Thrassians - right direction but extremely under-tuned

bharathitman

The direction that the dev team has taken this particular patch is good, but the numbers are under-tuned by a lot. I understand that you don't want people to use (abuse) this in trials to push 140+ single target DPS on some fights, fair game, but as it stands next patch people wouldn't be using it anywhere at all (even dungeons and vMA). The risk is far too great for a measly 840 increase in spell damage.Stam DDs will hover around 10k health and mag DDs around 13k. People are not going to bother with such severe restrictions

The numbers are under-tuned by atleast 50%
1. Reduce the number of stacks to 30
2. Increase the spell damage / weapon damage for every stack to 30 (for a total of 900 spell damage)
3. 0.5% health decrease for every 1 stack instead of a set number for a maximum of 15% decrease at 30 stacks(this will alleviate health cheesing a bit)

Kadoin

Never thought I'd see the day a 1-piece is called "undertuned", but the forums never let me down.

ketsparrowhawk

I made this comment in another thread, but I'd like to see the "curse" tied to damage done. For each stack, a % of your damage done is dealt to yourself. No other curse needed. This would discourage AOE usage and would prevent everyone from running it in trials because the healers wouldn't be able to keep up (but they could probably handle 1 or 2 players using it).

I also think it needs FAR fewer stacks. The original 20 was fine. Also the damage needs to at least be in the 4-digits IMO in order to make players properly salivate. Adjust the penalties accordingly.

Red_Feather

ketsparrowhawk wrote: »

I made this comment in another thread, but I'd like to see the "curse" tied to damage done. For each stack, a % of your damage done is dealt to yourself. No other curse needed. This would discourage AOE usage and would prevent everyone from running it in trials because the healers wouldn't be able to keep up (but they could probably handle 1 or 2 players using it).

I also think it needs FAR fewer stacks. The original 20 was fine. Also the damage needs to at least be in the 4-digits IMO in order to make players properly salivate. Adjust the penalties accordingly.

that is a fascinating mechanic

IonicKai

As long as it's tied to killing blow and has such large number of stacks it's not worth it unless the payout is huge. They really over thought the adjustments. All they needed to do was halve the spell damage gain and maybe add weapon damage gain to whats on live and it would have been good enough to use without being completely overtuned. It was already a bit of a choice to use it. The people wanted it used the group made adjustments to accommodate the penalties and it still wasn't this obliterating mechanic. It can make things trivial because it was a bit too much damage however it was a proper risk reward scenario.

Olupajmibanan

Remove the shield % penalty, no reason to have this set double dipping into shield size (via reduced shield % size and maximum health).

YandereGirlfriend

Kadoin wrote: »

Never thought I'd see the day a 1-piece is called "undertuned", but the forums never let me down.

So you think that a loss of ~8300 HP, 50% shield strength (which is doubly nerfed due to lack of HP), AND your monster set is worth 830 Spell Damage?

And even if you do, good luck playing DPS with 10k HP or else stacking all Health glyphs and 64 attribute points into Health. By the time you account for all of that Magicka pool loss (and its impact on your sustain via smaller synergy bonuses) your actual gains from the Thrassians are quite dubious indeed.

BahometZ

Damn, this item is really throwing Zos for a loop.

The problem with live Thrassian is that it is very fun, very cool, but it flies in the face of the current tenet of raising the floor lowering the ceiling. It absolutely blows through the ceiling. Good players will get the killing blows and can reduce the risk significantly, they know where enemies spawn in vet trials and what mechanics look like. Average players won't get that many killing blows, and when they do they'll stand in red, get hit by mechanics, spend more time in danger, or they'll run in groups of other average players that haven't theory-crafted a way to neutralise the thrassian risk. Thrassian was OP for players who were already at the upper-end, who don't need any help. It's a trap for people who think they can handle it. (Disclaimer: If you're here on the forums you already are more invested in the game than 85% of the player base, so you probably aren't average.)

It should be said that talented, organised teams are breaking records for content with or without Thrassians. It's not really changing their lives except to make finishing content slightly quicker. And obviously we knew that Thrassians was going to just bring extra stupid dummy thicc scores to everything. With Thrassians already on live for a couple months those records won't be broken. It is done. So what purpose do Zos see Thrassians serving now? Who do they want to use it and in what content?

Overland and normal content is irrelevant for the purpose of game balance.
Vet dungeons are for farming, fun, and achievement hunting, and feels like an ideal place for OG Thrassians – in four man content there is more personal responsibility, so you take on the risk. You can push boundaries without affecting game balance too much. A lot of the older dungeons are already easy, so doesn't make a big difference there, and new dlc dungeons are punishing, so Thrassians might help you get the complete if you've struggled, but you'll get one-shotted so other achievements aren't a cakewalk.
Vet trials have leaderboards, and so maybe Thrassians should be a rarity so as not to skew scores beyond reach, I think that's a reasonable approach.
PvP it should probably be niche. I've only seen it used effectively by magsorcs on keep walls, they wreck and they get wrecked if they aren't careful. Again, high risk, high reward. That seems fair. Stealth wiping the stacks helps prevent gankcheese.

