Does wearing crafted gear drag your whole team down?

Recremen

This is a problem that affects every aspect of competitive play, but seems to be especially pronounced in PvP due to the ubiquity of either regen or crit, and the dearth of weapon/spell damage and raw stat increases. Obviously this isn't an issue for folks that wake up in the morning, throw a pile of "clean" laundry in the air, and walk underneath it hoping that something sticks, but for those of us who actually want to have some control over their appearance this can be incredibly frustrating. Anyone can go farm Bloodspawn or Kena, grab up some Black Rose or Dreugh King or Vicious Death, and get by with a great build, but y'all look the dang same. Meanwhile, anyone looking to mix and match the literally dozens of motifs available in the game are stuck with Hunding's and Julianos and the like, which is totally fine right up until you run into a group that not only has the right gear, but the ability to use it as well. I can knock a scrub on their boot wearing my Totally Pro-Tier Hunging/Night Mother crafted combo, I can even take a decent player wearing that, but someone who is actually in the upper 1% of performance? No heck no way. It's like running elegantly into a reinforced brick wall.

Meanwhile when we ask about any progress on a restyling system, we get told we can "dye the armor" or "wear a costume" but that there are no short-term plans for a proper style system. Y'all know I love the dyes and the costumes in this game, but those are a once-or-twice a week thing for a lot of us. We don't want to be wearing our Wrothgar Best all the time or it will stop being our best and just be that old rag we put on constantly! I really hope you guys make a restyling/vanity tab, or whatever kind of system a development priority. It makes Khajiit sad when you have to choose between form and function, and it brings the competitiveness of his team down as well.

WhiteMage

For how I want to (and do) play in Cyrodiil, Kagrenac's Hope, a crafted set, is BiS. Where's your poll option for that?

Astanphaeus

Kagrenac's is still a good group set...

That said, I would love a way to re-cfraft my armor so I don't have to wear some of the hideous motifs (cough*Abah's Watch*cough) some of the better sets come in.

Seratopia

I refuse to give up my crafted stylized gear.

They'll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands before I wear a drop set. And if I'm weak because of it at least I'll look good right?

But for real they need a vanity tab.

OR a chance for any type of drop set item to have a chance at being any motif?

Recremen

It's at least not optimal

WhiteMage wrote: »

For how I want to (and do) play in Cyrodiil, Kagrenac's Hope, a crafted set, is BiS. Where's your poll option for that?

No poll option for contrarians, sorry. For real though, that's only "good" for

1. Magicka builds
2. People whose team is dying a lot

It can be useful, but it is at best an exception to the rule, unless you're suggesting that everyone looking to control how they look go Magicka and all wear light or heavy Kag's. I'm trying to paint the big picture here, not break out every little exception. I also didn't mention Eternal Hunt, because that has almost no use in group play and is mostly for your friendly neighborhood 1vXer.

Recremen

It's at least not optimal

Seratopia wrote: »

I refuse to give up my crafted stylized gear.

They'll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands before I wear a drop set. And if I'm weak because of it at least I'll look good right?

But for real they need a vanity tab.

OR a chance for any type of drop set item to have a chance at being any motif?

Dropped sets can already come in an enormous variety of useless traits (in terms of end-game specialized play), adding a chance for them to drop in every motif would only multiply the search by the number of possible motifs. That's hundreds of pieces of gear to wade through, each probably having a low drop rate. Not exactly what I'd call desirable. ;-)

Sanct16

Usually you don't run ONLY dropped gear anyway, so just get some big pieces crafted and you're good to go. Chest and Legs is 90% of the whole appearance.

Anyway tho, the bigger annoyence imo is that certain style chests still don't work while you wear a tabard and just get replaced with some super generic red something.

WuffyCerulei

Where's the "I'm doing quite well with crafted sets in my group" option? I wear 5 Destruction Mastery, 5 Julianos, and 1 Kena. I can't not wear Julianos. It really beefs things up. And yeah, some dropped sets are good, like the 2 I have, but they aren't required.

IxSTALKERxI

It's at least not optimal

I 100% agree with you mendo. I remember when we played together in Rage I'd be like suggesting sets run and then you'd say how the styles of those sets don't look nice haha. Which is cool, I get that people want their characters to look bad ass. It's a shame they are forced to wear crafted gear to do so!

Almost all of the best in slot gear for group pvp is non-crafted this patch and even more so next patch, with the exception of alchemist. If you're not wearing the best sets you are dragging the team down. Some of the new sets I wanna wear are in the nord style which look hideous.

Rylana

If I see a single other person in Bloodspawn and Black Rose I'm going to scream

Crafted gear is just fine for most specs, metagaming is stupid and makes for trash players that dont use fundamentals.

