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Concerns about gear in 1.6
Joy_Division
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Why has nothing been done to diversify the gear in this game for the past nine months? Half the crafted sets and most of the dropped sets are woefully inefficient and ineffective. This either means those folks who don't have the time to compare / contrast gear or fully comprehend its effect on gameplay are running bad builds and getting themselves (and groupmates) killed or directing others toward cookie-cutter builds that use the same stuff.
And it's only going to get worse as it is becoming clearer that, at least from a magicka DPS perspective, stacking spell damage is *the* way to go. Spell damage was always good, but soft caps and the fact that DPS also relied on weapon damage made for a self-balancing mechanism that encouraged players to diversify their gear. Now those are gone, with critical no longer driving ultimate, with no soft cap, and spell damage modifying all DPS, it is very advantageous to simply stack spell damage. Whereas before using the 5 piece bonus for Torug's Pact or Oblivion's Foe was cute if ineffective, now those players who use these bad sets are going to be *way* behind in spell damage and DPS. If some poor soul makes a set of Vampire's Kiss or the 8-trait Shalidor's curse or 8-trait Specter's Eye, how are they going to feel after I post my DPS wearing Martial Knowledge 4 piece (177 spell damage + 177 spell damage), 2 piece Torug Pact (177 spell damage), 2 piece adroitness (177 spell damage) + 2 rings of Cyrodiil Light (177 spell damage)? That's 885 more spell damage than their 1108! I don't play stamina builds but I'd imagine they are all still going to wear the ever-present Hunding's Rage set and similarly out-perform folks who stray from the cookie-cutter setup?
I will grant it is possible I am overestimating how good spell damage is. Nevertheless, it is much more desirable than stuff like +4% healing taken, +124 magicka recovery, and many of the 5 piece capstone abilities which is a huge problem because getting those set bonus requires a significant investment in your gear. If people are going to get huge DPS increases, please at least make the full 5 piece set bonuses have a comparable effect on our characters! Please just look how bad many of these are: Ashen Grip gives a 10% chance to do a small amount of fire damage when struck by a melee attack, twilight's embrace grants raises the healing done to the wearer by 10%, Elegant - a set that only drops on Sanctum - just raises light attack damage by 10%. The list goes on and on.
Everything that is wrong about armor set bonus system as it stands on the PTS for 1.6 can be illustrated by what happened to the Burning Spellweave set. I've seen at least 3 posts mentioning the problems with this set and it really bothers me that after 4 patches to the PTS in 1.6, it still has the same issues. I understand there are pressing concerns as far as bugs, sorcerer balance questions and the like, but if ZoS has time enough to nerf the Aggressive Warhorn ultimate even though nobody asked for it and I doubt anyone appreciates it, then they have time to fix this.
This set is supposed to be a *reward* for countless runs of the most difficult Veteran dungeon. You can't craft it. You can't buy it. You will have to run Veteran City of Ash over and over and over to get a complete set. I have done over FIFTY runs of this dungeon until I finally got my 5 different pieces yesterday. It's pretty good ... ZoS did a good job incentivizing players to chase this gear:
2 piece: + 90 magicka
3 piece: + 8 spell damage
4 piece: +4% spell critical
5 piece: 20% when dealing fire damage to inflict burning and gain 20 spell damage for 8 seconds (15 second cooldown).
I wore it for the first time during today's Crypt of Hearts dungeon as was pleased with the results...a small, albeit noticeable boost from my previous set. Plus it looks awesome.
But in a week, this set will become vendor trash. For the PTS, the set bonuses are:
2 piece: +933 magicka (this follows the 1.6 scaling formula and thus is fine)
3 piece: +177 spell damage (this also follows the 1.6 scaling formula)
4 piece: +4% WEAPON Critical (even though this set has a fire damage theme and ZoS clearly designed its game - and especially 1.6 - for light armor users to be everything spells, they decided to make the 4th piece inconsistent and worthless).
