7.0.2 Proc Set Changes & the Death of Proc Sets in PVE

LeonAkando

7.0.2 Changes:

Sets that use Weapon and Spell Damage now require 6574 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 5478, resulting in approximately a 17% reduction.
Sets that use Magicka or Stamina now require 39,901 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 4% reduction.
Sets that use Health now require 43,968 to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 13% reduction.
Sets that use Physical or Spell Resistance now require 30,680 of either, up from 27,890, resulting in approximately a 9% reduction.

Thoughts:

Overall in PVE, Proc Sets are disfavored over stat sets. The reason is quite simple, they're weak. In Flames of Ambition, a MagDD can run a set like Icy Conjuror and maybe get 2k DPS out of it, or they can run Siroria's and get 6-7k out of the extra spell damage. Where Proc Sets were more viable was in unoptimized PVE content such as Solo and Four-Man Dungeons. Due to the lack of buff coverage you could get more DPS relative to stat boosting. However, for every role alike, DD, Healer, and Tank you avoided procs with the exception of Monster Sets due to their powerful nature.

So I'm going to look at the Proc Changes as it relates to each role in the Trinity.

1. Damage Players have no incentive to run Proc Sets.
6,574 is an absurd number. That's to get to the power that they are at currently in Flames of Ambition which is to say, practically worthless. You'd need a significant increase over that number to start valuing them in PVE content. You need to run stat sets just to get enough stats to make Proc Sets even a consideration.

For StamDD, due to Medium Armor Passives, Fighter's Guild passives and more, this number is far more achievable than it is for MagDD. This is addresses one of the major grievances of this scaling change. If you are trying to balance both MagDD and StamDD at the same time you cannot with the same numbers. You could, replace the Medium Armor WD Passive with a Pen Passive similar to MagDD, which may appease Penetration Starved StamDD. Otherwise you need to tune these numbers separately. If your goal is to make Proc Sets viable again, it would be illogical to make it where the only Proc Sets worth running are Stam ones.

Furthermore, Monster Sets, despite having an increased power budget over their full-set counterparts, will be mostly worthless. Already we see a shift to Double 1 Piece bonus Monster Sets due to how weak the Procs are. It seems antithetical to the design of the game to introduce a myriad of special effects, buffs, and abilities surrounding Monster Sets for them to ultimately always be deconstructed because you made Double Crit 1P stronger than any proc. The only Proc that I think will have good value is Domihaus because it gives stats (and now that I mention it, I'm sure ZOS will nuke it into the ground as well).

Lastly, a major grievance with this change is the existing imbalance in Proc Sets. Even with the old values in 7.0.0 PTS, Relenquens was doing well over double the damage of the second highest stamina Proc Set. When you let all sets scale equally, then you exacerbate the imbalance between sets. With 10k WD you could make some sets look okayish, instead of worthless, but then Relenquens is so busted that even MagDD run it for its crazy damage. Relequens is already one of the only proc sets that gets play, which shows you how much stronger it is than every other proc set in the game.

2. Heal Players cannot reasonably obtain 39,901 Max Stat.
Out of all the scaling changes, this number always seemed the most absurd to me. A healer should bring Major Courage. They can either do that with Olorime, which set bonuses give Magicka Regen, or they can do that with Spell Power Cure, which set bonuses give Max Magicka. For the sake of trying to make Heal Proc viable, we will assume the healer went with Spell Power Cure.

So even with Spell Power Cure's set bonuses, 64 Attribute points into Max Magicka, Full Arcane Jewelry (+Max Magicka) and fully Magicka Enchanted gear with Infused Large Pieces, a healer still runs short of the needed 39,901 Max Stat. That's shameful. They would need to give up their Atronach Mundus, and thus a large portion of their regeneration, just to match the same Proc Set values as live patch, which again, is already worthless.

Even by introducing glaring weaknesses in a build for the pursuit of a decent proc, you would simply get more healing out of properly building out your character and just using healer spells than having a full Max Magicka build for a pitiful healing proc.

3. Tank players are punished, again.
This comes out of a line of strange, almost vindictive, stream of nerfs to the tanking playstyle. Not only can tanks no longer run proc sets to increase their own damage (which helped them immensely in the Overland) but they are so far off from target that their procs would do less than their own light attacks. ESO is the only game in which the tanking role does around 3-5% of the damage of a damage dealer. Why? Doesn't that seem overkill?

Then when they consider the sets that designed to help out tanks, the new scaling on them is unreasonable. To reach the values of Live, on sets that are already currently worthless, they would need to have nearly max resistance (31k/32k Max) and that is already considered overkill in almost all PVE content. It is a detriment to give up all their stats in pursuit of resistance cap.

