PTS Update 37 - Feedback Thread for New Item Sets

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the new item sets in Update 37. Please try out the new item sets and let us know what you think! Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Which of the new item sets did you try out, and what did you think of them?
• Did anything you received feel under or over-powered?
• Would you include any of the new item sets in any of your current builds?
• Do you have any general feedback?

ESO_Nightingale

A bit disappointed by the lack of a frost damage monster helm. But the sets look mostly ok here. Snake in the stars looks like a pretty awful design that i wouldn't want to play against.

Volckodav

@ZOS_GinaBruno you left a litle typo in using your template, it's update 37 not 34

But for the form;

3 item set stands out and need to be cheked properly (PTS updating):

Runecarver’s Blaze to see with serpent dis. if that not going of track and how it deal with reaplying effect

Shell Splitter 17K general offensive pen for 5sec can REALLY go wring quickly, have to check if that can be build easly or not but seems seriousoly OP

Snake in the Stars Oblivion damage when you heal yourself or an ally really? I cannot see anything good in the design, and given 2.5k tick that seems REALLY OVERTUNED

monkiie

Runecarver's Blaze will only proc off of skill damage over time effects. The set WILL NOT proc from status effect damage, any item set that deals damage, and certain abilities that deal dot damage such as a sorcerer's hurricane. To make matters worse, the set only applies on the 3rd instance of damage from a damage over time skill, not every 3rd instance of damage from it. So if my dot lasts 24 seconds and hits every second, runecarver's will only work the 3rd second of the dot while doing nothing for the remaining 21 seconds. Not sure what is the intended effect from this set but currently it's misleading from its tooltip description and either bugged or just very underwhelming.

Snake in the Stars states "applying a Major or Minor Debuff to an enemy applies Star Venom to them for 6 seconds." However, applying a status effect such a concussed, chilled, or hemorrhaging does not apply star venom even though those status effects apply a minor debuff.

propertyOfUndefined

I don't think Snake in the Stars will be as overpowered as most seem to think. It can be applied to a single target every 12 seconds. That means if you throw razor caltrops at a crowd (affecting them with major breach), you manage to affect just 1 of those players with the set's debuff. If the damage is also cut in half by battle spirit the way I think it is, then it basically just cancels out the effect of a single HoT like vigor for 6 secs.

I think it'll be a good, niche set, but far from over the top.

acastanza_ESO

The Ozezan the Inferno and the 5PC bonus on Ritemaster's are giftwrapped for Ballgroups:

Healing an ally within 12 meters with a Direct Heal creates a 15 meter tether between you for 10 seconds. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds. You and allies touching the tether are healed every second, scaling off the higher of your Max Magicka or Stamina. If you or an ally is overhealed by the tether, they gain Minor Heroism for 1.5 seconds.

Any healing creates a group healing teather, and if its an overheal they gain ultimate?! This is crazy. Combined with the Ozezan the Inferno monster set which gives armor and minor vitality, you're making the worst part of PVP - ballgroups - massively stronger.

Please don't do this.

thesarahandcompany

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

I don't think Snake in the Stars will be as overpowered as most seem to think. It can be applied to a single target every 12 seconds. That means if you throw razor caltrops at a crowd (affecting them with major breach), you manage to affect just 1 of those players with the set's debuff. If the damage is also cut in half by battle spirit the way I think it is, then it basically just cancels out the effect of a single HoT like vigor for 6 secs.

I think it'll be a good, niche set, but far from over the top.

Flagging that I think it should proc off burning and poison status effects.

It shouldn't proc every 3rd tick, just on the third tick as is. Otherwise things like elf bane + burning talons will be very OP lol. I think this set is supposed to buff DOTs like acid spray and burning talons that are 4 seconds long and tick every second.

SkaraMinoc

Shell Splitter is an alluring set due to the potential 17081 total penetration. However, reaching 20 stacks will not be common for most players.



