Why "Mechanical Acuity set" is called as PVP meta?

AvalonRanger

Why "Mechanical Acuity set" is called as PVP meta?
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Mechanical_Acuity

"Upon reaching max stacks or after the effect ends, this effect cannot occur again for 25 seconds."

I felt "25sec cooling time" is too much long. It feels like PVE group contents.

Dagoth_Rac

I 'm not super knowledgeable about PvP meta sets, but burst is king in PvP. You need to be able to do large amounts of damage in a short period of time or else enemy player will just heal through your attacks and never die. So toying with your enemy, waiting for Mechanical Acuity to proc, then hitting with all your most powerful skills, and having them all be guaranteed crits, is a lot of burst.

In PvE, you need to do consistent, steady damage over 10 minute fights. Doing really high burst damage for brief windows is not helpful. Getting a boss from 78,535,921 health to 78,424,810 health really quickly is not worth it if, in the long run, it takes more time to go from 100,000,000 to 0. You just can't burst a PvE boss down from full health to zero in a few seconds, like you can with a player.

Heren

I feel you're wrong.

Kahnak

AvalonRanger wrote: »

Why "Mechanical Acuity set" is called as PVP meta?
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Mechanical_Acuity

"Upon reaching max stacks or after the effect ends, this effect cannot occur again for 25 seconds."

I felt "25sec cooling time" is too much long. It feels like PVE group contents.

As far as I know, survivability is the meta in PvP right now. As @Dagoth_Rac explained, burst is important in PvP and MA is without a doubt a burst set.

It's possible that it could have some use in PvE, but it's niche to the point that I couldn't tell you where it would be more valuable than the existing PvE meta sets.

tsaescishoeshiner

Building on the above comment, people who use Mechanical Acuity usually wear it so it's 5/5 on one bar and 3/5 on the other. So they can wait on their 3/5 bar until it's ready and then only switch bars to activate it once they're ready to kill kill kill (i.e. ultimate and other procs ready, enemy's in a weak position, etc).

The cooldown used to be lower, and at the time the set was occasionally used in PvE, so the cooldown nerf made it way worse in PvE but still a niche in PvP. When it works, it's super fun! And I think there's a visual effect when it's ready to proc.

fred4

The set's proc condition has changed over the years. I don't think it was ramping up when it was released, but you could get 100% crit instantly when it procced. This made it a meta PvP set at the time, but anyone who calls it that now is probably quoting out-of-date information.

That said, it can still be used in PvP. Notably a templar described their build recently in these forums, which involved Thrassian Stranglers and Mechanical Acuity. I'd say he was for real. I even tried building that way, but his playstyle seemed to be very different from mine. He seemed to be a counter-puncher. He let people come to him, never be the one to attack first. Like @tsaescishoeshiner suggested, he probably stayed on his back bar, thereby controlling the proc. You probably also need a class, like templar, that does multiple hits per second (with Sweeps), so you can reliably ramp the set to the full 100%. Plus templar is one of two classes, nightblade being the other, that has a 10% class crit damage bonus. I find that templar usually benefits from light armor, because of this, but with Mechanical Acuity you can opt for medium armor instead, thereby upping your crit damage. You don't need to worry about having crit % in your base build, but you may want to be a Khajiit for this to really pay off. I don't think I'd recommend it for most PvP builds.

In PvE endgame the set is well known for boss burn strategies. Specifically you pair Mechanical Acuity with Elf Bane and an Inferno staff. The latter prolongs the destro ult by 5 seconds. This combination nukes bosses like crazy in places like vet Maelstrom, vet Vateshran, and Infinite Archive. vMA high scores may be achieved like this. Competitive players use a gear swap addon, such as Dressing Room, to swap to such a setup in for boss fights. Probably also for trash packs in score-pushing trial groups. This is basically beyond what you'll find used in vet trial PUGs, perhaps even hard mode progression groups, but it's used for score-pushing.

moo_2021

AvalonRanger wrote: »

Why "Mechanical Acuity set" is called as PVP meta?
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Mechanical_Acuity

"Upon reaching max stacks or after the effect ends, this effect cannot occur again for 25 seconds."

I felt "25sec cooling time" is too much long. It feels like PVE group contents.

Same reason people rely on ultimates for burst kills.

It's useful in Cyro and IC where opponents are properly built, and duels without very strong burst would last forever. It's good enough if you can kill someone once a minute.

Not so useful in BG.

ioResult

ZOS nerfed Mechanical Acuity at the end of 2021 into its current form.

Prior to that, the five piece bonus for MA was:

When you deal direct damage, you gain unerring mechanical vision for 5 seconds, granting you 100% Critical Strike chance. This effect can occur once every 21 seconds.

This meant every single attack you did plus all weaved in light, heavy, or bash attacks were all critical hits for five seconds. People who knew how to use this set - especially Nightblades - could melt people even from range using this set. Nightblades could Ambush into a target to activate this set and then have 5 seconds of Critical Damage to do an Incapacitating Strike and a Relentless Focus. If that didn't kill the target they still have 2 or 3 critical hits of Surprise Attack to finish them off. Then add in a weave of a critical light or heavy attack between each skill in this combo. 100% of people died to Nightblades using this set who knew what they were doing.