This also ties with the new Health requirement. 43,968 health is more reasonable to see a tank in veteran content run, but even then it is largely considered overkill. One does not need absurdly large health pools to tank, and in fact they will likely find it more valuable to reallocate that health into bigger resource pools. Furthermore, all sets that scale off health are unused. So even when running a full Health-Tank only build, which would be immensely selfish, it would prove to have very little benefit in game.


Summation/TD;DR:

1) Damage dealers will rarely use Proc Sets due to laughably low damage, Monster sets will likely be abandoned for double crit 1 bonuses.
2) Proc Sets were already weak for Healers. Reaching nearly 40,000 Magicka is almost an impossible task without sacrificing all core utility that a healer brings.
3) In order to make use out of any tank sets, they need to have an excessive amount of health and resistances, which again were already sets that were never used.

Conclusion:

Why is it that Proc Sets have to die? Why is it that Monster Sets have to be invalidated? Why can't healers run heal procs without being considered a troll? Why do tanks get nerf after nerf after nerf every patch? Who are these changes for? It is because ZOS insists on trying to balance PVP and PVE in tandem. It cannot be done.

I think it's absurd, if I were to tell a friend about this game that there are 500 sets, yet only a dozen of them would ever see play because ZOS found it fit that all sets needed to die for the sake of trying to balance two very opposing game modes at the same time.

I'm not suggesting people should be mad at PVP players for complaining about things that grievance them, people should be mad at ZOS for not balancing PVP separately. They already do that with Battle Spirit, so why does that not apply further?

For the sake of the health of the game, for the sake of the fun of players, just separate the balancing of these two modes. PVP Players were critical of the removal of proc sets in Cyrodil because it took all build diversity out of the game, but PVE players also do not want Blackwood to be a large "No Proc Sets Allowed" in PVE content either.

MageCatF4F

Right now on live I run a monster set. After this weird rebalance of proc sets I'll still have a monster helm and a monster shoulders - but they'll be from different sets. I'm a magic class and Khajiit. PVE only. Solo/Duo.

This is the best way they could satisfy the needs of PvPers? I can't follow ZOS logic on this. And this is my last word on it. I'm through trying.

Tigertron

I’m lost. Who is this targeting? Overpowered trial groups? The proc sets were removed from PvP I thought. If I understand correctly my Selen’s monster set is being nerfed? So I’m being hurt because 200 or so players can tromp through trails? And I care if if they do?

TBH I have not fully digested the impact but on the surface it looks like it’s going to be just a game for kids with nimble fingers now. Unless simple crafting and decorating your house is what you call fun.

I’m just glad there are some new MMOs coming soon.

karekiz

INB4 But Pen KEK post.

katorga

Realistically, magicka dps damage proc set for trials, etc. is just Zaans. Stamina probably more impacted, but magicka dps with siroria/MS seems to dominate that tier of play.

I use all sorts of damage proc sets solo for arenas, world bosses and whatnot, so bummer. It will be interesting to see what I can do with a 55-60K mag sorc and heal sets.

PVP, we'll see. Someone will find some combination of race/class/proc set that is "op" and the whole circus will start over again.

LeonAkando

Tigertron wrote: »

I’m lost. Who is this targeting? Overpowered trial groups? The proc sets were removed from PvP I thought.

They were only temporarily removed, and only in Cyrodil. They will be returning in Blackwood, which is why all the Sets are receiving a massive slew of nerfs.

OlumoGarbag

Proc sets were never good in this crit meta we have.
If crit wouldnt be damn overpowered in PVE, damage scaling would be more interesting. Besides getting 6k spell or weapondamage would be pretty easy if people would run more buff sets. Maj/min courage powerfull assault and maj/min damage buffs alone would give any group member easy 6k value.

Tigertron

LeonAkando wrote: »

Tigertron wrote: »

I’m lost. Who is this targeting? Overpowered trial groups? The proc sets were removed from PvP I thought.

They were only temporarily removed, and only in Cyrodil. They will be returning in Blackwood, which is why all the Sets are receiving a massive slew of nerfs.

In the name of balancing. I see.

So trial fights that last 5-10 minutes will now just last longer. Or wipe more. And that is supposed to be fun?

AyaDark

In teso is balance !!!

But the only balance it is is skill from guild of mages - and nothing more.

Vizirith

LeonAkando wrote: »

7.0.2 Changes:

Sets that use Weapon and Spell Damage now require 6574 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 5478, resulting in approximately a 17% reduction.
Sets that use Magicka or Stamina now require 39,901 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 4% reduction.
Sets that use Health now require 43,968 to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 13% reduction.
Sets that use Physical or Spell Resistance now require 30,680 of either, up from 27,890, resulting in approximately a 9% reduction.

