Thoughts on Thrassian Stranglers

Hooded_1

I haven’t done a ton of testing on this piece myself, but I am aware of some of the mechanics to it... one of the big drawbacks is whenever you port to a new zone your stacks fall off. I don’t think this should be the case, I suspect this is a bug that ZOS needs to fix.

I am, admittedly, more of a PvE player, so I’m curious how this will play out. My suspicions are that this piece will benefit vet groups more than it will beginner/intermediate groups, since vet groups can very quickly adapt to different metas that show up patch to patch.

So down to the specifics... Forgetting about the need to kill 20 creatures to get to max spell damage, how do you offset the extra damage taken? I have two ideas for people to go on to the PTS and test out... Putting heavy armour (primarily for more resists) on a magicka DPS, and/or stacking more into health. The magic number for health in a raid right now is ~18k, So adjust your stats so that it’s 40% more than that. This would put you at about 25k health I believe. I’m curious to see what the DPS is like if you’re a magicka DPS parsing with a heavy, magicka-based set on with these gloves. I’ll be testing out these ideas myself, and I encourage others to as well.

Hooded_1

So this is what I came up with... Zaan, Seducer heavy armour, (5 heavy 1/1) Thrassian Stranglers, 2-pc. FGD (any 2-piece spell crit can work), Master inferno staff front bar, vMA back bar. Running the Thief mundus to make up for lost spell crit for not running light armour. Front bar is sharpened trait with poisons. MagDK.

My meta magDK last PTS pulled about 76-78k, just for reference.

Hooded_1

sustain sucked with this build though, I had to use Balance to assist with the sustain. Also the parse was done with parse food, while the stat picture was taken with Artaeum pickled fish bowl

MudcrabAttack

I think red CP alone would basically offset the damage taken increase of thrassian stranglers. As it is, DPS with high CP can sleepwalk through red circles in the older dungeons. Max CP lets you get lazy with mechanics in a lot of places.

My own thoughts on the set are it's just too much damage, somewhere around 110-120k dps on a mage? Why wouldn't it become BIS in almost all dungeons? It's not just elite trials players who can survive ugly mechanics. Think of 4 player dungeons, where 1 dps will easily hit the 20 kill cap in just two or three mob pulls. It's way overtuned for a mage, but even my stamblade was getting much higher DPS on the PTS by wearing medium armor pelinals / thrassian stranglers and spell damage jewelry glyphs, and slotting degeneration for the major sorcery.

It's about 8000 more DPS than I'm used to seeing on the archer stamblade, and wearing medium armor instead of light offsets the damage intake further.

Austinseph1

I'm not really sure what to think about this, It feels like an irresponsible set to just throw in like a wrench in whatever semblance of balance they attempt to attain. The game didn't need a set like this and the people good enough to use it correctly don't need the insane damage increase to clear any content in the game. Its going to be a DPS junkie runing around with 12k hp that does 150k dps.. or A PvP player that can burst anybody before they can get a move off. Mag DPS parses will become pointless and it will go from OP to getting nerfed into a pointless ses if history has taught us anything about the pattern they have set. It seems cool but from a balance standpoint it will be a nightmare.

Kurat

They wanted to raise the floor and lower the ceiling. This set does the opposite to ceiling but it will raise the floor. So 10k dps players will have opportunity to maybe clear some content coz they can hit 15k now lol.

Austinseph1

Kurat wrote: »

They wanted to raise the floor and lower the ceiling. This set does the opposite to ceiling but it will raise the floor. So 10k dps players will have opportunity to maybe clear some content coz they can hit 15k now lol.

They go from the the skill floor to literally lying on the floor because they will spend most of their time dead lol. And you actually have to have the killing blow to get the buff, so the higher your damage the more likely you will get the stack. Its not going to do anything for the floor but a dummy parse where they got full stacks and just dummy parse with them. and then in an actual raid go back down from 40k dps to 10k

Olupajmibanan

Is it enough to just press the sneak button in order to drop stacks or do you have to actualy get "hidden"?

Second question, do you have to land the killing blow in order to get stacks or is kill participation enough (like in case of False God or Vicious Ophidian)?

VoidCommander

I think the damage bonus is well adjusted for this set. Taking 40% extra damage is comparable to the damage increase you would gain in terms of pvp. You would be just as vulnerable as your targets wearing the set. Plus, it wouldn’t be useful for ganking given that you can’t stealth with it.

