Snake in the Stars, good or bad?

dsalter

right now im on the fence of if its good or not because it has more cons than pros.

Pros =

• every heal tick per 100m is about 1.5k of oblivion damage just for applying a debuff.

cons =

• damage seems on the low side if the point of it is to punish healing stackers its not going to outpace the healing income.
• has a 12second CD so you cant mass apply it to a ball group.
• you cannot stack it so you cant use it to pressure one by one.

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

TimeDazzler

dsalter wrote: »

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

Ok, so let me get this straight. You want it to deal 3510 oblivion damage, every 100ms, every time someone is healed. Be able to apply it with status effects as well, and remove the 12 second cooldown so you can just apply it like plaguebreak per target. Yessir, that sounds balanced, Cyrodiil will be empty in 72 hours.

dsalter

TimeDazzler wrote: »

dsalter wrote: »

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

Ok, so let me get this straight. You want it to deal 3510 oblivion damage, every 100ms, every time someone is healed. Be able to apply it with status effects as well, and remove the 12 second cooldown so you can just apply it like plaguebreak per target. Yessir, that sounds balanced, Cyrodiil will be empty in 72 hours.

then fix heal stacking to near infinity.
if this set is ment to counter the heal stacking, it needs to deal damage that can contest.

fred4

It was hopefully overnerfed and stillborn, much like Soldier of Anguish. I'm fine with that. Sets that defile (when it was stronger) or that otherwise interfere with your healing have been deeply unpopular. Same goes for Oblivion damage. Sloads was one of the few sets ever to go live and be rapid-patched before 3 months.

ZOS are running out of ideas. That's fine. We have 500+ sets to choose from. If these kind of sets end up taking "dead set space" and are never reworked, that's honestly no great loss.

Luede

dsalter wrote: »

right now im on the fence of if its good or not because it has more cons than pros.

Pros =

• every heal tick per 100m is about 1.5k of oblivion damage just for applying a debuff.

cons =

• damage seems on the low side if the point of it is to punish healing stackers its not going to outpace the healing income.
• has a 12second CD so you cant mass apply it to a ball group.
• you cannot stack it so you cant use it to pressure one by one.

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

could you at least make the effort to think about your "ideas" before you present them to us?

FirmamentOfStars

The issue here is, that a designed set to counter ballgroups and heal stacking will hurt much more everybody else than ballgroups. If we would accept OPs suggestion of increasing snake of stars damage, just imagine what the set will do on a single player? Most solo players have 2-3 heals running at all times, meaning snake of the stars would deal like 10k oblivion damage per second to a single player without healing from others. Now as a templar main, I would die even faster, if i am staying in my rune and ritual, with living dark and vigor going using puncturing strikes. Thats potentially 28k oblivion damage in one second (if snake in the stars tooltip would be around 3.5k).

The only way providing counters to ballgroups via sets is to make sets doing more damage, the more enemies are in the vicinity, so a similar effect like proximity detonation. Or a set that increases damage done based on enemies group size. It is not that hard to get the grasp of it and the devs did a decent attempt with the set, which grants penetration after a heavy attack increased by the numbers of enemy players in a radius around the original target.

Or the devs get it finally right with the base heal stacking mechanics…

Arrow312

I think this set will just infect single player with HOTs more then grps. Ballgrps or Zerg will outheal this also the CD seems a little bit high 12 sec on player and 12 sec for the set proc. I dont think you can counter a Ballgrp with this set. For duels or against small grps it could work.

as said sets which making damage base on the amount of enemies will be more usefull or cap the stacks of healing.

Supershutze

The problem with sets that directly counter healing isn't actually a problem.

Every half decent pvp build in existence relies almost exclusively on healing for defence. This is because healing has no counter, whatsoever.

Snake in the stars per-nerf would have been extremely powerful, but that just means it's doing it's job; a set designed to counter healing is going to counter builds that rely heavily on healing... which at the moment is all of them.