CapuchinSeven

If I see a single other person in Bloodspawn and Black Rose I'm going to scream

A lot of the non-crafted "uber" sets, are crutches.

Julianos, Seducer, Kagrenac's, these are solid sets without needing to take things to the stupidly comical level of things like Viper.

Bryanonymous

So many people make polls at this forum just to reinforce their own beliefs. It's not even clever. Just annoying.

Personally, I want to craft my own gear, and if that drags others down, I'll play solo.

IxSTALKERxI

It's at least not optimal

I guess I have a different way of looking at things. The way I see it is:

Your group can use all the fundamentals to fight 60 people, even though you executed everything very well you end up being overwhelmed with only 15 of them remaining (maybe you got drained of resources or weren't killing fast enough), and then afterwards you think to yourself, if only we all were wearing slightly stronger setups we could of killed them all and lived to tell the tale.

Anyways I like squeezing the most out of gear I can, it all adds up. Anyone who's played with me knows how pedantic I can be when it comes to gear haha.

Kas

[x] craft something that's very close to optimal for your specific build

that crit's really not fully optimal so don't use your pve gear (tbs/hundings/julianos) but there are SOOO many crafted sets for stam and mag that perform extremely well in many builds (the whole picture needs to work out):

eternal hunt, willow's path, tava's, seducer, magnus, kagrenac, and many many more

melek-taus

I would love to be able to change the style of dropped armor to already known styles.

Derra

Don't worry about it, all that crit is TOTALLY competitive in PvP

Crit is the most unterrated stat in eso pvp.

Recremen

It's at least not optimal

Rylana wrote: »

Crafted gear is just fine for most specs, metagaming is stupid and makes for trash players that dont use fundamentals.

"Just fine" is necessarily not competitive. When you're talking about competitive play, you're already assuming people with good fundamentals.

Derra wrote: »

Crit is the most unterrated stat in eso pvp.

Crit will get you by when you're blowing through scrubs, but so would high weapon/spell damage and max stat increases. Crit underperforms dramatically when fighting people with impen, however, and really competitive groups/players are running a lot of impen. Thus, If your performance is the same against scrubs when running high crit versus high stat/damage but weaker against competitive players, it can be said that crit is overall not ideal for PvP.

asneakybanana

If I see a single other person in Bloodspawn and Black Rose I'm going to scream

Recremen wrote: »

This is a problem that affects every aspect of competitive play, but seems to be especially pronounced in PvP due to the ubiquity of either regen or crit, and the dearth of weapon/spell damage and raw stat increases. Obviously this isn't an issue for folks that wake up in the morning, throw a pile of "clean" laundry in the air, and walk underneath it hoping that something sticks, but for those of us who actually want to have some control over their appearance this can be incredibly frustrating. Anyone can go farm Bloodspawn or Kena, grab up some Black Rose or Dreugh King or Vicious Death, and get by with a great build, but y'all look the dang same. Meanwhile, anyone looking to mix and match the literally dozens of motifs available in the game are stuck with Hunding's and Julianos and the like, which is totally fine right up until you run into a group that not only has the right gear, but the ability to use it as well. I can knock a scrub on their boot wearing my Totally Pro-Tier Hunging/Night Mother crafted combo, I can even take a decent player wearing that, but someone who is actually in the upper 1% of performance? No heck no way. It's like running elegantly into a reinforced brick wall.

Meanwhile when we ask about any progress on a restyling system, we get told we can "dye the armor" or "wear a costume" but that there are no short-term plans for a proper style system. Y'all know I love the dyes and the costumes in this game, but those are a once-or-twice a week thing for a lot of us. We don't want to be wearing our Wrothgar Best all the time or it will stop being our best and just be that old rag we put on constantly! I really hope you guys make a restyling/vanity tab, or whatever kind of system a development priority. It makes Khajiit sad when you have to choose between form and function, and it brings the competitiveness of his team down as well.

Other than my stamplar every single one of my builds uses at least one crafted 5 piece. Sure its not full crafted but crafted is definitely not useless. Clever alchemist is great for burst, kags is a really solid set mixing decent spell damage with regen and that bonus rez speed, and julianos can definitely work if you're a more damage focused player. As for stam sets they have eternal hunt, clever alchemist, tavas on tank dks and ulti gen sorcs, and morkuldin which has a solid 4 pc.

