So, I've noticed when looking at most people's leveling builds, they tend to put all points into either magicka or stamina. it mostly seems to be magicka for a couple reasons:

1. magicka skills tend to be more powerful than weapon skills, not all of them but most of them. either scaling better or having better effects.

2. stamina is used for dodging, blocking, sprinting and bashing so if you are a stamina based character whenever you use any of those combat moves you're draining the same resource bar that you use for your weapon skills. magicka based builds can use as much stamina as they want since most of their skills won't rely on it much.

3. medium armor provides stamina regeneration and that's it's only direct benefit to weapon skills (attack speed, better stealth and crit chance don't directly affect weapon skills). light armor provides magicka regeneration, reduces the cost of all magicka abilities, increases spell crit chance and reduces enemy spell resistance, all of which directly benefit magicka skills.


I would really like to build a character focused around stamina but for the most part it seems like magicka based builds are stronger. can anyone point out any significant benefit to using a stamina build? the only thing I can think of is that your normal attacks will be a bit stronger but I doubt that would make up for the extra damage/utility you could put out with magicka abilities.

Yep, that is a valid point. In order to balance it: Stamina should also make it possible to reduce the sta-costy spells and yield crit chance.

Also depends on soft caps, saw a thread the other day where someone said "Ok so everyone will be going full health" ?
Curious myself

I've tried each class during beta with different combinations of armor types and weapons.

The one I tried last was the DK and it was the one I liked the most. I played with medium armor and a bow as main weapon.

All the class skills use magicka and bow skills use stamina; I found it to be a good balance and had little downtime when killing stuff.

I suppose any class would benefit from that kind of build and enjoy minimized downtime in PvE at least; I don't know, people like archetypes even if Zeni. made it clear they didn't want to have any.

I'm not sure if there is a way to respec where you put those points later on but it seems like it would make a much bigger difference leveling than when you are at max level? With overcharging it seems like if you put a bunch of points in to stamina and then end up with a bunch of gear and skill poionts used to up your stamina overcharging will make it kind of a waste. On the other hand it is going to be a lot harder to level without putting points in it. I would think the ideal would be a class that uses a balance of magica/stamina. After playing a sorc I started playing a class that used a lot more stamina and noticed I never really had the stamina left to dodge when attacking. Also I got so used to using all my stamina sprinting everywhere on the sorc that I ended up in some fights with no stamina

The reason why magicka skills seem stronger than weapon skills is because your class skills damage scale up with your level and I believe with your magicka. Weapon skills for the most part scale up on damage with your stamina, but also with your weapons.

Most if the time, it seems like your class skills are stronger but that's because you can see an immediate change in damage when you lvl and become stronger. For example, when I became lvl 10, I immediately noticed my class skills were dealing more damage, but my weapon skills were not getting much better. Problem was that I still used a lvl 6 weapon. The moment I got a lvl 10 weapon with more base damage, my weapon skills damage sky rocketed up. Let's not forget to mention that the quality of the weapons will also affect your weapon skills effectiveness. As a lvl 10 white weapon does less damage than a green weapon.. And so on. So when you're lvl 50 and have a lvl 50 legendary weapon, I think your weapon skills will be a lot better. . Heck just having weapons for my lvl made a huge difference.

Awesome summary guys. These are exactly the conclusions I came to. (Hence they MUST be right!)

;-)

I'm pointing some of my friends who have not played beta to this thread.

Most of the higher ups on the PTS were putting all points into health and using items for plus magika/stamina

What a lot of MMO players are *STILL* not getting about ESO is that, for min/max builds, there is no such thing as a "magika build" and a "stamina build".

100% of all min/max builds need both magicka and stamina. This means:

* +Max Magicka and Stamina (till overcharge)

* Mag/Stam +Regen (till overcharge)

* Reduction in Mag/Stam costs (no limit here)

If that is not how you build your character, then you will be "less powerful".

If you don't care about min/max, then you can definitely make a "magicka build" or a "stamina build" if you want.

Does anyone know if you can respec where you put your points (magica/health/stamina) later in the game?

You can.

Is there a way to distribute points while leveling, that would be pretty well rounded? I was thinking of going 2-1-2 - Mag, Health, stam for my distribution as I level.