5 piece: 20% when dealing fire damage to inflict burning and gain 207 spell damage for 8 seconds (15 second cooldown). This is a *huge* nerf! As is clearly demonstrated in the second piece, 8 spell damage in 1.5 equates to 177 spell damage in 1.6. This means to keep the same commensurate bonus, this 1.6 version of this set should have a 443 bonus.
So what we have here is anything beyond the 3 piece bonus of armor either worthless or outperformed by other sets that are much easier to acquire - which unfortunately has been a theme to this game since launch.
It really bothers me that I pay $15 a month and have done their gear chase only for ZoS to nerf this set into Oblivion 1 week after I spent two months getting it. I trust that my $15 is going to people who can balance this game and provide interesting rewards for players who spend their spare hours of the day completing the content. I *really* want to know the reasoning behind the abject inconsistency with the switch to weapon critical and the complete discarding of the 5 piece bonus. 5 piece bonuses are supposed to be good. Trust me that bonus is BAD. Wearing two pieces of Torug's Pact, a set I can make myself with just 3 traits researched will *always* give me 177 spell damage. Always. The 5th piece bonus for the set I spent two months piecing together enduring countless wipes will, *half* of the time, under the best of circumstances, give me 207 spell damage...that's an average of 103 spell damage.
2 piece Torug's: 177
5 piece "reward" set Burning Spellweave: 103.
This is what I am paying $15 a month for...
If they were worried about the user's spellpower when the bonus is active, why did they get rid of soft caps in the first place? And there was nothing to worry about, even without the nerf that 443 spellpower bonus is active less than half the time, which means it would more or less the same as the 2 piece 177 bonus. So it would be very similar to the soon to be very popular Martial Knowledge set, which grants 2 spellpower bonuses - for only 4 pieces. And if they are still worried, why are they allowing us to stack multiple versions of lesser sets to always have a higher spell damage?
Obviously I am very upset about this specific set, but it is emblematic of what is wrong with just about every gear set in the game: the more pieces your wear and the more difficult the set is to acquire, the less effective your character will be. I think it would be interesting and healthy for the game if there were actual choices for optimal set-ups when it came to gear.
Edited by Joy_Division on 23 February 2015 15:06 And it's only going to get worse as it is becoming clearer that, at least from a magicka DPS perspective, stacking spell damage is *the* way to go. Spell damage was always good, but soft caps and the fact that DPS also relied on weapon damage made for a self-balancing mechanism that encouraged players to diversify their gear. Now those are gone, with critical no longer driving ultimate, with no soft cap, and spell damage modifying all DPS, it is very advantageous to simply stack spell damage. Whereas before using the 5 piece bonus for Torug's Pact or Oblivion's Foe was cute if ineffective, now those players who use these bad sets are going to be *way* behind in spell damage and DPS. If some poor soul makes a set of Vampire's Kiss or the 8-trait Shalidor's curse or 8-trait Specter's Eye, how are they going to feel after I post my DPS wearing Martial Knowledge 4 piece (177 spell damage + 177 spell damage), 2 piece Torug Pact (177 spell damage), 2 piece adroitness (177 spell damage) + 2 rings of Cyrodiil Light (177 spell damage)? That's 885 more spell damage than their 1108! I don't play stamina builds but I'd imagine they are all still going to wear the ever-present Hunding's Rage set and similarly out-perform folks who stray from the cookie-cutter setup?
I will grant it is possible I am overestimating how good spell damage is. Nevertheless, it is much more desirable than stuff like +4% healing taken, +124 magicka recovery, and many of the 5 piece capstone abilities which is a huge problem because getting those set bonus requires a significant investment in your gear. If people are going to get huge DPS increases, please at least make the full 5 piece set bonuses have a comparable effect on our characters! Please just look how bad many of these are: Ashen Grip gives a 10% chance to do a small amount of fire damage when struck by a melee attack, twilight's embrace grants raises the healing done to the wearer by 10%, Elegant - a set that only drops on Sanctum - just raises light attack damage by 10%. The list goes on and on.
