Will enchantments ever be useful?

Faulgor · February 2015

Although I burried all hope of seeing a decent enchanting system, couldn't we have at least useful enchantments? If anything, 1.6 made everything worse, when it is probably the last chance for quite some time to see improvements.

Currently, the only enchantments for armor pieces are attribute increases. While this is boring enough, couldn't they at least be on par with set bonuses? A VR14 legendary set bonus for health is slightly above 1000 Health, whereas a legendary VR14 enchantment is only 700 Health. Even the traits on jewelry are better than this, easily above 800, although I have no exact numbers here for legendary grades. Combined with the fact you only get the full effect of armor enchantments on head, chest and leg pieces, this is absolutely pitiful.

Jewelry enchantments were moderately important, at least on live. 14 weapon or spell damage per glyph was on par with the better equipment sets, and attribute recovery enchantments were even better than many sets. On PTS, both are a joke. While a set bonus adds about 177 spell and weapon damage at maximum, I believe an enchantment is about a third of that value (as there are no +damage glyphs in the template boxes, I'm going by memory). Attribute recovery enchantments add 64 per glyph, which yields a maximum of 192 on three jewelry pieces- again, an absolutely laughable amount compared to sets and the scale of recovery values in 1.6.

But the absolute worst are weapon enchantments. I can honestly say I have never enchanted a weapon in ESO since beta. There is simply no point.
On PTS, a fire/shock/frost/poison glyph adds 490 damage, with a cooldown of 4 seconds. This translates to 122,5 dps, if you get it to proc without delay every 4 seconds. Ideally, most fights in PvE don't even last long enough for a second proc. Even with a powered weapon and a full Torug's Pact set, you only get 637 more dps - still laughable when compared to the necessary dps of upwards of 10k in 1.6, even more so considering the commitment of using a specific set and items for it.
Other weapon enchantments aren't any better, with a 406 damage shield for 5 seconds, a decrease of the target's weapon damage by 64 or of their armor by 1116 - and one that actually upsets me, attribute drain enchantments with 367 damage and 166 attribute gain. That's 41,5 health, magicka or stamina per second on a 4 second cooldown. Slightly better than the jewelry glyph for attribute recovery, I'll give you that - but still so unbelievably underwhelming. And this actually upsets me because instead of making this mechanic which already existed in the game useful, you introduced attribute gain on heavy attacks - which not only introduced a new mechanic, but is also absolutely nonsensical.

In summary, I don't even know what to give feedback on anymore. I've been suggesting improvements to enchanting since beta - removing the cooldown, increasing the magnitude, scale magnitude with spell power or magicka, improve the system as a whole by making more use of soul gems, so on and so forth - but it does not even seam to exist for you guys. Apparently it matters so little that there is not even a simple sound or visual effect for applying an enchantment. I would worry if such an integral part of the Elder Scrolls series is not really used by the community, but to you, it was apparently still too powerful.

I mean, what is even your idea with enchantments, ZOS? What's the intended design here? I just don't get it.

TL;DR
Enchantments suck. Fix them or remove the whole system, in its current state it's just an embarrassment.

angelyn · February 2015

I agree with you that enchants need looking at-and you are right to say that 1.6 made them worse since they took a reduction in effectiveness. I also fedback on how the enchants came over from 1.5 to 1.6 based on the comparison exercise I did in this thread. I tested it with a lv 7 alt who had no passives etc, at an enchanting station (without equipping the enchant)So I have some numbers available..but not everything that you mentioned..However, if they scaled all enchantments similarly regardless of if they are V1 or V10 then the ratios would still apply UzCIeDg.jpg?1

If all mobs and our health scaled by 1.7, why did some enchants scale by less? Perhaps it's because you are supposed to make up the difference between champion points?

Max Health Enchants scaled on a 1:5 Ratio
Max Magicka/Stamina scaled on a 1:6 Ratio
All recovery enchants scaled on a 1:3 Ratio
Reduce cost enchants scaled up on a 1:8/9 Ratio
Spell Resistance/Armour glyphs scaled on a 1:6 Ratio
X resistance Glyphs (eg Fire Resistance) scaled on a 1:2 Ratio
Spell/Weapon Damage Glyphs increased on a 1:2 Ratio
General Damage enchants for weapons varied between 1:3 and 1:10 Ratio
You can definitely see that spell/weapon damage glyphs damage didn't scale up as much as other things.
The glyph that scaled the lowest was the bash glyph at only 7%.I don't even use this glyph but it looks odd to me.
I will be switching all my fire resist glyphs to spell resist/armour since elemental resistance specific glyphs scaled much less (180% vs 600%) I suspect that they nerfed this so much because Vamps have had 10% reduction in fire damage. So technically, vamps have had no change from 1.5 because their enchants will probably give at least 10% less protection than they did in 1.5. Perhaps vamps will now be even more vulnerable to fire, due to this. To be honest, I'm tired of doing all the maths only to be shot down or it fall on deaf ears. So perhaps someone else can work out how vulnerable vamps will be to fire in 1.6
Weapon enchants I will now either go with standard glyph of x damage (fire/frost etc), but most likely I will go for weapon glyphs that absorb health. Both these types of glyphs levelled the most out of the damage ones.
I'm thinking reduce cost glyphs over recovery..Since they got scaled higher than recovery

