PTS Update 45 - Feedback Thread for New Item Sets

ZOS_Kevin · January 12

This is the official feedback thread for the new item sets in Update 45. Please try out the new item sets and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

Which of the new item sets did you try out, and what did you think of them?
Did anything you received feel under or over-powered?
Would you include any of the new item sets in any of your current builds?
Do you have any general feedback?

BasP · January 13

Vandorallen's Resonance & Noxious Boulder
For the moment I've only tried the Heavy Attack sets because I was interested in seeing how they compare to the more commonly used HA sets. I don't normally use a Heavy Attack build myself, by the way, so my Khajiit HA Warden setup probably isn't optimized. Still, the comparisons are valid I suppose.

I felt that the new sets weren't necessarily underpowered. In fact, they are quite well balanced from what I've seen. I do think that they could be a tad stronger so that they'd be worth farming and using over the existing HA sets, however. Perhaps the 5th piece of Noxious Boulder could get a small increase to Heavy Attack damage after dealing damage with a HA, for example?

For what it's worth, my DPS with the different sets was:

Sergeant's Mail + Noble Duelist: 50K on a 6M Dummy, 89K on a Trial Dummy
Sergeant's Mail + Vandorallen's Resonance: 50K on a 6M Dummy, 86K on a Trial Dummy (with some lucky crits)
Sergeant's Mail + Deadly Strike: 50K on a 6M Dummy, 82K on a Trial Dummy
Sergeant's Mail + Noxious Boulder: 48K on a 6M Dummy, 81K on a Trial Dummy

Fledgling's Nest
Thematically, I really like the idea behind this set. I feel that it could use a pretty big buff to make it worth using over existing support sets though. Minor Courage is a buff that is easily gotten from, for example, the Arcanist's Domain and Soul Burst skills, so I have a hard time imagining that people will want to sacrifice an entire set (with a slightly awkward proc condition) for that buff.

I think that giving allies inside the nest a minor buff is worth considering. Minor Protection would fit thematically, for example. And as someone mentioned in another thread, Minor Courage could be turned into Major Courage so that it could be an alternative for Spell Power Cure or Olorime or something.

Tommy_The_Gun · January 13

Medium – Lamp Knight’s Art

2 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
3 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
4 – Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
5 – Gain 100000 Offensive Penetration. Reduce your damage done by 46%.

I mean... I have read it a couple of times, just to make sure I have not misread it. *counts zeros"...
...um... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... yeah five.. so that is 100K Penetration...
Sure, you deal like 46% less damage... which is kinda less relevant since you can compensate with critical chance and critical dmg done... yeah...

This set basically kinda converts all your Damge type into Olblivion DMG... single target, AOE, DOT... everythig.

This set gives way too much opportunity cost. It is something that normally is reserved for a Mythic Item, not a 5 piece set. And even if you compare the final bonus of this set to Mythic items, a lot of Mythic items are actually weaker...

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · January 13

Lamp Knight's Art is the "anti armor" set. You can stack 50k+ armor with Aetherial Ascension, Pariah, Gaze of Sithis, Lady mundus, Nord passive, and the Reinforced trait. Lamp Knight's Art trades 100k penetration for -46% damage done.

5 – Gain 100000 Offensive Penetration. Reduce your damage done by 46%.

Here's how this looks on paper.

I highlight 10% damage increase because many sets provide this value (e.g. Essence Thief) and Lamp Knight's Art must achieve this to exceed the opportunity cost of using a different set.

With no extra penetration, the enemy must have 37k resist or greater to achieve a net 10% damage increase.
If the enemy has Major Breach, they must have 43k resist or greater to achieve a net 10% damage increase.
If the enemy has Major and Minor Breach, they must have 46k resist or greater to achieve a net 10% damage increase.

My feedback is the damage reduction is too aggressive and should be reduced to 40%. Most players have between 20k and 30k resist and a very small number of players have above 35k resist. You must be very intentional about stacking armor that high and an even smaller number of players have over 40k resist.

