Will ZOS ever nerf Master’s Dual Wield/Stinging Slashes?

SandandStars

Yeah, but don’t you think Master’s Dual Wield is a little overtuned?

😁

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

@SandandStars Look at it this way:

Will nerfing MDW make BRP 2h, Vate SnB, or Maelstrom DW more popular for PvP? Will it make players decide to start wearing hundings and shacklebreaker? Would it screw over classes that don't actually have a good class melee spammable? Would we see more stamsorcs give up on brawling and start using relequin bowsorc builds? Would this be an indirect buff for NBs and DKs that already have great melee spammables?

Of all the sets that exist in the game, only a small fraction of them are used, so if MDW is overtuned, then so are all the other sets commonly being used today. Resolving vigor is a lot more commonly slotted than MDW is. Now, because resolving vigor is really popular, basically essential to many builds, would it be a good idea to nerf the healing value of resolving vigor in order to "incentivize" players to start replacing it with other skills? Frost reach is also looking quite over-tuned compared to flame and shock reach...so should we nerf frost reach down to the level of the other abilities even though its existence provides a purpose that no other ability could do?

Instead of focusing on trying to nerf the sets that are actually effective and currently provide options, it could be better to take a good look at all the under-used trash and bring them up to par. Because at this point, that will actually bring in more build diversity, not always nerfing what sets work well over and over again in a viscous cycle that's lead to the kind of stale meta that we have today. The fact that you have players spamming rending slashes and overriding the DoT as much as they are is proof that players want to use melee spammables that are instant, and there's a serious lack of viable options for that, especially ones that cost stamina. The problem isn't that its "overtuned", the problem is that its getting stale, and its pushing players into making pressure builds by default.

Years ago, a lot of the magicka players would get sick of and complain about dizzy swing being too OP and that it needed nerfs. The problem was, what other choices did the majority of stamina classes have at the time? They were shoehorned into using it because it happened soon after they gutted heroic slash as a spammable, and for some time, MDW couldn't be used as a viable spammable either after they changed DoT intervals from 1 to 2 seconds. ZOS absolutely needs to implement alternative options for players to use to increase build diversity instead of repeating the same mistake they did before.

Besides that, MDW has already been indirectly nerfed when they gave everyone free stats and resources and it hasn't been changed in 43 months. The game changing has been pushing brawling players into using MDW, and so I'd really like to see more viable options provided through buffing other arena weapons or implementing new abilities that could be used as spammables in place of it. Instead of having an old, formerly niche set nerfed that eventually became popular because of dizzy swing not being as impactful as it used to be.

Vaqual

Arcanasx wrote: »

@SandandStars Look at it this way:

Will nerfing MDW make BRP 2h, Vate SnB, or Maelstrom DW more popular for PvP? Will it make players decide to start wearing hundings and shacklebreaker? Would it screw over classes that don't actually have a good class melee spammable? Would we see more stamsorcs give up on brawling and start using relequin bowsorc builds? Would this be an indirect buff for NBs and DKs that already have great melee spammables?

Of all the sets that exist in the game, only a small fraction of them are used, so if MDW is overtuned, then so are all the other sets commonly being used today. Resolving vigor is a lot more commonly slotted than MDW is. Now, because resolving vigor is really popular, basically essential to many builds, would it be a good idea to nerf the healing value of resolving vigor in order to "incentivize" players to start replacing it with other skills? Frost reach is also looking quite over-tuned compared to flame and shock reach...so should we nerf frost reach down to the level of the other abilities even though its existence provides a purpose that no other ability could do?

Instead of focusing on trying to nerf the sets that are actually effective and currently provide options, it could be better to take a good look at all the under-used trash and bring them up to par. Because at this point, that will actually bring in more build diversity, not always nerfing what sets work well over and over again in a viscous cycle that's lead to the kind of stale meta that we have today. The fact that you have players spamming rending slashes and overriding the DoT as much as they are is proof that players want to use melee spammables that are instant, and there's a serious lack of viable options for that, especially ones that cost stamina. The problem isn't that its "overtuned", the problem is that its getting stale, and its pushing players into making pressure builds by default.

Years ago, a lot of the magicka players would get sick of and complain about dizzy swing being too OP and that it needed nerfs. The problem was, what other choices did the majority of stamina classes have at the time? They were shoehorned into using it because it happened soon after they gutted heroic slash as a spammable, and for some time, MDW couldn't be used as a viable spammable either after they changed DoT intervals from 1 to 2 seconds. ZOS absolutely needs to implement alternative options for players to use to increase build diversity instead of repeating the same mistake they did before.

Besides that, MDW has already been indirectly nerfed when they gave everyone free stats and resources and it hasn't been changed in 43 months. The game changing has been pushing brawling players into using MDW, and so I'd really like to see more viable options provided through buffing other arena weapons or implementing new abilities that could be used as spammables in place of it. Instead of having an old, formerly niche set nerfed that eventually became popular because of dizzy swing not being as impactful as it used to be.

Sorry in case I missed your point, but you have been writing many very lengthy paragraphs and your point did not always become clear to me. You seem to be conflating popularity and strength in an absolutely arbitrary way. It doesn't matter if other options will become more popular through this, MDW just offers objectively too much value atm. Whatever argument is to be had about vigour, set arrangements, etc. doesn't change that. The circumstances that lead to this state have been pointed out. Possible fixes have been proposed. Whether this is adressed by improving alternatives (risk of powercreep) or giving this set a minor nerf treatment, is ultimately not relevant.

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

El_Borracho

No, it’s just fine as is

I hope not. The nerf trend is lazy. Especially arena weapons, as there really is no other reason to run arenas. Would rather see them buff other weapons or sets.