I did find my enchants useful though in 1.5,perhaps less so in 1.6 due to wierd scaling, but as you say, it definitely needs looking at in 1.6. I know many people have said that they are now wondering why they bothered to level up enchanters.

AlnilamE · February 2015

You know, coming from TES games, when I first started playing ESO I was a bit underwhelmed by Enchanting. But then I realized why the limitations to enchantment type are there and how to use good enchantements to benefit my build.

I now have a happy Level 50 enchanter.

I'm not sure why you are comparing set bonuses with enchantments, since they don't replace each other. You can add a health enchantment to a set piece that has a health bonus. Or add magicka, since the set already gave you enough health.

The base qualities of Jewelry are also on top of whatever enchantment you put on that piece of jewelry, so having a piece that has the trait you want is a good thing, and you have a lot of flexibility on what enchants you want to put on in addition to that.

If you think enchantments are useless, you should try going out with armor that's not enchanted, then put enchants on to see what the difference is.

DeLindsay · February 2015

Weapon Glyphs have an ICD of 8 seconds not 4. One thing about that I've always been bugged with is that there's no SD Glyph like the WD Glyph we already have.

angelyn wrote: »

[*] I will be switching all my fire resist glyphs to spell resist/armour since elemental resistance specific glyphs scaled much less (180% vs 600%) I suspect that they nerfed this so much because Vamps have had 10% reduction in fire damage. So technically, vamps have had no change from 1.5 because their enchants will probably give at least 10% less protection than they did in 1.5. Perhaps vamps will now be even more vulnerable to fire, due to this.

1.6.2 nerfed Fire Resist Glyph even further to just over 2K for VR10-14 Legendary, but they also nerfed Resist all to just over 1K. That's a value of roughly 3.5% Fire Resist, or a bad joke basically. On Live right now the Flame Glyph is 1550 with a 3250 hard cap for Resistance making 1 single Fire Glyph reach Fire Resist hard cap (in Light or Heavy Armor). On PTS right now, even with the 40% weakness instead of 50%, it looks like Vampires are going to take FAR more damage from Fire than Live.

It would take all (3) Fire Glyphs (10.5%) and all 24 starting points spent in the Elemental Defender Star in The Lady constellation (9.2%) to get close to the value of a SINGLE Fire Glyph on Live, which is 23.8%. It will actually take 41-44 points in Elemental Defender + the (3) Glyphs to be exactly the value of that Glyph on Live or 88 points and no Glyphs. Granted we'll have 10% less weakness. I'm trying to stay optimistic but I'm starting to see the validity to comments some have been making in regards to the Champion System being a cover for a massive nerf to how we've all been playing since launch.

angelyn · February 2015

DeLindsay wrote: »

Weapon Glyphs have an ICD of 8 seconds not 4. One thing about that I've always been bugged with is that there's no SD Glyph like the WD Glyph we already have.

angelyn wrote: »

[*] I will be switching all my fire resist glyphs to spell resist/armour since elemental resistance specific glyphs scaled much less (180% vs 600%) I suspect that they nerfed this so much because Vamps have had 10% reduction in fire damage. So technically, vamps have had no change from 1.5 because their enchants will probably give at least 10% less protection than they did in 1.5. Perhaps vamps will now be even more vulnerable to fire, due to this.

1.6.2 nerfed Fire Resist Glyph even further to just over 2K for VR10-14 Legendary, but they also nerfed Resist all to just over 1K. That's a value of roughly 3.5% Fire Resist, or a bad joke basically. On Live right now the Flame Glyph is 1550 with a 3250 hard cap for Resistance making 1 single Fire Glyph reach Fire Resist hard cap (in Light or Heavy Armor). On PTS right now, even with the 40% weakness instead of 50%, it looks like Vampires are going to take FAR more damage from Fire than Live.

