Upcoming changes for the crafted armor sets - a broader view on balancing and set bonuses

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO

For discussion (aka whining) on how those changes are effecting your personal build please go here. This also applies if you just want to see what those changes are.

This one opened a new thread dedicated to a more general view on crafted sets and what the current changes mean and possible ideas on balancing (ideal and/or actual game), improving and/or extending the crafted sets.

In order to do this let's start with just the mere facts (at least as they currently are on the PTS)


When taking a more detailed look at the changes on the PTS for the crafted sets (and only those) the following statistics come up for the 25 crafted sets reported so far:

Set that improve max health (14 in total)

• 5 with just 2 items of the set (1 already with only 2, 1 (Twilight's Embrace) with just 3 traits researched and that one boosting health twice with 4 items, making it almost identical to the 8 traits set Shalidor's Curse, that does this with 3 items)
• 5 with 3 items of the set required, with a double boost only for 8 traits researched set Orgnum's Scales
• 4 with 4 items

Set that improve max magicka (6 in total)

• 2 with just 2 items of the set: Magnus' Gift (4 traits) and Kagrenac's Hope (8 traits)
• 4 with 3 items of the set required: Seducer (3 traits), Spectre's Eye (8 traits), Eyes of Mara (8 traits) and The arena (8 traits)
• 0 with 4 items of the set required

Set that improve max stamina (3 in total)

• 1 with just 2 items of the set: Night‘s silence (2 traits)
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Hunding's Rage (6 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: The arena (8 traits)

Set that improve health recovery (7 in total)

• 5 with just 2 items of the set: Song of Lamae (5 traits), Vampire's Kiss (5 traits), Willow's Path (6 traits), Oblivion's Foe (8 traits) and Eyes of Mara (8 traits)
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Hist Bark (4 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Whitestrake's Retribution (4 traits)

Set that improve magicka recovery (6 in total)

• 2 with just 2 items of the set: Seducer (3 traits), which doubles the effect for 4 items, and Eyes of Mara (8 traits)
• 3 with 3 items of the set required: Magnus' Gift (4 traits), Willow's Path (6 traits) and and Kagrenac's Hope (8 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Oblivion's Foe (8 traits)

Set that improve stamina recovery (3 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set
• 2 with 3 items of the set required: Night‘s silence (2 traits) and Oblivion's Foe (8 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Willow's Path (6 traits)

Set that improve spell damage (4 in total)

• 1 with just 2 items of the set: Torug's pact (3 traits)
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Song of Lamae (5 traits)
• 2 with 4 items of the set required: Magnus' Gift (4 traits) and Eyes of Mara (8 traits)

Set that improve weapon damage (2 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Ashen grip (2 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Torug's pact (3 traits)

Set that improve spell critical (1 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set:
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Night Mother's Gaze (6 traits)
• 0 with 4 items of the set required:

Set that improve weapon critical (4 in total)

• 2 with just 2 items of the set: Hunding's Rage (6 traits) and Night Mother's Gaze (6 traits), both doubling the effect with 4 items
• 0 with 3 items of the set required:
• 2 with 4 items of the set required: Ashen grip (2 traits) and Nigh's Silence (2 traits)

Set that improve spell resistance (1 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set:
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Whitestrake's Retribution (4 traits)
• 0 with 4 items of the set required:

Set that improve armor (4 in total)

• 4 with just 2 items of the set: Death's Wind (2 traits), Hist Bark (4 traits) and Alessia's Bulwark (5 traits), the last doubling the effect with 4 items and Spectre's Eye (8 traits).
• 0 with 3 items of the set required:
• 0 with 4 items of the set required:

Set that improve healing taken (3 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set:
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Shalidor's Curse (8 traits)
• 2 with 4 items of the set required: Twilight's Embrace (3 traits), Vampire's Kiss (5 traits)

Just looking at the numbers of how many sets support what kind of improvement, it becomes obvious that balanced, this ain't!

