What is your favorite "suboptimal" gear?

Blkadr

Aegis Caller and Pillar of Nirn for extra bleed damage, I like proc sets.

ssewallb14_ESO

Venomous Smite.

In PvE.

It's actually really good. It's closer to meta sets than one might think in an environment with limited group buffs. It also always pumps out AoE regardless of what you're doing.

EvilAutoTech

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

It USED to be 5pc each of Darkstride and Prisoners, which USED to give 100% sprint cost reduction in addition to giving great magicka regen while sprinting. Then they changed the math on how the 5pc buffs were applied, and they no longer give 100% sprint cost reduction when worn together.

I've got that on a Stampire (Vampblade?). Not 100% reduction but, at stage 4, she runs like the wind and keeps going and going and going.

Magenpie

Darloc Brae - all my characters have a set.

Ei8htba11

Venomous Smite + Sheer Venom + Velidreth for my poison themed Necro in PvE (rarely do PvP). Dot up the trash and watch em fall :P

AlnilamE

My stamsorc runs around with Unfathomable Darkness.

A guildie runs Tinkerer and it's a lot of fun seeing things just fly up in the air.

Kiralyn2000

Encasement of Anguish.

At least until they finally make a style/motif of it.

Scion_of_Yggdrasil

Arms of Relequen and Bahraha's Curse. Currently running bow/bow, and its fun/relaxing keeping enemies at a distance, letting the DoT wreck them while you just spam light attacks. Throw on Molag Kena and you've got a good time.

Raideen

Mad Tinkerer. The set goes perfectly with the lore of one of my mains, but sadly its sub optimal and therefore I don't use it. I think it sucks because its such a fun thing.

SidraWillowsky

haelene wrote: »

Mad tinkerer. I love that little fabricant and get a lot of joy out of seeing him fling things into the air.

Yep, it's a really fun set. It's also really funny to see the little fabricant keel over dead next to me if it procs but doesn't have anything to kill by the time it's up. Very dramatic.

Grothdarr, Iceheart, and Nerien'eth all have really neat and satisfying procs- Groth really feels like a pool of lava, Iceheart does the neat "whoosh whoosh" thing, and you can actually "feel" the Nerien'eth crystal explode.

Pillar of Nirn has a neat proc too, and it deals a ton of AoE damage to boot.

I use Thunderbug on my magden in PvP sometimes, just to surprise people. Pair that with Crystallized Slab and people get hurt when they try to attack me both up close and from range.

josiahva

Thunderbug+Storm Master on a Sorc tank was a lot of fun back in the day...probably still is...walk by stuff and it dies.

Sealish

I like having fun running around in Pelinal's Aptitude from time to time. It's too bad that the 2-4 bonuses are so poor though. I'd love to see an update to it where it becomes this:

(2 items) Adds 1096 Stamina
(3 items) Adds 1096 Magicka
(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage and Spell Damage
(5 items) All skills scale to your highest offensive stats

It still wouldn't be meta but it would be way more viable and I know that I would use it in most every build I put together.

Grizzbeorn

Hide of the Werewolf

Scion_of_Yggdrasil

Sealish wrote: »

I like having fun running around in Pelinal's Aptitude from time to time. It's too bad that the 2-4 bonuses are so poor though. I'd love to see an update to it where it becomes this:

(2 items) Adds 1096 Stamina
(3 items) Adds 1096 Magicka
(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage and Spell Damage
(5 items) All skills scale to your highest offensive stats

It still wouldn't be meta but it would be way more viable and I know that I would use it in most every build I put together.

With the PTS update, light and heavy attacks dynamically scale based off your highest offensive stat.... so maybe pelinal will get some changes if its 5 piece bonus is the new default.

ArchMikem

SirAndy wrote: »

Infernal Guardian on my MagSorc, it procs with shield casts and i just love those flaming mortars ...

That used to be on my MagSorc for a long time as well, absolutely loved it. But then eventually I came up with a bar setup that had no room for Ward. That's when I switched to Zaan for a Crit kitty.

JimmyJuJu

Plague Slinger + Red Mountain. So many projectiles!

Bucky_13

LadyLethalla wrote: »

Darloc Brae for dem resources.

