Mythics vs. Monster Sets: Bring Back Monster Sets

El_Borracho

Once upon a time, you had to play the actual game to get some of the best gear. You want a Zaan's helmet? Beat vet Scalecaller. Velidreth? Beat vet Cradle of Shadows. Yes, there were exceptions like the Golden Vendor or having people carry you through trials or dungeons for gear. But it involved playing the actual game. And you got actual gear in the process. And you might actually learn how to get better at the game in the process.

Now, all you need is infinite patience and luck. Oh, you want Dov-Rah Sabatons? Enjoy looking for psijic portals that rarely appear in Southern Elsweyr, and maybe you'll get your lead. Harpooner's Kilt? Go fish and pick flowers. Oakensoul Ring? Steal stuff from lockboxes in Murkmire and mine nodes in Glenumbra. Death Dealers Fete? Enjoy DSA and oblivion portals.
Arguably the worst of all? Mora's Whispers. Go kill an unknown number of watchlings, watchers, run ICP an unknown number of times just to kill one boss, and loot clothing nodes and treasure chests. Whee!

Why are people chasing some of these mythics? Because monster sets have been nerfed to uselessness while being replaced with mythics. I'm not against mythics, they have their place, but its normally a needless grind to get them, with most of it being pointless, like stealing stuff from lockboxes. Monster sets were one of the few items that you had to do things like learn mechanics and repeatedly try to beat before succeeding. Weird. Almost like it was designed to make players better. Killing watchlings or chopping logs while praying for a lead does not.

Please make monster sets viable again. Give players a choice of whether to chase silly RNG or to get gear that works the old fashioned way. I mean, it was super fun farming leads from dungeon bosses to get that Velothi Amulet, but I would much rather have my old Zaan mask to beam enemies down with my other beam on my Arcanist. You can have both, it doesn't have to be the current state of only mythics being strong.

merpins

There's a lot of good monster helm sets. Sure, I'll concede that the most recent monster helms have been unremarkable, at least from a PVE DPS perspective. But it's been a while since they've released any good PVE DPS set in general. The most recent ones have been mythics to be sure.

I want them to go back and rework most sets in the game, to make most stuff viable. Not just monster helms. There's a ton of garbage mythics, and I'd wager if there was the same number of mythics as there are monster helms, it would follow the same trend; 90% garbage.

KiltMaster

I use zaan's instead of the wading kilt and it parses better, at least for me.

Lozeenge

velothi is just really strong on arcanist, that's all. other classes have been using monster sets like zaan, stormfist, or kjalnar since U35. i sometimes use prior thierric for trash mobs to make up for nightblade's poor AoE damage.

wading kilt and sea-serpents doesn't provide as much value anymore. crit damage cap is very easy to reach and courage is everywhere in group PvE with berserk being only slightly harder to come by.

Monte_Cristo

I use both a monster helm set and a mythic on my main toon.

MrGarlic

I use 2x monster set, 5x clothing, 3x piece weapon and jewellery and a mythic, usually oakensoul.

There are some good(ish) 3 piece sets, mostly PvP stuff, but some work in PvE too.

LunaFlora

i usually use one piece of a monster set with mythics, because i like i think the two five piece sets are more important than monster sets.
and mythics just give more than monster sets

and i doubt any monster set could make me want to replace oakensoul

if zos added four piece sets i would totally use full monster sets again

Elyu

I think the problem lies with a lack of clear direction / purpose.

At the moment it seems monster sets and mythics are competing to provide the most tangible benefit, whereas I would say they should have different purposes entirely; monster sets to enhance a particular gameplay style, mythics to open up a completely new build option.

For example you could run a completely off-meta dd build that's purely designed to feed ultimate to your group;

This on a nord nb for max ulti generation, running Elemental Susceptibility on the backbar, and barbed trap and deadly cloak on the frontbar with 2 charged dual wield weapons, 1 running poison, 1 disease. (maybe that's overkill and you just need elemental susceptibility to proc all 3 stacks of zaudrus)

Cryptcanon Vestments
(1 item) You can no longer cast Ultimate abilities. Instead, casting an Ultimate ability transfers your Ultimate resource to your living group members, divided equally among them. Gain Minor Heroism while you are in combat.

Baron Zaudrus
1 item: Adds 548 Maximum Stamina, Adds 548 Maximum Magicka, Adds 603 Maximum Health
2 items: Applying a status effect to an enemy grants you a stack of Zaudrus's Ambition for 10 seconds, up to 3 stacks max. When you gain 3 stacks, the stacks are removed and you gain 4 Ultimate. On gaining Ultimate, you cannot gain additional stacks of Zaudrus's Ambition for 1 second.

