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

Derra

I personally love the harvest speed passive. I pick flowers. Like - a lot. I spend hours picking flowers. I find some primitive fun in that. The harvest speed will make my live a thousand times better.
God i love this. Even the thought about it makes me squeal like a little piglet.

Edit: Do whatever you want to the rest of the abilities. DON`T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT HARVEST SPEED!

Faulgor

Except for Master Gatherer which I think is great, I agree. Was really looking forward to the "utility" perks in the Thief trees, but I'm more or less disappointed.

I'm also missing perks that benefit enchantments in some way. They remain absolutely lackluster.

Darkonflare15

Tbh I think the 2% movement speed is nice since with addition of major expedition buff and that this can be access from multiple abilities now. That there is no point in gaining more movement speed anyway. It just a nice boost when you get there.

Digiman

LonePirate wrote: »

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.

The constellation system unlocks is split into parts. Warrior points is for physical, Mage points for Magical, thief for stealth and loot.

Everyone gets the same constellations, you not locked out in either one and the perk unlocks are just rewards when you spend points in their system. Which many of the Thief constellation has very beneficial areas where you want to spend you thief points in.

Nothing is excluded, its a perk system for further progress beyond max level.

Arki

I liked every one of these! Are they game changing? No. Should they be? No. Champion system adds flavor, small utility, bonuses here and there. It's not meant to be played as "omg gotta grind two days more to get this passive", it's more like "hey I just got a champion point doing the stuff I like to do in the game".
Ye I know, you allready did all the content what to do know etc etc. Help other people, stream stuff, take a break whatever. Champion system is not a replacement for the rest of the content in the game, its an additional boon.

KhajitFurTrader

I like them as they are. They shouldn't be so strong that they're starting to feel mandatory to get, in any way. Nothing in the CS should. A design approach that favors a lot of diverse play styles is favorable over one where everyone feels forced to take the same few FOTM perks.

Darkonflare15

The shadow strike one is nice. I can now killed two opponents with a well place 2h heavy attack in pve. It would be fun to go back into to stealth.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

I agree. All the perks in all the trees are worthless. I dont even understand who thought this stuff up. The whole champ system needs to be redone. This is why they should have told us about this whole pay to win switch earlier. Now this lame champ systems with horrible perks and worthless things to put points into will be forced on us.

Faugaun

LonePirate wrote: »

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.

OK my thoughts -

Fortune seeker, I get dozens of chest daily, that others just walk past blindly not seeing...every delve I go in has 2-3 chests....

Treasure hunter - um yeah if Evey item was purp with a chance of gold...in 1-3 days I would be in all gold gear...this is way to fast.

Windrunner - two eqally geared characters with equally skilled players fighting one flees whoever has this will get what they want...or if you an I start a fresh pve character and race to VR1 if we do the exact same things except one has the skill and the other doesn't then guess who will finish first?

Plentiful Harvest - OK let's suppose I farm 100 pieces of material x (which sells for 800 on the open market). I don't have this skill ...another player does...then he for the same effort acquires an extra 80 gold ...OK perhaps it is a rather low % gotta say farming nodes for the mats for 80 g seems a little lackluster. Consider this is probably something you do anyways though ....plus when combined with the treasure chest bonuses and other bonuses these small changes may actually add up Toma total 30% extra gold (which is significant). I personally could see buffing this to 15-20% but any higher is too much IMHO.

Merchant Favored - not everything revolves around PvP, that said a 10% reduction at all merchants would be nice but if choosing between the two I like this one better. My last repair bill was 1,800...this skill would directly save me 180 gold (let's not forget that I get 30% wish more from the other passives) which is pretty decent for something that I do a dozen times a day (180*12 = an extra 2160 gold per day in my pocket). Conversely I hardly ever spend 21600 gold at merchants in a day (unless I am upgrading bags or buying horses). To me the reduced repair is a decent benefit (especially when comboed with everything else).

