Armor Skills - Balance is lulz

ezking · June 2014

It's no secret at this point that Magicka is more beneficial then Stamina as far as builds go.

One of the things I have noticed for some time now, is how out of balance the armor skills are, no matter what character I am building, I always end up trying to put on as much Cloth as possible.

The other night while planning out a new character in a design that was meant to max 1 thing, I noticed that light armor per slot had the best regen, best dmg improvement and the best dmg reduction compared to the other armor types.

I think that the armor skills need a major balancing, as far as passives go anyways.

passive 1: dmg
passive 2: regen
passive 3: utility
passive 4: 5 piece dmg improvement
passive 5: cost reduction

a simple guideline, with every armor type focusing on different things, stam, magicka, or health, but with the passives being BALANCED when compared to another armor type.

IE 10% attack speed on weapon basic attacks is not = to 10% crit on all spells, and reduction on cost of blocking.. rly? thats the set bonus for wearing majority heavy armor?

Just makes more sense if they were all balanced better, letting you actually build a character that was unique instead of what we have, which is light armor or bust.

hvy gets reduction in interrupt or block
medium gets a reduction in roll dodge
light gets a reduction in sprint

logical ***, not just light gets cost reduction on ALL magicka, crazy magicka regen, best magicka defense, and best magicka offense, while medium values for stam ability cost reduction, dmg improvement, and regen are far inferior nad heavy is pidgeoned into defensive builds.. seems kind of ***.

with the skills for armor types they way they are, putting on a set of armor already confines you to having to play a character a specific way, instead of allowing you to mix armor freely and make a unique character.

just my 2 cents, I've noticed this same thing in lots of other trees, but figured this was one of the most drastically limiting and out of balance things that would make a good example, thoughts?

SootyTX · June 2014

Totally agree. I have no idea how the current set-up is viewed internally by ZoS as even vaguely balanced, with every single forum dedicated to the game full of posts like this. It really is light armor + staff or you are a second class citizen.

khele23eb17_ESO · June 2014

When you see the armor passives you have to wonder what clueless or delusional individual looked at them side by side and gave an OK to put them in game like this. Then on top of that they added stuff that gives spellcasters highest crit chance in game and allows them to cap armor so that medium/heavy gear has no advantage even in dmg mitigation.

ezking · June 2014

I really want this game to work, but if play quality doesnt move up from the bottom of their list soon, its going to be time to move on.

majority of the skill trees in this game have very very poor balancing, some skills, like the dual wield tree for example its clear that balance or a 2nd opinion was never even a thought on some passives. Lots of skills in this game are completely useless or very poorly implemented. It should be class trees that dictate play style, If I want to use stealth, I make a NB and invest in nightblade shadow skills that boost stealth.

instead, if I want to increase stealth efficiency I need to wear leather, which is only really efficient at basic physical attacks, so Im forced into an entire dictated play style because I wanted 1 thing. if you want any physical damage reduction, you have to play the cookie cutter tank, there is no freedom or customization here at all, which was a big thing they talked about.

Stop spending time making sure you are going to be able to put this crap on xbox and make this crap into something enjoyable, or at least own up to your promises -_-

"Make any kind of character you want!" as long as it uses light armor and a staff, leather and dual wields, or a shield and heavy armor.

khele23eb17_ESO · June 2014

ezking wrote: »

"Make any kind of character you want!" as long as it uses light armor and a staff, leather and dual wields, or a shield and heavy armor.

If it was actually like that the game balance would already be 66% better that it is now. Leather and dual wield, shield and heavy - not even close to light+staff.

They should have started by designing 4-5 archetypes for each class and making sure theyre balanced - for NBs for example it could be a warlock/bloodmage, shadowwalker/assassin (magicka focused), bladedancer/duelist (stam), scout/archer (stam), and some sort of lifeleech/shadowform tank. Make sure the synergies for those playstyles are in place in the skill trees/passives. If players can come up with something more than that, great, if not you have at least 4-5 playstyles per class covered. More than enough variety if you ask me.

