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What armor sets to craft for what purpose
fred4
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Further to my posts from last December ... these ones:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669706/what-dungeons-to-farm-and-for-what
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669712/what-trials-to-farm-and-for-what
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669714/what-mythics-to-farm-and-for-what-purpose
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669772/what-arena-gear-to-farm-and-for-what-purpose
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669776/what-to-farm-in-infinite-archive-and-for-what-purpose
Here's a rundown of useful craftable sets. I have bolded the truly useful ones:
Alessia's Bulwark - May be useful for Infinite Archive. Since enemies have low weapon and spell damage, there, it can significantly reduce their damage. However you may be better off with Torug's Pact and/or Heartland Conqueror to deal with marauders, since Weakening Enchants can scale up to an order of magnitude higher with visions. Alessia's Bulwark is probably only useful in early arcs.
Armor of the Seducer - Has limited use in case you specifically want cost reduction, for example as a backbar set to reduce the cost of Shadowy Disguise. That said, there are better ways to achieve high cloak sustain.
Ashen Grip - Might work as a poor man's PvP proc set, but requires melee range. Way of Fire is the actual meta set instead.
Hunding's Rage / Law of Julianos - Outdated sets, displaced by Order's Wrath. Might still work as the second set, when wearing Order's Wrath already, but Claw of the Forest Wraith is probably the better option in that case, depending on class / build. The combination of Order's Wrath + Julianos should be the best for a healer without access to any other crit or healing sets, or use Order's Wrath + Kagrenac's Hope.
Night's Silence - Really only useful if you dislike playing as a (stage 1) vampire.
Night Mother's Gaze - Has been an option for nightblade gankers in PvP, e.g. because you don't have time to apply Major Breach without giving the game away otherwise. Note that nightblade guarantees a crit when opening from cloak, thus this works. Is it still the best? I doubt it.
Torug's Pact - A flexible set with a variety of uses. Makes for a decent back bar tank set when you have nothing else, e.g. due to the Armor buffs and buffing an Infused Crusher enchant from 2K to 3K. Also very useful in Infinite Archive to lower the cooldown of an Infused Weakening enchant and increase it's value, e.g. to deal with marauders and avoid enchant downtime.
Vampire's Kiss - I mention it, because of the size of the heal. That said, the proc condition is probably too situational for it to be truly useful. Might be good for soloing, but if you've got Pale Order, just wear that.
Willow's Path - This set has never scaled as well as the tooltip would have you believe, because I don't think it scales with your other multipliers, such as those from the nightblade class. Generally, if you want to build for either sustain or health regen, other sets are better. However it might be worth (re-)testing for specific builds and how it interacts with Infinite Archive buffs.
Highland Sentinel - I believe this works as a dummy parsing set and not much more. May, however, be meta in some content where you stand still a lot. Sunspire springs to mind, but the true meta may be Flame Blossom for the boss fights, there.
Adept Rider - People make this for their brand new characters, which haven't yet been able to go to Cyrodiil and get Major Gallop from the intro quest. That's about it.
Aetherial Ascension - A possibly underrated set. A personal favorite for adding tankiness to light or medium armor (solo) builds, while retaining the damage and sustain passives of those armor types. Nerfs your damage quite a bit, but for some (world) boss fights this works better than shielding setups. The core combat cost penalty is surprisingly innocuous.
Ancient Dragonguard - A solid PvP / solo PvE set. Not particularly good, but also not terrible.
Assassin's Guile - A possibly interesting set. For example it extends the duration of multi-effect poisons, so they might actually be useful. The most notable use is extending Escapist poisons from 4.4s to 8.4s in PvP, which grants you near 100% CC immunity. However a full 5-piece set is a steep price, most likely making you a troll build.
Claw of the Forest Wraith - A meta DD option for some classes, such as Arcanist, for players who only have access to crafted sets and combine this with Order's Wrath. I believe the latter beats it, which means you use Forest Wraith only in that combination.
Clever Alchemist - Was a popular PvP option until the nerf that makes it activate only in combat, e.g. it's no longer good for ganking. Should still be decent. Possibly an option for some PvE boss burn setups also.
Daedric Trickery - Was quite a meta PvP option for a while, especially as a back bar set for DKs, and possibly still is.
