Prayer Shawl, Combat Physician, Lunar Bastion, Brands of Imperium, how useful are these?

hcbigdogdoghc

Yes, I know they are not meta tank/healer sets by any means, but I just want to know how useful they are as someone that heals/tanks, in both dungeon and trial environments. The idea of being a "shield support" have always interested me, but unfortunately in ESO dps is king.

Still, I've been using the same spc(olo)/hollowfang/symphony on my healers since forever. Recently I've been wondering about the usefulness of hollowfang, it's not rare to see a <10% minor vitality uptime on certain group members. Same thing with yolnahkriin on my tanks, it's only a 2-3% dps increase, is it really doing that much for a dungeon group?

Regardless I've never tried these 4 sets because people say they are trash, but as far as I know these sets got a buff a couple of patches ago. Are they better now? Viable somewhat? There should be situations where combat physician is better than hollowfang, or lunar bastion is better than torugs (just 1% dps increase) right?

Any thoughts?

Thoragaal

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

Yes, I know they are not meta tank/healer sets by any means, but I just want to know how useful they are as someone that heals/tanks, in both dungeon and trial environments. The idea of being a "shield support" have always interested me, but unfortunately in ESO dps is king.

Still, I've been using the same spc(olo)/hollowfang/symphony on my healers since forever. Recently I've been wondering about the usefulness of hollowfang, it's not rare to see a <10% minor vitality uptime on certain group members. Same thing with yolnahkriin on my tanks, it's only a 2-3% dps increase, is it really doing that much for a dungeon group?

Regardless I've never tried these 4 sets because people say they are trash, but as far as I know these sets got a buff a couple of patches ago. Are they better now? Viable somewhat? There should be situations where combat physician is better than hollowfang, or lunar bastion is better than torugs (just 1% dps increase) right?

Any thoughts?

I would first would argue that it's not becuase "DPS is king". It's just that the shield is like getting a huge HP boost for a certain time window. People don't need more HP because they can already survive the stuff that's happening. The extra shield becomes reduntant 99% of the time.
If the DPS dies it's because; 1) They didn't get enough healing, 2) They didn't move out of stupid, 3) The tank lost aggro. It could also be due to them not spending their CPs properly, making them unable to mitigate enough damage.

However, there are certain times where those shields can be very useful, just like Kagrenac's Hope can be extremely useful when doing completely new content and people are still learning; ressing those dead people helps the progress. But Kagrenac is far from "META".
The problem with most "shield sets" though is that it's more or less down to RNG. The shield will be up when it's not needed and still on CD when the incoming damage is about to happen.
Prayer Shawl only goes off if the player is fully healed "When you overheal yourself or an ally, you grant them a damage shield [...]", so it's only good if the player is low on max HP / almost no mitigation, and a big burst of unaviodable damage is coming.
Combat Physician is more reliable, since it's off of crits "When you critically heal yourself or an ally, you grant your target a damage shield [...]" but again, people usually don't need that boost of "extra HP". You could use it in a pre-made group and the DPS is "allowed" to go down to 12k HP and spent the rest of their attributes in to max Stam/Mag.
Lunar Bastion is only 8m, but can ofc be used in a group where everyone is stacking.

And Hollowfang is good, not because of minor vitality but because of the magicka sustain it provides (imo). However, in most content, if the DPS is built for end game then that extra magicka also becomes redundant.
Most sets become extremely situational and depends on the rest of the group. Something can be extremely useful (but far from optimal, like a shield/ward) to one group but completely useless to another. And most of the time it's just easier and more beneficial to "step out of stupid" and allowing to build around more DPS instead.

But I completey 100% agree with this "There should be situations where combat physician is better than hollowfang, or lunar bastion is better than torugs (just 1% dps increase) right?".
But, the shield is like getting a boost of extra max HP, and generally people don't like farming gear in order to complete specific content. And ZOS has tried (afaik) to make it so that Anyone with Any kind of gear setup (only relying on skill/experience) can finish said content.

Firstmep

Imperium is nice if you are tanking a 4 man grp and they're potatoes, it can keep them alive long enough so they can move out of bad stuff.

the1andonlyskwex

I love Combat Physician for PuG (and PvP) healing. It doesn't proc on anyone at full health though, which is both good and bad. On one hand, it won't really protect against one-shots like you might expect from damage shields in general. On the other hand, if you keep HoTs ticking and your crit is high enough, it will proc pretty reliably whenever people take damage, and prevent a lot of 2-shots and deaths from standing in stupid.

I don't think the uptime on Prayer Shawl is high enough to be reliable (it always leaves someone unshielded, and will often be wasted on people not taking damage).

Brands of the Imperium and Lunar Bastion seem well suited for tanks who also want to provide a little off-healing, but that's not really a role I have much experience with.

Everstorm

Well, the shields (I assume) aren't blocked by ring of the pale. But that would work best with a pre-made group where you can talk that through upfront. Brands and Bastion on the tank and the other on the healer.

Wandering_Immigrant

I combine spc with combat physician on a templar healer. The idea being as soon as anyone takes any damage their shield procs from HoT protecting them from additional damage so their health can quickly go back to full without any additional input from me, maintaining their spc uptime. This frees me up to focus on combat prayer uptime, orbs/shards and whatever else I feel like doing.

I only ever pug with this character, so ymmv, but I've been wearing this combo since combat physician got adjusted and haven't had any complaints.

Starlock

I can't use dungeon sets, generally, but I went out of my way to test Imperium because at the time it seemed like a better version of a set I was already using. The results were disappointing, mostly because the radius of effect is just too small. The vast majority of the time, other players were simply not within 8 meters of me to get any of the benefit. It's even worse now than it was because they forced it to group members only. Scrapped it and never looked back.

Benoftheflies

I would say combat physican would be the best of them all, since that is the most reliable. I think vHOFhm prog would be great with a templar healer running nova, combat physician, and gossamer. Then as your group gets more and more reps swap from the damage mitgation sets to a damage sets

etchedpixels

My main tank runs imperium and battalion defender. It's good with stamina groups because they tend to be close enough but not so much with ranged. Then again ranged folks ought to be out of most of the crap or they are standing in the wrong place 8)

I keep meaning to try hitis on my magwarden tank as another option - particularly for 3 dd runs.

Sinolai

Prayer Shawl is a big disappointment. It sounded good until we tested it. It only goes to 1 player at time so basically you can give a permanent shield to 1 player in the party. that's it. Not good enough to replace group support sets.