There seems to be an abundance of maximizing your health, followed by improving health recovery and then maximizing magicka and magicka recovery.
With just 3 crafted sets offering a way to maximize stamina and only 2 offering improvements for stamina recovery and that only with 3 or 4 items equipped, the idea that this change is improving stamina builds is laughable, as far as these values are concerned.

Especially, as this introduces far more ways to improve your magicka recovery (often already with just 2 items) and/or maximizing magicka.

It is also clear that there are now less ways to gain more spell critical and more to achieve weapon critical, as was/is abundantly discussed elsewhere.

And while the amount of spell resistance one can get from set bonuses is extremely limited, the amount of armor bonus from sets alone is close to ridiculous.

Furthermore, the 5 items specials for the otherwise identical (at 5 items) 8 trait Shalidor Curse, with its 60 seconds cooldown, looks at least to this one inferior to the 3 traits Twilight's Embrace without cooldown and 10% healing bonus.

Last but not least, for those arguing that "but there are some dropped sets available that can do X with just Y items".

When comparing the effort to find/buy/get a dropped set of the right level and type as to fit the rest of your gear, with crafting (either yourself or buying from a crafter) this is just another unbalance.

While getting those items is clearly possible, from either buying or trials or PVP, this is not a sure thing and as such in terms of effort involved clearly if that traits is available as crafted gear favors the later in terms of finding / making the right item.

Therefore, for those mixing and matching their 'build' with crafted sets, the most variety seems to be health addicts and magic users, while those who want to maximize stamina or stamina recovery have only limited options, which are even more limited by the fact that they neither match with weapon damage or weapon critical, while for magicka users the possibility exist.

Some improvements are there for weapon critical, bringing it on par now, with spell critical if and only if 'inner light' is used, otherwise spell critical will be nerfed, as already abundantly discussed elsewhere.

For those tanking and/or relying on Healing taken and Physical Armor, running into the soft (or even hard) cap seems to be feasible even with the upgraded caps, while spell resistance by craftable items get's the short end of the stick. Therefore, anyone using medium armor, which have no buffs for spell resistance, - like stamina builds - are pretty much still out of luck when facing spell slingers etc.

Furthermore, looking at the QuakeCon trial competition, the one thing noticeable for both finalist teams was that none in either team was using anything but a staff.

That's hardly what you would expect for a balanced system, right?

Edited: now also including those for Coldharbour

Anastasia

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO wrote: »

For discussion (aka whining) on how those changes are effecting your personal build please go here. This also applies if you just want to see what those changes are.

This one opened a new thread dedicated to a more general view on crafted sets and what the current changes mean and possible ideas on balancing (ideal and/or actual game), improving and/or extending the crafted sets.

In order to do this let's start with just the mere facts (at least as they currently are on the PTS)


When taking a more detailed look at the changes on the PTS for the crafted sets (and only those) the following statistics come up for the 22 crafted sets reported so far, missing only the ones from Coldharbour:

Set that improve max health (14 in total)

• 5 with just 2 items of the set (1 already with only 2, 1 (Twilight's Embrace) with just 3 traits researched and that one boosting health twice with 4 items, making it almost identical to the 8 traits set Shalidor's Curse, that does this with 3 items)
• 5 with 3 items of the set required, with a double boost only for 8 traits researched set Orgnum's Scales
• 4 with 4 items

Set that improve max magicka (6 in total)

• 2 with just 2 items of the set: Magnus' Gift (4 traits) and Kagrenac's Hope (8 traits)
• 4 with 3 items of the set required: Seducer (3 traits), Spectre's Eye (8 traits), Eyes of Mara (8 traits) and The arena (8 traits)
• 0 with 4 items of the set required

Set that improve max stamina (3 in total)

• 1 with just 2 items of the set: Night‘s silence (2 traits)
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Hunding's Rage (6 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: The arena (8 traits)

Set that improve health recovery (7 in total)

• 5 with just 2 items of the set: Song of Lamae (5 traits), Vampire's Kiss (5 traits), Willow's Path (6 traits), Oblivion's Foe (8 traits) and Eyes of Mara (8 traits)
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Hist Bark (4 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Whitestrake's Retribution (4 traits)