Deadland's Demolisher - Used for bash builds, notably by necros, e.g. builds that throw everything into dealing bash damage. Also useful as an AOE interrupt. In that capacity it could be useful to interrupt blob shards in Infinite Archive add waves, but probably competes with too many other sets, considering it's such a niche use.
Diamond's Victory - Was a meta PvE DD set until it got nerfed. I believe it's now more or less defunct.
Dragon's Appetite - A meta PvP set with the right, carefully-crafted build. Like Draugrkin, it thrives on flat-buffing small damage. Best used with DOTs, status effects, Crushing Shock, and a bleed damage skill, the latter of which can now be scribed. While Draugrkin deals higher damage and debuffs your healing, Dragon's Appetite buffs your healing.
Druid's Braid - Mostly a 1-piece filler set, if you don't have access to Trainee or want to stack it with the latter.
Eternal Hunt - A very old set for dodge rolling PvP stamblades. Not popular anymore, due to the sheer amount of other options, but still a perfectly decent set for a unique playstyle, both offensive and defensive.
Fortified Brass - If you want to make your first PvE tank, you are low CP, perhaps the "wrong" race (e.g. not Nord), and you don't have anything else yet, this is a recommended option to get to the 33K resistance cap.
Heartland Conqueror - A unique buildcrafting set to play around with weapon traits. Notable applications include buffing your Infused Weakening enchants to deal with marauders in Infinite Archive and raising your status effect chance via the Charged trait. A PvP setup with a Sharpened front bar weapon and a Defending backbar one might also be something to do. On the other hand, the minor bonuses of this set are basically garbage and double-barring a set is a disadvantage in a (PvP) meta that favors a front bar set, a back bar set, a full monster set, and a mythic. This conspires to make Heartland Conqueror uncompetitive, unless you figure out a niche use. That said, another of it's niche uses is to buff Training weapons when leveling a new character.
Innate Axiom - This is really "meh", but it's worth pointing out the double magicka + stamina 3-piece line, making this vaguely attractive for PvP or as a 3-piece only. Still, you can find better options.
Mechanical Acuity - A very meta set for it's particular uses. These include temporary boss burn setups for PvE, such as combining it with Elf Bane and an inferno staff ultimate. This is how high scores are made, for example in the solo arenas. On the other hand they include PvP uses. The proc can be controlled by single barring. Some tanky builds wait for ultimate on their back bar, only to hit you with something like the destro ult or Northern Storm and Blood for Blood, while gaining up to 100% crit from Mechanical Acuity on their front bar. The scribed warden ground AOE CC is particularly nasty in this context. Mechanical Acuity is possibly one of the components turning these warden builds into the meta setups that they are.
New Moon Acolyte - I wouldn't wear this today, but it was once a meta PvP set.
Order's Wrath - The single crafted meta DD set you wear, when you have nothing else, or even when you do. Not outright meta for the highest damage, but close and very universal due to it's simplicity and usefulness for all classes. That said, my personal feeling is that you need to be a good player with a good rotation to get the most out of it, otherwise it may feel lacklustre. The same can be said for the actual outright meta DD set, Coral Riptide, only much more so in that case. Both are stat sets. I think in terms of ease of use, proc sets, such as Whorl of Depths, Pillar of Nirn, maybe Aegis Caller, maybe Null Arca, tend to give you damage more easily with a sloppy rotation, or simply a 1 1/2 bar one instead of a full 2 bar rotation. On the other hand Ansuul is the non-proc set I would wear instead of Order's Wrath, if you have it, or Deadly Strike in case of arcanist or templar, or both of them on those classes.
Shacklebreaker - Like New Moon Acolyte, this set is now ancient and only gets a historical mention for PvP. It was, however, one of the few sets allowed in the Ravenwatch campaign, when that was restricted.
Shattered Fate - A viable PvP front bar set as a 5-piece. Personally my testing on a normal dummy left me unconvinced as to how good this really is, but some meta players use this, because penetration rules in PvP.
Sload's Semblance - This set was a PvP menace when it was released. Now nerfed and rarely seen, it still deserves a mention as an unmitigatable Oblivion damage set. Perhaps combine with Jerall Warchief.