Everything that is wrong about armor set bonus system as it stands on the PTS for 1.6 can be illustrated by what happened to the Burning Spellweave set. I've seen at least 3 posts mentioning the problems with this set and it really bothers me that after 4 patches to the PTS in 1.6, it still has the same issues. I understand there are pressing concerns as far as bugs, sorcerer balance questions and the like, but if ZoS has time enough to nerf the Aggressive Warhorn ultimate even though nobody asked for it and I doubt anyone appreciates it, then they have time to fix this.
This set is supposed to be a *reward* for countless runs of the most difficult Veteran dungeon. You can't craft it. You can't buy it. You will have to run Veteran City of Ash over and over and over to get a complete set. I have done over FIFTY runs of this dungeon until I finally got my 5 different pieces yesterday. It's pretty good ... ZoS did a good job incentivizing players to chase this gear:
2 piece: + 90 magicka
3 piece: + 8 spell damage
4 piece: +4% spell critical
5 piece: 20% when dealing fire damage to inflict burning and gain 20 spell damage for 8 seconds (15 second cooldown).
I wore it for the first time during today's Crypt of Hearts dungeon as was pleased with the results...a small, albeit noticeable boost from my previous set. Plus it looks awesome.
But in a week, this set will become vendor trash. For the PTS, the set bonuses are:
2 piece: +933 magicka (this follows the 1.6 scaling formula and thus is fine)
3 piece: +177 spell damage (this also follows the 1.6 scaling formula)
4 piece: +4% WEAPON Critical (even though this set has a fire damage theme and ZoS clearly designed its game - and especially 1.6 - for light armor users to be everything spells, they decided to make the 4th piece inconsistent and worthless).
5 piece: 20% when dealing fire damage to inflict burning and gain 207 spell damage for 8 seconds (15 second cooldown). This is a *huge* nerf! As is clearly demonstrated in the second piece, 8 spell damage in 1.5 equates to 177 spell damage in 1.6. This means to keep the same commensurate bonus, this 1.6 version of this set should have a 443 bonus.
So what we have here is anything beyond the 3 piece bonus of armor either worthless or outperformed by other sets that are much easier to acquire - which unfortunately has been a theme to this game since launch.
It really bothers me that I pay $15 a month and have done their gear chase only for ZoS to nerf this set into Oblivion 1 week after I spent two months getting it. I trust that my $15 is going to people who can balance this game and provide interesting rewards for players who spend their spare hours of the day completing the content. I *really* want to know the reasoning behind the abject inconsistency with the switch to weapon critical and the complete discarding of the 5 piece bonus. 5 piece bonuses are supposed to be good. Trust me that bonus is BAD. Wearing two pieces of Torug's Pact, a set I can make myself with just 3 traits researched will *always* give me 177 spell damage. Always. The 5th piece bonus for the set I spent two months piecing together enduring countless wipes will, *half* of the time, under the best of circumstances, give me 207 spell damage...that's an average of 103 spell damage.
2 piece Torug's: 177
5 piece "reward" set Burning Spellweave: 103.
This is what I am paying $15 a month for...
If they were worried about the user's spellpower when the bonus is active, why did they get rid of soft caps in the first place? And there was nothing to worry about, even without the nerf that 443 spellpower bonus is active less than half the time, which means it would more or less the same as the 2 piece 177 bonus. So it would be very similar to the soon to be very popular Martial Knowledge set, which grants 2 spellpower bonuses - for only 4 pieces. And if they are still worried, why are they allowing us to stack multiple versions of lesser sets to always have a higher spell damage?
Obviously I am very upset about this specific set, but it is emblematic of what is wrong with just about every gear set in the game: the more pieces your wear and the more difficult the set is to acquire, the less effective your character will be. I think it would be interesting and healthy for the game if there were actual choices for optimal set-ups when it came to gear.
