A 6500 Word Solution for Set and Trait Imbalance

Masel · April 2017

Underwhelming Sets and Traits in ESO – Tweaking Numbers and making worthless Sets great again!
I believe many of you have, like me, thought a lot of times „I wonder if this set or trait could be fun to use and effective in this build“ and found that it simply underperforms (or overperforms in some cases) in damage, utility, sustain and healing, but was cool in the general way of thinking behind it.
I wanna go through all the sets that need tweaks in their numbers in order to become worth using. Of course this is a lot of work, but if we all participate we can actually try to make the nice guys from ZoS think about implementing some of those changes. I’m a rather PvE oriented player and would gladly accept the help of any experienced PvP players to make it more balanced throughout both sides of the player Base.

I will complete the formatting within the next days so this becomes easier to read, I did this in Word and copying the formatting did not work at all

Also, they values fro Maximum Stat bonuses are stilla t the level of pre-HotR, and I'M too lazy to change them all.

OK let’s start with sets:

First of all, I’m going to adjust numbers, and in some cases add new bonuses or remove bonuses that just don’t make sense at all and for some reason don’t get changed. The tables show the already improved suggestion.

Almalexias mercy:

5-piece set gives aoe-healing on damage taken. Cooldown is too high and proc chance is too low. So either guarantee it after 3 seconds or remove the cooldown and make it 10% chance.
New Tooltip:
2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Spell Resistance by 1935
4 Items Increases your Spell Resistance by 1935
5 Items When you take damage, you have a 20% Chance to heal yourself and all allies within 7 meters by 2429. This effectcan only occur once every second.

Eagle Eye:

3-piece set, increases crit rating and range of bow abilities. In general a fun set, but the 3-piece bonus needs to be worth slotting over Vicious Ophidian/Alkosh or Agility on Bow Focused Builds. Add in another 200 Weapon damage on Bow abilities on the 3-piece bonus and multiply the crit bonus with 1.5 to match Agility values.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Weapon Critical by 1032
3 Items Increases the Range of your Bow abilities by 3 Meters. With an equipped Bow, also grants 200 Weapon Damage.
4 Items /
5 Items /

Agility/Willpower:

Great starters that have become very affordable. In endgame they lost their place as you can’t add a fourth piece bonus and minor slayer is better. My suggestion would be to add a four piece bonus for weapons that gives you 4.5% crit for weapon and spell, respectively.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina/Magicka by 1400
3 Items Increases your Weapon/Spell Damage by 174
4 Items Increases Weapon/Spell Critical by 1032
5 Items /

Wilderqueens Arch:

Snares enemies through bow abilities. Doesn’t have any use in PvE, so adding either a Fixed AoE DoT to it might make it worth using. E.g. Bow abilities infect enemies with the wilderqueens curse that deals 2000 Poison Damage to enemies within 5 meters every second for 5 seconds. This effect can occur every 8 seconds.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
3 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
4 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
5 Items Reduces the Movement Speed of Enemies hit by your Bow abilities by 30% for 5 seconds and infects them with the Wilderqueen's curse, dealing 1250 Poison and 1250 Disease damage to them and all enemies in a 5 meter radius every second for 5 seconds. This effect can only occur every 8 seconds.

Buffer of the Swift:

Pvp set that gives Shields on damage taken. In order to make it better remove the 10% chance and maybe add minor evasion.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
4 Items You take 5% less damage from other Players.
5 Items Whenever you take Magical Damage, you have a 10% chance to receive a damage shield that absorbs up to 4000 damage.

Eternal Warrior:

While this is a fun set to use, sets that proc on death do not really have much use in PvE and the 3-piece is worthless in PvP. So instead, make it proc on high incoming damage AND death and reduce the cooldown to a minute. That way it can be a great Ultimate Generation set and still provide the safety it was intended to deliver. Maybe >50% of health as a border.

Way of Martial Knowledge:

This set used to be great, but the 4 second cooldown kills it. It basically boosts every 8th action by ten percent, making it a 1.25% damage increase on the five piece. You can actuall reduce the cooldown to 1 second and it would still only buff every second ability making it a 5% increase overall.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items When you deal damage, you increase the damage of the next ability by 10%. This effect can only happen every second.

Way of Air:

Doesn’t have any use in PvE. If dodge rolls buff something. It should be a long-lasting buff so you can actually try to include it in your rotation. 4 piece needs another Buff in It like weapon crit. Make the buff 500 weapon damage and increase its duration to 15 seconds. Seems strong, but you’d still have to dodge every 15 seconds and the two regen bonuses don’t help your damage at all.

