Question for endgame pve players.

OWLTHEMAD · April 2020

The new thrassian strangler set
Mythic
1 item: Killing an enemy grants you a persistent stack of Sload’s Call, up to a maximum of 20 stacks. Each stack increases your Spell Damage by 150, but also increases your damage taken by 2%. Removing Thrassian Stranglers, crouching, or going invisible removes all stacks of Sload’s Call.

Would it not be possible to drop your dps set with this and replace it for a group healing or defense set?

On paper it looks at least stronger than siroria at max stats.

Could you not replace this with sets like twilight remedy (everyone uses bubbles now) or hollow fang thirst, effectively replacing the need for a healer and counter acting its negative benefits while also improving self sustain in the case of hollowfang?

Im posting this as a knee jerk reaction while im looking at the forums during work, so i havent been able to sit down and just theorycraft with it.

Anyone else thinking about this ?(of course there is who am i kidding)

Whats the general consensus?

FirmamentOfStars · April 2020

You mean like using a heal set, so that healers will become meaningless?

First off the set has a pretty bad side effect of up to 40% damage taken, meaning more mechanics will one shot you in PvE. I am not sure, if this set actually will be used or not in PvE, since as said, a dead damage dealer does zero damage and the opportunity cost here is very high.

On the other hand naturally it would be viable for a group to kick their healers and instead make everyone offheal. But healers do no only heal, they are responsible for many buffs and debuffs, which increase the damage of the dds significantly while probably also reducing incoming damage. Those buffs and debuffs are very crucial for a progression group and can only be provided by a dedicated healer.

validifyedneb18_ESO · April 2020

Its a very binary set, either people can survive at 20 stacks with the amount of healing available, or the set is useless. Maybe in some content it will be useful, but id rather not use an item where it can only be on for some bosses.

OWLTHEMAD · April 2020

Well maybe not outright replacing the healler, but im just imagining a couple dds running inventors guard or similar, a couple running twilight remedy, ir any number of other configurations.

I do forsee major protection and major aegis becoming far more relevant from healers so that dds can make use of it.

I absolutely beleive this is a pve set that will result in at least an alternative meta if not out right replacing it.

OWLTHEMAD · April 2020

The damage you take caps out at 40% right? Im not certain how the math works out but i do feal like that would be easy to negate with good uptimes on major buffs.

Wish i could get on pts to mess with it in trials.

kalunte · April 2020

i'm pretty much sur that combining good rotations on major prot buff and put more enchants/attributes into health could compensate the 40% dmg since 3000sp value is somehow equal to a 100% sp buff (this isnt precise calculation).
still having larger healthpools could cause issues in fights like Lokke's icetomb and Zmaja curse.

i dont know if same "healtofulllife" mecanics are in the new trial tho.

Sanguinor2 · April 2020

Depends on the Trial and how hard you can actually nuke stuff with 8 dds wearing it. In the older Trials you might not even Need much of a def increase since you can just outnuke some bosses, if you for example can nuke the warrior hard enough that he only does 1 or no starfall then dropping a nova on him or something might be enough to survive.
It really will be interesting if the set goes live as it is Right now. For higher Damage Content it could Maybe even be worth it to run lower stacks, 4 stacks for example are a permanent siro 5 piece and only increase Damage taken by 8%.
But most likely it will be a matter of increasing Defence enough to run full stacks and nuke everything hard.

azjuwelz · April 2020

Might increase need for healers to offset the 40% additional damage. Could be interesting to test but might make a boring meta.

SidraWillowsky · April 2020

It's... something, lol:

I've seen parses as high as 150k.

Wardens can mitigate all but 2% of the additional damage taken (30% via Major Protection from Sleet Storm, and an additional 8% from Minor Protection via Frost Cloak) though I'll note that that is on top of normal damage.