Thoughts:

Overall in PVE, Proc Sets are disfavored over stat sets. The reason is quite simple, they're weak. In Flames of Ambition, a MagDD can run a set like Icy Conjuror and maybe get 2k DPS out of it, or they can run Siroria's and get 6-7k out of the extra spell damage. Where Proc Sets were more viable was in unoptimized PVE content such as Solo and Four-Man Dungeons. Due to the lack of buff coverage you could more DPS relative to stat boosting. However, for every role alike, DD, Healer, and Tank you avoided procs with the exception of Monster Sets due to their powerful nature.

So I'm going to look at the Proc Changes as it relates to each role in the Trinity.

1. Damage Players have no incentive to run Proc Sets.
6,574 is an absurd number. That's to get to the power that they are at currently in Flames of Ambition which is to say, practically worthless. You'd need a significant increase over that number to start valuing them in PVE content. You need to run stat sets just to get enough stats to make Proc Sets even a consideration.

For StamDD, due to Medium Armor Passives, Fighter's Guild passives and more, this number is far more achievable than it is for MagDD. This is addresses one of the major grievances of this scaling change. If you are trying to balance both MagDD and StamDD at the same time you cannot with the same numbers. You could, replace the Medium Armor WD Passive with a Pen Passive similar to MagDD, which may appease Penetration Starved StamDD. Otherwise you need to tune these numbers separately. If your goal is to make Proc Sets viable again, it would be illogical to make it where the only Proc Sets worth running are Stam ones.

Furthermore, Monster Sets, despite having an increased power budget over their full-set counterparts, will be mostly worthless. Already we see a shift to Double 1 Piece bonus Monster Sets due to how weak the Procs are. It seems antithetical to the design of the game to introduce a myriad of special effects, buffs, and abilities surrounding Monster Sets for them to ultimately always be deconstructed because you made Double Crit 1P stronger than any proc. The only Proc that I think will have good value is Domihaus because it gives stats (and now that I mention it, I'm sure ZOS will nuke it into the ground as well).

Lastly, a major grievance with this change is the existing imbalance in Proc Sets. Even with the old values in 7.0.0 PTS, Relenquens was doing well over double the damage of the second highest stamina Proc Set. When you let all sets scale equally, then you exacerbate the imbalance between sets. With 10k WD you could make some sets look okayish, instead of worthless, but then Relenquens is so busted that even MagDD run it for its crazy damage. Relequens is already one of the only proc sets that gets play, which shows you how much stronger it is than every other proc set in the game.

2. Heal Players cannot reasonably obtain 39,901 Max Stat.
Out of all the scaling changes, this number always seemed the most absurd to me. A healer should bring Major Courage. They can either do that with Olorime, which set bonuses give Magicka Regen, or they can do that with Spell Power Cure, which set bonuses give Max Magicka. For the sake of trying to make Heal Proc viable, we will assume the healer went with Spell Power Cure.

So even with Spell Power Cure's set bonuses, 64 Attribute points into Max Magicka, Full Arcane Jewelry (+Max Magicka) and fully Magicka Enchanted gear with Infused Large Pieces, a healer still runs short of the needed 39,901 Max Stat. That's shameful. They would need to give up their Atronach Mundus, and thus a large portion of their regeneration, just to match the same Proc Set values as live patch, which again, is already worthless.

Even by introducing glaring weaknesses in a build for the pursuit of a decent proc, you would simply get more healing out of properly building out your character and just using healer spells than having a full Max Magicka build for a pitiful healing proc.

3. Tank players are punished, again.
This comes out of a line of strange, almost vindictive, stream of nerfs to the tanking playstyle. Not only can tanks no longer run proc sets to increase their own damage (which helped them immensely in the Overland) but they are so far off from target that their procs would do less than their own light attacks. ESO is the only game in which the tanking role does around 3-5% of the damage of a damage dealer. Why? Doesn't that seem overkill?

Then when they consider the sets that designed to help out tanks, the new scaling on them is unreasonable. To reach the values of Live, on sets that are already currently worthless, they would need to have nearly max resistance (31k/32k Max) and that is already considered overkill in almost all PVE content. It is a detriment to give up all their stats in pursuit of resistance cap.

This also ties with the new Health requirement. 43,968 health is more reasonable to see a tank in veteran content run, but even then it is largely considered overkill. One does not need absurdly large health pools to tank, and in fact they will likely find it more valuable to reallocate that health into bigger resource pools. Furthermore, all sets that scale off health are unused. So even when running a full Health-Tank only build, which would be immensely selfish, it would prove to have very little benefit in game.


Summation/TD;DR:

1) Damage dealers will rarely use Proc Sets due to laughably low damage, Monster sets will likely be abandoned for double crit 1 bonuses.
2) Proc Sets were already weak for Healers. Reaching nearly 40,000 Magicka is almost an impossible task without sacrificing all core utility that a healer brings.
3) In order to make use out of any tank sets, they need to have an excessive amount of health and resistances, which again were already sets that were never used.

