Useless Armor Traits

kevkj

These are the effects for legendary gear:

• Infused - Increase armor enchantment effect by 25%
• Invigorating - Increase Health Recovery, Magicka Recovery, and Stamina Recovery by 16
• Nirnhorned - Increases Physical and Spell Resistance by 253

What purpose do these traits serve in the game? I cannot think of any situation where they would be the best choice.
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Infused
Unless I am mistaken, the only enchantments you can apply to armor are stat boosts to the 3 resources (magicka/health/stamina). If for example the player was trying to stack health, 7 pieces of of legendary glyphs would add 4390 health. 7 piece infused would add an additional 1098 health to the glyph effect. If the player was using The Lord mundus, 7 piece divines would instead add an additional 1417 health to the mundus effect.

Invigorating
7 pieces would add 112 Tri-Stat Recovery. One piece of Legendary Magma Incarnate already gives you 129 Magicka + Stam Recovery. 2 pieces of legendary jewelry glyphs gives you 168 Tri-Stat Recovery.

Nirnhorned
I did not work out the math for how this compares to the Reinforced trait, but I suspect it is worse in every way. Anyhow, one piece of NORMAL protective jewelry gives you 1624 additional resistance but 7 pieces of nirnhorned armor gives you 1771.
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Did I make a mistake somewhere? Please correct me if I did. I left out shields in my calculations, but I do not think it changes anything.

What should be done about these traits? Remove? Buff? Rework with 3 new effects?

bmnoble

Not being best in slot does not mean people don't use them at all plenty of niche builds people use for fun and just experiment with instead of chasing top damage numbers all the time.

Infused for those that want to max their resources, for things like a pet sorc build where you want a large magic pool due to pets damage scaling with resources.

Invigorating for more sustain, there is a crafted set that further boosts regen of your resources by 15%. I know a few guild mates that absolutely hate using heavy attacks in their rotations and go overboard with sustain from other sources so that they are still able to wear 2 damage sets.

Nirnhoned on a light armour magic tank to make up for the lower resistances of their armour choice etc..

kevkj

bmnoble wrote: »

Infused for those that want to max their resources, for things like a pet sorc build where you want a large magic pool due to pets damage scaling with resources..

That is precisely my point though, if you are interested in stacking stats then it appears Divines would be the better option (assuming you would also be using the corresponding mundus to go all the way). Additionally, Divines would give you a lot more flexibility to swap effects by changing Mundus whereas Infused locks you into the stat stacking build.

bmnoble wrote: »

Invigorating for more sustain, there is a crafted set that further boosts regen of your resources by 15%. I know a few guild mates that absolutely hate using heavy attacks in their rotations and go overboard with sustain from other sources so that they are still able to wear 2 damage sets. .

Then perhaps the trait needs to be buffed? Recovery is a very good stat to have, but the numbers are pathetic.

bmnoble wrote: »

Nirnhoned on a light armour magic tank to make up for the lower resistances of their armour choice etc..

Okay, for a legendary light chest Reinforced gives an additional 223 Resistance while Nirnhorned gives 301 Resistance. So you are correct, there is indeed a niche for this trait.

tonyblack

If I remember correctly, there were comparisons at some points between divines and infused for big pieces (head, chest, legs) and infused was marginally better for dps, it might have changed now though where stacking crit is priority. It’s still bis trait for big pieces on tank where sturdy is the one to go for the rest.

Invigorating is indeed trash, i’ve read it used to be called prosperous and gave bonus to earned gold which is far more fun potentially, idk why it was reworked into something that useless.

Snamyap

Infused on chest, legs and head can be nicely combined with the three stat enchantment.

Riptide

Half or more of the traits have been useless and divines far and away the best for almost the entire life of the game. They’ve made a few efforts to remedy this over the years, but about the time that happens it seems like we get a sweeping combat overhaul and they are forever putting out fires rather than refining.

Reminds me of a friend of mine who changes the wall colors of his place all the time but despises finish work, so every room smells of fresh paint but can’t really entertain as nothing is ever done. Most DIY homeowners know rollering on paint is actually pretty easy, and even fun - its the stuff with the small brush around the crown and baseboards that is tedious and time consuming - and makes the most difference.

Varana

Infused was very close / superior to Divines on certain pieces or in certain builds at some point in the past, and the pendulum may swing back at some time. It's still a decent choice, and a better one for certain combinations. (As you yourself say, Divines may result in better stats... with the right mundus. If you use a different mundus stone for whatever reason, Infused becomes the better choice to achieven certain results.) In the past, it was also widely used by tanks (currently, Sturdy wins most of the time, but that hasn't always been so). Or if you're using the Ritual on a healer, Divines is not really useful.