Set that improve magicka recovery (6 in total)

• 2 with just 2 items of the set: Seducer (3 traits), which doubles the effect for 4 items, and Eyes of Mara (8 traits)
• 3 with 3 items of the set required: Magnus' Gift (4 traits), Willow's Path (6 traits) and and Kagrenac's Hope (8 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Oblivion's Foe (8 traits)

Set that improve stamina recovery (3 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set
• 2 with 3 items of the set required: Night‘s silence (2 traits) and Oblivion's Foe (8 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Willow's Path (6 traits)

Set that improve spell damage (4 in total)

• 1 with just 2 items of the set: Torug's pact (3 traits)
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Song of Lamae (5 traits)
• 2 with 4 items of the set required: Magnus' Gift (4 traits) and Eyes of Mara (8 traits)

Set that improve weapon damage (2 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Ashen grip (2 traits)
• 1 with 4 items of the set required: Torug's pact (3 traits)

Set that improve spell critical (1 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set:
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Night Mother's Gaze (6 traits)
• 0 with 4 items of the set required:

Set that improve weapon critical (4 in total)

• 2 with just 2 items of the set: Hunding's Rage (6 traits) and Night Mother's Gaze (6 traits), both doubling the effect with 4 items
• 0 with 3 items of the set required:
• 2 with 4 items of the set required: Ashen grip (2 traits) and Nigh's Silence (2 traits)

Set that improve spell resistance (1 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set:
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Whitestrake's Retribution (4 traits)
• 0 with 4 items of the set required:

Set that improve armor (4 in total)

• 4 with just 2 items of the set: Death's Wind (2 traits), Hist Bark (4 traits) and Alessia's Bulwark (5 traits), the last doubling the effect with 4 items and Spectre's Eye (8 traits).
• 0 with 3 items of the set required:
• 0 with 4 items of the set required:

Set that improve healing taken (3 in total)

• 0 with just 2 items of the set:
• 1 with 3 items of the set required: Shalidor's Curse (8 traits)
• 2 with 4 items of the set required: Twilight's Embrace (3 traits), Vampire's Kiss (5 traits)

Just looking at the numbers of how many sets support what kind of improvement, it becomes obvious that balanced, this ain't!

There seems to be an abundance of maximizing your health, followed by improving health recovery and then maximizing magicka and magicka recovery.
With just 3 crafted sets offering a way to maximize stamina and only 2 offering improvements for stamina recovery and that only with 3 or 4 items equipped, the idea that this change is improving stamina builds is laughable, as far as these values are concerned.

Especially, as this introduces far more ways to improve your magicka recovery (often already with just 2 items) and/or maximizing magicka.

It is also clear that there are now less ways to gain more spell critical and more to achieve weapon critical, as was/is abundantly discussed elsewhere.

And while the amount of spell resistance one can get from set bonuses is extremely limited, the amount of armor bonus from sets alone is close to ridiculous.

Furthermore, the 5 items specials for the otherwise identical (at 5 items) 8 trait Shalidor Curse, with its 60 seconds cooldown, looks at least to this one inferior to the 3 traits Twilight's Embrace without cooldown and 10% healing bonus.

Last but not least, for those arguing that "but there are some dropped sets available that can do X with just Y items".

When comparing the effort to find/buy/get a dropped set of the right level and type as to fit the rest of your gear, with crafting (either yourself or buying from a crafter) this is just another unbalance.

While getting those items is clearly possible, from either buying or trials or PVP, this is not a sure thing and as such in terms of effort involved clearly if that traits is available as crafted gear favors the later in terms of finding / making the right item.

Therefore, for those mixing and matching their 'build' with crafted sets, the most variety seems to be health addicts and magic users, while those who want to maximize stamina or stamina recovery have only limited options, which are even more limited by the fact that they neither match with weapon damage or weapon critical, while for magicka users the possibility exist.

