Though I do agree it does feel bad when you use full investment on a skill that's supposed to be about procs, and only end up with: 15% (assuming quintupled like Debilitate) -> 44.55%

Dovahmiim wrote: »

L post. 20-25% chance without any boosts is very high, the chance is typically 10% for regular direct damage abilities. This one also hits potentially 4 times in a single cast. You'd see twice as many by using a lightning staff frontbar, and way more by using charged.

L comment. Already did extensive tests on PTS when it changed, base chance was improved by x5 from 3% (single target dot) to 15%. OP got 26%, with CP, no charged, and no D Staff, expected result is 24% so they got a bit lucky all things considered.

As a st direct damage skill, it should of been 10% to start, not 3%, so as a 1.5x multiplier, yes it's pitiful when talking about the context of ESO's other skills with improved status effect chance. In those cases, they get 3x ~ 5x; eg. Jabs, Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast, Debilitate, Volatile Familiar, Wild Guardian, etc.

Either they intentionally buffed it by 1.5x which is pathetic.

Or they didn't know it was bugged to begin with, and buffed it by 5x thinking they're granting us some amazing new effect that doesn't even appear on the tooltip.

And I'm not saying BA should be 50% base chance with the 5x from a 10% starting point, but if it wasn't initially bugged, 3x for 30% would of been more than fair.

Let's not forget they only did this because the change to Relentless Focus made the abilities nearly identical which we've said forever, but it became no longer up for debate so they couldn't ignore the NB favourtism and decided to throw BA the dirtiest, stinkiest, used up bone they could think of. RF is cheaper, has more burst damage, a burst heal, harder to counter by firing at once vs over 1.2s, +2 stack cap meaning you can fire it 3 times, and infinite stack duration... Daedric Summoning also can't compete nearly as much with Assassination, but that's a whole other topic.

And to your comment about it being single target so 20-25% is apparently rewarding. Have you tried Jabs? It also has the same 15% per hit base, except it can be spammed on 6 targets at a time while BA takes at least 4s of weaving for 1 target.

As a thought experiement, let's say Jabs hits 1-6 targets, 3 hits, over 4 casts. That's 12 ~ 72 chances to proc Sunderered. In the same 4 seconds, Bound Armaments gets 4 chances to proc sundered. Jabs has 3x ~ 18x more chances over a 4s period yet they have the same status effect chance bonus. How is that even remotely equal from your ST=more powerful comparison? My example is arbitrary, but it still highlights that it feels way lower than it should be given the circumstances surrounding the skill and skills like it.

There is a reason why almost everyone is running Assassination and not Daedric Summoning, and no, it's not because of Surprise Attack (Blood for Blood can replace that and is just as strong). This is a burst meta and BA simply does not do well here. MR/RF not only fit extremely well on any build, but they also heal you while doing damage. This is arguably the biggest gripe I have with this ability. A strong burst skill that also heals you for 33%/50% of its damage done is insane. Hit someone for 9k MR, and you're healing for 4.5k, like what?

I've run builds with MR/RF and builds with BA and the difference is massive. Even I get pressured to 50% HP, I literally don't even need to swap to back bar for my burst heal. I'll just hit a MR get a mini burst heal from that. If I run Crit Surge and that MR crits, then it's going to bring me to full HP. You simply can't replicate that fully with BA.

For BA to be truly equal to MR/RF, they need to yeet that burst heal mechanic completely, OR give BA something unique on activation. Even a simple effect like "When you deal damage with a bound dagger, you reduce the target's armor by X value" or "When you deal damage with a bound dagger, you gain X crit chance" would be more than enough to close the power gap between these two.

Here's a simple breakdown to compare the 2 skills using base character stats:

• Relentless Focus = 4183
  • Diseased = 470 (336 +134 aoe 4s CD)
  • RF + D = 4653
• Bound Armaments = 3452 (863*4)
  • Sundered = 369
  • X1 = 3821 (91% of RF)
    • Need 25% proc chance (15% + 66%), tad bit higher than CP (60%), no investment required, doesn't work in Battlegrounds.
  • X2 = 4190 (100% of RF)
    • Need 50% proc chance (15% + 233%), nearly identical to 2x charged (235%), slightly ahead when combined with CP (295%).
  • X3 = 4559 (109% of RF)
    • Need 75% proc chance (15% + 400%), same as a Charged Destruction Staff + CP (395%).
  • X4 = 4928 (118% of RF)
    • Need 100% proc chance (15% + 566%), possible, but not optimal through Charged Destruction Staff + CP with the set "Symmetry of the Weald" (595%) or "Heartland Conquerer" (630%).

The thing is.. if you were building for status effect chance on BA, it would apply to RF and Diseased too, so the comparisons are slightly inflated. In example 2 BA appears to equal RF in damage, but due to RF's 33-39% proc chance for Diseased, 1/3 casts would get about 10% more damage than BA, putting it ahead overall still.

All this to say, BA can equal, and even exceed RF in damage with Status Effect RNG, but you're required to build into it where as RF is good for any build due to the raw damage scaling. For players not building into status effect chance, BA will more often than not appear in the 1st category of 1 proc per cast (91% of RF).

... And, it doesn't burst heal, can be easily dodged, and stacks don't last forever. If it had an activation effect like the Blood Magic passive from any range, all daggers flew at the same time, and had infinite duration, I would happily ignore the damage gap, build requirement, higher cost, and -2 stack cap. It's all of these things in conjunction with being apart of a bad skill line that makes the gap between these seemingly equal abilities, gigantic.

Also, there really isn't an incentive to build into status effect chance for Sorcerer like there would be for DK/Warden/Arcanist, so doing so doesn't really offer a cohesive reward outside of juicing up 1 ability. Why bother?