Nirnhoned is quite niche, but I've seen PvP builds using a Nirnhoned heavy chest (may not be good any more, I don't know).

Invigorating has been in a weird place since its creation (it is a "new" trait, introduced only a few years ago). It always borders on being undertuned, but when buffed, it quickly runs into the danger of being overpowered when building into it specifically. Of the three you name, Invigorating is probably the only really good example.

But two important points:
One, these things change over time. The values of the traits have been constant for a while now, but other changes (damage formula, sustain, CPs, specific sets or skills) can change what is BiS and what not.
And second, not being strictly BiS doesn't mean a thing is not viable in ESO. There is a very large grey area where even running a slightly non-optimal build can get you through almost all content (including harder group content). If you're still running an Infused tri-stat chest on your tank, instead of changing it to Sturdy, you'll do just fine even now. Even on a DD, there power gap is small.

the1andonlyskwex

Armor traits are pretty weak in general, and none of the ones you mentioned really seem like outliers to me.

Infused, like reinforced, is only good on the big armor pieces (head, chest and legs), and on those pieces it's reasonably competitive with other options (like divines).

Nirnhoned is the opposite. Big armor pieces are better off with reinforced, while small (or light) armor pieces benefit more from nirnhoned.

Invigorating has the best stat density of all the traits (compare invigorating to divines with the atronach or serpent mundus). Unfortunately, it requires a hybrid (or PvP) build to take advantage of those stats, and sustain isn't really a priority for most builds, making it pretty niche.

Personally, I'm really happy with Infused and Invigorating on my battlegrounds healer builds, where resources and sustain are super useful.

ThirdEye_PULSE

I think you see a variety of traits being utilized more by PVPers than PVEers. PvP requires you to be well rounded in sustain, defense, offense. Ect. So just for instance my pvp character runs all these traits for armor and jewelry:

Well-fitted, impenetrable, reinforced, and sturdy can be useful if your running a block heavy build.

On my jewelry i like running 2x swift and 1x infused... especially on builds that lack in class mobility like perhaps a stamsorc or warden.

It wasnt always this way. Used to be full-impen with maybe a couple well fitted pieces. They made a change to crit resistance to try and make other traits more viable. Good change imo.

the1andonlyskwex

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

It wasnt always this way. Used to be full-impen with maybe a couple well fitted pieces. They made a change to crit resistance to try and make other traits more viable. Good change imo.

It's probably the best PvP balance change ZOS has ever made.

YandereGirlfriend

I think that the OP is arguing for some much-needed buffs for these traits, so I'm not sure why current users of the traits are trying to shoot them down.

Infused was indirectly nerfed when the CP system took away the +20% scaling for Max Resource pools.

Invigorating might be stat-dense but 1/3 of those stats are the relatively useless Health Recovery and this holds back the entire trait due to the spreadsheet balancing approach. Health Recovery is especially useless in PvP, which is where this trait seems intended to be used.

Nirnhoned loses to Reinforced on ALL pieces of Heavy and Medium armor and (IIRC) most of the big pieces of Light armor as well - meaning that it only outperforms Reinforced on the small pieces of Light Armor. Moreover, why do we have two different traits that do the same thing (e.g. increase Armor)? This seems tremendously redundant and desperate for a re-work on Nirnhoned to something more useful and interesting.

ThirdEye_PULSE

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I think that the OP is arguing for some much-needed buffs for these traits, so I'm not sure why current users of the traits are trying to shoot them down.

Infused was indirectly nerfed when the CP system took away the +20% scaling for Max Resource pools.

Invigorating might be stat-dense but 1/3 of those stats are the relatively useless Health Recovery and this holds back the entire trait due to the spreadsheet balancing approach. Health Recovery is especially useless in PvP, which is where this trait seems intended to be used.

Nirnhoned loses to Reinforced on ALL pieces of Heavy and Medium armor and (IIRC) most of the big pieces of Light armor as well - meaning that it only outperforms Reinforced on the small pieces of Light Armor. Moreover, why do we have two different traits that do the same thing (e.g. increase Armor)? This seems tremendously redundant and desperate for a re-work on Nirnhoned to something more useful and interesting.

My attempt wasnt to shoot it down. I made a clear point that they made changes in PVP which made other traits more viable. They could do the same for PVE. But personally as a DPS pve player, i kinda like my armor setups to be simple. For tanks and healers, trait choices are more important and diverse.