Perfected Pillager's Profit
2 items: Adds 4% Healing Done
3 items: Gain Minor Aegis at all times, reducing your damage taken from Dungeon, Trial, and Arena Monsters by 5%.
4 items: Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
5 items: Adds 129 Magicka Recovery, Casting an Ultimate ability while in combat grants 5% of Ultimate spent, up to a max of 20, as Ultimate to up to 11 other group members within 12 meters every 2 seconds over 10 seconds. Group members can only be affected by this set once every 45 seconds.

BXR_Lonestar

I would like to see more monster sets with penetration as its 1 piece bonus. With the proliferation of hybrid builds, most DPS characters are wearing medium armor on the body pieces, which makes it hard to have enough penetration to reach the 18200 threshhold you are aiming for. It would actually be nice to wear monster helms for damage purposes, but if I need that 1 piece bonus to be penetration for my build, there are only 3 monster sets to consider, and none of them would really fit the build, or their damage output is really "meh."

I'm actually loving grothdar on my mag dk fire build, but at the end of the day, I don't have enough penetration built in to maximize my DPS without penetration coming from the monster set 1 piece bonus, which basically locks me into using Valkyn Skoria.

Not a big fan of the hybridization at all tbh, but so long as it is a thing and I'm forced to wear medium armor to reach the upper echelons of damage output, the least they can do is have a greater variety of monster helms that offer penetration as the 1 piece bonus. Or better yet - maybe offer table that will allow you to exchange the 1 piece bonus on monster helms.

AcadianPaladin

After the dumpster fire that was Update 35, I was preparing to rage quit the game. In desperation, I tried Oakensoul and fell in love. I now run nothing but Oakensoul, Slimecraw x1 for crit and two appropriate 5 piece sets. Absolutely no other mythics are of any interest to me. I have a wide selection of monster pieces and like the fact that you can wear one piece for one bonus - simple and flexible. I can't really imagine any two piece monster set good enough to displace Oakensoul. My main draw to Oakensoul is actually not the HA (though it is handy to have an effective ranged skill that helps both damage and sustain); rather, it is not worrying about maintaining a whole bar full of buffs so I can focus on positioning and my foe(s) instead of when buffs are expiring.

Directly to the point, I suppose it does say something that the only monster piece I actually use is one piece of Slimecraw.

FireBreathingNord

By placing a proc set on the back bar and front bar, you can equip a mythic and monster sets at the same time.

El_Borracho

FireBreathingNord wrote: »

By placing a proc set on the back bar and front bar, you can equip a mythic and monster sets at the same time.

I understand you can run both, normally at the cost of running an arena weapon that gives more damage than a monster set. My gripe is that the monster sets are shadows of what they used to be whereas the mythics (for DDs primarily) are very strong by comparison. For example, current Zaan:

(2 items) When you deal Critical Damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you have a 33% chance to tether to your enemy for 10 seconds as long as you remain within 8 meters of them. Enemies touching the tether take 145 Flame damage every 1 second, increasing by 100% per tick and are afflicted with the Burning status effect. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

Pre-nerf Zaan:

(2 Items) When you deal damage with a Light or Heavy Attack to a nearby enemy, a beam of fire will connect you to your enemy. The beam deals 3440 Flame Damage every 1 second for 5 seconds. Every second, this damage increases by 50%. The beam is broken if the enemy moves 8 meters away from you. This effect can occur every 18 seconds.

Its not even close. No proc chance, a lower cooldown, and higher scaling (even under the old scaling system, and would scale even higher under the new scaling system).

Obviously, I would want to run old Zaan with the Velothi Amulet. But instead, formerly top sets have been wrecked so something like the Amulet can be relevant. That is the problem, which is compounded by the silly RNG hoops you have to jump through to get the Amulet.

If it came down to an either-or, as in mythics reduce the power of monster sets when worn together, I would be fine with that. But the idea of ruining great sets in order to make the Kilt or Amulet a go-to damage piece is frustrating

Billium813

How about the idea of Monster sets for other body pieces that aren't Shoulders and Head? There would still the restriction of 1 Monster set (similar to only 1 Mythic being allowed) per build.

Mythics like Mora's Whisper and Gaze of Sithis annoy me cause they require the build to drop the monster set. It could be interesting if there were OTHER 2 piece Monster sets that were made of Arms and Boots, or Chest and Head, or Shoulder and Arms, or Legs and Boots. Thoughts?

acastanza_ESO

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

I would like to see more monster sets with penetration as its 1 piece bonus. With the proliferation of hybrid builds, most DPS characters are wearing medium armor on the body pieces, which makes it hard to have enough penetration to reach the 18200 threshhold you are aiming for. It would actually be nice to wear monster helms for damage purposes, but if I need that 1 piece bonus to be penetration for my build, there are only 3 monster sets to consider, and none of them would really fit the build, or their damage output is really "meh."

