Z'en's Redress seems far too weak on Live for the investment it requires

Transairion

Z'en's Redress
(2 items)129 Magicka Recovery
(3 items) 129 spell damage
(4 items) 1096 Maximum Magicka
(5 items) Your Light Attacks apply the Eye of Z’en on enemies for 20 seconds. Enemies with the Eye of Z’en take an additional 1% more damage for each damage over time effect you’ve placed on them, up to 5%.

Simply put the limitation of "personal DOT's that can be attached to a target only" really limits this set to a handful of skills, as many DOT's in the game are ground based/object based and none of those work. For the maximum bonus you have to have five personal attached-DOT's on the same target at the same time, almost all of which have a ~10 second duration... which means almost the entire combat time of this set is a mad juggle trying to keep everything up. It's not easy nor enjoyable, especially when your class has no attached-DOT's native to it. 1-2 of these is fine to manage but then... +2% damage in exchange for a 5peice set bonus.

Minor Vulnerability is 8% and can have 100% uptime easily (any class via Set/s, inbuilt to Nightblade)

Major Vulnerability is 30% (Class exclusive)


Meanwhile compare this proc condition to another from the same DLC:

Azureblight Reaper
(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical
(3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
(4 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery
(5 items) When you deal damage with a damage over time effect, you apply a stack of blight seed to your target for 5 seconds. At 20 stacks, the Blight Seeds explode, dealing 11100 Disease Damage to the target and nearby enemies.
An enemy that has reached 20 stacks cannot be infected with Blight Seed for 2 seconds.

Any kind of DOT whether attached, ground or object-based will proc this... including Mystic Orb which'll add ~15 stacks by itself as it floats by!


So why did Z'en get cut from 10% max to 5% max while keeping the same atrocious proc conditions, relegating the player in question entirely to being a DOT-juggler? It also may very well be "stupid", as there's no indication what level of debuff you have active (ingame buff tracker has no "stack" icon, ingame visual is simple green when any valid DOT is on target) nor is there anything to suggest two players can't replace each other's Z'en debuff constantly since only one can be active at a time. If the best I can pull out is 2-3% debuff, I don't want to screw the guy who can manage that 4-5% debuff.


This set was a great concept but to me it feels like the implementation imploded. I really like the idea of being support on my Necromancer (Minor + Major Vul) but trying to work Z'en debuff in as well feels like far too much work for too little reward. What happened?

WrathOfInnos

If it were any easier to manage, then all groups would just assign the set to healers (like IA). Some of the best groups are already doing this because they are able to mix a few DoT's into their healing rotation. I agree that the set is disappointing when you look at effort vs reward and compare to sets like Alkosh and IA, it was definitely more balanced with these other support sets in the first iteration (2% per DoT up to 10%).

All that being said, it is definitely possible to keep good uptime on any magicka DPS class. If you're looking at running this on a Necro, I've found the following rotation to work pretty well.

Front Bar: Scalding Rune, Blast Bones, Consuming Trap, Degeneration, Mystic Siphon
Back Bar: Unstable Wall, Unnerving Boneyard, Flame Reach, Skeletal Arcanist, Barbed Trap

Open with: Blast Bones, Scalding Rune, swap, Skeletal Arcanist

Then repeat:

Boneyard, Unstable Wall, swap
Consuming Trap, Blast Bones, Degeneration, swap
Flame Reach, Barbed Trap or Skeletal Arcanist (alternate), swap
Mystic Siphon, Blast Bones, Scalding Rune, swap