Sounds like another person trying to defend magic again over stamina. I would be agreeing, however stamina needs help. Dual wield is cool and all, but the FACT still remains that stamina does not help Class Ultimates. It doesn't help to say its the same because MAGIC is more powerful because it powers the best ultimates.

Blocking, CC, and all the other crap that people talk about really doesn't matter when your character is dead. How much dps does a dead character do? With how quick the ultimates can spam and the fact stamina does not effect the most useful class ultimates is my issue. And I don't believe by any means that a dual wielder is more powerful than a mage by far.

Stamina builds are almost utterly useless. I say utterly as primary magic builds at some points use them as a quick back up weapon. (i.e. your destruction staff wielding dragon knight/templar that switches quickly to sword and shield while they regain health)

The fact of the matter is, STAMINA NEEDS TO REGENERATE FASTER THAN MAGIKA. This is simple fact. It was like that in every elderscrolls game before it and as magika attacks do more damage, stamina needs to be faster on the draw so it can do more light attacks quicker.

On top of this, with the recent bash nerf stamina based sword and shield and even two handed stamina users that spec heavy armor just cannot complete with their pyro counterpart. So once again solution is simple. Make stamina regenerate quicker than magika. If someone can put 3 consecutive destruction and staff hits on me that can do 800 damage and it costs stamina for me to run, block, and use most of my abilities, they should at least have to wait a little longer to kill me. Who knows, it might give stamina folks those critical seconds where they can close the gap and melee them to death. (perhaps the true argument, magic ranged vs stamina melee)

For any that say L2P, I have mastered S&S, two handed, and bow, and am working on dual weapons. I strongly encourage you to play a full stamina build before you offer your "advice" as if you probably look down on your bar (some nightblades, I'm talking to you) you will notice it is heavy reliance on magic.

(this forum hates me today, first I write a foot long reply to a topic that gets closed before I write the last sentence, then it simply deleted my draft and redirected me to the General Discussion without even saving a draft.. oh god.. and now it made it write gibberish on whole screen across the post, making me unable to submit post.. but at least I could copy it and paste it after refreshing)

MAIN issues with stamina builds:

- can't attack AND defend. You have to choose ONE of them, because you won't have enough resource for both.

- damage is not even in the same league, since all class skills are magicka/spellpower based

This sounds easy, but fixing that will require changing half the game, which, honestly is a lot harder than nerfing magicka skills in every patch in an attempt to bring down magicka builds to the same mud as stamina builds. Which is NOT what should be done if they are to have any customers left before the year is over.

1) Rework Roll Dodge, Block (NOT BASH- that's technically an attack) and CC-breaker to use different resource called, idk, Breath. That could be further increased by tanking passives and maybe an enchant. Breath generation would be tied to your Stamina regeneration and current level of stamina (perhaps with this calculation:
Breath_regen = 2*Stamina_regen * Current_stamina / Max_stamina). This would have no effect whatsoever on magicka-based characters, but it would help a lot for hybrid and stamina builds.

2) Increase the DAMAGE (actual damage, not weapon damage stat) of light and heavy attacks of all non-staff weapons. Hitting a mob with a heavy attack should FEEL like a heavy attack, charging one for 3 seconds and then getting less damage than from an instant skill is infuriating. Especially since you're open to all attacks while you charge one.

3) Get rid of DoTs, or make them stack. DoTs are cool to have in other games when you have practically unlimited bars and only apply them when you have to. If you have a bar with 5 abilities only, and half the damage of 2 of them are LONG DoTs, you're wasted.
Exemplar abilities:
- Poison Arrow - the only single target "filler", yet half the damage is wasted if you don't allow it to tick for 10 seconds.... except, what are you gonna do in the meantime? Weapon attacks? You don't have anything else worth casting, therefore you waste half potential by spamming them.
- Cleave - another fine example - the only AoE skill of 2h line, yet again, half of the damage is done as a looooong DoT, while the instant part is equal to maybe a light attack at best.. which is downright pathetic compared to the destructive power of, let's say, Elemental Blockade.
So, either scrap DoTs completely and add their damage to the instant part, or make them "add up" with remaining damage of the previous ones.

4) Rework medium and Heavy armors. Medium should receive % lower stamina costs and Heavy should receive % lower Breath costs. Also make defenses soft cap at 50% (and hard at 75%) instead of those pathetic 25%. It's downright absurd to get killed by a single VR spell EVEN while you're capped.. and same with armor. You can't play a heavy knight in VR, because even with hard capped armor, VR mobs still beat the living crap out of you, because you can't block while swinging your weapon.
So, perhaps:
- Athletics: every piece of medium armor decreases stamina costs of abilities by 1/2/3%.
- Resolve: every piece of heavy armor increases Armor and Magic Resistance caps by 1/2/3% and your Armor And Magic Resistance by 0.5/1/1.5%.
- Bracing: having 5+ pieces of heavy armor decreases your Breath costs by 10%.

