An in depth look at the Maw of Lorkhaj Trial sets, are they even worth it?

Gilliamtherogue

Now that the new trial that released with the Thieves Guild patch has started to be cleared more and more, people are starting to finally complete some of the new gear sets that drop from it. In the past, Zenimax has really struggled with making trial gear appealing for any real usage outside of insanely niche or just outright inefficient setups. The first time around Aether was the only usable set, and was highly coveted at the time, while most of the jewelry sets and the heavy and medium sets were not relevant at all. Fast forwarding to Sanctum Ophidia, each set kept its core identity but gained more fitting bonuses, and got close to being strong, but still failed to be truly useful. After a lot of communication with ZoS through something known as the Council of Raiders (thanks to @Woeler for creating this group), it seemed that we finally gave the company an idea of what to look for when making gear.

The fruit of our work with feedback and communication netted us these 4 unique sets;

Tanks-


Healers-


Stamina DPS-


Caster DPS-


At first glance some of these invoke mixed feelings. Most of them on paper sound incredible, but instead of making assumptions let's jump into what they actually do.

Lunar Bastion; One of the few tanking sets that comes in jewelry, thought to have the ability to replace Footman's.

2 piece- % healing is a pretty lack luster stat for most tank builds, since most of this game deals with overhealing or preemptive healing.

3 piece- gives Minor Aegis, a 5% damage reduction that only is applied to damage dealt by bosses. For reference, Footman's 5 piece gives 6% damage reduction, as it is 12% of block's mitigation, which is 50% (.12 x .5 = .06). It's only 1% short, but does not suffer diminishing returns as block damage reduction does (usually loses value due to rounding down calculations). However, what this buff deems Bosses is rather finicky, as it does not apply to all mobs that would be seen as a boss. World bosses in overland areas are apparently not considered bosses, rather only named enemies with the special health bars in instanced areas are. Not only that but you lose all value when you're not fighting a boss, which effectively makes this a set only have 2 active set bonuses, and another 2 that only apply in set conditions. This is a massive loss to performance and thus ultimately kills this bonus.

4 piece- 1064 health. Pretty basic, more health to be tankier, kinda meh for most builds as they have plenty of health elsewhere.

5 piece- Activating a synergy will place a fairly large blessing down on the ground at your position. Allies who stand in it will receive a small shield every 2 seconds, over 10 seconds. Since tanks often synergize shards this means it's up a fair amount. Damage shields do however, take true damage so CP and mitigation mean nothing to them. Overall it's pretty much just a pseudo health bubble that can save glass cannon builds from mechanics that would otherwise 1 shot them. HOWEVER, this is capped at 6 players. This is a really big deal, as trials run 12 people. You could argue that two tanks could run this, but that incurs operational loses as they can run other sets, as well as the fact that this game lacks a smart system that detects buffs, and can reapply to targets who already have this on them.

Final Verdict: This set is neat, it looks cool and the 5 piece activation is really awesome to look at, but it literally stops there. Weaker than Footman's by 1% mitigation on top of the fact that it doesn't work on the majority of mobs, it pretty much has no use aside from a few niche moments. This set is in dire need of attention, Minor Aegis should apply to all non player entities to be useful, and the 5 piece should go to 12 targets, not 6.

Twilight Remedy; A really interesting set that seems to play to the current meta of group wide utility. I personally love this idea and I wish more sets existed that buffed parties instead of simple stat stacking. Also comes in jewelry, allowing it to be paired with the ever favored Spell Power Cure set for full on healers.

2 piece- 129 magicka recovery. Pretty simple, helps the healer not run out of resources so they can spam away. Most healers will find themselves needing more regen than gear gives them, so this helps fill in the "quota" of how much they need.

3 piece- Minor Aegis again. I really don't understand why this is on a HEALER setup, it makes it seem like ZoS knew that Lunar Bastion wouldn't be too good so they put it on this set as an alternative so tanks could provide some extra boost to the group's DPS. From a healer perspective this is pretty useless, although it'll help on some boss fights since healers run 7/7 light most of the time and are kinda fragile. Regardless this a dead set bonus again since it only applies to bosses.