2 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
4 Items Increases your Detection Radius by 40% and increases your Weapon Damage by 129.
5 Items Dodge rolls increase your Spell and Weapon damage by 300 for 15 seconds and reduce the cost of dodge rolls by 33%.

Way of Fire:

Weaker version of Red Mountain. Reduce cooldown to one second.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
3 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items When you deal damage with a Weapon ability, you have a 20% chance to deal an additional 4000 Flame Damage. This effect can occur once every 1 seconds.

Ice furnace:

This is one of the sets that I don't get. Weapon damage on a magicka set? Change it to spell damage And you’d have a fun build with Burning Spellweave. Ice – fire mage here we come. Oh and also double the damage because it’s aheavy set that forces you to sacrifice three jewels to be worth considering.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases Spell Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items When you deal direct damage with a Frost Damage ability, you have a 50% chance to deal an additional 2100 Flame Damage to all enemies within 8 meters around the initial target. This effect can occur once every 1 second.

Bogdan the Nightflame:

Veeeery underwhelming. Increase the proc chance to 10% and the radius to 10m.

New Tooltip:

1 Item Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
2 Items When you heal a friendly target, you have a 10% chance to summon a totem for 6 seconds that heals you and your allies in a radius of 10 meters for 3483 Health every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

Infallible Aether:

Used to be meta on healers, now it just fills in on enemies that are immune to concussion as it overwrites it and prevents off-balance from happening. Make it a unique buff and weaken the percentage so it becomes useful again as a support set!

2 Items Increases Spell Critical by 688
3 Items Grants Minor Slayer, increasing your Damage Done against Enemies in Dungeons and Trials by 5%.
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items Your fully charged heavy attacks do an additional 903 damage.Enemies you damage with fully charged Heavy Attacks are afflicted with a Corrupted Aether for 10 seconds, increasing their damage taken by 5%. Adds 688 Spell Critical.

Iceheart:

While this set sounds nice, the damage it gives is neglectible. Make the damage higher and increase the radius to 8m as grothdarr is.

New Tooltip:

1 Item Increases Spell Critical by 688
2 Items When you deal Critical Damage, you have a 20% chance to gain a damage shield that absorbs 8600 damage for 6 seconds. While the damage shield holds, you deal 1550 Cold Damage to all enemies within 8 meters of you every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

Elemental Succession:

Also sounds fun, but there aren't enough builds in this game that can actually use all three types of damage other than force pulse. When using two elements at 50% each, you get a spell damage buff of 515 on one of them but lose it on the other and have four seconds without a buff to anything. Double the spell damage it gives to each element. That way you get 1030*0.5+1030*0.5+1030*0=515 spell damage on a build that uses two elements equally and this makes them more viable. Also you’d get a constant 310 spell damage to force pulse.i can see this on on mag dk lightning builds, sorcs that use fire or wardens with fire or lightning.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
5 Items While you are in combat, you gain a rotating bonus to Flame, Shock, or Frost Damage. The active element changes every 4 seconds. Your attacks dealing damage with the active element gain 1030 Spell Damage.

Affliction:

Weak proc set, gives max magicka as a four piece. Make the cooldown one second and change the four piece to stamina.

New Tooltips:

2 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
5 Items When you deal disease or poison damage, you have a 50% chance to deal an additional 2979 Disease Damage. This effect can occur once every 1 seconds.

Essence thief:

Make the essence automatically come to you in a moderate speed. Other than that great set.

Combat physician and Gossamer:

Only work on enemies that aren’t at 100% health, change this and there we go.

Flanking Strategist:

Just a little stronger than Hundings and very situational. It should give you at least double the buff to try it out in PvP and give you a HoT of the damage done.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
3 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items Strikes in the Back of your enemies hit with an additional 660 weapon damage and grant you Invisibility for 10 seconds.

Galerions Revenge:

Damage is way too weak, make it at least double as strong.

2 Items Increases Spell Critical by 688
3 Items Increases your Magicka Recovery by 129
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items When you deal damage with a Light of Heavy Attack, you put a Mark of Revenge on the enemy for 15 seconds. After stacking 6 Marks of Revenge on an enemy they detonate for 10000 Magic Damage.

Hide of Morihaus:

You can quadruple the damage and then it might be fun with eternal hunt.