It would take all (3) Fire Glyphs (10.5%) and all 24 starting points spent in the Elemental Defender Star in The Lady constellation (9.2%) to get close to the value of a SINGLE Fire Glyph on Live, which is 23.8%. It will actually take 41-44 points in Elemental Defender + the (3) Glyphs to be exactly the value of that Glyph on Live or 88 points and no Glyphs. Granted we'll have 10% less weakness. I'm trying to stay optimistic but I'm starting to see the validity to comments some have been making in regards to the Champion System being a cover for a massive nerf to how we've all been playing since launch.

@DeLindsay I appreciate that someone has done the maths and a post from a fellow number cruncher is always welcome to me

but, I now feel ready to chuck my vampire PVE sorcerer out the window.

Surely the fire resist nerf must be a bug. They couldn't seriously have put in the patch notes that they've reduced the fire damage and then actually nerfed the enchants so that vamps end up taking MORE fire damage than live on purpose?

I'm going to post your calculations in the feedback thread..perhaps it's not intended.*Hopes beyond all reason that it's not intended*

newtinmpls · February 2015

AlnilamE wrote: »

If you think enchantments are useless, you should try going out with armor that's not enchanted, then put enchants on to see what the difference is.

First, gotta say that I love your character names (listed in your signature).

Second, I agree that enchantments are more than meets the eye. I have a .... 28th level orc/sorc/tank who uses a frost enchantment on his 2-handed sword. No, not so much for the damage add (it's not huge) but for those times when he criticals and turns his opponent into a pillar of frost.

Its just wonderful to see. Usually his (templar) partner will poke the hapless former enemy with some sort of light effect just before he crumbles to snow. I have no idea what she is using but the game effect is that it looks like she poked him and he fell apart.

AlnilamE · February 2015

LOL! Thank you! I need to update their levels as I've been working on some of them.

I hear you! When I use a destro staff, I tend to put an enchantment that's a different element from the staff. For example, a fire staff will have an ice enchantment. That way, if a mob has a resistance to the element of the staff, I can still hit them with the enchant element.

On my NB, I was using 5 Night Mother's and 4 Hunding's for Dual Wield, until I realized that I could enchant my dagger with the "reduce armor" enchant and that was acutally better than the Night Mother's set bonus, so I switched to 5 pieces of Hunding's instead and put one "reduce armor" and one "increase armor" on each of my daggers. I love the idea that I'm pretty much sucking armor out of my enemies...

Faulgor · February 2015

AlnilamE wrote: »

If you think enchantments are useless, you should try going out with armor that's not enchanted, then put enchants on to see what the difference is.

I never enchant my armor before veteran ranks. After, is it noticable? Sure. But even food is more important.
On PTS, if you enchant your armor with 7 stamina glyphs, you get 2939 stamina; 7 health glyphs add 3232 health (without infused pieces). Purple food adds 2880 to stamina AND magicka as well as ~3100 to health. It really doesn't make or break a build, it's simply one more piece to the puzzle, and one of the smaller ones to be honest.

But armor enchantments are not the big problem, they are mainly boring. Jewelry and weapon enchantments deserve a closer look, though.

angelyn · February 2015

@DeLindsay I've just read that some vampire passives took an undocumented nerf too( in addition to the fire resist enchant nerf and possible nerf to Dunmer passives)

I plan to check as soon as I can but I'm really getting annoyed with all the nerfing that wasn't in the patch notes, unless they sneakily all fall under the "rebalance" umbrella

DeLindsay · February 2015

angelyn wrote: »

@DeLindsay I've just read that some vampire passives took an undocumented nerf too( in addition to the fire resist enchant nerf and possible nerf to Dunmer passives)

I plan to check as soon as I can but I'm really getting annoyed with all the nerfing that wasn't in the patch notes, unless they sneakily all fall under the "rebalance" umbrella

Undeath wasn't nerfed it was just fixed. apparently it was bugging out and actually mitigating more than it's max 33%. Both tooltips read identical on Live and PTS 1.6.2.

Yes the Dunmer Fire resist Passive got nerfed, but I can't verify how much exactly as my VR14 Vampire is Bosmer. If I base it off what my Racial is (Resist Affliction, 1440 against Disease/Posion) then it's barely 2%. The new hard cap for Spell Resistance and Armor is 32,500 from what I've read. That means 1% for either is 650. Part of the nerfs are because there's a good amount of Resistance/Armor to be had in the Champion System but like I said above, even adding up EVERYTHING I couldn't reach 50% Spell Resistance, even against only Fire. Mind you this is only using stats not abilities. If you add the 5120 Major Ward and whatever gives you Minor Spell Ward (960) you'd get to 50% for a short duration. This is ofc months from now or longer as it would require 100 pts in 2 different Stars (meaning no less than 600 total pts to get that far).

