Over Half of the Passive Perks in The Thief Constellations Are Worthless

LonePirate

Seven of the twelve passive perks within the three Thief constellations are worthless or close to it. An eighth one is only useful when levelling alts before it becomes useless. These exceptionally weak passive perks are:

Fortune Seeker (The Lover) - Grants a 50% increase in gold found in treasure chests. Most people find two or less treasure chests a day. Many find none, especially if you spend most of your time in Cyrodiil. This extra 34 or so gold from a once or twice a day event is an insult as it buys next to nothing. I can obtain that same amount of gold in a couple of minutes by killing mobs. This perk should offer a minimum 300% increase in gold to even tempt me into unlocking a chest (apart from the Legerdemain skill line points).

Treasure Hunter (The Lover) - Increases the quality of items found in treasure chests. Except for soul gems, the loot in treasure chests becomes instant inventory filler sold to vendors. Changing these items from white to green or from green to blue will make absolutely no difference to their outcome. This perk should guarantee every item is of purple quality with a chance of receiving a gold quality item.

Wind Runner (The Lover) - Increases movement speed by 2%. Is that it? A measly 2% increase for a perk that requires 120 points in this constellation and 360 points in all? Most players will not even be able to notice this tiny change, not even in Cyrodiil where people travel long distances by foot and horse. This perk should be at least 20% just to stop us from laughing at it.

Plentiful Harvest (The Shadow) - Offers a 10% chance to double the yield of any resource node. About the only way this perk could be worse would be if it required an actual Champion Point. That one extra Bugloss or three extra ore every tenth node is as close to zero as you can get. This perk should offer a 50% chance at a minimum.

Merchant Favored (The Shadow) - Merchants charge 10% less to repair your armor. This discount is nothing more than pocket change and is of absolutely no value to PVPers who incur no repair bills. A much more useful perk would be one that offers a 10% reduction in the gold and AP cost of all goods sold by merchants.

Master Gatherer (The Shadow) - Resource gathering time is reduced by 50%. Bar none, this is the absolute worst perk in any of the Champion trees. Apart from the Argonian skill that increases swim speed, no other skill or perk in the game is as bad as this one. There is no way to improve this perk. It needs to be removed in its entirety and replaced by something else. A 10% or 20% chance to harvest a Nirncrux stone would be a good replacement for this perk which requires 75 Champion Points in this tree and 225 points overall.

Shadowstrike (The Shadow) - Allows players to enter stealth for 2.5 seconds after killing an enemy with a heavy attack. This perk seems beneficial at first but closer inspection reveals it to be such a narrow case with a minuscule benefit, especially for the price of 120 Champion Points. Heavy attack killing blows are infrequent and 2.5 seconds is practically the blink of an eye. The types of attacks that trigger this perk should change or the duration needs quadrupled or the stealth effect needs to be replaced by an immunity effect.

That brings us to the perk that is only partially beneficial:

Inspiration Boost (The Tower) - Grants a 20% increase to inspiration gains. This perk is certainly beneficial when levelling alts; but once your crafting skills reach level 50, this perk is of no value whatsoever. I'm not sure how to make this perk more beneficial for max level crafters. Perhaps increasing the chance of hirelings delivering purple and gold materials would be a better alternative.

ZOS, please send these perks back to the drawing board for an overhaul.

s7732425ub17_ESO

Master Gatherer (The Shadow) - Resource gathering time is reduced by 50%. Bar none, this is the absolute worst perk in any of the Champion trees. Apart from the Argonian skill that increases swim speed, no other skill or perk in the game is as bad as this one. There is no way to improve his perk. It needs to be removed in its entirety and replaced by something else. A 10% or 20% increase in the chance to harvest a Nirncrux stone would be a good replacement for this perk which requires 75 Champion Points in this tree and 225 points overall.

No, this is actually the best perk in the entire tree (and one of the best in the game). It significantly reduces harvesting time, and this will have a big impact on a lot of players. I find your other opinions hard to follow when you say this is so terrible.

AlnilamE

You obviously don't play the game the same way I do.

Those are pretty much the perks I'm most excited about (except for the inspiration one).

I find at least half a dozen chests a day, love opening them, know the location of pretty much all chests in Craglorn and most of the treasure maps in the EP Zones. Never pass up a harvesting node unless I'm in the middle of some serious PvP and yes, that extra bugloss is something to celebrate.

