Stonethorn Set changes (New Moon Acolyte and a couple of others.)

MindOfTheSwarm

So it seems that New Moon Acolyte got hit pretty hard by the nerf bat and the reason according to ZOS was due to that fact that the cost increase was mitigated easily in group play. If the issue, was skill cost then why nerf the damage? Would it have not made better sense to instead double down on the pros and cons? Something like this:

(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical, Adds 833 Spell Critical
(3 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage, Adds 129 Spell Damage
(4 items) Adds 1487 Physical Penetration, Adds 1487 Spell Penetration
(5 items) Adds 650 Weapon Damage and Spell Damage. Increases the cost of your active abilities by 20%.

This way, you have increased both the cost and the reward significantly being both a buff and a nerf. This would give it a place as a very powerful set but also the cost increase is high enough that even in group play you would feel the cost increase.

Now another thing to note is that certain sets such as Spider Cultist, Sword Dancer and other similar sets got a significant buff having their 5 piece go up from 450 to 600. The problem with these sets however is that as they only target specific weapons which makes them useless for skills outside of their skill lines. I would probably buff these a bit further to about 650 to give them a place as even at 600 they will not see much use.


Finally, with all of these buffs to sets then why were Silks of the Sun, Netch's Touch and Ysgrammor's Birthright Left untouched? 400 spell damage on a specific element just cannot compete with other sets and if ZOS are gonna make all these buffs then these should get a buff too and probably get a small rework to differentiate between them. Something like this:

Silks of the Sun:

(2 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(3 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(4 items) Adds 833 Spell Critical
(5 items) Adds 600 Spell Damage to your Flame Damage abilities.

(Focuses on Magicka Recovery to benefit MagDks as they can struggle with recovery according to feedback and in my experience.)

Netch's Touch:

(2 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(5 items) Adds 600 Spell Damage to your Shock Damage abilities.

(Focuses on Max Magicka to benefit Magsorcs especially now that Necropotence has been nerfed.)

Ysgrammor's Birthright:

(2 items) Adds 833 Spell Critical
(3 items) Adds 833 Spell Critical
(4 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(5 items) Adds 600 Spell Damage to your Frost Damage abilities.

(Focuses on Spell Critical to benefit Magdens and their bonus to Critical Damage vs Chilled targets.)


Overall these sets gain a small rework to their 2 and 3 piece bonuses to better reflect the likely classes that would equip them. The 4 piece bonuses reflect where the sets lack. Their 5 piece gets a buff to bring them in line with the other multitude of set buffs that have been brought in with Stonethorn. The buff would also mean that classes outside of the most obvious ones would get use out of these sets.

* You could argue that Netch's Touch is far more powerful due to having both Spell Damage and a focus on Max Magicka, but Silks of the Sun for example would allow for more flexibility with jewellery traits and Ysgrammor's Birthright would allow more flexibility with weapon traits. Netch's Touch while the strongest on paper would mean that players would need to find their Crit Chance from other sources.

If you add Spell Damage and Max Magicka up per set the overall buff to Spell Damage, benefits and cons would be around these:

Silks of the Sun:

Around 600 effective Flame Damage with slight boost to Crit and great boost to Recovery. Offers no Resources.

Netch's Touch:

Around 820 effective Shock Damage with slight boost to recovery and great boost to resources. Offers no Crit.

Ysgrammor's Birthright:

Around 710 effective Frost Damage with slight boost to resources and great boost to Crit. Offers no Recovery.

As you can see the pros and cons are different for each set allowing for different pairings when they are equipped. Silks of the Sun would mean a player would not need to worry about resource recovery as much and in some cases allow for Food that gives the max amount of Magicka possible without a need for recovery.

Naftal

Not sure about the numbers presented, but I agree that they should've increased the cost on New Moon instead of nerfing the damage while buffing the damage of a lot of other sets in the same patch.

Your reasoning for Netch's Touch max magicka doesn't work in the next patch when they're changing sorc to use both magicka and spell damage for pets and everything.

Galwylin

I personally don't agree with this nerfing crap or really the buffing. Old sets are just that. Old. By nerfing such a new set there's no reason to ever care about any new ones because it won't last and will be a question of how soon will they nerf it so why bother if its no better than what you're using way back when. There are too many sets for them to reasonably continue this constant nerf/buff. It seems to take so much of their time they let other things just stay messed up.

Each year we should all move on to the newest thing because there are too many old things to stay relevant. Power creep isn't so bad as long as they design to meet it. Not trying to keep some old tired sets active or get the new NMA that comes out because they nerfed the old one down. That's all this leads to. Them releasing the same thing over and over with the only difference is the old gets nerfed.

Bah! I hate this kind of crap. Its just working hard at being lazy to me.