Depends upon what you're doing. +12% damage from a simple 2-piece is actually godly strong. There are infinite 5-piece sets that wish that they were even half that powerful. OTOH, it's a giga-nerf if someone was using it with Jabs, Flurry, etc.

i personally stopped using it when they removed the bleed dot it used to do lol, didnt really like the new version (and with the new changes its definitely not improving)

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i personally stopped using it when they removed the bleed dot it used to do lol, didnt really like the new version (and with the new changes its definitely not improving)

Same here.

I used that thing along with Dro'Zakar (to be clear, NOT in PvP) because it was one of the few supplementary Bleed sources in the game. Then it was randomly snatched away. Yet here we are, still playing and (I hope) enjoying the game (for the most part).

Which is perhaps another way of saying... whenever these big set changes come in and they're decried as the end of the world... it really isn't. It's perhaps the end of the specific thing that you were doing, and that's not fun, but there's always another thing out there to try.

I feel bad for the 'Plars and those holding it down with Flurry in 2024 but everyone will find something new to build with.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Depends upon what you're doing. +12% damage from a simple 2-piece is actually godly strong. There are infinite 5-piece sets that wish that they were even half that powerful. OTOH, it's a giga-nerf if someone was using it with Jabs, Flurry, etc.

It's still a strong bonus, but it's pretty obvious why it needed a nerf, it wasn't just good on flurry/jabs setups. As a comparison, MA Destro gives 1250 once a second. MA 2H gave up to 560, all you had to do was deal at least 2.23 direct damage hits a second to match, lets just say 3/s total required to exceed.

• 1/s is already covered from light attack weaving.
• 1/s will be covered by most abilities as they tend to have a direct damage hit on cast depending on if you pick them correctly. Eg. Twin Slashes instead of Degeneration.
• 1/s for common abilities like Sorc's 3x pets auto attacks, Warden's Bear auto attack, Templar's Burning Light.
• 1/s for all enchants 1-2 of them via 4s CD, most status effect procs for Chilled, Diseased, Concussed, Overcharged, and Sundered.

Those 4 things cover at least 2.23 or 3 times a second.. For some setups, it was close to 5-6 times a second, like Sorc, highly inflating their PVE DPS especially when you pair in Flurry/Jabs/Force Pulse/Wield Soul + Sorc Script/Bound Armaments/Haunting Curse/Atronach, etc. Now you consider how the buff isn't attached to an aoe dot you can walk out of, it buffs your character and improves low scaling direct damage like status effects by effectively doubling them, and you can see why it was so strong.

All that said, very sad to see it go. I really liked how it made you think about your build, I'm very much apposed to boring % multipliers that ZOS seem to like to source on everything instead of unique bonuses and interactions that are fun to build around. All it needed was a slight nerf to make it harder to hit the value I just outlined of 3x a second.

Also, this was not a PVP nerf, it's clearly a PVE nerf, very few people waste a slot on a gap closer, let alone an entire 2P set bonus as well. The set is used on like 6/7 classes for PVE DPS if you look up any parse video over the past 2-3 years it's behaved this way.

Sluggy wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Depends upon what you're doing. +12% damage from a simple 2-piece is actually godly strong. There are infinite 5-piece sets that wish that they were even half that powerful. OTOH, it's a giga-nerf if someone was using it with Jabs, Flurry, etc.

It's still a strong bonus, but it's pretty obvious why it needed a nerf, it wasn't just good on flurry/jabs setups. As a comparison, MA Destro gives 1250 once a second. MA 2H gave up to 560, all you had to do was deal at least 2.23 direct damage hits a second to match, lets just say 3/s total required to exceed.

• 1/s is already covered from light attack weaving.
• 1/s will be covered by most abilities as they tend to have a direct damage hit on cast depending on if you pick them correctly. Eg. Twin Slashes instead of Degeneration.
• 1/s for common abilities like Sorc's 3x pets auto attacks, Warden's Bear auto attack, Templar's Burning Light.
• 1/s for all enchants 1-2 of them via 4s CD, most status effect procs for Chilled, Diseased, Concussed, Overcharged, and Sundered.

Those 4 things cover at least 2.23 or 3 times a second.. For some setups, it was close to 5-6 times a second, like Sorc, highly inflating their PVE DPS especially when you pair in Flurry/Jabs/Force Pulse/Wield Soul + Sorc Script/Bound Armaments/Haunting Curse, etc. Now you consider how the buff isn't attached to an aoe dot you can walk out of, it buffs your character and improves low scaling direct damage like status effects by effectively doubling them, and you can see why it was so strong.

