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My thoughts on every heavy armor set in ESO

Deltrox
Deltrox
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Hey guys! I've been spending this past week or so writing up a list and review of every heavy armor set in ESO. I am a tank-only player who mainly plays PvE, but I do the occasional BG and I have some friends who are very into PvP who I've learned from. I'm not the most experienced tank, but I've done almost everything. I'm a very statistical and analytic person so the sets that I've looked into I usually have some quantitative measure of whether they're good or bad. Anyways, here is the 27 page long report on all the heavy armor sets!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c9sHP_L4R7WJP-RulvttGmdaHTiEussudSqnPUk3BkY/edit?usp=sharing
Tank - PC/NA - IR - GH
  • TankHealz2015
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    Excellent read.
    Thanks!
  • Xvorg
    Xvorg
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    Deltrox wrote: »
    Hey guys! I've been spending this past week or so writing up a list and review of every heavy armor set in ESO. I am a tank-only player who mainly plays PvE, but I do the occasional BG and I have some friends who are very into PvP who I've learned from. I'm not the most experienced tank, but I've done almost everything. I'm a very statistical and analytic person so the sets that I've looked into I usually have some quantitative measure of whether they're good or bad. Anyways, here is the 27 page long report on all the heavy armor sets!

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c9sHP_L4R7WJP-RulvttGmdaHTiEussudSqnPUk3BkY/edit?usp=sharing

    Ok, some comments from a PvP point of view:

    Veiled Heritance: It is not that bad; it increases wpn dmg on dmg done. It considers ranged attacks and dots (if i remeber well). Not sure if considers procs/enchants.

    Elf Bane: Bad everywhere. The 2 extra secs imply just one extra tick of dmg, Could be useful in PvE if a DD wants to use HA, but why? In PvP with BS is absolutely bs

    Livewire: Great for shock staff DKs in PvP who don't want to waste much magicka setting enemies off balance: Proc + blockade and heeeeeere comes the lash!!!. It was my bread and butter until ZoS made lash proc dodgeable.

    Nikulas + Beckoning Steel: That is a combo I would like to see. Saddly both sets are long forgotten.

    Shalk: Good in PvP for mDks and Mageblades that like to spam soul harvest

    Vampire Cloak. It has its uses. Minor prottection is carried to shields so for sorcs in heavy it could be something.


    The rest, I fully agree. Neither DKS nor Rattlecage are good sets...
    Edited by Xvorg on December 22, 2018 3:49AM
    Sarcasm is something too serious to be taken lightly

    I was born with the wrong sign
    In the wrong house
    With the wrong ascendancy
    I took the wrong road
    That led to the wrong tendencies
    I was in the wrong place at the wrong time
    For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme
    On the wrong day of the wrong week
    Used the wrong method with the wrong technique
  • Ragnarock41
    Ragnarock41
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    Problem with your post is that in some cases, you are taking some sets that are obviously meant for heavy armor brawlers and judging them as if they were meant for tanks, aka DPS slaves in PvE or just utility bots as I prefer to call them in PvP.

    One other issue is that you don't know why some sets are in their current situation(not your fault really), like for example the trainee(trainee was supposed to be a beginner set but it offered way too high stats, so it was nerfed. Its replaced by the set called shacklebreaker which funnily enough, offers even better stats) and the blackrose set was nerfed to counter heavy armor meta. Its a common thing in this game. Devs introduce new sets, sets overperform or sometimes related mechanics overperform, then they nerf it so much its completely unviable. Black rose is a great example.

    Also if you wonder why the heavy armor damage sets are so damn strong, its because they were made in an era where heavy armor passives were ridicilously bad and nobody outside of PvE tanks was using heavy armor, so they decided to make sets that compensate for the lack of armor passives. Obviously after the HA passive rework , and the sustain nerfs in morrowind, people started to realize heavy armor offers good sustain, and heavy armor sets offer great weapon damage, and with that, the heavy armor high weapon damage builds became meta.
    Edited by Ragnarock41 on December 22, 2018 4:05AM
  • SirAndy
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    That summary is just a wee bit biased towards your personal play-style, don't you think?
    dry.gif
  • Deltrox
    Deltrox
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    Xvorg wrote: »
    Deltrox wrote: »
    Hey guys! I've been spending this past week or so writing up a list and review of every heavy armor set in ESO. I am a tank-only player who mainly plays PvE, but I do the occasional BG and I have some friends who are very into PvP who I've learned from. I'm not the most experienced tank, but I've done almost everything. I'm a very statistical and analytic person so the sets that I've looked into I usually have some quantitative measure of whether they're good or bad. Anyways, here is the 27 page long report on all the heavy armor sets!

