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Can we talk about Enchanting again?
Faulgor
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A year ago I already made a post about this, but as not much has changed and with Update 7, lots of improvements are on the way, I think this deserves some attention again.
It's a real shame this profession has not received any love since ESO's release - except being easier to level. Provisioning got a whole overhaul and the new experience drinks, the gear crafts got constantly updated sets, new styles and a new research trait, and alchemy at least benefitted in some ways from 1.6. For enchanting, everything got worse.
Well, we did get a sound effect for applying a glyph recently, something which I asked for since release, so I guess that's nice ...
Before I go into the lackluster effects, I want to talk about some general shortcomings of the enchanting system.
Now, talking about the actual glyphs themselves:
Armor glyphs
- -60% penalty on shoulders, gloves, belt and shoes makes them effectively insignificant.
- Even all armor enchantments combined are less important than the food you eat.
- It's BORING. There are already enough ways to improve your base attributes, why can't a magical craft come up with something better than a cook or a smith?
- The upcoming prismatic enchantments - even if they will be craftable - do not add to the variety, because as I said, there are already enough ways to manage your attributes.
Jewelry glyphs
- Glyph of X Regen: 64 recovery is of insignificant magnitude compared to set bonuses, drinks, buffs, champion points.
- Glyph of Bashing: Increases bash damage by 37. I'm sorry, what?
- Glyph of Increase Physical/Magical Harm: 64 weapon/spell damage is of insignificant magnitude compared to set bonuses, buffs, base damage.
- Glyph of Potion Boost: 3.5 seconds is pitiful, but alright when stacked on all jewelry. Medicinal Use is miles better, though.
- Glyph of X Resist: 2183 resist sounds like a lot, but it isn't. It only helps against a very limited number of attacks, and even when put on all 3 pieces, it's not enough to justify the enchantment slot.
- Glyph of Reduce Spell/Physical Harm: Outclassed by block cost reduction or bugged nirnhoned equipment.
Weapon glyphs
- Glyph of Absorb X: 367 damage and 166 absorb translates to 91,75 dps and 41,5 recovery due to the 4 second cooldown. Insignificant.
- Glyph of Crushing: 1116 armor reduction is insignificant, even in synergy with similar effects.
- Glyph of Weakening: 64 power reduction is insignificant.
- Glyph of Frost/Fire/Shock/Poison/Disease: 490 damage translates to 122,5 dps due to the 4 second cooldown. Insignificant. Secondary effects too random to be useful (although the healing debuff from Disease is the best option for PvP).
- Glyph of Hardening: 1116 damage shield is insignificant.
- Glyph of Decrese Health: 367 damage translates to 91,75 dps due to the 4 second cooldown. Insignificant, but at least unresistable!
- Glyph of Rage: Possibly best option out of all weapon glyphs, but 64 power increase is still insignificant.
Basically, the only useful glyphs as far as I can tell are spell cost and block cost reduction for jewelry. I realize simply increasing the magnitude on all of these to be comparable to other sources of stat increases could unhinge the game balance (lol), but first, this wouldn't be a problem if enchanting hade been made worthwhile from the start, and second, I believe there are other ways to improve glyphs. For example, instead of increasing the damage of Frost/Fire/Shock glyphs, the chance for their secondary effects could be increased dramatically.
What's more - and this is especially relevant considering the intent for the VR15/VR16 gear to have equal magnitudes for crafted as well as dropped gear - dropped enchanted items are sometimes miles better than anything a master enchanter can make.
The enchantment on the legendary sword has more than twice the magnitude a crafter can make (1000 vs 490). How would people feel if that was the case for other crafted items, I wonder?
What I'd like to know from ZOS, after over a year of feedback on this deadest of all features: What is your vision or intent for enchanting? Are you happy with its current state? How do you plan to or would you like to improve it?
Although I feel like repeating myself, I made some suggestions on how to improve this profession. These are not a must have, just some ideas.
It's a real shame this profession has not received any love since ESO's release - except being easier to level. Provisioning got a whole overhaul and the new experience drinks, the gear crafts got constantly updated sets, new styles and a new research trait, and alchemy at least benefitted in some ways from 1.6. For enchanting, everything got worse.