All that said, very sad to see it go. I really liked how it made you think about your build, I'm very much apposed to boring % multipliers that ZOS seem to like to source on everything instead of unique bonuses and interactions that are fun to build around. All it needed was a slight nerf to make it harder to hit the value I just outlined of 3x a second.

To be fair, it's not like it was trivial to kill people with the setup. You need to use probably the single most clunky skill in the game as a gap closer and then pray that your barswap actually works. Then you need your opponent to hang tight for at least another two seconds while you get a good head of steam all while being completely unable to block or bash and being pretty easy to read. Dodge basically negates flurry entirely and even if you just block it reduces most of the damage to nothing. Yeah, it can hit super hard but you really have to move fast and it's basically impossible to combo it with any kind of meaningful stun. It's also excptionally hard to use when being chased by multiple people.

Then there's scribing. Since that stuff has come out and people have started to aquire it the amount of damage and defense that someone with access to that DLC has really started to pull ahead. I think this item was a good tradeoff between risk and reward but it's getting harder and harder to keep up with previously existing gear and skills and I just don't see the value in using it now when I know it's not going to outpace a single-use skill that gives huge shields or does a large delayed AoE burst of damage.

I edited my post for clarification, this comment was a PVE perspective, the main reason it was actually nerfed. Very few people used it in PVP, and it was performing fine there. It was overperforming in PVE.

I have a feeling this set was only nerfed this patch, especially so late into it because of 1 reason that I found day 1..

Shared Pain

You could effectively double the damage, and the proc has no cooldown, making it deal 20-30% of your dps against 1 target which would have become obscene in 1vX, still will be with other damage done sets, but those are way more tame and have heaftier requirements. Shared Pain has a really low tooltip on purpose, this set circumvented that balance decision.

BananaBender wrote: »

I see it as a buff for 90% of the builds

In what real sense is it a buff for 90% of builds though?

Plars, Sorcs and Wardens were performing decently with it, but were behind the main meta classes anyway. So its a nerf to the classes underperforming. Sorcs need a decent spammable like rapid strikes, which it nerfs. Wardens rely on chilled procs, which it nerfs. Plars rely on jabs which it nerfs.

Arcanists, Necros and MagDKs all rely heavily on DoTs so weren't using it much any way.

Nightblades are probably the only real beneficiaries of this buff.

Less than 20% of top 100 parses on esologs use the 2H anyway, so its not exactly overperforming in reality, even if it does on their spreadsheet in some very particular cases.

@Theist_VII I dunno, maybe because if you label it only about templars other classes might feel somewhat overlooked?

This is a huge nerf to sorcs. The vMA 2h is doing comparable dps to the other backbar weapons but it's worse to use with less cleave.

I can't think of a PVE situation where you're not better off just using the vMA bow or inferno staff.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Depends upon what you're doing. +12% damage from a simple 2-piece is actually godly strong. There are infinite 5-piece sets that wish that they were even half that powerful. OTOH, it's a giga-nerf if someone was using it with Jabs, Flurry, etc.

It's still a strong bonus, but it's pretty obvious why it needed a nerf, it wasn't just good on flurry/jabs setups. As a comparison, MA Destro gives 1250 once a second. MA 2H gave up to 560, all you had to do was deal at least 2.23 direct damage hits a second to match, lets just say 3/s total required to exceed.

• 1/s is already covered from light attack weaving.
• 1/s will be covered by most abilities as they tend to have a direct damage hit on cast depending on if you pick them correctly. Eg. Twin Slashes instead of Degeneration.
• 1/s for common abilities like Sorc's 3x pets auto attacks, Warden's Bear auto attack, Templar's Burning Light.
• 1/s for all enchants 1-2 of them via 4s CD, most status effect procs for Chilled, Diseased, Concussed, Overcharged, and Sundered.

Those 4 things cover at least 2.23 or 3 times a second.. For some setups, it was close to 5-6 times a second, like Sorc, highly inflating their PVE DPS especially when you pair in Flurry/Jabs/Force Pulse/Wield Soul + Sorc Script/Bound Armaments/Haunting Curse/Atronach, etc. Now you consider how the buff isn't attached to an aoe dot you can walk out of, it buffs your character and improves low scaling direct damage like status effects by effectively doubling them, and you can see why it was so strong.

All that said, very sad to see it go. I really liked how it made you think about your build, I'm very much apposed to boring % multipliers that ZOS seem to like to source on everything instead of unique bonuses and interactions that are fun to build around. All it needed was a slight nerf to make it harder to hit the value I just outlined of 3x a second.