I still need to test how the stacks build- do you need the killing blow, or does it count if something that you're damaging with other people die? If it's the latter, then I can see crazy raid groups going into a vet trial, stacking a few magden DDs and/or warden tanks/healers and stamcro DDs, building stack on mobs, then having the Wardens rotate using Northern Storm and all keep Expansive Frost Cloak up for the damage mitigation and have the stamcros rotate Goliath (though I don't know if that's as common as it used to be) and just go to town. The downside is that if anyone dies in a boss fight, they're going to have to build the stacks back up, so there's a damage loss at first and they need to wait for adds to kill to be able to build stacks.

It might be doable for some groups, in which case their group DPS is going to be insane; they'll tear through bosses.

In "regular" open world stuff, it's great- I did a few delves in Skyrim and stuff just melted. I then took my magden to Elinhir in Craglorn for the stronger and bigger mobs, and the effect of the Thrassian gloves was pretty much washed out by the amount of damage mitigation and heals that I had to stack to stay live. I did manage to stay alive, but my DPS wasn't any different than it is when I go in on a normal setup because I had to heal/shield so much.

It's hilarious to see the astronomically high DPS numbers when it works/on a dummy, but it's just not super practical to use.

John_Falstaff · April 2020

azjuwelz wrote: »

Might increase need for healers to offset the 40% additional damage. Could be interesting to test but might make a boring meta.

Would have to rework the one-shot galore that riddles latest dungeons (Moonhunter was the apotheosis of that), if damage was more monotonous, sure, it would've been compensated with more healing, but healer won't do anything against a one-shot and DDs as it stands will have to invest part of their newly gained power into higher health. Granted though, still will have plenty to spare, can dump 10k more health and still end up with a hefty gain compared to live.

azjuwelz · April 2020

I was more thinking trials, but yes. And since I run a warden healer, the major protection did come to mind.

JinMori · April 2020

The set is strong, good players will be able to use it, but there is the big risk of one shots.

ATreeGnome · April 2020

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

The new thrassian strangler set
Mythic
1 item: Killing an enemy grants you a persistent stack of Sload’s Call, up to a maximum of 20 stacks. Each stack increases your Spell Damage by 150, but also increases your damage taken by 2%. Removing Thrassian Stranglers, crouching, or going invisible removes all stacks of Sload’s Call.

Would it not be possible to drop your dps set with this and replace it for a group healing or defense set?

On paper it looks at least stronger than siroria at max stats.

Could you not replace this with sets like twilight remedy (everyone uses bubbles now) or hollow fang thirst, effectively replacing the need for a healer and counter acting its negative benefits while also improving self sustain in the case of hollowfang?

Im posting this as a knee jerk reaction while im looking at the forums during work, so i havent been able to sit down and just theorycraft with it.

Anyone else thinking about this ?(of course there is who am i kidding)

Whats the general consensus?

Additional healing will have only a marginal effect on making Thrassian Stranglers viable. The biggest concern with running a set that makes you take extra damage is how much more vulnerable you become to being 1 shot. The most direct way to offset this would be to have 40% higher effective health. This can be accomplished through damage reduction, mitigation, or just running higher max health. If you run higher max health you will typically be sacrificing a pretty significant amount of max magicka and will require some extra healing to get you back to full health after taking damage (higher risk of being 2 shot). I think the more likely solution will be that groups will start running mitigation ultimates in a rotation.

So the real question is, will it be an increase in DPS to run something like Nova or Veil of Blades with Thrassian Stranglers with a 1 piece monster set compared to a Destro ult and a 2 piece monster set?

I haven't run the numbers but I'm betting that the answer will be yes, at least for 12 man content where you could have 4 night blades rotate Veil of Blades and still have 4 other DPS running full damage ultimates. It's also possible that supports could run the mitigation ultimates but I would be surprised if Warnhorn weren't still the best option.

Another thing to take in to consideration is how Oblivion damage will interact with this. If you take 40% increased Oblivion damage too, it's pretty likely that Thrassian Stranglers will be out of the question for some content. I'm not sure if you could reliably survive flare in vCR for example.