Gaze of Sithis

Raeyleigh

Gaze of Sithis – Heavy Head

1 – Adds 5000 Maximum Health
1 – Adds 500 Health Recovery
1 – Adds 10760 Armor
1 – Reduces your Block Mitigation to 0.

When I read the spoilers for gaze of sithis I knew id be getting good use out of it if the numbers would be like 5k health 500 recovery and 5k resistance.
Now reading the patch notes and learning it will even be 10760 Resistances... It seems a little excessive...
To be fair I didnt test anything yet and it might get adjusted during PTS.
Dks, Templars, Wardens and Necros rely on blocking a lot to stay alive in PvP. So i can imagine it might be somewhat balanced on them. But id like to shift the attention to Nb, Sorc and werewolf.

Stamblades only block very rarely in between roll dodges and cloak.
MagSorc stacks shields. Damage shields already have an inherent 0 block mitigation, completly negating the downsides.
Werewolfes rely on sheer tankiness and some dodges, they also block rarely and have probably the best use for the stats.

Im not looking forward to running into a necro wearing it, but especially those 3 classes will see very little if any drawbacks for running such a loaded item.
Im glad they adressed the tanky PvP meta by nerfing procs, malacath, health recovery and arctic blast, but im afraid this item might lead us straight into another one.

IAmIcehouse

This looks ridiculously overturned. I can't imagine this goes live as is. Unless they're just trying to sell DLCs to PvPers

Y2J

I will be definitely using this mythic on my mag sorc in pvp, such a huge boost in survivability. I have a feeling this mythic will be adjusted a bit before the PTS finishes though.

Benoftheflies

this and parsing food will be good for most front kits in vashm, who are learning or strugging with survivability. not really needed for score pushers but helps a lot for learing

FangOfTheTwoMoons

Definitely needs to be tuned down. You don't even have to test it to prove how busted this would be on StamBlades and MagSorcs.

xaraan

oh god, i had thought magsorc would be OP with this, I didn't even think about WW lol

master_vanargand

At least "Adds 10760 Armor" should be removed.
Still this will be strong.

Ratzkifal

Keep in mind that the health recovery, and all other health recovery, is now halved. It is also a helmet, so you cannot wear it together with another Monster set. It is also a mythic, so you can't pair it with something else like Malacath's.

It is probably the item with the highest opportunity cost attached to wearing it, but it also obviously has greater power than any single monster helmet or mythic on their own (because it is both at once).

It can probably be nerfed without being made useless, but don't just look at the big numbers out of context!

Dracane

I am looking forward to using this on my pve tank. I anticipated health values like this when I read the spoilers.
But almost 11k armor seems very excessive even for my purpose. I could drop any resistance set and defending and still reach the cap.

I would be rather surprised if this goes live.
Thinking of Werewolves with this, is a highly dreadful thought.

Waffennacht

1. Cant be used with any monster set
2. Cant be used with any other mythic
3. Gives approx 16% dmg mitigation that has a direct counter to (seems in line with malacath)
4. No block mitigation
5. Health regen is cut in half

For the opportunity cost it better be BAMF

YandereGirlfriend

The under-reported story is just how mediocre the other Mythic item is that gives you... 1500 Max Resources? Uh, okay.

That's one Mythic that I'll never have to worry Scrying for.

TheUndeadAmulet

IDK what y'all are on about, GoS is looking like an easy BIS for Sorcs and Nightblades in PvP. Neither class wants to be blocking as it hurts their mobility which is their main strength. Getting that much resistance and health for essentially free means you can have high damage, tankiness and mobility all at once.

Even if the stats GoS gives are slashed in half I still would consider it. Pretty good sign of it being overpowered IMO.

Ocelot9x

Best way to sell the dlc sadly. I just had hopes that this time would be something op related to crit damage, so people had to build squishier to enjoy the new flavour.
Instead is a tank item, so I guess everyone will hit like a wet noodle next patch.
With procscrubs coming back to cyro and the tankiness provided by this item pvp will be reeeeally fun.

Tommy_The_Gun

Waffennacht wrote: »

1. Cant be used with any monster set
2. Cant be used with any other mythic
3. Gives approx 16% dmg mitigation that has a direct counter to (seems in line with malacath)
4. No block mitigation
5. Health regen is cut in half

For the opportunity cost it better be BAMF

I was gonna point that out, than I saw your post.
You kinda nailed it. People are thinking that you will be able to use it with allessian, but that is not the case since health recovery will be useless next patch. Besides, next patch it will be super easy to stack penetration (weapon trait item set). So you can get 20K easily, so I would imagine most builds will run at least 10K.. so again combain that with brutality ring and you are countering it TWICE.

