Please explain Telvanni Efficiency Armor set

BlackSail_123

OK, so I have the Telvanni Efficency stuff. I happen to be using 3 jewelry pieces and weapons, to make a 5 piece set. I understand the text of the Telvanni armor, a 50% reduction in the coooldowns for your companion's abilities. My choice for companions is Isobel, as a healer. I use all purple quickened mediun armor pieces (except for a blue necklace). So, I took off all of my telvanni, to see what the cast time for the ability "Vanish" would be. The ability showed a cooldown of 23.8 seconds (without the Telvanni stuff). Redonned the pieces and checked again, expecting 11.9 seconds. Was surprised to see 5.8 seconds. That is only 24.4% of that greater time. How? Is the reduction offered by the Telvanni Efficiency armor bugged (in our favor)? I almost feel like I am cheating, as Isobel heals constantly, and pretty much can not die. Her vanish lasts 6 seconds, and resets in only 5.8 seconds now...will be even less once I get that last purple piece. How am I getting a roughly 75% reduction?

EdjeSwift

@Erickson9610 broke this down a while back

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/649582/companion-cooldown-chart

BlackSail_123

@EdjeSwift Thanks for that link. I searched before posting, but did not see that. Takes a bit of concentration to grasp it, at first, but helpful.

Necrotech_Master

it stacks cooldown reductions with quickened trait companion gear

purple quickened gear is 2.6% each and you can get it on every piece of gear

7 equipment slots, 3 jewelry, and 1-2 weapon slots (im not sure if the companions 2h weapons have twice the value as 1h weapons)

not counting weapon slots, it would be 26% cooldown reduction if you had purple companion gear from equipment + jewelry, if you had a 1h/shield for example, i think those are also 2.6% each which would be 31.2% cooldown reduction total

add in telvanni set for an additional 50% cooldown reduction

i dont remember if the companion buffs were multiplicative or additive, if it was additive then you would be getting roughly 80% cooldown with telvanni + all quickened traits

Orbital78

It is decent for IA farming, but you're never going to be able to compete with a real duo score.

BlackSail_123

The math on the cooldown time reduction is definitely not straightforward. I do understand the explanation shown in that table, but still find it strange that when the only change is the armor, the cooldown reduction is so large. As stated, 23.8 seconds without the Telvanni armor. While nothing else changes, simply donning the 5 pieces drops that time to 5.8 seconds. Not complaining, just find it strange. Says 50%, but you ultimately get 75.6% off the already quickened times. That gives a total of 83.9% time reduction from the original 36 second cooldown on the Vanish ability.

BlackSail_123

The additive stacking of reductions is mathematically strange. Normally, IRL, reductions occur on the remainder amount, not the original amount. For example, if you have 100 of something and reduce it by 10%, you now have 90. Doing a further 10% reduction would reduce the amount to 81, not 80. The first 10% plus the second 10% is not equal to a 20% reduction. I see what is happening with the cooldown reductions, they are just added together then applied to the original 36 seconds, but still find this strange. I also again state that it feels like cheating. A fully quickened Isobel, with 4 "heal if below x%" abilities slotted makes you close to unkillable. Only really massive kill shots, from uber bosses, might do it, otherwise you are just continuously healed. I have solo'ed group dungeons that I should not have been able to do.

Araneae6537

It makes sense to me that the reductions are applied all together — otherwise it would never be best to stack the same trait as you’d get less and less from it.

Don’t forget that you’re trading a five piece set bonus to increase your companion’s efficacy! It’s good that we have tools to complete content we previously couldn’t solo.

Necrotech_Master

Uazole2 wrote: »

The additive stacking of reductions is mathematically strange. Normally, IRL, reductions occur on the remainder amount, not the original amount. For example, if you have 100 of something and reduce it by 10%, you now have 90. Doing a further 10% reduction would reduce the amount to 81, not 80. The first 10% plus the second 10% is not equal to a 20% reduction. I see what is happening with the cooldown reductions, they are just added together then applied to the original 36 seconds, but still find this strange. I also again state that it feels like cheating. A fully quickened Isobel, with 4 "heal if below x%" abilities slotted makes you close to unkillable. Only really massive kill shots, from uber bosses, might do it, otherwise you are just continuously healed. I have solo'ed group dungeons that I should not have been able to do.