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daemonios✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭IMHO 1.6 is far from ready for live. Gear sets have been a problem for a long time. Some crafted sets, especially those that require the highest number of traits, are rarely used because of useless bonuses, and some dropped sets have idiotic unchanging traits (e.g. reinforced, well-fitted). 1.6 adds huge nerfs to set bonuses, such as the ones you mention. I'll add the PvP jewelry/weapon set that gave 10% spell crit and was nerfed to 2% spell crit (now corrected to 4%...) and freaking *health*.
The Champion System may be the worst thing that happened to the game. It was an interesting idea at first, but the implementation seems to be all about taking all responsibility for balancing from the devs and putting it into players' hands. Feel a bit weak? Grind a couple more CP, you'll be stronger then.2 -
Nihil✭✭✭I wrote this in the thread at the beginning of PTS when someone found out the formula for damage, and I think it pertains to this thread well.
" 2% critical rate (while having 50% increase to crit damage) is a 1 % increase to dps. While 177 spell power is equivalent to 1851 extra damage (in regards to COEF being 1), Thus if we were able to ever bring, ability + spell powerx10.46>185,142, 2 % crit would over take the spell power in damage. As we increase our crit damage this will become a lower target to reach (for sake of easy math 100 % increase to crit damage needing ability +spell powerx10.46 >92,571 for 2 % to come out ahead).
This also shows that for ability = power we would need to have a % increase to our ability of ~98% (I can only recall being able to increase it by ~ 50 % through passives / skills so thus not happening atm), but there might also be other factors involved with ability as ability directly modifies more aspects of the game then just damage (argonian potion passive if I remember correctly, I don't think the damage shield for sors is linked to spell power but to max magicka only and probably more that I can't remember).
As I can't get on to PTS right now I can't get an idea on how close we can get to these stats, but in general I think we will be hard pressed to get our ability and power up to a point where 2 % crit rate will over take 177 spell power."
Sense then we have found out more numbers and to cut a lengthy explanation short... even with max champion points providing base stat % increases, I have not found away to really increase it so ability = power in terms of dps gained (with minor and major buff on spell power / damage). The other stats like you said just seem a little lack luster too, regens could be nice if we had some hard hitting skills that costed a ton of mana (or for heavy armor tanks / damage deals but that might be primarily pvp if someone can make a build work for it). But Skills that semi fit that bill I have found locked behind timers / gimmicky mechanics reduceing their usefulness. I think they made spell damage / weapon power to strong on gear in all reality, I think it should give more damage the strait abilities but all other stats seem to fall short (dps wise) when compared to it. Even hundering rage with crit/stamina/crit/~1.5weapon damage stat would maybe be just a little better then martial knowledge 4 set bonuses.
I would like to see more unique gear that synergize well together, and with themselves. Like you showed with the city of ash set being out shown by some lower level gear, crafting is sitting very similar where you don't need to even work up to the top to necessarily get the best gear for any build.
(side note: elegant drops as a VR 7 set too)Edited by Nihil on 23 February 2015 09:011 -
Sharee✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭[nevermind, it wasnt really adding to the discussion]Edited by Sharee on 23 February 2015 09:531 -
GreyBrow✭✭✭✭Joy_Division wrote: »
2 piece Torug's: 177
5 piece "reward" set Burning Spellweave: 103.
@ZOS_GinaBruno Make this man president of ZOS immediately.3 -
DDuke✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭This just goes to show how woefully out of touch with their playerbase the team behind itemization is.
If something takes dozens, if not hundreds of hours & clearing relatively difficult content, of course it should be better than something you craft in 5 minutes with zero effort.
All AA/Hel Ra sets, except Twice-Fanged Serpent jewelry
Vicious Ophidian
Infallible Aether
Eternal Yokeda
Burning Spellweave
All useless vendor trash/deconstruct fodder after 1.6 (some of them already are)Edited by DDuke on 23 February 2015 12:211 -
Lied✭✭✭With the potential rescaling of VR1-14 gear if/when VRs are removed, combined with the invalidation of all VR1-14 gear when seasonal gear arrives, and of course how it all ties in with the CP system... I'd imagine 1.6 through like... 1.8.5 or something will be a very unstable period of time concerning balance.1 -
daemonios✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭This just goes to show how woefully out of touch with their playerbase the team behind itemization is.