4 piece- 129 spell damage. Increases potency of healing and damaging spells that scale with Magicka/spell damage. Simple stuff, not bad at all.

5 piece- The eye opener of this set, anyone who activates your synergies while wearing this set will receive a pretty nice heal over 10 seconds, as well as the buff Minor Force (12% critical hit damage). Since it's bound to the synergizer and not the caster, this set has no cap on how many targets who can have it, except for the amount of players who can synergize your stuff. The heal scales with CP and is pretty nice, but it's pretty much just a free Rapid Regen with Minor Force tacked on. Many end game DPS builds run Trap Beast already, which leaves this set either null or a pseudo bar slot. The duration of this set is definitely noticeable, as 10 seconds is a mere fragment of a fight.

Final Verdict: It's good enough to be ran in a trial, by one healer. Two healers are needed for vMoL, so having one healer run 5 SPC and 5 Twilight's is preferred, while the other wears 5 SPC and 5 Worm Cult. However the 3 piece isn't really fitting, and gives no real boost to a healer's purpose or capability. On top of that, the 5 piece is outshined by Trap Beast since it lasts only 10 seconds. If the duration was buffed to 30, then this would be pretty stellar.

Roar of Alkosh; A really interesting looking set that honestly got me SUPER excited to get. Since it comes in jewelry it allows you to run two 5 pieces and a 2 piece monster set, for maximum stat values.

2 piece- 688 weapon critical. Roughly translates to 3.2% weapon crit, which is really good for high Critical Hit Damage builds and raid buffs. Since crit is dependent on many other factors for a DPS value, as well as being inherently chance, it has no static value. However simply plugging it into your Critical Hit Damage modifier will give you a rough estimate of how strong it is. Fully buffed this comes out to 4.22% DPS( .032 x 1.32 ) for my build.

3 piece- Minor Slayer. Operates exactly the same as Minor Aegis, except it buffs YOUR damage against bosses. Almost every single boss in this game has some sort of add mechanic where additional mobs need to be fought, so this bonus immediately becomes outshone by a 3 piece Agility when that happens. This needs to operate the same way as I proposed Aegis, where it applies to all non player entities. If Minor Slayer gave a flat 5% bonus to non player mobs, this set would immediately become viable in almost all scenarios, but not by terribly much over Agility.

4 piece- 129 Weapon damage, pretty straightforward. Boosts DPS by a noticable amount, this is roughly worth 180 weapon damage buffed, which is then applied to abilities' coefficients. Overall for most builds, it comes out somewhere to 400-600 DPS in a full raid scenario. Weaker than a weapon critical bonus if your crit is under 90%.

5 piece- The real reason I was excited for this set. Activating a synergy causes you to shoot out an ability, roughly the size of a Refreshing Path, that damages any enemy that is caught in it. Upon application it deals a small amount of up front damage and reduces their resistances by 3010, which translates to a staggering 6.02% bonus damage (3010/500, 500 being a mobs value to gain 1% mitigation). It also does really decent damage, and even finds it's way into the top 4 of my recap IF I can position myself insanely well. Alone this out performs popular 5 set bonuses like Hundings and even Nightmother's by quite a bit. Not only that, but this mitigation applies to anyone hitting the target, which translates to an entire raid groups DPS being ammped by 6.02% when hitting the target. There is also no ICD (internal cool down) on this set, so reactivating a synergy simply refreshes and reapplies the damage to enemies hit, however this offers no real bonus and actually lowers the value of this set if it means you won't be able to resynergize after the debuff fades. The real drawback to this though, is the activation of a synergy issue. Synergies are currently fubar in the Live patch, many times synergies flickering on and off leaving you unable to hit them in time, or having to reposition yourself numerous times, invoking a heavy operational loss. On top of this, the activation is EXTREMELY small and finicky, if targets are too close they will magically ignore the damage, and if they are slightly to your sides they are not hit. This NEEDS to be changed to become a radial activation, at least 6 or 8 meters. This would allow Alkosh to becomes SO much more useful at applying, while not making it overpowered since it cannot stack.

