Poisonous Serpent, why the nerf

madman65 · January 14

Watching a streamer explain the change and it looks bad for the future of this set. The streamer showed the calculation at 100% 50% 25% and even 1%, the only time when the NEW damage gets close to the old is at 1%. WHY!

C_Inside · January 15

This change is yet more proof (as if we needed more) that the devs don't play their own game and don't understand how it actually works.

OK so you got a set that has a 2 second cooldown that triggers a DOT that lasts 4 seconds. So you're in a situation where you're either never going to take advantage of the final tick of the Poisoned status effect, or you're never going to take advantage of the short 2 second cooldown. This is a lose-lose situation which is never good.

Furthermore, ZOS seems to have forgotten that in order to use this set the target must have a poison DOT on them already, which itself can trigger Poisoned. And let's not forget that the proc is single target direct damage, which at minimum has a 16% chance of procing Poisoned. But that's going to be closer to 27% since the meta in most cases is to run a Nirnhoned+Charged dagger on your front bar, and this is a front bar set.

So assuming you're not running a poison damage enchantment and you only have 1 poison damage skill in your rotation to proc Serpent, you're essentially sacrificing 92% of the set's damage to get around 65-70% more uptime on Poisoned (additive). This is a truly terrible trade and the set will never, ever, not in a billion years, ever be used by anyone if ZOS doesn't change it.

Literally all they had to do to make this set competitive was change the stamina bonuses (as they did), give it Minor Slayer, and keep the 5 piece bonus as it is on live. I've actually tested this set before and the proc is decently strong. Especially on Dragonknights. It's not as strong as Rele's proc, but it has a much higher chance to proc Poisoned that Rele's chance to proc Sundered and unlike Rele it doesn't need to build stacks. So in single target fights where bosses clear Rele's stacks (like the dragons in Sunspire or the 1st boss in Kyne's Aegis) this set could've been really good.

@ZOS_Kevin Please PLEASE send this feedback to the devs. We currently have a severe lack of good Minor Slayer DPS sets and this one has the potential to actually be good if you just tweak it correctly. For the love of God don't let it die like all the other hundreds of 5 piece sets that are never used.

MashmalloMan · January 18

You're referring to Skinny's video. His calculations didn't take into account that sets that guarantee a status effect, can still proc status effects themselves, unlike skills which don't which is what his calculations was off of. Status effects have no cooldown, so proccing the same effect twice per tick is still beneficial. All that said, in the initial forum post, it states the 10% base chance is now guaranteed, so maybe this 1 set is an exception to the rule of previous sets, that's assuming they also haven't been changed in a year and a half since I last used them..

Set examples that can double proc: Plaguebreak, Unleashed Terror, Asylum Destro.

Skill examples that don't double proc: Blighted Blastbones, Ruinous Scythe, Rending Slashes, Ele Reach.

Skill examples that can double proc: Eviscerate morphs... Only because the guaranteed status effect it gives for Hemorrhaging is from a skill that deals Magic damage instead of Bleed damage. This means you can get 2 effects per activation via Overcharged and Hemorrhaging.

Aka. further testing required, if it can double proc, it's probably equal or greater than it was before.

C_Inside wrote: »

OK so you got a set that has a 2 second cooldown that triggers a DOT that lasts 4 seconds. So you're in a situation where you're either never going to take advantage of the final tick of the Poisoned status effect, or you're never going to take advantage of the short 2 second cooldown. This is a lose-lose situation which is never good.

Poisoned has 3 ticks over 4 seconds, once at 0s, 2s, and 4s. If you're fighting single target, yes you won't get the last tick, but since you can't perfectly proc it once every 2s due to latency, human reaction time, and GCD, you're always going to get the 2nd tick. So basically 66% of the total poison duration. It never hurts to over proc status effects, especially now that they deal decent damage across the board as of the update they released a year ago.

If you can also double proc like I spoke about above, then that's quite a lot of ticks going off every 2s. Doubt it's enough to beat much in pve, but it looks like a good pvp set.

Also as a DK, this could be juicy.

Stx · January 19

Is this old <snip> set on live causing any problems at all? Was anyone asking for it to be changed?

<snipped for Cursing and Profanity>

bar_boss_A · January 20

Stx wrote: »

Is this old set on live causing any problems at all? Was anyone asking for it to be changed?

No but there are a lot (me included) that want old sets refurbished so they may yet again become relevant. So it is a good thing they look over the old sets.

Stx · January 20

Well yes I agree with that. But ideally they would look at a whole group of sets instead of just one or two.

And I’m just confused. Why are they taking an old underperforming set and nerfing it?

bar_boss_A · January 20

Stx wrote: »

And I’m just confused.

And rightfully so

. So lets give the feedback that the proc-damage should be doubled

C_Inside · January 20

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Poisoned has 3 ticks over 4 seconds, once at 0s, 2s, and 4s. If you're fighting single target, yes you won't get the last tick, but since you can't perfectly proc it once every 2s due to latency, human reaction time, and GCD, you're always going to get the 2nd tick. So basically 66% of the total poison duration. It never hurts to over proc status effects, especially now that they deal decent damage across the board as of the update they released a year ago.

