Briarheart is very good. On average the damage is the same as Hunding's but it also gives you 600 heal for every critical hit you score while the buff is active. The 10% proc chance may seem small but if you have a lot of DoTs in your rotation it will activate as soon as the cooldown is over and heal you for every critical hit with no cooldown. So in fact you can easily get 1K HPS while doing damage if 2 skills crit every tick. That will allow you to play more aggressive and lift pressure of your own heals allowing you to save stamina, especially if running solo or in a non-optimized group. I'm running it myself on my DK in vMA and I find the heals pretty reliable. But could work even in trials. As for the farming part, it's in fact harder now to get it in divines, since the trait pool has been expanded (it only dropped in divines, reinforced, well fitted and infused before the patch), but it's easier to get weapons with good traits. It's still cheap: I got my set for just under 5K for all 5 lower body pieces in divines from guild traders.

My current setup is 5 Briarheart (hands, feet, chest, legs, waist) 5 Vicious Serpent (jewels, shoulders, front bar 2H) with Maelstrom bow on back bar and 1 Slimercraw (head). When I get more experienced with stamina play style and get a 2nd VO 1H weapon (I already have a dagger) I consider changing to 2W setup and full Slimercraw setup. This is often an ignored monster set as well, since players present optimized trial builds, where you have minor berserk from healers running combat prayer, but for solo, unless you are a NB, this buff is inaccessible. 8% to damage done is 2.4K DPS on a 30K parse, way more than any of the proc monster set. And the 1p bonus allows you to have over 65% crit even while running serpent or warrior mundus; also high crit means more briarheart procs.

I play briar with NMG(or situational hunding depending on penetration) on NB bow build. I's good to drop ulti when thorns are up. (and they are up almost on CD due to over 80% crit chance and lots of DoTs)

Briarheart gives more burst damage . You will do more DPS in short (10-12 seconds) fights . So it is very good for burning bosses down while self healing a lot . Anything else Hunding's performs better .

kylewwefan wrote: »

Awhile ago someone suggested I look into briarhearts as it performs comparably to Hundings and HoTR was to fix the trait drops now. While I still have the named daggers that are charged, I look to find sharp or infused......$700k. I only found 2 looking through several traders.

This was more looking into oddball sets for me than finding the new cheese or something. It won't make a big enough difference for me I think, but is Briarhearts really gonna be the next big thing?

Indeed. Just checked a few prices on tamriel trade center and it's astonishing what some people demand for jewelry and sword/ daggers. Leaves me no choice but to farm it myself. No way I'm going to shove them half a million gold in their rear end for one single piece.

I think it is a good set for running with randos in dungeon finder or soloing.

I run 5 Seventh Legion, 5 Briarheart, and 2 Stormfist on my kahjiit StamSorc tank. You get a ton of self heals by combining the heals from crit surge, 7th legion, and briarheart. Not to mention a whole bunch of crit. I optimize the setup by dropping a Rearming Trap (minor force), and using Aggressive Warhorn (major force)

Basically, I made a tank set up with selfish armor and group utility.

Briarheart is best when you run a lot of DoTs since any of those will crit and heal you. So for 4 man/solo I'd say it's one of the better sets on stamDK. On Stam NB and Sorc it's not that great since you have class skills that do the same thing - siphoning strikes and critical surge.

It's a fun set for casual play. When my Bosmer Stamblade thief regears for a serious fight, it's part of what he wears.

SirAndy wrote: »

IzakiBrotherSs wrote: »

You'll never see anyone wearing Briarheart in a raid. Sure it has its benefits, but there much better sets. Its kinda a crappy stamina version of what BSW used to be. Hunding's is better when used as the main 5 piece.

There's more to ESO than just raids though ...

Also, it is not true that you won't see people in raids wearing briar. I do it, and some of the best stamina DDs I know use it too. It is the best non-support front bar set there is. The uptime is usually between 50-60% from the front bar only, which makes it better than hundings rage. Pair it with hundings rage or leviathan and watch your raid dps skyrocket...

It may not be best in end-game trials, but that's not always the best standard by which to judge anyway.