Besides, if/when Master's Weapons get nerfed, the PVP crowd will not be happy. They will then move onto the next "OP" or "Game Breaking" weapon or set or class. Once upon a time, a werewolf wearing Crimson Twilight was deemed to be the death of PVP unless it was nerfed into oblivion. Now people are crying for the return of the werewolf. Never happy, all the time, the life cycle of the ESO PVP player.

Vaqual

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Turtle_Bot

Just wanted to point out that 6k weapon/spell damage is fairly common for brawler builds. Most will sit around the 6 to 6.5k range depending if they have continuous or SSC active or not (closer to 7k if they have both) and tend to sit around 4.5k unbuffed.

Most brawlers want the high weapon/spell damage to buff their heals alongside high sustain to allow them to continuously brawl, while they focus more on putting attributes into health to reach that 35-40k threshold to survive burst instead of into mag/stam for the marginal damage/healing those give.

3k weapon/spell damage is not a brawler, that is a troll tank using a health based heal and tbh, a troll tank with MDW is a poor attempt at being a brawler because none of its other abilities will deal enough damage to make MDW an issue.

IZZEFlameLash

No, it’s just fine as is

El_Borracho wrote: »

I hope not. The nerf trend is lazy. Especially arena weapons, as there really is no other reason to run arenas. Would rather see them buff other weapons or sets.

Besides, if/when Master's Weapons get nerfed, the PVP crowd will not be happy. They will then move onto the next "OP" or "Game Breaking" weapon or set or class. Once upon a time, a werewolf wearing Crimson Twilight was deemed to be the death of PVP unless it was nerfed into oblivion. Now people are crying for the return of the werewolf. Never happy, all the time, the life cycle of the ESO PVP player.

Kinda funny how that goes. Players wanted homogenization of classes to play pretty much the same with different vfx. Now players complain about lack of class identity while blaming the hybridization (which also what players wanted back in the days without even realizing themselves).

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

SandandStars

Is it safe to say that gear and class imbalance are so perpetually f u b a r that people have just thrown in the towel and given up on trying to improve them?

Or are people not wanting to change their current meta builds?

Vaqual

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

I don't know what to reply that hasn't been said already be others or me. At this point I disagree on almost everything you say, especially your warped idea of how set balancing should depend on the level of external support.
Your assessment of penetration is also incomplete, as you can hypothetically always run the risk of overpenetrating, which makes higher penetration a risk/reward decision like many other situational bonuses, e.g. evasion or blue defensive stars.

gariondavey

No, balancing pvp combat is not a priority

Ark is right

Joy_Division

SandandStars wrote: »

Is it safe to say that gear and class imbalance are so perpetually f u b a r that people have just thrown in the towel and given up on trying to improve them?

Or are people not wanting to change their current meta builds?

Yes and no.

I would not so much say gear and class balance is fubar, rather the nature of ESO's combat in which builds with 35K health and with minimal investment in resource sustain can continuously do very high damage.

That's not a class or gear issue since any class can basically do that with a wide variety of gear, though for sure some classes (DK and NB) can do it easier with specific gear (such as the one's being mentioned in this thread).

It's safe to say that any semblance the sort of combat that is usually found in other MMOs (actual difference between classes, distinctive roles [i.e., the tank-heal-dd trinity], health bars gradually falling/rising, fights being decided by character abilities rather than gear, etc.) is definitely f u b a r and never coming back due to how far ZOS had traveled down this road and their overall philosophy.

It's not so much like I am throwing in the towel, rather what exactly will nerfing Master's dual wield or Vateshran Destro do to impact ESO PvP? Nothing. Nada. Not a gosh darn thing. While it is true these weapon sets are more efficient and do things beyond ZOS's rigid formula of what a skill/set/bonus typically allows, let's not exaggerate here. If ZOS nerfs MAster's duel wield, people will just drop drop their swords and Dragon's Appetite for Draurgkin and Crushing shock which follows the same basic principle of using flat damage gear to place pressure. Or I will get burst down instead with proc sets that do high damage, just as what happens now. It will just make things it more annoying and more homogenous as now we have two less tools to kill these 35K health builds that can heal to full in GCDs. So it whack a mole, tearing a page out of War and Peace. It's not so much that precious meta builds would have to be changed into something that might actually require thinking or using a different sort of build that might actually spawn a new meta. Rather, it's the annoyance of buying 8 gold mats to use a different build that follows the same meta.

Not to mention the attitude of nerf anything that dares transcend beyond the bounds of what ZOS's formula allows (despite it being a specific weapon set that must be earned and takes up 2 gear slots) is a huge reason why we find ourselves here with generic abilities, scouring though gear sets that might actually impact fights against these 35K health do it all builds.

CameraBeardThePirate

No, balancing pvp combat is not a priority

Dekrypted wrote: »

I think a nerf would be nice. Tbh it'd kill alot of arcanist builds for pvp. The rest would switch over to spamming with the asylum destro.

Balance in this game is so bad lol

Idk, I think it'll just force Arcanists to actually learn how to use beam instead of crutching on the status effect damage

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

I don't know what to reply that hasn't been said already be others or me. At this point I disagree on almost everything you say, especially your warped idea of how set balancing should depend on the level of external support.
Your assessment of penetration is also incomplete, as you can hypothetically always run the risk of overpenetrating, which makes higher penetration a risk/reward decision like many other situational bonuses, e.g. evasion or blue defensive stars.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'm saying that set balancing shouldn't be influenced by external support. I think its an entirely fair concept that no one else should be able to make your own sets scale more effectively than they otherwise could, because organized groups and ball groups being given additional advantages over the years, including proc scaling, hasn't been good for PvP.

