bored with sets

CoronHR

i tire of switching sets every patch. i always tell myself 'don't do it', but then my raid group goes on about it and i cave to peer pressure eventually.

it's fine except that the meta is like 3 or 4 sets now, the whirling thing, nirn, kinras, rele. and it's kind of boring.

what i'd really like is a whole slew of meta sets, depending on race, class, stam/mag. imagine if a set gave a breton a bonus, or it's noticeably better for warden, or templar.

eso LOVES to release new sets. tons of new sets, on and on, with 5-piece bonus texts that make war and peace look like a short read. and at the end of the day, the meta set is just better anyway. so, these new sets end of being mostly trash.

why don't they release something meaningful? like i've proposed above. something good for a dunmer magblade, or an orc stamknight, or whatever. across all 18 of my characters, i swear it's just 4 dps sets, 2 heal, 2 tank. and if i try to vary it a little, or a lot, it becomes a mess. maybe i should get better at building my own sets? i mean correct me if i'm wrong, please, but it's like the class and race barely matter anymore. just slap on the same set. anyway... what i'd really like is a better variety of sets. does anyone else feel this way?

has this issue been complained to death? i imagine it has. every issue has. but anyway, there you go.

EldritchSun

I was thinking about class specific sets yesterday, and came to conclusion it would clutter every new expansion and break the current 1 light/1 medium/1 heavy sets per zone/dungeon rule as well as the drops rules. This is a core system and changing it would mean reworking the whole game.

Although, I agree sets and non-class abilities killed classes as something unique and themed. ZoS should've got rid of the classes and make the class skills unlockable. Unlike remaking the core loot and non class skill-line system, this could be done easier.

Dawnblade

Already plenty of sets in the game, they just need to spend some time tweaking them such that more are competitive and not useless deconstruct trash.

Oh and stop adding broken sets and OP stuff that gets nerfed to Oblivion the next cycle.

Tannus15

This is the thing I want to see more of in ESO, more niche builds that work.

The most disappointing nerf in U35 was the destruction of the frost warden PvE build. It wasn't BiS but it was very competitive to run frostbite + rele or whorl with double ice staff in U34 and it got hit super hard with the nerf hammer.

I'd love to see more sets that only really work with a specific class and build like the old mDK elf bane.
They don't have to be BiS, but being close enough allows some more variety and interest.

Give me some class skill arena weapons or some guild focused sets.
I love that Maw of the infernal is strongest only for sorc running daedric prey. I've love to see more synergy between class skills and abilities and sets to make them ok for anyone, but really shine in the right setup.

AvalonRanger

I don't need new set anymore. Change the basic game system more decent.

phaneub17_ESO

Glad to be solo/casual player who's not chasing the meta, gives me a lot of freedom to do combos that people won't normally touch. An example I love Unfathomable Darkness for my Stam Warden, summoning extra crows as I fight, they don't do a lot of damage but they sure add to the class theme.

Tannus15

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Glad to be solo/casual player who's not chasing the meta, gives me a lot of freedom to do combos that people won't normally touch. An example I love Unfathomable Darkness for my Stam Warden, summoning extra crows as I fight, they don't do a lot of damage but they sure add to the class theme.

this exactly, it's a fun almost good enough set. it's perfect for solo and casual, but in trials it's harder to justify.

however if the crows were actually buffed by something in the warden skill set or could proc a passive which made this set compete with pillar of nirn, but only really for warden's, it would be fantastic.

mad tinkerer should also be "good enough" for this, but it's just not. it's so frustrating that there are a bunch of sets which have the same basic functionality as pillar of nirn (damage proc on 10s ish cool down) that are just flat out inferior even if you have a class passive that should bring it up to par.

another set i'd like to see given some slight adjustment if morkuldin. the glowing swords are awesome, but it's just not good enough to justify running on any build other than "because I like glowy swords".

