Since we know you can switch weapons, and assuming you can switch those weapons fairly quickly, this thread is a discussion as to how combat might be different from other MMOs as a result of this.

In particular:

Do you think we will see downsides to using weapon switching? Will there be cooldowns, or will it cost a lot of resources? Do you think it will be worth switching weapons in mid battle?

More importantly, do you think switching weapons in mid-battle can be taken advantage of by your opponent? If it can be, I personally think this will be a nice buffer to meta-game + PvP combat.

Personally, for balance's sake, there either has to be a disadvantage to weapon switching, or weapon switching isn't that beneficial.

I would think switching weapons would end up becoming a double edged sword in some situations. One person pulls out rock, the other has paper, since you can only do one weapon switch, the person who has rock switches to scissors giving an advantage over the paper user. But that paper user can switch to rock to beat the scissor user. Assuming there's cooldowns/you can only do it once in a certain period of time, the paper user would be the winner.

To further complicate things, say someone has a hybrid build, which is fairly flexible, and not an extreme that can be described as a rock/paper/scissors build easily countered by another build.

Let me actually put this into terms with the game now. Say an archer who focuses on damage output in his bow, and uses medium armor as a result of this, also has less protection against heavy weaponry, but at the same time can counter mages because of their light armor. This would be the typical rock paper scissors situation, but the mage at a disadvantage could switch a weapon to a two-handed, get up close because of abilities on his/her hotbar, and put the archer at the disadvantage. The archer could then switch to magic, bind his/her opponent and nuke a now defenseless two hander with light armor.

Do you think there will be a balance of hybrid characters who mix their armor and resistances, or will there be an influx of "pure" characters that can easily counter each other in most situations?

Only one weapon switch? What's the source on that?

theres 2 weapon quickslots i think. if you want to switch on more weapons i'd imagine it requiring you to open lots of panels and dragn'n'dropping ingame.

would love the source too to make sure.

Yeah, I'm not sure about more than two weapons and how that is going to work. However, the way I understand it you can go back and forth between the two weapons as much as you like during the fight. I haven't seen anything to the contrary in any case. So I don't see how switching to a different weapon would disadvantage people in and of itself.

If I understood something I read some time who knows when and where (but I think it was official) correctly, the only drawback to weapon swapping is the short time it takes to do the swap. I really hope I did, because there's no inherent need to add a drawback like a cooldown in this game, since abilities have no cooldowns.

To me this sounds like one of many "tactics" available to us put in place by system design. I see this as a good thing.

And as far as I've seen, we will be able to switch back and forth between our two weapon sets without consequence (other than perhaps a minor delay). Pretty sure I heard somewhere tho that we can not swap in a different weapon from our inventory during a combat phase.

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/03/25/ask-us-anything-combat-2

There you go .

Weapons will have different stats, and will have different strengths against certain opponents. The strength would come from the armor I.E. if someone is wearing heavy armor or light etc. and it would be more effective to use a bow on certain armors than it would to use a sword. We would need a closer look at their stats to be sure of it, as there might not be a distinction in armor sets, all reduce damage in various ways but not favor certain types of damage resistance.

But yeah, the only way the weapon itself can give an opponent and advantage over him/herself would be either stats or abilities. You're limited with 5/6 slots for abilities a ranger isn't going to equip a bow and have 5 slots dedicated to melee attacks, so getting up and personal with the ranger would disadvantage him, especially if you have close range stuns.

I also heard from a trusty source (trusty from my perspective) that you can do it in combat. Not going to rat out the individual in question, but this discussion is based on the assumption that you can indeed swap during combat, so it's more so hypothetical meta-game discussion >_>.. nothing concrete, but then again there are very few things on this forum that are concrete.

I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from. The reality seems to be that every piece of armor gives an armor value, which is totaled up and plugged into an equation and reduces incoming damage. There isn't 'weak against bows' armor. Just lower AVs, which reduce less of all damage.

You're making weird assumptions.

1) He can also switch, and only an idiot wouldn't alternate with a melee setup.

2) Is he going to have 5 melee attacks? Probably not. But... so? There isn't any indication that ranged attacks don't work at close combat range in this game.