BTW, the exact value of the nerfed VR10-14 Legendary Fire Resist Glyph on 1.6.2 is 2183, just slightly less than 3.5% Fire resist. Resist all, and Armor, is now 1116. ZoS even said that specific resistance Glyphs would be twice as strong as Resist all, even that's untrue. Double 1116 is 2232 not 2183. Yes it's a very small variance but still an incorrect statement.

At this point if 1.6 goes Live as is (values of everything, not the bugs) I probably won't even wear my Fire Neck anymore as I can get almost triple it's value out of the 24 points The Warrior starts with putting them into Elemental Defender. There are Glyphs of FAR more value than ~3.5% Fire resist. Actually it only takes 16 points in Elemental Defender to double a single Fire Glyph. The 10pt Passive in The Lady is VERY valuable so it's worth putting at least 10 into Elemental Defender (for Vampires/PvE Tanks at least) and 10 pts alone nets you 5% Fire Resist.

angelyn · February 2015

DeLindsay wrote: »

Undeath wasn't nerfed it was just fixed. apparently it was bugging out and actually mitigating more than it's max 33%. Both tooltips read identical on Live and PTS 1.6.2.

Phew! It's just as well because I forgot I can't test anyway at the moment with EU being on the test templates.

DeLindsay wrote: »

Yes the Dunmer Fire resist Passive got nerfed, but I can't verify how much exactly as my VR14 Vampire is Bosmer. If I base it off what my Racial is (Resist Affliction, 1440 against Disease/Posion) then it's barely 2%. The new hard cap for Spell Resistance and Armor is 32,500 from what I've read. That means 1% for either is 650. Part of the nerfs are because there's a good amount of Resistance/Armor to be had in the Champion System but like I said above, even adding up EVERYTHING I couldn't reach 50% Spell Resistance, even against only Fire. Mind you this is only using stats not abilities. If you add the 5120 Major Ward and whatever gives you Minor Spell Ward (960) you'd get to 50% for a short duration. This is ofc months from now or longer as it would require 100 pts in 2 different Stars (meaning no less than 600 total pts to get that far).

Damn,why wasn't it in the patch notes? Perhaps it's truly a bug. I'm hoping

DeLindsay wrote: »

BTW, the exact value of the nerfed VR10-14 Legendary Fire Resist Glyph on 1.6.2 is 2183, just slightly less than 3.5% Fire resist. Resist all, and Armor, is now 1116. ZoS even said that specific resistance Glyphs would be twice as strong as Resist all, even that's untrue. Double 1116 is 2232 not 2183. Yes it's a very small variance but still an incorrect statement.

I'll add in this to what I posted in the bug section.

DeLindsay wrote: »

At this point if 1.6 goes Live as is (values of everything, not the bugs) I probably won't even wear my Fire Neck anymore as I can get almost triple it's value out of the 24 points The Warrior starts with putting them into Elemental Defender. There are Glyphs of FAR more value than ~3.5% Fire resist. Actually it only takes 16 points in Elemental Defender to double a single Fire Glyph. The 10pt Passive in The Lady is VERY valuable so it's worth putting at least 10 into Elemental Defender (for Vampires/PvE Tanks at least) and 10 pts alone nets you 5% Fire Resist.

Same here, resist element glyphs took a MASSIVE nerf. The spell absorption on the lady is very cool. At the moment my main is VR11-time to level to 14 pronto so I can get all those points.

ZRage · February 2015

I also don't get why they NERF gear relevance in the game why actually that is the biggest part which keep people playing the game. Grind and hunting for new items, ability to craft good items and finding decent stuff worth something.

Especially weapon enchantments that also have a cooldown ... WTF it's not even worth bothering to have enchantment at all?

Also why not add new unique items / enchantments / gear from world drop / boss drop? It would be cool if people had a chance to find good stuff from fissures or chests or dungeons. Just proper amount of random element and difficulty should be paired with it.

Ezareth · February 2015

I can't speak to PvE but magickal resists in PvP are broken again. Vampires who are trying to rely upon fire resistance glyphs in PvP shouldn't waste the enchant slot.

Oughash · February 2015

ezareth_ESO wrote: »

I can't speak to PvE but magickal resists in PvP are broken again. Vampires who are trying to rely upon fire resistance glyphs in PvP shouldn't waste the enchant slot.

The only jewelry enchants that seem worth it are the cost reduction ones (~200/per). All others have terrible scaling.