Conclusion:

Why is it that Proc Sets have to die? Why is it that Monster Sets have to be invalidated? Why can't healers run heal procs without being considered a troll? Why do tanks get nerf after nerf after nerf every patch? Who are these changes for? It is because ZOS insists on trying to balance PVP and PVE in tandem. It cannot be done.

I think it's absurd, if I were to tell a friend about this game that there are 500 sets, yet only a dozen of them would ever see play because ZOS found it fit that all sets needed to die for the sake of trying to balance two very opposing game modes at the same time.

I'm not suggesting people should be mad at PVP players for complaining about things that grievance them, people should be mad at ZOS for not balancing PVP separately. They already do that with Battle Spirit, so why does that not apply further?

For the sake of the health of the game, for the sake of the fun of players, just separate the balancing of these two modes. PVP Players were critical of the removal of proc sets in Cyrodil because it took all build diversity out of the game, but PVE players also do not want Blackwood to be a large "No Proc Sets Allowed" in PVE content either.

1. Stat based sets were really always better in pve mostly because of the numbers of mobs. Take something like unleashed terror, When you deal direct damage with a Charge, Leap, Teleport, or Pull ability, you cut your enemy, causing them to bleed for 10 seconds, dealing 19734 Bleed Damage over the duration. This ability can occur once every 10 seconds per target.

While this still wouldn't be very good for a boss, it would be useless against mobs. Proc sets in general stand out for their ability to do damage even when you aren't. In pve you often have a very high uptime on abilities landing and as such it's not very good overall. Even the most op proc set would generally fall lower in dps than nearly every stat based set.

2 & 3. This one is a bit tougher and in my opinion ties together with the tank issues. Generally tanks and healers have been just buffing dps and not so much for actually tanking or healing, as in running full healing sets (increasing heals) or full tank sets (take last year's alkosh changes). But along with the Alkosh changes last year, it seems that something like SPC or olorime would be better off on a magdps instead of healer.

You are completely right in that by changing olorime healers are force to run higher mag, but that would then mean regen is lower. Which would artificially make healing harder. Same thing with alkosh last year and tanking. Maybe this was intentional. In my opinion they should try to increase boss and mob damage instead but this does theoretically change how healing/tanking is played.

As far proc sets affecting tanks in overland, everybody should have multiple set ups and now what with the slottable cp's you can theoretically change them easier on the fly for free unlike before.

NoSoup

Once again sets are being "optimaized/balanced" around PVP rather than PVE.

YandereGirlfriend

Quite right.

We had this one golden chance to elevate proc sets to viability in PvE but ZOS just went ahead and dynamited it.

The obvious choice was a BATTLE SPIRIT NERF TO PROC SETS but they are never willing to take this needed step.

Skullstachio

LeonAkando wrote: »

3. Tank players are punished, again.
This comes out of a line of strange, almost vindictive, stream of nerfs to the tanking playstyle. Not only can tanks no longer run proc sets to increase their own damage (which helped them immensely in the Overland) but they are so far off from target that their procs would do less than their own light attacks. ESO is the only game in which the tanking role does around 3-5% of the damage of a damage dealer. Why? Doesn't that seem overkill?

This is primarily because tanks used proc sets in PvP to do all their damage for them, hence the need for the Scaling that was introduced in v7.0.0 and further adjusted in v7.0.2

I technically see these changes as a benefit as it will allow us to see which players go through the trouble of improving upon their skill (and being respected for it provided good sportsmanship is involved.)and who possibly couldn’t be bothered using actual skill and just slap on several damage proc sets, letting it carry them like a crutch in PvP which has been done previously. (Just like the plague of the crimson twilight players in PvP before Blackwood.)

There is one thing I picked up on. The fact that, even if a player cannot reach the proverbial ceiling, there is the possibility that ZoS may yet very well repeal a component to an old patch which prevented damage and heal procs from being Critical.
In that regard, there is a chance that proc sets will be able to Crit again since the new set scaling formula will result in a base power drop, plus critical damage in PvP isn’t as viable since critical resistance can be utilised to mitigate set proc critical damage to a fine point.

YandereGirlfriend

Skullstachio wrote: »

LeonAkando wrote: »

3. Tank players are punished, again.
This comes out of a line of strange, almost vindictive, stream of nerfs to the tanking playstyle. Not only can tanks no longer run proc sets to increase their own damage (which helped them immensely in the Overland) but they are so far off from target that their procs would do less than their own light attacks. ESO is the only game in which the tanking role does around 3-5% of the damage of a damage dealer. Why? Doesn't that seem overkill?