Your own assessment that somehow, you could make a practical MDW build with only 3k weapon damage, and that's supposedly a reason why it should be nerfed, is actually quite the warped idea itself. Lets also not pretend that the risk of overpenetration is this situational, "risk/reward" decision anymore than potentially having too much or too little resource recovery for certain fights, investing into flat damage sets at the expense of getting more damage out of your harder hitting burst and ultimate abilities, or coming across a build that simply counters your own build. Most players who PvP already understand that there's a practical penetration threshold that you wouldn't want to exceed, and that simply investing in other stats would be the sensible thing to do, like having more than 3k weapon damage too.

SandandStars

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Idk, I think it'll just force Arcanists to actually learn how to use beam instead of crutching on the status effect damage

@CameraBeardThePirate - i’ve been meaning to get back to you regarding Fatecarver: A couple months ago on a thread about Arc being weak offensively, I was dismissive about Fatecarver’s potential in PVP.

So in the past couple weeks I’ve been messing with an off meta Arc build, and finally figured out how to turn off the aim assist, and with a bit of practice, lo and behold, it’s actually a viable pvp skill. You were right.

I play solo bgs mostly, and it’s actually a lot more fun to aim it quickly/deftly (vs just spamming cc until you lock down someone low on stamina, and stand there beaming them… Snore….).

Question: You also stated runeblades were a viable skill, but I can’t get them to do any damage. Can you offer any hints? 😁

CameraBeardThePirate

No, balancing pvp combat is not a priority

SandandStars wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Idk, I think it'll just force Arcanists to actually learn how to use beam instead of crutching on the status effect damage

@CameraBeardThePirate - i’ve been meaning to get back to you regarding Fatecarver: A couple months ago on a thread about Arc being weak offensively, I was dismissive about Fatecarver’s potential in PVP.

So in the past couple weeks I’ve been messing with an off meta Arc build, and finally figured out how to turn off the aim assist, and with a bit of practice, lo and behold, it’s actually a viable pvp skill. You were right.

I play solo bgs mostly, and it’s actually a lot more fun to aim it quickly/deftly (vs just spamming cc until you lock down someone low on stamina, and stand there beaming them… Snore….).

Question: You also stated runeblades were a viable skill, but I can’t get them to do any damage. Can you offer any hints? 😁

For runeblades, a high crit chance and things like Draugrkin/Dragon's scale really well with it. I've been using Escalating over Writhing as that felt like it packs a bit more of a punch.

SandandStars

Thanks! Appreciate the tip! I’ve always shied away from crit builds in pvp, bc they just don’t seem as effective as raw spell damage & pen, but I will definitely give it a try.

So maybe Orders Wrath & Draugrkin?

Vaqual

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

I don't know what to reply that hasn't been said already be others or me. At this point I disagree on almost everything you say, especially your warped idea of how set balancing should depend on the level of external support.
Your assessment of penetration is also incomplete, as you can hypothetically always run the risk of overpenetrating, which makes higher penetration a risk/reward decision like many other situational bonuses, e.g. evasion or blue defensive stars.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'm saying that set balancing shouldn't be influenced by external support. I think its an entirely fair concept that no one else should be able to make your own sets scale more effectively than they otherwise could, because organized groups and ball groups being given additional advantages over the years, including proc scaling, hasn't been good for PvP.

Your own assessment that somehow, you could make a practical MDW build with only 3k weapon damage, and that's supposedly a reason why it should be nerfed, is actually quite the warped idea itself. Lets also not pretend that the risk of overpenetration is this situational, "risk/reward" decision anymore than potentially having too much or too little resource recovery for certain fights, investing into flat damage sets at the expense of getting more damage out of your harder hitting burst and ultimate abilities, or coming across a build that simply counters your own build. Most players who PvP already understand that there's a practical penetration threshold that you wouldn't want to exceed, and that simply investing in other stats would be the sensible thing to do, like having more than 3k weapon damage too.

You are contradicting yourself, it is impossible to have an argument like this. If you say support should not make sets overly effective, than that is literally support affecting a balancing decision. Maybe it is semantics or maybe you are just arguing for the sake of the argument. You also don't have to explain to me how "most PvP'ers" balance their stats, because the concept is clear to me. It is not my lack of understanding that makes me refuse your points. No matter what your opinion about high defense builds is, no matter how useful you think they are, MDW is overperforming on them.

MindOfTheSwarm

No, it’s just fine as is

I think it’s ok. But when combined with Blooddrinker and Deadly Strike or Draugrkin it gets obscene. The problem is that nerfing any will make them rubbish in any other scenario. It’s not sets alone that are OP, its combinations. And this is next to impossible to balance out due to the sheer variety of set mixes available.

CameraBeardThePirate

No, balancing pvp combat is not a priority

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I think it’s ok. But when combined with Blooddrinker and Deadly Strike or Draugrkin it gets obscene. The problem is that nerfing any will make them rubbish in any other scenario. It’s not sets alone that are OP, its combinations. And this is next to impossible to balance out due to the sheer variety of set mixes available.

Because powerful set combinations should exist.

Pointing it out for maybe the third time in this thread, but the Master's/Vat/Dragons/Maarselok build is one of the few ways to have decent pressure this patch. Yes, it's far above pretty much any other pressure set combo, but the only aspect of that combo that I'd say is OP on its own is Vateshran Destro.

Good set combos should exist - the problem is patches where there's only 1 or 2 options for a specific type of build. If you could have decent DoT pressure in other ways, we wouldn't even be talking about the Master's DW build because there'd be other builds in the meta. ZOS needs to bring up other DoTs - not nerf the only way to have good DoT pressure that's left.

Too bad it likely won't happen, because ZOS has only doubled down on the U35 changes since they happened.

El_Borracho

No, it’s just fine as is

@IZZEFlameLash exactly. Players were warned that hybridization would lead to cosmetic differences and loss of class identity. Homogenization occurred. People complained about class identity. So the devs gave us the Arcanist, which is unlike every other class.