Some improvements are there for weapon critical, bringing it on par now, with spell critical if and only if 'inner light' is used, otherwise spell critical will be nerfed, as already abundantly discussed elsewhere.

For those tanking and/or relying on Healing taken and Physical Armor, running into the soft (or even hard) cap seems to be feasible even with the upgraded caps, while spell resistance by craftable items get's the short end of the stick. Therefore, anyone using medium armor, which have no buffs for spell resistance, - like stamina builds - are pretty much still out of luck when facing spell slingers etc.

Furthermore, looking at the QuakeCon trial competition, the one thing noticeable for both finalist teams was that none in either team was using anything but a staff.

That's hardly what you would expect for a balanced system, right?

---

Apologists will tell you to 'wait and see, after all ZOS is working on it ya know'...

Those getting by on the current crumbs thrown about for stam builds are just to keep "hoping." But lets take a look at your astute analysis here (*agreed upon by others interested in the topic and looking at the supposed upcoming changes that are 'buffing' up stam folks) ...

***>>>"With just 3 crafted sets offering a way to maximize stamina and only 2 offering improvements for stamina recovery and that only with 3 or 4 items equipped, the idea that this change is improving stamina builds is laughable, as far as these values are concerned.

Especially, as this introduces far more ways to improve your magicka recovery (often already with just 2 items) and/or maximizing magicka.

It is also clear that there are now less ways to gain more spell critical and more to achieve weapon critical, as was/is abundantly discussed elsewhere.

And while the amount of spell resistance one can get from set bonuses is extremely limited, the amount of armor bonus from sets alone is close to ridiculous.

---

;o( STILL.

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO

Given that for each number of trait level up to 6 traits there are three crafting stations.
For the 8 traits you have three double crafting stations plus the one in Craglorn for the Arena set.

Now, one could arguably also sort the new improvements in three types: health, stamina and magicka related

Magicka

• Max Magicka
• Magicka Recovery
• Spell damage
• Spell critical
• Spell resistance

Stamina

• Max Stamina
• Stamina Recovery
• Weapon damage
• Weapon critical
• Armor (aka weapon resistance)

Health

• Max Health
• Health Recovery
• Healing taken
• Armor (aka weapon resistance)
• Spell resistance

Arguably armor and spell resistance are already part of the stamina and magicka crafting trees, but they could just also be part of health.
For this reason, and for balance, it makes sense to have them also in health, which brings the number of improvement areas for each type up to 5 for all.

This now would allow that for each trait level you would have one crafting station that provides either health, stamina or magicka related improvements, equalizing (read balancing) the improvements at each level, as there already the three different 8 traits set stations:

• magicka from the mage guild
• stamina from the fighters guild
• health from the Coldharbour stations

So a possible crafting set distribution could be

Magicka

• Ashen Grip (2 traits)
• Seducer (3 traits)
• Magnus' Gift (4 traits)
• Vampire's Kiss (5 traits)
• Willow's Path (6 traits)
• Kagrenac's Hope (8 traits)
• Orgnum's Scales (8 traits)

Stamina:

• Night‘s silence (2 traits)
• Twilight's Embrace (3 traits)
• Whitestrake's Retribution (4 traits)
• Song of Lamae (5 traits)
• Night Mother's Gaze (6 traits)
• Eyes of Mara (8 traits)
• Shalidor's Curse (8 traits)

Health

• Death's Wind (2 traits)
• Torug's Pact (3 traits)
• Hist Bark (4 traits)
• Alessia's Bulwark (5 traits)
• Hunding's Rage (6 traits)
• Spectre's Eye (8 traits)
• Oblivion's Foe (8 traits)

The arena set is unique as it offers health, stamina and magicka.

Furthermore, right now at 4 items a 3 trait set Twilight's Embrace provides the same improvements as the 8 traits set Shalidor's Curse, which frankly speaking makes no sense at all and is really breaking the time / effort spent on researching these traits.

One fast and quick change - also addressing power creep - could be to make the lower number of known traits only 3 items sets for 2 and 3 traits required.