New Tooltip:

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Physical Resistance by 1935
4 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
5 Items Roll-dodging through an enemy knocks them down and hits them for 8000 damage.

Heem-Jas Retribution:

3 seconds is veeery short. Make it 8 so you actually have something from it in trash mobs and add-heavy boss fights.

2 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
5 Items When an enemy within 28 meters dies, you get Major Berserk for 8 seconds, increasing your damage done by 25%.

Witchman's Armor:

This is a burst heal and sustain boost on ultimate cost. Dawnbreaker will actually heal you for ~3.4k health and stamina. If you cast it every 30 seconds, you have 145 health and stamina per second, very underwhelming. I’d suggest adding the same amount of healing and stam return on cast over 1s per 10 Ultimate cost of c ultimate. So add 3,4k per spec instantly and another 3,4k over 12.5s on dawnbreaker.

2 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
5 Items When you use an Ultimate ability, you heal for 30 Health and you restore 30 Stamina per point of the Ultimate's cost and an additional 30 Health and Stamina per Point of the Ultimate's cost over 1s per 10 Points of the Ultimate’s cost.

Hircine's Veneer:

Add ~2k stamina for 12 group members on top of the recovery.

2 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
5 Items Increases the Stamina Recovery of up to 12 allies within 28 meters by 10% and increases their Maximum Stamina by 2300.

Spelunker:

Weird set that only buffs five abilities out of which only two are used and not for the damage they do. Bone Shield doesn’t even benefit from it. Make it add 500 Spell damage on synergy abilities and leave the stamina return on every synergy your allies pop.

Molag Kena:

Add in Heavy Attacks to proc it and increase the duration to 8s. With the sustain as it is right now reduce the penalty to 15% to enable more classes to sustain it.

1 Item Increases Spell Damage and Weapon Damage by 129
2 Items Dealing Damage with 2 consecutive Light or Heavy Attacks triggers Overkill, increasing your Spell and Weapon Damage by 516 and increasing the cost of abilities by 15% for 8 seconds.

Nerien’eth:

Either change the 1 PC bonus to spell damage or increase the damage by 20%. Or simply change the cooldown to 2 second. That way it feels a lot stronger. It is easily avoidable in PvP, so that wont be a problem.

1 Item Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
2 Items When you deal Direct Damage you have a 10% chance to summon a Lich Crystal, exploding after 3 Seconds, dealing 10062 Magic Damage to all enemies in a 4 meter radius. This effect can only occur every 2 seconds.

Para Bellum:

Reduce the time needed to one second and half the shield strength.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
3 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
4 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
5 Items When you have not taken damage for at least 1 second, you receive a Damage Shield that absorbs up to 6406 Damage.

Permafrost:

Make it work on all allies in a 10m radius and make it deal damage around the ally when a shield bursts. E.g. Increases the Health regen of allies in a 10m radius by 957 while they are guarded by a damage shield and deals 1000 cold damage in a 5 meter radius when a shield bursts.
This would work great on a warden or a DK tank with igneous Shields and would be a very good offensive tank set. As it is part of a vMA set it should have potential to make the shield worth using.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases your Magicka Recovery by 129
5 Items Grants 957 Health Recovery to Allies within 10 meters who are protected by a Damage Shield. Whenever a Damage Shield on an ally within 10 meters expires or bursts, deals 1000 Cold Damage to enemies within 5 meters of the ally.

Phoenix:

Make this set grant major and minor expedition and make you immune to snares so you can actually escape the situation for 15 seconds.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases your Magicka Recovery by 129
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items When you die, you instead become immune to all negative effects and healing for 3 seconds, When the effect ends, you heal for 17200 Health and explode for 8600 Fame Damage to all enemies within 8 meters. You also gain Major and Minor Expedition for 20 Seconds, increasing your Movement Speed by 30% and 10%, respectively and become immune to Snare And Stun Effects for 20 Seconds.

Tormentor:

Make this set work on direct damage through single target weapon abilities. This way you can use it to taunt on frost staffs with clench or force pulse to avoid the heavy attack taunt and increase your resistances.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Adds 4% Healing taken
4 Items Adds 4% Healing taken
5 Items When you deal direct damage with a single-target ability, you increase your Spell and Physical Resistance by 3642 and taunt the enemy for 15 seconds, forcing it to attack you.

Warrior’s Fury:

Make this set also grant you 300 spell and physical resistance on damage taken with the same cumulative effect. And make it work on damage taken, not critical damage taken.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items When you take damage, your Weapon Damage is increased by 30 and your Resistance (Physical and Spell) is increased by 50 for 6 seconds, stacking up to 25 times.