Here's what the data looks like with 40% damage reduction instead of 46%.

With no extra penetration, the enemy must have 33k resist or greater to achieve a net 10% damage increase.
If the enemy has Major Breach, they must have 39k resist or greater to achieve a net 10% damage increase.
If the enemy has Major and Minor Breach, they must have 42k resist or greater to achieve a net 10% damage increase.

If the target has uncommon armor debuffs (Fracture poison, Crushing enchant, Roar of Alkosh, Tremorscale, Crimson Oath's Rive) or the player has a line of penetration from another set, then the opportunity cost becomes even greater.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · January 14

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

This set basically kinda converts all your Damge type into Olblivion DMG... single target, AOE, DOT... everythig.

Not trying to criticize but this isn't really accurate. The Lamp Knight's Art set doesn't bypass the damage reduction from Major/Minor Protection, Nibenay Bay Battlereeve, Contingency, Blue CP, Red CP, etc. Nor does it bypass block mitigation.

MincMincMinc · January 14

Lamp Knight's needs to be at 25-30% to be relevant as I outlined in my thread

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/671947/lamp-knights-art-makes-no-sense

TLDR:

the average range of pvpers sits between 24k and 28k. In most combat other than duels they will have major and minor breach applied by other players so this window becomes 15k and 19k resists or 23% and 29% mitigation. This for the most part translates to 23% and 29% damage done. When you compare the -46% damage done to the pen damage gained it means we are still -23% to -17% damage done and down a 5 piece bonus.

To make up the -23% to -17% damage done players will drop Ele sus or ransack and pick another skill. Currently there are no skils worth ~20% damage done unless you can think of one that people are not already running.

To make up for the 5 piece bonus players will swap weapons and traits. For instance, a sharp maul player will now run a Nirn Great sword for the 494wd. Which accounts for a 5 piece bonus that has build restrictions.

My suggested adjustment would be to change the -46% damage done to -30%. This means that for the skill trade you will need to make up for 1-6% damage done. This takes into account that this set will place restrictions on the user for what they can build for. I would also like to see on dedicated pvp sets like this we see more crit resist 2-4 piece bonuses instead of max stat which is basically useless now a days with how scaling works.

As a side suggestion change the verbiage of the set to help newer players understand better without getting confused. "ignore all enemy resists but lose 30% damage done"

Arunei · January 14

So Lamp Knight is essentially useless against NPCs/mobs since they don't have resists iirc, yes?

EDIT: Oh wait it's a RotW set, don't mind me lol. Not that there aren't PvP sets that can be used for PvE, this just is one of the ones that really can't.

MincMincMinc · January 14

Arunei wrote: »

So Lamp Knight is essentially useless against NPCs/mobs since they don't have resists iirc, yes?

sort of correct, mobs will never have high enough resists to match the 46% loss. Again you basically need the enemy to have 46*660= 30,360 resists to go even on the set. Then to make it worth wearing you need a 10-15% damage done boost. So if you add that on that means the enemy has to have 61*660=40,260 resists. Assuming you or a group member doesnt proc sundered or have built in major breach or any other debuff that affects their resists.

Again why the 46% damage done loss should be 30% or 25%. Otherwise this set will never see use which is a shame, sets like this really open doors for theorycrafting. Its actually nice to see someone came up with an amazing set concept that isnt a bloated paragraph long proc set that automatically plays the game for you.

ioResult · January 14

I applaud the test for Cyrodiil but I think we're all going to find the most math intensive things the server is doing in Cyrodiil is all the AoE calculations. We know this because Cyro bogs down when ball groups run around. Why? Literally all they cast are constant AoE abilities.

Why am I mentioning this?

Because half the new sets from the new dungeons all seem to have some sort of AoE component and will be abused by ball groups.

Why do so many of these sets have an AoE?

