Armor sets (Glowy balls) Why is it so hard to farm (LOL)

chaz

So, some of us hit a thread , some of us felt needed to have new life breathed into it and unfortunately one of the forum mods made the mistake of shutting it down. Especially with all the new players that have been coming around as of late. Just because the thread was old, even if 4 years old, there are still a lot of players that have no idea what these glow orbs are that hover and circle over some players. Even me, after a while I forgot all about them because it's been a long time since I've seem someone running it, then all of a sudden and especially recently I have noticed a lot more people running with these types of sets with it's visual effect. Very rare will you find someone running 2 of the sets, for an AWESOME cool visual perk.

So, Special armor and it's mysterious glowing orbs. There seems to be at least 3 sets that I know of that each set have special perks and also come with a visual effect, 3 glowing orbs hovering over the character.

(Worms) A blue orb represents that the player is wearing a set of armor that helps reduce magicka cost for the entire group.

(Sanctuary ) A green orb represents that the player is wearing a set of armor that helps reduce stamina cost for the entire group.
**^^** Correction: (5 items) Increases your healing received by 12% for you and your group within 10 meters.**^^**

(Ebon) A red orb represents that the player is wearing a set of armor that helps increase the entire groups health.

As for me, I particularly like the Ebon set, it gives a lot of health and also the firth perk also give some extra health to other players, good for dungeons and trials. I also like using it particular on a healer build, because it seems to make a lot of noobs uneasy and tank spank snobs very toxic and salty as they think that the Ebon set is a tank only build. When it's not. I think and personally it works well with healers, well because as a healer, you're not just healing people, but also giving them extra health at the same time.

That said, I strongly focus on that statement because weather or not you realize it there are other people out there other than alcast and woeler. Sure these are two great young men helping us over the years with their dedication to builds that will help novice players to the veteran players, however their word is not set in stone. So thus, if you think Ebon is a tank only set, then sorry you've been left behind on the ignore band wagon long ago.

Sanctuary armor sets I really like especially if you have a lot of stam builds. Stam blade in particular seem to like the added boost especially if running medium armor and getting the stam perk from skill lines.

Worm's Raiment. Well, who doesn't love a small advantage especially if your a great crushing dps mag sorc or yea even magplar? Well I know I would if running with my Mag Sorc in a good vet trial burning down the impossible or helping others survive a little more using my own pets to heal people.

kringled_1 wrote: »

Hircine's veneer, which drops in Selene's Web, also has green orbs and reduces stamina costs across the group, similar to Worms.

Oh before I continue, let me touch base on the ebon set just a tad more and give you another example of why it's not just a tank build. So a while back I was in craglorn and joined this vet trial call. Now at the time I was on my healer and was at the time also running an ebon build. So just before we were all set to just go in, the "crown" decided to take a look at me, get all cocky and salty, said "Oh I'm not having a healer in my group that runs ebon because it's a tank set" So he had viciously removed me. Well, an hour later, because I was just hanging out in crag, those people came back out with a lot of salt that they could not finish the trial because the healers, well, "sucked". And there was a mildly weird zonechat fight about it. In anycase, half of those people started a new group and since I was still there hanging out, they picked me up. Regardless of my role and the 3 red glowy orbs floating around me. Well, we all took a stab at Vet HrC, and managed to get thru it, got the achievement and Undaunted bust. That was my first time running vhrc and I did that on my healer, sure enough from that day they started calling me an OP' healer. Though still at the end there were those that still defend their brown nosing that Ebon is a tank role armor set only, and it doesn't stack, and only tanks, not healers should use it. So that is just food for thought. I'm not saying it's a heal build only, and I have nothing against tank roles using it, my point was, that I was personally using it on my healer build for some additional health, and the 5th armor set perk also gave members in the party some extra kick. 2 people running it does not cancel the 5th perk, it just doesn't stack. Also, the perk I believe is a metered perk, and some groups in trials have to split. HrC I know at the start you would usually split into teams of 6 and 6, or AA you sometimes split into 4 ,4, and 4. So why not take someone running an armor set that gives you a smidgen of an advantage? Just saying.

Ahh yes, here we are at the threads title.