The result? The chronically aggrieved are upset that the other classes are not like the Arcanist, the Arcanist has skills other classes don't, the way the Arcanist's resources are set up are not available to other classes, and on and on and on.

At some point, the devs need to just say no.

SandandStars

Reading through this thread and thinking about various perspectives on certain class and gearset combinations being overpowered, and whether this really matters or not, another significant factor occurs to me that makes me realize anything close to balance is pretty much impossible.

That factor is pvp desync and lag and other “conditions” that have an extreme impact on different skills, which presumably are not part of the dev team’s calculations.

For example, whirling blades are an extremely forgiving skill to use in PVP. Of course it is an AOE skill, so it should be, right? But then compare this to shalks, which takes a fair amount of skill and timing to be able to land against a good player in PVP. But wait, then add lag…

Now all of a sudden a skill like dizzy swing, which shouldn’t be too hard to avoid, has a range of 30 m because you were lagging. Someone just hit you through a pillar with dizzy and you’re on yout back for 5 seconds while the animation tries to catch up with the server, mean while the other player is spamming away. Some skills work well in the mysterious conditions of PVP, in spite of anything stated on the skills tooltip.Some do not work at all (blast bones, screaming cliff racers, etc).

Of course, anyone who plays PVP very long intuitively figured this out, and picks the skills that happen to work in these conditions.

Given this, trying to balance things just seems absurd. I am with those of you who decided to throw in the towel.

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

I don't know what to reply that hasn't been said already be others or me. At this point I disagree on almost everything you say, especially your warped idea of how set balancing should depend on the level of external support.
Your assessment of penetration is also incomplete, as you can hypothetically always run the risk of overpenetrating, which makes higher penetration a risk/reward decision like many other situational bonuses, e.g. evasion or blue defensive stars.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'm saying that set balancing shouldn't be influenced by external support. I think its an entirely fair concept that no one else should be able to make your own sets scale more effectively than they otherwise could, because organized groups and ball groups being given additional advantages over the years, including proc scaling, hasn't been good for PvP.

Your own assessment that somehow, you could make a practical MDW build with only 3k weapon damage, and that's supposedly a reason why it should be nerfed, is actually quite the warped idea itself. Lets also not pretend that the risk of overpenetration is this situational, "risk/reward" decision anymore than potentially having too much or too little resource recovery for certain fights, investing into flat damage sets at the expense of getting more damage out of your harder hitting burst and ultimate abilities, or coming across a build that simply counters your own build. Most players who PvP already understand that there's a practical penetration threshold that you wouldn't want to exceed, and that simply investing in other stats would be the sensible thing to do, like having more than 3k weapon damage too.

You are contradicting yourself, it is impossible to have an argument like this. If you say support should not make sets overly effective, than that is literally support affecting a balancing decision. Maybe it is semantics or maybe you are just arguing for the sake of the argument. You also don't have to explain to me how "most PvP'ers" balance their stats, because the concept is clear to me. It is not my lack of understanding that makes me refuse your points. No matter what your opinion about high defense builds is, no matter how useful you think they are, MDW is overperforming on them.

Lets say the base abilities of Rending Slashes and Blood Craze (A) counted as a "5" and MDW (B) also counts as a "5" and when you add them together for the Rending Slashes/Blood Craze + MDW (C), you get 10. If they were to buff (A) to a 7, but nerf (B) down to 3, so that (C) remained the same, you could still have the augmented ability doing nearly the same thing as it did before, and I really wouldn't be bothered by that.

Now, the base of your argument claims that (B) is "objectively" providing too much value for its slots, yet even if you nerfed it, but buffed (A) to compensate for it, I have a feeling that you still wouldn't be content because it really seems like you and other's believe that (C) would still be too strong. You and others are attempting to use the bonus from (B) as a reason to nerf (C), even though (C) isn't actually the problem in the greater context.

If anything, nerfing (C) through (B) without buffing (A) for compensation, will likely just remove options from an already limited meta and make the game more stale, along with indirectly buffing classes that aren't reliant on (B) to have a good melee spammable (like NB and DK), or decent pressure. You're also attempting to use various outside factors such as health stacking, max health scaling heals, ice staves with elemental susceptibility being overloaded, and undeath, as another reason to nerf (C) through (B). Even though (B) has remained static and unchanged in 43 months, and as if these outside factors actually uniquely benefit (B) more so than other builds when it practically doesn't. Like your 3k weapon damage brawler with (B) build that wouldn't actually be practical at all.

While (A) and (C) may have had a duration increase since U35, the fact remains that its overall DPS is actually lower than before while everyone's overall HPS has also increased, because (A) took a major hit when they nerfed DoTs. And DPS is what actually matters most for pressure builds, especially since (B) has remained static while CP 2.0 brought in a lot of stat inflation, none of which has benefited (B) at all, and has in fact, already indirectly nerfed (B).

If anything, weapon damage stacking with balorghs is enabling "tanks with damage" more than any other kind of build. Yet I can also tell that its actually the outside factors previously mentioned that are far more problematic as the common denominators to much of PvP's current issues, regardless of your opinion of (B), and that's why context matters.

Vaqual

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

I don't know what to reply that hasn't been said already be others or me. At this point I disagree on almost everything you say, especially your warped idea of how set balancing should depend on the level of external support.
Your assessment of penetration is also incomplete, as you can hypothetically always run the risk of overpenetrating, which makes higher penetration a risk/reward decision like many other situational bonuses, e.g. evasion or blue defensive stars.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'm saying that set balancing shouldn't be influenced by external support. I think its an entirely fair concept that no one else should be able to make your own sets scale more effectively than they otherwise could, because organized groups and ball groups being given additional advantages over the years, including proc scaling, hasn't been good for PvP.