For PvE I don’t see any reason to fret over people clearing easier dungeons quickly. They are already so much of a breeze sometimes an overall 3000 spell damage isn’t going to change much. People will breeze past those dungeons same as before.

I am 100% confident that if thrassian passes PTS as is they will be banned for parsing purposes by any respectable trial guild. It just doesn’t make sense for a whole team of mages to be trying to hoard 20 kills each at the start of a trial, only to have to reset because they got hit by a now one shot ability.

Paradisius

Thrassian Stranglers is in an overall niche spot, I dont expect many mag dps take this at all times. Achieveing 20 killing blows before a boss is possible on maybe 1 or 2 dps but 3, 4, etc, it becomes less likely to get full benefit for group dps the more people that have it, resulting in a possibly lower group dps as you have to sacrifice a 5pc or monster pc effect to use this. Ontop of that, you have to keep those 20 stacks without entering stealth/invis/sneak, new zones, or dying. 40% damage taken increase is nothing to scoff at, so while this will be a good dummy hump, I only expect very few people to get the most out of this equipment

Sluggy

Overall I think it's a fun item to play with and while I think it might be a tad overtuned I do like that it allows for some serious damage while also providing a hefty cost. In trials, this set will be just about useless since only one or two members would ever be able to get full stacks going most of the time and there are too many one-shot mechanics. In dungeons, even harder ones, I could see this being considered BiS for a premade that has appropriately adjusted their team dynamics so that healers and tanks actually focus on group survival while the DPS do all of the damage and damage-buffing. I wouldn't dare take this into pugs for any serious dungeons.

As for the OP comment about dropping off when porting: That is definitely not a bug. Otherwise everyone would equip it, go kill some overland mobs, and then hop into a dungeon at full power and never have to worry about building the stacks again. As it is now, it at least requires some consideration as far as team dynamics goes. That being said, it's pretty easy to get a build that still functions even when the stacks aren't up. With zero stacks I got a magplar to about 33k/60k on a 6m/trial dummy. Once the stack were up it was like 45k/97k. I also took my solo stamDK into vMA with it and managed to do fairly though I didn't finish.

I have yet to have a chance to play with this in PvP but I suspect it will be DoA for the most part outside of dueling and maybe some highly coordinated groups. It's a 50/50 chance that you or your enemy get blown the eff up. And sure, you can get extremely powerful self-heals but those don't do you much good if you get one-shotted.

I personally also like that it raises both the floor and the ceiling: Allowing for experienced players to really make it shine and giving less rotation/build-centric players that are otherwise not terrible a chance to get those deeps.

Septimus_Magna

Hooded_1 wrote: »

So down to the specifics... Forgetting about the need to kill 20 creatures to get to max spell damage, how do you offset the extra damage taken? I have two ideas for people to go on to the PTS and test out... Putting heavy armour (primarily for more resists) on a magicka DPS, and/or stacking more into health. The magic number for health in a raid right now is ~18k, So adjust your stats so that it’s 40% more than that. This would put you at about 25k health I believe. I’m curious to see what the DPS is like if you’re a magicka DPS parsing with a heavy, magicka-based set on with these gloves. I’ll be testing out these ideas myself, and I encourage others to as well.

Stacking into health should equalize the negative effect of Thrassian but it will put a lot more strain on your healers(s).

Everyone is thinking about constantly maintaining full stacks but I think thats not the only way to look at this set in a trail environment. Its pretty difficult to get high stacks because you need to get the killing blow with low chance of 1/12. But what if you build to run between 3-6 stacks? Each stack gives 150 spell dmg so at just 3 stacks its roughly as strong as the NMA 5pc, but instead of the cost increase you take more dmg which is a pretty good trade-off. Once you go over 6 stacks you can tap crouch to remove the stacks. Or if you know there wont be any more adds you can keep the stacks, it introduces an element of skill and risk vs reward. This also means you barely have to invest into health because you only take 6-12% more dmg, increasing your health from 18k to 20.2k health would cover the 12% increased dmg taken.

For dungeons its a different story, usually there are many adds and you have a 1/4 chance of getting the killing blow so here I would build to run full stacks. This means running at least 25k health, I dont know which method is most efficient to reach this much health. In terms of sets its probably not smart to give up either MS or FGD, so it would probably be a combination of a 1pc monster set with health, health enchants and/or attribute points into health. Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl will help a lot but that means you need to run FGD for the sustain.