Destruction Mastery:

Increase 5-piece bonus to 3000 Magicka.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases Spell Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items While having a Destruction staff equipped, increases your Maximum Magicka by 3000.

Armor of Truth:

Very situational and underwhelming. Change it to proc on applying status effects on an enemy and increase it to 400 weapon damage.

2 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items When you inflict a status effect on an Enemy, increases your Weapon Damage by 434 for 10 seconds. This effect can only occur every 10 seconds.

Glorious Defender:

Make this grant you major evasion for 10 seconds on a light and heavy attack and return 350 stamina everytime you dodge an attack.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items When you deal damage with a light or heavy attack, you have a 20% chance to gain Major evasion for 10 seconds, increasing your dodge chance by 15%. You also restore 400 Stamina and 2 Ultimate every time you dodge an attack.

Archer’s Mind:

Make the five piece grant 8% crit damage and 129 weapon damage while wielding a bow. This seems like a strong five piece, but bows are supposed to become viable right? And TFS grants you a flat 10%+ damage increase so this isn’t stronger than that.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
3 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
4 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
5 Items Increases your Critical Damage done by 8% and grants 129 Weapon Damage while wielding a Bow.

Wyrd tree’s Blessing:

Make this heal all allies in a 15m radius for 20000 over 15s on proc too and apply minor magickasteal.

2 Items Increases your Magicka Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases your Magicka Recovery by 129
5 Items Casting a Magicka ability removes up to 5 negative effects from you, heals all allies within a 15m radius for 15000 over 15 seconds and applies minor Staminasteal and Magickasteal to all enemies within a 15m radius from you. This effect can only occur once every 25 seconds.

Noble duelist's silk:

Very weird set. Change 1-piece bonus to Spell damage. Could work well with mirage on a magicka nb and a lightning staff, but requires a lot of incoming damage.

2 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
3 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items When you dodge an attack, your Light an Heavy Attacks deal an additional 1225 damage for 8 Seconds.

Overwhelming Surge:

The name is irritating. Make this an 8m AoE around you and then we’re talking!

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items When you activate a class ability, you have a 15% chance to surround yourself with a torrent tha deals 2365 Shock damage to all enemies in an 8 meter radius for 6 seconds.

Cyrodiil 3 PC Sets:

Multiply all of those by 1.5 to match agility/willpower/endurance.

Swamp Raider:

Increase the Weapon Damage Bonus to 600. Seems strong, but it should work great on a DK with claw, injection, noxious breath and FoO to proc it constantly.

2 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
3 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
5 Items When dealing Damage with a Magicka ability, your Poison and Disease Damage Abilities gain an additional 600 Weapon Damage for 10 Seconds.

Undaunted Infiltrator and Unweaver:

Those were supposed to promote hybrid builds, but they are pretty weird as they are. change the four piece bonus to spell critical/weapon critical (swap them out), respectively and switch out their five piece bonuses too.
That way those two sets can function as a substitute for the vMA staffs on the back bar.
2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina/Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina/Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases Weapon/Spell critical by 688
5 Items When activating an Ability that costs Stamina/Magicka, your light attacks deal an additional 774 damage and Heavy Attacks deal an additional 1161 damage for 10 seconds.

Destructive Mage:

Reduxe the cooldown and make this work on yourself too. Totally underwhelming as it is right now.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases Spell Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items Dealing Damage with a fully-charged Heavy Attack, you place a Bomb on the enemy for 10 seconds. When you or another player hits the target with another fully charged Heavy Attack, they detonate he Bomb, dealing 7875 Magic Damage to all enemies within 8 meters. This effect can only occur every 2 seconds.

Twin Sisters:

Make this set proc on blocking and dealing damage so you can use it offensively and defensively.

2 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
5 Items When you deal melee damage or block an attack, you have a 10% chance to let all enemies within 5 meters bleed for 10375 Damage over 8 seconds, ignoring their resistance. This effect can only occur every 8 Seconds.

Ashen Grip:

Seriously underwhelming, needs significantly more damage to become useful. Could be especially good as an easily obtainable alternative for dropped sets for beginners.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
4 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
5 Items When you deal direct melee damage, you have a 20% chance to breath fire to all enemies in front you for 12000 Flame Damage over 4 seconds. This effect can only occur every 4 seconds.

