Nirnhoned, Precise and Sharpened

flguy147ub17_ESO · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

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code65536 wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

They definitely need to buff the nirn weapons & make them competitive with Sharpened.

That said, the opposite is true with nirn armor traits: nirnhoned heavy armor gives more armor/spell resistance now than reinforced heavy armor. Even on shield slot with Shield Expert passive unlocked, I got around 50 more armor & spell resistance with Nirnhoned than I did with Reinforced.

Actually, for large heavy pieces, Reinforced outperforms Nirn. For small pieces or for light armor, nirn would be better.

I literally just tested this by crafting 2 legendary shields. One with nirnhoned, another with Reinforced. Nirnhoned shield gave me 50 more on both resistances (didnt have Defending weapon on either bar, in case you were wondering).

I'll log back in to PTS shortly to test it with heavy armor chest.

I know you probably dont have an answer but do you still think impen maybe best for PVP or do you think nirnhoned will be for armor. I am on PS4 so i cant check anything out on PTS

player_klaus · April 2016

Joy_Division wrote: »

TY @Asayre for your insights and analysis. I very much appreciate your contributions.

cant say it any better. thank you.

and... while you are busy, crunching pts-numbers -are you planning to compare the new galerion with julianos?

hedna123b14_ESO · April 2016

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

In a raid scenario with the new changes to the crusher enchant and what not I've been pretty torn between these in a stamina situation. Sharpened becomes useless in most cases in raids due to the staggering amount of mitigation reduction we have access to, but as you mentioned it allows reallocation of CP. Since FTC isn't working atm on PTS I find it extremely difficult to get any concrete information out about this.

In a fully optimized raid scenario for stamina we have the following armor reductions; - 5280 (Major Fracture), - 3010 (Alkosh), -1188 (Minor Fracture), -2580 (Nightmother's Gaze), -3360(? forgetting exact value, but Sunderflame), and -1946 (Infused Crusher enchant), -100 (Base) This equates to a total of 17464 armor reduction, which most bosses have 18k-22k Even on a target with 22500 (maximum physical reduct in game I've seen on a boss who casted an armor buff on himself) that over penetrates. On top of this, this is without any points into Piercing, which I currently have 2442 pen from on Live. I feel like it's safe to say that in a proper raid scenario, or even some 4 mans that Precise will still remain optimal for Stamina builds, as it has since the sharpened bug was fixed.

Casters do lose the Nightmother's and Sunderflame buff but their LA passive only brings down the difference to 1056 of less pen access, so down to 16408 without any erosion. Even then, this means that only the Planor Inhibitor would benefit from Sharpened, assuming you are using flame damage (which all top DPS builds are using).

I'm fairly certain that proper group compositions will have Precise being favored, as it is on live. Sharpened is merely a one size fits all setup that favors pug groups or players not looking to min max insane buff management. I could be incorrect though, which I'd love to dissect further if you see any contradictions/issues. Regardless, great work with your break downs.

This is the same conclusion I have arrived at. It seems that precise is best when running with a group that has a full complement of buffs.

DDuke · April 2016

flguy147ub17_ESO wrote: »

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DDuke wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

They definitely need to buff the nirn weapons & make them competitive with Sharpened.

That said, the opposite is true with nirn armor traits: nirnhoned heavy armor gives more armor/spell resistance now than reinforced heavy armor. Even on shield slot with Shield Expert passive unlocked, I got around 50 more armor & spell resistance with Nirnhoned than I did with Reinforced.

Actually, for large heavy pieces, Reinforced outperforms Nirn. For small pieces or for light armor, nirn would be better.

I literally just tested this by crafting 2 legendary shields. One with nirnhoned, another with Reinforced. Nirnhoned shield gave me 50 more on both resistances (didnt have Defending weapon on either bar, in case you were wondering).

I'll log back in to PTS shortly to test it with heavy armor chest.

I know you probably dont have an answer but do you still think impen maybe best for PVP or do you think nirnhoned will be for armor. I am on PS4 so i cant check anything out on PTS

Well... At the moment (on Live) I'd say reinforced heavy chest/shield & impen small parts is best.