Paradoxically, if this item will be nerfed, it will be because of PvE, not PvP. Somehow no one ever thought that DPS will run it. No need for tank / support if every one will have it. End-game PvE were using Stranglers and, surprise - ZOS nerfed Stranglers as they underestimated what end-game PvE-ers can do.

Sarousse

It's over guys. They want to sell their DLC. Like always, they introduce unbalanced items that will be nerfed next year.

Enjoy the totally unbalanced meta coming.

TwinLamps

Dracane wrote: »

I am looking forward to using this on my pve tank. I anticipated health values like this when I read the spoilers.
But almost 11k armor seems very excessive even for my purpose. I could drop any resistance set and defending and still reach the cap.

I would be rather surprised if this goes live.
Thinking of Werewolves with this, is a highly dreadful thought.

I fail to see how would a PvE tank benefit from zero block mitigation.
Wouldnt you get one shotted by most vet mechanics that way?

olsborg

Im guessing Onslaught is the ultimate to use for the coming meta.

MurderMostFoul

Being a mythic helm means that there are some opportunity cost here, but come on, how many 5 piece bonuses are the benefits worth? Like 7!?!
I haven't done the calculation, but it's clearly out of wack.

The drawback is substantial, but as others have pointed out, it is easily minimized on some classes. This item, as is, will essentially be a must equip for those classes. That is bad design.

Furthermore, I don't like the idea of the drawback. Blocking is an essential element to gameplay. An item that just takes it out of the equation means you are simplifying gameplay, removing a core element to combat. So while the drawback does create a disadvantage, the bonuses then reward less skilled play.

Ragnaroek93

Looks indeed overtuned on paper so far. The bigger issue is tho, how broken stacking armor is, which indirectly results in this item being broken. With how the current armor mitigation works (mitigation just scales linear with your armor value without any diminishing returns or softcaps) it rewards the player for stacking armor because stacking armor becomes even stronger when you already have a lot of armor. For example 5k armor gives 10% damage mitigation but there's obviously a difference if you get 10% damage mitigation while having no damage mitigation at all or when you already sit on 40% damage mitigation. In the latter case it's not 10% effective damage mitigation but ~17% damage mitigation. To make things worse they nerfed maces to a flat value rather than giving them a % penetration which allowed people to softcounter high armor stacking.

I think if this item goes through we'll see roll based builds for every class. Nb and sorc (with ball of lightning) seem to be the obvious choices but you can play a roll based build on everything to be honest.

Greek_Hellspawn

Lmao this is like 2 monsters sets combined into 1 item,what a joke.

Firstmep

Greek_Hellspawn wrote: »

Lmao this is like 2 monsters sets combined into 1 item,what a joke.

This.

This mythic blows pretty much any defensive monster set out of the water, easily.

Ive seen some posts claiming its okay, beacuse of the downsides.

But the way i look at it: I can throw this on stamblade/magsorc, and become disgustingly tanky, without sacraficing really anything.
The loss of monster 2pc set is not really a big deal, there are so many sets in the game these days, you can still easily get to the stats/damage you want without a monster set.

MurderMostFoul

Firstmep wrote: »

Greek_Hellspawn wrote: »

Lmao this is like 2 monsters sets combined into 1 item,what a joke.

This.

This mythic blows pretty much any defensive monster set out of the water, easily.

Ive seen some posts claiming its okay, beacuse of the downsides.

But the way i look at it: I can throw this on stamblade/magsorc, and become disgustingly tanky, without sacraficing really anything.
The loss of monster 2pc set is not really a big deal, there are so many sets in the game these days, you can still easily get to the stats/damage you want without a monster set.

Besides, lots of folks who run mythics were already not running a two-piece monster set to make room for it even though they weren't in helmet or shoulder slots.

Drygon

Firstmep wrote: »

Greek_Hellspawn wrote: »

Lmao this is like 2 monsters sets combined into 1 item,what a joke.

This.

This mythic blows pretty much any defensive monster set out of the water, easily.

Ive seen some posts claiming its okay, beacuse of the downsides.

But the way i look at it: I can throw this on stamblade/magsorc, and become disgustingly tanky, without sacraficing really anything.
The loss of monster 2pc set is not really a big deal, there are so many sets in the game these days, you can still easily get to the stats/damage you want without a monster set.