Eyes of Mara:

Generally sounds fine, but sustain is not really an issue on healers, so giving this set an offensive additional bonus would make it more effective. Give restoration staff abilities a 10% chance to grant 5% crit to allies hit by them.

2 Items Increases your Magicka Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases your Spell Damage by 129
5 Items Reduces the cost of your Restoration Staff Abilities by 12% and increases the critical chance of allies hit by your Restoration Staff Abilities by 1095.

Kvatch Gladiator:

Only works on enemies hit that are below 25%, which is way too low. Make it let your attacks hit up to 200% harder on enemies below 50% health so it gives you a gradual execute on everything and a decreasing Weapon Damage Bonus working the other way around.

2 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
3 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items Your Light and Heavy Attacks deal up to 200% more damage against enemies below 50% health, based on their missing Health. Increases your Weapon Damage by up to 300 against enemies above 50% Health, decreasing to 0 based on the enemies missing health.

Vampire’s Kiss:

Set that doesn’t give damage bonuses and still works on killing enemies. Change the bonus to work on enemies dying in range, similar to Vicious Ophidian so you don’t have to kill enemies yourself and you can wear this on a tank. Maybe add a Stamina Recovery and Increase the healing too.

2 Items Increases your Health Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
4 Items Adds 4% Healing taken
5 Items When an enemy within 28 meters dies, Heals you for 14000 over 6 seconds and restores 420 Stamina.

Morkuldin:

Fun set, but the summon duration is too short, similar to Maw of the infernal, increase this to 30 seconds as well OR let another proc renew the duration.

2 Items Increases your Maximun Stamina by 933
3 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items When you deal damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you have a 10% chance t summon an animated weapon to attack your enemies for 15 seconds. The Animated Weapon’s basic attack deals 4551 Physical Damage. Each subsequential hit with a Light or Heavy Attack has a 10% chance to refresh the duration.

Orgnums Scales:

Just make it increase your health regen by 50%, remove the 60% barrier. Also make it weaken the effect of Vampirism on Health Recovery up to 100% based on missing health.

2 Items Increases your Health Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
4 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
5 Items Increases your Health Recovery by 50% and decreases the Effect of Vampirism on your Health Recovery to up to 100%, based on your missing Health.

Pelinals Aptitude:

This was supposed to make hybrid builds workable, but it gives three recovery bonuses and only sets damage stats to the higher one. Make it give both spell and weapon damage, stamina and magicka and recovery on the 2, 3 and 4 pc bonuses.

2 Items Increases your Weapon and Spell Critical by 688
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina and Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases Weapon and Spell Damage by 129
5 Items Your Weapon and Spell Damage and Weapon Critical and Spell Critical both become the highest one of the two values.

Spectres Eye:

This is such a weak set… Make it at least permanent (increase duration to 6s) and make it reflect projectiles hit at you when dodging them.

2 Items Increases your Spell Resistance by 1935
3 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
5 Items When you cast a Magicka Ability you gain Major Evasion, increasing your dodge chance by 15% for 8 Seconds. You also reflect every dodged attack back at enemies for 8 seconds while dealing an additional 2000 Magic Damage. This effect can only occur every 10 seconds.

Aspect of Mazzatun:

While this set looks good on paper, falling below 30% Health is a bad wax to proc it. It would be a great overall sustain set if it proceed when falling below 30% health, stamina or magicka and restored the Ressource that fell below 30%. Then give each effect an individual cooldown.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
4 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
5 Items When you fall below 30% Health, Stamina or Magicka, you either Heal for 7052 or restore 6020 Stamina or Magicka. Each Effect can only occur once every 45 seconds.

Arch Mage:

Make this work on Light and Medium Weaving too.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Magicka by 933
3 Items Increases Spell Damage by 129
4 Items Increases your Spell Critical by 668
5 Items Your Light Attacks restore 300 Magicka and your Heavy Attacks restore 1200 additional Magicka.

Hand of Mephala:

This set only works in Melee range, does not help Magicka DDs and has a 5 Second Period before it even procs. Add Minor Breach, making the Web spawn under attackers and let the webs explode after 1 second.

2 Items Adds 4% Healing taken
3 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
4 Items Increases your Physical Resistance by 1935
5 Items When you take damage, you have a 10% chance to cast a web around the attacker for 5 seconds, reducing the Movement Speed of enemies within by 50%. After 1 second the web bursts in to venom, dealing 2580 Poison Damage and applying Minor Fracture and Minor Breach to any enemy hit for 5 seconds, reducing their Physical and Spell Resistance by 1320.