Hapexamendios

Bored with sets? Play nude

tomofhyrule

Counterpoint: if there was a set that was buffed by a specific race/class, then that wouldn't change the fact that a few would be meta. It's just instead of the raid lead saying "Hey, you need to wear Whorl," it'd be "Hey, you need to buy a race change token and and come on an Altmer magsorc wearing Whorl."

No matter what, a meta will develop. I'd love if it were better to do a mix of thiongs, and my main raiding group is relatively casual in that regard. Still, harder content does require a certain amount of attention to meta. Case in point: I'm a tank, but I hate using staves. I am and always will be full on sword-and-board. But since SnB can't proc a full-strength crusher, doesn't have access to a ranged interrupt, doesn't give access to unique raid buffs like brittle, etc... it really sucks. I do everything I can, but for my latest group I had to bite the bullet and get a #%@# frost stick.

I wish that they'd fix it so that dual SnB tanking could be viable without having to use a stick, but that's how the trials run. And each piece of content is putting more and more in that makes dual SnB harder (more ranged interrupts, more intense mechanics all at the same time, etc). I'll still do everything I can with dual SnB (which I have most dungeon HMs and all vTrials at least complete if not some HMs), but I can feel that I'm actively fighting the meta, which means I need to be good enough at my off-meta build to justify being off-meta.

merpins

Wish they'd go back and just buff every set to the power of the sets everyone uses. The game would be, by far, so much more fun if you really had choice in your build, rather than just playing around with the same 4-8 sets. I want to see a day where when a new player asks "What class is best?" and I say "all classes are viable," only for them to ask "what sets are best?" only for me to be able to say "All the sets are good, go ham and try out neat ***." I want to be able to say it's all good just like I'm able to say all classes are good and all races are (for the most part) good.

Turtle_Bot

A lot of sets sort of do this already, with the damage types being different, e.g. flame and melee (grothdar, zaan, red mountain, elf bane, sun silk, etc) that fit thematically with flame magdk, or ice wraith, frostbite, hrothgar, iceheart, nunatak, whorl, etc for an ice themed warden, or some lightning damage sets (can't remember their names off the top of my head) for sorcerers.

There are a few issues with majority of these sets though.
1. These sets get nerfed into the ground or powercrept into oblivion with every successive patch, which makes their already niche roles even worse when compared to the overall power that the meta sets give to everything.
2. The class skills often don't synergise well with these sets in a way that would make them competitive when compared to many of the meta sets.
3. There is a lack of unique buffing for a specific damage type that a set that buffs overall stats doesn't already fill.

This third point has a few examples, but mainly for shock damage, there are sets like elf bane that increases the duration of flame abilities, ice damage has frostbite buffs ice damage against enemies afflicted with frost statuses (up to +14% damage), magic damage has warmaiden that gives a 150% boost compared to all other specific damage type buffing sets at +600 damage instead of the standard +400 damage, while shock only has the generic +400 damage netches touch and that's it (unless there was a set released recently that I am unaware of). These sets are also very weak compared to majority of generalised damage increasing sets, such as basei's mania (+12% for missing mag), old deadly (+20% to dots/channels), etc that increase damage done by a lot more and also increased it for multiple/all damage types instead of just 1 type of damage.

There's an easy way to fix this, give each set that buffs only a specific damage type (such as sun silks, netches, ysgramor, etc) a buff, so that they are stronger than sets that give generic buffs to all damage types, but the trade off is that other damage types aren't buffed by the set. This would allow for classes to focus builds around their themes better and would make generic damage sets less overbearing on the meta.
For example, make these sets that buff specific damage types, buff that damage type by a unique amount of say 20% and create unique differing buffs for all damage types like they did with elf bane for flame and frostbite for ice damage and also buff many of the older specific damage type proc sets so that they can compete with generic meta proc sets like relequen, scoria, etc on their themed builds.

lastly is to rework class abilities to focus into their classes themes and synergise with their class passives better (i.e., lightning/physical for sorc, frost/bleed for warden, flame/poison for dk, magic/disease for nb and magic/physical for plar). This requires a lot more work to implement right and balance properly as it would require a lot of reworking of abilities and not just changing damage types, although some abilities would only need a damage type change on one morph.