Falmer · June 2014

I think half the balancing problems with this game are due to the extremely low soft caps. One of my first characters was a heavy armor character. Wearing all heavy armor though is completely pointless. You hit the soft cap on armor wearing just green ranked armor.

When they artificially limit how much of a tank you can be, you are better off going light armor so you can wear higher ranked gear and get all the benefits of light armor to boot. I have light armor wearers 5L/2H builds that can hit the armor soft cap. When that is the case... why wear anything else?

Woolenthreads · June 2014

I love PVE'ing my various Alts but I started with a Sorcerer/Healer so Light Armour + Resto/Destro is what I'm likely to enter Cyrodil with. Only the Templar-Healer Alt is using that setup as well.

Lupinemw · June 2014

Still trying to work out why the softcap on my health regen is 30pts less than the other two stats..

alexj4596b14_ESO · June 2014

ezking wrote: »

It's no secret at this point that Magicka is more beneficial then Stamina as far as builds go.

One of the things I have noticed for some time now, is how out of balance the armor skills are, no matter what character I am building, I always end up trying to put on as much Cloth as possible.

The other night while planning out a new character in a design that was meant to max 1 thing, I noticed that light armor per slot had the best regen, best dmg improvement and the best dmg reduction compared to the other armor types.

I think that the armor skills need a major balancing, as far as passives go anyways.

passive 1: dmg
passive 2: regen
passive 3: utility
passive 4: 5 piece dmg improvement
passive 5: cost reduction

a simple guideline, with every armor type focusing on different things, stam, magicka, or health, but with the passives being BALANCED when compared to another armor type.

IE 10% attack speed on weapon basic attacks is not = to 10% crit on all spells, and reduction on cost of blocking.. rly? thats the set bonus for wearing majority heavy armor?

Just makes more sense if they were all balanced better, letting you actually build a character that was unique instead of what we have, which is light armor or bust.

hvy gets reduction in interrupt or block
medium gets a reduction in roll dodge
light gets a reduction in sprint

logical ***, not just light gets cost reduction on ALL magicka, crazy magicka regen, best magicka defense, and best magicka offense, while medium values for stam ability cost reduction, dmg improvement, and regen are far inferior nad heavy is pidgeoned into defensive builds.. seems kind of ***.

with the skills for armor types they way they are, putting on a set of armor already confines you to having to play a character a specific way, instead of allowing you to mix armor freely and make a unique character.

just my 2 cents, I've noticed this same thing in lots of other trees, but figured this was one of the most drastically limiting and out of balance things that would make a good example, thoughts?

The problem is amour has too be vary generalized, because of the many type of builds. Medium amour needs a boost weapon penetration. regin and reduction in magic cost along with current passives.

Heavy amour needs stamina/magic regin and cost reduction with a retroactive passive too increase weapon power by X% if upswing anything other then sword and board, if using sword and board increased block midgation and reduction in cost too block. This would solve everything

Also there is melee weapon penetration!

Anvos · June 2014

I have to agree that part of the problem this game has is the soft and hard caps being too low, like I've said in previous threads.

Though I'd still like to work with an idea I have of implementing armor type effecting your soft cap on armor, where light armor pieces would decrease your soft cap and heavy armor pieces would increase your soft caps.

Phantorang · June 2014

I believe stamina can be just as good as magicka based builds, you just need to max stamina to get a good damage output.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO · June 2014

The softcaps and hardcaps should be based on the composition of armor your wear.

If for example heavy armor gave 300 softcap per piece worn, medium 200 and light 100 and hardcap 450, 300, 150 then it would fix some of the problems.

If your for example had 7 pieces of heavy armor on then softcap wouldn't begin to kick in before 2100 armor while if you wore 5 light and 2 heavies then the softcap would be at 1100.

