Do item sets trigger status effects?

UNSeki

Since we have Minor Breach on wall of ice now, I'm looking into making my dual ice staff tank build more status focused. So I tried to google this, but I kept getting other results.

I was reading Frozen Watcher's description:

(5 items) Summon a blizzard around you while you are Bracing, inflicting 496 Frost Damage every 1 second to enemies within 6 meters. This effect scales off your Max Health. Your blizzard has a 15% chance of inflicting Chilled on enemies damaged.

Does this mean that sets don't have a base chance of triggering status effects (the 1% regular AoE DoT that skills have), or that they do but this set replaces that base chance for a higher 15% for the Chilled status effect?

I saw people saying that Frozen Watcher is unnecessary nowadays due to Pulsar with Charged having enough of a chance to trigger brittle on multiple enemies. I get that, but this doesn't really answer my question of whether item sets themselves can trigger status effects or if this is exclusive to sets like Frozen Watcher, Burning Spellweave, etc.

Thecompton73

Only if it's specifically stated as being applied by the set. Frozen watcher will have a 15% chance while others such as plaguebreak have a guaranteed status effect application. The actual damage from sets is considered proc damage and as such cannot trigger other procs such as status effects or other sets. So for example the flame damage from Sunderflame would have 0% chance to proc burning as I understand it.

LunaFlora

if the set mentions an effect that's what it gives. so it is only sets like Frozen Watcher yes

UNSeki

Thank you for the replies. I'll have to factor that in for my build.