If something takes dozens, if not hundreds of hours & clearing relatively difficult content, of course it should be better than something you craft in 5 minutes with zero effort.
All AA/Hel Ra sets, except Twice-Fanged Serpent jewelry
Vicious Ophidian
Infallible Aether
Eternal Yokeda
Burning Spellweave
All useless vendor trash/deconstruct fodder after 1.6 (some of them already are)
I disagree in 1 thing: 9-trait sets (and I know there's only one of those right now, but it's high time they introduced some more) should be on par with the best end-game drops. It takes 29 days or something to research ONE nirnhoned trait. If you want a 5-piece set, that's 58 days of research using 3 research slots, IF you can promptly get a piece to research in the first place (otherwise you'll typically pay 25k gold per piece, or 5k gold plus the trait stone).
Maybe make those 9-trait sets bound on pickup so crafters can't flood the market with them, but in any case there should be high rewards for the high effort in researching all traits.Edited by daemonios on 23 February 2015 13:111 -
DDuke✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭This just goes to show how woefully out of touch with their playerbase the team behind itemization is.
If something takes dozens, if not hundreds of hours & clearing relatively difficult content, of course it should be better than something you craft in 5 minutes with zero effort.
All AA/Hel Ra sets, except Twice-Fanged Serpent jewelry
Vicious Ophidian
Infallible Aether
Eternal Yokeda
Burning Spellweave
All useless vendor trash/deconstruct fodder after 1.6 (some of them already are)
I disagree in 1 thing: 9-trait sets (and I know there's only one of those right now, but it's high time they introduced some more) should be on par with the best end-game drops. It takes 29 days or something to research ONE nirnhoned trait. If you want a 5-piece set, that's 58 days of research using 3 research slots, IF you can promptly get a piece to research in the first place (otherwise you'll typically pay 25k gold per piece, or 5k gold plus the trait stone).
Maybe make those 9-trait sets bound on pickup so crafters can't flood the market with them, but in any case there should be high rewards for the high effort in researching all traits.
If I wanted to, I could get a full 9-trait set in the following 5 minutes just by knowing the right person(s). I can even craft 1/4 of the gear myself (never having spent a skill point in +research speed/slots).
All for a stack of Nightwood/Void Cloth/Voidstone, some style materials & trait gems.
Such a joke.
I'd be fine with crafted sets being equally strong (or even stronger than end game ones) if they required rare materials that took some skill to acquire.
E.g. "Tier 2 Voidstone/Voidbloom/Nightwood" (rename it something else), a green Ore/Wood/Cloth that only appears behind The Serpent in Sanctum Ophidia, or spawns randomly (once a day or so) in Cyrodiil (only when all factions are locked) in a random location, with a big announcement telling people it has spawned. Make harvesting it take something like 5 minutes, so it's not just "first come first served".
Probably a bad idea, but you get the jist.Edited by DDuke on 23 February 2015 13:331 -
daemonios✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭This just goes to show how woefully out of touch with their playerbase the team behind itemization is.
If something takes dozens, if not hundreds of hours & clearing relatively difficult content, of course it should be better than something you craft in 5 minutes with zero effort.
All AA/Hel Ra sets, except Twice-Fanged Serpent jewelry
Vicious Ophidian
Infallible Aether
Eternal Yokeda
Burning Spellweave
All useless vendor trash/deconstruct fodder after 1.6 (some of them already are)
I disagree in 1 thing: 9-trait sets (and I know there's only one of those right now, but it's high time they introduced some more) should be on par with the best end-game drops. It takes 29 days or something to research ONE nirnhoned trait. If you want a 5-piece set, that's 58 days of research using 3 research slots, IF you can promptly get a piece to research in the first place (otherwise you'll typically pay 25k gold per piece, or 5k gold plus the trait stone).