Then in late 2021, ZOS nerfed the five piece bonus of MA to:

When you deal non Critical Damage, you gain a stack of Mechanical Acuity for 4 seconds, granting you 20% Critical Strike chance per stack, up to once every 1 second and stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching max stacks or after the effect ends, this effect cannot occur again for 25 seconds.

From the perspective of every Nightblade main in Cyrodiil, this nerf was a direct attack on their class and (ganker) playstyle. If you ask people who have mained a Nightblade since beta, it was the first of many attacks on Nightblades up to and including this last patch. But that's another thread.

This change made Mechanical Acuity not practical at all for squishy Nightblades. At the time even those Nightblades trying to make 1vX Brawlblades couldn't really use the new Mechanical Acuity effectively, so it was abandoned by PvPers.

But then came the tank meta to Cyrodiil. And this has been followed by the current Unkillable meta - with all the silly multi-part Scribing skills - a meta that lets classes like DK and Warden survive through just about anything yet still kill opponents.

With the current silly PvP meta, Mechanical Acuity becomes more relevant for any tanky build & class. You run MA jewelry and then some 2 piece weapons on your front bar from another set. On your back bar you run a MA healing staff (because you're afraid to die). Then you sit on your back bar heavy attacking, shielding and healing - building up stacks of MA. When you get close to full stacks, you swap bars and do a burst combo. You get all the crit from MA and try to burst down your opponent. If you can't, you simply swap back to your back bar and Scribe your way to endless heals & shields, building up MA stacks again until you can rinse & repeat. It takes no PvP skill at all because your class, your other (tanky) set and Scribing skills with their stacking heals and shields all combine to carry you. And that's why some folks might think that Mechanical Acuity is a meta set again these days.

AvalonRanger

ioResult wrote: »

ZOS nerfed Mechanical Acuity at the end of 2021 into its current form.

Prior to that, the five piece bonus for MA was:

show previous quotes

When you deal direct damage, you gain unerring mechanical vision for 5 seconds, granting you 100% Critical Strike chance. This effect can occur once every 21 seconds.

This meant every single attack you did plus all weaved in light, heavy, or bash attacks were all critical hits for five seconds. People who knew how to use this set - especially Nightblades - could melt people even from range using this set. Nightblades could Ambush into a target to activate this set and then have 5 seconds of Critical Damage to do an Incapacitating Strike and a Relentless Focus. If that didn't kill the target they still have 2 or 3 critical hits of Surprise Attack to finish them off. Then add in a weave of a critical light or heavy attack between each skill in this combo. 100% of people died to Nightblades using this set who knew what they were doing.

Then in late 2021, ZOS nerfed the five piece bonus of MA to:

show previous quotes

When you deal non Critical Damage, you gain a stack of Mechanical Acuity for 4 seconds, granting you 20% Critical Strike chance per stack, up to once every 1 second and stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching max stacks or after the effect ends, this effect cannot occur again for 25 seconds.

From the perspective of every Nightblade main in Cyrodiil, this nerf was a direct attack on their class and (ganker) playstyle. If you ask people who have mained a Nightblade since beta, it was the first of many attacks on Nightblades up to and including this last patch. But that's another thread.

This change made Mechanical Acuity not practical at all for squishy Nightblades. At the time even those Nightblades trying to make 1vX Brawlblades couldn't really use the new Mechanical Acuity effectively, so it was abandoned by PvPers.

But then came the tank meta to Cyrodiil. And this has been followed by the current Unkillable meta - with all the silly multi-part Scribing skills - a meta that lets classes like DK and Warden survive through just about anything yet still kill opponents.

With the current silly PvP meta, Mechanical Acuity becomes more relevant for any tanky build & class. You run MA jewelry and then some 2 piece weapons on your front bar from another set. On your back bar you run a MA healing staff (because you're afraid to die). Then you sit on your back bar heavy attacking, shielding and healing - building up stacks of MA. When you get close to full stacks, you swap bars and do a burst combo. You get all the crit from MA and try to burst down your opponent. If you can't, you simply swap back to your back bar and Scribe your way to endless heals & shields, building up MA stacks again until you can rinse & repeat. It takes no PvP skill at all because your class, your other (tanky) set and Scribing skills with their stacking heals and shields all combine to carry you. And that's why some folks might think that Mechanical Acuity is a meta set again these days.

Hmm...Interesting information. Thanks.

danko355

I believe it’s still used very often, but by wardens and dks mostly. You just build very tanky and wait for the ulti, then pop northern storm / corrosive and melt people with ulti+ MA combo. Works very well since you don’t need to build for damage, but still have tons of damage during this attacking window.

CameraBeardThePirate

AvalonRanger wrote: »

Why "Mechanical Acuity set" is called as PVP meta?
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Mechanical_Acuity

"Upon reaching max stacks or after the effect ends, this effect cannot occur again for 25 seconds."

I felt "25sec cooling time" is too much long. It feels like PVE group contents.

25 seconds is not too long. PvP is played around combos. Most kill combos will require an ultimate to actually kill the opponent. While Acuity is on cooldown, you play defensively and charge your ultimate. Once Acuity is ready, you dump your ultimate and rinse and repeat.

In fact, 25 seconds is often too short for most classes to recharge their ultimate, requiring the player to stay on their off-bar to prevent Acuity from activating before their ultimate is ready.