And remember that they are "perks". Extras that you don't have to put anything in. Your choice of putting CP in certain constellations should be because you like the active skills, and the passives are a bonus. Not everybody likes the same things, so I'm sure there are passives in the other constellations that suit your playstyle more.

Meanwhile, leave the Thief for the treasure hunters and gatherers.

:-)

Blackmoon777

Wind Runner (The Lover) - Increases movement speed by 2%

it is joke? it shoulsd be at last 10%

LonePirate

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Master Gatherer (The Shadow) - Resource gathering time is reduced by 50%. Bar none, this is the absolute worst perk in any of the Champion trees. Apart from the Argonian skill that increases swim speed, no other skill or perk in the game is as bad as this one. There is no way to improve his perk. It needs to be removed in its entirety and replaced by something else. A 10% or 20% increase in the chance to harvest a Nirncrux stone would be a good replacement for this perk which requires 75 Champion Points in this tree and 225 points overall.

No, this is actually the best perk in the entire tree (and one of the best in the game). It significantly reduces harvesting time, and this will have a big impact on a lot of players. I find your other opinions hard to follow when you say this is so terrible.

Let me show some math to illustrate how pathetic this perk is.

It takes only a few seconds to harvest a plant or chop some wood. Let's say this takes 4 seconds which is a reasonable estimation. This perk now cuts that harvest time to 2 seconds. You need to harvest 30 resource nodes to save 1 minute of game time.

How much time does it take you to travel from one resource node to the next? 10 seconds in Craglorn? 30 seconds in a regular PVE zone? 2 minutes in Cyrodiil? Now travel 30 times to 30 nodes to save a massive 1 minute of time.

That 1 minute of saved time for 30 nodes is next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. Even if you do nothing but harvest nodes all day long, this perk provides such an unnoticeable value even when stacked over time.

I solidly stand by my opinion that this perk is hands down the worst one in the Champion System. Nothing else even comes close to the ridiculousness and insignificance of this worthless perk.

Rioht

Agree with the posts here already. I'm looking forward to getting these myself as I spend a lot of time exploring/gathering. The ONLY one of the arguments I agree with is the sprint speed, as 2% is a little low. Ide say 5% minimum and 10% max.

Tyr

The champion system was never intended to be about vertical progression mainly. It was intended as horizontal progression for different play styles including for leveling alts, crafting, etc...
As a result only about 1/4 of the benefit you gain from the champion system is purely about combat in end game.

DeathDealer19

before complaining about these things because you do nothing but pvp all day and night, I go back to a point ive made to others. Not every passive is there to benefit you and how you play. A lot of people enjoy gathering, crafting, and find quite a few chests per day. especially with the new skill line, chests will become a lot more popular. And repair bills do matter to pve players who do dungeons and trials constantly. just because you pvp and don't do pve doesn't make that useless. Youre spending CP on the passives that you pick. the bonuses you unlock are FREE so don't complain if they don't apply to you because you only enjoy doing one thing.

Synozeer

Treasure Hunter (The Lover) - Increases the quality of items found in treasure chests. Except for soul gems, the loot in treasure chests becomes instant inventory filler sold to vendors. Changing these items from white to green or from green to blue will make absolutely no difference to their outcome. This perk should guarantee every item is of purple quality with a chance of receiving a good quality item.

If this increases the chances of getting an Undaunted shoulder piece from the chests (even the blue chests) then we might have something here.

Recremen

At least partially agreeing with all your points. Most of these things sound really neat at first blush, but when you take the time to examine them they're actually incredibly weak benefits. I like the direction, but firmly believe that it needs further exploration to find an adequate balance. What is the gold/time value for an average player for this particular perk? What about for someone who specializes in this activity? What about for someone who rarely does this activity? How much of the player base falls into each of these categories?

Of course, maybe this is the intended design, we really don't know! They may have already examined these in detail and found the benefits to be on par with what they wanted to give out. It would be nice to get some dev opinion on that (though I can understand the reluctance to speak up, all considered).