If you can also double proc like I spoke about above, then that's quite a lot of ticks going off every 2s. Doubt it's enough to beat much in pve, but it looks like a good pvp set.

Also as a DK, this could be juicy.

Over proccing the direct damage status effects is fine. Over proccing the DOT statuses is not for the same reason why you don't over-cast your DOT skills before they run out. The power budget of a DOT is spread across its entire duration. Meaning that if you overproc Poisoned for example you're not taking advantage of its full power. The correct thing to do here is to shift some of your build's output away from procing Poisoned and put it towards doing something else.

This is where the first problem with this new version of Serpent is and what I explained in my original post. So much of its power budget is spent on proccing a status effect, but its set up in a way that you can't take full advantage of that status effect. Meaning you're wasting a big chunk of the set's potential power output. This is very bad and why this new version of Serpent will never be used if not adjusted.

The second problem that I also outlined is that if you decide to instead use the proc every 4 seconds to take advantage of the full Poisoned duration then you're not taking advantage of the set's super short 2 second cooldown and the direct damage hit that you get when the set procs. Remember, some of the set's power budget is also spent on the low cooldown and the direct damage when it procs.

So you're in a situation where you simply can't take full advantage of the set's entire power budget. This is a very bad thing and why this set in its current iteration will never be used. Why waste time with a set like this that you can only ever take *some* advantage of when you can, for example, use Whorl and take *full* advantage of all the power it has.

JobooAGS · January 20

Funny enough, one popular skill already does what this version of serpent does and more...

Cast_El · January 21

I used to love this set. The nerf is hard and the status effect should be change to hemoraging because this status effect can stack.

MashmalloMan · January 21

C_Inside wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Poisoned has 3 ticks over 4 seconds, once at 0s, 2s, and 4s. If you're fighting single target, yes you won't get the last tick, but since you can't perfectly proc it once every 2s due to latency, human reaction time, and GCD, you're always going to get the 2nd tick. So basically 66% of the total poison duration. It never hurts to over proc status effects, especially now that they deal decent damage across the board as of the update they released a year ago.

If you can also double proc like I spoke about above, then that's quite a lot of ticks going off every 2s. Doubt it's enough to beat much in pve, but it looks like a good pvp set.

Also as a DK, this could be juicy.

Over proccing the direct damage status effects is fine. Over proccing the DOT statuses is not for the same reason why you don't over-cast your DOT skills before they run out.

Well that just isn't true.

I think you're underestimating how beneficial over proccing the dot status effects can still be. As I stated, you're getting 2/3 ticks every 2s on a single target, not 1. I wouldn't compare it to 20s dot skills, their power budget is spent across 5x the amount of time, so their tick/s is much lower in comparison to a skill spammable. 20s dots are typically about 2x as strong as a spammable, meaning it deals 20%/s. 20% isn't worth spamming. In the case of status effects, the gap is much closer as I'll detail below.

Burning is the standard to which they balanced the other effects, so I started with that at 100%, these are per tick, not total damage dealt.

Burning = 100% (3 ticks over 4s)
Poisoned = 66% (scales up to 2x, 3 ticks over 4s)
Hemorrhaging = 75%/100%/125% (2nd and 3rd stack add +25%, 3 ticks over 4s)
Concussed = 110% (125% if within 4s)
Overcharged = 110%
Sundered = 110%
Chilled = 110%
Diseased = 100% + 40% (aoe 4s cd)

Generally, you can see direct damage status effects only beat out dot status effects if they're proccing quicker than the 2s gap between each tick of a dot status effect. Obviously for a pve DPS setup, the most optimal way to juice this is get 100% uptime of burning/poisoned via flame + poison enchant, and IF you could pick 1 status effect to over proc, it would be Concussed.. although in the case of Warden, chilled, or in the case of DK poisoned or burning due to their respective passives.

Considering this set, as I said in 1v1, 1 proc accounts for 2 ticks of poisoned, so 132% - 264%. At first glance, if you didn't consider the 2 ticks or the actual damage ratio of everything I showed above, you may think direct damage status effect like concussed proccing 1/2s would be stronger, but it wouldn't be, seeing as that would only be 110% (+15%). Also, DK's get +50% and +5% dmg here so they basically always want to over proc poisoned/burning over any other effect.

I'm not quoting the rest of your comment simply because I may agree, some of the power budget may be wasted, I'm not sure, I'm just saying you should test it on the pts because it could be better than it appears if the ticks also proc status effects like other sets I listed, that said I highly doubt it's better than Whorl, but I don't think it's intended to be.

Finedaible · January 22

*Game balance and various reworks left in shambles for years*

"Let's start reworking a bunch of sets that didn't need adjusting."

Kahnak · January 27

Yeah, this one was a bit confusing. It was just a hair's breadth away from being good with the updates to stats. Really no need to adjust the proc condition.