The art of class balance is a delicate and tough task. They have to watch how people play, adjust as they go, and the combat will mature with itself in time.

The art of class balance is a delicate and tough task. They have to watch how people play, adjust as they go, and the combat will mature with itself in time.

This isnt even really about class balance, though a lot of class skills do factor into the equation.

This is about magicka vs stamina and the abilities based on those resources.

How could they think it was a good idea to base ALL utility effects on stamina (blocking, dodging, bashing/interrupting, CC breakout, sprinting, and sneaking), then go and make weapon abilities cost more than their magicka equivalents, then add resource cost reduction for magicka abilities to light armor without doing the same for medium armor (or heavy for that matter)?

This is a multitude of mistakes and design oversights that compound into a severe issue. It should not be taking them this long to fix that issue - hell, we dont even know if they're going to resolve it because nobody from ZOS has even acknowledged the disparity between resources and their related abilities.

The problem gets even worse in pve... I was tanking a few dungeons last night and came across packs of mobs that permanently snare you, preventing the tank from even getting close enough to taunt enemies off of allies, and there was even a boss that had to be 100% ranged - melee combatants would die instantly.

More bias against melee characters. If you arent a skirt-wearing mage with a staff you cant get by in this game =/

I've always played a heavy armor wearing, no magic using, two handed weapon Nord. This has been my main and favorite playstyle in every ES game to date. In MMO's I always stick to the dps, up close and personal, warriors. I can't seem to find that playstyle in ESO. It's dissapointing really.

Yup. Horribly balanced. Solution is simple:

Option 1:

make ALL skills cost Magicka. stamina is for rolling, dodging, blocking ONLY. then it's easy.

Armor solution: Armor needs some help anyways. There is little reason at this point in the game to even wear anything but light.

take Magicka regen away from light. Give it bonuses to specific damage types (elements and holy/whatever). put the Magick regen talents into the "World" category, or roll them into weapon styles. Medium still has stamina and speed bonus, making it the choice for mobility, and give it damage bonuses to all melee skill lines. Heavy armor adds damage bonus for bashing ( you could add this to the damage passive), and stamina regen (add to the health passive).

Option 2:
Simply separate movement abilities from stamina. Put a little "energy" bar in game that pops up when you start sprinting, dodging, etc. give medium armor a skill that replenishes this along with stamina (I assume we could adjust other stamina skills to be the same).

"Medium Armor skill: Wind Walker,
Increases Stamina and Energy recovery by 2% per piece of medium armor equipped. current recovery bonus is x%"

there you go. now weapon skills have their own category just like magick skills do. the armor changes stay as well...medium should get a damage bonus (make it 1% per piece so it has an advantage to heavy), and heavy still need the stamina regen and damage boost to bash - make it enough so that bash would be halfway between where it was and what it is now. like 10% per point or something like that.

Then once that's solved, they can actually work on balancing melee skills and melee weapon builds so they are comparable to the magick builds.

Both ideas have merit. first one would also help balance out the issue with specs that are setting themselves up as physical damage dealers/tanks. Right now its a disparity...you need stamina to block/dodge/use taunt skill/etc, but since the shield bash reduction, most tanks are suffering for a way to actually kill things without resorting to light armor/magick builds (which, again, splits their resource spending).

DPS (magick based of course...and currently the best DPS builds are magick based) do not have a similar issue....they can go all into Magick and not worry about stamina... This is the primary reason they are so far ahead of the stamina based builds. no need to split resources. the first option would make it so that ALL builds would use magick, and then there was only one resource side of the equation to worry about for damage/taunts/skills, etc. The Stamina pool would be less used, allowing more stamina for tanks to block and dodge.

Second option is just easier to implement.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

- Stealth also suffers a movement speed penalty, preventing the player from catching up to anyone that's even running at normal speed

Umm, sorry. Think you are mixing up stealth with invisibility. Why on earth would you move at the same speed when trying to be stealthy?

Those arent half bad ideas.

It really bugs me that I can take two abilities that are supposed to do the same thing - for example, impale (nightblade class ability, deals X damage and does 300% extra damage vs low health targets) and reverse slash (2h ability, deals X damage and does extra damage based on target health loss).

I dont have the game open right now, so these arent exact numbers, but impale will typically read something like 200 magicka cost, 300 damage (before the bonus). Then reverse slash reads something like 300 stamina cost, 150 damage (before the bonus).

Why do stamina based skills cost more and deal less damage than class or magicka based skills? That's not even taking into account light armor which further reduces magicka costs by, what, 21%? Granted, it's easier to get melee critical than it is to get spell critical in this game, but even if I ran 75% melee crit (which you cant reach), the magicka based skills at 0% crit would still be pulling more damage in the long run.

The whole "everyone can be everything" concept brought into a MMO killed meleers (both warriors and assassins).

I'd like to see a Fighters guild ability called "Lantern" that puts a small lantern on the players hip which increases Melee Crit chance by 20% and reveals hidden Vamp/Daedra/WWs from stealth.

Also a make Magelight not reveal NBs from stealth.

Balance.

The answer to all this is to decrease damage that players take. Increase mitigation from heavy and medium armor, and increase time to kill across the board. The problem is that players are dying too fast in both PvP and PvE, especially in melee (Impulse) range.

Melee is OK

nay, it a gruesome business trying to be a sword swinger. I have spent my life in not doing the magiky, save for a wee bit of healing I had learned, and its just no fun especially when you find yerself out on your own, and the times ye be cast down is way more than the ones ye take the bad uns down. Not even talking about being an all powerful one mind ye, I be a tanker, but try and survive a wee bit these days, heavy armor? Bah, might as well run naked fer all the good it seems to do, and no real way now of a hurtin the bad uns.
Finding myself stuck in pretty much having to block em, and then hits em real hard to hurt, the rest of it is just a sticking em in the side and hope you can cut em a bit.

You guys need to realize that weapon damage in VR goes up faster than spellpower does. So yes, initially weapon skills will suck. But as the game 'unlocks' higher levels of gear, weapon damage will catch up and even outpace (especially for classes that can already cap weapon damage easily) class skills.

Also, change all the "+armor" buffs to % instead of flat numbers so you can't armor cap in light armor.

Much of the problems solved.

bg22 wrote: »

Absolutely, 100% agree w/ the OP. Zenimage literally hates melee and doesn't care who realizes it.

It's more and more obvious every day.

Is ineptitude really hate? No.

First we need to clarify the term melee because you always could use great class skills in melee. Nothing wrong with that ...

If you are trying to say that equipped weapons with melee range have no good skills to offer i disagree. But i would agree to push the damage of stamina based weapons because it is very low in comparison to class skills.

As long this is not improved there is no reason to play with 80% of the weapon skills from damage perspective.

The only efficient stamina based DPS option is playing 2H or Fighter guild skills.

Unfortunately thats it.