Sure, they could buff traits. But ultimately the way PVE works for DPS wherein damage is god and everything else takes a backseat, no matter what i think one trait will always rise above the rest. Unless you solo, tank, or healer for PVE i dont think youll ever see the diversity of traits being used on gear like PVP uses. PVP demands you need to be able to do a lot of diverse things well. Therefore, many traits are useful. PVE DpS is straightforward. Damage. Thats it. As long as one trait gives more damage then another, your gonna go full in on that trait. Thats just how the game is designed.

the1andonlyskwex

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I think that the OP is arguing for some much-needed buffs for these traits, so I'm not sure why current users of the traits are trying to shoot them down.

I'm more interested in balance than I am in getting my own stuff buffed.

I think just about any buff to Infused is likely to lead to bigger nerfs later (because that's what happens to overpowered stuff), and I don't really think any numerical buff to Invigorating is likely to satisfy people who only value traits for how much trials DPS they provide. I'm also pretty strongly against major reworks (like bringing back Prosperous or Exploration), since I'm already happy with what I currently have.

YandereGirlfriend

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I think that the OP is arguing for some much-needed buffs for these traits, so I'm not sure why current users of the traits are trying to shoot them down.

I'm more interested in balance than I am in getting my own stuff buffed.

I think just about any buff to Infused is likely to lead to bigger nerfs later (because that's what happens to overpowered stuff), and I don't really think any numerical buff to Invigorating is likely to satisfy people who only value traits for how much trials DPS they provide. I'm also pretty strongly against major reworks (like bringing back Prosperous or Exploration), since I'm already happy with what I currently have.

I can understand that concern but the current situation is not balanced. The mentioned traits are all like objectively weak compared to the the stronger options. A modest buff to all of them would not harm anyone.

kevkj

I'm less concerned with Infused and Nirnhorned now after some of the comments in this thread, however I still see no good argument for Invigorating. Even in PVP where recovery/cost reduction is highly valued, no one uses Invigorating. The numbers are simply too low.

the1andonlyskwex

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I think that the OP is arguing for some much-needed buffs for these traits, so I'm not sure why current users of the traits are trying to shoot them down.

I'm more interested in balance than I am in getting my own stuff buffed.

I think just about any buff to Infused is likely to lead to bigger nerfs later (because that's what happens to overpowered stuff), and I don't really think any numerical buff to Invigorating is likely to satisfy people who only value traits for how much trials DPS they provide. I'm also pretty strongly against major reworks (like bringing back Prosperous or Exploration), since I'm already happy with what I currently have.

I can understand that concern but the current situation is not balanced. The mentioned traits are all like objectively weak compared to the the stronger options. A modest buff to all of them would not harm anyone.

Except they're not weak, which is why I use them. They're only weak in a very specific context: PvE DPS.

the1andonlyskwex

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I think that the OP is arguing for some much-needed buffs for these traits, so I'm not sure why current users of the traits are trying to shoot them down.

Infused was indirectly nerfed when the CP system took away the +20% scaling for Max Resource pools.

Invigorating might be stat-dense but 1/3 of those stats are the relatively useless Health Recovery and this holds back the entire trait due to the spreadsheet balancing approach. Health Recovery is especially useless in PvP, which is where this trait seems intended to be used.

Nirnhoned loses to Reinforced on ALL pieces of Heavy and Medium armor and (IIRC) most of the big pieces of Light armor as well - meaning that it only outperforms Reinforced on the small pieces of Light Armor. Moreover, why do we have two different traits that do the same thing (e.g. increase Armor)? This seems tremendously redundant and desperate for a re-work on Nirnhoned to something more useful and interesting.

By the way, with respect to your specific claims:
1) Infused went from undisputed BiS for large armor pieces to merely competitive with that nerf. It's also still BiS for healers.
2) Invigorating is stat dense compared to Divines even if you ignore the health recovery. Heck, if you use 2-4 piece set bonuses as the baseline it's extremely stat dense (because Atronach and Serpent are already stat dense for mundus stones).
3) I checked the math, and Nirnhoned is better than Reinforced on all light armor and also on medium and heavy hands and waists.

Amottica

It is not possible to make all enchantments similarly useful as we will always go for what seems to be the most effective. As such, it seems more of an exercise in futility to try.

At ESO University, they ahve some healer builds that have used Infused. So what is useless to one person or build type is useful to someone else.