Sluggy

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

In terms of sets its probably not smart to give up either MS or FGD, so it would probably be a combination of a 1pc monster set with health, health enchants and/or attribute points into health. Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl will help a lot but that means you need to run FGD for the sustain.

I haven't tested with anything but a pure damage setup at this point so I can't speak of things like max health vs max mag but you don't really need to give up either of these sets. I ran MS and four pieces of FGD (since the 5 piece doesn't give me damage anyway) and just used a single heavy attack each rotation for perfect sustain. If you really want the sustain, drop a monster piece. The damage gained from thrassian will more than make up for it. If you want more defense, run Chudan or two one-pieces of the armor monster sets in heavy.

Septimus_Magna

Sluggy wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

In terms of sets its probably not smart to give up either MS or FGD, so it would probably be a combination of a 1pc monster set with health, health enchants and/or attribute points into health. Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl will help a lot but that means you need to run FGD for the sustain.

I haven't tested with anything but a pure damage setup at this point so I can't speak of things like max health vs max mag but you don't really need to give up either of these sets. I ran MS and four pieces of FGD (since the 5 piece doesn't give me damage anyway) and just used a single heavy attack each rotation for perfect sustain. If you really want the sustain, drop a monster piece. The damage gained from thrassian will more than make up for it. If you want more defense, run Chudan or two one-pieces of the armor monster sets in heavy.

Using HAs in your rotation is also a solution to improve sustain, it might depend on your class and race which option works the best.

Olupajmibanan

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Hooded_1 wrote: »

So down to the specifics... Forgetting about the need to kill 20 creatures to get to max spell damage, how do you offset the extra damage taken? I have two ideas for people to go on to the PTS and test out... Putting heavy armour (primarily for more resists) on a magicka DPS, and/or stacking more into health. The magic number for health in a raid right now is ~18k, So adjust your stats so that it’s 40% more than that. This would put you at about 25k health I believe. I’m curious to see what the DPS is like if you’re a magicka DPS parsing with a heavy, magicka-based set on with these gloves. I’ll be testing out these ideas myself, and I encourage others to as well.

Once you go over 6 stacks you can tap crouch to remove the stacks.

Does this work mid-fight without actually going "hidden"?

nk125x

Just use 4 pieces armor of the swift in pve for your resistance (5th piece is pvp). Also you will be able to keep your 5-5-2 with one of the 5 pieces being swift and mythic

Septimus_Magna

Olupajmibanan wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Hooded_1 wrote: »

So down to the specifics... Forgetting about the need to kill 20 creatures to get to max spell damage, how do you offset the extra damage taken? I have two ideas for people to go on to the PTS and test out... Putting heavy armour (primarily for more resists) on a magicka DPS, and/or stacking more into health. The magic number for health in a raid right now is ~18k, So adjust your stats so that it’s 40% more than that. This would put you at about 25k health I believe. I’m curious to see what the DPS is like if you’re a magicka DPS parsing with a heavy, magicka-based set on with these gloves. I’ll be testing out these ideas myself, and I encourage others to as well.

Once you go over 6 stacks you can tap crouch to remove the stacks.

Does this work mid-fight without actually going "hidden"?

Thrassian Stranglers – Light Hands
1 – Killing an enemy grants you a persistent stack of Sload’s Call, up to a maximum of 20 stacks. Each stack increases your Spell Damage by 150, but also increases your damage taken by 2%. Removing Thrassian Stranglers, crouching, or going invisible removes all stacks of Sload’s Call.

I havent tested it myself but from what I understand you dont need to be hidden.
You can remove the stacks by unequipping the set piece.
You can remove the stacks by crouching (without being hidden).
You can remove the stacks by going invisible (NBs with Cloak for example).

I am curious to see if Mist Form removes the stacks for example, maybe I have some time tonight to test it on the PTS.

leepalmer95

It'll be nice 1 hitting VDSA/ VMA lmao.

Tyrthax

It’s very easy to cheese a Parse with the Stranglers, myself and other members of my guild have been getting 100k+ Parses with it on Trial dummies.

Though I think that is where their viability (If you can call it that) ends. While you can build stacks off of -anything- you kill, (this includes bugs like centipedes and stuff), crouching/stealthing removes them, you can’t Fast Travel with the stacks anywhere, or load into a new zone with them. I haven’t seen if you need have the killing blow to get a stack, or participate in the kills to get them. But I think in total, it would not be hard to build up the stacks in a trial... You’ll just be a glass cannon and die from pretty much everything.