to be honest companion builds are really shallow, the only thing you can do is stack traits, kind of wish they would have sets lol

that being said, soloing group dungeons is more of a matter of skill level, ive been able to solo virtually all group dungeons that dont have some kind of prevent mechanic (like wayrest 2) both with or without a companion, though it is definitely faster with a companion to have the dmg or tanking (though a lot of dlc dungeons the companion will frequently die to mechanics anyway)

BlackSail_123

Don't get me wrong, I love the set. Yeah, doing things the proper mathematical way does give diminishing results for each reduction. I calculated what the result would be, if each reduction only affected the prior total. The result would be 12.7 seconds for Vanish. This is found by reducing 36 seconds by 2.6% then repeating 11 more times (using the answer from the prior calculation as the start), then the 3% reduction, then the 50% reduction. So yeah, I am way happier with the additive method.

Jim_Pipp

The titular question has had great answers... but why use both quickened and telvanni efficiency?

On paper it is impressive; A cool down can be reduced from 36 seconds to 5.5 - and 5.5 seconds is better than a companion needs for a perfect rotation of skills (cooldown + cast time, an ability every second)... Except there are only 3x undaunted and 1x armour skills with 36 second cooldown, and they don't make a good build except for the synergies.

Cooldown reduction does not change synergy cooldowns. Even if your undaunted skills have a 5.5 second cooldown, you can only use each synergy every 20 seconds.

I love companion builds; my favourite two build styles are;

1) "quickened builds" - 4-5 skills with a cooldown of 12 seconds, and a duration of 8 seconds, use enough quickened to reduce the cooldown to 9-ish, so every ability has near 100% uptime with occasional light attacks for ultigen.

2) "telvanni efficiency builds" lots of skills have a duration half of the cooldown (including the 36 second skills due to the 20 second synergy cooldown), which allows near 100% uptime on the best companion buffs/debuffs.

I can see how certain skills (e.g. vanish) become very powerful with both quickened and TE, but I can't think of a companion build that would shine with both.

Necrotech_Master

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

The titular question has had great answers... but why use both quickened and telvanni efficiency?

On paper it is impressive; A cool down can be reduced from 36 seconds to 5.5 - and 5.5 seconds is better than a companion needs for a perfect rotation of skills (cooldown + cast time, an ability every second)... Except there are only 3x undaunted and 1x armour skills with 36 second cooldown, and they don't make a good build except for the synergies.

Cooldown reduction does not change synergy cooldowns. Even if your undaunted skills have a 5.5 second cooldown, you can only use each synergy every 20 seconds.

I love companion builds; my favourite two build styles are;

1) "quickened builds" - 4-5 skills with a cooldown of 12 seconds, and a duration of 8 seconds, use enough quickened to reduce the cooldown to 9-ish, so every ability has near 100% uptime with occasional light attacks for ultigen.

2) "telvanni efficiency builds" lots of skills have a duration half of the cooldown (including the 36 second skills due to the 20 second synergy cooldown), which allows near 100% uptime on the best companion buffs/debuffs.

I can see how certain skills (e.g. vanish) become very powerful with both quickened and TE, but I can't think of a companion build that would shine with both.

yeah your usually giving up too much to do full quickened + telvanni

because many of the base companion skills are only like ~12-14 sec cooldowns, reducing those by 80% brings them down to ~2.8 sec for 14 sec base cooldown

this can cause problems with companions not actually using many of their skills, since the prioritize them from slot 1 to slot 5, if you have a skill with 3 sec cooldown in slot 1, they might almost never get to slot 5 of a rotation

and using quickened also means your companion is losing dmg (either raw dmg from +dmg trait, crit chance from the +crit trait, or armor pen from the +pen trait) if you are doing a dps companion, or +max hp/+dmg reduction for a tank companion

so if your using telvanni efficiency, i would say its extremely inefficient to use a lot of quickened trait gear

BlackSail_123

My "healer" Isobel uses only healing abilities. I have "Mystic Fortress" from the resto staff line in slot 1, "Vanish", from the medium armor line in slot 2, then all 3 "Healing Grace" class abilities slotted in slots 3,4 & 5, plus her ultimate. There are no synergies associated with any of these. Whole point of this build is basically unlimited, continuous heals for the group. Even with low max health, everyone in your group will be very hard to kill, and Isobel herself stays alive almost all the time (rarely ever dies).