Your own assessment that somehow, you could make a practical MDW build with only 3k weapon damage, and that's supposedly a reason why it should be nerfed, is actually quite the warped idea itself. Lets also not pretend that the risk of overpenetration is this situational, "risk/reward" decision anymore than potentially having too much or too little resource recovery for certain fights, investing into flat damage sets at the expense of getting more damage out of your harder hitting burst and ultimate abilities, or coming across a build that simply counters your own build. Most players who PvP already understand that there's a practical penetration threshold that you wouldn't want to exceed, and that simply investing in other stats would be the sensible thing to do, like having more than 3k weapon damage too.

You are contradicting yourself, it is impossible to have an argument like this. If you say support should not make sets overly effective, than that is literally support affecting a balancing decision. Maybe it is semantics or maybe you are just arguing for the sake of the argument. You also don't have to explain to me how "most PvP'ers" balance their stats, because the concept is clear to me. It is not my lack of understanding that makes me refuse your points. No matter what your opinion about high defense builds is, no matter how useful you think they are, MDW is overperforming on them.

Lets say the base abilities of Rending Slashes and Blood Craze (A) counted as a "5" and MDW (B) also counts as a "5" and when you add them together for the Rending Slashes/Blood Craze + MDW (C), you get 10. If they were to buff (A) to a 7, but nerf (B) down to 3, so that (C) remained the same, you could still have the augmented ability doing nearly the same thing as it did before, and I really wouldn't be bothered by that.

Now, the base of your argument claims that (B) is "objectively" providing too much value for its slots, yet even if you nerfed it, but buffed (A) to compensate for it, I have a feeling that you still wouldn't be content because it really seems like you and other's believe that (C) would still be too strong. You and others are attempting to use the bonus from (B) as a reason to nerf (C), even though (C) isn't actually the problem in the greater context.

If anything, nerfing (C) through (B) without buffing (A) for compensation, will likely just remove options from an already limited meta and make the game more stale, along with indirectly buffing classes that aren't reliant on (B) to have a good melee spammable (like NB and DK), or decent pressure. You're also attempting to use various outside factors such as health stacking, max health scaling heals, ice staves with elemental susceptibility being overloaded, and undeath, as another reason to nerf (C) through (B). Even though (B) has remained static and unchanged in 43 months, and as if these outside factors actually uniquely benefit (B) more so than other builds when it practically doesn't. Like your 3k weapon damage brawler with (B) build that wouldn't actually be practical at all.

While (A) and (C) may have had a duration increase since U35, the fact remains that its overall DPS is actually lower than before while everyone's overall HPS has also increased, because (A) took a major hit when they nerfed DoTs. And DPS is what actually matters most for pressure builds, especially since (B) has remained static while CP 2.0 brought in a lot of stat inflation, none of which has benefited (B) at all, and has in fact, already indirectly nerfed (B).

If anything, weapon damage stacking with balorghs is enabling "tanks with damage" more than any other kind of build. Yet I can also tell that its actually the outside factors previously mentioned that are far more problematic as the common denominators to much of PvP's current issues, regardless of your opinion of (B), and that's why context matters.

I appreciate your effort in explaining your point of view but I fear your are missing my points. I will respond once more out of courtesy, but beyond that I have no interest in further exchanges.
I will also not repeat points that I have made before in detail.

1. Yes I would not be bothered if the package "C" is stronger in the hands of a supported or offensively specced player, as long as it becomes less effective on highly defensive builds.

2. I explicitly said I wish for this set to still be in a usable and decent spot. If this set is what makes or breaks "options from an already limited meta" than this should be a strong hint that something is up with this set.

3. I am not married to a 3k brawler build, that was an example to illustrate the potential of MDW, bridging a large power gap on a spammable option, while giving a dot equal to a full dot with the power of such a build. Picking apart the the meaningfulness of such an example, when these builds are clearly played, is just tiresome. Maybe one player will have 3.1 k another has 3.7k, a third 4.1k. Spelling everything out is nothing but exhausting to the reader.

4. Yes, the combo is weaker as before U35, but so is every other dot. Even if it got with the CP update, the change from U35 singlehandedly moved it to the top.

5. I agree that Balorgh is cheesy for certain ults, but apart from that, I have to admit, I do not understand what your last paragraph means.

Thanks for your time and feel free to pick apart my points. I am out.

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

@Vaqual

I've been writing paragraphs because I often have to repeat the points that I've already made, only for people to keep arbitrarily claiming its objectively giving too much value, without actually breaking down the numbers and often times just tunnel visioning on what their death recaps show to push for why they think something needs to be nerfed. And they often arbitrarily conflate the base abilities that MDW affects with the MDW bonus itself, how it can be used with some other sets, and with status effect spam as well as if its somehow unique to MDW. Or claim that all the MDW builds can practically neglect weapon damage and still be able to do good damage as if somehow all their damage is going to be coming from MDW.

And personally, I wouldn't call 6k weapon damage to be "high weapon damage" but that's the point where I noticed other instant cast melee spammables like molten whip and concealed weapon begin to show higher tool tip damage for the direct damage portion over rending slashes with MDW. That doesn't even include the other buffs, debuffs and passives tied to those spammables that could also further buff those class spammables, and their other abilities as well. That's also with MDW rending slashes slotted on the front bar, which means I could use another potential 5pc offensive set to further buff those class spammables and other abilities, and then replace the mediocre rending slashes/blood craze without MDW with another class skill. You could also replace blood craze with structured entropy if you wanted a DoT that heals you, and it also scales better with your stats as well.