5) Make some sort of noticeable visual effect of having Bow at full charge. Since it won't automatically shoot, we either shoot too soon, or wait too long, wasting damage either way.
Also, if I was in charge, bow would have NO light attack. You can't just shoot an arrow instantly.. I'd make under 0.5s charges not hit at all, 0.5-2 sec hit for steadily higher damage (2 sec being the standard "heavy" damage) and 2-3 sec charges for Overcharged (aka looking for weak spot to hit, up to 100% more damage) damage (higher than heavy attack damage).
Well if it was COMPLETELY up to me, I'd rework whole bow.. like each bow skill could only be activated with bow attack charge, with damage depending on the charge level and skill depleting said charge. That would require massive buffing of damage done by bow attacks to compensate for not being able to chain bow skills IMMEDIATELY after releasing heavy attacks.

m.stollb16_ESO wrote: »

As a VR12 DK the best *sustained* dps I could do with a Stamina/Medium Armor/increased Weapon Damage build on a single target is around 650 dps (without Standard or active use of any ultimate).

(*Sustained* means with constant use of Stamina potions for about 40 seconds then I can't keep it up anymore.)

That's in an ideal situation with Hunding's Rage set, legendary VR12 Bow with Precise trait and enchant that decreases target's armor by 600, Flawless Dawnbreaker slotted, 188 Weapon Damage in stats, Warrior Mundus Stone, from max range, without any interruptions nor having to dodge or block, Molten Armaments crit bonus in the first 6 seconds. I tested this on the bosses outside of Seeker's Archive (they have a bit more than 50k Health).

When I tried to combine Weapon attacks with class skills that have DoTs like Searing Strike, Engulfing Flames, Burning Talons that actually *lowered* my dps because I don't have the Spell Crit nor Spell Damage to make these DoTs very efficient and I loose time while using them where I could have attacked with the bow.

With any other Stamina weapon I tried, my sustained dps was *much* lower!

Now, as you know, most groups won't invite anyone with less than 700 dps to a trial, so...
I guess as a DK my only options for trials currently are Tank and Fire Staff Dps (both in Light Armor, of course).


Here's how I think the Stamina vs. Magicka weapon skill lines and Light vs. Medium/Heavy Armor imbalances could be fixed:

- Increase the Weapon Damage soft cap (in character stats) to around 220
- Increase the Armor soft cap for player characters to about 3000 (and change the mitigation formula so an Armor value of 3000 has the same mitigation effect a value at the previous soft cap had before)
- Increase the Armor values on Medium Armor pieces and greatly increase the Armor values on Heavy Armor pieces
- Make all active skills from the Armor skill lines only usable when at least 5 pieces of the corresponding type are worn
(that means, for example, that Immovable and its morphs could only be used by characters wearing at least 5 pieces of Heavy Armor)

- Nerf the Destruction Staff skills (especially Impulse)
- Reduce the cost of most Stamina-based Weapon skills and slightly increase the damage they do

- Lower the difficulty on some of the Trial bosses

Hunding's Rage does not buff any weapon abilities. It should, it even says it does, but it does not. The 5 set is currently broken at the moment.

I would hope ZOS is aware of the issue already but if not, here is an explanation. I crafted new sets to make sure my numbers are exact and the controls are not messed with.

Bottom line: the 5 set reads (at VR 9 white quality) "Increases weapon damage by 18% when using weapon abilities". This reads to me that it increases the weapon abilities damage by 18% of the weapon's portion of the damage.

Base Damage:

Completely ungeared (ie naked) my Executioner IV (two handed morph) deals 81 damage.

Gear: All gear listed is white, with no enchantments or traits, unless otherwise listed.

Level 13 vendor bought great sword (Green) = 40 damage.

VR9 crafted great sword = 134 damage.

VR9 crafted medium hunding's rage set (5 pieces) = 18% increase.

Test:
Naked with green level 13 sword, Executioner does 106 damage. So far it can be noted that a about 62% of the weapon's damage is added to the skill's damage.

Naked with white VR9 sword, Executioner does 166 damage. It appears that this weapon added about 63% of the weapon's damage to the skill's damage. Pretty consistent.

5 Piece Hunding's Rage set equipped with green level 13 sword. Executioner tool tip still displays 106 damage. It appears that the set has 0 effect. Set is broken and useless. Should be around 110 damage if you count the set as only increasing the weapons portion of the effect. Would be around 125 if the set counted to the ability as a whole.

5 Piece Hunding's Rage set equipped with white VR9 sword. Executioner tool tip still displays 166 damage. It appears that the set has 0 effect. Set is broken and useless. Should be around 180 damage if you count the set as only increasing the weapons portion of the effect. Would be around 195 if the set counted to the ability as a whole.

Conclusion: a crafted 6 trait requirement, 5 set bonus, that can do nothing but help any type of weapon skill or stamina build, is 100% useless.

An easy fix would be to introduce working armor sets for stamina like there is for magicka. Most sets are broken. The rest are under par.
Make good medium and heavy armor sets that work. Medium is about melee dps.
Heavy is about survival. This should be reflected in sets for better synergies with the armor passives that also need to be redone.

MisterBigglesworth wrote: »

I agree. Buff Stamina damage. What could possibly go wrong?

lol wow

Risen from the dead.

And why don't you reroll a magica build instead of crying here? It's meta, so it will change sooner or later.

Classic Bait Post ty for the laugh

Shunravi wrote: »

OLIVI3R wrote: »

And why don't you reroll a magica build instead of crying here? It's meta, so it will change sooner or later.

Which one is meta? This thread is ancient...

You know what else is ancient?

MY MOM! Also this thread.