What's the use of rattlecage and medusa?

fiender66 · December 2020

Allow me to ask, and forgive if it sounds like a noobish question: how are heavies but magically oriented sets, like rattlecage and medusa, used by mainly?
I hear that medusa is widely farmed, but I'm not able to understand why and for what type of build.
Thanks in advance

Dagoth_Rac · December 2020

You wear jewelry and a fire staff, or jewelry and 2 pieces of heavy. You can still wear 5 pieces of light armor, which is typically the max, anyway. Most magicka builds use 5 light + 1 heavy + 1 medium. This would just switch it out for 2 heavy instead of 1 heavy and 1 medium.

Rattlecage is not very popular because you can easily get Major Sorcery from potions. But Medusa is fairly popular because you can only get Minor Force from skills, and they can be clunky skills for a magicka build. So getting Minor Force from your gear, and freeing up a skill slot, can be tempting.

El_Borracho · December 2020

I run Medusa and Siroria on my Magblade. Wear Medusa heavy chest and legs in divines, all Medusa jewelry, wear all light monster set, and 3 light Siroria body pieces and a Siroria Inferno/VMA Inferno setup. I love it. Gives you the extra resistance without losing out on the damage or resources, plus you don't have to run Trap or Channeled Accel. I think its worth the tradeoff of not running the Undaunted passive.

You can run what @Dagoth_Rac mentioned as well (3 jewelry and the staff) but you would lose the Minor Force when you bar swap, assuming you are running a VMA staff on your back bar. In that case, its not as effective.

Rattlecage (and its stamina cousin Toothrow) look great until you realize you can get the 5th piece bonus through potions or skills.

fiender66 · December 2020

Thanks mates, these are very exhaustive answers, and I find them useful

SpiritofESO · January 2021

fiender66 · January 2021

SpiritofESO wrote: »

But, be aware that this "meta" of wearing mixed armor weights goes against the "per piece" BONUSES available by wearing the full seven pieces of armor.

Some justification is usually given about the Undaunted health passive, which unfortunately is vastly overrated and delivers a fairly minor amount of Health Point benefit -- especially when weighed against the excellent "per piece" bonuses that your armor skill delivers.

I agree that the 2nd Undaunted passive is often overrated, but the combination of 5+5+2 (apparel, web/gems, monster) is the most often used and, IMHO, rightly so. I may be wrong, OFC, but I do not see any advantage in wearing 7 pieces instead of 5 of any set, while a wise use of enchantments and traits is paramount

etchedpixels · January 2021

Going over 5 pieces of a set still gives you the non set special benefits so if you are nailing together armour as you level it's no worse than wearing a random bit of something generic but often it has better enchantments. If you are wearing 7 pieces of something and you've got a pair of suitable matching other bits you might as well wear them instead.

Without a monster set the best two piece buff is I believe still Armour of the Trainee. It's also usually the best one piece buff when running 5/5/1/1 with a mythic ring.

Araneae6537 · January 2021

fiender66 wrote: »

SpiritofESO wrote: »

But, be aware that this "meta" of wearing mixed armor weights goes against the "per piece" BONUSES available by wearing the full seven pieces of armor.

Some justification is usually given about the Undaunted health passive, which unfortunately is vastly overrated and delivers a fairly minor amount of Health Point benefit -- especially when weighed against the excellent "per piece" bonuses that your armor skill delivers.

I agree that the 2nd Undaunted passive is often overrated, but the combination of 5+5+2 (apparel, web/gems, monster) is the most often used and, IMHO, rightly so. I may be wrong, OFC, but I do not see any advantage in wearing 7 pieces instead of 5 of any set, while a wise use of enchantments and traits is paramount

I believe they were talking about the armor passives, not more than 5 pieces of a set. Many wear five pieces of their main armor weight and then one of each of the other two (often in a monster set since the pieces come in all weights) for the undaunted passive which gives 2% bonus to all resource pulls for each armor weight worn. Depending on your goals, it may be more advantageous to wear all 7 pieces of your main armor weight to maximize the per piece armor passives (this is not capped at five). In particular, I know of people who do this with medium armor to maximize their weapon critical rating. I would not expect this to be as worthwhile for heavy armor — one of the passives is +2% to health per armor piece, but +2% to all resource pools seems even better.

El_Borracho · January 2021

Araneae6537 wrote: »

fiender66 wrote: »

SpiritofESO wrote: »

But, be aware that this "meta" of wearing mixed armor weights goes against the "per piece" BONUSES available by wearing the full seven pieces of armor.

Some justification is usually given about the Undaunted health passive, which unfortunately is vastly overrated and delivers a fairly minor amount of Health Point benefit -- especially when weighed against the excellent "per piece" bonuses that your armor skill delivers.

