Stamina is not weaker than Magika, they are for different purposes. Both of them improve the damage of appropriate skills associated with them. Magika skills tend to be slightly more potent but this is offset by the fact that stamina builds get increased white damage as well as stamina skill damage. Do not underestimate the importance of white damage as it can account for quite a lot (particularly in longer fights). Not to mention stamina builds have the option to block more and run farther, no need to explain how this can be very useful in PvP.

Both are completely viable, and that has been demonstrated by many high level players who were owning with stamina builds just as well as the magica builds. The question is how you see your character, if you are focused on hack and slash or bow damage then more focus on stamina will give you the most benefit. If you fancy yourself a power user, lots of “pew pew” and your weapon is just an auxiliary tool then magica is where you want to focus. Each one is the OP one for the right type of player.

Healing is one area that Magika has clear superiority. The vast majority of healing abilities are magika based so in this regard Stamina builds might be considered weaker as they do not have that versatility of being very effective healers. However they do gain versatility in having higher mobility and survivability. So again it comes to what each individual values most.

P.S. In the early game stamina is weaker because you have unlocked so few and mostly trash abillities for it. But this changes fairly soon, and blocking becomes much more important fairly early. Re specing is quite expensive so it is likely worth just pushing through this period rather than going magika and paying to re spec

I have to admit that I think the same, magicka is better than stamina atm. Magicka skills are also better than stamina skills, so it is rather bad for stamina users. I do hope that the balance will be fixed before launch or is already, but I think it will take a year to be acceptable. Stamina is actually really bad, or else I have misunderstood something. Still hard to plan your first char because of this.

Melee vs Ranged - Melee seems to have no benefits over ranged, but has all the penalties; you have to get close, you have to take damage, lag, versatility, etc. Melee is probably rather useless in AvA.

Lot of people seem to use destrostaff and there is sure going to be a lot of bows as well.

I normally play melee, without magic skills, I have to admit that my play style does not really exist in the game yet. There has been many posts here I know, but I have not heard that it has got any better.

Also I hope they make heavy armor to be a bit more viable option.

Should I go with the most OP weapon set and respec later, or should I just go with what I like the most?

Overall yes, but lategame it matters very very little since both can be maxed out by simply enchanting those stats, but it does mean less health (since you have to enchant stamina instead of health).

Still putting all points into health+ capping through enchantments seems the better route for now.

This ^

Apparently its extremely easy to cap out both atm. I just wish there were more stam -> magica / magica -> health ect... types of skills.

Used to love that in darkfall, mana -> stam then stam -> health

Ok but for leveling.. which we all will be doing soon ^^ its better to devide over the stats wherever you feel you're lacking right ?

Food for thought. Ppl mentioned soft caps / overcharged stats. Remember. Just because you've hit your soft cap on stamina or magicka doesn't mean you need to put everything else in health. The soft cap only means you gain less from putiing points into magicka or stamina from this point on, but if you want to play a glass canon, every points you put will increase your damage a little more, regardless of soft cap. Just won't be as effective as before soft cap.

The flip side: dead people deal 0 dps.

Just sayin'

You and me, both at Overcharge on Mag & Stam. You @ 1500 heath but 5% more dps. Me @ 2700 health. GG, enjoy your trip back.

Someone knows how scaling works and it's intended balance at end-game.

Even a melee DPS will have a great time investing in magicka instead of stamina. After all, if all their abilities use magicka, then they'd have the entire stamina pool available for default combat actions. On the other hand, a stamina build would have to juggle his stamina between abilities and combat actions even with a larger a pool.

I feel that the design is a bit flawed. Perhaps class skills shouldn't all use magicka, and weapon/world skills shouldn't all use stamina. For instance, it doesn't make much sense that Mage's Guild skills use stamina.

Can someone link me a video where anyone had both overcharge in magica/ magica regen plus stamina/stamina regen. I have seen many who capped two of them but I have yet to see anyone cap all four (or even three for that matter). Even if you could cap all 4 you would have the endurance of wet toilet paper.

Whatever you put into health = that many more enchants you will need to devote to magika or stamina. And the reverse is also true. With the exception of people who say cap be dammned I am going all in on this one stat it does not matter. The only question is are you going to spread your total resources (points and enchants combined) on either one, two or three of the stats. It doesn’t matter how you cap your (name of stat here) as you will still be using enchants to cover the one you didn’t put points in that matters to you.

Also as I said above Stamina skills make up for inferiority to Majika skills because stamina also raises your white damage and majika does nothing to improve that.

Since when?

And you get the 5% value from where? I'm curious.

Yes that is the best way to approach it. You can always respec later ingame if you want so you might as well take advantage of your point allocation while leveling.

Staff weapon skills use magicka..
Mage guild skills also use magicka.

Videos on Overcharging. You really don't get very much once you hit overcharge and keep on stacking that stat.

Keep in mind, all weapon skill damage (as well as light/heavy attacks) scales based off of maximum stamina. That includes the Destruction Staff, and Restoration Staff healing power, despite the fact that you use magicka to cast those spells. So, if you plan to use weapon skills, investing in the stamina attribute isn't exactly useless.

I think they built the game so that, no matter your spec, you are encouraged to invest in all 3 attributes to some degree.

-Travail.

Melee is plenty viable in PvP. Everyone has access to gap closers, and everyone has access to CC abilities.

From what Ive heard you can get to soft cap on both magica and stamina using enchantments. So why wouldnt you do both? Magica makes spells stronger. Stamina makes weaponskills stronger. Do both.

While its true that staff skills use magicka, its also true that the size of your stamina pool makes them hit harder.