There needs to be a change

Syiccal

For every 10 players I run into at least 75% are running some variation of the arena weapon set up, ie master dw. This includes myself on occasion.
It's made bg and pvp in general very stale. There is no build variety between classes any more.

merpins

PVE player here.

Pillars of Nirn + Relequen/Riptide (on EVERY meta build) goes brrrrrrrrr.

ZoS just needs to rethink their old sets. Rather than nerfing everything so there's only a couple obvious choices, they needa buff EVERY set in the game to make them competitive. I wanna pick any two dps set in the game, and be able to play with them in the meta. It's just not like that for either PVE or PVP. It shouldn't just be a proc meta, all choices should be good. It would be way more fun it you had the 150+ choices the game provides, rather than just the 10 everyone uses for both PVE and PVP.

Lumenn

merpins wrote: »

PVE player here.

Pillars of Nirn + Relequen/Riptide (on EVERY meta build) goes brrrrrrrrr.

ZoS just needs to rethink their old sets. Rather than nerfing everything so there's only a couple obvious choices, they needa buff EVERY set in the game to make them competitive. I wanna pick any two dps set in the game, and be able to play with them in the meta. It's just not like that for either PVE or PVP. It shouldn't just be a proc meta, all choices should be good. It would be way more fun it you had the 150+ choices the game provides, rather than just the 10 everyone uses for both PVE and PVP.

/Agree. Make TBS awesome again!

Cast_El

Arena weapon set meta is very boring. You can fight a Dk, templar, warden, arcanist, sorcerer, or even Necro and NB : and you will them using arena weapon.
It's so frustrating.
The balance is not good.
If you don't play vateshraan staff with Stinging Slashes combined with zaan/marselock you have big disadvantage.
70-80% of players are paying thoses.
You are forced to play with those set, If you don't (like I do) you know you won't have the same pressure and it will be harder to win.
Bring back variety of builds. Just nerf procs damaging set while battle spirit is active, 10-15% should be fine

VinnyGambini

It's actually quite easy to change:

1. Stinging slashes - 1600 for every dmg tick is way too much - nerf it to 1200-1300.
2. Elemental susceptibility - add 2000 magicka cost to this skill, and make it apply 2 status efects not 3.
3. Zaan and Maarselok - add more coodown for both, like extra 4-5 seconds cooldown.

Nothing big has to be made to balance those 3 things.

Lalothen

merpins wrote: »

ZoS just needs to rethink their old sets. Rather than nerfing everything so there's only a couple obvious choices, they needa buff EVERY set in the game to make them competitive. I wanna pick any two dps set in the game, and be able to play with them in the meta. It's just not like that for either PVE or PVP. It shouldn't just be a proc meta, all choices should be good. It would be way more fun it you had the 150+ choices the game provides, rather than just the 10 everyone uses for both PVE and PVP.

The way they've tweaked sets over the years from being pretty good for certain builds to being more or less objectively useless - Queen's Elegance stands out as a memorable example here, since it's been made consistently more and more redundant over time - makes me wonder what, if any, rationale is actually being applied to such changes.

Looking at QE now:

(2 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(3 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(5 items) When you use a Light Attack you reduce the Health, Magicka, or Stamina cost of your next active ability cast within 2 seconds by 10%. When you use a fully charged Heavy Attack you gain Empower for 3 seconds, increasing the damage of your Heavy Attacks against monsters by 70%. Each of these effects can occur once every second.

What actual use does it have? Empower is far, far better sourced elsewhere (oakensoul, use a class or mages' guild skill, or procure a set like Rage of Ursauk), as are cost reductions.

QE's original form:

2 items: Adds 1-129 Spell Damage
3 items: Adds 11-967 Maximum Magicka
4 items: Adds 11-967 Maximum Magicka
5 items: (Queen's Elegance) Increases your Light and Heavy Attack damage by 20%.

The original form of the 5-piece bonus would actually be useful.

I'd bet there are a tonne of previous set iterations that, if reverted to, would actually make those sets more competitive without necessarily making them OP or the new meta. I would love to see a patch dedicated to that to be honest.

propertyOfUndefined

I would just nerf the outliers to bring them down to the level of the other sets. No point in trying to buff everything else when it's just a handful that are clearly overperforming.

Twohothardware

The #1 reason there's no build diversity now is because of ZOS hybridizing skills and weapon and spell damage and every set in the game. This resulted in everyone just running the same couple of sets when we used to have actual distinction between stamina and magicka builds.

propertyOfUndefined

Disagree that it has anything to do with hybridization. On the contrary, I think hybridization's opened up many new possibilities when it comes to build-craft. The problem, in my mind, is that there are a handful of sets that are clearly over-performing.

merpins

Lalothen wrote: »

merpins wrote: »

ZoS just needs to rethink their old sets. Rather than nerfing everything so there's only a couple obvious choices, they needa buff EVERY set in the game to make them competitive. I wanna pick any two dps set in the game, and be able to play with them in the meta. It's just not like that for either PVE or PVP. It shouldn't just be a proc meta, all choices should be good. It would be way more fun it you had the 150+ choices the game provides, rather than just the 10 everyone uses for both PVE and PVP.

