Improving dropped gear

RodneyRegis

Hey

I'm sure these questions have been asked hundreds of times before but I wanted some definitive info before I use my mats and decon shedloads of gear. Let me know if I should move to another subforum!
tl;dr skip to the questions


I’m starting to pick up some decent dropped sets (blue trial stuff etc) and looking to put together some gear which will work for magicka DPS and healing, and wanted to get some confirmation/advice on improving gear.
I’m pretty happy with my crafted stuff – I’m looking to mostly use Julianos or Seducer with a dropped set. So I’ve got 1 fire & 1 lightning (no enchant), 1 resto (powered) in both sets, all gold, and 5 light pieces as well as a heavy chest and medium legs, all gold 160 divines, magicka enchant. Also a heavy chest with health enchant in case I need it. My thinking is that I can then use any combination of monster set armour weight (as long as the shoulders aren’t heavy). Probably a bit of a waste getting everything yellow but I was heavy on mats and kutas.
Then I’ll use 3 jewellery (although I usually keep 4 so I can swap in a regen if needed) and 2 light armour pieces of whichever dropped set – shoes/belt/gloves.
Is that sensible so far or am I missing something? I know it’s not BIS gear but I’m hoping it will serve all my magicka alts pretty well until I get some. It also keeps my farming process pretty straightforward, and hopefully means I can finally get rid of the thousands of dropped/monster pieces I’ve had clogging up my inventory for ages just in case I ever use them. Should also be enough to farm some decent VMA weapons without having to crawl through with 2200 spell damage!

So my questions revolve around what to do with my dropped gear. I have some normal trial gear plus sets in the above pieces for necro, war maiden, mother’s sorrow, Elf Bane, BSW, SPC etc.

1) My understanding is that if I improve dropped gear I don’t have to enchant it again – green dropped gear will become top quality gear if I improve it to yellow, without any need to use a kuta. Is that correct?

2) What does improving actually change? Is it the set bonuses or just the enchantment? For example does 5 pieces blue give the same set bonuses as 5 pieces yellow, or a mixture?

3) Let’s say I have 5 Siroria blue pieces – jewellery, belt and shoes – is there any point improving the armour to yellow? I won’t be jewellery crafting any time soon although obviously I hope to start picking up purple trial gear. I assume I'll get the better stats from the enchant, but will the set bonuses be based on the blue jewellery?

4) What enchantments should I put on my damage staves? Both infused? Or some Charged? Nirnhoned? Precise? Sharpened?

5) If I do need to enchant dropped armour (hopefully shouldn’t happen with the 5 pieces as they’re usually going to be magicka, but for example if I have purple medium monster shoulders with a stam enchant) can I “over-enchant”? So could I enchant a purple shoulder with a yellow mag glyph, or a purple head with a yellow tri-stat glyph in anticipation of improving to yellow later? Would I be able to do this, and would it give better stats to purple armour than a purple glyph?


Finally, is there an addon which would let me “group” all these pieces of gear (all monster sets, Julianos and seducer, dropped sets) and move them to the bank or into my inventory? Rather than spend 20 minutes going in between accounts every time I want to play another alt?

Cheers, sorry it's a bit long-winded!

Nestor

Built in Enchants improve with the gear, added enchantments do not.

If your swimming in Kutas, no reason not to use them.

If you want to see what the exact differences are, que them up to improve and you can see the before and after. You gain both resist and set bonuses.

If you have different levels of improvement, you get an average. The tool tip shows the average if you have it equipped

Difference between Purple and Gold for Armor is sepressingly small. Weapons do gain 10% going to Gold.

Yellow_Monolith

Lets say you get a purple medium armor chest piece that has a max stamina enchant built in. Just improving that from purple to gold with dreugh wax will be the same as putting a gold kuta enchantment on a crated piece of gear. So don't put gold glyphs on items that already have the enchantment you want

Oreyn_Bearclaw

1. Yes. If you improve dropped gear, the enchant scales with it. Only reason you would need to reenchant would be to change the type of glyph.
2. It improves both. Also improves resistances and in the case of weapons, it increases spell/weapon damage. That’s why you should always gold weapons first.
3. It take an average essentially. So in that case, you would see benefits upgrading the armor, but likely not a huge amount as 3/5ths of the set will be blue.
4. Most DPS generally run infused. Healers have more flexibility.
5. You can put gold enchants on purple gear and it will give the full value of the enchant. It’s sort of the poor mans way to upgrade. If you later upgrade the piece itself to gold, it will have no impact on the enchant.

RodneyRegis

Wow, fantastic responses, I know exactly what to do now. Cheers!

