The PTS road so far with 10.3.0 till 10.3.4. was pretty much disappointing for me because subjectively it felt like almost all across the board the damage and/or tools we have in content were tuned down without giving us anything worth of compensation. No relevant set buffs and almost no useful new sets so far. Again, this is purely subjective from my point of view, so if you disagree, feel free to comment.
I will not go into detail for the nice Quality of Life changes. I like the thing that you have now collectible disguises, green Champion points unslotted and increased mount speed but those things do not affect combat in any way. So for guys like me, who like to do 4-person dungeons and 12-person trials, this is a bit less interesting.
Arms of Relequen getting a one-line of Penetration is pretty much a damage downgrade compared to the current triple critical rating and stamina. In optimised groups you’d always try to reduce the enemy armor rating to zero.
Unleashed Ritualist sounds good on paper but on PTS the overall damage on a Mag Sorcerer with Maw of Infernal, and Ritualist was pretty much the same. I like the fact that you have the bonus passively but still it feels like a missed chance.
Way of Fire having removed max stamina and only triggering on Light and Heavy attacks reduces this set to „trash level“ and I doubt, it will ever see play again. If you restrict the proc to only light and heavy attacks the damage should be much higher.
Poisonous Serpent got nice 2nd and 4th bonus in 1st week patch but later on its 5th bonus made this set redudant because poison stacking is really bad with just the status effect. You can try it in Infinite Archive with Focussed Efforts but still, there are much better options.
Wrathsun and Soulcleaver getting a buff is „okay’ish“ but still far from making those sets playable. You’d need alot less stacking to reach maximum stack or it won’t even proc in some fights. Perhaps the (5) could be something like this „When you deal damage with a Dawn's Wrath ability, you gain a stack of Sunlight for 15 seconds, once per attack. You can have 20 stacks max and gain 10 Magicka Recovery and 10 Spell Damage per stack. When at max stacks, your Dawn's Wrath abilities deal 25% bonus damage and a Wrathful Nova is cast on the enemy, but you cannot refresh Sunlight.“ I’d also remove the mana deletion upon completion as it feels counter productive.
Why does Vandorallen, Noxious Boulder and Jerensi have so much lines of Penetration? Those sets are weak in terms of damage already (poor scaling in comparison to other dps sets) and when giving penetration instead of weapon damage makes it even worse.
Lucilla’s Windshield sounds poor because Minor Brittle is easily achieveable these days just by having a frost staff active. If you would add Major Brittle in there, this set could see play in some occasions since Major Brittle is currently exclusive to Nunatak.
Fledgling’s Nest would’ve been a nice support set if there was no Arcanist in the game. Currently you can make this entire set obsolete by having one Arcanist slot Zena’s Disc. And since there is hardly any trial group without an Arcanist these days, they won’t need that.
Blackfeather Flight … I have zero clue what to do with this set. Is this for Scroll Runners in Cyrodiil? I have no niche, i can imagine this set being useful.
What I would like of the next PTS?
If you would love if you could increase the combat value of unused sets. Especially the Infinite Archive sets are mostly trash not worth using. And with hundreds of sets in ESO, it is sad that only a few dozens are actually being used.
Edited by TheDarkRuler on 15 February 2025 12:01