The way they've tweaked sets over the years from being pretty good for certain builds to being more or less objectively useless - Queen's Elegance stands out as a memorable example here, since it's been made consistently more and more redundant over time - makes me wonder what, if any, rationale is actually being applied to such changes.

Looking at QE now:

(2 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(3 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(5 items) When you use a Light Attack you reduce the Health, Magicka, or Stamina cost of your next active ability cast within 2 seconds by 10%. When you use a fully charged Heavy Attack you gain Empower for 3 seconds, increasing the damage of your Heavy Attacks against monsters by 70%. Each of these effects can occur once every second.

What actual use does it have? Empower is far, far better sourced elsewhere (oakensoul, use a class or mages' guild skill, or procure a set like Rage of Ursauk), as are cost reductions.

QE's original form:

2 items: Adds 1-129 Spell Damage
3 items: Adds 11-967 Maximum Magicka
4 items: Adds 11-967 Maximum Magicka
5 items: (Queen's Elegance) Increases your Light and Heavy Attack damage by 20%.

The original form of the 5-piece bonus would actually be useful.

I'd bet there are a tonne of previous set iterations that, if reverted to, would actually make those sets more competitive without necessarily making them OP or the new meta. I would love to see a patch dedicated to that to be honest.

Yeah I used to play a niche light attack build with Queen's Elegance. I think I still have a set of golded jewelry of that set. Pretty sure this was before jewelry crafting too, so I had to buy it for a ton of gold smh.

Twohothardware

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

Disagree that it has anything to do with hybridization. On the contrary, I think hybridization's opened up many new possibilities when it comes to build-craft. The problem, in my mind, is that there are a handful of sets that are clearly over-performing.

What new possibilities did it open that increased build-craft? There's always going to be one or two sets that are better than others and if stamina and magicka builds use the same sets due to hybridization you have everyone running the exact same thing.

propertyOfUndefined

Sets like dagon's dominion or balorgh used to be options for stamina-based characters. They are now viable regardless of primary stat. There are many more sets on the list. More options mean more lee-way to be creative with builds.

Hybridization is not the issue. The outliers need to be adjusted.

CameraBeardThePirate

The arena weapon setup is overperforming, but only because there aren't any other reliable ways of applying pressure in the current meta. People are way too tanky right now, and after the blanket DoT nerfs in U35, DoT procs are way stronger than DoT skills. Buff DoTs, and buff other sets. Ele Sus could use a nerf, but rather than destroying some of the only ways to create pressure in this meta I'd rather see more pressure builds brought up.

TechMaybeHic

It's not the end all solution, as mentioned; we need other pressure choices; but it's the quick first step. So far, they target things that are not that big of issues at all and nerf and leave this stuff go. They need to strike right at the obvious outliers to at least do minimal improvement

Reverb

I like arena weapons being strong. The problem isn’t that the vate staff and master daggers are over performing, the problem is that other weapons aren’t also performing at that level. Buff the other arena weapons, buff AS weapons, all types. Re-buff valkyn skoria, grothdarr, and other monster sets to bring them in line with the high performers.

Give people more options in this tank meta.

Lumenn

I agree with buffing other sets, but I'd like to add the 9/9 crafted as well. Not putting down anyone's efforts in the slightest but you can start a brand new account and have a character leveled and enough cp in just a few weeks easy for raids/trials/dungeons etc. Unless you spend a fortune on these new research scrolls, it takes months to reach 9/9 on everything. That's gotta count for something, and sets like TBS aren't showing it either.

nesmewno

Arena sets strong! Hunt Leader + Permafrost - best of the best sets....for rework!

JerBearESO

Buffing everything instead of nerfing a few things is not really the easy option. They should just nerf masters DW and maarselok for now. Then begin planning out any overall solution since that will take a bit of time

Neatle

propertyOfUndefined wrote: »

Disagree that it has anything to do with hybridization. On the contrary, I think hybridization's opened up many new possibilities when it comes to build-craft. The problem, in my mind, is that there are a handful of sets that are clearly over-performing.

i agree, people seem to forget the reason why hybridization reduced the diversity, it's because it brought set performance upfront as a limit and instead of balancing classes around a particular type of sets Zenimax now balances everything around what we currently have available it just shows that a lot of classes were forced to use underperforming sets
but hybridization is actually a good step forward and gives more freedom when you're trying to make a build from scratch

Rkindaleft

VinnyGambini wrote: »

It's actually quite easy to change:

1. Stinging slashes - 1600 for every dmg tick is way too much - nerf it to 1200-1300.
2. Elemental susceptibility - add 2000 magicka cost to this skill, and make it apply 2 status efects not 3.
3. Zaan and Maarselok - add more coodown for both, like extra 4-5 seconds cooldown.

Nothing big has to be made to balance those 3 things.

I know this is PvP balancing issue but rather, just add Proc or DoT nerfs to Battle Spirit. I don't want more sets that become unusable in PvE because of PvP. PvE already has a severe lack of build diversity in the meta because of hybridization, just like PvP. At least before your character was either Stam or Mag and you had 6-7 sets across the DPS spectrum. Now it's the exact same setup no matter what. If they balanced more things with Battle Spirit this would've never been an issue in the first place.