In general, I feel this set is not overpowered but will remain strong in situations it's specifically designed for. That is,

1. Increasing damage done against blocking players
2. Building stacks and switching targets (continuation of penetration momentum)

Experienced players using niche builds will be able to generate stacks quickly against blocking players and then use that momentum to switch targets and burst down other players. This set feels less like an anti-block set and more like a "punish the teammates of players who block too much" type of set. Similar to how Hrothgar's Chill punishes the teammates of armor players, Shell Splitter punishes the teammates of blocking players.

Do you have any general feedback?

Requires specific builds to fully utilize the set. (Jabs, Bash, Flurry, etc)

Here's a rough guide that represents how many stacks you can expect to generate.

0 stacks = Sorc shields, Stamblade dodge, etc
5 stacks = Players that block infrequently to get their health back up (most common)
10 stacks = DKs turtling in Cinder Storm, Healers that frequently block, etc
20 stacks = Permablock Tanks

Duration is 5 seconds so it drops off quickly.

2-4 piece bonus: 4461 penetration
5 stacks: 3155 penetration (similar to Spinner's and Spriggan's)
10 stacks: 6310 penetration (similar to Stuhn's)
20 stacks: 12620 penetration (similar to Balorgh 500)

The 2-4 piece bonus is very strong. It's arguably stronger than the 5 piece bonus for many players. For this reason, I feel the set is not underpowered in any way.

Dr_Con

While it is true that these are all buffs that have few sources, the sources are commonly seen from consumables that many people will already have in groups from tripots already. Conversely, there's a lot of ability sources for the minor versions of these buffs, but people may not be running those morphs as they underperform.

I propose the ability for the wearer to change these Major buffs into Minor buffs through crouching, much like how Spaulder can activate/deactivate through crouching. This will increase the versatility of this item by allowing it to satisfy certain niches without increasing its power by any large measure.

This set likely has value in PVP, and players overlapping this set would add value to group sustain with these changes.

I don't know if trial healers will use this item in its current state, it seems very unlikely at the high end even with this change. It has value in PUGs or in groups not using potions (where it performs as well as, if not better than Hircine's and Worm's combined).

This being said- and with the proposed change in mind- it also probably also deserves the tri-orb effect. Probably a red, blue, and green one -or maybe some oily orb that has a shifty reflection of these three colors- to signify fortitude, intellect, and endurance- to be vibrant when the major versions are active, and dim if the minor versions are active. The tooltip should also indicate the range and whether or not it persists through death.

Dr_Con

Assuming this tether always persists, the downtime between tethers makes this an unappealing set to run over sets like Pillager's for the sake of ult regen. Due to the fact that the tether can also break, that depreciates its value further, even with the heal. I would consider making the proc timer be 12 seconds (the minor heroism buff can last for 1.5 seconds after the tether ends, having a theoretical (12s+1.5s)/15s*100% uptime, yet still underperforming).

This would have made an excellent monster helm set bonus-certainly better than the Roksa set which I doubt will be used by many- but healers have to be selective about what they put on. This set will probably be like Phoenix Moth Theurge- obscure and forgotten quickly.

math edited

acastanza_ESO

Dr_Con wrote: »

While it is true that these are all buffs that have few sources, the sources are commonly seen from consumables that many people will already have in groups from tripots already. Conversely, there's a lot of ability sources for the minor versions of these buffs, but people may not be running those morphs as they underperform.

I propose the ability for the wearer to change these Major buffs into Minor buffs through crouching, much like how Spaulder can activate/deactivate through crouching. This will increase the versatility of this item by allowing it to satisfy certain niches without increasing its power by any large measure.

I don't know if people will use this item in its current state, it seems very unlikely at the high end even with this change.

I just don't think it'll get used, issues with sustain are pretty rare in coordinated groups, and people are already (usually) getting this buff for at least their dominant resource off their existing potions. It might be a buff to groups that exclusively run heroism pots, but is that who we're really targeting for buffs now? My suggestion might be to actually put both Major and Minor versions of these buffs on the set. Then no matter what potions you're running you'll be getting something out of it.