The entire point of sets like this is to reduce TTK to the point where fights actually go somewhere, **but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

Snake in the Stars, released in the pathetic state it's in, pitifully fails to accomplish it's entire reason for existing.

Luede

Supershutze wrote: »

The problem with sets that directly counter healing isn't actually a problem.

Every half decent pvp build in existence relies almost exclusively on healing for defence. This is because healing has no counter, whatsoever.

Snake in the stars per-nerf would have been extremely powerful, but that just means it's doing it's job; a set designed to counter healing is going to counter builds that rely heavily on healing... which at the moment is all of them.

The entire point of sets like this is to reduce TTK to the point where fights actually go somewhere, **but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

Snake in the Stars, released in the pathetic state it's in, pitifully fails to accomplish it's entire reason for existing.

if healing is a problem, you need to address the problem and not develop a set that counteracts other problematic sets

Tommy_The_Gun

Tbh. If they could change something about this set, I wish they would make this set to affect ultra high heal stacking more, but not affect the "low end" heal stacking. Because if some random players are healed by themselves + some random healer - they can still be killed quite easily. On the other hand of the spectrum we have ball groups with 10+ Vigor stacked and some Radiating Regenerations. And the result is that they can outheal even 10+ sieges hitting at the same time.

I would lower the damage per tick to something like 200 - 300, but at the same time I would add a % damge bonus that will increase if the player affected is in group and it would sale with group size:

(5 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery, Applying a Major or Minor Debuff to an enemy applies Star Venom to them for 4 seconds. This effect can occur once every 12 seconds. Whenever an enemy with Star Venom is healed, they take 300 Oblivion Damage, up to once every 0.1 seconds. The damge is increased by 150% per group member they are grouped with. An enemy can only be effected by one instance of Star Venom every 12 seconds.

Again, I don't blame ball groups for using tools & mechanics that are available to them. It is rather the fault of the devs that they made such huge disproportions between "low en" and "high end" min-maxing available in a 1st place.
I mean devs of this game have a huge experience when it comes to mmos and yet the don't realise that multiplicity is the worst enemy of balance ?

The ideal situation is to deal with the problem through battle spirit & additional limits & caps. Limit the stacking of same healing abilities, or add some group based debuff to battle spirit (the larger the group, the lower things will scale etc).

And yet ZOS for whatever reason is choosing the worst solution possible. Add a set that would not be a solution and will only make things worse. The more changes this dev team is introducing, the more I think that Cyrodiil is being balanced around Ball Groups, not the other way arround. They are the target audience.

TechMaybeHic

Im not a fan of increasing damage based on group size alone. If you ever try to run with less experienced players, you know how the game already disincentivizes bringing a weak link, with VD, Occult Overload, Plaguebreak, Dark Con, etc. It's unhealthy for the game PvP community to leave less skilled players to group with themselves and better players to avoid them. Even if you are a super leet, cool, "small man only. Rest of you are zerglings!" you hurt yourself because there then exist 2 perceptions of the game. Leet meta-build players and groups. Then the horde of players that nobody has taken in and helped improve.


I think ultimately; what they did to this set was make it nearly worthless because it has so much downtime. Yet people I run with are watching closely just whether we need to not use some heals that don't heal more than it; but I doubt it will be an issue.

Would be nice if they addressed the stacking directly, but if I were to redesign this set; I'd get rid of either the individual target cooldown or the wearer cooldown; lower the initial damage slightly and I would have it escalate in damage per tick so rapid procs of it escalate quickly to a big hit.

fred4

Supershutze wrote: »

Every half decent pvp build in existence relies almost exclusively on healing for defence. This is because healing has no counter, whatsoever.

Are you kidding? The counter to healing is damage.

**but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

I believe this is true. No reason to be surprised, though. I only know one category of player who is possibly not afraid. That's the dueller. However being a good dueller requires a lot of experience. It's only then that you can win fights by pulling the right move at every point, thereby outdamaging players faster than they can damage you. In an open world context the closest playstyle is probably that of a squishy nightblade that uses stealth or Shadow Image without leaning on those skills. Othwerise it's just not viable.