Stuhn's Favor - An old PvP set, quite meta on release. Offering a unique source of penetration it should still be decent, but your build must have the means to proc Off Balance.
Tava's Favor - I believe this set is now dead, because someone actually has to fire at you and you have to dodge roll the damage. If I remember correctly, it once procced from having Shuffle running, e.g. Major Evasion, but this has long been changed.
Telvanni Efficiency - This set was recently nerfed for no good reason. Then and now, if you want your companions to be marginally useful in harder content, wear this set for fun and use Quickened on top. In terms of actual vet endgame, though, companions fail. They basically have no true use one way or the other.
Trial by Fire - A tanky PvP set option.
Wretched Vitality - A very meta PvP backbar set. The single best sustain set in the game. Enough said.
Armor Master - I'm not sure people still use this (in PvP), because there are so many competing sets. This set doesn't quite work. The 10 second time is rather too short, it doesn't match the Shuffle activation time for example, but the buff does carry to the other bar. The point of having a time-activated set is to single-bar it, thus the health buff is kind of wasted, unless you have a health-scaling heal on your back bar maybe.
Critical Riposte - I've only ever used this as 2-piece in Ravenwatch, when I had nothing else to slot.
Kagrenac's Hope - I think this deserves a mention in so far as resurrection times may be undervalued. In some content you get constantly stunned or interrupted. PvP and lots of PvE content springs to mind. A templar with the rez CP and this set may have insanely short resurrection times. What probably kills the set is the existence of necro, rez sigils in vBRP, or simply that you have a fundamental problem when players die in the first place, especially on a no death run
.
Oblivion's Foe - I've used this set when taking baby characters into Cyrodiil at level 10, because Soul Trap is one of the earliest skills you unlock.
Twice Born Star - This set is ancient. Just a note. Don't use it. When you swap it out, you lose your 2nd mundus stone, so you have to keep wearing this set forever, or that happens. You have to go to a mundus stone every time you put the set back on. Haven't checked in a long time, but that bug is probably still present. The set is not good enough to justify the hassle. The minor bonuses are terrible and it doesn't fit into today's build meta, where single-barring sets is generally useful and outright meta for PvP.
Edited by fred4 on April 10, 2025 3:29PM https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669706/what-dungeons-to-farm-and-for-what
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669712/what-trials-to-farm-and-for-what
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669714/what-mythics-to-farm-and-for-what-purpose
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669772/what-arena-gear-to-farm-and-for-what-purpose
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669776/what-to-farm-in-infinite-archive-and-for-what-purpose
Here's a rundown of useful craftable sets. I have bolded the truly useful ones:
Alessia's Bulwark - May be useful for Infinite Archive. Since enemies have low weapon and spell damage, there, it can significantly reduce their damage. However you may be better off with Torug's Pact and/or Heartland Conqueror to deal with marauders, since Weakening Enchants can scale up to an order of magnitude higher with visions. Alessia's Bulwark is probably only useful in early arcs.
Armor of the Seducer - Has limited use in case you specifically want cost reduction, for example as a backbar set to reduce the cost of Shadowy Disguise. That said, there are better ways to achieve high cloak sustain.
Ashen Grip - Might work as a poor man's PvP proc set, but requires melee range. Way of Fire is the actual meta set instead.
Hunding's Rage / Law of Julianos - Outdated sets, displaced by Order's Wrath. Might still work as the second set, when wearing Order's Wrath already, but Claw of the Forest Wraith is probably the better option in that case, depending on class / build. The combination of Order's Wrath + Julianos should be the best for a healer without access to any other crit or healing sets, or use Order's Wrath + Kagrenac's Hope.
Night's Silence - Really only useful if you dislike playing as a (stage 1) vampire.
Night Mother's Gaze - Has been an option for nightblade gankers in PvP, e.g. because you don't have time to apply Major Breach without giving the game away otherwise. Note that nightblade guarantees a crit when opening from cloak, thus this works. Is it still the best? I doubt it.
Torug's Pact - A flexible set with a variety of uses. Makes for a decent back bar tank set when you have nothing else, e.g. due to the Armor buffs and buffing an Infused Crusher enchant from 2K to 3K. Also very useful in Infinite Archive to lower the cooldown of an Infused Weakening enchant and increase it's value, e.g. to deal with marauders and avoid enchant downtime.