Now, could you also enlighten me how using MDW is the mathematically and objectively superior option when it comes to using it with and against ball group compositions? And also with AoE builds, burst builds, ranged builds, ganking builds, bombing builds, and for group gameplay? Could you explain to me how a set that's been designed and optimized most for augmenting an ability for pressure based brawling builds, ever since it was introduced, is problematic for being good for pressure based brawling builds. By how much is it too good by? What do you personally think what the purpose of MDW should be? When I've been playing during MYM with my Masters 2h, aoe burst builds, tell me how replacing Masters 2h with MDW would have been objectively stronger when it comes to wiping groups of several players within seconds, and how Masters 2h couldn't possibly have objectively stronger power potential.

Perhaps, maybe the greater context also matters. Maybe the game's balance is made up of many moving parts where affecting one part can cause a ripple effect that can effect other parts of the game. Which may have unintended consequences, like screwing over the classes that don't have a good melee spammable that can compete with concealed weapon and the DK whips. Maybe looking at things in vacuum might not always be the best way to make an assessment in determining the full objective value of something, and seeing the bigger picture might be better for overall balance.

I find that 6k WD (your number) as a breakpoint to be extremely high, and that is not even including the constant benefit of the flat DoT ticks between "spammable" casts. No fight consists of just spammable usage you are bound to benefit from that. Slap that on a 3k WD brawler build and you get disproportionate pressure and an outstanding spammable for the amount of offensive commitment on the build. As you say so yourself, this is clearly a single target damage focused set, I see no reason to contextualise with ball groups and AoE sets. So I will not "enlighten" you about its performance in these matters.
And why the shallow comparison with the Masters-2h? Are you genuinely asking me to concede that an AoE set does more AoE than a single target set?
Masters-2h scales with the number of enemies, and apart from the broken interaction with pull sets (which has been discussed elsewhere, and is 100% the fault of the pull set, as they enable multiple cheesy combos) this can absolutely be played around. Also, the wearer only benefits while actively using the ability. You seem to undervalue this fact immensely. It is like another DoT slot on the bar freed up.
As I said before, numerous times in multiple threads, providing a single skill with the ability to act as a A/S-tier spammable, accompanied by a ~3k-WD worth of dot pressure on top of it's regular effects via a 2-piece set is just unmatched. There is no other combination that is so economic, except maybe Ele Sus + Vate Ice. And if there is a single target option, that is outclassing all other options in terms of either bar/set slot economy or just plain damage, that is evidently better than the rest, then I find that this is too strong. It does not matter how it holds up against AoE sets. To benefit from AoE you need multiple targets in position. Single Target damage can always be relied on. Take all this together and you have a set that is on average going to be the best value for the investment.

Maybe it is my fault, but to me your arguments sound a bit like this: "Other functional build options than stat optimized brawlers exist, therefore MDW isn't overperforming in that niche." Which is just denying reality in my eyes.

I agree, looking at the bigger picture matters. But overcomplicating and obscuring clear and evident matters for such a solvable issue just doesn't serve a purpose. Scaling/partial scaling could even make the weapon better for 6k WD users. I think I wrote good things on my first post in this thread. You claim that people here argue with tunnel vision, but no one is asking for this set to be deleted. Only to be adjusted, to reign in its overly strong performance in the context of a certain build type.

Lets be real, no one is actually going to run a MDW build with 3k weapon damage thinking that they're going to have enough damage or healing for such a build to work. And high weapon damage to me, is when you start stacking it above 7k, which is also when a lot of the proc scaling sets can become super charged. And I find using a set to add a lot of "weapon damage value" to an otherwise mediocre ability to be acceptable if it makes it work. If they were to ever buff the base abilities of rending slashes and blood craze themselves, then they could look at toning down MDW. Because taking a 1, and increasing it by 100% to turn it into 2, doesn't necessarily mean that the 100% increase is "broken OP" if its multiplying the power of something that's already weak by itself. And using MDW isn't the only viable way of making a strong brawler, or other strong dueling builds, that's why its not as "broken" as people claim it is.

The problem with the "scaling" solution IMO, is that it would allow you to get a lot more value out of your set if you're playing with other people that can increase your weapon damage for you. Why should someone be able to potentially get much more value out of a set simply by getting free weapon damage from someone else over someone who isn't? Other than someone else's minor brutality or sorcery, there are no other methods available for someone else being able to directly increase the value of your weapon damage stats, your penetration stats, or your other stats, outside of some unique class passive group buffs. Like directly increasing the value of a weapon damage stat line from a base of 129 to 180 before weapon damage modifiers for example. All this does is empower organized groups and punish outnumbered gameplay even more, and turns PvP more into a numbers and composition game. We've already seen this with the other "proc" sets that scale, where many of the AoE burst sets are best utilized by the ball groups themselves while players who don't play in those organized groups, can't take advantage of them nearly to the same extent that they can.

I also find the notion of "flat damage sets are unfair because they can use that for damage and then invest into tankiness elsewhere" to be somewhat hypocritical. I've already explained this point many times, so I'll say this; penetration is a pure damage stat like flat damage sets are, and they both don't offer any direct benefits to survivability. Yet no one asks for penetration stat sets to scale depending on how much weapon damage you have. Even though weapon damage is not only an offensive stat, but even more of a defensive stat as well when you consider that damage in this game gets mitigated a lot more than healing does. So asking players to stack weapon damage if they want to benefit from "free damage" sets wouldn't combat the tanks with damage meta, it actually would reinforce it further. We saw this happen when the Malacath DoT meta ended after they introduced proc scaling, and gave everyone free stats and resources. We also saw how hybridization contributed more to healing inflation more than it increased damage, because that's what weapon damage does. We also saw ball groups become even stronger, and proc scaling is actually a major contributor for that, even if many players don't seem to realize that.