This is primarily because tanks used proc sets in PvP to do all their damage for them, hence the need for the Scaling that was introduced in v7.0.0 and further adjusted in v7.0.2

I technically see these changes as a benefit as it will allow us to see which players go through the trouble of improving upon their skill (and being respected for it provided good sportsmanship is involved.)and who possibly couldn’t be bothered using actual skill and just slap on several damage proc sets, letting it carry them like a crutch in PvP which has been done previously. (Just like the plague of the crimson twilight players in PvP before Blackwood.)

There is one thing I picked up on. The fact that, even if a player cannot reach the proverbial ceiling, there is the possibility that ZoS may yet very well repeal a component to an old patch which prevented damage and heal procs from being Critical.
In that regard, there is a chance that proc sets will be able to Crit again since the new set scaling formula will result in a base power drop, plus critical damage in PvP isn’t as viable since critical resistance can be utilised to mitigate set proc critical damage to a fine point.

I think they're talking about 'tanks' in terms of PvE not PvP.

We all hated the proc sets in PvP but the casual PvE players are the ones who will suffer from this change in the end.

And, of course, anyone who was looking forward to being able to maybe use something other than the same Critical Chance sets that have been the meta for hundreds of thousands of years in PvE.

doesurmindglow

I'm not convinced proc sets were ever really seriously important in PVE. There's maybe two or three you see in endgame comps (at least one of which is still getting buffed as far as I've tested it) but for the most part this is an imaginary or at least a purely hypothetical loss.

It IS fair to say that there was a missed opportunity to make proc sets viable in PVE. That's a legitimate point. Sorta. It's ignoring that even with the nerfs a lot of these sets are still pretty overtuned in both game modes, that it actually should be an expectation that you'll be relying on specialized player roles in endgame PVE anyway, and finally, that most of the sets are still perfectly viable for casual overland play even if you can't proc down a boss while AFK.

But yes, I agree they could have probably balanced it more intentionally by somehow separating the game modes at least as far as proc sets are concerned.

the1andonlyskwex

doesurmindglow wrote: »

I'm not convinced proc sets were ever really seriously important in PVE. There's maybe two or three you see in endgame comps (at least one of which is still getting buffed as far as I've tested it) but for the most part this is an imaginary or at least a purely hypothetical loss.

It IS fair to say that there was a missed opportunity to make proc sets viable in PVE. That's a legitimate point. Sorta. It's ignoring that even with the nerfs a lot of these sets are still pretty overtuned in both game modes, that it actually should be an expectation that you'll be relying on specialized player roles in endgame PVE anyway, and finally, that most of the sets are still perfectly viable for casual overland play even if you can't proc down a boss while AFK.

But yes, I agree they could have probably balanced it more intentionally by somehow separating the game modes at least as far as proc sets are concerned.

The problem is that proc sets are currently good, but not meta, for the PvE content that casual and semi-casuals players do (e.g. overland, normal dungeons, vet dungeons, normal trials). With these changes, proc sets will go from being good for those players to being totally worthless. For example, my DK healer is currently using Overwhelming Surge for sustain, but because he only has 3700 SD, it's getting a 40% nerf in u30.

I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is typical for casuals like me. We don't have the time/resources to upgrade all of our gear to legendary and re-trait/re-enchant all of our jewelry, and those are just the bare minimum to even begin approaching the 7.0.0 thresholds. To actually hit those thresholds, you also need a few other SD/WD sources (like melee weapons, swords, a SD/WD mundus stone, or a SD/WD race). Now, I'm not even sure I can hit the 7.0.2 threshold without 2-3 people showering me in buffs.

This is gear that was already non-meta in PvE. It just doesn't make sense to nerf it so heavily, and in a way that hits the people who need nerfs the least the hardest.

remosito

And another kick in the teeth for my 6 casual pve tanks... (they all run proc sets when not tanking in groups which is 90% of the time)

I would be really pissed if I hadn't already decided that I am unwilling to further help pay the salaries of whoever is in charge at zos of such things (green tree mess, no cp scaling, "balance", no cp penalty limit upping for blackwood) ...just confirms my decision was the right one... (Really sorry for all the wonderful artsy people working there, they do a bank job..)

If something gets overused in one part of your game and underused in another part. You don't bloody nerf it on both sides. Ain't exactly rocket science.

FrancisCrawford

This would all be a LITTLE less bad if max stat and power were blended together, as they are in determining skill effectiveness. Scaling procs differently from how skills are scaled makes balancing almost impossible.

That said, even with that improvement this would be a floor lowerer. Why? Because casual players with lower stats get a higher fraction of their damage (or healing) from procs that elite players do. So exactly the lower-end people for whom proc sets are a bigger percentage of their PvE effectiveness are getting a bigger percentage nerf to proc sets.


And yes, proc sets ARE used in dungeon PUGs. Just see the posts complaining about Maw of the Infernal or Mad Tinkerer to confirm.