I think the negatives of the gloves balance the huge attack potential... After all, you can’t DPS While you are dead.

Sluggy

So again, I feel like people are getting hung up on the whole 40% more damage. That's really not a dead-end with this set, there are ways around this if you stop and reconsider the roles of your party support. I.E. Healer and tank working together to mitigate damage instead of just being damage buffers and extra dps on the side.

The biggest issue with the set is that you need to build up the stacks to get the full power from the set and this will obviously be difficult in many trials. But don't doubt that some highly organized teams out there will find a way to 'schedule' their kills to get around this. For 4-person content, this not an issue most of the time.

In the end this is an interesting set with a lot of dynamics going on. It's not going to be the best thing to use everywhere or even viable in some places but it's not going to be wise to outright refuse to use it anywhere either. It's just another tool in the kit that mag users constantly complain about not having.

MLGProPlayer

leepalmer95 wrote: »

It'll be nice 1 hitting VDSA/ VMA lmao.

They might as well leave it like this for a few months so people can re-farm the content since they aren't upgrading our weapons. Instead of needing 100 hours to re-farm your weapons from 2015, you might be able to do it in 75 hours now. Joy.

universal_wrath

Hooded_1 wrote: »

I haven’t done a ton of testing on this piece myself, but I am aware of some of the mechanics to it... one of the big drawbacks is whenever you port to a new zone your stacks fall off. I don’t think this should be the case, I suspect this is a bug that ZOS needs to fix.

I am, admittedly, more of a PvE player, so I’m curious how this will play out. My suspicions are that this piece will benefit vet groups more than it will beginner/intermediate groups, since vet groups can very quickly adapt to different metas that show up patch to patch.

So down to the specifics... Forgetting about the need to kill 20 creatures to get to max spell damage, how do you offset the extra damage taken? I have two ideas for people to go on to the PTS and test out... Putting heavy armour (primarily for more resists) on a magicka DPS, and/or stacking more into health. The magic number for health in a raid right now is ~18k, So adjust your stats so that it’s 40% more than that. This would put you at about 25k health I believe. I’m curious to see what the DPS is like if you’re a magicka DPS parsing with a heavy, magicka-based set on with these gloves. I’ll be testing out these ideas myself, and I encourage others to as well.

Set is for parsing open world only. Many trials and dungeons have lots of aoe attacks or in some dungeons some boss will randomly attack any player. 40% dmg taken is huge even if you are max cp. It is a nice set with its down sides, I personaly don't see it being used in vet dungeons, DLC ones atleast. It will stresses out the healers and make their hair fall when you group with them as maybe random hit tgat shouls only take 20% of you HP bow takes 50% for example.

RiskyChalice863

Sluggy wrote: »

Overall I think it's a fun item to play with and while I think it might be a tad overtuned I do like that it allows for some serious damage while also providing a hefty cost. In trials, this set will be just about useless since only one or two members would ever be able to get full stacks going most of the time and there are too many one-shot mechanics. In dungeons, even harder ones, I could see this being considered BiS for a premade that has appropriately adjusted their team dynamics so that healers and tanks actually focus on group survival while the DPS do all of the damage and damage-buffing. I wouldn't dare take this into pugs for any serious dungeons.

As for the OP comment about dropping off when porting: That is definitely not a bug. Otherwise everyone would equip it, go kill some overland mobs, and then hop into a dungeon at full power and never have to worry about building the stacks again. As it is now, it at least requires some consideration as far as team dynamics goes. That being said, it's pretty easy to get a build that still functions even when the stacks aren't up. With zero stacks I got a magplar to about 33k/60k on a 6m/trial dummy. Once the stack were up it was like 45k/97k. I also took my solo stamDK into vMA with it and managed to do fairly though I didn't finish.

I have yet to have a chance to play with this in PvP but I suspect it will be DoA for the most part outside of dueling and maybe some highly coordinated groups. It's a 50/50 chance that you or your enemy get blown the eff up. And sure, you can get extremely powerful self-heals but those don't do you much good if you get one-shotted.

I personally also like that it raises both the floor and the ceiling: Allowing for experienced players to really make it shine and giving less rotation/build-centric players that are otherwise not terrible a chance to get those deeps.