Sword Dancer/Sword Singer/Spider Cultist Cowl/Light Speaker:

Those sets are mostly lackluster due to them buffing only a certain amount of abilities while forcing you to have a certain weapons slotted. Making them increase your Weapon Damage or Spell Damage while slotted by a fixed amount makes them Buff all abilities while still requiring you to have that weapon equipped. The 400 Weapon or Spell Damage Sounds strong, but the 2 piece bonus is Health, so it will not outperform other sets damagewise, but bring them on par with others. The sets that buff physical/fire/cold/shock/magic damage abilities have their use as they already buff enough skills on certain classes.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina/Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage/Spell Damage by 129
5 Items Increases your Weapon Damage/Spell Damage by 400 while having Dual Wield Weapons/ a Two-handed Weapon/ a Destruction Staff/a Restoration Staff equipped.

b]Unfathomable Darkness:[/b]

Too many proc sets here. Make it apply Minor Breach and Minor Fracture for 5 seconds when it hits an enemy
(2 items) Adds 833 Weapon Critical
(3 items) Adds 1487 Physical Penetration
(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage
(5 items) When you deal damage, you have a 10% chance to call a murder of crows around you for 12 seconds. Every 3 seconds a crow will be sent to peck the closest enemy within 12 meters of you, dealing 4000 Physical Damage and applying minor Breach and Minor Fracture, reduicng their Spell and Physical Resistance by 1320 for 5 seconds. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

Those are my suggestions as far as sets are concerned, please tell me if something is totally off or OP in any way. Also make (reasonable) suggestions for sets yourself so we get ideas together. Same holds for the traits.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZoS_RichLambert @ZOS_KaiSchober, maybe you can consider some of these changes prior to Morrowind as it would make people run the old content too if there are rewards worth using in them.

Feedback is very welcome!

Hamburglarjones · April 2017

This is a huge issue. I thought they mentioned some sort of system for vMA and undaunted prior to Morrowind. I am hoping it will be in soon.

Masel · April 2017

Push! This is up on three forums now, maybe I'll get a Dev response now...

Yubarius · April 2017

I really like all the suggestions except for Phoenix. If you wear that set, you deserve to die twice

wimhwimladimf · April 2017

There's too many sets tbh.

BohnT · April 2017

Very good suggestions but there are some things I'd like to see in a different way.

Warriors Fury is extremely good for pvp and adding resistance and making it proc on all damage would simply make this set op. It is very good now and has its unique synergies with stamdk and stamplar

Para Bellum: make it that you get the shield every 10 seconds when you take damage but reduce the shield to ~9k to stop it from being op in cyro

Pelinal's Aptitude: good suggestions but it should equal crit chance, dmg and penetration. This would make hybrids a bit better. In addition @ZOS_GinaBruno please tell the resposible devs to change shaklebreaker to an drop set so we can combine these two sets

Kvatch Gladiator: let light attacks proc a .8 sec dot that deals x dmg every. 2 seconds ( to actually make the dot useful and not being negated before the dmg is dealt) and increase the requirement to 35% to make it overall better for pve and pvp

Ashen Grip: I know how bad the set is but please no more damaging procs in this game. Change it to a 2 second silence to anybody who is hit by the flames but increase the cooldown to 8 seconds

Maw of the Infernal: I really want this set to be viable I just love the looks and the deadroth. Make it proc on all dmg dealt and give the deadroth 6 seconds cc immunity, increase the damage by 30% and when the deadroth is killed before it despawns it explodes dealing 3k oblivion damage in a 4 meter radius.

Bogdan the Nightflame: Enemies who enter the healing circle are feared and burnt by oblivion fire. Add a fear and a dot to ppl who enter the healing circle

Heem-Jas Redistribution: give the buff to 1 ally aswell and the set would be very nice with a 5 seconds duration but please buff reaper mark then for nbs to a longer duration as it forces you to kill one specific enemy

Swamp Raider: let the damage be permanently applied to make this set on par with the other set which buff a certain type of damage

There are a few more sets I'd like to change but this would be a good start

Masel · April 2017

Added a few additional sets: Hand of Mephala, Aspect of Mazzatun, Arch Mage, Light Speaker, Spider Cultists cowl, Sword Singer and Sword Dancer.

BohnT · April 2017

The changes to Aspect of mazzatun sound so awesome I really want that they add this.

Arch mage seems a bit too strong with 500 mag for light attacks 250 would be more appropriate for it.