If you are new (and not a sniper), you need tankiness so that you can experience fights lasting more than a few seconds and get your bearings. You need room - time - to experiment with your skill rotation without dying immediately.

If you are a class with standard mobility, basically anything but a sorc or a nightblade, you also need tankiness. Duelling only works when there is a single opponent. In open world you need high mobility or you need to be somewhat tanky. Yes, line-of-sight is the ultimate defense, but mastering that takes a bunch of experience too.

You start out in PvP, you have to figure out your defense. Many people, perhaps, don't move beyond that, or they like the brawler classes. Historically there was only one place that didn't penalize you for dying, the original IC with immediate respawn in the same location. The closest we have, these days, that allows you to rejoin the same fight with the same dynamics and learn by trying again, are BGs. That's arguably more (group) pressure than the anarchy that was original IC.

In open world, outside of the stealth and speed classes, there has always been a case for being tanky so you don't get obliterated by uneven numbers as easily. A majority of players choose some degree of survival. It doesn't matter what ZOS do. If they adjust the meta, people just find ways of returning to the status quo.

Finally, I think healing must be balanced with damage. From my personal psychological point of view, there must not be a scenario where I lose agency. If I feel, even for one second, that I am doomed, that there is nothing I can do to save my character, that is extremely off putting. Such moments, of course, happen when you get zerged, but I'm talking in even fights. Hard CCs have cooldowns for that reason, so they don't become oppressive. Even roots do these days.

Insufficient or disabled healing feels much the same way, at least to me. I've been dotted up in the past, by a single player, to where I could not outheal the pure DOT pressure alone. This resulted in a scenario where I was doomed, no matter what I did. What do you think I did after that experience? Of course I changed my build for more healing. Was there another solution? Should I have worked on my duelling, aiming to solve the problem with counter-attack? I dare say many players don't take the game seriously enough to take that route and see it through.

MEBengalsFan2001

dsalter wrote: »

TimeDazzler wrote: »

dsalter wrote: »

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

Ok, so let me get this straight. You want it to deal 3510 oblivion damage, every 100ms, every time someone is healed. Be able to apply it with status effects as well, and remove the 12 second cooldown so you can just apply it like plaguebreak per target. Yessir, that sounds balanced, Cyrodiil will be empty in 72 hours.

then fix heal stacking to near infinity.
if this set is ment to counter the heal stacking, it needs to deal damage that can contest.

I agree with healing stacking. You should not have 8+ vigor and regen on you. I mean come on devs fix your game. Jeez...

Ball groups can survive because of Regen and Vigor stacking, not from actual skill.

Jierdanit

Supershutze wrote: »

The entire point of sets like this is to reduce TTK to the point where fights actually go somewhere, **but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

The problem with straight up reducing TTK is that it's going to completely suck for less experienced players.
Sure it would be great if 2 players with good builds would actually be able to kill eachother in a 1v1 but you can't do it in a way that leads to newer players getting killed even faster than they already are.

Necrotech_Master

honestly i think what would probably make this set ok is to just remove the 100ms cooldown on applying the oblivion dmg

if someone has say 15 HOTs on them, theres a good chance a good portion of those are ticking during that 100ms cooldown (its a really short cooldown, but still a cooldown), so even if 3 of those 15 hots ticked during the same 100ms cooldown, thats already straight up negating the oblivion dmg from the proc

its not like the proc lasts that long, it can be purged, and it has both a 12 sec global cooldown and a 12 sec per target cooldown (so even if you were focusing 1 target it would have a maximum 25% uptime which is really low)

AdamLAD

Why does it have to be oblivion damage ? Or damage at all. It should do what it's intended use is. To mitigate healing. So why doesn't it mitigate healing ? 🤣🤣..........

TechMaybeHic

My smallest HOT us Refreshing Path and it crits for more than this does damage. Without crit in the heal, this tick is like 200-300 more damage so I might take 1200 damage over 4 seconds?