LonePirate

DeathDealer19 wrote: »

before complaining about these things because you do nothing but pvp all day and night, I go back to a point ive made to others. Not every passive is there to benefit you and how you play. A lot of people enjoy gathering, crafting, and find quite a few chests per day. especially with the new skill line, chests will become a lot more popular. And repair bills do matter to pve players who do dungeons and trials constantly. just because you pvp and don't do pve doesn't make that useless. Youre spending CP on the passives that you pick. the bonuses you unlock are FREE so don't complain if they don't apply to you because you only enjoy doing one thing.

You are completely missing the point here, well two points, actually. First off, these perks I listed are garbage perks that will go largely unnoticed by players because they have so little impact on them. The perks should be meaningful but these are inconsequential.

The second point you're missing is one of fairness and balance. You suggest I am complaining because these perks don't apply much to the PVP community and that I should be more open to other play styles. How would you feel if half the perks for The Thief were PVP related such as 10% increase in siege weapon load times or 10% more health for wall repairs? These perks would be of no value to you if you do not PVP. Would you honestly find that acceptable? Of course not.

There is not a single perk that applies only to PVP and every suggestion I offered would make all of those perks better for all players. If people want to gather resources or crack chests all day, that is great. The problems I identified and the changes I proposed to the perks would make those activities better because the current perks are little more than insulting junk.

s7732425ub17_ESO

LonePirate wrote: »

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Master Gatherer (The Shadow) - Resource gathering time is reduced by 50%. Bar none, this is the absolute worst perk in any of the Champion trees. Apart from the Argonian skill that increases swim speed, no other skill or perk in the game is as bad as this one. There is no way to improve his perk. It needs to be removed in its entirety and replaced by something else. A 10% or 20% increase in the chance to harvest a Nirncrux stone would be a good replacement for this perk which requires 75 Champion Points in this tree and 225 points overall.

No, this is actually the best perk in the entire tree (and one of the best in the game). It significantly reduces harvesting time, and this will have a big impact on a lot of players. I find your other opinions hard to follow when you say this is so terrible.

Let me show some math to illustrate how pathetic this perk is.

It takes only a few seconds to harvest a plant or chop some wood. Let's say this takes 4 seconds which is a reasonable estimation. This perk now cuts that harvest time to 2 seconds. You need to harvest 30 resource nodes to save 1 minute of game time.

How much time does it take you to travel from one resource node to the next? 10 seconds in Craglorn? 30 seconds in a regular PVE zone? 2 minutes in Cyrodiil? Now travel 30 times to 30 nodes to save a massive 1 minute of time.

That 1 minute of saved time for 30 nodes is next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. Even if you do nothing but harvest nodes all day long, this perk provides such an unnoticeable value even when stacked over time.

I solidly stand by my opinion that this perk is hands down the worst one in the Champion System. Nothing else even comes close to the ridiculousness and insignificance of this worthless perk.

When a person sees three resource nodes in close proximity, they want to grab them as quickly as possible. They don't want to have to wait a whole four seconds to grab a single node. Cutting the time in half *feels* better. You want to be able to harvest, harvest, harvest and not harvest, wait, harvest, wait, harvest.

(Also, with how much people farm resource nodes, this will actually save hours of their time over the long run).

MrGhosty

I'm quite excited about all of these actually. Reduced gather time means being able to snag a node that much faster if you're opting to not kill a nearby creature that will aggro on you.

I've stockpiled treasure maps and plan to save them until I've unlocked the better reward. If you grab treasure chests in vet zones at your current level these rewards could actually be useful and at the very least up a green to a blue which you can break down for the improvement mat.

The speed thing is a bit disappointing, but zos already established they don't like fast people when they nerfed the set configuration that allowed you to move in stealth as fast as starting level horse. If this stacks with other things that extra 2% could really be nice but these are intended to augment and enhance playstyles so if you're not already specced into moving as fast as possible there probably won't be much benefit to you.

All things considered I can't say that I agree with you about any of these, it just sounds like this passive line is not the one for you or your playstyle which OK! We also don't really know how these values are going to come out in the wash once they're applied to a live environment.

Wahee

I was sorely disappointed with all of the thief tree perks. Was anyone else hoping for a sneak speed penalty reduction. I was hoping this was finally a chance for all of us non vamps to have access to sneak speed without sacrificing a set bonus

driosketch

This list of "useless" perks only shows me that you and I play a very different style of game.

More to the bigger issue at hand, the templates only give you a flat 70 CP. There is no way to test anything beyond the 10 point perks. Feedback on the perks is good, but players need to be able to test them.