They were very close for all classes last patch, with many only lacking the secondary damage type on class spammable/burst abilities (lightning for magsorc, frost for magden, poison for stamdk) and overall damage was high enough to allow for many different theme/niche builds to be viable for majority of content (even most end game content).
Cro is a bit harder to pin down for a specific damage type, as it has access to majority (if not all) of the types of damage within its class kit, but it does have a lot of unique and powerful buffs/debuffs/mechanics in its class kit to make up for this lack of focus and it tends to benefit disproportionately from current meta of the generic damage sets being stronger than the specific damage type sets, so a buff to necros would be required so it doesn't fall completely behind the other classes with these changes.

Making these changes would also allow for some more interesting combat element possibilities for dungeon/trial bosses/mechanics etc where certain bosses could have weaknesses to specific damage types for a period of time, but resistant/immunity to other damage types for that same period, so groups would build around this and have to bring multiple classes to have the same average level of effectiveness against all bosses, e.g. first boss is resistant to frost/poison damage, but weak to lightning/bleed damage, then the second boss is weak to frost/poison, but resistant to fire/disease, then the third boss could be weak to fire/disease, but resistant to lightning/bleed damage types and basic magic/physical damage types would be neutral against everything. This would inherently create diversity in group compositions since in this example, a group of only/mainly magdks/stamblades would struggle against the second boss, while a group of only/mainly magsorcs/stamdens would struggle against the 3rd boss, etc, so groups would have to balance this out across their groups with an appropriate mix of classes.

ESO_Nightingale

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

A lot of sets sort of do this already, with the damage types being different, e.g. flame and melee (grothdar, zaan, red mountain, elf bane, sun silk, etc) that fit thematically with flame magdk, or ice wraith, frostbite, hrothgar, iceheart, nunatak, whorl, etc for an ice themed warden, or some lightning damage sets (can't remember their names off the top of my head) for sorcerers.

There are a few issues with majority of these sets though.
1. These sets get nerfed into the ground or powercrept into oblivion with every successive patch, which makes their already niche roles even worse when compared to the overall power that the meta sets give to everything.
2. The class skills often don't synergise well with these sets in a way that would make them competitive when compared to many of the meta sets.
3. There is a lack of unique buffing for a specific damage type that a set that buffs overall stats doesn't already fill.

This third point has a few examples, but mainly for shock damage, there are sets like elf bane that increases the duration of flame abilities, ice damage has frostbite buffs ice damage against enemies afflicted with frost statuses (up to +14% damage), magic damage has warmaiden that gives a 150% boost compared to all other specific damage type buffing sets at +600 damage instead of the standard +400 damage, while shock only has the generic +400 damage netches touch and that's it (unless there was a set released recently that I am unaware of). These sets are also very weak compared to majority of generalised damage increasing sets, such as basei's mania (+12% for missing mag), old deadly (+20% to dots/channels), etc that increase damage done by a lot more and also increased it for multiple/all damage types instead of just 1 type of damage.

There's an easy way to fix this, give each set that buffs only a specific damage type (such as sun silks, netches, ysgramor, etc) a buff, so that they are stronger than sets that give generic buffs to all damage types, but the trade off is that other damage types aren't buffed by the set. This would allow for classes to focus builds around their themes better and would make generic damage sets less overbearing on the meta.
For example, make these sets that buff specific damage types, buff that damage type by a unique amount of say 20% and create unique differing buffs for all damage types like they did with elf bane for flame and frostbite for ice damage and also buff many of the older specific damage type proc sets so that they can compete with generic meta proc sets like relequen, scoria, etc on their themed builds.

lastly is to rework class abilities to focus into their classes themes and synergise with their class passives better (i.e., lightning/physical for sorc, frost/bleed for warden, flame/poison for dk, magic/disease for nb and magic/physical for plar). This requires a lot more work to implement right and balance properly as it would require a lot of reworking of abilities and not just changing damage types, although some abilities would only need a damage type change on one morph.