The idea behind that is that getting 1% base mitigation is going to net you anywhere between 1.5-2% crit resistance as well. Impenetrable is 3.8% crit damage reduction, but you've also got to remember that people don't have 100% crit chance... and if you're blocking people dont crit you at all (where as base mitigation still applies).

So after patch, I'm probably going full nirn actually, since it's even better than the current reinforced

Rex-Umbra · April 2016

I nirn better if I am in heavy armour and have low crit?

Dagoth_Rac · April 2016

Asayre wrote: »

Although I've only discussed magicka builds primarily, this conclusion of using Sharpened in most situations holds true for stamina builds as well. Stamina builds do not have a Flat Penetration skill but this is compensated by several armour debuff methods.

Does this take into account that weapon damage is easier to buff than spell damage? 5 pieces Medium Armor + Flawless Dawnbreaker is 20% extra weapon damage buff that really have no spell damage equivalent. (To be fair, there are a bunch of ways to buff max magicka that really have no stamina equivalent.) So is it possible that Nirnhoned is better than Precise or Sharpened for stamina builds? The 11% improved damage on the weapon will be getting buffed by 40% to 50% weapon damage for stamina builds as opposed to the typical 20% to 25% spell damage buff for magicka builds.

Fat_Cat45 · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

I literally just tested this by crafting 2 legendary shields. One with nirnhoned, another with Reinforced. Nirnhoned shield gave me 50 more on both resistances (didnt have Defending weapon on either bar, in case you were wondering).

I'll log back in to PTS shortly to test it with heavy armor chest.

Did you take into account the CP passive for 75% extra shield armor? Because that stacks with Reinforced.

DDuke · April 2016

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

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DDuke wrote: »

I literally just tested this by crafting 2 legendary shields. One with nirnhoned, another with Reinforced. Nirnhoned shield gave me 50 more on both resistances (didnt have Defending weapon on either bar, in case you were wondering).

I'll log back in to PTS shortly to test it with heavy armor chest.

Did you take into account the CP passive for 75% extra shield armor? Because that stacks with Reinforced.

Yes I did, and Nirnhoned still gave 50 more mitigation than Reinforced

Asayre · April 2016

@DDuke, they are right that Reinforced is better than Nirnhoned for big pieces. If the base armour (armour before traits/buffs) is greater than 1881 then Reinforced is better than Nirnhoned. The reason you found that shields give more mitigation with Nirnhoned compated to Reinforced is because it's base armour is 1720. If you have the Shield Expert passive unlocked the Nirnhoned is also buffed by 75% that's why it's still better than reinforced.

@Gilliamtherogue, I had similar problems with FTC and LUI, I've moved to AUI it provides similar functions. I've also recently been using CombatMetrics which has some very useless filtering functions (http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1360-CombatMetrics.html). And yes you're right that Precise is more favourable for groups with a lot of armour debuffs.

@flguy147ub17_ESO, Impenetrable is always better than Reinforced. Without going into too much detail, you can compare Impenetrable to Reinforced by evaluating the following function

where Mitigation_Base is your mitigation without Reinforced, Critical Chance is the Critical chance of your opponent, Impentrable is the amount that Critical Modifier is reduced by Impenetrable which is 0.039 in the PTS. Mitigation_Reinforced is the extra mitigation coming from using Reinforced. You can use the value for Nirnhoned here. I'll use the maximum bonus of 444 extra resistance which comes from Reinforcing a Heavy Chest piece. If the function is positive Impenetrable is better than Reinforced and vice versa. I created a plot for a range of Mitigation_Base and Critical Chance and in all cases the function is positive thus Impenetrable is better on all pieces.

@player_klaus, I must admit that I didn't initially see much merit to the Galerion set in PvE. But here is a a picture of the set without any CP assigned

The 2,3 and 4 set piece bonuses are mediocre and slightly worse than Julianos. The 5 piece bonus is buffed by Elemental Expert and can crit so I expect the average damage from the 5 piece bonus to be ~10k (5810*1.25*(1+0.6*0.6)). Assuming a light attack every second, the 5 piece bonus churns out about 1.6k DPS. Assuming a typical DPS of 20k the 5 piece bonus contributes 8.3% increased damage. In contrast the 5 piece bonus of Julianos (299 spell damage) increases ability damage by about 5.5% (10.5 * 299 * 1.25 / (40000 + 10.5*3000) ). I'll think a bit more to make sure my evaluation is correct but it sure does appear intriguing.