Dr_Con wrote: »

Assuming this tether always persists, the downtime between tethers makes this an unappealing set to run over sets like Pillager's for the sake of ult regen. Due to the fact that the tether can also break, that depreciates its value further, even with the heal. I would consider making the proc timer be 12 seconds (the minor heroism buff can last for 1.5 seconds after the tether ends, having a theoretical 11.5s/15s*100% uptime, yet still underperforming).

This would have made an excellent monster helm set bonus-certainly better than the Roksa set which I doubt will be used by many- but healers have to be selective about what they put on. This set will probably be like Phoenix Moth Theurge- obscure and forgotten quickly.

I strongly disagree here, this set is going to be a massive buff to ballgroups in PVP as-is.
They'll have no issue with the tether range, and are constantly rolling on overheals.
It is going to enable some pretty ridiculous gameplay.

Dr_Con

As a selfish set this underperforms, particularly in the health recovery department. Usually, resource recovery is more stat-dense than health recovery- in this case we see them as being equal in both the 1 piece and 2 piece bonuses. I would consider raising the health recovery value of the 1pc by 8 (to 78), and the 2pc to specifically increase health recovery by at least another 2 points per stack. Remember this is a selfish set, and health recovery in PVP is nerfed into half so any buffs to health recovery won't hurt its viability in PVE.

Thecompton73

Snake in the Stars is meant to punish using healing over time skills/passives/sets but the way it is currently set up affects solo and small group players that might only have 1 or 2 sources of HOTS much more harshly than those that run around with 4 to 5+ up at any given time.
My fix would be to reduce the cool down on the damage to 0.25 seconds while at the same time lowering the amount from 2800 to around 700-900 per tick. This would allow the set to rightfully punish stacking 4-5 healing effects per second, thus doing about the same damage per second as at current levels or perhaps a bit more, while greatly reducing it's effectiveness against builds only running 1 or 2 sources of healing over time.

Necrotech_Master

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Snake in the Stars is meant to punish using healing over time skills/passives/sets but the way it is currently set up affects solo and small group players that might only have 1 or 2 sources of HOTS much more harshly than those that run around with 4 to 5+ up at any given time.
My fix would be to reduce the cool down on the damage to 0.25 seconds while at the same time lowering the amount from 2800 to around 700-900 per tick. This would allow the set to rightfully punish stacking 4-5 healing effects per second, thus doing about the same damage per second as at current levels or perhaps a bit more, while greatly reducing it's effectiveness against builds only running 1 or 2 sources of healing over time.

i would agree with this

when i was running my NB in cyro, i dont have a lot of strong self healing, and my only heals are vigor and dark cloak

when im moving dark cloak only heals for about 700 hp per tick in pvp, vigor is a bit stronger at about 1000, so getting hit with your suggestion, would at most mostly counter my current heal over times, not make me take twice as much dmg per sec as im healing

xylena_lazarow

Thecompton73 wrote: »

My fix would be to reduce the cool down on the damage to 0.25 seconds while at the same time lowering the amount from 2800 to around 700-900 per tick.

That would be trivially shrugged off by individuals making it entirely useless in smaller fights. If anything, buff this set to the sky, 50% uptime is not enough to put a dent in the tank meta. Remember Soldier of Anguish? Me either. Every time something might threaten the tank meta, we see too many players afraid of dying in a video game (not directed at you).

Tommy_The_Gun

Snake in the Stars - I understand that this set is being introduced to combat stacking multiple healing abilities but... It will simply not work where it really should.

What it will cause is it will hurt an "Average Joe" solo player the most, while organized groups (aka Ball Groups) or even smaller groups (aka small scale) will be able to deal with it with no problem - by using multiple burst heals and / or purges.

Meanwhile, a solo player, unless they have access to free purge ability (like Wardnes for example) won't be able to use Healing over time at all... because if they do - they will die. This set will kill them on its own with current stats. So any ability that has a HoT aspect is a potential "killer" and this set pretty much prohibits any of those abilities from being used.