Random percentage in odds to finding what you want. Why is it, like OMG so difficult at times to farm what you want? It is so ridiculous in getting a good drop. When I farm and especially for jewelry I like to run the dungeon on veteran. For the better quality drop. Especially jewelry since it seems mats for upgrading jewelry is well beyond overly priced, like 2 of the worlds richest people combined overly priced. So thus, why go through a normal dungeon to get blue rings and a neck if running Vet gets you purple? Yeah! It is so difficult. Truth be told, if it wasn't for the golden merchant in cyrodiil, I would not have ever picked up 2 rings for ebon. It was by far just flat out luck that the golden vendor had them, and I got 2 gold Ebon rings for my set up. I wish that vendor did this more often and specifically for these sets. I don't know what it is, maybe it's just poor luck, but 6 months of farming norm and vet and I have never seen one Ebon ring ever.

Ok, so here are some links to these armor sets and what they can do:

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Worm's+Raiment+Set
(Green glow orbs)

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sanctuary+Set
(Blue glow orbs)

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Ebon+Armory+Set
(Red glow orbs)

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Hircine's+Veneer+Set
(Green glow orbs)

Also found this for WW:

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Savior's+Hide+Set

At the bottom of each of those pages you can see if they're bind on equip or pick up. However the page itself has some good details if you're interested in learning about the sets. I like them all, because they make you stand out, who doesn't like glowy orbs circling around you? Well there we have it, all in a nut shell. Also, I challenge anyone to make a better healer using 5 pieces of the Ebon set and tell me if you can heal players better than me. Can you pop off a heal that gives 18k to 21k heal at a time (not an ultimate) can you help players get through vet trials? Can you be more open minded instead of salty thinking it's offensive for a healer to wear Ebon if not tanking? Not everyone knows every thing about every thing. But that's my challenge to you. To be a better person and try new things.

Thanks.

Thalidar

Youre completely right that over how versatile these sets are but a slight correction, Sanctuary increases healing received and done to the entire group now. ( not increases stamina).

chaz

Thalidar wrote: »

Youre completely right that over how versatile these sets are but a slight correction, Sanctuary increases healing received and done to the entire group now. ( not increases stamina).

Oh yeah,. thanks for the correction. My bad.

kringled_1

Hircine's veneer, which drops in Selene's Web, also has green orbs and reduces stamina costs across the group, similar to Worms.

kathandira

chaz wrote: »

Also, I challenge anyone to make a better healer using 5 pieces of the Ebon set and tell me if you can heal players better than me. Can you pop off a heal that gives 18k to 21k heal at a time (not an ultimate) can you help players get through vet trials?

Imagine this, 2 Tanks, wearing Ebon Armor...You became unnecessary, even if the group has to split up. I like to keep multiple sets to fit the needs of the group, and reduce redundancy.

That said, I use Olorime and Worm Cult. I love my blue orbs! But I may soon trade those in for Twilight Remedy. Not fully decided yet though.

kathandira

*double post*

AcadianPaladin

Thanks for the concise review of what color orbs go with which set. I knew Ebon but was unsure on the other two.

josiahva

I on the other hand am a tank that doesn't run Ebon unless forced to by some trial group that insists on the extra 1000 health. I am perfectly ok with a healer running Ebon if they want, I just dont think its a very good tank set. In reality, its only 5% extra health. How often does someone get down to less than 5% health and not die? Not often. 99% of the time if you get down to 5% health, you end up dying anyway. On the other hand as a tank I could run virtually any other set with more group benefit. Say I run...Seducer. The extra magicka regen will allow me to spam Obsidian shield constantly...which will mitigate far more damage than Ebon...or say I run...Knightmare, it gives me a 20% chance on melee damage to apply Major maim to all enemies within 8 meters...reducing their damage by 15%...again, better damage mitigation than Ebon will provide...heck, maybe I wear Seducer and spam AoE heals...again, better damage mitigation(though it doesnt increase base health like Ebon). I could wear Imperium and get damage shields on 6 nearby people. I could run Amalexia's Mercy and passively heal everyone within 7 meters for 2500 health every 3 seconds(assuming a lot of incoming damage). Lunar Bastion(not a great set itself) will shield allies within 8 meters to mitigate more damage. I could use Powerful Assault to buff group damage. The list goes on and on...as a tank virtually ANY sets that helps the group in some way is a better use of 5 armor slots than Ebon. I included Knightmare particularly as a garbage set that will still mitigate more damage than Ebon. My point is simply that Ebon is not the great set people make it out to be...its fine to run Ebon, but in the end unless you have really squishy 15k health nightblades, its not making enough difference that it cant be substituted with whatever group-benefit set you like. To be clear MANY MANY TRIAL TANKS USE EBON AND IT IS OFTEN CONSIDERED BIS, but at 5% passive health bonus...I disagree simply because the numbers do not add up when compared to other sets except in that 1% of the time you fall to 5% health and live anyway...that's the only time Ebon is ever making a difference for a group