Tharonil

The most time i play solo, so my character has the pale order ring equipped and one defensive monster piece.

Even with the ring only i have to sacrifice one 5 piece set and reach ~4700 weapon damage. Less if i build some armor penetration

My wild werewolf set only deals 1200 damage per second on live server. With the new change it will decrease to ~900 dps.

But why? It was not the greatest damage before, but I liked the effects.
Many other sets will suffer too.

I mean, they will not suffer if you are the over-hyper-min-max-chosen one. But I don't get why the sets get stronger if you get over the new cap. So stronger player get stronger than before?

colossalvoids

Not that we had many viable proc sets in pve, it's just erased more of them to be stashed until zos finally do balancing via battle spirit or have different caps for pve and pvp, enables them to crit again etc. Pretty typical, not much surprising as they don't really invest much time in the game themselves.

DreadDaedroth

Always ruining the fun for tanks.
Only a couple of sets that scale with hp or resistances (high values too).
Thurvokun got a silly damage buff, Maarselok is no more tied to bashing, nerfed Crimson.

YandereGirlfriend

DreadDaedroth wrote: »

Always ruining the fun for tanks.
Only a couple of sets that scale with hp or resistances (high values too).
Thurvokun got a silly damage buff, Maarselok is no more tied to bashing, nerfed Crimson.

Increasing the damage of Thurovokun is like the worst possible action that they could have taken for the set while still technically calling it a 'buff.'

The damage was honestly the last thing that should have been touched - the more pressing concern is the woeful uptime as well as the entirely trivial debuffs that the set is now tied to (e.g. Minor Maim, Minor Defile).

I would much rather strip away ALL damage from the set in exchange for a higher uptime (let's get back to 100%!) and an upgrade in quality of the debuffs to perhaps Minor Defile and MAJOR Defile. That would still be useful in PvP even if would not be for PvE.

Alternatively, you could give it Minor Breach and Minor Mangle which would be useful in both PvP as well as PvE (at least for trash pulls or tanking builds that don't use Pierce Armor).

Vizirith

remosito wrote: »

And another kick in the teeth for my 6 casual pve tanks... (they all run proc sets when not tanking in groups which is 90% of the time)

I would be really pissed if I hadn't already decided that I am unwilling to further help pay the salaries of whoever is in charge at zos of such things (green tree mess, no cp scaling, "balance", no cp penalty limit upping for blackwood) ...just confirms my decision was the right one... (Really sorry for all the wonderful artsy people working there, they do a bank job..)

If something gets overused in one part of your game and underused in another part. You don't bloody nerf it on both sides. Ain't exactly rocket science.

But in all fairness, basic stat based sets would still be better for your tanks when not tanking. So it's kind of hard to say that this is much of a loss. They went from bad to worse. Which is of course the wrong way, but they were always sub-par anyway.

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

doesurmindglow wrote: »

I'm not convinced proc sets were ever really seriously important in PVE. There's maybe two or three you see in endgame comps (at least one of which is still getting buffed as far as I've tested it) but for the most part this is an imaginary or at least a purely hypothetical loss.

It IS fair to say that there was a missed opportunity to make proc sets viable in PVE. That's a legitimate point. Sorta. It's ignoring that even with the nerfs a lot of these sets are still pretty overtuned in both game modes, that it actually should be an expectation that you'll be relying on specialized player roles in endgame PVE anyway, and finally, that most of the sets are still perfectly viable for casual overland play even if you can't proc down a boss while AFK.

But yes, I agree they could have probably balanced it more intentionally by somehow separating the game modes at least as far as proc sets are concerned.

The problem is that proc sets are currently good, but not meta, for the PvE content that casual and semi-casuals players do (e.g. overland, normal dungeons, vet dungeons, normal trials). With these changes, proc sets will go from being good for those players to being totally worthless. For example, my DK healer is currently using Overwhelming Surge for sustain, but because he only has 3700 SD, it's getting a 40% nerf in u30.

I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is typical for casuals like me. We don't have the time/resources to upgrade all of our gear to legendary and re-trait/re-enchant all of our jewelry, and those are just the bare minimum to even begin approaching the 7.0.0 thresholds. To actually hit those thresholds, you also need a few other SD/WD sources (like melee weapons, swords, a SD/WD mundus stone, or a SD/WD race). Now, I'm not even sure I can hit the 7.0.2 threshold without 2-3 people showering me in buffs.

This is gear that was already non-meta in PvE. It just doesn't make sense to nerf it so heavily, and in a way that hits the people who need nerfs the least the hardest.

