PTS Gold road pen and paper Criticisms. (Prone to change and cheese.)

Skullstachio

Disclaimer: these are prone to change over time but in the current state, this would be "my" critical thought logic and may differ from soul to soul, mind to mind, and may change over time as the weeks roll by, there is also some added goofiness to it, but it may also just be me.
It would also be wise to read the actual patch notes before proceeding as I will not provide the effects of the sets here. Not out of laziness mind you, it is because I have serious trust issues regarding the current landscape of the gaming industry and I need to make like palworld and chillet.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/pts-patch-notes-v10-0-0

Another thing to note. Wouldn't it have also been wise to add some new earnable class sets to the Infinite archives with each chapter? Seems kinda weird that IA would very well turn out to be a one and done job for the gold/septims...

Armor Sets:
Symmetry of the weald:
I could probably see this being used on either a tank or healer for more status application, DPS will get more out of direct damaging status effects.
direct damaging status effects. (Sundered, overcharged, diseased, concussed and chilled.) will have more consistent application while also being slightly detrimental to poisoned, hemorrhaging and burning status effects since it is done over time and constantly reapplying Status effects DoTs may be a hinderance.

Macabre Vintage:
Honestly just looks like a PvE version of the PvP Vicious Death set with bleed damage and higher damage that only works on PvE targets just as plaguebreak similarly only works on PvP targets. for AD cleaning, 50-50 but slightly better, but other than that, not as appealing.

Ayleid refuge:
Wouldn't this be better if it were activated once every 3 seconds upon bracing rather than blocking an attack? especially in harder content where one wrong move can almost instakill? Plus 11% DR is just 1% below the necromancers nobility in decay but upfront, short lived and somewhat "dead" if you will when there are better sets out there already.

Highland sentinel:
High uptime while immobile, possibly the highest raw crit chance of any craftable armor set alone in PvE settings, what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot in a situation that calls for a more mobile fight without using charge and teleport abilities. Maybe a few broken crit based necromancers utilising death knell if done right but no bones about it, its kinda mid.

Tharriker's strike:
I could see this being used for 2-handed weapon memes a little, place a buncha dots until wrecking blow is the only one left, use wrecking blow followed by a heavy, rinse and repeat until all dots tick/expire, reapply dots, etc.
Also lightning staff heavy attack builds using oakensoul have just been thrown a bone.

Threads of war:
Now this here... I have some serious questions and quite a few gripes which may change throughout the week, same with the other sets outlined both above and below.
who's the wisecracking ravenous rodent from the shivering isles that came up with this? Because unless there is an unaforementioned change (not counting the werewolf changes) in light/heavy attacks across the whole board yet to surface or missed in the first batch of patches. I distinctly remember that all light/heavy attacks have 0% chance to apply status effects. Meaning that no amount of status chance granted will ever allow them to proc any status effects whatsoever, hence the facilitation of using specific enchantments in order to get the desired status effect outcome when not using non-status effect related enchants like the glyph of weapon damage, glyph of hardening, etc.

Mora scribes thesis:
I see this as a selfish set in group settings, not so much for solo play, I can also see this being used by oakensouldiers if you catch my meaning as the buffs provided by the mythic add on to the sets uptime immensely, adding 11 minor buffs and 5 Major buffs for 100% uptime on 640+ critical chance and +11% critical damage/healing done, having it on medium armor when using just the weapons/jewels is good for solo play, but in group content, whole different ball park where it may be more situated for the light armored players it is originally intended due to how easy it is to reach the critical damage cap, not as easy for critical healing.

Slivers of the null arcana:
I honestly wouldn't completely know what to say about this one, but I do know another piece of PvP power creep when I see it, but at the same time, it depends on how it actually plays out in a combat scenario that I cannot properly describe, xynode or a few other youtubers like skinnycheeks or even hack the minotaur might be able to show it in action once the PTS has been patched up.

Xoryn's masterpiece:
This looks like a hybridised version of worm cultist and hircines veneer if they added flat magicka/stamina to you and 11 group members. Most likely gonna be a piece for healers and maybe a handful of magicka Tanks.

Lucent Echoes:
Definitely a group buffer as this will add on even more to the critical damage cap, on an interesting sidenote, with all the many possible sources of critical damage available, I think the combat team may need to revisit the Critical Damage cap and see if it needs to be raised. raising the cap from 125% to 200% seems like a good way to go as it is something only just barely achievable in solo play, but ultimately to go all in on it would require sacrifices in raw power and other departments. but in a group setting, is feasibly a lot easier to achieve than solo and with some to almost no sacrifice. give it time...

Rourken Steamguards:
Kinda heavy handed ain't it. Good way to break most dungeon mechanics that don't have oblivion damage based mechs. I can definitely see quite a lot of use for solo players more than most, but it is simueltaneously somewhat obscure on many fronts.

Shadow Queens Cowl:
PvE guard/witness based wall hacks, didn't think I'd see the day. But on a more serious note, wouldn't it have been better to make it a medium cowl? To reflect the stealthplay that medium armor offers? I also see this as a cheese mythic for the thieves guild/dark brotherhood dailies.

The saint and the seducer.
Ah yes, another one of uncle sheos toys, whack it on with Kynmarchers cruelty and daedric trickery and presto you got yourself a walking talking wheel of fortune (and misfortune) waiting to start another Sanguine party like its going out of fashion.

Combat and Gameplay
I'll only be touching on the warden so with that out of the way.

The damage touchup to the netch & its morphs with granting 5% bonus damage done when not cleansing negative effects is a really nice addition, at minimum and maximum, in the right scenario, it can last anywhere from 0 seconds (if cast with a negative effect as it actually tries to cleanse on cast and every 5 seconds.) up to about 30 seconds if no negative effects are on you between each 5 second interval.
I do have some concern when it was mentioned that, and I quote

"In order to help the Warden's damage production without rocking the boat too much in PvP (where they already are plenty strong), we're adding a conditional bonus that will mainly activate in PvE. We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line."

I know this would involve moving the damage components from the Winters Embrace skill line into Animal Companions, but What would this entail exactly?

Because turning falcons swiftness into a slottable damaging perma pet instead of a mobility buffer outshined by the many other tools, classes, etc. in tamriel would be a good start.

Necrotech_Master

the macabre set that causes enemies to explode, i think it might be OK for a trash set, though i dont know why it specifies 50% of the enemy max hp, as 98% of PVE enemies are going to be well over the 48k amount to cap the dmg

the only place it might be under that is overland

even if you go into a normal group dungeon, most enemies are 60k hp minimum, which would be over the 48k needed to reach the dmg cap

i actually was talking with some friends about it last night and there were people suggesting that it could still be used in PVP to trigger on the NPCs there such as guards in cyro or anything in IC

LunaFlora

i really like Tharriker's Strike and am glad to see another non combat mythic with Shadow Queen's Cowl.
Mora Scribe’s Thesis also indeed seems useful to pair with Oakensoul.


Making Falcon's Swiftness a pet would be awesome yes.
The Warden changes are a bit frustrating as i really like using Arctic Blast and Winter's Revenge for damage, even Crystallised Slab is useful sometimes.

And though the Netch change is nice i don't love the Animal Companions magicka morphs.
Like i only really use Deep Fissure because of the Breach debuffs and Fetcher infection because Fetcher Swarm can't be used on more than one target at once.

I've been using the Warden's Bleed Damage morphs way more since we lost the Magic Damage bonus from the Piercing Cold passive.



And when they do add new class sets i feel like Quarter four is likeliest as that's when the Archive was added as well.