RodneyRegis

3. It take an average essentially. So in that case, you would see benefits upgrading the armor, but likely not a huge amount as 3/5ths of the set will be blue.

So am I better off dropping the crafted stuff, and use dropped sets instead and then 5 piece body trial gear which I can improve, in order to get the maximum set bonuses from the most powerful gear rather than holding them back with blue trial jewellery? Or just wait until I can farm purple trial jewellery instead?

Gythral

3. improve the armour to purple & keep farming for purple neck/rings

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Probably depends a bit on what sets you actually plan to run. Blue jewelry is certainly not the end of the world. Meta DPS gear at the moment doesn’t really use any crafted sets. People run 5 Siroria and 5 Mother’s Sorrow for just about every magic spec. Purple MS jewelry is easy to get, but the weapons are a bit spendy.

One thing to think about is that end game DPS sets are broken into essentially two types, those that work well on both bars and those that work well on only one. This might not be an important distinction currently to you if you don’t have a VMA inferno staff for your back bar, but once you get one, you will want one of each type of set in your build. Siroria really only works if slotted on both bars. MS does pretty well on just your front bar. BSW is better on both but you can make it work on one. Just something to think about down the road.

The problem you are going to face now is that if you give up crafted stuff to try and increase jewelry quality, you are going to need to get your hands on dropped weapons in good traits. If you have access to them already, have gold, or don’t mind farming, it’s your best bet. If not, I would not sacrifice weapon quality and trait simply to upgrade your jewelry. Simply put, the correct weapon is more important than jewelry quality.

Nestor

RodneyRegis wrote: »

3. It take an average essentially. So in that case, you would see benefits upgrading the armor, but likely not a huge amount as 3/5ths of the set will be blue.

So am I better off dropping the crafted stuff, and use dropped sets instead and then 5 piece body trial gear which I can improve, in order to get the maximum set bonuses from the most powerful gear rather than holding them back with blue trial jewellery? Or just wait until I can farm purple trial jewellery instead?

The set bonuses far out weigh the small, I repeate small differences between Blue and Purple. Please dont fall into the trap in thinking you need the best gear to succeed. If the set bonus helps your build or playstyle, you will do far more damage than wearing a perfectly improved set of something that does not work for you.

Should you keep looking for purple jewelry? Sure. But giving up on a beneficial set for your build or playstyle because it is not Purple os just flat out dumb. And limits your fun.

RodneyRegis

Awesome! Thanks.

Blimey, you weren't kidding about mother's sorrow staves. I have a 5 piece MS I picked up for nothing - jewellery and 2 armour.

So that's why dropped weapons cost so much more, because it's so much easier to get green trial armour and improve it?

I'll keep trying for a VMA staff and then get an MS one then!

Oreyn_Bearclaw

RodneyRegis wrote: »

Awesome! Thanks.

Blimey, you weren't kidding about mother's sorrow staves. I have a 5 piece MS I picked up for nothing - jewellery and 2 armour.

So that's why dropped weapons cost so much more, because it's so much easier to get green trial armour and improve it?

I'll keep trying for a VMA staff and then get an MS one then!

MS staves are spendy, but you can farm them. I have found 3 so far just randomly chest farming in deshaan while I wait for BG queues to pop (2 of them came from simple chests). You can get a bad trait staff for about 60-70k if you hunt around a bit on PC/NA.

If you have the coin to spend and want to go down the road towards BIS, I would buy two, trait change them to infused and use MS jewelry and Siroria armor. Once you get a VMA staff, you could drop the back bar, and re-enchant your spare staff with a prismatic glyph for the handful of fights that it matters (wont be a total waste, and on some fights, its quite a bit of extra damage). I carry 2 MS staves myself. That will keep you in purple jewelry and you can easily gold everything else if you want, but start with your front bar weapon, and then back bar weapon. The only difference between that setup and BIS would be to get perfected siroria (difference is pretty small, only 1k extra magic) and a back bar VMA (adds a few K DPS).

That said, I agree with @Nestor . Dont kill yourself or sacrifice a build for purple jewelry. Blue Siroria Jewelry with Julianos weapons and a few armor pieces will work just fine. They will get you through any content in this game including VMA without issue. Realistically the meta can change in an instant, but julianos has been strong since its launched. The first plan is a certainly the way I would do it, but there is certainly the possibility that by the time you get it together that the meta will have moved on. If you are actively pushing score, than chasing meta is part of the game. If not, it is certainly not needed.

RodneyRegis

Sounds good. I'm not too far off being able to do the above, so I'll push for that and then go back to Julianos when they nerf siroria next week!