Same goes for sets that have healing over time effect (example: Grace of Gloom or Almalexia's Mercy).

But that is only the top of the Ice Berg. The real issue is team play. How am I suppose to play with my allies if pretty much any one that wants to help me, can unwittingly kill me by casting Heal over time on me (Regeneration, Echoing Vigor etc) ?

But wait, it gets even better. Apparently Snake in the Stars can proc from.... racial passives. Yep. Racial Passives. Argonian's Resourceful passive and Orc's Unflinching Rage passive.

I don't know if there is a way to make this set work where it should without a complete re-design. Sets like this should be imho designed to proc in very specific conditions, vs very specific targets & game play styles so it would actually work where it is needed, while not affecting (or affecting in a lesser way) where it is not needed.

Right now (like I have said before) - it will work the opposite way of (what I guess) is the intended goal.

Here is what I would change in this set:
- Tone down oblivion damage way, way down !
- Add more proc conditions, so it would not proc from literally every possible source of healing (maybe limit it only to player casted abilities ?)
- Add maximum health scaling, so that the more tanky the player is - they get hit for more.
- Add group size scaling (just like Ring of the Pale Order or Rallying Cry sets have) so that the larger the group, the greater the damage, so players who are grouped would take more damage. This will kinda "shift" this set to be more "anty-group" set, while if used against solo or small scale group it would be significantly less effective.


Shell Splitter - When an enemy blocks one of your attacks, increase your Offensive Penetration by 631 for 5 seconds. This effect can stack up to 20 times. You can gain one stack every 0.5 seconds.
This set has a serious design flaw and again... the result of introducing such set will be the opposite of (what I guess) the intend goal is - to combat block builds.

The issue is that you can "accumulate" a lot of penetration while fighting very tanky player (and they block anyway) - but you can actually "use" that penetration vs other less tanky player and almost one shot them. So, in the long run, this set punishes more being less tanky, than more tanky, so what it will cause is that more players will build for survivability.

This set penetration should be somehow tied to the initial target, so that whooping 12K penetration could only be used against that target.

acastanza_ESO

I would like to propose an alternative to the Snake in the Stars set, that rather than punishing healing directly instead punishes overhealing, and in a way that is designed to specifically target overhealing through many stacked HOTs.

Rather than dealing damage up front when you heal, instead; if you're overhealed while under the effect of Star Venom all active HOT effects are removed and you take some amount of Oblivion damage that scales (up to a reasonably punishing max health%) based on the number of HOTs that were removed.

This way, there is still an effect on solo players but just purging your vigor and your radiating and taking say 10% health damage wouldn't be nearly as oppressive as the set currently, and someone rolling in a ballgroup with 12 radiatings and 12 vigors going would have all of that purged and potentially take a pretty massive amount of damage (say, 65%).

I think something like this would do a significantly more effective job of providing a set to target the extreme-heal-stacking gameplay that is ongoing and bad for game health. It would also provide a counter to some of the other proposed sets that give extremely strong proc effects that proc off of overhealing. Groups would actually have to consider if those overheal procs are worth the risk rather than them being automatically "yes please, lets make this immortal constantly overhealed group even stronger, thanks".

If you could, please pass this suggestion along @ZOS_Kevin. I really appreciate the time you've taken recently to actually engage in dialogue with us and the combat team about our feedback and concerns. It's extremely welcome.

Thecompton73

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

My fix would be to reduce the cool down on the damage to 0.25 seconds while at the same time lowering the amount from 2800 to around 700-900 per tick.

That would be trivially shrugged off by individuals making it entirely useless in smaller fights. If anything, buff this set to the sky, 50% uptime is not enough to put a dent in the tank meta. Remember Soldier of Anguish? Me either. Every time something might threaten the tank meta, we see too many players afraid of dying in a video game (not directed at you).