ESO_Nightingale · January 14

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the new item sets in Update 45. Please try out the new item sets and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:
Which of the new item sets did you try out, and what did you think of them?

Did anything you received feel under or over-powered?

Would you include any of the new item sets in any of your current builds?

Do you have any general feedback?

I didn't try any "new" ones because i don't feel motivated to after seeing nothing that appealed to me. But I tested relequen's update, if that counts as new. I'm not a fan of lines of penetration. penetration does literally nothing in organised raid groups so i think putting it on item sets is an easy way to hurt its viability in raid settings.

i don't think i'd include any new sets on my build because they're more of the same stuff we always get. they don't seem like they would fit well on mine.

as for general feedback, i really want a frost damage dealer's monster set or mythic item that rewards you for dealing a lot of frost damage, chilling enemies etc. Iceheart has a portion of it's budget related to shielding health, and Nunatak has a line of armor and only really is good for its major brittle. I really just wish i had a monster helmet that really screamed "ICE STAFF! ARCTIC BLAST! UNSTABLE WALL OF FROST! FROST REACH! WINTER'S REVENGE! CHILLED! FROST SCRIBING SKILLS LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!". something like "increases your frost damage done by 12% up to 25% based on the missing hp of your target" or "increases the duration and damage of your frost damage over time skills by 25%" or "when you apply the chilled status effect to an enemy, you apply a stack of shatter, increasing their damage taken from you by 5% for 2 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. at 3 stacks the stacks are consumed to deal frost damage to the target. after the stacks explode, you cannot gain additional stacks of shatter for 1 second".

Necrotech_Master · January 14

Arunei wrote: »

So Lamp Knight is essentially useless against NPCs/mobs since they don't have resists iirc, yes?

EDIT: Oh wait it's a RotW set, don't mind me lol. Not that there aren't PvP sets that can be used for PvE, this just is one of the ones that really can't.

NPCs do have armor but between 9100 and 18200, which is far too low for the lamp knight set to actually do anything (in fact you will be overall losing dmg)

ive estimated the "break even" point for lamp knight to be 30,500 armor, if the enemy is running less armor than this, it will overall be a net dmg loss

you will only see an effective net dmg gain if the enemy has more armor than that

(see skaraMinocs posts for visual charts describing this)

armor cap being 33k gives 50% dmg reduction, if you ignore that entirely but have -46% dmg you will overall only be getting a net gain of 4% more dmg if the enemy is at 33k armor

i think mathematically it would still be better to run a standard pvp build that has about 10-15k penetration over this lamp knight set, as the only enemies that it would come out to a net gain would be basically 35k+ armor heavy tanks

Tannus15 · January 14

Unleashed Ritualist is a trap for unwary sorcerer players.

Because of the changes made in Update 35 (yes, that update again) where prey was buffed from +20% to +45% pet damage, Unleashed ritualist is just a terrible set for sorcs to use.

the problem is the way the damage bonus is calculated. If you are using pets, which you obviously are if you want to use a set like this, then you are also using daedric prey. so let's do some really basic maths with it:

let petBaseDamage = 1000

let ritualistPetDamageBonus = petBaseDamage * 0.16 = 160

let preyPetDamage = petBaseDamage * 0.45 = 450

so prey, without ritualist looks like this :

let preyPet = petBaseDamage + preyPetDamage = 1450

add ritualist and this is what it looks like :

let ritualPet = preyPet+ ritualistPetDamageBonus = 1610

so what is the real damage bonus from running ritualist?

let petPercentage = ritualPet / (preyPet/100) = 111

So it's 11% effective damage.

This means you have a set designed around the pet class, which is of least benefit to the pet class.
Ritualist is a better set on a warden or a necro, than it is on a sorc.

Nerfing the pet damage into the ground and then putting that damage back into the prey damage bonus was a terrible idea and needs to be reverted.