I'm actually loving grothdar on my mag dk fire build, but at the end of the day, I don't have enough penetration built in to maximize my DPS without penetration coming from the monster set 1 piece bonus, which basically locks me into using Valkyn Skoria.

Not a big fan of the hybridization at all tbh, but so long as it is a thing and I'm forced to wear medium armor to reach the upper echelons of damage output, the least they can do is have a greater variety of monster helms that offer penetration as the 1 piece bonus. Or better yet - maybe offer table that will allow you to exchange the 1 piece bonus on monster helms.

This is actually a really good idea, I think a lot of monster sets could be pushed over the edge into viability with better 1pc bonuses. Or maybe even better - giving them an additional "minor" 2pc bonus in addition to their set effect.

CameraBeardThePirate

Billium813 wrote: »

How about the idea of Monster sets for other body pieces that aren't Shoulders and Head? There would still the restriction of 1 Monster set (similar to only 1 Mythic being allowed) per build.

Mythics like Mora's Whisper and Gaze of Sithis annoy me cause they require the build to drop the monster set. It could be interesting if there were OTHER 2 piece Monster sets that were made of Arms and Boots, or Chest and Head, or Shoulder and Arms, or Legs and Boots. Thoughts?

They don't even need to be monster sets - just make more 1-2-3 piece sets like Trainee to have more flexibility with your builds. That way, if you have to drop a monster set, you'd have more options filling in those pieces.

fizzylu

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

They don't even need to be monster sets - just make more 1-2-3 piece sets like Trainee to have more flexibility with your builds. That way, if you have to drop a monster set, you'd have more options filling in those pieces.

Something in my brain doesn't like only using parts of a set so it would be cool if they created more sets that weren't just five pieces or 2 piece monster sets. I really don't see why they don't, Zenimax seems insistent on shoving more and more sets into the game.... they might as well switch things up a bit so there can be more build diversity with them.

Billium813

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

How about the idea of Monster sets for other body pieces that aren't Shoulders and Head? There would still the restriction of 1 Monster set (similar to only 1 Mythic being allowed) per build.

Mythics like Mora's Whisper and Gaze of Sithis annoy me cause they require the build to drop the monster set. It could be interesting if there were OTHER 2 piece Monster sets that were made of Arms and Boots, or Chest and Head, or Shoulder and Arms, or Legs and Boots. Thoughts?

They don't even need to be monster sets - just make more 1-2-3 piece sets like Trainee to have more flexibility with your builds. That way, if you have to drop a monster set, you'd have more options filling in those pieces.

I suppose they don't necessarily HAVE to be monster sets, except these new 1-2-3 piece sets would need effects more like monster sets and less like Trainee/Agility/Endurance/Willpower sets. Potentates and Wrath of the Imperium are interesting, but flat resource or WD/SD increases are boring.

I do think they need more 1-2-3 piece sets though. I was expecting more be added to the game when Markyn Ring of Majesty was released... but Druid's Braid wasn't it.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Solution: Make all mythic items slightly weaker but give them their own slot.

Urzigurumash

For sure an underappreciated cause of high HP pools in PvP is that it's hard NOT to slot 1 piece Trainee in maximally efficient builds.

Personally I'd vote for the idea of more bonus stats on the 2nd item, simple and effective.

Hapexamendios

I've used 1 piece of trainee in a couple solo PVE builds as well. Usually something like:

5 piece set
3 piece set
2 piece monster
1 mythic
1 piece Trainee

boi_anachronism_

I mean i use monster or mythic on my blade for example depending on content. For portals in vcr for example i run kilt but for something with a ton of trah packs i go zaan.

svendf

I wonder how long it will take for people, who don´t scry, to get pushed out of the game.

Kalle_Demos

One thing to remember about Monster Sets, Procs specifically, is that the ridiculous spell/weapon threshold restriction is still in effect. Unless you have 6,574 Weapon or Spell Damage, your proc set values are cut in half from their original values. Getting rid of this malformed 'solution' to what at the time could be boiled down to pvp whining and an unethical attempt to make Mythics, still behind paywalls, more appealing would be an excellent step in putting the 'Monster' back into Monster Sets.

