Gear changes with update 29
Larcomar
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Follow PTS a bit but ofc there are patches on top of patches. Just wondering what changes, if any, I need to think about making to load outs when the update hits. Should stress I'm talking PVE here - PVP seems totally up in the air with all the tests and tbh I'm prob not going to go back anyway - and nothing heavy duty ie soloing normals and doing vet pledges with groups.
The main stuff I spotted was that
- it looks like crit sets seem to have been nerfed - quite heavily. Are people thinking that's likely to end the hegemony of MS in builds? Most of my mag toons use it right now.
- as I understand it you now gain stats as you level, rather than a 20% bonus to your stats from cp. It sounds like that's going to indirectly nerf stat sets. But yell if I'm wrong.
- to get around "prebuffing" some sets won't now activate out of combat. Maybe minor, but sounds like it's going to mean my stamsorc ditching 7th legion and my dk maybe having to rethink elfbane. I've lost track of this one though.
- weapon types seem to have been moved around a bit. Ive generally run swords for pve and axes for pvp on stam toons in the past. Axes now are about crit damage, so I'm wondering if they're now better for pve, and prob mauls for pvp. But see nerfs to crit above.
- light armor and heavy armor looks to have gotten a bit of a nerf, while medium looks to be king. But you can now mix and match to your hearts content.... Hmmm...
Trying to figure what all this adds up to. Wondering for ge if it means mag toons should now stack spell damage rather than crit (and def not mag). But also wondering if, given stam toons get an extra 15% bonus to wpn dmg + medium armor looks pretty strong righ tnow, it might be time to mainline a stam toon this patch.
Is there any stuff I've missed? What are you guys thinking?
Ps And ofc there's the cp2 system. Still looking at that - but wondering if it means specialising toons a bit more. Ie one toon to focus into crafting stars, one into harvesting stars etc meaning they may be less effective for dps. I'm only around 1050 cp so doub't I could do them all.
Edited by Larcomar on March 4, 2021 11:57AM The main stuff I spotted was that
- it looks like crit sets seem to have been nerfed - quite heavily. Are people thinking that's likely to end the hegemony of MS in builds? Most of my mag toons use it right now.
- as I understand it you now gain stats as you level, rather than a 20% bonus to your stats from cp. It sounds like that's going to indirectly nerf stat sets. But yell if I'm wrong.
- to get around "prebuffing" some sets won't now activate out of combat. Maybe minor, but sounds like it's going to mean my stamsorc ditching 7th legion and my dk maybe having to rethink elfbane. I've lost track of this one though.
- weapon types seem to have been moved around a bit. Ive generally run swords for pve and axes for pvp on stam toons in the past. Axes now are about crit damage, so I'm wondering if they're now better for pve, and prob mauls for pvp. But see nerfs to crit above.
- light armor and heavy armor looks to have gotten a bit of a nerf, while medium looks to be king. But you can now mix and match to your hearts content.... Hmmm...
Trying to figure what all this adds up to. Wondering for ge if it means mag toons should now stack spell damage rather than crit (and def not mag). But also wondering if, given stam toons get an extra 15% bonus to wpn dmg + medium armor looks pretty strong righ tnow, it might be time to mainline a stam toon this patch.
Is there any stuff I've missed? What are you guys thinking?
Ps And ofc there's the cp2 system. Still looking at that - but wondering if it means specialising toons a bit more. Ie one toon to focus into crafting stars, one into harvesting stars etc meaning they may be less effective for dps. I'm only around 1050 cp so doub't I could do them all.
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GreenHere✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I know this answer probably isn't really what you're looking for, but I'm gonna share my thoughts because it seems like we occupy similar brackets in the game. (As in, "nothing too heavy duty; vet dungeons & such") Hope it helps.
The TL;DR for all the changes seem pretty firmly in the "don't worry about it too much" category to me.
- Crit is being nerfed, but just enough knock it down to be more on-level with other stats; it'll still be good, but it won't be unquestionably King anymore. Other choices are viable now, but speccing for crit still is too. No biggie, imo.
- Stats are getting rebalanced in such a way that doesn't "punish" sub-CP300 players, and players who have low Spell/Weapon Damage builds. Most of us above that are ending up with similar stats, just shifted around a little; it equates to marginal differences overall. More health is nice, and resource/regen from other sources means you can shift glyphs/food/whatever if you feel like it.
- Armor passives are kind of annoying, but ultimately nothing of huge consequence. You're still gonna be running sets which dictate the weights you wear more often than not, I reckon. So again, not much to worry about changing builds over here, imo.
The CP system will be analyzed and figured out by people smarter than me in no time; optimal paths will be found and laid out in the coming week or so. But overall, the idea ZOS is going for (and seems to be semi-successful with) making all the bonuses less potent, so choices have less dire consequences for picking the "wrong" stars vs uber-optimizing. Sure, the differences will matter, but it's not fully sussed out yet so worrying ahead of time won't do much good.
Overall, the changes don't seem that impactful unless you occupy the top ~10% of performance among the player base. And even then it's nothing catastrophic, it seems.
The largest reason that ZOS is having this Respec Your Character event (or whatever) is because they have to wipe and reissue all skill points to address some backend technical issue; and the new CP system wipes that side of things too. Just makes sense to allow a grace period in such a time where everyone is repurchasing skills and rethinking their builds. It's not because the upcoming changes are super dramatic, far as I can see; more coincidental timing.
Sorry for such a wishy-washy answer, but you asked for thoughts, and mine are essentially "Stuff that's good now will still be good after the changes, just by not as large a margin. More options are viable now, since all of them are a little closer together. Nothing needs to be changed, since you'll still be 90+% as effective as you are now; unless you're a min-maxer."
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Larcomar✭✭✭✭✭No, that's actually very helpful. Not least, because as you put it, we occupy similar brackets. I may start doing some trial stuff now - I feel I need to have some kind of "end game" activity - but I'm never going to be one of these top ten percent guys that half the guides / website seem to write for.
What you say actually makes alot of sense looking at the numbers. Given Zos' penchant for richochet changes (release wildly overperforming set, wildly overnerf it the next month, then - after howls of protest - eventually put it back somewhere vageuly sensible) I was slightly wondering, but maybe they're taken an easy does it approach for once.
I may still swap some stuff out. 7th legion definitely - hurricane isn't just an AOE it's my main speed buff on the stam sorc and ofc scales up - but also maybe MS on a couple of the mag toons. If theyre just bringing crit in line with other stats, it's not actually a bad thing - I'd actually rather have a bit more variety when it comes to building different toons than be in the position that it just doesn't make sense to run anything else. Hell, maybe that set of netches touch Ive been sitting on forever will finally find a use.
The armor stuff does sound a bit annoying. Weird as it may sound, my mag DK runs elfbane in heavy for solo. It just kind of fits. And makes him pretty much unkillable. But, thinking about it, given you can wear any combo now and it looks like light and heavy kind of cancel each other out, Ill maybe slot a medium monster helm, 3 elfbane on the body + staff, and go light on the rest - I usually run it with BSW or OS on the other bar so I can slot wild hunt or pale order as necessary. If I'm right, that should give me a decent balance of damage v tankiness, no penalty for martial / magical damage (I still don't get that) and only a 3% reduction in run speed. Which I'm not wild about, but frankly isn't going to remotely be noticeable.
Cheers
larc
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