Recremen

It's at least not optimal

asneakybanana wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

This is a problem that affects every aspect of competitive play, but seems to be especially pronounced in PvP due to the ubiquity of either regen or crit, and the dearth of weapon/spell damage and raw stat increases. Obviously this isn't an issue for folks that wake up in the morning, throw a pile of "clean" laundry in the air, and walk underneath it hoping that something sticks, but for those of us who actually want to have some control over their appearance this can be incredibly frustrating. Anyone can go farm Bloodspawn or Kena, grab up some Black Rose or Dreugh King or Vicious Death, and get by with a great build, but y'all look the dang same. Meanwhile, anyone looking to mix and match the literally dozens of motifs available in the game are stuck with Hunding's and Julianos and the like, which is totally fine right up until you run into a group that not only has the right gear, but the ability to use it as well. I can knock a scrub on their boot wearing my Totally Pro-Tier Hunging/Night Mother crafted combo, I can even take a decent player wearing that, but someone who is actually in the upper 1% of performance? No heck no way. It's like running elegantly into a reinforced brick wall.

Meanwhile when we ask about any progress on a restyling system, we get told we can "dye the armor" or "wear a costume" but that there are no short-term plans for a proper style system. Y'all know I love the dyes and the costumes in this game, but those are a once-or-twice a week thing for a lot of us. We don't want to be wearing our Wrothgar Best all the time or it will stop being our best and just be that old rag we put on constantly! I really hope you guys make a restyling/vanity tab, or whatever kind of system a development priority. It makes Khajiit sad when you have to choose between form and function, and it brings the competitiveness of his team down as well.

Other than my stamplar every single one of my builds uses at least one crafted 5 piece. Sure its not full crafted but crafted is definitely not useless. Clever alchemist is great for burst, kags is a really solid set mixing decent spell damage with regen and that bonus rez speed, and julianos can definitely work if you're a more damage focused player. As for stam sets they have eternal hunt, clever alchemist, tavas on tank dks and ulti gen sorcs, and morkuldin which has a solid 4 pc.

We're talking about the difference between function and optimal here, though, and specifically in the context of group play. I never said that crafted sets were useless (I'm wearing 7-8 pieces, after all), but when you compare any one of those sets you mentioned to a dropped combo it's like night and day. Especially stuff like eternal hunt and clever alchemist, which aren't group-oriented and have incredibly lackluster 4-piece bonuses. A guild team isn't going to pop pots and wreck things for 15 seconds, they need sustainable damage.

If crafted sets were really competitive, then why are folks so bent out of shape over the alleged superior dropped stamina sets on the PTS?

NACtron

It's at least not optimal

For most group roles and builds monster helmed are almost always required. As well a couple players in the raid running sets like for example Spell power cure. However aside from that most roles can get away with running crafted gear except for monster helms.

Soris

Astanphaeus wrote: »

Kagrenac's is still a good group set...

That said, I would love a way to re-cfraft my armor so I don't have to wear some of the hideous motifs (cough*Abah's Watch*cough) some of the better sets come in.

Absolutely.

zyk

I prefer sets to have distinct appearances. Having an opportunity to visually recognize which sets an opponent is using is good gameplay. I wish this were more true. PVP aesthetics is at the bottom of my list of concerns.

My concern is gear parity for PVP enthusiasts who spend the majority of their time in PVP. I do not think these players should need to spend dozens or hundreds of hours grinding PVE instances to remain fully competitive in PVP.

IMO, Master/vMA weapons and monster sets should have PVP acquisition paths. While this is somewhat true with Monster sets, availability needs to be expanded with so many new sets coming. One piece per week won't cut it.

Gear parity is a big issue now and will get worse in update 12.

heystreethawk

Men'do that is crazy talk, you enhance any given team with your presence

While I'm not quite as fastidious about my appearance as the OP, I do hate the aesthetic limitations of dropped gear, and agree that the ability for a cosmetic alteration would be wonderful. The majority of healers and Magicka DPS who spec out for group play are straight up compromising their builds without Transmutation / Vicious Death, and those sets look horrible. If I wanted to wear a hideous puffy shirt into battle, I'd play Seinfeld Online.

zyk wrote: »

My concern is gear parity for PVP enthusiasts who spend the majority of their time in PVP. I do not think these players should need to spend dozens or hundreds of hours grinding PVE instances to remain fully competitive in PVP.

IMO, Master/vMA weapons and monster sets should have PVP acquisition paths. While this is somewhat true with Monster sets, availability needs to be expanded with so many new sets coming. One piece per week won't cut it.

Getting the right trait on VMA weapons is a nightmare, but aside from the miserable element of oh my god Defending again which I would love to see alleviated, I think VMA is an amazing stress test for PvPers and I think it makes PvPers better at PvP. I believe that the arena taps into abilities and mindsets which are conducive to PvP combat prowess moreso than it measures Standard PvE Practices, so I'm okay with those weapons being locked behind its infuriating gates!

