Is Nirnhoned and Precise ever going to be brought up to par with Sharpened?

kojou

I am not anywhere close to the level of theory crafting and such as some players in the forums, but this is my meager understanding, so feel free to correct me if my math is wrong, or I am forgetting something:

Bosses have ~18,000 total resistance

Precise provides an increase of 3.5% of damage (assuming base damage of crit at 50%) which equals 1750 resistance.

So basically if a boss has more than 1750 resistance left you are better off using Sharpened.

(Asayre - Nirnhoned, Precise and Sharpened)

In base situation with no war horn or champion points:

Light Armor removes 4484

Major Fracture/Breach removes 5280

And Alkosh removes 2905

If we assume 100% Alkosh up time then we have:

18,000 - 4484 - 5280 - 2905 = 5331

Which means that we still get the most benefit from sharpened.

What happens if we put 100 points into Elf Born and the additional crit damage becomes 75% instead of 50%?

Precise = .75 * 7 = 5.25 total damage or 2625 resistance and Sharpened is still the way to go.

If we assume 100% War horn up time in addition to the Elf Born .07 * .75 * 1.3 = 6.8% or 3412.5 resistance

and sharpened is still the way to go...

How about 100% rearming trap in addition to everything else .07 * .75 * 1.3 * 1.12 = 7.6 or 3822 resistance...

So sharpened is still better here...

But wait, we are forgetting the "Crusher" enchant on an infused weapon! That is worth 1946 resistance!

5331 - 1946 = 3385 and 3385 is less than 3822, so in a situation where you have 100% uptime on all buffs Precise will be 448 points better than sharpened.

Forget about the fact that most classes benefit more from putting points in Thaumaturge than Elfborn, and how many players would have to slot infused weapons with crusher enchants to get 100% up-time on that, and the team would have to achieve perfect Alkosh and War Horn up-time, but since it is theoretically possible to make Precise do more damage than Sharpened then we do not need to buff Precise.

This is before the nerf to Trap and War horn...

luen79rwb17_ESO

There's zero choices in terms of traits. Rest of the game seems fine: tons of build diversity, gear diversity, heck there's even leveling diversity, exploring diversity

So much sense of freedom in ESO. Except on the damn traits, 90% are trash. ZOS please fix this!

usmcjdking

Until there is a more reliable way of reaching the penetration cap, no.

Mojmir

Wouldn't running precise with crusher and spinners 5 pc be better than sharpened staff with 5 pc Julianos? Bosses cap at 18k I thought?

kojou

Mojmir wrote: »

Wouldn't running precise with crusher and spinners 5 pc be better than sharpened staff with 5 pc Julianos? Bosses cap at 18k I thought?

It might be... I have no idea. Spinners is more of a PvP set though.

BiS for most magicka builds is Burning Spell Weave and it is normally combined with Moondancer or Infallible.

OrphanHelgen

Sharpened useless when you overpenetrate bosses

olsborg

Id love for precise to additionally provide 2% crit dmg and crit healing per quality tier, 2% at white, 4% at green etc..

Mojmir

OrphanHelgen wrote: »

Sharpened useless when you overpenetrate bosses

As I posted in a discussion elsewhere,I can see that in a trial setting. I don't think you could in solo or 4 man setting. Hence why I asked about julianos/spinners. Bsw wep drops are *** btw.

aLi3nZ

Some of the weapon trait drops are so bad and I hope they can be taken off completely.

Who would want a 160cp training inferno staff or powered (increase healing) two handed sword?

Who likes to use the charged trait? Right? Anyone? No.

I got a bsw precise inferno staff and tbh I am very happy with it just as much as I would be with sharpened. It would be nice to test my dps difference between sharpened and precise though. But I definitely noticed my dps has increased a lot since my crit chance is now over 50%. I think it depends on your champ point configuration and crit chance before equipping the weapon as well. I have like 80 points in precise tree so crit damage does 20% more damage plus 20 or something in Spell erosion for an extra 1k penetration. A lot of champ points would be wasted if I don't get a crit hit.

Betheny

If all traits were actually useful, and the game didn't force more and more dps as the solution to getting through any content...

Mojomonkeyman

Im using a lot of different traits in pvp. As a stamina player I feel sharpened in PvP is not exactly overrated, but not as important as people like to think. Defending, powered, infused and precise are viable in a lot of combinations, some find more use in offhand buffbar builds, though.

bowmanz607

Sharpened is best for our dps sure. Not for tanks and healers. In that case crit chance and defending are good choices. You see more sharpened then anything because everyone wants to dps. Remember, nirn and precise both also effect healing where sharpened does not. Further, sharpened does not work for everyone on back bar. Many people will use back bar as buff bar, so sharpened is not bis. Using defending or precise or more healing etc areUchiha better for the build. Last, everyone wants to be like the streamers and they use sharpened, so more people run sharpened.

