weakest stat in the game, for one. 15% is laughable as a racial -- you have 30 base HP regen @ VR10 - this racial is adding a whopping 4.5 health regenerated every 2 seconds. yippee! completely meaningless. Frost resist is also pretty bad because of how uncommon frost is as an element in PvP particularly; everybody runs around with fire staves. Rugged is really the only thing Nords have going for them, but even then 300 armor isn't a huge deal. Nords, objectively, have the weakest racials in the game. Everything that the race offers is either too small to matter or easily provided by gear.

IMO, every race needs their racials buffed up to be on par with Imperial/Redguard/Breton/Dunmer.

SirPuppingtonVonHat · May 2014

Just give us Nords Battle Cry back. That'll make everything okay. T_T

(For those that don't know, Battle Cry was the Nords racial ultimate that increased group damage by 7%/8%/9%/10% for a set period of time. And thats before morphs, which we never got to see. Was removed when racial ultimates got the can.)

dodgehopper_ESO · May 2014

Personally i really like the nord racials.

The_Emproer wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

I would personally like to know how nords are somehow feeble with a massive frost res, regen, armor boost as their traits... Think about your armor choices and enchants here.

because health regen is easily the weakest stat in the game, for one. 15% is laughable as a racial -- you have 30 base HP regen @ VR10 - this racial is adding a whopping 4.5 health regenerated every 2 seconds. yippee! completely meaningless. Frost resist is also pretty bad because of how uncommon frost is as an element in PvP particularly; everybody runs around with fire staves. Rugged is really the only thing Nords have going for them, but even then 300 armor isn't a huge deal. Nords, objectively, have the weakest racials in the game. Everything that the race offers is either too small to matter or easily provided by gear.

IMO, every race needs their racials buffed up to be on par with Imperial/Redguard/Breton/Dunmer.

Regarding frost in pvp, that is one part of the game, and i suspect it will see more use as time progresses particularly with upcoming spellcrafting. Dont scoff the armor boost, it means you can mote comfortably wear med and lt armors and have those benefits yhat those passives allow. Couple the regen with different armor choices and it is not all that bad. I would say that part of their traits is the weakest area.

Tootall2186 · May 2014

Does anyone have an evidence or data to back up the fact that the Dark Elf fire dmg increase IS or ISNT working? I feel that im not getting that bonus damage added to my spells. Im not sure if its supposed to say it specifically on the spell tool tip or if im just supposed to assume its added in there...?

Anyone tested this or able to test this? Have 2 toons the same level with "X" fire skill and see what the damage states for both and see what each spells dps rates are? I think it would be interesting to see if this is actually a working racial line or not... I know on sites like esohead it doesnt add in the dmg to the spell tips.