Hand of mephala still seems underwhelming the only thing it has going for is minor breach/ fracture. Let it restore 100 stam magicka for every enemy hit or add something to make it better.

I think syvarra's scales need a buff too.
First change the 2 and 4 item bonuses to wpn damage and stamina
Increase the radius to 8 m and increase the dot damage by 10% for every npc hit to a max of 50%

Lord Warden:
2pc the summoned shadow ball slows enemies (30% snare) and deals 3000 magic damage every second.

Spawn of mephala:
Deals 2064 poison damage every second and snares the enemy by 50%. The damage increases by 10% every second. This will lead to about +3,5k aoe dps for stam builds

Masel · January 2018

Updated for Dragon Bones PTS.

pauli133 · January 2018

Masel92 wrote: »

Combat physician and Gossamer:

Only work on enemies that aren’t at 100% health, change this and there we go.

I, uh, don't think I want my Combat Physician gear putting shields on injured mobs. Nor do i wish to grant them Major Evasion.

Combat Physician:
(2 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(3 items) Adds 833 Spell Critical
(4 items) Adds 833 Spell Critical
(5 items) When you critically heal a friendly target, you grant them a damage shield that absorbs 8195 damage for 8 seconds. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

Gossamer:
(2 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(3 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(4 items) Adds 1096 Max Magicka
(5 items) When you heal a friendly target, you have a 10% chance to grant them Major Evasion, for 6 seconds, increasing their dodge chance by 15%.

leandro.800ub17_ESO · January 2018

You must have spent allot of time on this. Some changes are indeed needed to make all sets usefull in some way
ZOS please take time to read it

Solariken · January 2018

Some of these ideas are so good they're making me drool.

TheNightflame · January 2018

I would wear that eyes of Mara and re morph healing springs, love it!

TheNightflame · January 2018

I've also always loved the idea of essence thief. I agree that it should either come to you slowly, or be much closer to you and be able to be picked up by your allies

coop500 · January 2018

I never even knew the phoenix set existed.... Now I wanna use it lol

Derra · January 2018

Some suggestestions are awesome some seem debateable - heem jas is currently very strong in pvp raid groups with stam DPS for example. 8s would make it broken op.

But i really really like most of the suggestions for underused sets and would love to see most implemented in the game yesterday.

BohnT · January 2018

Derra wrote: »

Some suggestestions are awesome some seem debateable - heem jas is currently very strong in pvp raid groups with stam DPS for example. 8s would make it broken op.

But i really really like most of the suggestions for underused sets and would love to see most implemented in the game yesterday.

Yeah Heem-as on stamwarden kicks mountains of ass but on the flip side it's truly underperforming in all other situations where you don't have a raid group in your back.

I think 8 seconds are too long but 3 seconds are too short. Maybe change the proc condition to: After an enemy died in a 28m radius you gain major beserk for 4 seconds when dealing damage to the next enemy.
This would make it a cool set that gives you atleast time to find a next target

DDuke · January 2018

Whoa... some really good ideas there. A couple really op ones too

Way of Air:
Doesn’t have any use in PvE. If dodge rolls buff something. It should be a long-lasting buff so you can actually try to include it in your rotation. 4 piece needs another Buff in It like weapon crit. Make the buff 500 weapon damage and increase its duration to 15 seconds. Seems strong, but you’d still have to dodge every 15 seconds and the two regen bonuses don’t help your damage at all.

2 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
3 Items Increases your Stamina Recovery by 129
4 Items Increases your Detection Radius by 40% and increases your Weapon Damage by 129.
5 Items Dodge rolls increase your Spell and Weapon damage by 300 for 15 seconds and reduce the cost of dodge rolls by 33%.

Insanity. Every stamina build can dodge once every 15 seconds, meaning that's just flat Hunding's and reducing dodge roll cost by 33% is worth 666 stam regen if you dodge roll every 4 seconds (duration of dodge cost stacking modifier).

That set and Senche are currently only balanced because you have to play a low dmg build that can spam dodge roll to get value out of them.

Flanking Strategist:
Just a little stronger than Hundings and very situational. It should give you at least double the buff to try it out in PvP and give you a HoT of the damage done.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina by 933
3 Items Increases Weapon Critical by 688
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage by 129
5 Items Strikes in the Back of your enemies hit with an additional 660 weapon damage and grant you Invisibility for 10 seconds.

While I'd absolutely love a set like this (100% my playstyle), I think what you're suggesting is a bit op :P

Maybe if it was just the weapon damage (or invisibility)... but getting both is crazy.