So unless I'm stacking a massive amount of very few heals; it's really not much net damage and a much longer cool down

Lapin_Logic

dsalter wrote: »

TimeDazzler wrote: »

dsalter wrote: »

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

Ok, so let me get this straight. You want it to deal 3510 oblivion damage, every 100ms, every time someone is healed. Be able to apply it with status effects as well, and remove the 12 second cooldown so you can just apply it like plaguebreak per target. Yessir, that sounds balanced, Cyrodiil will be empty in 72 hours.

then fix heal stacking to near infinity.
if this set is ment to counter the heal stacking, it needs to deal damage that can contest.

How much do you think 1 HoT ticks for?

The set is meant to inconvenience a player by cutting his HoTs by 70% roughly, it's not meant to be a one hit nuke death sentence.

Araneae6537

I agree with what many others have said: I don’t think this was a good concept for a set and instead the exact same HoTs shouldn’t stack, at least not more than two. That seems the most fair and in line with how buffs and other mechanics work.

WeylandLabs

TimeDazzler wrote: »

dsalter wrote: »

i'd double or even triple the damage output so it can apply pressure, remove the cooldown, allow it to trigger on both status affects AND debuffs, the 1 per player is fine if all of the rest is done.

Ok, so let me get this straight. You want it to deal 3510 oblivion damage, every 100ms, every time someone is healed. Be able to apply it with status effects as well, and remove the 12 second cooldown so you can just apply it like plaguebreak per target. Yessir, that sounds balanced, Cyrodiil will be empty in 72 hours.

In my opinion *


It was fine the way it was and didn't need to be touched in the first place. If you look at it a different way It was less damage per 1 second for 6 seconds vs the 4 second at 100ms insane hypothetical paper logic it has today.

It's wasn't practical ingame it was showcased for a nerf only in one setting to accommodate a false narrative if it being OP. The snake debuff is easily counterable with another set, and we all know this. So for players to push an agenda of it being it being insanely strong exposes bias in playstyles, builds and a creative capacity to counter.

But Snake was DOA after week 2 PTS and was kinda "meh" after. I'd like to debate this subject if any players can come up with a reasonable and practical rebuttal ?

And @TimeDazzler please stream again !

Necrotech_Master

thats why im thinking on paper it might be a little overnerfed, if your talking about hitting a player in a ball group

but will have to see how its being utilized in a live environment, and how it would affect say a solo player such as myself

i rarely run in groups, and the only self heals i run are vigor and dark cloak

dark cloak heal ticks are only like 700-800 if im moving, and like 1300-1400 if im not moving (non crits)

vigor heal ticks are roughly like 1100-1200

with the current snake set, i would basically have no healing for 4 sec because 90%+ of the healing is being negated by the snake dmg, and my healing is already not very strong, and i have no built in self purge like most other classes being a NB

say there was a ganker running this, if they hit me with that, i would just be dead instead of potentially having recovery time, because instead of just trying to break out of cc and dodge the next attack, any healing i would try to do for the next 4 sec basically wont work, if im already at half hp thats danger territory to begin with

so i think it really depends on the situation its being used in

WeylandLabs

fred4 wrote: »

It was hopefully overnerfed and stillborn, much like Soldier of Anguish. I'm fine with that. Sets that defile (when it was stronger) or that otherwise interfere with your healing have been deeply unpopular. Same goes for Oblivion damage. Sloads was one of the few sets ever to go live and be rapid-patched before 3 months.

ZOS are running out of ideas. That's fine. We have 500+ sets to choose from. If these kind of sets end up taking "dead set space" and are never reworked, that's honestly no great loss.

The fact you remember Soldier of Anguish on the PTS is pretty amazing. I do also and it was a set that time that could have killed super tanky players. But had a downside in dueling towards a particular playstyle at that time.


PTS Snake vs PTS Soldier was similar in thoery and are at different times in the game. PTS Snake was far more needed today vs PTS Soldier back then when Duroks just got nerfed.