Was gonna write this one, have it on all my nightblades. Along with NIght's Silence for my non vampires. Permacloaking when you do daily delve quests speeds things up a lot, and it's always nice to sneak around. Even use DB in PvP sometimes when I want to avoid combat as much as possible, like during IC event when I just wanted to complete the daily quests.

Marto

I will die on the hill that is Kagrenac's Hope

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Feizao wrote: »

I usually start any build with bone pirate or bright-throat

Agreed. Hard to call it optimal these days, but I have 2 PVP gear sets I always keep in my bank. One is spinners and bright throat (magic), the other is spriggans and bone pirate (stamina). Makes it super easy to quickly get a bunch of toons on the PVP board for transmutes. Optimal, no, but checks the boxes and it works.

MinnesotaKid

Magenpie wrote: »

Darloc Brae - all my characters have a set.

Yep me too, coupled with either Shadow Walker or for my non vamp/NB toons, Night's Silence.

Ectheliontnacil

Frost staves to deal dmg

Pauwer

I love mad tinkerer on my magdk, it's so much fun. I wonder if it would work with the flame blossom set, i would have farm it though... maybe i will tonight... Maybe some infernal guardian too on the mix... Hmm hmm

pod88kk

VO + Oblivion when I'm XP farming

SOOO MANY SOUL GEMS '0'

etchedpixels

When I was levelling my first fairly tanky character I had great fun watching mobs kill themselves on my thunderbugs carpace armour set.

I do run some slightly odd mixes as I don't intend to do vet content (the whole 'stand there, 3 seconds, move to there, boss at 91% hit this skill, blah blah' mechanical nature of it is just boring to me) so just go with what works and I happen to collect.

My tanky warden runs blessed meridia and hatchling's shell. The former lets me effectively block a hard hitter for 5 seconds whilst I clean up other stuff and the latter I started running because I found it really effective dragon bashing and in general for AoE heavy environments or soloing dungeons where being tanky is not the same as actually being a tank. It also seems to dramatically cut my armour repair bill.

My stamina templar runs 5 defiler, 4 hundings, 3 venomous smite which gives me a 50% plus critical chance and pretty much means the defiler set has 100% uptime and all the delve bosses and the like just sit there stunned while I burn them.

My stam warden is fairly new to level 50 so on easy to farm/make stuff. 4 Hundings, 3 gryphons ferocity, 3 sword singer, and the bar switch takes it to 5 sword singer for 2h and 5 gryphon's for bow. All cheap/easy to get hold of.

For collecting stuff and zipping round the game when levelling I love cowards gear and nights silence. Not at all good for combat bonuses but great for picking flowers, skysharding and collecting wayshrines, especially with a cheap stamina food buff.

MJallday

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

haelene wrote: »

Mad tinkerer. I love that little fabricant and get a lot of joy out of seeing him fling things into the air.

Yep, it's a really fun set. It's also really funny to see the little fabricant keel over dead next to me if it procs but doesn't have anything to kill by the time it's up. Very dramatic.

Grothdarr, Iceheart, and Nerien'eth all have really neat and satisfying procs- Groth really feels like a pool of lava, Iceheart does the neat "whoosh whoosh" thing, and you can actually "feel" the Nerien'eth crystal explode.

Pillar of Nirn has a neat proc too, and it deals a ton of AoE damage to boot.

I use Thunderbug on my magden in PvP sometimes, just to surprise people. Pair that with Crystallized Slab and people get hurt when they try to attack me both up close and from range.

Mad tinkerer overwhelming surge and Lambris

It’s fun when all 3 proc at same time !

Ryath_Waylander

Blkadr wrote: »

Aegis Caller and Pillar of Nirn for extra bleed damage, I like proc sets.

We call it the Weedeater It's fun in chokepoints

TwinLamps

hundings bloodspawn shackle
idgaf how bad it is, good enough for farming and solo

Krogmo

Back when the DB DLC came out I loved to play hide of morihouse on my tank.

The five piece bonus is: "When you Roll Dodge through an enemy, you deal **** Physical Damage and knocks them down for 3 seconds."

It wasn't useful with boss fights, but I could literally steamroll the trash! Funniest thing ever.

Oberon45

Aegis Caller is such a fun set to run in delves or dungeons where there are some big add pulls. It is a lot of fun just watching them get chummed up by the spinning blades.

Odovacar

maybe not anymore with proc chances now but I always loved mechanical acuity when it firsts came out...semi-old school bomber compliment too