Junipus

Nirnhoned - increases damage against shields by X%
Sharpened - as is.
Precise - As is (don't forget with CP increase we have more to put into penetration if we choose)

Should give people a choice for PvP and can be useful for PvE if ZOS implements damage shields on mobs/bosses as part of the mechanics for their next trial.

Alternatively ZOS can drop the resistances by a few thousand so Precise is more applicable in certain situations over sharpened, or change mob resistances based on their role so casters have LA values etc. Do you then waste DPS on over-penetration or balance it with higher crit damage...

NordSwordnBoard

Just talking about this last night.

Changing the sharpened meta could create a whole lot of options for new builds. A fun part of this game is theory crafting and its limited to too few sets after you do the math/see your damage when you go off meta.

Nirnhoned should go back to the "best" because of its rarity, but not always be the dumbed-down auto-trait like sharpened is now. Weapon traits should be situational or build specific, a "jack-of-all-trades" should not excel at all trades. For example, if sharpened applied more to single target damage and prosperous was made to instead increase AoE damage or target area, then nirnhoned should only do 80%-90% as well at both.

TLDR; All the dps use the same armor-piercing rounds, all the time, all situations. Make the other stuff useful, and get rid of prosperous.

kojou

Weapon drops in general are awful... which is why it is so painful to get that staff you have been grinding for in precise and you use it because it at least isn't useless, but wishing you had a sharpened. This is the main reason I would like to see the traits equalized a little bit.

My 2 cents on recommendations for the other 2 traits...

First off the understood raw DPS increase of a Sharpened weapon at 5160 Penetration is 11.9%. I actually think this is a pretty reasonable value and does not need to be nerfed.

Nirnhoned:

- I would make this the damaging alternate to Powered by Increasing all damage done by 8% (Also buff Powered to 8%).
- At 8% this is ~67% of the strength of sharpened Unbuffed. In other words if the boss has less than 3,457 (67% of 5160) points of mitigation then Nirnhoned will do a little bit more damage.
- Also in PVP this will also be the ideal trait for players to use against shields.

Precise:

- I would make this trait increase Critical Chance by 9% (an increase of ~29%). This would be enough that you could make a build that focuses on crit and if you have reasonable raid buffs you will do equal or a little more damage with this trait than sharpened.

- On a Nightblade with 100 points in Elfborn you will have 75% more damage on a Crit, so the added effective value of Precise would be 6.75% more damage or be worth 3375 points of Sharpened's resistance. (Note that this value should be a bit less than Nirnhoned because precise buffs both healing and damage.)

Conclusion:

This would essentially mean that Precise would be a stronger trait for builds with more points in Elfborn, and Nirnhoned for builds with more points in Thaumaturge.

Sharpened would be the trait for PvP against heavy armor, and 4 man content where you are not de-buffing the boss to as high a degree. In general it will still be very strong and usable in trials as well.

None of the traits would be particularly stronger than the other, so if you got any of the 3 your DPS would be similar enough that you could happily run any of the 3 in all content until you got the one that suited your build the best.

This would also give theory crafters more to work with optimizing a build or raid team for the selected trait to squeak out that extra bit of damage.

PurifedBladez

Zos is killing off build diversity like the plague. Look at Stam builds.. theyre all like 90% the same thing, same skills, etc. In pvp and pve.

The trait system is a joke. They have 9 traits in the game and when it comes to weapons you only really want that 1 trait, armor wise youd only really want a couple of the things to drop. It's just insanity.

So now you have a game that has terrible performance, a terrible tone deaf dev team, rare build diveristy, ridiculous proc sets, ridiculous abilities and sometimes some pretty unforgiving grinding.

Why am I still playing this game again? Lol.

bowmanz607

PurifedBladez wrote: »

Zos is killing off build diversity like the plague. Look at Stam builds.. theyre all like 90% the same thing, same skills, etc. In pvp and pve.

The trait system is a joke. They have 9 traits in the game and when it comes to weapons you only really want that 1 trait, armor wise youd only really want a couple of the things to drop. It's just insanity.

So now you have a game that has terrible performance, a terrible tone deaf dev team, rare build diveristy, ridiculous proc sets, ridiculous abilities and sometimes some pretty unforgiving grinding.