SanguineMyBrother

I like mixing worm and ebon which creates pink orbs

kargen27

I hate the floating orbs. I like Ebon on my healer in Cyrodiil depending on the group. I also like using Ebon on my healer with pick-up groups sometimes because then I can take a beating while healing and not worry about it. I like doing random dungeons and sometimes my healer ends up somehow being the tank. Being able to put on Ebon is a good option sometimes.
The flying orbs though. They are distracting and sometimes give me a sense of motion sickness. The armor I wear shouldn't make me feel a bit queasy. So the armor is good but let us toggle the orbs on/off.

THe difficulty getting a set is by design. When people ask for account wide skyshards, drops that are not bind on pick-up and things like that I almost always point out these things are in the game because they are good for the game. MMOs survive by players repeating content. They can only provide a limited amount of comment in any given time period so they need us to spend more time in the content they can provide. So the game is designed to entice us to play the same content over and over again. Sure if you concentrate on getting that one piece of armor with a specific trait it can get grindy and monotonous. When that happens time to move on to some other part of the game for a while. The alternative is we all get what we want right away then a month or two later we think well now what. It sometimes sucks but those grinds in the long run help keep the game healthy.

I still from time to time run up and down the beach killing crabs hoping for one last trophy needed for an achievement. Eventually I will get it but I don't try for it so much that it becomes tedious. I know that isn't as important as getting that final piece of gear for your trial set but the mindset needs to be similar. Don't let chasing the armor ruin the game.

Linaleah

josiahva wrote: »

I on the other hand am a tank that doesn't run Ebon unless forced to by some trial group that insists on the extra 1000 health. I am perfectly ok with a healer running Ebon if they want, I just dont think its a very good tank set. In reality, its only 5% extra health. How often does someone get down to less than 5% health and not die? Not often. 99% of the time if you get down to 5% health, you end up dying anyway. On the other hand as a tank I could run virtually any other set with more group benefit. Say I run...Seducer. The extra magicka regen will allow me to spam Obsidian shield constantly...which will mitigate far more damage than Ebon...or say I run...Knightmare, it gives me a 20% chance on melee damage to apply Major maim to all enemies within 8 meters...reducing their damage by 15%...again, better damage mitigation than Ebon will provide...heck, maybe I wear Seducer and spam AoE heals...again, better damage mitigation(though it doesnt increase base health like Ebon). I could wear Imperium and get damage shields on 6 nearby people. I could run Amalexia's Mercy and passively heal everyone within 7 meters for 2500 health every 3 seconds(assuming a lot of incoming damage). Lunar Bastion(not a great set itself) will shield allies within 8 meters to mitigate more damage. I could use Powerful Assault to buff group damage. The list goes on and on...as a tank virtually ANY sets that helps the group in some way is a better use of 5 armor slots than Ebon. I included Knightmare particularly as a garbage set that will still mitigate more damage than Ebon. My point is simply that Ebon is not the great set people make it out to be...its fine to run Ebon, but in the end unless you have really squishy 15k health nightblades, its not making enough difference that it cant be substituted with whatever group-benefit set you like. To be clear MANY MANY TRIAL TANKS USE EBON AND IT IS OFTEN CONSIDERED BIS, but at 5% passive health bonus...I disagree simply because the numbers do not add up when compared to other sets except in that 1% of the time you fall to 5% health and live anyway...that's the only time Ebon is ever making a difference for a group

they do add up and let me explain to you how. most typically, dps and healers do not wear any gear with health on it. which even with food often places them at as low as 15k health, I mean you could use food with higher health quotent, but then you lose out on other buffs from it, since you have to eat double stat food in this case - enchanting for health means losing out on performance, and yes those numbers do add up. there are abilities that are not avoidable and can tick for this much. in those cases ebon quite literally means the difference between life or death. those 15k squishy nighblades you mentioned? usually its not just nighblades. its most of your healers/dps. so yes, ebon is a good set. there are better sets depending on circumstances/mechanics, but in specific cases - ebon is absolutely invaluable.