Tavore1138

Since it will take you an average of infinity hours to get a CP doing craft related things it matters not a jot if these are good or not as you will never ever see them!

I do agree that these passives (and many of the other passives) are pretty underwhelming though - it would be nice if they were sufficient to make you excited to try for them like some of the ones you could get in another game with similar constellations type perks...

XEVENEX

Ive noticed the champion system offers magic, elemental, and dot damage reductions but none for melee damage reduction. This leads me to believe magic/elemental DPS in PvP will be the lowest. Disappointing.

LonePirate

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Since it will take you an average of infinity hours to get a CP doing craft related things it matters not a jot if these are good or not as you will never ever see them!

I do agree that these passives (and many of the other passives) are pretty underwhelming though - it would be nice if they were sufficient to make you excited to try for them like some of the ones you could get in another game with similar constellations type perks...

The people marching in lockstep with ZOS proclaiming these perks to be awesome need to put things in perspective. Many of these awful perks require 90 or 225 total Champion Points at a minimum before they unlock. That is 90 or 225 game play hours if you go by the ZOS estimate of 1 CP per hour. These perks are pathetic rewards for that much game play. Raise your expectations, people! ZOS can and should do better.

Recremen

driosketch wrote: »

This list of "useless" perks only shows me that you and I play a very different style of game.

What is your play style? What about these perks is appealing? Do you only like the idea of the perks, or is the actual in-game benefit going to be significant enough to make you happy?

Consider what he said about current time to harvest vs. time to travel to a new node, as well as the number of nodes you would need to collect to achieve some discrete amount of efficiency. In this scenario, my gathering runs would benefit far more from the Plentiful Harvest perk than the Master Gatherer perk. It is only a 10% increase in yield, but the average Time To Travel between nodes is much greater than the time to harvest, so a reducing gathering time to 50% matters much less. Even still, 10% yield increase is pretty weak considering how long it takes to go gathering resources.

It's also important to consider if this affects leather drops or not.

Nihil

There will always be varying degrees of opinions based on perks / passives when they try to cover multiple areas of game play and to be fare most of the free passives are pretty underwhelming in the grand scheme of things (but every little bit counts).

For some people the difference to 2 seconds would be the different between getting a node and not. If there was a mob near by that they didn't notice that 2 seconds is enough to stop them from being attacked before they are able to grab it. double resources is still double resources, that gives players more chance to receive some sort of temper from the items they gather over a longer period of time. For players who farm Dolmens the treasure chest perks could be very nice, but without knowing exactly how the one that improve quality of items will work out can't really say on that.

If we look at some of the other perks for combat, we have a 199 damage shield once every 20 seconds... seriously 199? so like 25 health in live (give or take). The bash one gives basically 1k health 20 % of the time... that really isn't that much either. The healing from critical attacks / being dealt critical attacks is like 199 (so again 25 health in live) while nice not going to save you all the time, specially if their is a cool down on it like crit surge (no idea on that yet). (numbers based off of ~ 20k health as these numbers scale with health) To some players these bonuses might look miniscule and not worth the passive requirements that are associated with them, for others every little bit helps.

Most of them in the mage tree I like for combat oriented characters, although some still look lackluster, riposte and the 24 damage to attackers when you block their attacks. yey 3-4 damage on live (approx).

So if you have no problem with the warriors passive as a person who prefers combat (specifically pvp) then what about the players who aren't as into combat or prefer pve? Those players could legitimately like those passives, and those players who would use them should be the ones who give feedback on them.

( I am going to agree on the inspiration gain one, as you need 90 CP before you can unlock it and majority of the time you will have your characters pretty high at that point. I would prersonally switch that and the 10 point passive around)

Cody

im actually excited about the running speed. combine it with MA passives...:)

Shuichi

Cody wrote: »

im actually excited about the running speed. combine it with MA passives...:)

I'm not certain I'm excited anymore. If 2% is all we're given that is a waste of a point, if you are able to delve more than one point in it and make it higher it will be worthwhile, but I'm not sure that's how it will work.