CameraBeardThePirate

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

One thing to remember about Monster Sets, Procs specifically, is that the ridiculous spell/weapon threshold restriction is still in effect. Unless you have 6,574 Weapon or Spell Damage, your proc set values are cut in half from their original values. Getting rid of this malformed 'solution' to what at the time could be boiled down to pvp whining and an unethical attempt to make Mythics, still behind paywalls, more appealing would be an excellent step in putting the 'Monster' back into Monster Sets.

1) Getting to 6500 weapon or spell damage is not that hard.

2) Even if you don't get that high, most procs still retain their usefulness.

Proc set scaling was needed, and wasn't due to "pvp whining".

FantasticFreddie

KiltMaster wrote: »

I use zaan's instead of the wading kilt and it parses better, at least for me.

Name does not check out

BlueRaven

El_Borracho wrote: »

Once upon a time, you had to play the actual game to get some of the best gear.

Wait, have I not been playing the game? Can I get 10 years worth of refunds? 😆

Couple of things to break down here;

- “Once upon s time” dungeons were much simpler, and let’s face it, easier.

- & “Once upon s time” the dungeon community (and the eso community in general) was much less toxic.

- No one can just press a button and get the latest mythic, it takes a commitment to the game.

-There is no “conflict” between mythics and monster helms. There is a boat load of monster helms to choose from. And both can be worn at the same time.

El_Borracho

@BlueRaven awesome literal response to the first sentence of my original post. No need to read further.

But do go on. Because farming nodes directly correlates to using the Oakensoul ring in combat. As does looting lockboxes in Murkmire. Just like running Lair of Maarselok to get a Maarselok helm. Or March of Sacrifices for a Balorgh helm. Almost indistinguishable.

And thanks for pointing out you can wear both. Good to know I can wear a watered down monster set, or maybe only one piece of it. Because I still want to run an arena weapon with it, because the arena weapon is now much better than 2 pieces of a monster set. A choice that only exists because the original, more powerful version of the monster set doesn't exist anymore because it was nerfed ahead of mythics coming out. That makes me want to go out and run more dungeons to get more watered down monster sets.

Will have to try that out, right after I get back to playing the game, aka hoping that watchling drops that lead this time. Strange, never really had to hope and pray the final boss of a dungeon dropped that helm in order to get a useful armor piece...

Ingenon

Bring back monster sets? When did monster sets leave?

Every time I do a trial or vet dungeon, there are multiple folks wearing monster sets. Healers wear two piece monster sets. Tanks wear two piece monster sets.

OK, most of the DPS are wearing a mythic. But many of them are wearing one piece from a monster set with their mythic. Something like Wading Kilt with one piece Slimecraw.

OP, just curious, what content are you doing where no one is wearing any monster sets?

AlterBlika

Acquiring a mythic is much harder than a monster set. You want zaan? Run vet scalecaller up to 3 times, you can even solo if you're into it. You're guaranteed to get the wanted mask on the 3rd run. It's just not the same with mythics. Take sea searpent or lefthander aegis (yes, it's useful) for example. It took me literally months to get them, simply because of leads dropping from daily quests.

Although I still use stormfist on my solo build sometimes when I have slots for it. Good for trash packs, good for bosses, gives some sustain.

FantasticFreddie

Ingenon wrote: »

Bring back monster sets? When did monster sets leave?

Every time I do a trial or vet dungeon, there are multiple folks wearing monster sets. Healers wear two piece monster sets. Tanks wear two piece monster sets.

OK, most of the DPS are wearing a mythic. But many of them are wearing one piece from a monster set with their mythic. Something like Wading Kilt with one piece Slimecraw.

OP, just curious, what content are you doing where no one is wearing any monster sets?

Came here to say this! I'm always wearing a monster set as a healer or tank, and on PC a lot of trash setups use monster sets still.
And we know they are prevalent in pvp because "nerf maarselok" threads trot across the general chat forum once a month

OBJnoob

AlterBlika wrote: »

Acquiring a mythic is much harder than a monster set. You want zaan? Run vet scalecaller up to 3 times, you can even solo if you're into it. You're guaranteed to get the wanted mask on the 3rd run. It's just not the same with mythics. Take sea searpent or lefthander aegis (yes, it's useful) for example. It took me literally months to get them, simply because of leads dropping from daily quests.

Although I still use stormfist on my solo build sometimes when I have slots for it. Good for trash packs, good for bosses, gives some sustain.

Amount of time spent is not the same as difficulty.

One task can be performed faster by a talented player. One task takes everyone the same amount of time (notwithstanding RNG.) They create artificial difficulty around acquiring mythics by tying them to finite nodes or quests that can only be done daily.

I don't think anyone here misses that fact. I think it's exactly what is being complained about.