Well, we did get a sound effect for applying a glyph recently, something which I asked for since release, so I guess that's nice ...
Before I go into the lackluster effects, I want to talk about some general shortcomings of the enchanting system.
- Jejota, Denata, Rekuta runes. You use Ta during leveling and for crafting writs, Kuta for anything serious. Unlike upgrading equipment, you don't need the lower quality ingredients to make legendary quality items. So these aspect runes are basically pointless, and often don't have a huge impact on the quality of the created glyph.
- Gathering runes is a total pain. For provisoning, materials are incredibly abundant that you hardly need to look for them at all; Alchemists can at least roughly estimate where to get which type of plant; For gear crafters, only some style materials are harder to come by. As an enchanter, the only thing I know for sure where to find are potency runes, because those are dependent on the level of the zone. But even then, potency, essence and aspect runes share the same nodes, so I'm unlikely to find what I'm looking for. Further, the return rate of runes from glyphs by decrafting is absolutely abyssmal.
- Rewards from writs are incredibly lackluster. While not as bad as those for gear crafting, the rewards don't offer a whole lot except for the occasional Kuta rune: A single green glyph and an empty soul gem. Why? Don't get me wrong, I'd like for soul gems to play a bigger role for enchanting, but sadly, they don't.
- The passive skills are ridiculous compared to other crafts. Provisioning and Alchemy have such good passives that improve the use of their items that they are pretty much mandatory professions, and both have passives that increase the yield of items recovered per craft. Combined with their already abundant supply of materials, these are pretty powerful. Gear crafts also have great passives to reduce the material use or improve material gain. It's no surprise then that all other professions have at least 6 skills, while enchanting only has 5. Not to mention the last dozen or so levels in enchanting are utterly pointless, because you can create max level runes much earlier than that.
Now, talking about the actual glyphs themselves:
Armor glyphs
- -60% penalty on shoulders, gloves, belt and shoes makes them effectively insignificant.
- Even all armor enchantments combined are less important than the food you eat.
- It's BORING. There are already enough ways to improve your base attributes, why can't a magical craft come up with something better than a cook or a smith?
- The upcoming prismatic enchantments - even if they will be craftable - do not add to the variety, because as I said, there are already enough ways to manage your attributes.
Jewelry glyphs
- Glyph of X Regen: 64 recovery is of insignificant magnitude compared to set bonuses, drinks, buffs, champion points.
- Glyph of Bashing: Increases bash damage by 37. I'm sorry, what?
- Glyph of Increase Physical/Magical Harm: 64 weapon/spell damage is of insignificant magnitude compared to set bonuses, buffs, base damage.
- Glyph of Potion Boost: 3.5 seconds is pitiful, but alright when stacked on all jewelry. Medicinal Use is miles better, though.
- Glyph of X Resist: 2183 resist sounds like a lot, but it isn't. It only helps against a very limited number of attacks, and even when put on all 3 pieces, it's not enough to justify the enchantment slot.
- Glyph of Reduce Spell/Physical Harm: Outclassed by block cost reduction or bugged nirnhoned equipment.
Weapon glyphs
- Glyph of Absorb X: 367 damage and 166 absorb translates to 91,75 dps and 41,5 recovery due to the 4 second cooldown. Insignificant.
- Glyph of Crushing: 1116 armor reduction is insignificant, even in synergy with similar effects.
- Glyph of Weakening: 64 power reduction is insignificant.
- Glyph of Frost/Fire/Shock/Poison/Disease: 490 damage translates to 122,5 dps due to the 4 second cooldown. Insignificant. Secondary effects too random to be useful (although the healing debuff from Disease is the best option for PvP).
- Glyph of Hardening: 1116 damage shield is insignificant.
- Glyph of Decrese Health: 367 damage translates to 91,75 dps due to the 4 second cooldown. Insignificant, but at least unresistable!
- Glyph of Rage: Possibly best option out of all weapon glyphs, but 64 power increase is still insignificant.