The game today is in a completely different stage of time vs 2017/18 it was in.


Today and how I look at it -


Playstyles : Nerfed

PvP - Tempo : Buffed

Hybridization : Buffed

Sets : Nerfed / PvP only

Functionality : Nerfed

Homogenized class : Buffed

Creativity : Nerfed



Now playstyles was nerfed because there was always a way to get around another person's defenses.

Per Utility - min/max - defile - dots - burst

The tempo at which the game is played today vs back then is completely different. Every one has traits of one another.

Stam sorcs - Speed and Crit Heals / Swift + adjusted sets and passives for all classes.

Magplars - Heals and Utility / Set bonuses with easy functionality through homogenized rotations in all other classes.

Dk's - Survival / CP Tree - Sets we all know this

Nightblades - Burst / Sets with high crit damage and heals.

I could keep going but have a lot to do today.

But what I'm saying is this game, as a business personaly should'nt be taken too seriously.

While we grow from gaming and benefit from it. Gaming means different things to different people. Your view of it could be looked at as practical, but it also could hurt the business.

Because ESO isn't an Esport players have to understand that this is only a game to enjoy, have fun and make your own world. That world for what I believe shouldn't be to convince others that ESO is a serious competitive game.

With that said players make ESO what ever it is, but to take it so seriously inhibits others fun. And if players are not having fun despite broken items, sets, passives, buffs, nerfs is always bad for business.

Because let's face reality - ESO from 2014 to 2018 ESO had a more engaging player base than it does today and was a lot more fun.

Holycannoli

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

thats why im thinking on paper it might be a little overnerfed, if your talking about hitting a player in a ball group

but will have to see how its being utilized in a live environment, and how it would affect say a solo player such as myself

That's why the devs need to address HoT stacking in PvP directly - in Cyrodiil and IC specifically - instead of trying to counter it with sets. Eliminating the stacking in PvP altogether can mess with BGs too much with this set in use.

Holycannoli

Holycannoli wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

thats why im thinking on paper it might be a little overnerfed, if your talking about hitting a player in a ball group

but will have to see how its being utilized in a live environment, and how it would affect say a solo player such as myself

That's why the devs need to address HoT stacking in PvP directly - in Cyrodiil and IC specifically - instead of trying to counter it with sets. Eliminating the stacking in PvP altogether can mess with BGs too much with this set in use.

Cyrodiil and IC (during events now as it's dead the rest of the time) are totally different environments with unique balance issues that don't carry over to BGs. I don't envy the devs the task of balancing everything properly but simply eliminating stacking HoTs, or introducing pretty harsh diminishing returns for every HoT beyond the first, would go a long way.

Don't know why they don't do it. Maybe they can't.

katorga

Supershutze wrote: »

The problem with sets that directly counter healing isn't actually a problem.

Every half decent pvp build in existence relies almost exclusively on healing for defence. This is because healing has no counter, whatsoever.

Snake in the stars per-nerf would have been extremely powerful, but that just means it's doing it's job; a set designed to counter healing is going to counter builds that rely heavily on healing... which at the moment is all of them.

The entire point of sets like this is to reduce TTK to the point where fights actually go somewhere, **but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

Snake in the Stars, released in the pathetic state it's in, pitifully fails to accomplish it's entire reason for existing.

Didn't ZOS try a set that applied "absorb the next X in healing" several patches ago? That was actually a better idea than this.

Either way, everyone loves to complain about. healing, but they complain MORE about anything that interferes with their healing. End result, healing debuffs and healing interference sets are over nerfed, and ZOS keeps boosting healing.

The real solution is to follow proc set scaling and make healing skills scale with max mag/stam only (and damage skills scale only with wep/sp damage) and break the link between stacking damage to boost your offense and your defensive healing. That will NEVER happen tho - pvp'ers love their unkillable builds.

OBJnoob

Yes, PvPers love their unkillable solo builds. They hate those unkillable groups though. Amusing.