3) He can also have a short ranged stun (or more general stun) that he's ready to pop when people run up on him. Followed by a snare/root, and then moving away while you're stuck in that mess.

But anyway, as we saw in the Quakecon video, weapon swtiching is pretty much instant. No cooldown, no cost.

There's no rock paper scissors for weapon choice vs weapon choice but there is vs certain classes/armor types

example for two hander bonuses:

sword increases dmg done use vs cloth

axe does bleed dmg use vs stealth class so they can't vanish

mace reduces armor use vs tanks

what about dagger and bow?

Hit stuff from range without wasting/using magic I guess.

Light armor will typically give less armor than heavy armor. Light armor will be more suited towards mages, which will have to have some sort of downside (probably the lack of armor). It will buff magicka regeneration speed at the cost of armor rating and possibly other things. Where the "how can someone benefit by switching weapons" thing come about is when someone has a backup weapon designed to either do a lot of damage quickly, or not focus on breaking through an opponent's armor. That's where the rock paper scissors thing comes in.

Getting close up enables a melee based character to use close up stuns. The Ranger might have close up stuns/ranged stuns to counter that, but nevertheless, someone could be about to ram a giant battleaxe down someone's medium/light armor setup. You can't change armor in combat, so that person is stuck to a playstyle that either survives on stuns/immobilization or through mobility/dodging, switching to melee wouldn't really benefit unless he/she could pull off dodging. The "rock paper scissors" thing pretty much rests on not being able to change weapons indefinitely, so you're right if you can do that, then weapon switching will occur at any time, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

We didn't see him switching back and forth haphazardly though, only from one to the other, and then back again later. So instantaneous weapon swapping might be in, but nothing else is confirmed. Not to mention it might be a different build from what's released, they might not have balanced it yet. I would assume they haven't gotten into the PvP aspect of the beta test either, so there isn't any immediate need for them to balance weapon swapping against other players yet.

Still, far too much speculation to have any merit. Assuming a cooldown on swapping back in a system that has almost entirely ditched cooldowns altogether doesn't make any sense.

Also, why is the 'ranger' (which is a useless term in this context) necessarily in any particular kind of armor? Most viable builds are going to incorporate some sort of ranged element, whether it is slotted abilities (particularly sorcerers and templars), bows or destruction staves. All you have is a guy with a bow currently equipped- when fighting him you won't really know what his skill set is- the bow could very well be his alternate weapon set, or he could have a bunch of close range magicka attacks from the DK fire tree waiting, or he may just be using the bow while waiting for his magicka pool to recharge. There really isn't any indication. If he uses a lot of magicka, the bow-user will be in light armor, because thats where the bonuses are. Stamina reliance is medium and health buffs are heavy. The Damage resistance is actually the least important aspect of the equation- what really matters is supporting the build style.

And assuming someone went for a "ranger" build, who mostly wanted to focus on using a ranged weapon, they would likely get stamina regen/ stamina buffing armor, which would fall under the medium armor category. I enver said that your weapon determines your armor pick, but your weapon usually is what you build your character around, the armor comes afterwards. People's secondary weapon of course complicates things, but their armor wouldn't and can't change in combat as a result of their weapon change. So their main build will likely reflect their armor, and you can counter based on that.

We have no idea how much mix and matching will be prevalent, but so long as there's those stereotypical armor combinations used, and stats/abilities allow it, there will be countering based off armor. If you can counter based on armor, your backup weapon might be built to counter his, and his might be built to counter. No one's suggesting this will happen 100% of the time, only that it could happen. I see no concrete evidence for or against what I've said. If you think it's useless to speculate/theorize ways in which things might turn out, doesn't that make 90% of this forum irrelevant? Doesn't make sense to take it out on my thread.

there is 2 weapon sets, and you can switch as much as you want between them

but when in combat, you can not change gear around, need to be out of combat for that one.

Switching weapons that are "at the ready" is what it sounds like this will be. Think of Gerralt of Rivia or the quick slots they had in Baldur's gate. The weapons that you favor and put in your weapon switch slots will be available to switch, but switching armor mid battle won't be allowed cause it isn't too feasible.

Seems like a good system.