I don’t think it’s necessarily DoA for PvP. I just think one has to think about a Thrassian build completely differently than other builds. As in, perhaps run Thrassian with two defensive five-piece sets (maybe one if you have defense built in some other way, such as being Nord). Thrassian by itself can provide enough damage to make a build hit really hard. And if you put on two defensive sets, you can actually still make it harder to burst you down than it would be with something like a two-offensive-sets-and-a-defensive-monster-set build right now. Meanwhile, your self-heals would be so much stronger that you’d likely be able to keep up with healing through sustained damage even better than a normal build right now, even despite the 40% extra damage taken.

I guess my point is that I don’t think Thrassian builds should involve pushing for max damage, like you might with a normal build. I think the way to think about Thrassian is to try to use it to get just a little bit more damage than you’d get with a normal build, while actually building in so much defense that you’re also slightly tankier. If you do that, it’d be better than a normal build.

From what I can tell fiddling around with builds on the UESP build editor, I’m almost certain that this is quite possible. I’ve been able to theorycraft Thrassian builds that have higher Spell Power values than any reasonable builds I’ve come up with, while actually still having enough health and extra mitigation that it’d take more damage to burst me down on the Thrassian build than it would on other builds I run that still have less Spell Power. And the healing would be so high that I could heal through stuff better, even despite the +40% damage taken. I think a build like this would be essentially clearly superior to non-Thrassian builds.

That said, Thrassian Stranglers would also require getting the kills to ramp up, and would fall off if you change zones (not sure exactly how that “change zones” effect works in PvP—for instance, no one has told me if it happens when you enter a keep for instance, or when you use a door in the IC sewers). So there’s a definite downside. That’s the big balancing factor. I will note, though, that if you build super tanky outside of Thrassian Stranglers, then you aren’t necessarily left with a totally terrible build without Thrassian stacks. It’s not like you have 40% extra damage taken regardless of how much extra spell damage you’re getting. If you don’t have stacks, you’re just left with a really tanky build—albeit one with a item slot that isn’t doing anything for you.

zvavi

universal_wrath wrote: »

Hooded_1 wrote: »

I haven’t done a ton of testing on this piece myself, but I am aware of some of the mechanics to it... one of the big drawbacks is whenever you port to a new zone your stacks fall off. I don’t think this should be the case, I suspect this is a bug that ZOS needs to fix.

I am, admittedly, more of a PvE player, so I’m curious how this will play out. My suspicions are that this piece will benefit vet groups more than it will beginner/intermediate groups, since vet groups can very quickly adapt to different metas that show up patch to patch.

So down to the specifics... Forgetting about the need to kill 20 creatures to get to max spell damage, how do you offset the extra damage taken? I have two ideas for people to go on to the PTS and test out... Putting heavy armour (primarily for more resists) on a magicka DPS, and/or stacking more into health. The magic number for health in a raid right now is ~18k, So adjust your stats so that it’s 40% more than that. This would put you at about 25k health I believe. I’m curious to see what the DPS is like if you’re a magicka DPS parsing with a heavy, magicka-based set on with these gloves. I’ll be testing out these ideas myself, and I encourage others to as well.

Set is for parsing open world only. Many trials and dungeons have lots of aoe attacks or in some dungeons some boss will randomly attack any player. 40% dmg taken is huge even if you are max cp. It is a nice set with its down sides, I personaly don't see it being used in vet dungeons, DLC ones atleast. It will stresses out the healers and make their hair fall when you group with them as maybe random hit tgat shouls only take 20% of you HP bow takes 50% for example.

Ha. Healers in dungeons. Magblade's self heal dependant on their dmg. Which means self heal is stronger. Even in trial running swallow soul instead of elemental weapon, and losing 7k Max mag for 7k Max hp is totally worth it damage wise. I agree that if you can't stay alive (rip floor players) in good groups (ceiling) it will be neglectable. Yet again a change that makes ceiling higher than floor.

The real question is if it is only kills or assists too. If it is assists (like pfg), then you will see 7 magblade's in trials running stranglers, with 1 heavy attack dk to give them all major slayer and engulfing flames.

RiskyChalice863

To my way of thinking, the ideal way to play with Thrassian Stranglers in PvP will almost certainly be to pair it with two of the following sets:

Mark of the Pariah
Warrior-Poet
Plague Doctor
Buffer of the Swift
Fortified Brass
Green Pact
Impregnable

Ideally, you probably want at least one that pumps health, because pumping health is probably the most efficient way to make yourself harder to burst.

You then run whatever monster set 1pc you want, probably a stat-heavy piece like 1pc Domihaus, Swarm Mother, or Stonekeeper.