Another option could be to actually let the number of bonuses follow the number of traits required.

Given that many of these are highly situational and/or not really very strong, the special 'last' bonus probably then should become the very first bonus for each set to really pull this off. This would also allow for more individual builds, with only a bit of tweaking for the more powerful special bonuses or even moving these to full set bonuses (8+ items)

In such a system (as proposed here) then:

2 trait sets would only provide that

• set special bonus at 2 items

3 trait sets would have

• set special bonus at 2 items
• stat recovery at 3 items

4 trait sets would have

• set special bonus at 2,
• max stat at 3 items and
• weapon / spell critical, respectively armor at 4 items

5 trait sets would have e.g.

• set special bonus at 2 (possibly scaling with number of items worn of that set)
• weapon / spell damage, respectively spell resistance at 3 items
• stat recovery at 4 items,
• weapon / spell critical, respectively healing taken at 5 items

6 trait sets would have

• set special bonus at 2 (possibly scaling with number of items worn of that set)
• max stat at 3 items
• weapon / spell damage, respectively spell resistance at 4 items
• armor, spell resistance or healing taken at 5 items
• weapon / spell critical, respectively armor at 6 items

7 trait (to be introduced, as really needed) sets could have

• set special bonus at 2 (possibly scaling with number of items worn of that set)
• stat recovery at 3 items
• max stat at 4 items
• weapon / spell damage, spell resistance at 5 items
• weapon / spell critical, respectively armor at 6 items
• armor, spell resistance or healing taken at 7 items

8 trait sets should be of the best end-game variety and/or provide some additional boni

For the Coldharbour (health) this could be e.g.

• set special bonus at 2 (possibly scaling with number of items worn of that set)
• weapon / spell damage at healing taken at 3 items
• max stat at 3 items at 4 / 5 items
• stat recovery at 5 / 4 items
• armor or spell resistance at 6 / 7 items
• another powerful special bonus at 8 items

Fighters Guild (stamina) and Mages Guild (magicka) sets the following could work

• set special bonus at 2 (possibly scaling with number of items worn of that set)
• weapon / spell damage at 3 / 6 items
• max stat at 3 items at 4 / 5 items
• stat recovery at 5 / 4 items
• healing taken or armor / spell resistance at 6 / 7 items
• weapon / spell critical at 7 / 3 items
• another powerful special bonus at 8 items

The Arena set could still be special with e.g. the following set boni

• armor / spell (half normal bonus each) resistance at 3 items
• weapon / spell damage (half normal bonus each) resistance at 4 items
• stat recovery for health, magicka and stamina (at 1/3rd value) with at 5 items
• max health, magicka and stamina (at 1/3rd value) with at 6 items
• weapon / spell critical (half normal bonus each) resistance at 7 items

In the above example there are at least 6 sets for any property with more than 6 sets only for armor and spell resistance (11 & 10)

There are also at least two different sets available for each stat that only require 3 or 4 items per set, except for weapon and spell critical (only one each), with lots of extra options to mix and match for a 3 & 5 or 4 and 5 combinations of all kinds of stats.

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO

With a closer look at the distribution also for some (probably not all) of the dropped and trial sets (but not the PvP ones) the picture actually gets even worse.

But have a look at it yourself


Want to combine several 2 times only boni for extra max magicka/health or extra magicka/health recovery, more than 4 different options are available to choose from (or pick even all 4). Want to flesh out your set with just two extra items for improved stamina recovery?
You have exactly zero options and only one for max stamina with just 2 items.

The pattern repeats for larger number of items used from a set.

Less options, means less ways to pick your 5 items from a set bonus, limiting to personalize your build and/or optimize it for your play style. Hampering stamina builds in more than just stats.

Not to mention you want to be competitive using stamina based skills?
Forget about it.

Still for normal questing / solo PvE survivability is up, but mostly because there are now more options to buff health (for everyone). However, given the passives for light armor, this helps in boosting said light armor, staff based magicka builds even more.