I'm thrilled when I see people in my guild tackle it for the first time, because it's an unpredictable whirlwind that requires you to react lightning fast to rapidly changing conditions while maintaining focus on eleven different things at once, and you'd describe Cyrodiil the same way, except that in VMA you're managing your survival entirely by yourself. People who beat the arena take what they've learned back with them into Cyrodiil, and I think that's a wonderful and all-too-rare example of synergy between the different game modes.

redspecter23

If the poll were, "Would adding a way to restyle your gear be a good addition Yes/No?" then I'd have a much more clear answer. I'd definitely love that option. Does crafted gear drag my group down? That depends on a lot of factors. Plenty of crafted gear is very useful and competitive in pvp, but not necessarily for every build. Specific builds might need 2 5pc drop sets and have no option to change the way they look without a costume. I find it unfortunate that we can't modify the style on our gear currently.

zyk

heystreethawk wrote: »

I'm thrilled when I see people in my guild tackle it for the first time, because it's an unpredictable whirlwind that requires you to react lightning fast to rapidly changing conditions while maintaining focus on eleven different things at once, and you'd describe Cyrodiil the same way, except that in VMA you're managing your survival entirely by yourself. People who beat the arena take what they've learned back with them into Cyrodiil, and I think that's a wonderful and all-too-rare example of synergy between the different game modes.

I've completed vMA and enjoyed the process. However, I do not enjoy grinding instances. The thought of it actually turns my stomach. The need to grind a single player instance in an MMO is counter-intuitive.

I think it would be fair if PVP players had to unlock a PVP acquisition path to these weapons by first proving they can defeat vMA, but I think the time requirement at the moment is unreasonable for a dedicated PVP player.

I think this is a big issue. I know a lot of PVP enthusiasts who don't play ESO because too much PVE is required to be fully competitive. I frequently observe old school players return, but quickly get turned off by the PVE side and quit again.

PVP and PVE are drastically different beasts in ESO. I do not think 1-12 player scripted instances are appealing to many people looking for an open world RvR experience. Gating some of the best PVP items only behind RNG instance grinds limits the PVP audience.

TBois

It only drags a bad team down.

bulbousb16_ESO

If I see a single other person in Bloodspawn and Black Rose I'm going to scream

Yes, it is important for a crafter to be able to restyle dropped pieces.

Takes-No-Prisoner

Seratopia wrote: »

I refuse to give up my crafted stylized gear.

Same, I like Clever/Skirmisher combo with 1pc Bloodspawn

Capsaica

Don't worry about it, all that crit is TOTALLY competitive in PvP

I chose the crit response with some level of sarcasm. It really is quite good as a healer in PvP. As a dps, however, if you run up against someone "properly" geared out for PvP, you will have some difficulties.

Crit on a sorc offers some survivability benefits if you're running crit surge. Crit on anyone helps your heals out.

There are several crafted sets which can provide valuable benefits to PvP. Almost all of my characters run a mix of dropped and crafted sets. Of course, almost all of my characters run multiple sets because I like to try different things...and I am constantly poor as a result lol.

I also would love to be able to re-style some gear. Costumes are great and all, and the ability to dye them has been truly wonderful, but sometimes you just are really sad about the way that your gear looks.

There is a ginormous thread on here somewhere about the problems that some of the different crafted styles have with fitting to your character models. Especially for female forms, but they can look odd on the male forms as well. I have personally seen it with the Abah's watch crafted styles and the Alliance styles (AD, EP and DC - AD specifically). My lovely orc sorc is continuously wearing a costume because I thought the tiny little image of the crafted Abah's Watch style looked pretty nifty at the crafting station. I was wrong, it looks like a barrel around her chest.

And Bloodspawn may look bad, but it doesn't even touch Nerien'eth in terms of "ack! I forgot to re-hide my helmet!"

Kas

Derra wrote: »

Crit is the most unterrated stat in eso pvp.

I agree that easy sources of crit (e.g. major buff) are underrated and that crit is generally VERY good for pvp, because of how good spiky/bursty damage is to get an enemy on the backfoot.
however, crit as an equipment set bonus is balanced with damage/main stat for pve.

Any enemy impen, let alone transmutation, distorts this balance significantly. on top of that, almost all stats are very useful in pvp (primary resource regen, health, secondary resource regen). hence, for me, there is very little reason to say "crit is significantly weaker in pvp than in pve". from that, and the fact that it's in balance with other stats for pve, I arrive at the cookie-cutter conclusion: crit is not a good stat for pvp

as for the most underrated stat, i'd go for armor/spell resist

Draxys

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Anyways I like squeezing the most out of gear I can, it all adds up. Anyone who's played with me knows how pedantic I can be when it comes to gear haha.

He literally describes the meta and what sets to wear for each class in guild message lol