This was all in the same patch:

Daedric Prey (morph): Increased the bonus to your pets’ damage to 45%, up from 20%.
Summon Unstable Familiar: Reduced the damage per tick by approximately 23%
Twilight Tormentor: Reduced the damage per hit of this morph's basic attacks by approximately 33%

Sorc has had these kind of terrible interactions since update 35. The class is fundamentally broken until the prey damage bonus is nerfed and the damage returned to the base skills.

BasP · January 15

Jerensi's Bladestorm Feedback
The new set that interested me most was Jerensi's Bladestorm and I figured I'd compare it to two other Dungeons sets, Pillar of Nirn and Aegis Caller. Considering I generally play ESO solo and never benefit from all of the buffs a Trial Dummy would give me, I only did some parses on a 6M Dummy and these were my results (I apologize for the subpar weaving):

I'll do some more tests with Jerensi's Bladestorm to see if I actually want to include it in one of my builds, but my first impression is that the set is pretty decent. I would prefer it if one of Jerensi's Bladestorm's Penetration lines would be changed into Critical Chance though, because that would make the set more useful for most PvE content. Even when playing solo it's not that hard to get close to the Penetration cap by other means with just 1 line of Penetration on a set when using The Thief mundus, whereas Critical Chance is a bit harder to increase.

I noticed that both Jerensi's Bladestorm and Orpheon the Tactician proc when using Traveling Knife with the following scripts by the way, which might be a bug?

Because I didn't expect that to count as an ability that leaves an effect on the ground. I'm glad it did though, because otherwise Jerensi's Bladestorm would have performed worse with the setup I used.

Orpheon the Tactician Feedback
I really like that this set deals damage when an enemy can't be stunned, which makes it useful in both PvP and PvE. It would be great if that mechanic could be added to similar sets that stun an opponent, such as Sellistrix. And maybe even the Warden's Arctic Blast could deal additional damage when an opponent can't be stunned?

That said, I don't see myself using the set as the damage seems a bit low to me. I used it in the parses above, and its damage is not even visible in any of the screenshots. Perhaps it would've procced more if I casted more abilities that could proc the set, but still...

Additional Vandorallen's Resonance Feedback
Considering most people probably use a Sorcerer Heavy Attack build, I thought I'd quickly create a setup for that and test Vandorallen's Resonance vs. Noble Duelist as well. My results were roughly the same as on the Warden in my earlier post, however: I did 90K DPS with Sergeant's Mail + Noble Duelist and 85K DPS with Sergeant's Mail + Vandorallen's Resonance.

I get that you don't want to release overpowered sets - and nobody likes to farm a truly overpowered set that gets nerfed in the next update - but I do think that Vandorallen's Resonance could use a buff. There's not much progression for a HA build if most of the best sets, aside from the Oakensoul Mythic, can simply be acquired in the base game.

xylena_lazarow · January 16

The best new set would be Rushing Agony nerfed to only work against Monsters. Needs to be gone from PvP.

Malprave · January 17

I used Jerensi’s Bladestorm on a Nightblade and liked it. I was proccing it with Twisting Path though, and wasn’t crazy about the vortex being centered on my character. I’d like it better if it appeared slightly in front of my char when using an aoe that begins at my feet.

Dovahmiim · January 17

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The best new set would be Rushing Agony nerfed to only work against Monsters. Needs to be gone from PvP.

This. ZoS need to stop adding new sets when they let aren't well informed enough to balance current sets.

ESO_Nightingale · January 17

Dovahmiim wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The best new set would be Rushing Agony nerfed to only work against Monsters. Needs to be gone from PvP.

This. ZoS need to stop adding new sets when they let aren't well informed enough to balance current sets.

Nah they should keep adding sets but they need to do frequent tuning passes instead of 4 times a year.