@Dagoth_Rac No I didn't take into account the extra weapon damage buffs. But I'll do put in some typical numbers for a stam character and see what happens. I don't play my stamina character much so I took a peek at @Gilliamtherogue post for stamina NBs (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/243441/end-game-stamina-nightblade-build-pve-dps/p1) and guesstimate that stamina builds will have about 33k stamina and 3.5k weapon damage. In terms of Weapon Damage bonus I expect it to be about 1.45 (20% Major Brutality, 5% Minor Brutality, 12% Agility, 8% Flawless Dawnbreaker). He has a critical chance of 73.8% (80.8% on his sheet but less 7% for the Precise daggers). His crit multiplier is about 0.91

This makes Nirnhoned

Precise

Sharpened
Again I begin I assume the ideal case where you benefit 100% from Sharpened the mitigation of a monster is higher for stamina builds because they do not have a source of Flat Penetration

So we come to roughly the same conclusion that Sharpened > Precise ~ Nirnhoned with similar caveats to the magicka case.

Lisbette · April 2016

Maybe in PvE Sharpened might be better, but PvP Nirn is better. Why?

DAMAGE SHIELDS

Since damage shields have no mitigation Sharpened is completely useless vs them (as is Precise) Damage done definitely applies to damage shields and with Bone Shield, Annulment buffs (and the ever present Hardened, Healing Wards, Igneous, and Blazing) Nirnhoned is by far the best for PvP

Now a certain shield stacking sorc knows this but is trying to mislead everyone so that he doesn't die even faster than he already does

Asayre · April 2016

Shush I die enough already in PvP

phaneub17_ESO · April 2016

Nevermind, it's been answered.

Vangy · April 2016

=(

Need so many tempers...... =( =(

player_klaus · April 2016

Asayre wrote: »

@player_klaus, I must admit that I didn't initially see much merit to the Galerion set in PvE. But here is a a picture of the set without any CP assigned

The 2,3 and 4 set piece bonuses are mediocre and slightly worse than Julianos. The 5 piece bonus is buffed by Elemental Expert and can crit so I expect the average damage from the 5 piece bonus to be ~10k (5810*1.25*(1+0.6*0.6)). Assuming a light attack every second, the 5 piece bonus churns out about 1.6k DPS. Assuming a typical DPS of 20k the 5 piece bonus contributes 8.3% increased damage. In contrast the 5 piece bonus of Julianos (299 spell damage) increases ability damage by about 5.5% (10.5 * 299 * 1.25 / (40000 + 10.5*3000) ). I'll think a bit more to make sure my evaluation is correct but it sure does appear intriguing.

ty @Asayre for your time. cant await to try it out.

WillhelmBlack · April 2016

Well this definitely opens up a few possibilities. Willpower and Agility weapons etc. Thanks OP, have thought about doing a website?

Vangy · April 2016

Answered.

andy_s · April 2016

Better start farming VMA sharpened weapons now if you still don't have any, because I guess ZOS added all possible traits to these weapons besides nirnhoned :P

Amorpho · April 2016

code65536 wrote: »

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sAnn92 wrote: »

Hi @Asayre I believe Nirn Staffs and 2-Handed stats are bugged. One-handed nirn weapons give 11% dmge and 2580 each. While Nirn values are the same for all weapones, staffs, 2-H and 1-H.

No, it's not bugged.

As I've repeated in other threads, half-potency traits for 1H weapons only apply for traits are character-wide and not item-specific. Nirnhoned is now a weapon-specific trait, affecting the tooltip damage of that weapon. It is not a character-wide 11% increase in SD/WD. In contrast, Sharpened and Precise (among other traits) affect character-wide stats are not weapon-specific, so their values are halved for 1H weapons.

This is exactly what I suspected @Asayre . Nirnhoned now affects weapon damage rather than overall character damage. This means that for a magicka build, Nirnhoned swords are utterly useless. In that case, Sharpened is the way forward. Not so, with staves. In that case Nirnhoned is better for PVP.

As far as the 66 points into Elfborn, I would say that most PVPers now run Impenetrable (which seems to be still the best trait). Wouldn't that make Sharpened even less "sharp" than Nirnhoned?