Vampire's Kiss - I mention it, because of the size of the heal. That said, the proc condition is probably too situational for it to be truly useful. Might be good for soloing, but if you've got Pale Order, just wear that.
Willow's Path - This set has never scaled as well as the tooltip would have you believe, because I don't think it scales with your other multipliers, such as those from the nightblade class. Generally, if you want to build for either sustain or health regen, other sets are better. However it might be worth (re-)testing for specific builds and how it interacts with Infinite Archive buffs.
Highland Sentinel - I believe this works as a dummy parsing set and not much more. May, however, be meta in some content where you stand still a lot. Sunspire springs to mind, but the true meta may be Flame Blossom for the boss fights, there.
Adept Rider - People make this for their brand new characters, which haven't yet been able to go to Cyrodiil and get Major Gallop from the intro quest. That's about it.
Aetherial Ascension - A possibly underrated set. A personal favorite for adding tankiness to light or medium armor (solo) builds, while retaining the damage and sustain passives of those armor types. Nerfs your damage quite a bit, but for some (world) boss fights this works better than shielding setups. The core combat cost penalty is surprisingly innocuous.
Ancient Dragonguard - A solid PvP / solo PvE set. Not particularly good, but also not terrible.
Assassin's Guile - A possibly interesting set. For example it extends the duration of multi-effect poisons, so they might actually be useful. The most notable use is extending Escapist poisons from 4.4s to 8.4s in PvP, which grants you near 100% CC immunity. However a full 5-piece set is a steep price, most likely making you a troll build.
Claw of the Forest Wraith - A meta DD option for some classes, such as Arcanist, for players who only have access to crafted sets and combine this with Order's Wrath. I believe the latter beats it, which means you use Forest Wraith only in that combination.
Clever Alchemist - Was a popular PvP option until the nerf that makes it activate only in combat, e.g. it's no longer good for ganking. Should still be decent. Possibly an option for some PvE boss burn setups also.
Daedric Trickery - Was quite a meta PvP option for a while, especially as a back bar set for DKs, and possibly still is.
Deadland's Demolisher - Used for bash builds, notably by necros, e.g. builds that throw everything into dealing bash damage. Also useful as an AOE interrupt. In that capacity it could be useful to interrupt blob shards in Infinite Archive add waves, but probably competes with too many other sets, considering it's such a niche use.
Diamond's Victory - Was a meta PvE DD set until it got nerfed. I believe it's now more or less defunct.
Dragon's Appetite - A meta PvP set with the right, carefully-crafted build. Like Draugrkin, it thrives on flat-buffing small damage. Best used with DOTs, status effects, Crushing Shock, and a bleed damage skill, the latter of which can now be scribed. While Draugrkin deals higher damage and debuffs your healing, Dragon's Appetite buffs your healing.
Druid's Braid - Mostly a 1-piece filler set, if you don't have access to Trainee or want to stack it with the latter.
Eternal Hunt - A very old set for dodge rolling PvP stamblades. Not popular anymore, due to the sheer amount of other options, but still a perfectly decent set for a unique playstyle, both offensive and defensive.
Fortified Brass - If you want to make your first PvE tank, you are low CP, perhaps the "wrong" race (e.g. not Nord), and you don't have anything else yet, this is a recommended option to get to the 33K resistance cap.
Heartland Conqueror - A unique buildcrafting set to play around with weapon traits. Notable applications include buffing your Infused Weakening enchants to deal with marauders in Infinite Archive and raising your status effect chance via the Charged trait. A PvP setup with a Sharpened front bar weapon and a Defending backbar one might also be something to do. On the other hand, the minor bonuses of this set are basically garbage and double-barring a set is a disadvantage in a (PvP) meta that favors a front bar set, a back bar set, a full monster set, and a mythic. This conspires to make Heartland Conqueror uncompetitive, unless you figure out a niche use. That said, another of it's niche uses is to buff Training weapons when leveling a new character.
Innate Axiom - This is really "meh", but it's worth pointing out the double magicka + stamina 3-piece line, making this vaguely attractive for PvP or as a 3-piece only. Still, you can find better options.