Jhalin

they really arent at all hard to farm, all those dungeons can be completed in less than 10 minutes by a competent group on normal

Gatviper

The other day I saw someone having orange orbs as well, not sure whether that was mixing 2 of the sets, or some other set gives orbs of that color.
Worm's Raiment at least is really easy to farm, Vaults of Madness is even on Vet one of the easiest group dungeons. Crypt of Hearts I for Ebon is also pretty easy, only Banished Cells for Sanctuary is a bit less of a breeze.

MartiniDaniels

Captain obvious to the rescue..

Ebon is for tanks only. You don't need so many health on healer and healing received bonus is also totally useless (for healer). So what's the point? Also tanks like hamsters all love ebon due to the red orbs and chance to have extra 4k hp without fuss.
In trials it's usually a competition between 2 tanks for the right to wear ebon, i can't imagine situation where there will be no ebon in coordinated group. And ebon shield looks awesome too ^^

MarleyRain

I've actually seen trial groups running vcr specifically that wanted a healer wearing ebon so the tanks can wear something more beneficial. As a healer I would personally not want to wear ebon it doesn't give me anything I need (mag, mag recovery, healing done) so if you want to gimp your healer wear this set but you will benefit alot more from worm, sanctuary, olorimes, jorvulds, infall.

John_Falstaff

@MartiniDaniels , the shield does look cool, but does anyone run Ebon in weapons? I think the set is still bugged and makes the group's health flicker during bar swaps.

And 1k health does matter, because things add up. Say, there's 16k health dps, now you add 1.1k from Ebon. But then, dps has, say, 10k resistances and some points in elemental defender and hardy, so to drain him for 1.1k extra health, enemy has to deal 2k damage all of sudden (so, effectively, dps has 18k health). Now, there's Minor Maim on the boss, so to chew through that extra health, boss actually has to deal ~2.3k extra outgoing damage - so 18.3k health. A hit incoming? Someone drops Nova for Major Maim, and now boss has to deal even more to chew through that extra health. Magicka DD casts a shield which gets 0.5k stronger because of the cap (and also subject to resistances). Things add up, and on average, the difference is enough to reduce one-shots across the group.

AlienatedGoat

It still bothers me that Hircine's and Sanctuary have the same green color.

Sanctuary should really be changed to yellow orbs.

Kurat

Dont wear ebon on healer, your group will miss out on other puffs that healer sets give. If you wanna boost your group hp, be a warden healer. Minor toughness increases group health by 10%. That's even better than ebon coz its % not fixed value.

OFFL1MIT

is this is true that if you mix 2 different sets, you get mixed color instead of 2 different colors? IF that's the case I like these small details.
Also talking about shiny things, why no one is playing morkuldin these days? I remember people used to play with it years ago at pvp , especially at dueling others, but now I can't see any1 wearing it, broken or out of meta?

Gatviper

Morkuldin swords don't do that much damage, and as summoned pets they're moving a bit too slow for PvP, and subject to any enemy hits, especially AoEs. The set is curious, but unless it's buffed a bit one day, ultimately not very useful.

Varana

On the other thread: Sorry, but resurrecting threads from 2014 (!!!) is nonsense. The game has changed tremendously since then, and questions and answers in those threads are prone to be horribly outdated.
Opening a new one like this right away would've hurt no-one.

On Ebon: You can get away with all sorts of stuff, the game offers a lot of leeway. Yes, you can be a really good healer using Ebon. But Ebon doesn't particularly help with that. Four lines of max health on the healer isn't necessary, and Healing Taken only for the healer isn't ideal, either. The set doesn't really benefit your healing. You're a good healer because of how you play, not because you're wearing Ebon. It's not really the 5-piece bonus that makes it a tank set, it's all the other stuff, from being heavy to the 2-4-piece bonuses.
(Kicking a healer just because they're wearing Ebon is stupid, as well.)

VaranisArano

OFFL1MIT wrote: »

is this is true that if you mix 2 different sets, you get mixed color instead of 2 different colors? IF that's the case I like these small details.
Also talking about shiny things, why no one is playing morkuldin these days? I remember people used to play with it years ago at pvp , especially at dueling others, but now I can't see any1 wearing it, broken or out of meta?