I don't know what to reply that hasn't been said already be others or me. At this point I disagree on almost everything you say, especially your warped idea of how set balancing should depend on the level of external support.
Your assessment of penetration is also incomplete, as you can hypothetically always run the risk of overpenetrating, which makes higher penetration a risk/reward decision like many other situational bonuses, e.g. evasion or blue defensive stars.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'm saying that set balancing shouldn't be influenced by external support. I think its an entirely fair concept that no one else should be able to make your own sets scale more effectively than they otherwise could, because organized groups and ball groups being given additional advantages over the years, including proc scaling, hasn't been good for PvP.

Your own assessment that somehow, you could make a practical MDW build with only 3k weapon damage, and that's supposedly a reason why it should be nerfed, is actually quite the warped idea itself. Lets also not pretend that the risk of overpenetration is this situational, "risk/reward" decision anymore than potentially having too much or too little resource recovery for certain fights, investing into flat damage sets at the expense of getting more damage out of your harder hitting burst and ultimate abilities, or coming across a build that simply counters your own build. Most players who PvP already understand that there's a practical penetration threshold that you wouldn't want to exceed, and that simply investing in other stats would be the sensible thing to do, like having more than 3k weapon damage too.

You are contradicting yourself, it is impossible to have an argument like this. If you say support should not make sets overly effective, than that is literally support affecting a balancing decision. Maybe it is semantics or maybe you are just arguing for the sake of the argument. You also don't have to explain to me how "most PvP'ers" balance their stats, because the concept is clear to me. It is not my lack of understanding that makes me refuse your points. No matter what your opinion about high defense builds is, no matter how useful you think they are, MDW is overperforming on them.

Lets say the base abilities of Rending Slashes and Blood Craze (A) counted as a "5" and MDW (B) also counts as a "5" and when you add them together for the Rending Slashes/Blood Craze + MDW (C), you get 10. If they were to buff (A) to a 7, but nerf (B) down to 3, so that (C) remained the same, you could still have the augmented ability doing nearly the same thing as it did before, and I really wouldn't be bothered by that.

Now, the base of your argument claims that (B) is "objectively" providing too much value for its slots, yet even if you nerfed it, but buffed (A) to compensate for it, I have a feeling that you still wouldn't be content because it really seems like you and other's believe that (C) would still be too strong. You and others are attempting to use the bonus from (B) as a reason to nerf (C), even though (C) isn't actually the problem in the greater context.

If anything, nerfing (C) through (B) without buffing (A) for compensation, will likely just remove options from an already limited meta and make the game more stale, along with indirectly buffing classes that aren't reliant on (B) to have a good melee spammable (like NB and DK), or decent pressure. You're also attempting to use various outside factors such as health stacking, max health scaling heals, ice staves with elemental susceptibility being overloaded, and undeath, as another reason to nerf (C) through (B). Even though (B) has remained static and unchanged in 43 months, and as if these outside factors actually uniquely benefit (B) more so than other builds when it practically doesn't. Like your 3k weapon damage brawler with (B) build that wouldn't actually be practical at all.

While (A) and (C) may have had a duration increase since U35, the fact remains that its overall DPS is actually lower than before while everyone's overall HPS has also increased, because (A) took a major hit when they nerfed DoTs. And DPS is what actually matters most for pressure builds, especially since (B) has remained static while CP 2.0 brought in a lot of stat inflation, none of which has benefited (B) at all, and has in fact, already indirectly nerfed (B).

If anything, weapon damage stacking with balorghs is enabling "tanks with damage" more than any other kind of build. Yet I can also tell that its actually the outside factors previously mentioned that are far more problematic as the common denominators to much of PvP's current issues, regardless of your opinion of (B), and that's why context matters.

I appreciate your effort in explaining your point of view but I fear your are missing my points. I will respond once more out of courtesy, but beyond that I have no interest in further exchanges.
I will also not repeat points that I have made before in detail.

1. Yes I would not be bothered if the package "C" is stronger in the hands of a supported or offensively specced player, as long as it becomes less effective on highly defensive builds.

2. I explicitly said I wish for this set to still be in a usable and decent spot. If this set is what makes or breaks "options from an already limited meta" than this should be a strong hint that something is up with this set.

3. I am not married to a 3k brawler build, that was an example to illustrate the potential of MDW, bridging a large power gap on a spammable option, while giving a dot equal to a full dot with the power of such a build. Picking apart the the meaningfulness of such an example, when these builds are clearly played, is just tiresome. Maybe one player will have 3.1 k another has 3.7k, a third 4.1k. Spelling everything out is nothing but exhausting to the reader.

4. Yes, the combo is weaker as before U35, but so is every other dot. Even if it got with the CP update, the change from U35 singlehandedly moved it to the top.

5. I agree that Balorgh is cheesy for certain ults, but apart from that, I have to admit, I do not understand what your last paragraph means.

Thanks for your time and feel free to pick apart my points. I am out.

It seems that you (and others) are fixated on the flat damage bonus from MDW as if its somehow instrumental in enabling tank players to do damage, which is simply not true. A "tanky player with damage" also needs weapon damage if they want to have any heals. Low heals, means low TTK, which means not a tank. It also means all your other offensive abilities will hit like a wet noodle, and MDW alone will absolutely not do enough to make the difference.

All the other "outside factors" I mentioned which are actually responsible for the "tanks with damage" meta are equally allowing all sorts of builds to tank up, not just flat damage bonus builds, which only do damage and do not contribute directly to your own survivability.

I also couldn't care less if U35 made using MDW a requirement for supposedly having "top single target DoT pressure" either... it's actually stacking defile or making relequen builds. In fact, it would actually be a good thing. Better to have it so you have to use a build limiting melee arena weapon, which exposes yourself to more risk and forces you to either sacrifice a 2pc monster, a mythic, or a second 5pc set, rather than giving it to ranged DoT and kite clown builds which used to be the case and much of the reason why both the Malacath DoT meta and the Scalebreaker DoT meta were obnoxious...although relequen bow sorcs are still a thing.