Finally, what about an Infused destro staff with an elemental damage (no poison or disease)? Wouldn't that make destro staves produce more overall damage than Nirnhoned and Sharpened?

Alcast · April 2016

Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · April 2016

Alcast wrote: »

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Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

what do you mean by this? i have watched your videos heard you say something similars and according to Asayre, elfborn is additive not multiplicative, to the crit, as seen here -

so the extra 10% crit damage from 29 CP into adds another 10% crit damage to the crit, ie 160% damage instead of 150%. how else would you expect it to act? the way you are explaining it sounds like it only adds 10% of the extra 50% damge, ie 155% instead of 150% damage.

Alcast · April 2016

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

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Alcast wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

what do you mean by this? i have watched your videos heard you say something similars and according to Asayre, elfborn is additive not multiplicative, to the crit, as seen here -

so the extra 10% crit damage from 29 CP into adds another 10% crit damage to the crit, ie 160% damage instead of 150%. how else would you expect it to act? the way you are explaining it sounds like it only adds 10% of the extra 50% damge, ie 155% instead of 150% damage.

On live server 10% Elfborn end up being 1,55 dmg modifier. If the base was 1.50 dmg modifier. I will test it on pts later.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · April 2016

Alcast wrote: »

show previous quotes

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

what do you mean by this? i have watched your videos heard you say something similars and according to Asayre, elfborn is additive not multiplicative, to the crit, as seen here -

so the extra 10% crit damage from 29 CP into adds another 10% crit damage to the crit, ie 160% damage instead of 150%. how else would you expect it to act? the way you are explaining it sounds like it only adds 10% of the extra 50% damge, ie 155% instead of 150% damage.

On live server 10% Elfborn end up being 1,55 dmg modifier. If the base was 1.50 dmg modifier. I will test it on pts later.

so i just did some testing on live, i believe you are wrong.i have 29 CP into elfborn and i did 3 test, one with light attacks from a sword, that being 676 light and 1074 crit, that is 160% increase, i then put on a aedric skill on my bar and then got a 1127 crit. that is 167%, pretty close to the 10% extra.

then i tried my breath of life, that was 12,320 normal and 19835 crit, that is a 160%. then i put a adric skill on bar, the crit changed to 21320, that is a 173% increase.

lastly i try sweeps, non crit was 3045 and crit was 5207. that is a 171% increase. that is pretty close to the extra 20% crit damage that i ought to be getting. so i do not know where you are getting the idea it is not working the way that Asayre says.

MaxTM · April 2016

@Asayre as always my greatest respect for your work! very appreciated

hrothbern · April 2016

DDuke wrote: »

They definitely need to buff the nirn weapons & make them competitive with Sharpened.

That said, the opposite is true with nirn armor traits: nirnhoned heavy armor gives more armor/spell resistance now than reinforced heavy armor. Even on shield slot with Shield Expert passive unlocked, I got around 50 more armor & spell resistance with Nirnhoned than I did with Reinforced.

@DDuke ,

tested the effect of the nirnhoned Armor trait, all on CP-160 gold:

Chest base value is 2772, Re-Inforced value is 3215, good for an Re-Inforced Armor addition of 443
Head, Shoulders, Legs, Feet base value is 2425, Re-Inforced value is 2812, good for a Re-Inforced Armor addition of 387
The nirnhoned trait delivers more additional Armor Resistance for Waist, Hands and Shield
Nirnhoned is a flat 301 Armor increase
Shield is good for a nirnhoned Armor addition of 301 with less than 75 CP in Block Expertise
Shield is good for a nirnhoned Armor addition of 175% x 301 = 527 AND a CP passive Shield Expert addition of 75% of 1290 with more than 75 CP in Block Expertise. In total an addition of 1617.

The difference between Nirnhoned and Re-Inforced for A Shield is indeed very small.

Alcast · April 2016

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

Alcast wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

what do you mean by this? i have watched your videos heard you say something similars and according to Asayre, elfborn is additive not multiplicative, to the crit, as seen here -

so the extra 10% crit damage from 29 CP into adds another 10% crit damage to the crit, ie 160% damage instead of 150%. how else would you expect it to act? the way you are explaining it sounds like it only adds 10% of the extra 50% damge, ie 155% instead of 150% damage.