Well it would do as much or a bit more to them as it currently does without destroying builds that only run 1 HOT. But I almost included a suggestion for a ramping mechanic so the more ticks per second the more damage they would do. Like 1st tick 700, 2nd 900, 3rd 1200 4th 1500 to really punish the heal stacking for a total of 4300 per second if you have 4 Hots on you. However I don't realistically see them going that extreme and I wanted to offer a fix that might actually get implemented so I don't have to retire my NB that only has Vigor for a heal, ticking at 1500 once per second. Poor little Le Petitmort is already squishy enough, this set as is will make him practically unplayable.

Thecompton73

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

I would like to propose an alternative to the Snake in the Stars set, that rather than punishing healing directly instead punishes overhealing, and in a way that is designed to specifically target overhealing through many stacked HOTs.

Rather than dealing damage up front when you heal, instead; if you're overhealed while under the effect of Star Venom all active HOT effects are removed and you take some amount of Oblivion damage that scales (up to a reasonably punishing max health%) based on the number of HOTs that were removed.

This way, there is still an effect on solo players but just purging your vigor and your radiating and taking say 10% health damage wouldn't be nearly as oppressive as the set currently, and someone rolling in a ballgroup with 12 radiatings and 12 vigors going would have all of that purged and potentially take a pretty massive amount of damage (say, 65%).

I think something like this would do a significantly more effective job of providing a set to target the extreme-heal-stacking gameplay that is ongoing and bad for game health. It would also provide a counter to some of the other proposed sets that give extremely strong proc effects that proc off of overhealing. Groups would actually have to consider if those overheal procs are worth the risk rather than them being automatically "yes please, lets make this immortal constantly overhealed group even stronger, thanks".

If you could, please pass this suggestion along @ZOS_Kevin. I really appreciate the time you've taken recently to actually engage in dialogue with us and the combat team about our feedback and concerns. It's extremely welcome.

This is another really good suggestion as a fix for the set. I really like that it would punish ball groups the most since that's who abuses stacked HOT's. Unfortunately rather than curtailing that play-style it seems to be something the Devs actively encourage and buff each and every update, so I'd settle for a fix that wouldn't make playing solo with vigor as my only heal the nightmare it will be if this goes live as is.

bachpain

I just read the developer note on the Snake in the Stars set. I just want to say that when the answer by the developers to the problem of heal stacking is an armor set, then it is inherently the wrong approach.

" This set was designed to counter pesky heal stacking for periods of time to help create windows of opportunity to cut foes down to size, and the current iteration is missing the mark while simultaneously feeling oppressive for anyone it was applied to. We're lowering the uptime and ensuring you can't chain cast it between multiple set wearers on a single target, and reducing its damage per hit, but increasing the number of times it can trigger while it's active. These changes should help reinforce the set's goal, while pulling back from its power against other builds. We're also taking some of the power out of the proc itself and putting it into more of a passive bonus that helps keep you in the fight, since healing builds naturally have quite a bit of sustain."

The problem with this logic is the set doesn't just impact heal stacking but everyone. Now you have created a problem to fix the problem that in the end will probably be worse for the overall community. If you encounter heal bots, block tanks etc you can pretty much ignore them and go elsewhere. If everyone is punished for hots then PVP is going to suck. I think the entire idea of making a set to fix an issue is totally missing the mark. Rework the heal stacking itself and fix the issue instead of yet another set to break PVP.

KlauthWarthog

Snake in the Stars will now make templars eat 3510 oblivion damage whenever they use puncturing sweeps, up from 2848. The same thing for bloodthirst, and probably worse for anybody using a ring of pale order. Is this actually intended?

Tommy_The_Gun

Snake in the Stars:
Why did you buffed it ? It is more potent now...

The issue with this set is still that it punishes "EVERY" healing. Healing itself is not an issue. Stacking multiple healing abilities is. This is what this set should go after. Not a healing coming from a set or passive. It should punish instances where you use 3 - 4 healing player skills or abilities...

TechMaybeHic

So snake in the stars punishes templars puncturing sweeps and Bloodthirst which hit rapidly; but then also 12 seconds cooldown for the wearer AND the person it procs on, for a 4 second duration.