It really is ok due to the downsides, not being able to block is quite big and Heath regen is halved and builds that might make use of it don't really stack health regen, and you are also losing the use of other mythic items like Malacath, Torc or wild Hunt.

Tbh, you can reach enough defense in pvp without it, sustain is a lot more important.

On certain builds it will be better and on others it won't replace Torc.

Atm, we can only speculate.

I'll wait for pts to be up and test before making up my mind.

Tommy_The_Gun

This item once it goes live:
- Add 1K health
- Add 100 health recovery (50% less in combat and additional 50% less in cyro).
- Adds 2500 armour / Minor Resolve
- You can not block or roll-dodge. Casting dmg shields deals dmg to you equal to shield size casted.

And people will be like: "It is useless"

Firstmep

Drygon wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Greek_Hellspawn wrote: »

Lmao this is like 2 monsters sets combined into 1 item,what a joke.

This.

This mythic blows pretty much any defensive monster set out of the water, easily.

Ive seen some posts claiming its okay, beacuse of the downsides.

But the way i look at it: I can throw this on stamblade/magsorc, and become disgustingly tanky, without sacraficing really anything.
The loss of monster 2pc set is not really a big deal, there are so many sets in the game these days, you can still easily get to the stats/damage you want without a monster set.

It really is ok due to the downsides, not being able to block is quite big and Heath regen is halved and builds that might make use of it don't really stack health regen, and you are also losing the use of other mythic items like Malacath, Torc or wild Hunt.

Tbh, you can reach enough defense in pvp without it, sustain is a lot more important.

On certain builds it will be better and on others it won't replace Torc.

Atm, we can only speculate.

I'll wait for pts to be up and test before making up my mind.

You are able to block, that's not what the set does.
Your blocking won't mitigate damage..
And there are a lot of builds in the game already, that barely ever block, like the ones mentioned above, and they just get an insane defense boost.
But let this go live, sure.
When pvp is infested with literal glass cannon stamblades with 35k hp and 30k+resistances, ppl will come back to the forums and it will get nerfed.

HankTwo

On paper it looks very op for classes like rollerblade.

ApoAlaia

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

This item once it goes live:
- Add 1K health
- Add 100 health recovery (50% less in combat and additional 50% less in cyro).
- Adds 2500 armour / Minor Resolve
- You can not block or roll-dodge. Casting dmg shields deals dmg to you equal to shield size casted.

And people will be like: "It is useless"

If previous PTS iterations are anything to go by this item will go through a 'tuning' process; half way through the PTS cycle it will be tuned to the point where PvP players are finally OK with it and PvE players will have already written it off but they will carry on tuning.

By the point it goes live it will be meh for everyone.

Greg11jkalfa

I didn't read every single comment, but they did say "The Battle Spirit passive now also reduces your Health Recovery by 50%." They even followed with the comment of "Currently, Health Recovery is quite powerful in PvP environments as it bypasses the typical penalty of Battle Spirit with healing, enabling those with high amounts of it to easily recuperate tremendous amounts of damage passively. Rather than nerfing Health Recovery as a whole and making it weaker in PvE where it already struggles due to the need of more reactive healing in those encounters, we've decided to utilize this to ensure it only sees a loss of power where it needs it." Instead of nerfing the item, it should either be disallowed in pvp zones, or they should nerf the overall recovery even further. Maybe it should reduce it by 75%, or maybe health recovery should just be 0 in PvP. I don't have the perfect answer, but it seems like they're content with finally ONLY changing the PvP side of things if, and when they can.

Edit: Furthermore, it's not as if the recovery nerf is being changed. It's completely new, on top of the other passives. Maybe reduced damage taken should be pushed up to 25% or so. There are other options than "Nerf it, it's too powerful."

LinearParadox

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Being a mythic helm means that there are some opportunity cost here, but come on, how many 5 piece bonuses are the benefits worth? Like 7!?!
I haven't done the calculation, but it's clearly out of wack.

The drawback is substantial, but as others have pointed out, it is easily minimized on some classes. This item, as is, will essentially be a must equip for those classes. That is bad design.

Furthermore, I don't like the idea of the drawback. Blocking is an essential element to gameplay. An item that just takes it out of the equation means you are simplifying gameplay, removing a core element to combat. So while the drawback does create a disadvantage, the bonuses then reward less skilled play.