Also, this was not a PVP nerf, it's clearly a PVE nerf, very few people waste a slot on a gap closer, let alone an entire 2P set bonus as well. The set is used on like 6/7 classes for PVE DPS if you look up any parse video over the past 2-3 years it's behaved this way.

Hey man, it most certainly was a pvp nerf. I use it back bar on my rangeplar with draugrkin front bar, and back bar on my jabplar with 8400 spell damage (ravager, essence thief, gaze, magma 1pc).

Why was this ever changed off the bleed dot? A million old sets that need help, instead let's change the VMA 2h a million times. At least maybe this iteration will be a good on a handful of PvP specs.

Theist_VII wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Why was this ever changed off the bleed dot? A million old sets that need help, instead let's change the VMA 2h a million times. At least maybe this iteration will be a good on a handful of PvP specs.

Why would anyone in PvP use this instead of a guaranteed 6% damage done to every attack you do and 6% less damage taken for free from Black Rose DW?

One is a universal backbar buff to a skill that is already great.

The other is a niché one that requires a skill not used in PvP, for a niché buff exclusively to direct damage.

This change is just bad, and doesn’t consider the rest of the arena weapons.

Because its a two handed weapon. That's one reason. There are likely more.

gariondavey wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Depends upon what you're doing. +12% damage from a simple 2-piece is actually godly strong. There are infinite 5-piece sets that wish that they were even half that powerful. OTOH, it's a giga-nerf if someone was using it with Jabs, Flurry, etc.

It's still a strong bonus, but it's pretty obvious why it needed a nerf, it wasn't just good on flurry/jabs setups. As a comparison, MA Destro gives 1250 once a second. MA 2H gave up to 560, all you had to do was deal at least 2.23 direct damage hits a second to match, lets just say 3/s total required to exceed.

• 1/s is already covered from light attack weaving.
• 1/s will be covered by most abilities as they tend to have a direct damage hit on cast depending on if you pick them correctly. Eg. Twin Slashes instead of Degeneration.
• 1/s for common abilities like Sorc's 3x pets auto attacks, Warden's Bear auto attack, Templar's Burning Light.
• 1/s for all enchants 1-2 of them via 4s CD, most status effect procs for Chilled, Diseased, Concussed, Overcharged, and Sundered.

Those 4 things cover at least 2.23 or 3 times a second.. For some setups, it was close to 5-6 times a second, like Sorc, highly inflating their PVE DPS especially when you pair in Flurry/Jabs/Force Pulse/Wield Soul + Sorc Script/Bound Armaments/Haunting Curse/Atronach, etc. Now you consider how the buff isn't attached to an aoe dot you can walk out of, it buffs your character and improves low scaling direct damage like status effects by effectively doubling them, and you can see why it was so strong.

All that said, very sad to see it go. I really liked how it made you think about your build, I'm very much apposed to boring % multipliers that ZOS seem to like to source on everything instead of unique bonuses and interactions that are fun to build around. All it needed was a slight nerf to make it harder to hit the value I just outlined of 3x a second.

Also, this was not a PVP nerf, it's clearly a PVE nerf, very few people waste a slot on a gap closer, let alone an entire 2P set bonus as well. The set is used on like 6/7 classes for PVE DPS if you look up any parse video over the past 2-3 years it's behaved this way.

Hey man, it most certainly was a pvp nerf. I use it back bar on my rangeplar with draugrkin front bar, and back bar on my jabplar with 8400 spell damage (ravager, essence thief, gaze, magma 1pc).

I'm not saying it didn't hurt pvp builds that were using it, I'm saying it was nerfed because of pve where it dominated all dps builds. It was not a problem for pvp builds where it was rarely used.

Theist_VII wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Why was this ever changed off the bleed dot? A million old sets that need help, instead let's change the VMA 2h a million times. At least maybe this iteration will be a good on a handful of PvP specs.

Why would anyone in PvP use this instead of a guaranteed 6% damage done to every attack you do and 6% less damage taken for free from Black Rose DW?

One is a universal backbar buff to a skill that is already great.

The other is a niché one that requires a skill not used in PvP, for a niché buff exclusively to direct damage.

This change is just bad, and doesn’t consider the rest of the arena weapons.

Because it’s a two handed weapon. That's one reason. There are likely more.

They are talking about PvP.

With Scribing, you don’t need to back bar a 2h for Brutality/Sorcery any more.

Yeah, I get that. I haven't used dual in years. The only issue I see is that you have to use a skill no one uses to get a buff... I mean, there might be a few people but it is definitely not everywhere.

Perhaps people that use two handed might opt for this as their gap closer after they've buffed their stamina pool by 20k so they can afford to use it once or twice per battle... 🤔