Final Verdict: This set is a massive tease. It has so much potential loaded into it that just can't currently be tapped into in the current state. On single target fights the application is easy to manage, granted you have a plethora of synergies going out (most synergies have an ICD of 20 seconds, so you need at LEAST two synergies going out every 20 seconds to keep this up 100%) and no one else is stealing them from you. Summary of the set to make it in line to where it should be; Minor Slayer needs to apply to ALL non player entities. The 5 piece activation needs to become a radial explosion, rather than a small line. On top of this, 10 seconds is far too short for the majority of content, where movement and other mechanics are going on. This should be boosted to at least 20 seconds, so that your ICD for activating a unique synergy is off. Personally 30 seconds would be optimal since Moondancer has it, but 20 is definitely the least.

Moondancer; Initially this set gave me and many others mixed feelings. The duality of this set between full out DPS and sustain management really had it be questioned in terms of meta builds. However, the findings of this set were quite shocking.

2 piece- 967 max magicka. Pretty straightforward, this is a lot more once you apply % amps such as racials, CP, and class/gear setups. On my caster Nightblade it comes out to a 1477 bonus. After applying this to kit coefficients it becomes roughly 300-400 dps in a proper raid setting. Weaker than spell damage until CP 3600 is obtainable, and even then is usually beaten.

3 piece- Again, Minor Slayer. Again, outshone by caster's 3 piece jewelry option of Willpower on everything but pure single target boss fights. I find it extremely disappointing that the hardest content in game drops gear weaker than a set obtained from AFK farming mobs.

4 piece- 129 Spell Damage. With Major+Minor Sorcery it becomes 161 Spell Damage, which when applied to class coefficients becomes something like ~350-550 dps in raid settings.

5 piece- Activating a synergy ( do you sense the pattern here? ) grants your character one of two buffs for 30 seconds, 448 Spell damage OR Magicka regen. The ability to offer a massive boost to DPS, or none at all was what originally made many people think this set was weak. However, after some testing we've figured out quite the opposite. The activation for this set has no ICD, and you can spam synergies as much as you want until you get the buff you desire, meaning that as long as there are synergies you can keep trying. On top of that, if you have this 5 piece bonus active on a dual wield bar, and swap off of it after receiving the buff, the buff retains, acting as a pseudo 5 piece without even needing to wear it. This alone leaves this set nigh unparalleled in power, since many caster builds run dual wield swords. Beyond this fact, while getting the Regen boost seems weak to most, it actually allows for another favorite set to be ran with little to no issues, Molag Kena. The added cost increase of Kena often dissuades players from using it, but this 5 piece regen proc alleviate that issue when paired with stellar healers and debuff management. Since I've done it for every other breakdown, 448 Spell damage equates to roughly 560 Spell Damage, which is ~1100-1600 DPS depending on the build.

Final Verdict: The only set that actually holds its own against other gear setups. More factors and variables lean toward the side of favor for this set, compared to against. However, I still believe Minor Slayer should apply to non player enemies aside from bosses. A simple trade off would be to make the 5 piece activation disappear if you swap off of it, if it is seen as too powerful to ZoS.

Overall I agree with the direction these sets are moving toward, being more group PvE based than universal application. While it's a shame that none of these can be utilized to the fullest in solo play, I understand why they aren't. There still needs to be some minor tweaking done to these sets however, before they can be truly utilized. Currently each of these sets except Moondancer are outperformed by crafted and overland(non instanced/dungeoned) farmable gear, which is extremely stupid. I hope that this is appreciated and taken into consideration by @ZOS_RichLambert , @ZOS_Finn , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom , and/or @ZOS_GinaBruno as well as other members of the ZoS staff and player community. I appreciate any feedback or discussion against or for these ideas.

lathbury

well thats good to know thanks for a well written review

Mr.Hmm

Nice well written review thanks

Made me more knowledgeable.