I wear Ebon and Worm's (ebon for tanking, worms for tanking normals because I'm too lazy to change out of it from PVP) and it varies.

When I put it on, I have 3 red and 3 blue glowy balls floating around me. But when I load into a new area, they sync up, so now I have 3 purplelish balls rapidly stribing between red and blue floating around me.

I've seen Sanctuary+Worms, and its a green-teal color as the balls strobe green and blue.

Ebon + Sanctuary looks funky, like somebody messed up the Christmas lights.

josiahva

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@MartiniDaniels , the shield does look cool, but does anyone run Ebon in weapons? I think the set is still bugged and makes the group's health flicker during bar swaps.

And 1k health does matter, because things add up. Say, there's 16k health dps, now you add 1.1k from Ebon. But then, dps has, say, 10k resistances and some points in elemental defender and hardy, so to drain him for 1.1k extra health, enemy has to deal 2k damage all of sudden (so, effectively, dps has 18k health). Now, there's Minor Maim on the boss, so to chew through that extra health, boss actually has to deal ~2.3k extra outgoing damage - so 18.3k health. A hit incoming? Someone drops Nova for Major Maim, and now boss has to deal even more to chew through that extra health. Magicka DD casts a shield which gets 0.5k stronger because of the cap (and also subject to resistances). Things add up, and on average, the difference is enough to reduce one-shots across the group.

Now...compare that to the worst of my examples...Knightmare. Tank procs it with a light attack(or a bash, whatever), reducing say a 18k hit damage(one shot) incoming to the DPS to 15.3k(15% damage reduction) for mitigation of 2.7k Knightmare mitigated more damage than Ebon did at 2.3k

Or maybe the tank activates a Synergy while wearing Lunar Bastion ...thats a 2.3k shield based off of tank resistances to group members...every 2 seconds for 10 seconds...so not only did that match Ebon for the initial hit...but for the next 8 seconds it provides an aditional 10k mitigation.

These two example sets are proc sets however and while it might be possible to get close to 100% uptime with the changes to synergy cooldown with lunar bastion its unlikely with knightmare...and still depends on your group throwing synergies your way, so lets compare to other sets:

Seducer: Casting healing springs with a back-bar resto staff will likely restore 1.4k health every tick on a tank(since he wont have a large magicka pool or high spell damage, a reasonable assumption). A single cast will cost 3510 magica-8% reduction from seducer 5-piece=3230- the retrurn for each person in the springs...lets assume a reasonable 2...so 2*260=520. so we are down to a single cast cost of 2710. Seducer will also buff your regen by 260 over 2 seconds...so it will really cost you 2450 for one cast of healing springs...which will tick 3 times for 2 people and restore a total of 8400 health...or for one person 4200 health...still out performing Ebon for mitigation(though it wont stop one-shots like knightmare or lunar bastion) with seducer you should be able to cast healing springs once every 4 seconds or so without adversely affecting other things you need to cast

Powerful assault: This set wont help keep your group members alive, but may be situationally useful when they are in fights they can avoid most of the incoming damage...does not out-perform Ebon for mitigation, but will significantly increase DPS
(you could make an argument for echoing vigor being the skill used to activate it, providing better mitigation that way, but that is a stretch)

Vestments of Olorime: Like Powerful Assault, this wont mitigate damage, but will increase DPS if you use circle of protection as the activation skill...and using that skill with this set will give a double buff to your melee fighters.

Battalion Defender: This will provide great automatic passive healing for those who need it most in perma-block builds...at 2000 healing per tick...it doesnt quite match the potential mitigation of Ebon, but is certainly worthy of consideration. I like this option because it provides automatic emergency healing quicker than the healer can target in most cases.