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c9sHP_L4R7WJP-RulvttGmdaHTiEussudSqnPUk3BkY/edit?usp=sharing

    Ok, some comments from a PvP point of view:

    Veiled Heritance: It is not that bad; it increases wpn dmg on dmg done. It considers ranged attacks and dots (if i remeber well). Not sure if considers procs/enchants.

    Elf Bane: Bad everywhere. The 2 extra secs imply just one extra tick of dmg, Could be useful in PvE if a DD wants to use HA, but why? In PvP with BS is absolutely bs

    Livewire: Great for shock staff DKs in PvP who don't want to waste much magicka setting enemies off balance: Proc + blockade and heeeeeere comes the lash!!!. It was my bread and butter until ZoS made lash proc dodgeable.

    Nikulas + Beckoning Steel: That is a combo I would like to see. Saddly both sets are long forgotten.

    Shalk: Good in PvP for mDks and Mageblades that like to spam soul harvest

    Vampire Cloak. It has its uses. Minor prottection is carried to shields so for sorcs in heavy it could be something.


    The rest, I fully agree. Neither DKS nor Rattlecage are good sets...

    Hey thanks for the comment! That's good to know about veiled heritance, vampire, and shalks. I was admittedly too harsh with shalks I think.

    Elf Bane is a tricky one for me. A PvE magDK would have longer dots therefore more time for whips, which is a very solid spammable. Whip is very hard to get accurate parses with though because it benefits from off-balance way more than other classes (and whip no longer consumes off-balance on bosses). Very possible (and perhaps even probable) that elf bane doesn't perform comparably still, but I haven't seen good proof either way.
    Tank - PC/NA - IR - GH
  • Deltrox
    Deltrox
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    Problem with your post is that in some cases, you are taking some sets that are obviously meant for heavy armor brawlers and judging them as if they were meant for tanks, aka DPS slaves in PvE or just utility bots as I prefer to call them in PvP.

    One other issue is that you don't know why some sets are in their current situation(not your fault really), like for example the trainee(trainee was supposed to be a beginner set but it offered way too high stats, so it was nerfed. Its replaced by the set called shacklebreaker which funnily enough, offers even better stats) and the blackrose set was nerfed to counter heavy armor meta. Its a common thing in this game. Devs introduce new sets, sets overperform or sometimes related mechanics overperform, then they nerf it so much its completely unviable. Black rose is a great example.

    Also if you wonder why the heavy armor damage sets are so damn strong, its because they were made in an era where heavy armor passives were ridicilously bad and nobody outside of PvE tanks was using heavy armor, so they decided to make sets that compensate for the lack of armor passives. Obviously after the HA passive rework , and the sustain nerfs in morrowind, people started to realize heavy armor offers good sustain, and heavy armor sets offer great weapon damage, and with that, the heavy armor high weapon damage builds became meta.

    Yeah I started after Morrowind so I definitely have a very short window of seeing balance. I personally think shuffle should be reworked to help with the heavy armor meta, but again, I'm not a particularly avid PvPer so theres a good chance that whatever i say would just make things worse.

    As far as me judging sets from a PvE tank perspective it was likely because I knew the set was good in PvP (or had similar sets that outperformed it) and so I was viewing it in a situation that most people write off. I'll go back through and look at making some edits to make things more clear
    Tank - PC/NA - IR - GH
  • Deltrox
    Deltrox
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    SirAndy wrote: »
    That summary is just a wee bit biased towards your personal play-style, don't you think?
    dry.gif

    It's very much biased towards my playstyle, BUT I have tried (and liked) quite a few different PvE playstyles. I commented quite a bit on dps-tanking, non-DK tanking, and selfish tanking. Most of the times when I was pointing out problems with a set it was because it gets outperformed (from a numbers standpoint) by sets that have the same playstyle.

    I try really hard to eliminate bias, but at the end of the day my opinion will usually cater to my bias.
    Tank - PC/NA - IR - GH
  • Ragnarock41
    Ragnarock41
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    Deltrox wrote: »
    Problem with your post is that in some cases, you are taking some sets that are obviously meant for heavy armor brawlers and judging them as if they were meant for tanks, aka DPS slaves in PvE or just utility bots as I prefer to call them in PvP.