Mechanical Acuity - A very meta set for it's particular uses. These include temporary boss burn setups for PvE, such as combining it with Elf Bane and an inferno staff ultimate. This is how high scores are made, for example in the solo arenas. On the other hand they include PvP uses. The proc can be controlled by single barring. Some tanky builds wait for ultimate on their back bar, only to hit you with something like the destro ult or Northern Storm and Blood for Blood, while gaining up to 100% crit from Mechanical Acuity on their front bar. The scribed warden ground AOE CC is particularly nasty in this context. Mechanical Acuity is possibly one of the components turning these warden builds into the meta setups that they are.
New Moon Acolyte - I wouldn't wear this today, but it was once a meta PvP set.
Order's Wrath - The single crafted meta DD set you wear, when you have nothing else, or even when you do. Not outright meta for the highest damage, but close and very universal due to it's simplicity and usefulness for all classes. That said, my personal feeling is that you need to be a good player with a good rotation to get the most out of it, otherwise it may feel lacklustre. The same can be said for the actual outright meta DD set, Coral Riptide, only much more so in that case. Both are stat sets. I think in terms of ease of use, proc sets, such as Whorl of Depths, Pillar of Nirn, maybe Aegis Caller, maybe Null Arca, tend to give you damage more easily with a sloppy rotation, or simply a 1 1/2 bar one instead of a full 2 bar rotation. On the other hand Ansuul is the non-proc set I would wear instead of Order's Wrath, if you have it, or Deadly Strike in case of arcanist or templar, or both of them on those classes.
Shacklebreaker - Like New Moon Acolyte, this set is now ancient and only gets a historical mention for PvP. It was, however, one of the few sets allowed in the Ravenwatch campaign, when that was restricted.
Shattered Fate - A viable PvP front bar set as a 5-piece. Personally my testing on a normal dummy left me unconvinced as to how good this really is, but some meta players use this, because penetration rules in PvP.
Sload's Semblance - This set was a PvP menace when it was released. Now nerfed and rarely seen, it still deserves a mention as an unmitigatable Oblivion damage set. Perhaps combine with Jerall Warchief.
Stuhn's Favor - An old PvP set, quite meta on release. Offering a unique source of penetration it should still be decent, but your build must have the means to proc Off Balance.
Tava's Favor - I believe this set is now dead, because someone actually has to fire at you and you have to dodge roll the damage. If I remember correctly, it once procced from having Shuffle running, e.g. Major Evasion, but this has long been changed.
Telvanni Efficiency - This set was recently nerfed for no good reason. Then and now, if you want your companions to be marginally useful in harder content, wear this set for fun and use Quickened on top. In terms of actual vet endgame, though, companions fail. They basically have no true use one way or the other.
Trial by Fire - A tanky PvP set option.
Wretched Vitality - A very meta PvP backbar set. The single best sustain set in the game. Enough said.
Armor Master - I'm not sure people still use this (in PvP), because there are so many competing sets. This set doesn't quite work. The 10 second time is rather too short, it doesn't match the Shuffle activation time for example, but the buff does carry to the other bar. The point of having a time-activated set is to single-bar it, thus the health buff is kind of wasted, unless you have a health-scaling heal on your back bar maybe.
Critical Riposte - I've only ever used this as 2-piece in Ravenwatch, when I had nothing else to slot.
Kagrenac's Hope - I think this deserves a mention in so far as resurrection times may be undervalued. In some content you get constantly stunned or interrupted. PvP and lots of PvE content springs to mind. A templar with the rez CP and this set may have insanely short resurrection times. What probably kills the set is the existence of necro, rez sigils in vBRP, or simply that you have a fundamental problem when players die in the first place, especially on a no death run
.Oblivion's Foe - I've used this set when taking baby characters into Cyrodiil at level 10, because Soul Trap is one of the earliest skills you unlock.
Twice Born Star - This set is ancient. Just a note. Don't use it. When you swap it out, you lose your 2nd mundus stone, so you have to keep wearing this set forever, or that happens. You have to go to a mundus stone every time you put the set back on. Haven't checked in a long time, but that bug is probably still present. The set is not good enough to justify the hassle. The minor bonuses are terrible and it doesn't fit into today's build meta, where single-barring sets is generally useful and outright meta for PvP.
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