That's all.

S0rwizard

Yes, any minute now

Arcanasx wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

Well... To those of you that replied to me... You are making sense, so fear not, I am understanding what you tell me. And I agree that Ele Sus is the main pain point.

Still, I don't like flat damage values. It's basically what was always wrong with procs... Then they changed almost all of them... And now we're here discussing the ones they didn't change. Doesn't that kinda say it all?

If you want good DoT pressure then you should be on a damage spec using DoTs. Not on a whatever spec using procs. And I'm not against procs... They should just scale to reflect the power of your toon. I understand that DoTs were nerfed and so everyone feels shoehorned into using all this stuff in order to kill... But that's not really justification, is it? It's just the other half of the problem.

For what it's worth I really liked @Vaqual last post. Something like that would be nice.

Vate destro does scale, so I'll assume you're talking about MDW and sets like draugrkin and DA.

MDW is a flat damage bonus that doesn't scale because it already effects an ability that scales with your stats. Masters 2h is the same way. So making MDW scale depending on weapon damage would make it so...you'd have stat scaling on an item that affects an ability that already scales with your stats, which I'd imagine might cause funny coding issues. The obvious issue with ability DOTs not doing too much damage with stats is because ZOS wanted to "narrow the gap" when it came to PVE dps so they unfortunately simplified it by lowering the DPS while increasing the duration. So unless they revert that, players are reliant on other means of trying to create pressure builds for PvP.

Flat damage modifiers have always existed since the beginning of the game, so I don't really have an issue with them existing either way; it adds another way in which to build your character. Ball groups which are basically dominating cyro aren't using these flat damage sets and they aren't getting killed by them either. You seem to support ball group gameplay (from other threads) and the force amplifier group sets and skills that they use to dominate cyro, but I do find it a bit odd how some of these other sets that are better used solo or in small scale are considered too problematic and shouldn't exist.

and then we complein about high health pool.... if a 40k health tank can do the same damage of a dps.... we have a problem

MindOfTheSwarm

No, it’s just fine as is

El_Borracho wrote: »

@IZZEFlameLash exactly. Players were warned that hybridization would lead to cosmetic differences and loss of class identity. Homogenization occurred. People complained about class identity. So the devs gave us the Arcanist, which is unlike every other class.

The result? The chronically aggrieved are upset that the other classes are not like the Arcanist, the Arcanist has skills other classes don't, the way the Arcanist's resources are set up are not available to other classes, and on and on and on.

At some point, the devs need to just say no.

I actually agree with this. Hybridization was not the way forward. New non-class skill lines were the way forward and still are. That’s how you bring more options to builds.

Arcanasx

No, it’s just fine as is

S0rwizard wrote: »

Arcanasx wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

Well... To those of you that replied to me... You are making sense, so fear not, I am understanding what you tell me. And I agree that Ele Sus is the main pain point.

Still, I don't like flat damage values. It's basically what was always wrong with procs... Then they changed almost all of them... And now we're here discussing the ones they didn't change. Doesn't that kinda say it all?

If you want good DoT pressure then you should be on a damage spec using DoTs. Not on a whatever spec using procs. And I'm not against procs... They should just scale to reflect the power of your toon. I understand that DoTs were nerfed and so everyone feels shoehorned into using all this stuff in order to kill... But that's not really justification, is it? It's just the other half of the problem.

For what it's worth I really liked @Vaqual last post. Something like that would be nice.

Vate destro does scale, so I'll assume you're talking about MDW and sets like draugrkin and DA.

MDW is a flat damage bonus that doesn't scale because it already effects an ability that scales with your stats. Masters 2h is the same way. So making MDW scale depending on weapon damage would make it so...you'd have stat scaling on an item that affects an ability that already scales with your stats, which I'd imagine might cause funny coding issues. The obvious issue with ability DOTs not doing too much damage with stats is because ZOS wanted to "narrow the gap" when it came to PVE dps so they unfortunately simplified it by lowering the DPS while increasing the duration. So unless they revert that, players are reliant on other means of trying to create pressure builds for PvP.

Flat damage modifiers have always existed since the beginning of the game, so I don't really have an issue with them existing either way; it adds another way in which to build your character. Ball groups which are basically dominating cyro aren't using these flat damage sets and they aren't getting killed by them either. You seem to support ball group gameplay (from other threads) and the force amplifier group sets and skills that they use to dominate cyro, but I do find it a bit odd how some of these other sets that are better used solo or in small scale are considered too problematic and shouldn't exist.

and then we complein about high health pool.... if a 40k health tank can do the same damage of a dps.... we have a problem

I might be misinterpreting your comment but flat damage sets aren't the issue, and they aren't the only sets that you can use to take advantage of 40k health pools.

Two players can have the exact build. Except one puts all their attribute points into stamina/magicka and the other puts it all into health. Stacking points into health is usually more effective and allows them to often trade damage more efficiently because damage gets mitigated more than healing, gives them an anti-burst buffer, and undeath also has a strong synergy with health stacking. Also, giving almost every kind of build you can make an ice staff to use with elemental susceptibility (too overloaded) just amplifies it as well.

Defensive stats in MMOs are usually slightly more efficient than offensive stats because it helps prevent ranged metas from becoming overly dominant. The problem with ESO is that its too skewed towards survivability at the moment, so damage isn't really the issue but rather the abundance of survivability that's available to take advantage of.

duckdown

No need to nerf only need to TONE DOWN a bit. this set r just too op. 1 click AT LEAST 2k per tick 1635 damage + damage from twin slashes + 100% bleeding proc.
(Combine with fire set. In 2 second this set will do around 5k damage. This set it Godly powerful its not even fun anymore)


Tell me is there any other set compare with this that can do this kind of damage. Or at least close to this damage? NONE