Maybe make those 9-trait sets bound on pickup so crafters can't flood the market with them, but in any case there should be high rewards for the high effort in researching all traits.
If I wanted to, I could get a full 9-trait set in the following 5 minutes just by knowing the right person(s). I can even craft 1/4 of the gear myself (never having spent a skill point in +research speed/slots).
All for a stack of Nightwood/Void Cloth/Voidstone, some style materials & trait gems.
Such a joke.
I'd be fine with crafted sets being equally strong (or even stronger than end game ones) if they required rare materials that took some skill to acquire.
E.g. "Tier 2 Voidstone/Voidbloom/Nightwood" (rename it something else), a green Ore/Wood/Cloth that only appears behind The Serpent in Sanctum Ophidia, or spawns randomly (once a day or so) in Cyrodiil (only when all factions are locked) in a random location, with a big announcement telling people it has spawned. Make harvesting it take something like 5 minutes, so it's not just "first come first served".
Probably a bad idea, but you get the jist.
I think that would still be an improvement over what crafted gear is now, but I have to say again, if 9-trait sets are bound on pickup, it would be enough. Not everyone has the traits researched to do this gear, and it represents a very long time investment, even if you don't have to actually play during all that time. Right now, I've spent most of my time since launch researching every trait in every piece of gear on my main character, am currently on the verge of finishing 9 traits in light/medium armour, and what do I have to show for it? Bugged freaking Twice-Born Star?
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SC0TY999✭✭✭✭IMHO 1.6 is far from ready for live. Gear sets have been a problem for a long time. Some crafted sets, especially those that require the highest number of traits, are rarely used because of useless bonuses, and some dropped sets have idiotic unchanging traits (e.g. reinforced, well-fitted). 1.6 adds huge nerfs to set bonuses, such as the ones you mention. I'll add the PvP jewelry/weapon set that gave 10% spell crit and was nerfed to 2% spell crit (now corrected to 4%...) and freaking *health*.
The Champion System may be the worst thing that happened to the game. It was an interesting idea at first, but the implementation seems to be all about taking all responsibility for balancing from the devs and putting it into players' hands. Feel a bit weak? Grind a couple more CP, you'll be stronger then.
They should allow master crafters be able to change traits.3 -
Helluin✭✭✭@Joy_Division
mate, I completely understand you.
For the droppable sets what you write is correct, but also for craftable ones.
Especially I agree with what you write about sets with hybrid stats.
I started a topic about these sets and hybrid builds less than one month ago and we still got no answer.
A big problem of 1.6 infact is how the damage scaling has changed without any changement on sets with mixed stats (with hybrid builds basically dead, useless sets and problems to switch amongst roles).
Damage scaling off stamina/weapon or magicka/spell together with the removal of softcaps created this issue that imho doesn't lead to build diversification, as the goal was, but to builds and gear even more similar.
The removal of softcaps helped those vocal people who wanted to stack just one stat and the ones having problem understanding stats. Since it wasn't hard to understand this, I prefer to refrain from any comment or any adjectives because it would have been true but not kind at all.
With the damage scaling system of 1.6 a softcap or an hardcap would have been better.
With the removal of softcaps, a mixed damage scaling system would have been better.
Instead we have both.
Yes, the system is really easy to understand now, but... where will be build diversification or "play as you want"?
The only big difference is given by passive skills, races, few skills, champion points, potions.
Builds and gear risks to be really similar instead.
There are many contents of 1.6 that I'm really looking forward to play on live server but I would have had more fun with a system leading to more diversification than this one.Edited by Helluin on 23 February 2015 14:51"... and the blue fire of Helluin flickered in the mists above the borders of the world, in that hour the Children of the Earth awoke, the Firstborn of Ilúvatar."2 -
Majax✭Too many wall of text. Just want to pop to say : stop making mandatory stuff for pvp lootable only on pve !
Go improve crafting stuff ^^0