There is no generic answer to your question. It absolutely depends on your class, race, armor and skills (your build).

Since you can respec your distribution once you get to lvl 50, its probably best to wing it, and put points in whichever stat is lacking as you level.

i.e. if you are always running short on magicka, then raise it. Stam issues? Raise it. Dying/getting low health a lot? Raise it.

The main problem is that at level 50 vr 10 with good gear, you don't need a single point in magicka or stamina from stats. You can put all 49 points in Health, because your gear/racials/armor/other passives causes Mag/Stam to hit Overcharge all by themselves, so putting any stat points in Mag or Stam are wasted.

The game pushes everyone into a magicka/LA focus. The stamina drain from block/dodge/interrupt/avoid CC/sprint is too large to allow a character to focus exclusively on stamina abilities, and even if that extra stam is freed up, you're completely ignoring your magicka-based class abilities by specializing. Where's the fun in ignoring your Dragon Knight class spec completely merely to swing an Axe in every conceivable way? And for this build you'd almost have to go medium armor.

Yet a magicka-focused player can simply load his hotbars full of nothing but magicka-based abilities, maintain his identity with respect to weapon and identity, and still be a perfectly viable build.

There's balancing that needs to be done for sure, but I don't know that there is an answer that will ever make stamina-exclusive builds effective or even interesting. We probably need to stop thinking of builds in these terms, and abandon the idea of a pure stamina spec.

yeah I agree with what some people already mentioned, since you use stamina for actions like dodge, block and especially stunbreaks, it makes stamina builds a lot harder to pull off ( not to mention that magic based skills are generally more powerfull)

um weapon skills and few alliance skills require stamina and lots of it .

A weapon focused character wil lrequire almost all points into stam. Puting stam also increases weapon line damage.

so it depends what you like to be , for instance a dragon knight focusing 2h / 1h shield will require tons of stam whereas a pure caster sorc will require only magica.

Between the free magicka/stamina each level-up and enchants, I don't think stat distribution has much impact either way.

I have to believe that they are going to change the soft caps at level 50 for magicka and stamina so that they can't be reached by simply wearing gear. That just seems like such an obvious flaw from the get go. Either that or have a soft cap for health so that you have a reason to put some of your stuff into stamina and magicka.

It's not a flaw if it's the design intent. Given that overcharging is a way of dialing back the rate at which stats can be improved, an overcharge happening on stamina/magicka at that point could very well be part of the balance between stats at those levels.

well it is if it limits players in the end to pure health builds as invested magicka&stamina points would be wasted due to too harsh dimnishing returns.

and it renders quite a few buff skill completly useless as well wich is an absolute no go in my eyes no active ability should be canceld out by dimnishing returns.

I found that at early levels magica had a much better return on investment. But once I hit 20 not having spent anything in stamina really started to hinder me. Specifically when it became important to dodge and block stuff. Trying to dodge out of the "flaming pudding" and discovering ive depleted all my stamina already was one of those "Oh Shizzle!" moments. I really think splitting points while leveling is the best idea, then respeccing for 'builds' when you hit max level. By then you will also know how you like to play your class and what resources you run out of the most. It is also not that hard to hit the soft caps.

The most common issue with "forum builds" is they tend to only be geared for end game and respective content, which at this point is all theory and assumption. Even the test server players have no carnal knowledge on what end game is going to end up being after release, although I would suggest checking out tamrielfoundry.com as they have the best current info.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought blocking and dodging etc used a flat percentage of your stamina regardless.

So if you tend to waste stamina by inefficient action, it doesn't matter how many points you put into it, it will still be gone at just the same rate.

Nope. Its based off your base values (i.e. what you get just for being level X). If you then artificially increase stamina (skills/gear/enchants/potions/etc), you'll be able to block, roll, cc break more before running out.

I also noticed a bigger need for magicka than stamina from the limited time I played. I am doing everything as a melee focused nightblade but it was always magicka that I ran out of. I had to balance my attacks based on that. Was hoping stamina would be more important for me.

I believe people were doing that because a point in health gave a +20 to health instead of +10 like magika and stamina. They have changed that so its only +10 across the board but they did boost the amount of health you get from enchants so i have no idea if a pure health build is best now.