Master gatherer - OK I give you this one has very little use to me as well, your proposed replacement is way op and a 10-20% chance of nirnhoned should not be done....that said this skill does have synergy with 2% increased run speed and 10% chance of doubled resources ...even so the 1 second I would save per node is a very minimal benefit (maybe make it instant loot with 0 mining time, or so I can mine while mounted ...that would be better).

Shadowstrike - I kind of agree and disagree with you here...for most players this will have very limited use and practically no uptime. For stealth based NB this can equal a guaranteed crit on the next enemy...perhaps allowing for chaining 2-hit kills and while 2.5 seconds isn't long it is enough to get behind a melee ranged taget and launch an attack. That said any ranged player will we no benefit and a tank having this might actually cause his team to take aggro for 2.5 seconds if he is not careful...

Inspiration Boost - I disagree with you on this as well, I think you overestimate its use fullness. I mean my main character was 50 in three of 6 crafting types by the time she reached VR1...if I had been smart I could have actually had all 6 at max...(level up alchemy, enchanting, provisioning and just level the other three from deconstruction, instead of loading points into smithing, tailoring and woodworking). If I had focused on the better way then I would have had all six maxed before I earned my first cp. The way I did it...I guess my second character would get the other three a bit faster, which is nice ...I guess but this one seems very bland to me.

OK, that's my knee-jerk reaction to the OP....now to read what everyone else said and reevaluate my position

Cheers!

Hutuldur

I like all of them. Speed, you can't really boost too much medium armor people, especially orcs. They are so fast already. 5% would be absolute max for that passive, but 2% if about right. Perhaps 3% would be best.

Also for example these:

Plentiful Harvest, if affects flowers also, it's very nice. 10% chance for double columbine is brilliant

Merchant Favored, Veteran Dungeons break armor quite badly. This will save hundreds of gold quickly.

Master Gatherer, just brilliant. If you don't gather things, you can't understand, but I really like this one.

Shadowstrike, 2.5s can be enough to be able to hide after a kill, if you kill someone with bow. NBs can also extend it nicely.

Valencer

I think the actual stars you put points into are supposed to be the meat of the champion system, whereas these unlockable passives are just neat little bonuses.

I like it. Makes sure there aren't that many must-haves.

Ysne58

I think inspiration should also count towards cp gain. Possibly also AvA gains. Those 2 changes right there would go a long way to resolve the complaints about taking too long to get a CP.

GreyBrow

this tree is intended to be used by all of our VR14 Sorc Alts that are only useful for plant picking.

xaade

LonePirate wrote: »

Blah blah blah.... these perks don't affect the way I enjoy the game... fix it for me...

blah blah blah.... these perks.... bunch of math.... don't alter my gametime by x%

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

Not all perks affect you.
Some perks are there for fun impact and not mathematical impact.

50% resource gathering time, while not impactful, is just a fun factor. And sometimes there are 20 nodes with 2 seconds walking distance.

Recremen

Derra wrote: »

I personally love the harvest speed passive. I pick flowers. Like - a lot. I spend hours picking flowers. I find some primitive fun in that. The harvest speed will make my live a thousand times better.
God i love this. Even the thought about it makes me squeal like a little piglet.

Edit: Do whatever you want to the rest of the abilities. DON`T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT HARVEST SPEED!

I personally like the idea of the harvest speed one, but you should consider the actual math behind it! If you're spending hours gathering materials, is this going to make your life 1000 times better? No! It will make it 1.05 times better. Travel To Node time is on average much more influential in gathering than Time To Pluck.

This is all to say that I love the direction, but I think the execution needs some more power behind it. ;-)

GreyPilgrim

LonePirate wrote: »

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.

Agree with all of this, but this in particular. I seriously saw this and thought wtf is that? 2% ? Maybe its a typo...

Dredlord

there is so much in the thief category that is must have, obviously the passives will be weaker.