I'm not a big fan of TBS because of the 2-4 piece bonuses. You get one Mundus for free, so the 5-piece is adding one additional Mundus bonus. Depending what you choose as your 2nd Mundus, there is usually a better set than TBS to get the same effect. For example:

Lover: Use Two Fang, Sunderflame, Night Mothers, Alkosh or Spriggans

Warrior: Use Hundings or Briarheart

Thief: Use Leviathan

Serpent: Use VO (cost reduction) or Bone Pirate (regen)

Tower: Use Hulking Draugr

All of the sets listed above have useful 2-4 piece bonuses and the 5 piece is similar in effect to what you would get from TBS. The main Mundus that does not have an equivalent set is Shadow, but if you want to use it just make it your primary Mundus and replace your 2nd choice Mundus with one of the other sets. You have to have a pretty high crit chance for Shadow to outperform Warrior anyway (about 70% for most stam builds IIRC).

As for Leviathan, it's not the most popular set, but it can certainly be effective. It is best used on Stamblade or Stamplar because of the 10% increased crit damage. In general Leviathan is the best crit set of your crit chance is already above 50% (basically if using daggers or other sets with crit bonuses like Hundings), while Mechanical Acuity is the best crit set if your crit chance is below 50%.

Honestly, TBS is a fantastic set... to mess around with. It's good if you want to experiment with different stats, and feel out what works best for you, before committing to an actual build. It is a terrible set for content.

If TBS was a jewelry set (like Agility, Endurance, and Willpower), with the mundus bonus on the 3pc, it would probably be usable. As is, it shouldn't be part of any long term build. Once you figure out what you like, you probably want to look for one of the sets that @WrathOfInnos suggested.

Danksta wrote: »

Actually, since it's nerf, Shadow never outperforms Warrior. In fact, Warrior out damages Shadow on crits, making Shadow the most useless mundus stone.

There are some weird edge cases when you're relying on crits to trigger a proc, where Shadow may, actually, be a better option. Not, you know, a lot of cases, but they do exist.

EDIT: Most useless is probably the Lady.

EDIT2: Scratch that. I kept thinking Thief, not Shadow. Disregard.

starkerealm wrote: »

Danksta wrote: »

Actually, since it's nerf, Shadow never outperforms Warrior. In fact, Warrior out damages Shadow on crits, making Shadow the most useless mundus stone.

There are some weird edge cases when you're relying on crits to trigger a proc, where Shadow may, actually, be a better option. Not, you know, a lot of cases, but they do exist.

EDIT: Most useless is probably the Lady.

EDIT2: Scratch that. I kept thinking Thief, not Shadow. Disregard.

I'm not really sure how Shadow mundus will get you a higher proc chance when relying on crit chance for said proc.

Danksta wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I'm not a big fan of TBS because of the 2-4 piece bonuses. You get one Mundus for free, so the 5-piece is adding one additional Mundus bonus. Depending what you choose as your 2nd Mundus, there is usually a better set than TBS to get the same effect. For example:

Lover: Use Two Fang, Sunderflame, Night Mothers, Alkosh or Spriggans

Warrior: Use Hundings or Briarheart

Thief: Use Leviathan

Serpent: Use VO (cost reduction) or Bone Pirate (regen)

Tower: Use Hulking Draugr

All of the sets listed above have useful 2-4 piece bonuses and the 5 piece is similar in effect to what you would get from TBS. The main Mundus that does not have an equivalent set is Shadow, but if you want to use it just make it your primary Mundus and replace your 2nd choice Mundus with one of the other sets. You have to have a pretty high crit chance for Shadow to outperform Warrior anyway (about 70% for most stam builds IIRC).

As for Leviathan, it's not the most popular set, but it can certainly be effective. It is best used on Stamblade or Stamplar because of the 10% increased crit damage. In general Leviathan is the best crit set of your crit chance is already above 50% (basically if using daggers or other sets with crit bonuses like Hundings), while Mechanical Acuity is the best crit set if your crit chance is below 50%.

Actually, since it's nerf, Shadow never outperforms Warrior. In fact, Warrior out damages Shadow on crits, making Shadow the most useless mundus stone.

I believe that's only the case for light and heavy attacks, which scale mostly from weapon damage. Most skills can crit higher with shadow than warrior. It takes a high crit chance before shadow is actually worth using though.

Edit: Just looked at the numbers a little more closely. For a typical stam DPS with an effective weapon power of 7500 (weapon damage + max stam / 10.5) and a crit multiplier of 1.8 wearing 7 medium divines, with flawless dawnbreaker slotted, shadow adds 7.6% damage to crits and warrior adds ~7%. This means that shadow only becomes better than warrior if your crit chance is higher than ~85% (more than 92% of damage done is coming from crits). This is just an example, but in most realistic cases Warrior will outperform Shadow.

Interestingly the math is quite different for magicka DPS and Shadow becomes better than Apprentice at about 60-65% crit chance.

I swear by TBS because i only have one proper character and it lets me respec ridiculously fast from solo build to healer or tank. (I can technically even use it to spec as a sub-par 15kish - 20kish dps)

no need to respec skills or attributes.

So yes. TBS is awesome, but not a min-maxing gear set.
it also has the + side of letting you get whatever armor style / trait you want.

TBS is a terrible set since the change of major force from multiplicative to additive. The nerf to Thief and Shadow was the final nail in the coffin. At this point only 1out of 4 sets that require 9 traits to craft is still good for anything and that's Eternal Hunt, which is a niche PvP set. I remember when people were anxious to research the 9th trait in order to make TBS.

At this point you may even stop at 6 since Hunding is better for stamina and Julianos for magicka. NMG is also 6 trait set used for stamina DD support. Shacklebreaker is very good in PvP for many builds, also 6 traits. They even fixed Willow's Path so it works with drink recovery bonuses. 5 NMG/Hunding/Julianos + 5 or 4 trial set w Minor Slayer + 1 or 2 monster set and Maelstrom bow or staff backbar is the standard setup for all classes ATM.