Thrassian Stranglers: Increased the duration of each stack to 10 minutes to make them essentially permanent while fixing some bugs with actual permanent stacks.
Note: This set is currently undergoing some additional changes which are not yet complete. We plan to increase the maximum stack count from 20 to 50, allowing the set to stack up to a maximum of 2000 Weapon and Spell Damage, but with a 50% reduction in healing and shield efficacy and 50% increased damage taken; this should make the maximum power of this set unattainable to reach by multiple players in Trial settings. At the moment, these stacks are also not being removed on death. These changes and issues will be fixed in a future PTS patch.
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Players will tend to min/max. In other words, if a damage oriented player (DPS) is given a choice to increase power at the cost of less "survivability" then the player is going to take the option that gives more power and try to figure out how to survive anyway. You could make it 100% more damage and there would still be DDs trying to figure out how to survive with it if they can get 2000 spell damage with it.
If you make it to where Thrassian Stranglers is not a viable min/max damage option then players will just go to the next best thing and leave it on the shelf, so the choice is either keep it strong enough to use or add it to the list of sets that are not used.
So my point is this:
What does adding this set to the game do for the game? How does it add more fun and make a better playing experience? This question needs to be answered first before any decisions on how to change the set should be made. If you want it to not be used then just lower the damage to the point there are better options and then it won't be used for trials, but then if you don't want it used then why add it to the game in the first place?
When I first saw this set in the previous PTS (6.0) I thought that this was a way to get groups to include healers in 4 person content. In other words, allow 2 DDs to have as much damage as 3 DDs, but include a healer to offset the amount of additional damage taken. I actually liked this as a goal for this set.
Now it is clear that that wasn't the goal for this set... basically it will give a good enough bonus that it will be worth running, but it won't be a high enough risk to make me want to have a healer with me over a 3rd DD, and I am back to trying to figure out what is the point to this set.
Playing since beta...