Robbmrp

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Master Gatherer (The Shadow) - Resource gathering time is reduced by 50%. Bar none, this is the absolute worst perk in any of the Champion trees. Apart from the Argonian skill that increases swim speed, no other skill or perk in the game is as bad as this one. There is no way to improve his perk. It needs to be removed in its entirety and replaced by something else. A 10% or 20% increase in the chance to harvest a Nirncrux stone would be a good replacement for this perk which requires 75 Champion Points in this tree and 225 points overall.

No, this is actually the best perk in the entire tree (and one of the best in the game). It significantly reduces harvesting time, and this will have a big impact on a lot of players. I find your other opinions hard to follow when you say this is so terrible.

If it took 10 seconds to pick up a flower, node or log I could see this making a difference. What's the actual time it takes until you can click R to get the item? Maybe 3 seconds at most? Not worth it in my book.

DDuke

I have to agree with this. The passives are very underwhelming

Some suggestions:

Wind Runner

Should be atleast 10% in my opinion, most people won't even notice a 2% difference.

Shadowstrike

Getting kills with Heavy Attacks doesn't really happen, unless you're running around with Infiltrator set & built for one shot heavy attacks (yes, a build exists for that...).

If anything, trying to get this passive to trigger would actually cause more harm than good (enemy healing/shielding while you're charging a heavy attack to finish him/her off).

I'd change this to grant invisibility if you kill an enemy within 5 seconds of a Heavy Attack.

Rest of the passives

Most are useless, unless you're playing on an alt.

Can't really get too excited about these, I was expecting something better (stealth oriented) & interesting

LonePirate

DDuke wrote: »

I have to agree with this. The passives are very underwhelming

Some suggestions:

Wind Runner

Should be atleast 10% in my opinion, most people won't even notice a 2% difference.

Shadowstrike

Getting kills with Heavy Attacks doesn't really happen, unless you're running around with Infiltrator set & built for one shot heavy attacks (yes, a build exists for that...).

If anything, trying to get this passive to trigger would actually cause more harm than good (enemy healing/shielding while you're charging a heavy attack to finish him/her off).

I'd change this to grant invisibility if you kill an enemy within 5 seconds of a Heavy Attack.

Rest of the passives

Most are useless, unless you're playing on an alt.

Can't really get too excited about these, I was expecting something better (stealth oriented) & interesting

These are all good suggestions and alternatives I could support.

Also, it is a bit odd that none the perks for The Thief have much of an impact on thievery and the Justice System. Why isn't there a perk that adds 1 or 2 seconds to the timer for picking locks? Why isn't there a perk that increases the amount of gold received for fencing or required for laundering? Why isn't there a perk that adds a meter or two to the distance that permits pickpocketing?

OtarTheMad

Bottomline is everyone plays the game differently. Some perks might not be useful to you at all, that's fine... don't invest in them... problem solved. Not everyone plays exactly like you and those perks might be really useful to them.

Jice

Well the other bottom line is that Thief points are not Mage points are not Warrior points.

Thief perks may not be to your liking but thief points only go into thief constellations and you gather them on a cycle so you never get the choice of which type you're leveling towards. So comparing a Mage point and a Thief point other than for reasons of how much EXP they take to gain a moot point, they aren't the same thing.

However evaluated on their own some perks are a little lack luster and if I had to spend the points on them I probably wouldn't, but that's true of all the Constellations, not just Thief.

My biggest complaint though is the overall disconnect between the champion point system and crafting in general. The only way to get any EXP towards any of these crafting perks is by doing the writs. A small amount, limited daily. So in order to get any of the crafting perks actually crafting and spending your time gathering materials will get you virtually no advancement to the goals you want in doing that. Gathering takes as much time as grinding, questing, dungeons, and PvP, yet yields you zip, nada, nothing for advancement of your character, just it's skills that are already maxed.

c0rp

I agree with a good amount the OP wrote. The 2% speed increase is an absolute joke for the amount of points required though. I actually did LOL when I saw that for the first time.

TheBucket

I think the heavy attack is pretty useless In a game with executes

Messorem

They aren't a main stat changer... Passive things like this are meant to give a small edge. It is meant for the tipping of balanced scales. Not changing the game entirely...

Siluen

I think it's pretty cool there are perks that benefit other kinds of gameplay. I love combat perks, but not everything has to be combat oriented. The only thing I find a bit odd they are bunched together so much. Why not add a non-combat perk to each of the trees instead of throwing all of them into the thief constellations?