These are just a few of the sets with group benefits...there are plenty of others like Alkosh I didnt even bother mentioning. To be clear, I am not saying Ebon is useless, its not...and there are some fights where it will be better than some of these, but a good tank will swap armor depending on the fight. For example...in vCoS I will swap to Plague Doctor/Imperium/Chudan in the fight with Dranos because this will give me more than 50k max health...meaning he cant kill me if someone doesnt interrupt him when he pins me...also, because while pinned I cant do anything else, Chudan gives me extra resistance without having to cast an armor spell and Imperium will proc while he has be pinned, providing nice passive damage mitigation to the group while I cant do anything so this combo is perfect for this fight, in other fights where I dont need the health I will swap out one or more 5-piece for Ebon or for Lunar Bastion or Powerful Assault, or Alkosh or some combo thereof and swap my monster set to Bloodspawn or Infernal Guardian, etc, all depending on the combinations that work best for the fight. To say that Ebon is the best set isnt true...there is no "best" set.....there are only situationally best sets. In difficult content a good tank should have at least 3 armor sets to choose between, if you are in a good group, chances are you wont have to change the set you are running, but in a bad pug, having alternative sets to choose from can often mean the difference between success and failure. I guess I look at the game differently than most, most people expect to have expert groups for the content they are running...I expect to have bad pugs(whether from group finder or in the case of trials...zone chat) so I tailor the sets I choose to the group I am running with and the fight and how much difficulty the group is having with it...there are some fights where I will even go with 100% pure selfish sets...if I have a bad healer and its critical I stay alive to prevent a group wipe(vBRF as an example, those amalgams will quickly wipe a pug if the tank goes down, as will the minotaur boss)

chaz

SanguineMyBrother wrote: »

I like mixing worm and ebon which creates pink orbs

Nice.

VaranisArano wrote: »

OFFL1MIT wrote: »

is this is true that if you mix 2 different sets, you get mixed color instead of 2 different colors? IF that's the case I like these small details.
Also talking about shiny things, why no one is playing morkuldin these days? I remember people used to play with it years ago at pvp , especially at dueling others, but now I can't see any1 wearing it, broken or out of meta?

I wear Ebon and Worm's (ebon for tanking, worms for tanking normals because I'm too lazy to change out of it from PVP) and it varies.

When I put it on, I have 3 red and 3 blue glowy balls floating around me. But when I load into a new area, they sync up, so now I have 3 purplelish balls rapidly stribing between red and blue floating around me.

I've seen Sanctuary+Worms, and its a green-teal color as the balls strobe green and blue.

Ebon + Sanctuary looks funky, like somebody messed up the Christmas lights.

Great stuff. Bet it looks great!

Here's me just messing around giving someone an 18K heal off one cast

Using budding seeds. It's pretty much a normal heal, but when crit pops I have seen as much as 22k to 26k in that area off one cast using this build. So even if I just used Budding and healing springs, it's almost, like 90% almost unlikely you will die, unless of course your'e not blocking or are too low in health and I didn't get to you in time.

Other than that, I would really like to see a better way to farm these special sets, because the drop rates are ridiculously low. And as I stated, as for Ebon, 6 months farming normal and vet , if it wasn't for the golden vendor I would have never got my rings.

kringled_1 wrote: »

Hircine's veneer, which drops in Selene's Web, also has green orbs and reduces stamina costs across the group, similar to Worms.

added to the original, thanks.

Haquor

Wearing ebon on the tank and not rhe healer makes complete sense since it is heavy armor and the jewellery weapon slots of tanks are usualy reserved for sets like alkosh which they cant wear on thier bodies due to lost survivability.

Sets like sanctuary/mending/worm/olorime are generally workln on the healer as they can be worn together (all light) with staves like asylum and master. This setup is the best way to get max buffs for the group. Thats why you see it as the 'meta'. If you wear ebon on a healer you lose the effect of your heals and damaging spells due to the mag/spell damage/mag recover/healing don bonuses of the above sets being absent. The tank would not make best use of those sets. Healers do.

Ragnarock41

josiahva wrote: »

