francesinhalover wrote: »
the crit chance makes up for at least 5?% of the dmg nerf. that being said set will still be really usefull on parses.
Yeah, the benefit of the crit chance will definitely vary with the build, since it depends on prior crit chance and crit damage both. It also matters how much of one's overall damage is eligible to crit, since 3% extra crit chance can't help guaranteed non-crits (e.g. Rele, Zaan) or guaranteed crits (initial hit of Stampede) at all. But it's interesting how this will play out - the numbers are suggesting to me that we will see some builds gain, some lose, and some stay effectively the same. For all that 22% and 3% look far apart, their effects are much closer than the numbers suggest.
Mag builds will get more out of this change, since stam builds do lose the 1096 stamina. That max stam translates to 104 weapon/spell damage applied towards skills and status effect procs (but not proc sets). It is not subject to weapon/spell damage modifiers but should benefit slightly from Undaunted Mettle (+4% would result in a further 4-5 WD/SD equivalent) and War Horn (which would boost it another 10-ish). It's far from the end of the world, of course, but it is a loss compared to mag builds, which get no direct damage benefit out of a line of 1096 stam.
On a 120.5k magDK parse from last update, I saw Nirn do about 9-9.5k between the DoT and the direct damage. Losing 22% of Nirn's damage would be a loss of 2-2.1k on that parse. The effective crit chance was about 63%, although the observed crit rate was very slightly higher (after accounting for Rele, Zaan, and Stampede). Crit damage was at cap. Rele and Zaan combined for very close to 13k. Adding 3% crit chance to the extant 63% crit chance would theoretically have improved the average damage output on the parse by ~2.1%, or just about 2.2k of that 105.5k crit-eligible damage (removing the 2k from Nirn for its 22% nerf and not counting Rele and Zaan's damage, which can't get buffed by crit chance). Even taking into consideration that the 3% extra crit chance won't help the initial direct damage of Stampede, which is already guaranteed to crit but also happens only once every 15 seconds, that figure looks like it should, on average, make up for the loss from Nirn.
Now that's just one example, but it should show that on a mag build even with two non-critting proc sets the changes to Nirn in some situations may be no loss at all. In combination with sets that can crit, Nirn's new crit chance will help more. On stam builds, there will be some damage lost from skill damage and status effect damage due to the loss of the max stam.
Necrotech_Master wrote: »
higher max stam for a mag build still could give you that tiny bit of crucial extra to dodge/ccbreak/sprint just a tad further lol
Rogue_WolfESO wrote: »What was their reasoning for this nerf?
Isn't Runecarver also being adjusted or did I misremember that?
Looking back over the last few years as a DPS sorc main, before and after hybridization, here are some of the meta sets for parsing/content that have come, gone, or stayed around, in no particular order, and not including HA builds, mythics, arena or monster sets (apologies if I forgot something, I'm getting old here!)
- False Gods
- Mother's Sorrow
- Medusa
- Whorl
- Bahsei
- Siroria
- Kinras
- Relequen
- Nirn
- Aegis Caller
- Tzogvin
- Vicious Ophidian
- Coral Riptide
- Sul-Xan (trash pulls)
- Burning Spellweave (trash pulls)
- Azureblight (trash pulls)
In other words, there will always be a new meta, or a returning old meta, so I don't get too worried about the changes to, e.g., Nirn, because something else will just take its place. I don't do trifectas or score push groups, so as long as I can still clear vet trials I'm fine with the Nirn adjustment. If it ends up just being absolutely intolerably bad I'll just craft something else. I'm staying capped on transmute crystals and bought another 200-stack each of Dreugh Wax and Tempering Alloy just in case.
My (stam)sorc will continue to be my main, but I have mag DK /zenkosh also as the second most "trial-ready" of my non-support toons.