They were very close for all classes last patch, with many only lacking the secondary damage type on class spammable/burst abilities (lightning for magsorc, frost for magden, poison for stamdk) and overall damage was high enough to allow for many different theme/niche builds to be viable for majority of content (even most end game content).
Cro is a bit harder to pin down for a specific damage type, as it has access to majority (if not all) of the types of damage within its class kit, but it does have a lot of unique and powerful buffs/debuffs/mechanics in its class kit to make up for this lack of focus and it tends to benefit disproportionately from current meta of the generic damage sets being stronger than the specific damage type sets, so a buff to necros would be required so it doesn't fall completely behind the other classes with these changes.

Making these changes would also allow for some more interesting combat element possibilities for dungeon/trial bosses/mechanics etc where certain bosses could have weaknesses to specific damage types for a period of time, but resistant/immunity to other damage types for that same period, so groups would build around this and have to bring multiple classes to have the same average level of effectiveness against all bosses, e.g. first boss is resistant to frost/poison damage, but weak to lightning/bleed damage, then the second boss is weak to frost/poison, but resistant to fire/disease, then the third boss could be weak to fire/disease, but resistant to lightning/bleed damage types and basic magic/physical damage types would be neutral against everything. This would inherently create diversity in group compositions since in this example, a group of only/mainly magdks/stamblades would struggle against the second boss, while a group of only/mainly magsorcs/stamdens would struggle against the 3rd boss, etc, so groups would have to balance this out across their groups with an appropriate mix of classes.

Agreed. The thing that annoys me is that niche sets never compare to generic ones which is total bs. Frostbite is LUCKY to be good enough as an easy set for frost warden. But it's damage is still beaten. It sure doesn't prop up the sorry state of frost warden either.

endgamesmug

As soon as i see (5 light attacks in 5secs), im like yeah probably gonna work in my 400+ping next😆

kind_hero

I would like to see some change in the direction they are going which each expansion.
Each DLC we get new sets, it is so predictable. The dungeon sets are not interesting at all, tbh. I would try to get a new set if at least would have some graphics effect, or fun proc.

Instead have some new features, while reworking some of the dozens useless sets that none uses. Really, why do we have so many useless sets? Some could be totally changed and none will care for the old variant. I liked the idea with the new druid set that has more than five pieces. That's something new and refreshing. We need more of that. I would be fine if the new dungeons would drop some throphy that can be sold or mats instead of sets that I will never use. Most people who want to do veteran content use the same sets for years, and for casual players there are the same craftable sets since almost forever or very affordable overland drop sets.

SPR_of_HA_community

HA players use sets and skills of 6+ years old !!

6+ years OLD !!!

Even those sets got nerfed !

BloodyStigmata

They're not going anywhere. They set the standard in One Tamriel--3 overland & 3 crafted for zone and 3 for dungeons/trials/arenas.

I doubt they're going to change just because a small amount of people compared to the whole playerbase only care about meta sets.

nb_rich

There are so many sets already they just need to tweak some of them so they are more useful. Any set meant for dps should not have 2 lines of recovery or max stat. Any of them with 2 of either should have one replaced with a line of crit, weapon/spell damage or pen. This alone will make a big difference.

Amerises

EldritchSun wrote: »

I was thinking about class specific sets yesterday, and came to conclusion it would clutter every new expansion and break the current 1 light/1 medium/1 heavy sets per zone/dungeon rule as well as the drops rules. This is a core system and changing it would mean reworking the whole game.

Although, I agree sets and non-class abilities killed classes as something unique and themed. ZoS should've got rid of the classes and make the class skills unlockable. Unlike remaking the core loot and non class skill-line system, this could be done easier.

Unfortunately, this would make everyone play the same rotation with the same sets. People with 18 characters would then need 3, except with the armory, one character could do literally everything. Trials would require higher DPS because everyone is perfectly equal.

