What to farm in Infinite Archive, and for what purpose?

fred4

I'll keep this list short, because Infinite Archive sets have been largely derided, and for good reason. I am, however, not well enough versed on most of them. If you have sets to add, please comment.

Soulcleaver is the set I actually use extensively. It is not meta. The ultgen nerf incurred by it is basically just mean, since the set is not regarded as competitive. However, it suited my well-established main character down to the ground. So what do I use it for:

1. PvP, especially the PvPvE of Imperial City. If you want to mix solo boss farming with PvP, you want to heal from damage. You run Swallow Soul, even though it's a bad spammable. It is a bad spammable, because it's damage is crap. It pales in comparison to Concealed Weapon. That said, it's easier to hit players with a ranged skill and, of course, you heal from it. Soulcleaver lifts that spammable to a decent (but merely decent) level and it adds some kick to Sap Essence, which also heals you and which you use to execute dodge rollers. The cost reduction helps with spamming particularly Sap Essence.
2. Casual PvE: A Siphoning-based magblade is good for casual solo play and solo arenas. You care less about damage and rely on the self-healing.
3. Competitive PvE: Well, it's not. Or is it? If your ambition is to merely get by in vet trial PUGs, Soulcleaver is not bad, possibly even good, since you're ready-made for portals requiring self-healing. I'm not expecting to beat arcanists on my nightblade, but if I can hover around the 12% mark of overall group damage in a random PUG, I'm happy. The combination of Soulcleaver, Whorl of Depths, and Velothi Ur matches the arcanist approach. It forgoes light attacks in favor of greater AOE damage. Sap Essence gets buffed quite a bit. I've done 14.4% of group damage in the last phase of vLC, despite parsing only 75K on a dummy. It may not have been a great PUG, but all the same.

Basalt-Blooded Warrior: Don't even bother. To the best of my recollection people thought this set would be good when IA came out. I'm really scratching my head. You could double-bar it in PvP, where you would value the back bar healing, but:

1. You really care about the ultigen above all else. You won't have 100% uptime on it outside of an Oakensoul build, so why not wear Drake's Rush and also help your group instead?
2. Double-barring a set is just not a good build pattern in PvP. It's very hard to compete with "front bar set" + "back bar set" + "monster set" + "mythic" + "1x Trainee". Basalt-Blooded doesn't really do that.

El_Borracho

Pyrebrand is a decent DK set in PVP and PVE, especially on a bow build.

fred4

El_Borracho wrote: »

Pyrebrand is a decent DK set in PVP and PVE, especially on a bow build.

Didn't it get nerfed? What was the effect of that? I'm not keeping track...

Cooperharley

El_Borracho wrote: »

Pyrebrand is a decent DK set in PVP and PVE, especially on a bow build.

*was a decent set before u44. Now it's not. ZOS took a sledgehammer to it per usual rather than a slight nerf, or even better, BUFFING other lesser-used sets.

The only thing in IA worth farming IMO are the class style pages for the class sets and the maligraphic horse mount if you haven't received that yet. After that, there's no incentive in my book.

El_Borracho

Cooperharley wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Pyrebrand is a decent DK set in PVP and PVE, especially on a bow build.

*was a decent set before u44. Now it's not. ZOS took a sledgehammer to it per usual rather than a slight nerf, or even better, BUFFING other lesser-used sets.

The only thing in IA worth farming IMO are the class style pages for the class sets and the maligraphic horse mount if you haven't received that yet. After that, there's no incentive in my book.

Welp, that's a bummer.