Magdalina

Nice, thanks for the review. Been wondering if Moondancer has cooldown on synergy there.

Polysemy

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Finn @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @Seiffer @Wrobel

Can we get an official response sometime before release of DB?

iam117

I agree, I was super stoked to see a new heavy set that could be great for tanking. Yet after reading and planning some, I'm still using footman. At v14. Sad IMHO that it still outshines a new trial set even after well over a year in game and 2 levels below max. And my other 5 pc bonus is crafted. I would love to see lunar bastion get some attention. Thank you @Gilliamtherogue for taking the time to put all this down on paper.

code65536

Of these sets, Lunar Bastion is, by far, the most worthless.

I had commented on the 5p bonus in an earlier thread by @Saturn.

code65536 wrote: »

The shield also disappears after that 2-second duration, even if the person is still in the blessing circle and even if they are taking no damage. In a smaller group, this isn't really problematic, since the shield will refresh and they'll get it again. But when you tested it the other day in the 12-man group, what I saw was the shield disappearing from person A and reappearing on person B so that, at any point in time, only half the group had protection.

In contrast, if you cast Regeneration, it hits 2 people, and when you cast it again, it hits two more people without removing the buff from the first two, allowing 4 people to have Regeneration active. But with Lunar Bastion, on each refresh tick, current shield holders lose the shield, and if the group has more than 6 people, there is a fair chance that they don't regain that shield.

But by far the biggest problem is the pathetically low potency of this effect. Essentially, all it does is mitigate a bit over 2K damage every 2 seconds for 6 people standing in an area. A Templar's Extended Ritual covers about the same area, ticks more frequently, ticks for a lot more than 2K and doesn't require some fancy hard-to-get set to use.

For a set that's ostensibly designed for PvE trials, it is so worthless in that kind of a setting.

And if you want to use Lunar Bastion for just the 3p bonus (which is a nice bonus), you'll have to put up with the useless 2p Healing Taken bonus. If a tank is going to go with a 3p Minor Aegis set, he's much better off with 3p Twilight Remedy (that magicka recovery is far more useful) than with 3p Lunar Bastion.

Deltia

Excellent research and I figured this would be the case when they showed the sets off. Sad because once again, there's very little incentive to do the newest content from a gear standpoint.

But 3 months from now it may change and be BiS (see Scathing Mage). Thanks for your research on this and contiunual help for the community. I can't matf.

Sasyk

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Finn @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @Seiffer @Wrobel

If you could please review and consider the changes to these sets proposed by @Gilliamtherogue that would be absolutely amazing.

Polysemy

Polysemy wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Finn @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @Seiffer @Wrobel

Can we get an official response sometime before release of DB?

More red numbers for you Finn :^)

Slayyer-AUS

nice review 10/10

Woeler

The problem with lunar bastion is the general concept. No matter how they change it, as long as it is left to do what it does, it's completely worthless compared to Ebon or Potentates.

The problem with this set is not only that it is bad, but that the general concept is bad. It's not something desirable. It's not a game-changer and it does not help anyone. If I wanted shields on people I could just spam igneous, and that shield is even bigger.

This set was clearly designed with the motto "Lets do something unique", and the set is clearly unique, but for that it pays a price. And that price is that it is totally worthless.

I'm looking forward to the upscaled Sanctum because there I can actually get sets that are good. Good to wear and good to sell.

Gilliamtherogue

Woeler wrote: »

The problem with lunar bastion is the general concept. No matter how they change it, as long as it is left to do what it does, it's completely worthless compared to Ebon or Potentates.

The problem with this set is not only that it is bad, but that the general concept is bad. It's not something desirable. It's not a game-changer and it does not help anyone. If I wanted shields on people I could just spam igneous, and that shield is even bigger.

This set was clearly designed with the motto "Lets do something unique", and the set is clearly unique, but for that it pays a price. And that price is that it is totally worthless.

I'm looking forward to the upscaled Sanctum because there I can actually get sets that are good. Good to wear and good to sell.