I on the other hand am a tank that doesn't run Ebon unless forced to by some trial group that insists on the extra 1000 health. I am perfectly ok with a healer running Ebon if they want, I just dont think its a very good tank set. In reality, its only 5% extra health. How often does someone get down to less than 5% health and not die? Not often. 99% of the time if you get down to 5% health, you end up dying anyway. On the other hand as a tank I could run virtually any other set with more group benefit. Say I run...Seducer. The extra magicka regen will allow me to spam Obsidian shield constantly...which will mitigate far more damage than Ebon...or say I run...Knightmare, it gives me a 20% chance on melee damage to apply Major maim to all enemies within 8 meters...reducing their damage by 15%...again, better damage mitigation than Ebon will provide...heck, maybe I wear Seducer and spam AoE heals...again, better damage mitigation(though it doesnt increase base health like Ebon). I could wear Imperium and get damage shields on 6 nearby people. I could run Amalexia's Mercy and passively heal everyone within 7 meters for 2500 health every 3 seconds(assuming a lot of incoming damage). Lunar Bastion(not a great set itself) will shield allies within 8 meters to mitigate more damage. I could use Powerful Assault to buff group damage. The list goes on and on...as a tank virtually ANY sets that helps the group in some way is a better use of 5 armor slots than Ebon. I included Knightmare particularly as a garbage set that will still mitigate more damage than Ebon. My point is simply that Ebon is not the great set people make it out to be...its fine to run Ebon, but in the end unless you have really squishy 15k health nightblades, its not making enough difference that it cant be substituted with whatever group-benefit set you like. To be clear MANY MANY TRIAL TANKS USE EBON AND IT IS OFTEN CONSIDERED BIS, but at 5% passive health bonus...I disagree simply because the numbers do not add up when compared to other sets except in that 1% of the time you fall to 5% health and live anyway...that's the only time Ebon is ever making a difference for a group

I don't think you play DD much. The difference with and without ebon is very noticeable as a DD. What good is your passive healing when people are getting one shot? Surely Ebon is not a must have. But I would say Its perfectly understandable that its superior to many other sets you listed for tanking purposes, people I run trials with, will force ebon, and If I were to run my own trial groups I would also force ebon, cause it can prevent one shots.

That 1k-ish hp from ebon, with resistances, CP passives and minor maim and major evasion added up, it equals to much more than you think.

paulychan

josiahva wrote: »

I on the other hand am a tank that doesn't run Ebon unless forced to by some trial group that insists on the extra 1000 health. I am perfectly ok with a healer running Ebon if they want, I just dont think its a very good tank set. In reality, its only 5% extra health. How often does someone get down to less than 5% health and not die? Not often. 99% of the time if you get down to 5% health, you end up dying anyway. On the other hand as a tank I could run virtually any other set with more group benefit. Say I run...Seducer. The extra magicka regen will allow me to spam Obsidian shield constantly...which will mitigate far more damage than Ebon...or say I run...Knightmare, it gives me a 20% chance on melee damage to apply Major maim to all enemies within 8 meters...reducing their damage by 15%...again, better damage mitigation than Ebon will provide...heck, maybe I wear Seducer and spam AoE heals...again, better damage mitigation(though it doesnt increase base health like Ebon). I could wear Imperium and get damage shields on 6 nearby people. I could run Amalexia's Mercy and passively heal everyone within 7 meters for 2500 health every 3 seconds(assuming a lot of incoming damage). Lunar Bastion(not a great set itself) will shield allies within 8 meters to mitigate more damage. I could use Powerful Assault to buff group damage. The list goes on and on...as a tank virtually ANY sets that helps the group in some way is a better use of 5 armor slots than Ebon. I included Knightmare particularly as a garbage set that will still mitigate more damage than Ebon. My point is simply that Ebon is not the great set people make it out to be...its fine to run Ebon, but in the end unless you have really squishy 15k health nightblades, its not making enough difference that it cant be substituted with whatever group-benefit set you like. To be clear MANY MANY TRIAL TANKS USE EBON AND IT IS OFTEN CONSIDERED BIS, but at 5% passive health bonus...I disagree simply because the numbers do not add up when compared to other sets except in that 1% of the time you fall to 5% health and live anyway...that's the only time Ebon is ever making a difference for a group

Tanks are sorta pushed to run ebon and the Dd set alkosh or whatever for trials. I'm with you in regards to ebon. Not a fan of it. I dig giving everyone extra health and all but, the red balls bounce around when I'm 9n my bear mount and I get queezy. Also. Alkosh or whatever sucks for me due to th3 set having zero stats that are useful to tanking. In trying to max my resistances so maybe that will help. I just hate running it

John_Falstaff

@josiahva , I'm not sure how to compare those things. Knightmare has a chance to proc, which makes the set useless when tank needs to apply Minor Main ahead of some attack when he sees a tell, it's a debuff that needs to be applied on demand, not with some random chance. So instead of wasting a five piece set on something random, tank can simply slot Low Slash that can apply the debuff with guarantee and when the tank wants it.