Sword Dancer/Sword Singer/Spider Cultist Cowl/Light Speaker:
Those sets are mostly lackluster due to them buffing only a certain amount of abilities while forcing you to have a certain weapons slotted. Making them increase your Weapon Damage or Spell Damage while slotted by a fixed amount makes them Buff all abilities while still requiring you to have that weapon equipped. The 400 Weapon or Spell Damage Sounds strong, but the 2 piece bonus is Health, so it will not outperform other sets damagewise, but bring them on par with others. The sets that buff physical/fire/cold/shock/magic damage abilities have their use as they already buff enough skills on certain classes.

2 Items Increases your Maximum Health by 1064
3 Items Increases your Maximum Stamina/Magicka by 933
4 Items Increases your Weapon Damage/Spell Damage by 129
5 Items Increases your Weapon Damage/Spell Damage by 400 while having Dual Wield Weapons/ a Two-handed Weapon/ a Destruction Staff/a Restoration Staff equipped.

Would make Hunding's/Julianos useless for most builds.

Also not sure if Eyes of Mara, Truth, Fury or Overwhelming need any buffing - those are used by a lot of people in current meta :P

xiaiceyan · January 2018

Great post, however as someone who is not familiar with most unpopular sets, I would really love to see the old set bonuses along side of your suggestions. It might be a lot of work on your side, but I think it would have a much larger impact for the post. Hope the devs see this post and start brainstorming till the next pts cycle.

Thank you again for making such a post and trying to improve the game.

idk · January 2018

News flash for OP. Improve own set to gen useful and a itehe set becomes less attractive. Simply the way life works.

pieratsos · January 2018

Fury is way too OP. Thats basically 100% uptime even in 1v1 situation without you having to do absolutely anything.
Truth is fine as it is now.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · January 2018

I agree that ZOS should spend more time with underperforming sets. For every set they nerf, they should buff two underperforming ones.

Chilly-McFreeze · January 2018

Some are quite nice but honestly, some of them are massively overpowered.

Fury is already good as it is now. No need for a buff
Martial Knowledge (effectively 10% stronger skills)
Wilderqueen - a garantueed snare snare and 2500 AoE DoT that can proc defile and a DoT with high uptime?
Buffer of the Swift - this needs a cooldown, just not as big as it is on live

Not to start with Eternal Warrior. You can't be serious about that. A free cheat-death/ 200 Ultimate every minute? In the current meta, people can outlast that time easily. Combine that with witchman's armor and you have a serious cancer build.

olsborg · January 2018

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

I agree that ZOS should spend more time with underperforming sets. For every set they nerf, they should buff two underperforming ones.

I agree. There are some sets that are OP compared to others. And the majority of the sets (mostly crafted ones) are extremely weak. Update all the outdated sets pls ZOS

Masel · January 2018

Great feedback, especially from the PvP side of things that I'm not familiar with. I'll adjust the overperforming sets you guys mentioned tomorrow morning.

Didgerion · January 2018

Buhahaha! The balance at its finest!

This set rocks!:
Flanking Strategist:
5 Items Strikes in the Back of your enemies hit with an additional 660 weapon damage and grant you Invisibility for 10 seconds.

Ladislao · January 2018

Could not find here information about traits, although they are listed in the title

As for the proposals, most of them are extremely imbalanced in my opinion. And it concerns not so much numbers as mechanics. Sorry, I do not want to stop on each of them. After all, this topic is just subjective thoughts out loud.

But it is absolutely necessary to pay attention of developers to the balance of old sets. Let them decide which changes to make. Still, they do it better (no kidding).

I hope that at least in the next patch we will meet such changes

Nihility42 · January 2018

Some of these are buffing already very strong sets, like the buffs for Fury or Truth. Others are decent.

ccfeeling · January 2018

Good job bro in direction

Anhedonie · January 2018

I may not agree on everything, but most sets do really need a buff or even a rework.

DeadlyRecluse · January 2018

A fair amount of these suggestions seem to disregard PvP.

Agility/Willpower are still the best 3 piece sets for PvP, for instance, where minor slayer doesn't really compete.

Iceheart, Eyes of Mara, Archer's Mind, Heem Jas, Overwhelming Surge, Armor of Truth, Wyrd Tree, and several others on your list absolutely already have uses, some more niche than others.

Just because you don't see a use for a set, doesn't mean there isn't a use--and that seems to be the case for many of these.