Why Are There no Staffs for the Advancing Yokeda Set?

Kaladinar

The Advancing Yokeda set is one of the most popular DPS sets for stamina and magicka melee.
I was doing some theorycrafting on a true hybrid DK build that would be able to retain the set's bonus on the backbar. It would be possible thanks to Venomous Claw, which deals Poison damage and thus Martial melee damage.

Yet, for some reason, I discovered that the Advancing Yokeda is one of the extremely few sets in the game to lack staves (and bows, too). This is inexplicable, as there are countless sets that will never be used in melee but still have the whole gamut of weapons available.
To add insult to injury, the Ophidian stamina DPS set that also drops in Hel Ra Citadel does have staves of all types.

The question to Zenimax is, then: are you serious about hybrid builds? If so, please right this wrong and add back staves and bows for the Advancing Yokeda set.

Ilsabet

A while back they decided to eliminate certain weapons from sets whose bonuses theoretically require certain other weapons to proc. It's not really about what kinds of builds would or wouldn't use certain weapons, which is why (for example) stam-based sets still drop staves. (Fun fact: I have a stam warden healer build that uses a War Machine inferno staff for Elemental Drain.) The idea is that if the bonus requires melee damage to proc, it can't possibly proc on a ranged weapon, so there's no point in having ranged weapon drops in that set.

They obviously didn't consider cases like class skills satisfying the proc condition, so you bring up an interesting point. I wonder if that would be enough to convince them to reconsider the rule.

SeaUnicorn

The idea behind it is that AY procs of melee damage and none of the ranged abilities, even when fired from melee range, count toward AY. What developers did not consider are class and world skills that are melee, like whip and arterial burst. In any case you can easily manage AY on one bar, just go to back bar for 3 GCD at a time to be safe.

WrathOfInnos

Agree 100%, AY bows and staves should never have been removed from the drop table. I'm guessing someone misread the tooltip and thought it only procced from melee light/heavy attacks (which would make it useless with a ranged weapon). However this is not the case, and it would be an excellent set to use with a bow or staff. Skills like Puncturing Sweeps and Whip can easily proc AY when using any weapon type.

The worst part is that they exist, and some players do own these weapons from drops several years ago. They cannot be collected or reconstructed, but they are usable and transmutable. However the vast majority of players do not have these, and it is now impossible for them to obtain. This is a huge problem when we're talking about gear pieces that may be the absolute best option for certain builds.

I'm not saying these old ones should be deleted. We just need to be able to obtain them again.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

El_Borracho

You can always run AY daggers, especially if you are running a magblade or magplar

Amottica

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

The idea behind it is that AY procs of melee damage and none of the ranged abilities, even when fired from melee range, count toward AY. What developers did not consider are class and world skills that are melee, like whip and arterial burst. In any case you can easily manage AY on one bar, just go to back bar for 3 GCD at a time to be safe.

I thought this set used to be stamina specific (or at least only bad magicka DPS would wear it as it did not offer any spell or magicka at one point. IIRC. So staves being removed would have made sense but should be put back now.

WrathOfInnos

Amottica wrote: »

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

The idea behind it is that AY procs of melee damage and none of the ranged abilities, even when fired from melee range, count toward AY. What developers did not consider are class and world skills that are melee, like whip and arterial burst. In any case you can easily manage AY on one bar, just go to back bar for 3 GCD at a time to be safe.

I thought this set used to be stamina specific (or at least only bad magicka DPS would wear it as it did not offer any spell or magicka at one point. IIRC. So staves being removed would have made sense but should be put back now.

There was a time when staves made little sense, but the missing AY bow has been problematic for a long time.

vesselwiththepestle

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

What developers did not consider are class and world skills that are melee, like whip and arterial burst.

Neither Whip nor arterial burst would proc Advancing Yokeda. Advancing Yokeda requires martial melee damage. There are very few sources for martial melee damage outside of DW/SnB/2H weapon skills. I think the idea is, no bow skill, no destro skill, no resto skill would be able to cause martial melee damage -> smart loot, similar to the light speaker set, which only drops resto staves as the only weapon.

I guess Biting Jabs would be an option and Surprise Attack. Not sure why you wouldn't want to run a melee weapon on such a character. Not sure if it would be worth to run AY to proc it with martial melee class/generic skills on a bow or destro build. Having the light attacks to proc it makes it a lot easier to keep up the stacks.

Kaladinar

El_Borracho wrote: »

You can always run AY daggers, especially if you are running a magblade or magplar

Yes, but for a DK a staff would be more beneficial to have in backbar. Unstable Wall of Elements with a fire staff would be boosted by the class passives (in addition to other fire damage boosts).

PvP_Exploiter

Does anyone know it it used to be only Melee Light Attacks when it was 5 stacks?

Would make sense for the removal of bow and staves but then the set has changed.

WrathOfInnos

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

What developers did not consider are class and world skills that are melee, like whip and arterial burst.

Neither Whip nor arterial burst would proc Advancing Yokeda. Advancing Yokeda requires martial melee damage. There are very few sources for martial melee damage outside of DW/SnB/2H weapon skills. I think the idea is, no bow skill, no destro skill, no resto skill would be able to cause martial melee damage -> smart loot, similar to the light speaker set, which only drops resto staves as the only weapon.

I guess Biting Jabs would be an option and Surprise Attack. Not sure why you wouldn't want to run a melee weapon on such a character. Not sure if it would be worth to run AY to proc it with martial melee class/generic skills on a bow or destro build. Having the light attacks to proc it makes it a lot easier to keep up the stacks.

That is interesting, when did they add the "martial" requirement? I'm sure it was just melee damage last time I checked.