I hear you but at the same time overwhelming surge isn't a pure mag recovery set. You use it to double dip as damage and mag recovery. Now you have to focus on just going mag recovery and sacrifice the damage. Which does make pure healing sets/mag recovery sets more relevant. And pushes you to be more healer less dps.

the1andonlyskwex

Vizirith wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

doesurmindglow wrote: »

I'm not convinced proc sets were ever really seriously important in PVE. There's maybe two or three you see in endgame comps (at least one of which is still getting buffed as far as I've tested it) but for the most part this is an imaginary or at least a purely hypothetical loss.

It IS fair to say that there was a missed opportunity to make proc sets viable in PVE. That's a legitimate point. Sorta. It's ignoring that even with the nerfs a lot of these sets are still pretty overtuned in both game modes, that it actually should be an expectation that you'll be relying on specialized player roles in endgame PVE anyway, and finally, that most of the sets are still perfectly viable for casual overland play even if you can't proc down a boss while AFK.

But yes, I agree they could have probably balanced it more intentionally by somehow separating the game modes at least as far as proc sets are concerned.

The problem is that proc sets are currently good, but not meta, for the PvE content that casual and semi-casuals players do (e.g. overland, normal dungeons, vet dungeons, normal trials). With these changes, proc sets will go from being good for those players to being totally worthless. For example, my DK healer is currently using Overwhelming Surge for sustain, but because he only has 3700 SD, it's getting a 40% nerf in u30.

I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is typical for casuals like me. We don't have the time/resources to upgrade all of our gear to legendary and re-trait/re-enchant all of our jewelry, and those are just the bare minimum to even begin approaching the 7.0.0 thresholds. To actually hit those thresholds, you also need a few other SD/WD sources (like melee weapons, swords, a SD/WD mundus stone, or a SD/WD race). Now, I'm not even sure I can hit the 7.0.2 threshold without 2-3 people showering me in buffs.

This is gear that was already non-meta in PvE. It just doesn't make sense to nerf it so heavily, and in a way that hits the people who need nerfs the least the hardest.

I hear you but at the same time overwhelming surge isn't a pure mag recovery set. You use it to double dip as damage and mag recovery. Now you have to focus on just going mag recovery and sacrifice the damage. Which does make pure healing sets/mag recovery sets more relevant. And pushes you to be more healer less dps.

You're kind of missing the point though. It's a huge nerf to a set that was already pretty far off-meta (in large part because it did two things sort of well instead of doing one thing very well). One of the things that makes ESO great is the huge variety of usable armor sets with interesting effects. These changes put a serious dent in that strength.

I'm already planning on dropping Overwhelming Surge for Shroud of the Lich, but the change mostly feels like playing with a piece of coal because somebody threw my favorite toy in the fire.

Also, this isn't just about Overwhelming Surge, that's just the set that I happen to know the numbers for. Most of my other characters are wearing various monster sets that are also taking huge nerfs.

Septimus_Magna

The changes wont affect mag DDs too much, only Zaan dmg is reduced if you dont use Siroria. For stam DDs Relequen is indeed buffed for most specs but its only single target dmg which can fall off in some fights so it is a strong set but with a heavy disadvantage.

I do agree that scaling proc sets with the same value for mag and stam makes no sense if you look at the medium armor passives. It would make more sense if mag would have a lower value. The reverse would be the case for sets scaling off max magicka or stamina, its easier to reach high max magicka so the scaling off max stam should be lower.

I do think few DDs will run a monster set, I will probably run the mythic HWK because the power gain can be pretty significant if you build up enough stacks.

cheemers

remosito wrote: »

And another kick in the teeth for my 6 casual pve tanks... (they all run proc sets when not tanking in groups which is 90% of the time)

I would be really pissed if I hadn't already decided that I am unwilling to further help pay the salaries of whoever is in charge at zos of such things (green tree mess, no cp scaling, "balance", no cp penalty limit upping for blackwood) ...just confirms my decision was the right one... (Really sorry for all the wonderful artsy people working there, they do a bank job..)

If something gets overused in one part of your game and underused in another part. You don't bloody nerf it on both sides. Ain't exactly rocket science.

Just run Baharas / Leeching / Tremorscale or whatever other procs now scale with HP or armor.

" But I want to use my set my way! "

Well... OK, do what you want. But the options are there if you want to maintain or improve your proc damage.

Everstorm

Why is it that Proc Sets have to die? Why is it that Monster Sets have to be invalidated? Why can't healers run heal procs without being considered a troll? Why do tanks get nerf after nerf after nerf every patch? Who are these changes for? It is because ZOS insists on trying to balance PVP and PVE in tandem. It cannot be done.

This so very much. I don't understand why so many MMO developers fall for this trap. It always leads to disappointing results for both the PvE crowd as the PvP crowd. It's tragic.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

It's honestly just hilarious that they managed to nerf proc sets in pve, where they were underperforming, and buff them in pvp, where they were overperforming. They've done the complete opposite of their intent as usual.