    One other issue is that you don't know why some sets are in their current situation(not your fault really), like for example the trainee(trainee was supposed to be a beginner set but it offered way too high stats, so it was nerfed. Its replaced by the set called shacklebreaker which funnily enough, offers even better stats) and the blackrose set was nerfed to counter heavy armor meta. Its a common thing in this game. Devs introduce new sets, sets overperform or sometimes related mechanics overperform, then they nerf it so much its completely unviable. Black rose is a great example.

    Also if you wonder why the heavy armor damage sets are so damn strong, its because they were made in an era where heavy armor passives were ridicilously bad and nobody outside of PvE tanks was using heavy armor, so they decided to make sets that compensate for the lack of armor passives. Obviously after the HA passive rework , and the sustain nerfs in morrowind, people started to realize heavy armor offers good sustain, and heavy armor sets offer great weapon damage, and with that, the heavy armor high weapon damage builds became meta.

    Yeah I started after Morrowind so I definitely have a very short window of seeing balance. I personally think shuffle should be reworked to help with the heavy armor meta, but again, I'm not a particularly avid PvPer so theres a good chance that whatever i say would just make things worse.

    As far as me judging sets from a PvE tank perspective it was likely because I knew the set was good in PvP (or had similar sets that outperformed it) and so I was viewing it in a situation that most people write off. I'll go back through and look at making some edits to make things more clear

    You're not far off from reality. Yes, shuffle rework would probably help with heavy armor meta, Anything that makes medium more appealing would help honesty, but bandaid solutions often result in other problems being born, so balance problems should be approached very slowly and carefully.

    I feel like nerfing heavy armor is taking us nowhere because for the last two years its been non-stop nerfs to heavy armor meta, and it didn't change anything.
    Edited by Ragnarock41 on December 22, 2018 6:52AM
  • Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
    Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
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    Loads of curse words make your summarys look bad.

    Will you be going through the medium and light armor sets that tanks use or might use? Like alkosh and magika furnace?
  • Xvorg
    Xvorg
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    Loads of curse words make your summarys look bad.

    Will you be going through the medium and light armor sets that tanks use or might use? Like alkosh and magika furnace?

    Despite the curses and swears, he is right at the end: most HA sets are somewhat useless in the current meta. In fact, there are too many sets which are different versions of the same idea, though one is great and the other crappy crappy (Eternal Warrior and Inmortal Warrior, for example), as there's Ice Furnace with its interesting idea for a 5th bonis (though impractical) and crappy 2nd bonus. Those sets need a serious rework.

    I would like to see something similar considering the medium and light armor sets too. For example, why would any magicka user take Noble Duelist after the changes to evasion? Why would you farm Storm Master (a LA version of it would be awesome)? Should Stygian be a medium armor set after all these years? And what about the weapon sets and their bad bonuses, like Deadly strikes?
    Edited by Xvorg on December 22, 2018 4:36PM
    Sarcasm is something too serious to be taken lightly

    I was born with the wrong sign
    In the wrong house
    With the wrong ascendancy
    I took the wrong road
    That led to the wrong tendencies
    I was in the wrong place at the wrong time
    For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme
    On the wrong day of the wrong week
    Used the wrong method with the wrong technique
  • Deltrox
    Deltrox
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    Loads of curse words make your summarys look bad.

    Will you be going through the medium and light armor sets that tanks use or might use? Like alkosh and magika furnace?

    Yeah, never meant this to be "professional" grade I suppose. I wanted it to be casual.

    I would like to do medium and light sets, but I think those would take a lot longer for me since I dont actively play dps; I can just parse decently well.
    Tank - PC/NA - IR - GH
  • Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
    Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
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    Deltrox wrote: »
    Loads of curse words make your summarys look bad.

    Will you be going through the medium and light armor sets that tanks use or might use? Like alkosh and magika furnace?

    Yeah, never meant this to be "professional" grade I suppose. I wanted it to be casual.

    I would like to do medium and light sets, but I think those would take a lot longer for me since I dont actively play dps; I can just parse decently well.

    No, I mean those sets from a tank perspective, not a dpses. There are tons of sets in this game that a tank can use, that are not in heavy specifically, like the 2 I mentioned.
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