LonePirate

Using several 2 piece sets is an inefficient method to obtain set bonuses. Let's say you have a standard 8 piece set before jewelry. If you have 4 different 2 piece sets, you receive 4 bonuses in total. However, if you have a 5 piece and a 3 piece set (or a couple of 4 piece sets), you receive a total of 6 bonuses (4 bonuses from the 5 piece and 2 bonuses from the 3 piece or 3 bonuses apiece from each 4 piece set). The choice should be an easy one for most people regarding how many different sets to equip.

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO

LonePirate wrote: »

Using several 2 piece sets is an inefficient method to obtain set bonuses.

That's fully understood and was only given as an example. Still some sacrifice the number of total boni for maxing out one. That is their choice.

But to give another - not quite so extreme - example: Let's say you want to have one 5 piece set.

In case you want to have max magicka as part of that set, you have 22 sets to choose from (7 crafted), for max health a whopping 23 (14 crafted) and for max stamina 9 (3 crafted)

In case you want to have magicka recovery as part of that set, you have 12 sets to choose from (5 crafted), for health recovery 7 (all 7 crafted) and for max stamina 8 (2 crafted)

Also there are only limited options for reducing stamina costs: only available by jewelry meaning, using those for something else (or part of a dropped set) is typically not an option.

So what about weapon damage versus spell damage?
- A total of 8 sets provide weapon damage, 2 crafted.
- A total of 16 sets provide spell damage, 5 crafted.

But sure with the outcry weapon critical got buffed, while spell critical nerfed, at least here stamina / weapon versus magicka / spell is up ahead, right?
- A total of 9 sets provide weapon critical, but 3 only if you do trials, 4 crafted
- A total of 6 sets provide spell critical, 3 crafted (and only one from trials)

However, for PvP magelight is a must for any spell critical build (up to +17%, when comparing this with +4% / +8% from the sets) in addition to the light armor passive (+5% for 5 pieces). For a stamina build medium armor would be preferred (without anything like inner light available to all). Weapon critical would go up 1% per piece.
In the end maxing this (not accounting for mundus stone etc. as they are similarly possible) you could max out by sets alone including armor passives.
- weapon critical: +23% (+5% for dual dagger wield and passive)
- spell critical: +17% but with inner light 34%

Not exactly what I would called overpowered for stamina builds, even when absolutely geared for that (again not accounting for race or class passives etc.)

There are some extra options to max out each if you are willing to use certain skills and/or use up more skill slots and have picked the right class at the start.

However, the overall picture continues: Less sets with the boni you want / need for your play style means either a limited number of special and/or living with a sub-optimal set.

So yes, even after 1.3.x stamina builds still have the short stick, often by a large margin, with less options to pick to close the gap.

demonlkojipub19_ESO

duncan_cougarpreeb18_ESO wrote: »

With a closer look at the distribution also for some (probably not all) of the dropped and trial sets (but not the PvP ones) the picture actually gets even worse.

But have a look at it yourself


Want to combine several 2 times only boni for extra max magicka/health or extra magicka/health recovery, more than 4 different options are available to choose from (or pick even all 4). Want to flesh out your set with just two extra items for improved stamina recovery?
You have exactly zero options and only one for max stamina with just 2 items.

The pattern repeats for larger number of items used from a set.

Less options, means less ways to pick your 5 items from a set bonus, limiting to personalize your build and/or optimize it for your play style. Hampering stamina builds in more than just stats.

Not to mention you want to be competitive using stamina based skills?
Forget about it.

Still for normal questing / solo PvE survivability is up, but mostly because there are now more options to buff health (for everyone). However, given the passives for light armor, this helps in boosting said light armor, staff based magicka builds even more.

Might be missing some sets from there. I know Armor of Air from craglorn drops has stamina recovery in 2 and 3 set bonuses.

Thats probably the only one missing tho /shrug.

But overall, the set bonuses are much more plentiful and full of options when you want to play a magicka build, but almost nonexistent when you want to play a stamina build. The magicka based 5 set bonuses are also way more attractive than anything the stamina based sets have to offer.