CoronHR

i was curious about how many sets there were in the game, so i looked it up, and around the flames of oblivion patch, there were close to 500, so it must be over 500 now. imagine that, 500 sets, and less than 5% would be considered meta

FluffWit

If you raid changing sets is essentially the entire game play loop.

Remathilis

Hapexamendios wrote: »

Bored with sets? Play nude

The player or the character?

Hapexamendios

Remathilis wrote: »

Hapexamendios wrote: »

Bored with sets? Play nude

The player or the character?

Why not both?

CoronHR

that doesn't work for all the never-nudes out there

Finedaible

I've been advocating new weapon or skill lines instead of more and more armor sets. This over-reliance on sets to expand player combat is increasingly unhealthy and we are now at the point that devs are introducing sets to counter other sets in pvp. This is shallow gameplay that only increases grind, benefits day-one exploiters, and leaves new and returning players scratching their heads trying to figure out how they are supposed to farm the new sets when they are being punished for not abusing broken sets. If devs really cared about pvp balance they would put the necessary counters into skills.

EldritchSun

Amerises wrote: »

Unfortunately, this would make everyone play the same rotation with the same sets. People with 18 characters would then need 3, except with the armory, one character could do literally everything. Trials would require higher DPS because everyone is perfectly equal.

How's the current situation different?

Androrix

I think they need to really rework the older sets especially to make them relevant again.

Gruumsh1

I figure most sets are there to clog a list of stuff that drops out of a dungeon thereby dragging the players through mindless repetition hell to get what they really need, thus equating to "content." Those sets aren't meant to be that useful but more like "flavourful" for non end-game play.

I do agree it would be great if more could be used in end-game though. Sadly, it doesn't look like a design ZOS wants so we get what we have.

CoronHR

i was thinking...and this might garner the respond 'well everyone will want you to change your race'...that, for example, sets from Rivenspire might give a buff to Bretons, or sets from Hew's Bane give a buff to Redguards. i realise what i'm asking...this would be painstaking to implement, test, balance, etc. but it might make some kind of sense. mother's sorrow...buff for dark elves. briarheart...buff for orcs. i predict mayhem with this idea, but might be a good, interesting mayhem. i wonder if it would give us some more meta variety. the reality is that the devs have massive amounts on their plates, but that shouldn't stop anyone from asking

Deter1UK

CoronHR wrote: »

i was thinking...and this might garner the respond 'well everyone will want you to change your race'...that, for example, sets from Rivenspire might give a buff to Bretons, or sets from Hew's Bane give a buff to Redguards. i realise what i'm asking...this would be painstaking to implement, test, balance, etc. but it might make some kind of sense. mother's sorrow...buff for dark elves. briarheart...buff for orcs. i predict mayhem with this idea, but might be a good, interesting mayhem. i wonder if it would give us some more meta variety. the reality is that the devs have massive amounts on their plates, but that shouldn't stop anyone from asking

Or, Just add an extra 'perfected' buff to existing sets that affects members of that alliance only. So then Mother's Sorrow would be as good as it always was for everyone else but for eg dark elves 5 pc gives a line of stam regen as well (for instance)

SPR_of_HA_community

merpins wrote: »

Wish they'd go back and just buff every set to the power of the sets everyone uses. The game would be, by far, so much more fun if you really had choice in your build, rather than just playing around with the same 4-8 sets. I want to see a day where when a new player asks "What class is best?" and I say "all classes are viable," only for them to ask "what sets are best?" only for me to be able to say "All the sets are good, go ham and try out neat ***." I want to be able to say it's all good just like I'm able to say all classes are good and all races are (for the most part) good.

Agree 👍

But they nerf not popular sets and builds - just HA as example, but do not nerf top DPS builds.

They force players to play with some thing they: DO NOT WANT !

There are so many sets, we want to have good option to use them to, but they make them useless.
Much better buff that sets !

Just as example - plague breaker ! Now it is overnerfed !

At least give it an option to be used in PVE, give better damage and less calldown !

It was nerfed from good set to some thing really bad.

The same for undaunted Infiltrator set ... what is that ? We used and like this set. Current version is really a bad joke!