The set is actually cheap and easy to acquire, and is worth picking up. First item I ever golded out was a briarheart jack.

Farm the dailies in Wrothgar, and you CAN find it cheap in traders.

The 700k swords you're seeing are at that price because the Briarheart weapons only JUST STARTED dropping in sharpened with the HotR update. Prior to that it was just defending, precise, powered, etc.

One more point against briarheart, some dots do not update on every tick so you can and will have dots running without getting the full benefit of briarheart as it procs, so the actual uptime will be even lower.

Automaton felt better when I tried it, even though it doesn't buff your poison skills. As others said, the main benefit for Briarheart is that you won't lose the bonus on your backbar.

cpuScientist wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Automaton felt better when I tried it, even though it doesn't buff your poison skills. As others said, the main benefit for Briarheart is that you won't lose the bonus on your backbar.

You have to look at what percentage of your damage comes from sources not directly buffed by automaton. In the case of say my StamPlar only poision injection (and monster set but hundings wouldn't buff it either or briarheart) and say it is 8% then I will find what 92% of the automaton bonus equates too and see if it is bigger than hundings if it is then automaton is better.

Automaton is better when 75% of your damage is physical (disregarding monster sets as it equally affects hundings and the like no matter if it is poison or physical)

We don't have to play based on feelings in this game. There are numbers behind it all. And the numbers for briarheart just are not there, it's a good set if you can get the weapons. But the benefit for the effort and gold to even farm/buy the weapons is far to small. You would be better just as effective with VO automaton hundings alkosh etc...

I don't recall the exact percentage of my rotation that was physical damage at the time I tested Automaton on my stamDK (which has the most non-physical damage, I'd say), and I didn't want to invent any numbers. Usually I only use it on my stamplar as well. But even for the DK, it's not too difficult to stay above 75% physical stamina-based damage, especially in trials when you can drop Noxious Breath. One thing that has to be considered is the ultimate though, Standard of Might for example would get buffed by Briarheart, but not by Automaton. The 2-4 pc bonuses are worth considering, too. It's really dependent on the individual rotation as you say.

And of course, this is only in comparison to Briarheart. If you add FoO and the like to your rotation, which aren't buffed by Automaton or Briarheart, you might have more success with sets that buff that damage as well, e.g. sets with Minor Slayer. So all in all, I agree that the window for Briarheart to be useful just isn't there.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

There is no such thing as a stam meta set. There are group meta stam sets (plural). Stam players in any organized raid must coordinate sets to pull max DPS. Someone needs NM, Sunderflame and Alkosh (probably x2). Once those are covered, then players can pair them with their favorite damage set (Hundings, VO, Automaton, Briarheart). Certainly briarheart is viable, but as you need weapons, the vast majority of end game players are going to simply pick Hundings. Same damage without the 500K+ price tag. If someone handed me the weapons in perfect traits, I might use them on a stam DK just for a bit of extra healing, but from a raw numbers standpoint, they arent worth the expense.

Another thought would be to use them for VMA, again, maybe on a stam DK, otherwise, no way I am dropping the stam regen from VO or the penetration form NM for a bit of extra heals.

Yeah this is all correct. But do not even bother with it in vMA. This pitiful heal will do nothing, in vMA you don't die slow slow slow deaths it's quick spikes in health that kill. Hots work best when they are under Sheilds Stam doesn't have shields, and it is not a hot to write home about. It is a coooooold.

If anyone feels that they are magically more survivable with this set I assure you it is a placebo effect. It is a feeling, not good for heals not worth the wearing over the sets you mentioned for vMA, hundings vo nmg are vastly better in there.

Like you said if you magically attained the perfect traited weapons then sure it might be as effective barring uptime problems and dots not taking the effect if they were cast before either came up, as hundings but the do difference would be truly unnoticeable and vary too much on rotation and timing.

Sets like BSW in it's heyday we're used because they actually outperformed juli (not even by that much tbh) briarheart it's uptime has to be 100% to match it and while you are swapping bars, it might not take the increased dps from front bar.

TLDR if you get the perfect weapons then try it out. But don't waste time or effort going for it.