Tannus15 · January 17

Ritualist vs Nirn parses on magsorc

114k rele + ritualist + maw

121k rele + nirn + maw

Please, to all pet sorcs out there, the set is garbage. Please don't use it

ZhuJiuyin · January 17

The changes to Unleashed Ritualist do make the Pet-Build theory interesting, but Unleashed Ritualist still needs a moderate buff, and the Pet mechanic needs improvement. (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/672097/please- unify-the-rules-for-pets)

Although Unleashed Ritualist may be too powerful for pet-players (not limited to Sorc, don't forget that Warden and Necro also have pets) if the buff is excessive, especially in extreme cases where it works at the same time as other pets. (such as Maw Infernal, Trapping Webs synergy spider), but according to the currently known test results (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/672090/so-has-anyone-tested-unleashed-ritualist), Unleashed Ritualist is still far behind other meta sets.
The ideal situation is that a series of pet-related sets and common skills such as Unleashed Ritualist, Maw Infernal, Trapping Webs, etc. are adjusted at the same time to avoid a single set or skill being too powerful.
My suggestion is to buff Unleashed Ritualist to 18-20%. Maw Infernal's 1set bonus changed to crit and Maw's proc condition changed to summon Maw when a light or heavy attack crits. And Trapping Webs changed to allow teammates or the caster themselves to synergy, but the damage caused by spiders was reduced.

CameraBeardThePirate · January 19

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Medium – Lamp Knight’s Art

2 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
3 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
4 – Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
5 – Gain 100000 Offensive Penetration. Reduce your damage done by 46%.

I mean... I have read it a couple of times, just to make sure I have not misread it. *counts zeros"...
...um... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... yeah five.. so that is 100K Penetration...
Sure, you deal like 46% less damage... which is kinda less relevant since you can compensate with critical chance and critical dmg done... yeah...

This set basically kinda converts all your Damge type into Olblivion DMG... single target, AOE, DOT... everythig.

This set gives way too much opportunity cost. It is something that normally is reserved for a Mythic Item, not a 5 piece set. And even if you compare the final bonus of this set to Mythic items, a lot of Mythic items are actually weaker...

Too much? The set is extremely underwhelming. Just do the math.

Most enemies in PvP will have at least Major Breach on them, sometimes Minor Breach as well. In order for this set to be even remotely worth it, the target needs to have at least 40k+ armor, which does not happen very often.

If the enemy has Protection or other mitigation like Esoteric, it loses even more value since Penetration is useless against that.

MincMincMinc · January 20

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Dovahmiim wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The best new set would be Rushing Agony nerfed to only work against Monsters. Needs to be gone from PvP.

This. ZoS need to stop adding new sets when they let aren't well informed enough to balance current sets.

Nah they should keep adding sets but they need to do frequent tuning passes instead of 4 times a year.

Unfortunately they have been grilled for years about how much they change the balance. They have lost a lot of the casual player base to wild set change swings every 3 months. Its one thing when you have a full crafter and millions of gold to change gear every month or two, but most people can't keep up.

Really the problem is that they do the pts release and that is it. They really need to watch for the first two weeks after patch release and determine a final balance. For example they pts tarnished nightmare, which it seems fine other than one or two people pointing out a somewhat high tooltip. Once it gets to live though 30x people are getting hit by 5 of them in an aoe which they can't counterplay in anyway. If 50% of players are using a set in pvp a week after release, there is a clear issue.

bar_boss_A · January 20

this game does not need any more item sets. A way to refurbish old sets that are deprecated since years would go a long way though.

Varana · January 22

Orpheon the Tactician

Please adjust the animation. A set effect should never obscure the battlefield so the tank is unable to see what's going on, especially not for such a long time. It's bad enough with stuff like the Maw daedroth or the Colossus.

Psycho925 · January 29

Jerensi's Bladestorm feedback

Thank you so much for the Jerensi's Bladestorm set. I think it opens up new options for builds crafting, optimizing the completion of solo content. It's a very successful set!

Because this set works with aoe abilities, you naturally want to use it only on your back bar. This further opens up options to use an Arena weapon set on your front bar.