Why am I still playing this game again? Lol.

Build diversity is at its height since 1.5. One tamriel did a lot in that regard. People run around with same skills because they are meta tards looking for easy efficient kills. You know the people. The people that watch streamers and you tubers and don't have a bone in their body to make their own build. They just use cookie cutters. There are a ton of viable builds out there these days if people would think for themselves.

As pointed out, there are plenty of useful traits outside of sharpened. Precise is good for certain builds. Defending. Nirn. The healing rexived one. Others have niche builds play which is fine. Not everything is going to be great for every build. Training may not be good for end game, but still great for leveling.

Sharpened is only good for dps. That's it. Nothing more. Outside of min max dps for end game competetive pve, dps is not the end all be all. Other traits are just fine.

Same for armor. Ya impen is great. But you can run 5 in pvp and be good. You get two more spots for other yraits. Reduce blocking is great. Dodgeroll great. Divines and the one that increases enchants which name escapes me. All great choices dep3nsing on what you do.

The issue in the game is people who lack the ability to make a build rather then just cut and paste.

MLGProPlayer

What the *** is the point of traits in this game?

It's mathematically impossible for there to be more than one optimal trait. If you bring other traits up to par with the optimal one, you might as well get rid of traits and just have one (if they all do the same thing).

Traits currently exist only to make farming frustrating. They serve no actual gameplay purpose.

AzuraKin

ztyhurstub17_ESO wrote: »

I assume the answer is no, but it would be nice to have a compelling choice to run one or the other and not be a state of "decon anything that is not sharpened' for all weapons.

nirnhoned needs reworked, precise is fine. contrary to some peoples conception, precise should not be intrinsic to the same lvl as sharpened, because precise boosts healing, precise and powered are balanced.

Zanen

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

What the *** is the point of traits in this game?

It's mathematically impossible for there to be more than one optimal trait. If you bring other traits up to par with the optimal one, you might as well get rid of traits and just have one (if they all do the same thing).

Traits currently exist only to make farming frustrating. They serve no actual gameplay purpose.

At the moment, you're right, they simply make grinding take forever, and that seems to be the point.

But it isn't true that one trait would always be best for everything, there's a lot of potential build diversity that's being crushed by how imbalanced the traits currently are. If all the traits were mathematically similar in potency there would be reasons and situations to choose them even if they still did roughly the same things they do now.

It's really hard to understand why this situation has persisted as long as it has.

My suggestion is to introduce reforging to the crafting system, 10 trait or style stones to change either on a set piece, must know the style and trait, maybe make tiers of difficulty like with crafted sets, must know 9 traits and/or 9 styles for trial gear, seven for dungeon drops, five for overland drops, etc.

Then balance the traits, it wouldn't be the huge kick in the teeth for everyone who deconned all the trash drops to rebalance once reforging was available.

Sharpened is way too strong, other traits don't have enough impact. There's a lot of neat mechanical stuff going on in ESO with all the various procs and interactions of skills but it all just gets buried when sharpened is more than twice as effective as any other trait in 99% of scenarios and still better in the other 1%.

Status effects are also too weak IMO, they don't have enough impact to be felt and all that interesting gameplay and theorycraft, all the potential build diversity is just lost in the noise healing/damaging through them makes.

Masel

The grinding is something that drives people off, not something that keeps people playing. I like theorycrafting very much and if there were more viable build combinations to try and work with, there would be a lot more to farm than right now with the mindless grind for sharpened.
I've been doing like a hundred runs (of which at least 70 were with full groups) in Arx corinium to get two sharpened swords of the undaunted infiltrator, and not one sword of the set dropped at all. If there wouldn't be a unique precise one, I wouldn't have been able to come up with the build I'm currently using. Either balance traits or remove BoP in dungeons.

AzuraKin

easy solution to the grind, there are generally at least ~ 6 bosses in a delve, there is 7 armor slots, 2 jewelry types, plus 4 staves, bow, 4 one hand, 3 2nd and shields. this adds up to 22 items most of which are weapons so i propose this, each boss in a dungeon is guaranteed to drop set item, each boss will drop a different armor piece with the final boss an additional piece of armor, each boss also has 4 types of weapons, i.e. first boss could drop set helm, bow, ice staff, and 2nd maul, second boss could drop set shoulders, shield, storm staff, one hand dagger, ect. this would spread out the pieces while giving players an average 1 in 135 chance at specific set/trait with which comes to 4 in 135 with 4 players.