Agreed, especially since Ebon lasts as long as you are in range with no ICD and overall more health. Since Lunar gives a 2399 damage shield, it gives a temporary 2399 bonus health, but stops there. Ebon gives an actual real health amount, that is effected by mitigation values, allowing it to be effectively larger than it states. On top of this, it seems to scale with bonus health amps (to what extent, I am unsure. I get 5% bonus HP compared to the tooltip of the wearer states). I gain 1105 health from a non golded set (3 blue, 2 purple pieces) so I suspect around 1150 with 3 purple and 2 gold (since jewelry can't be gold). Add on most DPS's CP allocation of ~21% damage reduction from Hardy+Ele Defender and another 20000 (30.3% miti) armor + spell res while fully buffed in raids (less for Light armor obviously). So that's sponging an effective 1739 health while not blocking (2889 if assuming permanent blocking) compared to 2339 health every 2 seconds with the chance of not getting it at all.

Apply this to a trial group and you get ~20000 effective raid wide health (assuming an average of +5% bonus HP scaling and the same mitigation values that I listed above) from Ebon with no restraints except an out range mechanic (quite large at that) verses Lunar's 14394 effective raid wide health, that is bound to synergies and a smaller range.

It's pretty clear to see that Lunar Bastion is quite weak, even when compared to out dated and BoE (footmans and ebon are both BoE at that) sets. Completely unbelievable.

Blud

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Overall I agree with the direction these sets are moving toward, being more group PvE based than universal application.

Agreed. I love this direction. The gear is specialized according to the play style the player enjoys!

Gilliamtherogue

Blud wrote: »

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Overall I agree with the direction these sets are moving toward, being more group PvE based than universal application.

Agreed. I love this direction. The gear is specialized according to the play style the player enjoys!

Yeah, now it just needs to actually be good. Since they've decided to take the direction of specialization it means they shouldn't have fears of a set being deemed OP, and being able to make it more powerful than other sets, because it is only applicable towards certain content. Take Marksman for example, 8% damage with bows and 5% cost reduction is stronger than its predecessor, Hawk Eye, which was 5% of each but worked on everything compared to Marksman's player only.

Alcast

Minor Slayer should give a 10% damage boost. At the moment 5% is not at all superior to Agility/willpower.

Alkosh:
The cone AoE attack of Alkosh is way too small in both radius and range to make it worthwile wearing.
Lunar:
Lunar bastion only hitting 6 people makes it quite bad. Upgrade it to 12 and then it will be actually good.

Cinbri

Sets are awesome and not just for PvE but for PvP too (especially Moondancer with its dual concept), i still in processs of collecting all jewel parts and wanna use it in PvP for new 2vX builds, for some reason most PvPers underrated those sets. Still i would like to see those sets even more universal for PvE/PvP: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/262490/request-for-maw-of-lorkhaj-sets-3pc-bonus

Hektik_V

Worm Cult's (and I would assume Ebon and Hircine) 18m effective range is pretty lackluster as well when you consider that's much less of a radius than a 28m BoL would cover.

Polysemy

Hektik_V wrote: »

Worm Cult's (and I would assume Ebon and Hircine) 18m effective range is pretty lackluster as well when you consider that's much less of a radius than a 28m BoL would cover.

Have been saying this since these came out... I can be fighting the twins on one side of the room and not be getting the Ebon buff from my main tank.... like wuuuutt.....



Have some more red numbers :^)

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Finn @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @Seiffer @Wrobel

Polysemy

*twiddles thumbs*

bloodenragedb14_ESO

gods, those look awful

nihonseanb14_ESO

Any set that requires a 2nd person (in this case a person to activate a synergy) for the 5 piece bonus to work is pretty useless.

A lot of synergies have an extremely small area that you can activate them. Tanking it is actually a pain to fire off the Nova synergy it is such a damn small window.

I would put these sets pretty low on my list of useful gear. Kind of neat, kind of 'oh wow' but sadly kind of useless.