Holycannoli

katorga wrote: »

Supershutze wrote: »

The real solution is to follow proc set scaling and make healing skills scale with max mag/stam only (and damage skills scale only with wep/sp damage) and break the link between stacking damage to boost your offense and your defensive healing. That will NEVER happen tho - pvp'ers love their unkillable builds.

I agree. Healing and damage should not scale with the same stat. They should be separate, ideally wholly separate but this is a good compromise.

Who remembers the days in MMORPG PvP where you had to target the healers first? Not in ESO. No, in ESO everyone is flinging heals around and there's no such thing as a "vulnerable" healer. If you can heal well you can also DPS well and that's never a good combo in PvP games. Great for solo games, in fact it's practically required, but not in PvP games.

dsalter

Holycannoli wrote: »

The real solution is to follow proc set scaling and make healing skills scale with max mag/stam only (and damage skills scale only with wep/sp damage) and break the link between stacking damage to boost your offense and your defensive healing. That will NEVER happen tho - pvp'ers love their unkillable builds.

I agree. Healing and damage should not scale with the same stat. They should be separate, ideally wholly separate but this is a good compromise.

Who remembers the days in MMORPG PvP where you had to target the healers first? Not in ESO. No, in ESO everyone is flinging heals around and there's no such thing as a "vulnerable" healer. If you can heal well you can also DPS well and that's never a good combo in PvP games. Great for solo games, in fact it's practically required, but not in PvP games.

druids in wow were a great example of why you should never merge stats, they would be hybrid healer damage because of how well their base skill scaled with intelligence to the point they were better damage dealers than their damage setup (feral)while being nightmarishly hard to kill

Kartalin

My interpretation of this set was more anti-Mara’s/Hist-Sap rather than anti-heal-stacking. But with pressure from more than just this set I expect you could make life very difficult for one person in such a group. If your goal is to 1v12 one of these groups with a specific set, outside of a very well-timed bomb, I don’t know why players think that should be something that is possible.

WeylandLabs

katorga wrote: »

Supershutze wrote: »

The problem with sets that directly counter healing isn't actually a problem.

Every half decent pvp build in existence relies almost exclusively on healing for defence. This is because healing has no counter, whatsoever.

Snake in the stars per-nerf would have been extremely powerful, but that just means it's doing it's job; a set designed to counter healing is going to counter builds that rely heavily on healing... which at the moment is all of them.

The entire point of sets like this is to reduce TTK to the point where fights actually go somewhere, **but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

Snake in the Stars, released in the pathetic state it's in, pitifully fails to accomplish it's entire reason for existing.

Didn't ZOS try a set that applied "absorb the next X in healing" several patches ago? That was actually a better idea than this.

Either way, everyone loves to complain about. healing, but they complain MORE about anything that interferes with their healing. End result, healing debuffs and healing interference sets are over nerfed, and ZOS keeps boosting healing.

The real solution is to follow proc set scaling and make healing skills scale with max mag/stam only (and damage skills scale only with wep/sp damage) and break the link between stacking damage to boost your offense and your defensive healing. That will NEVER happen tho - pvp'ers love their unkillable builds.

You have to make a YouTube channel and showcase paper theory from practical application today. That's why there is success in nerfing practical items sets now it's strictly based on dueling scenarios and not open world solo, gvg, ball and zergs. That doesn't play and you cant test that on the PTS for ballgroups and/or 'Gvg and solo open world. They take one aspect highlight a bias viewpoint throw on a build that's only for 1v1's and points out only the negative aspects for that situation.

Thus resulting in sets coming into live DOA like snake, this has happened for years now and wont change anytime soon. The pts lacks players wanting to pvp and its pointless to even pvp because its for nothing.

My opinion - Set nerfs or buffs shouldn't be based on one aspect with only dueling in mind. You can gauge a set better at live then make the adjustments towards the damage, heals or utility . The pts was or should be only to find bugs and broken mechanics in a set. Not balancing it in one controlled setting or situation to have a cognitive bias or favoritism towards something that could possibly interfere with your own playstyles builds and content.