This somehow makes it both almost pointless to wear AND overly oppressive to the wrong targets it is intended for at the same time.

TechMaybeHic

Can we talk not new item sets that are touched in this patch?

Mara's goes from ~830 after battle-spirit to ~550 per tick, which is something for jabs as you then are losing just a little less but I think the real issue is a minimum 5k heal after battle-spirit AND a full purge every 15 seconds. That heal can scale up then when you have the 15-second cooldown to however many negative effects you have on you. The only other thing to purge ALL negative effects on a set is 30 seconds. I think that's why nobody uses that set, so I don't believe Maras should be set to that, but I think it should be limited more to how many effects it should purge, and therefore its healing modifier be limited to that amount. I think you could kiss curse it to where it would be maybe only 4 or 5 total rather than 6. 6 is basically hitting close to a non-crit burst heal ability and a full purge which no ability does alone without a synenergy, so I think that is too much

Red99

Mara's balm needs a cooldown greater than 15 seconds not a slight nerf to healing

Vaqual

Snake in the stars:
I understand that you have to make the cooldown small enough to not let all the hot ticks slip through between procs, but 100 ms seems too punishing. There are many heal sources which would end up being a massive disadvantage to the player, as mentioned by other people here. Some heals were intended as frequent small scale heals. Imagine a necro with briarheart, RoPO, coil & tether running. He is just going to oneshot himself. Without counterplay. He can not cancel his sets or dots. His loadout wouldn't even be niche, it would be erased from existence. And that doesn't even include the whole "being ganked by your healer teammate" problem.

Everyone understands what you are trying to adress with these changes, I am sure, but this set already sounds like much more of a problem than a fix.

Can you not come up with some diminishing return mechanic for some of the aoe hots/hots with multiple targets? Or make them unique but allow for the strongest instance to tick? I think those abilities are at the core of the problem, right? If 5 healers are focus healing a guy with single target heals, that guy deserves to live. If everyone is just spamming vigor, that deserves to be punished.

Mara's Balm:
Nice to see a nerf, but I would hit it harder. Reducing the heal is the most direct way of tuning down the passive benefit, but that is only an issue because everyhing in the entire game is able to proc this set. The cleanse+burst portion of this set is already very strong (compared to skill costs, availabilty and potency of other cleanse skills), there is really no reason why it should give such a high passive hps. TLDR: There are thousands posts on this forums outlining the problems with this set, nerf is appreciated, but not enough in my opinion.

YandereGirlfriend

We NEED to talk about the new Akatosh CC set.

This set is going to be absolutely oppressive if it goes live in its current form.

Currently, the snare effect has NO COOLDOWN and can be spammed on the same target for 100% uptime (on a 70% snare!) if a small handful of players are daisy-chaining the set effect on cooldown. Yes, the effect can be blocked, but if you face a number of opponents wearing this set then you will spend so much time blocking its effect that you may as well be rooted/snared.

I would also note that this set effect is COMPLETELY UNCAPPED which means that it can hit more than the typical "negative effect set cap" of 6 targets. So it WILL stun and snare any and all opponents that are in its massive 12-meter radius.

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN TO FIX THIS SET:

Option A: The snare effect is made to be predicated upon the Stun actually hitting. This gives the target an intrinsic 7-second immunity window (e.g. when on Hard-CC cooldown after being Stunned [and snared]) and also allows for counterplay in the form of Immovability Potions/Poisons, etc.

Option B: There needs to be a cooldown placed upon the TARGET of this set like there is for Plaguebreak and a few other, primarily PvP sets. This would break the currently oppressive ability for the snare to be daisy-chained together on a target for a state of permanent snaring.

Either of these changes would fix the problem while still preserving the spirit of this otherwise cool set.

For anyone who had not previously thought about the implications of this set: imagine being a solo or small-scale player and getting permanently 70% snared by a handful of players within a larger zerg that are wearing this set. Because that is the future if this set goes live. It is a zerg-buffing tool that will seriously infringe upon the gameplay of solos as well as any smaller groups.

acastanza_ESO

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

We NEED to talk about the new Akatosh CC set.