Gilliamtherogue

@ZOS_GinaBruno

I noticed in today's patch notes that the revamped SO sets got some adjustments. I understand new content is going to be the focus for this patch, but could you take a look at this thread as well for addressing some concerns with trial gear overall? Some of the changes I suggested (Minor Aegis/Slayer) would also benefit the new trial sets as well, which are looking to still be lack luster.

Autolycus

Alcast wrote: »

Minor Slayer should give a 10% damage boost. At the moment 5% is not at all superior to Agility/willpower.

Alkosh:
The cone AoE attack of Alkosh is way too small in both radius and range to make it worthwile wearing.
Lunar:
Lunar bastion only hitting 6 people makes it quite bad. Upgrade it to 12 and then it will be actually good.

I'm on board with this. In most cases, the extra damage on non-boss mobs isn't absolutely necessary, and most trash in this game is laughable for your average trial-goer. I would be willing to accept sacrificing some of the damage and utility from others sets during non-boss encounters, or on adds during boss fights, if the boost to bosses was 10% as you suggested.

Lunar Bastion is quite disappointing. I won't dredge on about how long us tanks have been waiting for a good replacement for Footman, but this should have been it. At the very least, these damage shields should not be "revoked" during the next tick of the buff. Any player running this set in pvp is facing Battle Spirit nerfs on two of the 5 set bonuses, and one set bonus that doesn't even apply to anything in Cyrodiil (except maybe anchor bosses, but I doubt it if world bosses don't count), making this set arguably one of the absolute worst for a pvp tank. That means that forcing aoe cap limitations on this set is completely pointless and illogical. Couple that with the aforementioned "revoking" of shields and the mediocre (by comparison) healing received makes this one of the least attractive tanking sets to-date. I figured ZOS would have learned from Imperium, but I actually think this might be worse.

@Gilliamtherogue thanks for the detailed analysis! There is a lot of valuable information here.

elium85

Please adjust these sets to give them value!

FeaR Turbo

Feels Bad Man.

Gilliamtherogue

Brushed under the rug again. Took something like 8 months for a new trial, and the gear is still pretty much useless compared to crafted. Feelsbadman

rokrdt05

lol what did you expect @Gilliamtherogue ? How long before they fixed the khajiit passive or even acknowledged it?

I have a thread going about Ground Based effects disappearing before their respective timers are up and I can't get the dev team to comment one way or the other.

DschiPeunt

It's nice that you gave those sets a review, but I have to disagree to some extent regarding the Moondancer and Twilight Remedy set.

The problem with both sets is, that every DD has to activate the synergies for himself.

Twilight Remedy:
Using 5 pieces of SPC along with 5 pieces of TR will cost the healer a lot of spell damage and max magicka, while gaining a useless 5 piece bonus. I mean, come on: How could a healer provide synergies for every DD in a trial group every 10 seconds?

Moondancer:
As Alcast said: the 3 piece bonus of Moondancer is not superior to Willpower. And the 5 piece bonus is not worth it too, imho. Sure, I can synergize until I have the right buff, but again: Where do all those synergies come from? And what if I have the wrong buff? I don't think this is useful at all.

If not everyone would have to wear the set and synergize, I could see some applications of those sets, but not with their current design.

Valrien

DschiPeunt wrote: »

It's nice that you gave those sets a review, but I have to disagree to some extent regarding the Moondancer and Twilight Remedy set.

The problem with both sets is, that every DD has to activate the synergies for himself.

Twilight Remedy:
Using 5 pieces of SPC along with 5 pieces of TR will cost the healer a lot of spell damage and max magicka, while gaining a useless 5 piece bonus. I mean, come on: How could a healer provide synergies for every DD in a trial group every 10 seconds?

Moondancer:
As Alcast said: the 3 piece bonus of Moondancer is not superior to Willpower. And the 5 piece bonus is not worth it too, imho. Sure, I can synergize until I have the right buff, but again: Where do all those synergies come from? And what if I have the wrong buff? I don't think this is useful at all.

If not everyone would have to wear the set and synergize, I could see some applications of those sets, but not with their current design.

There's such a thing as a synergy called "Purify".

You should look into it.

Rune_Relic

Interesting post. Thanks.