That does mean many class or vampire spammables would not work. It would still be easy for any class to use AY with any weapon though, simply because Barbed Trap is a universally great martial melee DoT.

I believe venom claw, noxious breath, sub assault, ruinous scythe, blighted blastbones, hurricane, surprise attack, killers blade, incapacitating strike, power extraction, empowering strike and jabs would also work. It would also be possible to cast Carve or Blade Cloak from the back bar, then swap to Staff or Bow front bar and build AY stacks from ticks of those skills.

El_Borracho

Kaladinar wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

You can always run AY daggers, especially if you are running a magblade or magplar

Yes, but for a DK a staff would be more beneficial to have in backbar. Unstable Wall of Elements with a fire staff would be boosted by the class passives (in addition to other fire damage boosts).

I don't think a staff would help given AY's proc conditions. None of the mag DK's skills are martial melee damage, nor would a staff give that to you. Daggers, or other melee weapons, are the only way a mag DK could proc AY with light attacks

EDIT: I just re-read @WrathOfInnos suggestion of running trap. That would be a great work-around. You could move the Orb to the back bar, drop Channeled and put Trap on the front bar where the AY weapons are to proc it.

kringled_1

In the first post the OP literally named the skill he wanted to use to proc AY, Venomous claw. With hybridization in U33, it's not an unreasonable choice. It's definitely martial damage and the cast is melee range, without checking I don't personally know if the damage ticks would still count as melee.

Kaladinar

El_Borracho wrote: »

Kaladinar wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

You can always run AY daggers, especially if you are running a magblade or magplar

Yes, but for a DK a staff would be more beneficial to have in backbar. Unstable Wall of Elements with a fire staff would be boosted by the class passives (in addition to other fire damage boosts).

I don't think a staff would help given AY's proc conditions. None of the mag DK's skills are martial melee damage, nor would a staff give that to you. Daggers, or other melee weapons, are the only way a mag DK could proc AY with light attacks

EDIT: I just re-read @WrathOfInnos suggestion of running trap. That would be a great work-around. You could move the Orb to the back bar, drop Channeled and put Trap on the front bar where the AY weapons are to proc it.

Did you read my original post? I named one skill that definitively procs AY, Venomous Claw. There are others.

Point is, there's no reason this shouldn't be allowed.

El_Borracho

Kaladinar wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Kaladinar wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

You can always run AY daggers, especially if you are running a magblade or magplar

Yes, but for a DK a staff would be more beneficial to have in backbar. Unstable Wall of Elements with a fire staff would be boosted by the class passives (in addition to other fire damage boosts).

I don't think a staff would help given AY's proc conditions. None of the mag DK's skills are martial melee damage, nor would a staff give that to you. Daggers, or other melee weapons, are the only way a mag DK could proc AY with light attacks

EDIT: I just re-read @WrathOfInnos suggestion of running trap. That would be a great work-around. You could move the Orb to the back bar, drop Channeled and put Trap on the front bar where the AY weapons are to proc it.

Did you read my original post? I named one skill that definitively procs AY, Venomous Claw. There are others.

Point is, there's no reason this shouldn't be allowed.

Ahh, got it. Got stuck thinking about a pure mag DK. And I agree that the melee procs need to go now that the hybrid style is here

virtus753

Bash is martial melee too, no? Doesn’t everyone have the ability to bash, even without a weapon? (When the servers permit it and don’t just make your weapons/fists pass through the enemy’s hit box to no avail, that is.)

Aegis Caller is in the same boat.

And even if a set has a completely unproccable fifth piece bonus when using ranged weapons (like a melee light attack condition), the fact that ranged weapons count as two pieces means the fourth piece bonus would be in effect with the ranged weapon regardless. So it would not be completely useless, especially if a player wanted to use it as a placeholder for an arena weapon, and at any rate ZOS shouldn’t be taking away our options because they are dismissive or ignorant of the possible ways to proc these sets with ranged weapons or because they think they’re somehow saving us from ourselves when it comes to suboptimal gear usage. If they’re going to remove less than optimal set pieces, why stop here? If "smart" loot means only loot that's going to be most useful to us, they’ve got about 90% of the sets in game to remove. This feels highly arbitrary in its selectiveness.

I do have to wonder if this was part of an effort to trim database entries. It occurred to me last night that I hadn’t seen named drops in most of the newer dungeons. (I actually can't recall any named drops in DLC dungeons at all, and I'm struggling to remember ever having received named pieces from Delve or World Bosses in most of the DLCs like you can get from base game equivalents. From at least Orsinium it seems that named pieces only come from quests, not loot.) While I find it far less interesting to have only generic loot, it should theoretically help keep the number of new databse entries lower and allow the devs to introduce more sets instead. Some of the original dungeons had several named items per set (typically 5-6), and with transmutation now available they’re functionally no different than generic pieces. By not adding new named pieces, the devs save at least a whole set's worth of new items per dungeon, allowing them to introduce, e.g., a new PvP set instead. Now that generic set pieces drop alongside named pieces, and the stickerbook counts named pieces as their generic equivalents, it seems to me that the devs might be trying to phase out named items the same way they did the pieces that used to drop from dolmens (e.g. Voljar's Crescent Dagger).

p00tx

I don't know why more people haven't "liked" this post. I think you're 100% right about this. If they're going to drag the entire game into hybridization, they should have more carefully anticipated all of the ramifications for doing so and made many necessary changes at the same time, like bringing back certain set weapon types, or making spell dmg/weapon dmg glyphs into one hybrid glyph that encompasses both.

LesserCircle

Agreed, I wish I kept a staff from when it was available.