Lunar Bastion has range of 8 meters, in a whole lot of cases it's not enough for anything. It would've been a great set, not arguing with that, if not for the severely limited range. There was a thread around, people are asking why Lunar Bastion isn't used in place of Ebon - well, there you have it.

Seducer isn't a tanking set, and we're talking right now about probability of one-shots, not about how much healing one's doing to recover the health. If Rilis in Banished Cells turns and smacks a random team member for 19k damage, Ebon will give a chance to survive, while Seducer won't help to heal up an already dead DD.

Other sets you mention are also useful, but they're either healer sets or support sets, they serve different purposes. Sure, if you don't foresee one-shots but need to dish out a lot of healing against damage floating around (ahem, HoF), sure, use another set, but I'm explaining why 1.1k health from Ebon isn't something useless. It's pointless to compare usefulness of debuff from Alkosh and 1.1k health from Ebon. (And by the way, one transforms to another - thanks to Ebon, DDs has an alternative option to invest extra 1k stamina/magicka into their max pool while staying at comfortable level of health.)

So yes, the sets you give as example either have drawbacks, or serve different purposes and can't be directly compared to Ebon. Of course every set is situational. The only difference is that some sets fit more situations, and some sits fit fewer, that's all.

D0PAMINE

Knightmare used to be used quite a bit. Used to be used.

RogueShark

chaz wrote: »

Also, I challenge anyone to make a better healer using 5 pieces of the Ebon set and tell me if you can heal players better than me. Can you pop off a heal that gives 18k to 21k heal at a time (not an ultimate) can you help players get through vet trials? Can you be more open minded instead of salty thinking it's offensive for a healer to wear Ebon if not tanking? Not everyone knows every thing about every thing. But that's my challenge to you. To be a better person and try new things.

I'm not gonna say no healer should ever wear ebon no matter what, because there are niches and special/personalized builds (I won't knock anyone for playing what/how they want, as long as they're having fun and not being severely detrimental to others in group play), but as a healer you are not looking for 'the biggest burst heals' you can manage. When you're healing 20k hp on a 16khp target, it's a waste. As a healer, you have other priorities, such as buffing the group and debuffing the enemies. There are far more sets that help you accomplish this (IA, mending, olo/scp) in a much more beneficial way than giving people a little bit more health (that tanks usually cover) and not giving you any other particularly useful set bonuses.

RavenSworn

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@josiahva , I'm not sure how to compare those things. Knightmare has a chance to proc, which makes the set useless when tank needs to apply Minor Main ahead of some attack when he sees a tell, it's a debuff that needs to be applied on demand, not with some random chance. So instead of wasting a five piece set on something random, tank can simply slot Low Slash that can apply the debuff with guarantee and when the tank wants it.

Lunar Bastion has range of 8 meters, in a whole lot of cases it's not enough for anything. It would've been a great set, not arguing with that, if not for the severely limited range. There was a thread around, people are asking why Lunar Bastion isn't used in place of Ebon - well, there you have it.

Seducer isn't a tanking set, and we're talking right now about probability of one-shots, not about how much healing one's doing to recover the health. If Rilis in Banished Cells turns and smacks a random team member for 19k damage, Ebon will give a chance to survive, while Seducer won't help to heal up an already dead DD.

Other sets you mention are also useful, but they're either healer sets or support sets, they serve different purposes. Sure, if you don't foresee one-shots but need to dish out a lot of healing against damage floating around (ahem, HoF), sure, use another set, but I'm explaining why 1.1k health from Ebon isn't something useless. It's pointless to compare usefulness of debuff from Alkosh and 1.1k health from Ebon. (And by the way, one transforms to another - thanks to Ebon, DDs has an alternative option to invest extra 1k stamina/magicka into their max pool while staying at comfortable level of health.)

So yes, the sets you give as example either have drawbacks, or serve different purposes and can't be directly compared to Ebon. Of course every set is situational. The only difference is that some sets fit more situations, and some sits fit fewer, that's all.

technically, these one shots can be mitigated not with just the tank having ebon but also for the dps to at least put in one chant to health or even some points into health too. again, while having 60k dps is amazing, a dead dps does NO dps. you can help out the team as a dps by staying alive and having the tools to stay that way.