Essence Thief BUG

AvidNecro

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the Essence Thief set may be bugged or not functioning as intended. When compared to other damage sets, its performance—especially when compared to buffs like Major Berserk or a flat 10% damage increase—essence thief still seems to consistently outperform expectations.
While I play on console and don't have access to detailed combat metrics, the in-game results strongly suggest that Essence Thief is delivering more damage than what its tooltip indicates. The numbers don't seem to align with normal scaling, and its sustain potential is equally concerning. Even when running two full damage sets and a monster set, players using Essence Thief are demonstrating unusually high tankiness and sustain, which doesn't align with typical build trade-offs.
I may be mistaken, but the current performance of Essence Thief appears to violate core balance principles. I believe it would be worth investigating whether there's a bug, unintended synergy, or possible exploit associated with this set.
Thanks for your time and for looking into this.

Thumbless_Bot

You can look into it yourself in about 5 seconds.

This is theorycrafting 101 and one of the most enjoyable parts of the game, but you probably know that.

Hit a dummy with dizzy, get the damage number, proc essence, grab the booger, do another dizzy, grab the number. Second number should be roughly 10% higher than the first. If so, it is working as intended.

Then do the same as above with wrecking...

Now put on clever alchemist, dizzy, grab the number, drink a pot, dizzy, grab the number. Same with wrecking. Easy peasy...

If.you are arguing that the set is too strong, then that's different. The set is strong, but that's good. We need more strong sets that provide stats and arent broken proc sets that break rules, etc. We dont need to nerf the existing strong sets that allow for build diversity.

Evo95

The set does what it says, it adds 10% to the damage you have active at the time you trigger it, if you trigger it once with 4000 wd and a second time due to passive abilities you activate it with 5000 wd, it is obvious that you will have more in the second case even if the passive proc that give you 5000 wd disappears.

YandereGirlfriend

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

You can look into it yourself in about 5 seconds.

This is theorycrafting 101 and one of the most enjoyable parts of the game, but you probably know that.

Hit a dummy with dizzy, get the damage number, proc essence, grab the booger, do another dizzy, grab the number. Second number should be roughly 10% higher than the first. If so, it is working as intended.

Then do the same as above with wrecking...

Now put on clever alchemist, dizzy, grab the number, drink a pot, dizzy, grab the number. Same with wrecking. Easy peasy...

If.you are arguing that the set is too strong, then that's different. The set is strong, but that's good. We need more strong sets that provide stats and arent broken proc sets that break rules, etc. We dont need to nerf the existing strong sets that allow for build diversity.

Strong agree. Sets that make you do a thing for actual power should be celebrated.

We have so many lame sets that aren't worth the materials to reconstruct already.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it's reporting a possible bug.

gc0018

it is sth a elementary school kid can test in 5min. No buffer 15270 (x1.1 = 16797) vs with buff 16512 per hit, no bug found. it is a damage buff add up with other damage multiplier.

But yes essence thief itself is one of the strongest set no doubt, even magbuild can use it.

AvidNecro

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

You can look into it yourself in about 5 seconds.

This is theorycrafting 101 and one of the most enjoyable parts of the game, but you probably know that.

Hit a dummy with dizzy, get the damage number, proc essence, grab the booger, do another dizzy, grab the number. Second number should be roughly 10% higher than the first. If so, it is working as intended.

Then do the same as above with wrecking...

Now put on clever alchemist, dizzy, grab the number, drink a pot, dizzy, grab the number. Same with wrecking. Easy peasy...

If.you are arguing that the set is too strong, then that's different. The set is strong, but that's good. We need more strong sets that provide stats and arent broken proc sets that break rules, etc. We dont need to nerf the existing strong sets that allow for build diversity.

Strong agree. Sets that make you do a thing for actual power should be celebrated.

We have so many lame sets that aren't worth the materials to reconstruct already.

Strong disagree. I think one of the problems with balance in this game is this type of mindset. Thinking you should just be able to have it all. No sacrificing anything anymore to gain an edge in one area. You can have all the damage, all the crit chance, all the crit damage, all the sustain, and all the crit resistance with no penalty. Game was incredibly fun when you actually had to sacrifice sustain for damage, or speed for tankiness. Then sets like this that just continue to give you all of it is nonsense. God forbid someone thinks it’s possible it’s not working as intended due to power creep with subclassing and the unbelievable amount of players that are using it. Look how long clever alch and 2 sec pot cooldown went unnoticed before it was fixed…. Just saying.

Thumbless_Bot

AvidNecro wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

You can look into it yourself in about 5 seconds.

This is theorycrafting 101 and one of the most enjoyable parts of the game, but you probably know that.

Hit a dummy with dizzy, get the damage number, proc essence, grab the booger, do another dizzy, grab the number. Second number should be roughly 10% higher than the first. If so, it is working as intended.

Then do the same as above with wrecking...

Now put on clever alchemist, dizzy, grab the number, drink a pot, dizzy, grab the number. Same with wrecking. Easy peasy...

If.you are arguing that the set is too strong, then that's different. The set is strong, but that's good. We need more strong sets that provide stats and arent broken proc sets that break rules, etc. We dont need to nerf the existing strong sets that allow for build diversity.

Strong agree. Sets that make you do a thing for actual power should be celebrated.

We have so many lame sets that aren't worth the materials to reconstruct already.

Strong disagree. I think one of the problems with balance in this game is this type of mindset. Thinking you should just be able to have it all. No sacrificing anything anymore to gain an edge in one area. You can have all the damage, all the crit chance, all the crit damage, all the sustain, and all the crit resistance with no penalty. Game was incredibly fun when you actually had to sacrifice sustain for damage, or speed for tankiness. Then sets like this that just continue to give you all of it is nonsense. God forbid someone thinks it’s possible it’s not working as intended due to power creep with subclassing and the unbelievable amount of players that are using it. Look how long clever alch and 2 sec pot cooldown went unnoticed before it was fixed…. Just saying.

This set was released with the Imperial City DLC... in 2015... ten years ago. Nostalgia for yesteryear is one thing, but this set is part of yesteryear.

This set is the poster child for quality sets that bring diversity to builds.

If you wear this and no other damage set you are getting a boost of 10% of not much. 10% of of an 8k dizzy is 800. 10% of a 15k dizzy is 1,500.

That's the beauty of this set. The more you build into damage the better that 10% is. Vice versa. The less you build into damage the less reward you get for wearing this set.

It's an awesome set and designed immaculately. To make this set work well, to really shine, you do have to sacrifice... and you have to know what you are doing.