ResidentContrarian

Do I agree with the raised limit for WD/SD scaling?

No.

We all know exactly which sets are problematic. They got Crimson, so why exactly won't they go after the other few and lower the WD/SD needed to reach old values, then put a cap instead of raising the limit to an amount that only players with certain trial groups, gear, and race combinations can ever reach?

I thought ZOS didn't want racials to be THIS important. I thought they wanted players to have racial, gear, and build diversity -- the proc changes go against that.

Not only that, now the defensive procs are way stronger than the offensive procs -- again adding to imbalance in the game.

Then, such a high WD/SD requirement means that balance between mag and stam, balance between racials, balance between classes that cannot sustain well, and balance between even sets themselves now move in a concrete "META" direction.

A good idea to get a grasp on the balance of any item, method or idea in the game at any point is to simply ask: how will this change affect hybrids? Can I make a hybrid that can achieve what the developers envision or get close to it?

With Gaze of Sithis orignal form, a hyrbid build performance in the defense department scaled so high you could solo vet trials. Okay, that's OP - needs a nerf.

Now moving with the concept of the WD/SD cap and changes, we see something else:

Zero hybrids in PvE or PvP can ever reach that cap, and thus won't won't ever slot those proc sets.

What that means is, if a hybrid can't do it, to some degree either no pure build can achieve it or they cannot do it in a way that will be comfortable. Hybrid builds can generally get 70-90 percent of the build strength of a pure one but sacrifice either damage, sustain, max stat or crit.

Here where it's impossible to reach giving up all of that, means that a pure build must give up either damage, sustain, max stat, or crit to make it possible instead of nothing. Effectively taking the penalty of a hybrid build without being one.

Essentially running a proc set or trying to get it to its max value will be a net nerf to any build, meaning no one should bother wearing them as far as damage procs are concerned in PvE.

PvP you can still get away with it, but only a few of them will be worth running anyway.

Rureczka

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

The changes wont affect mag DDs too much, only Zaan dmg is reduced if you dont use Siroria. For stam DDs Relequen is indeed buffed for most specs but its only single target dmg which can fall off in some fights so it is a strong set but with a heavy disadvantage.

I would never say they're buffing relequen. Currently on pts it has 40% less dps than on live which is laughable. But that's not all. While it would seem that Staminas thanks to rele should have higher single target dps, they still fall short to the Magickas. How logical is even that? Seems they can't stop slaughtering the Stamina pve.

Moonsorrow

There will be a big imbalance between classes, races & specs that can somewhat efficiently still use some of the proc sets.

And for most part the "fun builds" that never was any Vet Trial top tier mathematically setups will just be less efficient so less fun to use. But was fun to theorycraft gimmicky builds with synergies to group members that could make Vet dungeons and stuff fun to do.

You know, with imagination on builds and not just stack Crit Chance with the same few sets. Soon PVE gonna be like no proc Cyro that has 19 sets to use, but with even less viable options if not want content to feel tedious.

Based on these 7.0.2 new scaling numbers i can say that about 70% of my proc sets can be just deconstructed and never used anymore.

Do not see also any point in buying future content that has any proc condition gear on it. And if it has somewhat good gear that has stats on it, then it will be nerfed in a few months also anyways because: "It is OP and must be NERF!" -Random Player who died to anything at PVP.

I guess there are pvp people who enjoy playing the game with the same crafted Hunding's Rage type of setups and in pve it is exciting using that same Mother's Sorrow gear on all of their magicka characters.

ZOS, you have done over 2 years of that audit where you did go through pretty much all the item sets and skills, and now you just forgot all that work and doing this? I mean this does not make the game balanced, it makes certain classes/races/spec combos a lot more efficient than others, surely you see it also?

There would have been a very simple solution to the scaling. But i know it can sometimes be too hard to see something obvious when looking at things from too close and with a lot to do and deadlines.

Honestly, surely the combat team must at least know that this will just lead -again- to more back and forth buffs and nerf cycles that the audit was supposed to end.

Hint: players in general dislike back and forth flip flops that make their efforts on farming for gear, progression at pve, and pvp (due to imbalanced classes, and when changes happen it feels like something is always artificially made the FOTM) just less fun. Playing a game is supposed to be fun, right?

Surely the raw data ZOS has shows the numbers of the active PVP community and same for the endgame PVE community... all i hear is many trials groups just fading away and PVP community, well... Cyrodiil compared to old better time is not what it used to be on populations, both because of the performance issues and how the balancing/combat is handled. IC is dead outside the pvp Events, and Battlegrounds has like the same 30 active players doing them only.

No new PVP content in ages, not even new maps for battlegrounds. Of course active communities dwindle down if got nothing new to do and the old content has big performance issues.

ESO has so much potential and simple solutions to most of them, but it is what it is.