Having disruptive items in gameplay is healthy in any game today for business and entertainment purposes.

FirmamentOfStars

WeylandLabs wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

Supershutze wrote: »

The problem with sets that directly counter healing isn't actually a problem.

Every half decent pvp build in existence relies almost exclusively on healing for defence. This is because healing has no counter, whatsoever.

Snake in the stars per-nerf would have been extremely powerful, but that just means it's doing it's job; a set designed to counter healing is going to counter builds that rely heavily on healing... which at the moment is all of them.

The entire point of sets like this is to reduce TTK to the point where fights actually go somewhere, **but for some reason people are afraid of dying in PVP.**

Snake in the Stars, released in the pathetic state it's in, pitifully fails to accomplish it's entire reason for existing.

Didn't ZOS try a set that applied "absorb the next X in healing" several patches ago? That was actually a better idea than this.

Either way, everyone loves to complain about. healing, but they complain MORE about anything that interferes with their healing. End result, healing debuffs and healing interference sets are over nerfed, and ZOS keeps boosting healing.

The real solution is to follow proc set scaling and make healing skills scale with max mag/stam only (and damage skills scale only with wep/sp damage) and break the link between stacking damage to boost your offense and your defensive healing. That will NEVER happen tho - pvp'ers love their unkillable builds.

You have to make a YouTube channel and showcase paper theory from practical application today. That's why there is success in nerfing practical items sets now it's strictly based on dueling scenarios and not open world solo, gvg, ball and zergs. That doesn't play and you cant test that on the PTS for ballgroups and/or 'Gvg and solo open world. They take one aspect highlight a bias viewpoint throw on a build that's only for 1v1's and points out only the negative aspects for that situation.

Thus resulting in sets coming into live DOA like snake, this has happened for years now and wont change anytime soon. The pts lacks players wanting to pvp and its pointless to even pvp because its for nothing.

My opinion - Set nerfs or buffs shouldn't be based on one aspect with only dueling in mind. You can gauge a set better at live then make the adjustments towards the damage, heals or utility . The pts was or should be only to find bugs and broken mechanics in a set. Not balance it in one controlled setting or situation to have bias or favoritism towards something that could possibly interfere with your playstyles builds and content.

Having disruptive items in gameplay is healthy in any game today for business and entertainment purposes.

There are several reasons why set testing belongs on the PTS and not the live server:

Availability: All sets are easy accessible on the PTS thanks to having crates for all but craftable sets, unlimited transmute stones, enchantments and upgrading materials. If a set would be deemed to be good based on patch notes and then only released on live server, the item pieces will be sold for very high value, making the acquiring of the set very expensive and therefore testing it not even desirable through high expenses plus the unnecessity, when the set gets nerfed in an incremental patch right after you acquired it.

PTS being easy to "change": I just listed some arguments, why changing the live server has big impact for the econimic for example. But the PTS is very accesible for changes, since the impact of changes there do not have consequences like changes on the live server, making it easy to test things and get feedback for the devs aswell. If a change would destroy the economics or balance and would come to live server right away, you can imagine the reaction of the playerbase. That is why there is a PTS.

Incremental live changes: I just mentioned that changes to the live server could be detrimental. Having sets being tested on the live server as you suggest, would request the devs doing lots of incremental patches, so that the set chan be adjusted frequently without crazy OP sets lasting for months (regular patch cycles). More and frequent incremental patches, even though requested from the players, will make the chances for the devs to *** up something go up. I guess this is why we dont have these regular small patches often and only, when something is utterly broken.

I agree with you, that the amount of players testing on the PTS is too small and do only test new things in some vacuum scenario. But most of the experienced players have a very good idea of how a sets function will translate into other scenarios or content after testing it in a vacuum. Many people even already know right away just by reading patch notes, what new sets will be underwhelming, decent, strong or even OP.