I agree that the 2nd Undaunted passive is often overrated, but the combination of 5+5+2 (apparel, web/gems, monster) is the most often used and, IMHO, rightly so. I may be wrong, OFC, but I do not see any advantage in wearing 7 pieces instead of 5 of any set, while a wise use of enchantments and traits is paramount

I believe they were talking about the armor passives, not more than 5 pieces of a set. Many wear five pieces of their main armor weight and then one of each of the other two (often in a monster set since the pieces come in all weights) for the undaunted passive which gives 2% bonus to all resource pulls for each armor weight worn. Depending on your goals, it may be more advantageous to wear all 7 pieces of your main armor weight to maximize the per piece armor passives (this is not capped at five). In particular, I know of people who do this with medium armor to maximize their weapon critical rating. I would not expect this to be as worthwhile for heavy armor — one of the passives is +2% to health per armor piece, but +2% to all resource pools seems even better.

Agreed. Medium armor is the only gear I'll go all 7 on for PVE. You want 5 pieces of light to keep those passives up, which are critical. I don't think there is a similar advantage of going 7 light.

WrathOfInnos · January 2021

El_Borracho wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

fiender66 wrote: »

SpiritofESO wrote: »

But, be aware that this "meta" of wearing mixed armor weights goes against the "per piece" BONUSES available by wearing the full seven pieces of armor.

Some justification is usually given about the Undaunted health passive, which unfortunately is vastly overrated and delivers a fairly minor amount of Health Point benefit -- especially when weighed against the excellent "per piece" bonuses that your armor skill delivers.

I agree that the 2nd Undaunted passive is often overrated, but the combination of 5+5+2 (apparel, web/gems, monster) is the most often used and, IMHO, rightly so. I may be wrong, OFC, but I do not see any advantage in wearing 7 pieces instead of 5 of any set, while a wise use of enchantments and traits is paramount

I believe they were talking about the armor passives, not more than 5 pieces of a set. Many wear five pieces of their main armor weight and then one of each of the other two (often in a monster set since the pieces come in all weights) for the undaunted passive which gives 2% bonus to all resource pulls for each armor weight worn. Depending on your goals, it may be more advantageous to wear all 7 pieces of your main armor weight to maximize the per piece armor passives (this is not capped at five). In particular, I know of people who do this with medium armor to maximize their weapon critical rating. I would not expect this to be as worthwhile for heavy armor — one of the passives is +2% to health per armor piece, but +2% to all resource pools seems even better.

Agreed. Medium armor is the only gear I'll go all 7 on for PVE. You want 5 pieces of light to keep those passives up, which are critical. I don't think there is a similar advantage of going 7 light.

7 light is lower damage than 5 light because you don’t get any more crit (unlike medium), but you still lose the Max Magicka from undaunted passives. You do get slightly better sustain with more light armor, and some builds (especially with mythics) will run 6 light + 1 heavy.

El_Borracho · January 2021

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

fiender66 wrote: »

SpiritofESO wrote: »

But, be aware that this "meta" of wearing mixed armor weights goes against the "per piece" BONUSES available by wearing the full seven pieces of armor.

Some justification is usually given about the Undaunted health passive, which unfortunately is vastly overrated and delivers a fairly minor amount of Health Point benefit -- especially when weighed against the excellent "per piece" bonuses that your armor skill delivers.

I agree that the 2nd Undaunted passive is often overrated, but the combination of 5+5+2 (apparel, web/gems, monster) is the most often used and, IMHO, rightly so. I may be wrong, OFC, but I do not see any advantage in wearing 7 pieces instead of 5 of any set, while a wise use of enchantments and traits is paramount

I believe they were talking about the armor passives, not more than 5 pieces of a set. Many wear five pieces of their main armor weight and then one of each of the other two (often in a monster set since the pieces come in all weights) for the undaunted passive which gives 2% bonus to all resource pulls for each armor weight worn. Depending on your goals, it may be more advantageous to wear all 7 pieces of your main armor weight to maximize the per piece armor passives (this is not capped at five). In particular, I know of people who do this with medium armor to maximize their weapon critical rating. I would not expect this to be as worthwhile for heavy armor — one of the passives is +2% to health per armor piece, but +2% to all resource pools seems even better.

Agreed. Medium armor is the only gear I'll go all 7 on for PVE. You want 5 pieces of light to keep those passives up, which are critical. I don't think there is a similar advantage of going 7 light.

7 light is lower damage than 5 light because you don’t get any more crit (unlike medium), but you still lose the Max Magicka from undaunted passives. You do get slightly better sustain with more light armor, and some builds (especially with mythics) will run 6 light + 1 heavy.

Ahh, thank you. Never had a sustain issue on my mag toons, prefer the undaunted or double-heavy from Medusa for resistances