However, if you only wear the set on your back bar, the second bonus for penetration doesn't work, which reduces the value of the idea

I propose switching the bonuses: the 2-piece and 3-piece bonus should be penetration, and the 4-piece bonus something else

Tannus15 · February 11

Poisonous Serpent is total garbage for PvE

as a proc set it's down in the bottom of my dps

and it's not bringing my poisoned status effect up anywhere near where it needs to be to make up for it

How did this end up in this state?

Tannus15 · February 11

just to emphasise how far off the mark this set is, I did a parse with the same setup except running red mountain

the red mountain proc is an easier condition to meet and it does more damage than the proc and the poison status dot from poisonous serpent.

even worse, the poison status from the red mountain parse was 1k dps reducing the value of poisonous venom even further.

and now i'm getting somewhat snarky about the whole thing, but I really can't see how this change can be justified.
this is from the Developer Deep Dive - Item Sets Part 2

Does the complexity or the effort required to earn a set factor into its power? For example, when comparing a crafted set to one that drops from a dungeon boss?

Nadav: The short answer is yes, crafted and overland sets tend to be less complex, but the best way to think about it is to consider the players who are seeking a set out. For example, both Overland and Trial sets are designed for PvE, but an Overland set is likely to be acquired by players who aren't going to do Trials.

Maybe they're looking for an easier experience, so they’d want something more passive, whereas because Trial players are highly specialized, the sets they can find can be a little bit more active in the way they operate.

That said, when it comes to sets like those found in Trials, we do try to mix it up and give some simpler Trial sets on top of complex ones. We want players to have that option and be an efficient Trial player at any level of experience.

Here was have an overland set clearly out performing a trial set, and it's not even close.

To underline this, I picked red mountain because it's a proc set from overland i could think of off the top of my head, not because it's some meta thing that someone might actually use. It's not a strong set. It's just way better than the "updated" trial set.

Fischblut · March 24

I don't know if this warrants a new thread, because this set won't be changed anyway, but I think that Squall of Retribution monster set from Exiled Redoubt dungeon could have been a very fun set for "master of all elements" roleplay

Current implementation is boring and doesn't fit anything I've seen in this dungeon

Based on what's going on during the boss fight, this set could have the following effect:

"When you take damage, you surround yourself with elemental aura. This aura deals X frost, X flame, X lighting, X physical damage to nearby enemies each second for X seconds." Damage doesn't have to be big, but the visual effect would be amazing!

I just randomly got this idea yesterday, when I had Whorl of Depth water circle visual combined together with Flame Wall of Elements... This sight instantly made me think of this dungeon set, which could have the same elemental vibe.

ESO_Nightingale · March 27

Fischblut wrote: »

I don't know if this warrants a new thread, because this set won't be changed anyway, but I think that Squall of Retribution monster set from Exiled Redoubt dungeon could have been a very fun set for "master of all elements" roleplay

Current implementation is boring and doesn't fit anything I've seen in this dungeon

Based on what's going on during the boss fight, this set could have the following effect:

"When you take damage, you surround yourself with elemental aura. This aura deals X frost, X flame, X lighting, X physical damage to nearby enemies each second for X seconds." Damage doesn't have to be big, but the visual effect would be amazing!

I just randomly got this idea yesterday, when I had Whorl of Depth water circle visual combined together with Flame Wall of Elements... This sight instantly made me think of this dungeon set, which could have the same elemental vibe.

I'm so bored of objectively bad tank and support monster helmets that no-one is going to use. For ages now I've really wanted a frost damage monster helmet or mythic item that really supports the damage of the playstyle. Iceheart is nice and all but part of its power budget is related to defense and nunatak is a tank's monster helmet with bad damage, uptime and a 1pc bonus. These are the only 2 helmets we have. I'd love something that bolsters chilled proc damage, rewards multiple applications of chilled within a small window or something.