Honestly, they don't need to change the original that much to make this work:

- Make stacks required 30 so not everyone in a trial is getting full stacks. Remember we're sharing kills with ~8 other players and some classes don't have executes. Also some vet trials don't have a lot of adds, vAS has almost none, literally none in +2, vCR has a few. There are maybe 40-50(?) adds on the way to the first boss in vSS. That's one player with a full stack under current conditions IF they get the killing blow on everything. Your 30 stacks seems like a good middle ground.

- Reduce overall dmg stack amount so it's not insane but also needs to be something worth the risk. 3k is too much, 900 is not enough. Again, we're sharing kills with other players, and once someone starts getting stacks it'll be easier for them to get more stacks (sload are notoriously greedy and self-serving so I do like this aspect from a lore flavour angle), so bear in mind how long it would take someone to get enough stacks for it to be worthwhile. I think 60 per stack (30 x 60 = 1800dmg at full) is fair for a mythic item, considering it would take 8 stacks to get 490dmg, a near equivalent to a 5 piece you may be missing out on. That 1800 will give a sense of power in dungeons where you can get full stacks, but it is not likely you will get to full stacks in many trials.

- Increased damage received and reduced healing received was fine, it rewarded knowledge and skill. I would actually keep it at 2% increased damage and reduced healing, so that at full stacks it's at 60%. That's the big risk you take. Reducing health to "make the curse feel more visceral as it's something you can see rather than feel after it's too late to react" is an incredibly vague cover for them wanting to level the playing field so that good and bad players both have the same issue. Good players are still going to get around it but whatever. One problem I see is that people might not really feel restrained by less health at the low stacks you're likely to experience, so it's not going to be noticeable until you get very large stacks, and also it's not that difficult to build for more health. Extra incoming damage and reduced healing even at low stacks can be enough to get you one-shot. At full stacks you won't live long. And the whole shield strength thing is double dipping and hurts mag unnecessarily. They already have reduced shields with reduced health.

In vMA where you can get full stacks easily 1800 more dmg is nice but won't offset 60% increase in dmg taken and healing reduction unless you are very good, in which case, party on.

In vet trials you probably won't get a full stack and will feel significant peril before you reach those high stacks. Personally I wouldn't bother chasing 1800 extra damage if it means one slip up and I'm dead. Dead dps does zero dps.

This is a mythic item that takes a lot of effort to obtain, and a fair amount of effort to use smartly. It costs an item slot, removing either a monster set or a 5 piece in most cases. It requires killing blows. It needs to be worth it. I do think it needs to retain the high risk, high reward element, otherwise why bother even coding it. May as well just delete the item and replace it with yet another non-combat pet. The patch 6.1.2 version is so so very bad, it's astoundingly terrible. Impressively so. In it's current state it is like the car that Homer Simpson designed for his brother Herb. Let's not screw Herb like Homer did.

ccfeeling

Complain more , nerf more .

That's what I see in the past few years .

Kittytravel

I previously mentioned this in another thread but I keep hoping ZOS will glance at this and go "Oh look a way to have a good mythic and not have it affect the meta."

"While in any Overland Zone, Public Dungeon, or Delve increase your Weapon and Spell Power by 2500 but also increase your Damage Taken by 30% and reduce your healing and shield effectiveness by 30%. These effects are not active within Cyrodiil or the Imperial City."

Otherwise they will just keep nerfing it or finding alternatives that will make it not used at all because it takes too long to ramp up or it ramps up too well and is too useful in PvP or PvE because of defensive stat stacking or not wanting to build the ceiling too high.

Kadoin

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Kadoin wrote: »

Never thought I'd see the day a 1-piece is called "undertuned", but the forums never let me down.

So you think that a loss of ~8300 HP, 50% shield strength (which is doubly nerfed due to lack of HP), AND your monster set is worth 830 Spell Damage?

And even if you do, good luck playing DPS with 10k HP or else stacking all Health glyphs and 64 attribute points into Health. By the time you account for all of that Magicka pool loss (and its impact on your sustain via smaller synergy bonuses) your actual gains from the Thrassians are quite dubious indeed.

Honestly, I don't think any of those mythics should exist without a proper drawback, HP drops isn't a real drawback in my opinon. What would be a good drawback is simply using the formula that the rest of the game is designed behind: tying the damage increase to a sustain loss.

And I don't mean one that is indirect like this hp reduction. I mean one that can't be ignored like a cost increase tied to stacks.

For some reason ZOS doesn't want to go that route, but as long as damage is available without affecting sustain in the game it will result in an item eventually becoming OP with or without any powercreep. It's simply how the game is balanced at the end of the day and even with the hp debuff, I see the mythic eventually being problematic precisely because it doesn't adhere to the damage-sustain rules everything else is balanced behind.

Anyron

No that isnt right direction.. It was fine as it was before this pts. Incredible damage but really squishy with feeling DONT DIE AND LOSE STACKS. Now its just trash
Now, imagine being magicka shield user.. you lose 6k health and 50% shields.. with that you have 18k health and 3.5k shield in noCp pvp...