Also with the increased hardcap heavy armor users can reach a level of defense the light armor user can never get to and they will overall get more out of armor enchants too.

dracobains_ESO · June 2014

Phantorang wrote: »

I believe stamina can be just as good as magicka based builds, you just need to max stamina to get a good damage output.

Have you seen any theory crafting on this or ran any numbers? I would be curious to see the results.

GwaynLoki · June 2014

Phantorang wrote: »

I believe stamina can be just as good as magicka based builds, you just need to max stamina to get a good damage output.

Looking at skills and my own experience, this isn't the case. Stamina-based builds dip into a defensive resource that is also used for dodging and blocking. Now, this might in theory work

IF you were able to get more stamina (or stamina regen) than magicka - so you could still dodge/block as many times as with a magicka build AND do damage equal to the damage a magicka-based build does.

OR IF stamina-using skills did significantly more damage than magicka-using ones. Thereby outweighing the fact that you have less defenses with stamina-based builds.

OR IF stamina-using abilities would provide you with some decent damage AND defensive capabilities at the same time. Thereby outweighing the fact that you have less defenses with stamina-based builds.

Sadly, none of these is the case.

In additon, while you can pick magicka-using skills from 3 class skill lines and several other lines everyone has access to, most stamina-using skills are limited to weapon choice (except for the armor "ultimate" ones) - meaning that you have access to only 2 of these lines in the build you intend to run. And that you are forced to position them accordingly on your skill bars.

Furthermore, assuming you are using medium armor for your stamina-using build (since this kind of armor has passives that are useful for your stamin-using build), you are using a type of armor which has passives that are simply sub-par to the ones for light armor - which is the armor to go for magicka-heavy builds.

catpower · June 2014

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO wrote: »

The softcaps and hardcaps should be based on the composition of armor your wear.

If for example heavy armor gave 300 softcap per piece worn, medium 200 and light 100 and hardcap 450, 300, 150 then it would fix some of the problems.

If your for example had 7 pieces of heavy armor on then softcap wouldn't begin to kick in before 2100 armor while if you wore 5 light and 2 heavies then the softcap would be at 1100.

Also with the increased hardcap heavy armor users can reach a level of defense the light armor user can never get to and they will overall get more out of armor enchants too.

This is a great idea. The more heavy you wear, the higher the caps, this would allow cloth to still use skills, circle of protection, immovable, etc. to hit their caps AND heavy wearers could use the same skills to shoot into true tank mode.

You could even let armor type influence attribute caps (slightly)...

ZDavis_ESQ · June 2014

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO wrote: »

The softcaps and hardcaps should be based on the composition of armor your wear.

If for example heavy armor gave 300 softcap per piece worn, medium 200 and light 100 and hardcap 450, 300, 150 then it would fix some of the problems.

If your for example had 7 pieces of heavy armor on then softcap wouldn't begin to kick in before 2100 armor while if you wore 5 light and 2 heavies then the softcap would be at 1100.

Also with the increased hardcap heavy armor users can reach a level of defense the light armor user can never get to and they will overall get more out of armor enchants too.

The fact that it doesn't already work this way has puzzled me since the open-access stress test "betas". For some incomprehensible reason, Zenimax just seems to be awfully committed to some very illogical notions when it comes to some of the math behind the game.

khele23eb17_ESO · June 2014

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO wrote: »

The softcaps and hardcaps should be based on the composition of armor your wear.

If for example heavy armor gave 300 softcap per piece worn, medium 200 and light 100 and hardcap 450, 300, 150 then it would fix some of the problems.

If your for example had 7 pieces of heavy armor on then softcap wouldn't begin to kick in before 2100 armor while if you wore 5 light and 2 heavies then the softcap would be at 1100.

Also with the increased hardcap heavy armor users can reach a level of defense the light armor user can never get to and they will overall get more out of armor enchants too.

Brilliant. This would actually solve a lot of issues. ZOS, make it so. After that you can start balancing the passives.