You then cover whatever sustain needs you have using your race, mundus stone, and jewelry enchants.

Obviously, this can be fiddled with a bit. You could go Nord and use the resistances mundus stone, and switch to using one sustain set, for instance. But the basic concept is just to run Thrassian, build in whatever amount of sustain you need, and then mostly otherwise just pump defense including a significant amount of max health. This way, at full Thrassian stacks, you actually should end up with a build that both hits harder and is tankier than a non-Thrassian magicka build.

Sluggy

@RiskyChalice863
So I actually had a chance to do some dueling with and against the set yesterday! It performed about as I expected. I was playing my hybrid DK and my opponent was a magsorc. He basically had me locked down the whole fight (magsorc is admittedly my very worst matchup). He would basically sit inside his mine field and body block with the matriarch while pressuring me with extremely powerful attacks. The only thing I could do was LoS, heal the crap out of myself, and wait for him to make a mistake and either step away from the minefield or run out of magicka. If I tried to attack while his guard was up I'd get blow up with 18k+ mines lol and if I managed to slip in he'd just streak away and reset the whole thing.

I'll have to try some more matches with him later since I was running an odd 2hand/resto setup. I imagine a bow or shield backbar would have been a very different story. Reflecting 20k+ frags back at someone would be an insta-gib for sure.

In open world as a solo it would be possible to catch a few people off guard and blow them up before they even knew what happened but all it would take is one mildly capable person with snipe on their bar standing behind you to end it real fast. If they built more tanky as you suggested I'm sure they'd do better overall but the question remains, will someone be dedicated enough to go hunt down and kill a bunch of things in order to get their stacks back every time some little thing goes wrong? If you're dedicated to the idea I'm sure you can make it work. But you'll have to be really dedicated.

Sluggy

Also the answer the question about resetting via zoning. Anything involving changes zones or instances counts. So porting, entering a dungeon, walking to or using a shrine to travel to a new zone. Transitus shrines, keeps, and buildings that are part of the same zone don't reset it.

RiskyChalice863

Sluggy wrote: »

@RiskyChalice863
So I actually had a chance to do some dueling with and against the set yesterday! It performed about as I expected. I was playing my hybrid DK and my opponent was a magsorc. He basically had me locked down the whole fight (magsorc is admittedly my very worst matchup). He would basically sit inside his mine field and body block with the matriarch while pressuring me with extremely powerful attacks. The only thing I could do was LoS, heal the crap out of myself, and wait for him to make a mistake and either step away from the minefield or run out of magicka. If I tried to attack while his guard was up I'd get blow up with 18k+ mines lol and if I managed to slip in he'd just streak away and reset the whole thing.

I'll have to try some more matches with him later since I was running an odd 2hand/resto setup. I imagine a bow or shield backbar would have been a very different story. Reflecting 20k+ frags back at someone would be an insta-gib for sure.

In open world as a solo it would be possible to catch a few people off guard and blow them up before they even knew what happened but all it would take is one mildly capable person with snipe on their bar standing behind you to end it real fast. If they built more tanky as you suggested I'm sure they'd do better overall but the question remains, will someone be dedicated enough to go hunt down and kill a bunch of things in order to get their stacks back every time some little thing goes wrong? If you're dedicated to the idea I'm sure you can make it work. But you'll have to be really dedicated.

Yeah, having to kill a boatload of stuff to get your offensive power back anytime you die would be a significant negative. I think it’s probably most naturally suited to the Imperial City—since killing a boatload of stuff there could actually be pretty consistently quick (well, maybe not “quick” but not that tedious).

It’s also worth noting that, by my estimation, you can actually still have a pretty powerful build even after like 10 kills. Obviously there’d be less offensive firepower, but getting 1500 spell power is still quite a lot, and at that point you’d actually be quite tanky if you had built really tanky outside of Thrassian like I’m suggesting. It’d still be pretty good, just a bit on the tankier side of things. If the build is still good after significantly lower than 20 kills, then the whole thing might require a good bit less dedication.

Sluggy wrote: »

Also the answer the question about resetting via zoning. Anything involving changes zones or instances counts. So porting, entering a dungeon, walking to or using a shrine to travel to a new zone. Transitus shrines, keeps, and buildings that are part of the same zone don't reset it.