Basically, the only useful glyphs as far as I can tell are spell cost and block cost reduction for jewelry. I realize simply increasing the magnitude on all of these to be comparable to other sources of stat increases could unhinge the game balance (lol), but first, this wouldn't be a problem if enchanting hade been made worthwhile from the start, and second, I believe there are other ways to improve glyphs. For example, instead of increasing the damage of Frost/Fire/Shock glyphs, the chance for their secondary effects could be increased dramatically.
What's more - and this is especially relevant considering the intent for the VR15/VR16 gear to have equal magnitudes for crafted as well as dropped gear - dropped enchanted items are sometimes miles better than anything a master enchanter can make.
The enchantment on the legendary sword has more than twice the magnitude a crafter can make (1000 vs 490). How would people feel if that was the case for other crafted items, I wonder?
What I'd like to know from ZOS, after over a year of feedback on this deadest of all features: What is your vision or intent for enchanting? Are you happy with its current state? How do you plan to or would you like to improve it?
Although I feel like repeating myself, I made some suggestions on how to improve this profession. These are not a must have, just some ideas.
- Add a refinement option for aspect runes. 2 Ta runes could be refined to 1 Jejota, 3 Jejota to 1 Denata, 4 Denata to 1 Rekuta, 5 Rekuta to 1 Kuta. This would make all aspect runes worthwhile without changing the crafting system itself. Possibly add a passive that improves the conversion rates.
- Normalize all crafting runes to a single rune node that yields an essence, a potency and an aspect rune.
- Improve the rewards for writs; Either add basic runes to the drop list from the box, or add new feature like the experience drink recipe for provisioning or the upcoming glass motif for gear crafting writs.
- Drastically improve the chance to extract runes from glyphs
- Add a passive that allows to remove glyphs from enchanted gear
- Add a passive that improves the magnitude of armor enchantments / removes the penalty from certain pieces / increases weapon glyph charges, proc chance or magnitude - anything, really
- Remove the cooldown mechanic from weapon enchantments. Overall, one of ESO's strong points that it does not depend on cooldowns. It's quite strange that it would do so to inhibit the weakest of all damage increases.
- Instead, replace it with a proc chance like previous TES games and other effects in the game already (Evil Hunter, Disintegrate, Burning Light, etc.)
- Bring the magnitude of all enchantments in line with other sources of the same effect. For example, an attribute recovery glyph should add at least the same amount as a set bonus.
Alandrol Sul: He's making another Numidium?!?
Vivec: Worse, buddy. They're buying it.
Vivec: Worse, buddy. They're buying it.
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ontheleftcoast✭✭✭✭✭Because of the stupid cost of Kuta stones I end up using Rekuta for most of my enchanting. The tiny difference between them doesn't justify the 3,000 extra gold for Kuta. The rest of your post is spot on, enchanters don't get much love. Ahd another thing that irks me, when killing monsters you can find all the really good armor and gear up to purple epic gear. But other than the enchanting writs I've never found a green or higher glyph in the game. Really? Why can blacksmiths harvest epic armor for Grain Solvent but I can't find a Purple glyph? And they get tons of raw ore to refine for Grain Solvent so they have two ways to get it where enchanters get one.
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Faulgor✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭ontheleftcoast wrote: »Because of the stupid cost of Kuta stones I end up using Rekuta for most of my enchanting. The tiny difference between them doesn't justify the 3,000 extra gold for Kuta. The rest of your post is spot on, enchanters don't get much love. Ahd another thing that irks me, when killing monsters you can find all the really good armor and gear up to purple epic gear. But other than the enchanting writs I've never found a green or higher glyph in the game. Really? Why can blacksmiths harvest epic armor for Grain Solvent but I can't find a Purple glyph? And they get tons of raw ore to refine for Grain Solvent so they have two ways to get it where enchanters get one.
You are correct, the only glyphs that drop are white quality. I'm so used to it, it didn't even come to mind ...Alandrol Sul: He's making another Numidium?!?
Vivec: Worse, buddy. They're buying it.0