This set is going to be absolutely oppressive if it goes live in its current form.

Currently, the snare effect has NO COOLDOWN and can be spammed on the same target for 100% uptime (on a 70% snare!) if a small handful of players are daisy-chaining the set effect on cooldown. Yes, the effect can be blocked, but if you face a number of opponents wearing this set then you will spend so much time blocking its effect that you may as well be rooted/snared.

I would also note that this set effect is COMPLETELY UNCAPPED which means that it can hit more than the typical "negative effect set cap" of 6 targets. So it WILL stun and snare any and all opponents that are in its massive 12-meter radius.

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN TO FIX THIS SET:

Option A: The snare effect is made to be predicated upon the Stun actually hitting. This gives the target an intrinsic 7-second immunity window (e.g. when on Hard-CC cooldown after being Stunned [and snared]) and also allows for counterplay in the form of Immovability Potions/Poisons, etc.

Option B: There needs to be a cooldown placed upon the TARGET of this set like there is for Plaguebreak and a few other, primarily PvP sets. This would break the currently oppressive ability for the snare to be daisy-chained together on a target for a state of permanent snaring.

Either of these changes would fix the problem while still preserving the spirit of this otherwise cool set.

For anyone who had not previously thought about the implications of this set: imagine being a solo or small-scale player and getting permanently 70% snared by a handful of players within a larger zerg that are wearing this set. Because that is the future if this set goes live. It is a zerg-buffing tool that will seriously infringe upon the gameplay of solos as well as any smaller groups.

Strongly agree, the issues with this set were being eclipsed by the crazyness of Snake in the Stars. Now that that set has been adjusted somewhat, hopefully some attention will be turned towards this set.

acastanza_ESO

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

I would like to propose an alternative to the Snake in the Stars set, that rather than punishing healing directly instead punishes overhealing, and in a way that is designed to specifically target overhealing through many stacked HOTs.

Rather than dealing damage up front when you heal, instead; if you're overhealed while under the effect of Star Venom all active HOT effects are removed and you take some amount of Oblivion damage that scales (up to a reasonably punishing max health%) based on the number of HOTs that were removed.

This way, there is still an effect on solo players but just purging your vigor and your radiating and taking say 10% health damage wouldn't be nearly as oppressive as the set currently, and someone rolling in a ballgroup with 12 radiatings and 12 vigors going would have all of that purged and potentially take a pretty massive amount of damage (say, 65%).

I think something like this would do a significantly more effective job of providing a set to target the extreme-heal-stacking gameplay that is ongoing and bad for game health. It would also provide a counter to some of the other proposed sets that give extremely strong proc effects that proc off of overhealing. Groups would actually have to consider if those overheal procs are worth the risk rather than them being automatically "yes please, lets make this immortal constantly overhealed group even stronger, thanks".

If you could, please pass this suggestion along @ZOS_Kevin. I really appreciate the time you've taken recently to actually engage in dialogue with us and the combat team about our feedback and concerns. It's extremely welcome.

I think the changes to Snake in the Stars, while better than it was, still miss the mark of punishing Heal-Stacking.
I'm just going to reiterate my previous suggestion which I think does a much better job of actually addressing this core issue.

danthemann5

Here's some math:

The maximum theoretical damage from sparkle snek occurs with 9 HOTs (no Mara's) or 8 HOTs (with Mara's). This assumes worst-case timing, meaning that every HOT tick is spaced exactly 100 ms apart, ensuring each results in a sparkle snek damage tick. The maximum theoretical damage is 47,970, with a 4-second DPS of 11,993, and a 16-second (4 sec duration + 12 sec CD) DPS of 750.

The bottom line is this will do exactly nothing to ball groups, but anyone in a not-ball group is gonna take a beating.

danthemann5

Oh, and if you're running Pale Order while solo, you're really in trouble.