Look at the proc-meta. You really think they have an issue "simplifying" gameplay? People are getting kills in PvP by left-clicking people to death. -_-

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

Looks indeed overtuned on paper so far. The bigger issue is tho, how broken stacking armor is, which indirectly results in this item being broken. With how the current armor mitigation works (mitigation just scales linear with your armor value without any diminishing returns or softcaps) it rewards the player for stacking armor because stacking armor becomes even stronger when you already have a lot of armor. For example 5k armor gives 10% damage mitigation but there's obviously a difference if you get 10% damage mitigation while having no damage mitigation at all or when you already sit on 40% damage mitigation. In the latter case it's not 10% effective damage mitigation but ~17% damage mitigation. To make things worse they nerfed maces to a flat value rather than giving them a % penetration which allowed people to softcounter high armor stacking.

I think if this item goes through we'll see roll based builds for every class. Nb and sorc (with ball of lightning) seem to be the obvious choices but you can play a roll based build on everything to be honest.

Armor doesn't have a softcap because nothing has softcaps. They removed them years ago and good riddance, they destroyed any specialization and therefore diversity.
Armor DOES have a hardcap however, and that's plenty. In fact, it's the ONLY thing in the game that has a hardcap. And if you're "in the know" you'll know that because of that, and the availability of penetration, that pure armor mitigation is actually one of the weakest forms of mitigation in the game. Why do you think Major/Minor Protection was so popular? Potentates set? Necro's Spirit Guardian? Major Evasion?

Armor is easily countered if not outright negated, even more-so now with the changes to penetration which were actually a buff, not a nerf as you seem to think.
The math isn't hard to do; the average armor values in PvP are around 10-20K for 80% or more of the playerbase. Flat pen out-performs percent at those values, and even more-so below them. Against even specialized tanks for capped armor, it's barely an improvement, and at the severe cost of effectiveness against far more dangerous targets like... iunno... anything that's not a troll-tank.

---

Now, none of that is to say that I think this item isn't over-tuned, but it might not be as bad as some people think. It does come with some opportunity cost, and I don't think that people are fully appreciating the inability to block ults in PvP. Meteor, Colossus, Leap, Incap... SOUL ASSAULT... All those hard-hitting ultis that we reflexively block with muscle-memory? Ka-chunk.
Procs too.
And many of them can't be dodge-rolled.

Necro ulti? Yeah it's gonna be nice for them.... when they ult. Those builds rely on ulti-gen to maximize uptime. I know. I have one. Know what I use to maximize my uptime? Bloodspawn. Oh wait, I can't use a monster set. BS is, whether you like it or not, still one of the most stat-dense and high-value sets in the game, and is unsurpassed for ulti gen (Tava's comes close, but is unreliable and the cost is too steep in both stam and set space) while ALSO providing a strong armor buff with almost constant uptime.

If GoS was anything else than a head or shoulder piece, I would be terrified, but 2pc monster sets are still some of the most influential and powerful (and cheap to run) sets in the entire game. Yes I know many people are running a 1pc monster now to make way for mythics and arena weapons, especially with the last patch making it much easier to backbar 5pc sets, but it's still a substantial opportunity cost between giving up the monster set AND the lack of block mitigation.

HankTwo

Health recovery is the least important factor of this set, even without the battle spirit health regen nerf taken into consideration. Its benefits are armor >> health >> health recovery, in that order. Imo it looks very op on paper for classes like nb and sorc.

Compared to basic max stat 5-piece set bonuses this thing gives:
- 10760 / 3460 = 3.11 times the 5-piece of fortified brass in armor
- 5000 / 2804 = 1.78 times the 5-piece of plague doctor in health
- 500 / 900 = 0.56 times the 5-piece of beekeeper in health regen

Or in other words stats worth ~ 5.45 times a basic max stat sets 5-piece bonus. Since this one piece set alone would make any build very tanky, it will allow classes like stamblades build for dodge roll and magsorcs with streak/bol and damage shields (which have 0 block mitigation anyway) to invest everything else into offense and sustain. I dont see how this will be balanced.

Draevik

This one piece is like wearing Aetherial Ascension and Green Pact on one piece of gear lol. This item is awesome for us gamers to dream about but is the most overpowered single defensive piece of gear in the game for PVP. You can wear 2 fully dedicated DPS sets with this and have the mit and health of heavy armor.

While wearing this the only thing you would use block for is CC prevention. Most non tanks don't block except to prevent either big damage or CC. And there are other ways to prevent spikes, major evasion (since most big hitters that kill are in my experience AoEs), roll dodge, shields and HoTs or those pesky streaking sorcs. Or you may just have one vulnerability some of the time, it will be more useful than not in most scenarios.