That’s really interesting! I’d previously been told Transitus shrines do reset it. So what you’re saying is that if you are in Cyrodiil, it won’t reset as long as you stay in Cyrodiil? If you are in the Imperial City, it won’t reset as long as you stay in the Imperial City? I imagine it must reset if you move between the IC and the IC Sewers though?

Hooded_1

30 health / 34 magicka, Fish Bowl (parse food for the parse) FGD body, 2-piece willpower, Thrassian with max stacks, Zaan, master destro staff on the front bar on a magDK pulled 95k DPS. Again, normally a 75-78k guy on live

Faulgor

I can foresee Nord being a decent race choice. I mean, it is their chapter after all.

Should've been called Orkey's Stranglers.

Palefang

I will try to do a breakdown of this set, from a theorycrafting point of view.
Expect numbers, but no parses.

For the demonstration, I will use "1p bonus" as a scaling tool. It is, so to speak, one the 2-4 bonus you get on sets, or the 1p bonus of monster sets.


. What is Thrassian's Strangler real net worth ?

What does it provides ?
1 – Killing an enemy grants you a persistent stack of Sload’s Call, up to a maximum of 20 stacks. Each stack increases your Spell Damage by 150.

So, for every ennemy killed (up to 20), you get 150 SP.
Thrassian is a 1p bonus, as such it should be compared as others 1p bonus. The standard for 1p SP bonus is 129 SP.
Let's also note that the standard for a 5p bonus is 300 SP.
(Since the 'normalization' of set, the "standard" bonus for 5p is around 2,3x the worth of a 1p.)

Basically, Thrassian gives you the worth of a 5p standard bonus with 2 stacks.
It means that the maximum 20 stacks gives you 10 times the worth of a 5p, or 23 times the worth of a 1p bonus.


What is the drawback ?
Each stack also increases your damage taken by 2%.

So, for every ennemy killed (up to 20), you take 2% more damages, up to 40%.
This increase is multiplicative with damages reduction, and not additive. It cannot be offset by CP or armor alone.

But, if the incoming damages is increased by X%, you can increase your life by X%, and take the same damages (in life%) as before.
As to speak, to offset Thrassian's drawback, you have to increase your life by X%, where X is 2x [nb of stacks].
In the worst case, it is worth 40% of your max life.


What is the net value of the set fully stacked ?

Most DD play PvE content with around 18k max life. (Rounded up)
It means the drawback of TS could be offset with 7200 more HP.
1p life bonus is worth 1206 HP. Which means, the drawback of TS costs you around 6x 1p bonus.

Overall, the net value of TS fully stacked is 16 1p raw bonus.
(Which would translate into 2064 SP worth.)


What if the set is not fully stacked ?
Let's assume that, while building, you have permanently offset the drawback of a fully stacked TS. It costs 6p 1p bonus worth.

So the scaling of TS net worth with stacks is the following :


You break even at 5 stacks. (Which means the build is worth starting 6 stacks.)
At 7 stacks, the net gain is worth a 5p standard bonus.
At 9 stacks, you have the net gain of a 5p stacked Siroria.


How does it compare to other sets ?

I think a graph is more explicit :


So, Thrassian's (mitigated) is worth more than 3 times Siroria when on 20 stacks.


How easy is it to build ?
Actually, this is an easy question.
+7k2 health is pretty easy to have and can be achieved with Attributes points alone. You will sacrifice a bit of your max ressource that, in turn, may make sustain a bit harder.
But you will still have access to 2 full 5p sets.


Overall, this set overperforms from a theorycrafting point of view.
I didn't do the breakdown with the new curse added (heal reduction), but I think it is pointless. Fully charged Thrassian is so powerful that you will want to throw a whole 2-3-4-5 bonus set to mitigate its effect and it will still be better than Siroria or the like.


My suggestion :
The idea of such a kiss-curse is great, but the total number of SP given is too damn high.
Based on this breakdown, I would do this suggestion :
- Lower the max stacks to 7.
- Increase the damage increase taken from 2% to 5,7%.
- Remove the healing taken / shield strengh reduction.

The net gain while on 7 stacks will be around the value of Julianos if you wish to go for extra health points. It won't be an auto-include without any drawback anymore.
However, this set will still be one-of-a-kind, as it offers you a trade of survivability for max damages. The canon-glass builds will have a tremendous raw gain of 1k SP. It will still be played by top players who rely on timed shields / healing to survive.
The max count of stacks being lower, it will be more accessible during trials, and if you die, it will be refilled more quickly.

That's my take on the set.