On live server 10% Elfborn end up being 1,55 dmg modifier. If the base was 1.50 dmg modifier. I will test it on pts later.

so i just did some testing on live, i believe you are wrong.i have 29 CP into elfborn and i did 3 test, one with light attacks from a sword, that being 676 light and 1074 crit, that is 160% increase, i then put on a aedric skill on my bar and then got a 1127 crit. that is 167%, pretty close to the 10% extra.

then i tried my breath of life, that was 12,320 normal and 19835 crit, that is a 160%. then i put a adric skill on bar, the crit changed to 21320, that is a 173% increase.

lastly i try sweeps, non crit was 3045 and crit was 5207. that is a 171% increase. that is pretty close to the extra 20% crit damage that i ought to be getting. so i do not know where you are getting the idea it is not working the way that Asayre says.

I will go check it again, maybe I messed up smth last time i checked it. thx

Reorx_Holybeard · April 2016

Alcast wrote: »

show previous quotes

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

what do you mean by this? i have watched your videos heard you say something similars and according to Asayre, elfborn is additive not multiplicative, to the crit, as seen here -

so the extra 10% crit damage from 29 CP into adds another 10% crit damage to the crit, ie 160% damage instead of 150%. how else would you expect it to act? the way you are explaining it sounds like it only adds 10% of the extra 50% damge, ie 155% instead of 150% damage.

On live server 10% Elfborn end up being 1,55 dmg modifier. If the base was 1.50 dmg modifier. I will test it on pts later.

They fixed Elfborn in one of the past major updates (1.7 or 1.8 I think) so that it is now an additive increase. For example, 10% Elfborn changes a 1.50 dmg modifier to 1.60.

Asayre · April 2016

Amorpho wrote: »

As far as the 66 points into Elfborn, I would say that most PVPers now run Impenetrable (which seems to be still the best trait). Wouldn't that make Sharpened even less "sharp" than Nirnhoned?

Finally, what about an Infused destro staff with an elemental damage (no poison or disease)? Wouldn't that make destro staves produce more overall damage than Nirnhoned and Sharpened?

I'm not sure what Elfborn has to do with Sharpened. But Sharpened will most likely give you the full bonus in PvP on unshielded targets since you probably won't have that many armour debuffs on your opponent. There is merit to running Nirnhoned as Sharpened (and Precise) have no effect on shields.

As a rough estimate, an epic V16 flame enchant does 2924 flame damage every 4 seconds (I lost my runestones to my crafting bag so had to use the free epic one from the template). If you have an infused trait this becomes 3507 flame damage every 3.2 seconds. This comes out to a DPS increase of 365. I know I don’t have legendary enchants but it is not in the ball park as 365 is ~1.8% DPS increase (assuming 20k DPS). This doesn't take into account mitigation and critical damage but a rough estimate puts Infused behind Nirnhoned and Precise.

Yes, the equation @Lightspeedflashb14_ESO used is correct for Live and on PTS. If you want to include warhorn it becomes

So everything is additive except for Major Force.

Nahz · April 2016

Considering your testing suggests spell penetration would be more valuable, I think sharpened should increase damage and nirnhoned should increase spell penetration. The more valuable option should come from the rarer material.

I'm not just saying this because I don't want to remake my gold torug swords...

hedna123b14_ESO · April 2016

Alcast wrote: »

show previous quotes

Asayre wrote: »

Yes it changes if you are using Warhorn, Minor Breach and Roar of Alkosh. But then again don't underestimate the sharpened plan with 66 in Elfborn since Major Force is multiplicative. I don't know if there is that much interest in a niche buff situation so I didn't write about it.

The Problem with Elfborn is that it only increases the crit damage modifier and not the whole damage part. So I always focus on Elemental expert and Thaumaturge for templar and I only put like 10 points into elfborn.

Or do you think with 3-4 Warhorns up in Trials Elfborn would outdo Thaumaturge?

The preferred distribution for a magicka templar is 73 ele 18 elfborn 3 spell erosion 73 thaum. Are you suggesting to take points out of Elfborn for a diminishing returns boost from Ele and Thaum? I don't advise this...

Eas007 · April 2016

The mathwizard at work again. My thanks dear sir