Time to look at Mechanical Aquity (pvp)

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

I main NB. We need to admit MA is causing a lot of issues.

Back when the proc meta was unleashed MA went from having a chance to proc to having a guaranteed proc every 16 seconds.

At that time it was only used by bombers.

Now we're in a bomber renascence. There are more than there ever have been because it's never been easier to do it. It's not a coincidence that during and after MYM the forum was filled with angry posts about NBs. Fast forward and seemingly the changes to increase TTK seem directly linked to that anger.

The issue now is that MA is becoming BIS for nearly every class in PVP. I know sorcs, wardens, templars, and necros that are running it and destroying people left and right.

You can get up to 10 attacks in those 5 seconds if you're good at LA weaving. On top of that, during cooldown you're still critting at your usual rate. There's no drawback if you stack crit damage.

When a set goes from being niche for one build of one class to getting used across multiple classes to great effect, we have to be honest about it's power level, even if we use it ourselves.

Here are three suggestions.

1: Decrease the proc time from 5 to 3 seconds with the same cooldown. It would still be very strong, but would fall out of favor for the button mashers.

2: Keep it at 5 seconds but increase the cooldown to 30 seconds. It would be much less desirable for general use but still useful for those who sacrifice in other areas to fully exploit the set.

3: keep the proc time and cooldown the same but PREVENT critting outside the proc. Under the current spec, this would be the equivalent of 23% crit (5 / 21). Obviously that's low BUT you would still have the benefit of saving your biggest hits for when it procs and given the on screen animation it's hard to miss.

I look forward to seeing what others say.

Waffennacht · August 2021

Its really not an issue

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

It is.

The devs are trying to increase (drastically in my opinion) TTK because the forum feedback erupted about bombers. It should be adjusted based on that alone. Now you have a growing player base that's realizing it back be OP on any DD on any class.

This will continue.

WrathOfInnos · August 2021

Can we continue this discussion in the existing threads? Starting another new one just means a lot of points will be repeated.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/581420/mech-acuity-and-ttk

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/579360/you-will-hate-me-but-for-balance-reasons-acuity-needs-to-go/p1

universal_wrath · August 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

I main NB. We need to admit MA is causing a lot of issues.

Back when the proc meta was unleashed MA went from having a chance to proc to having a guaranteed proc every 16 seconds.

At that time it was only used by bombers.

Now we're in a bomber renascence. There are more than there ever have been because it's never been easier to do it. It's not a coincidence that during and after MYM the forum was filled with angry posts about NBs. Fast forward and seemingly the changes to increase TTK seem directly linked to that anger.

The issue now is that MA is becoming BIS for nearly every class in PVP. I know sorcs, wardens, templars, and necros that are running it and destroying people left and right.

You can get up to 10 attacks in those 5 seconds if you're good at LA weaving. On top of that, during cooldown you're still critting at your usual rate. There's no drawback if you stack crit damage.

When a set goes from being niche for one build of one class to getting used across multiple classes to great effect, we have to be honest about it's power level, even if we use it ourselves.

Here are three suggestions.

1: Decrease the proc time from 5 to 3 seconds with the same cooldown. It would still be very strong, but would fall out of favor for the button mashers.

2: Keep it at 5 seconds but increase the cooldown to 30 seconds. It would be much less desirable for general use but still useful for those who sacrifice in other areas to fully exploit the set.

3: keep the proc time and cooldown the same but PREVENT critting outside the proc. Under the current spec, this would be the equivalent of 23% crit (5 / 21). Obviously that's low BUT you would still have the benefit of saving your biggest hits for when it procs and given the on screen animation it's hard to miss.

I look forward to seeing what others say.

It is funny, because it seems most people who use MA are gankers and bomber who are usually NB, now I wander why is that?

All the opt you present will make this setnot just fall our of favor, but go to trash can, except fot gankete and bombets. Nightblades usually only need about 2 secs to delet most people. Othet clas would take more than that because of their playstyle. Nightblade can hide and do their buffs and they attack on cooldowns, othe4 classes can accedently proc MA becausr if they LA or do any sort of attack during fights.

A more favoriable opt to other classes is to increase base crit chance by 40-50% instead of making it 100% and increade the duration to 7-8 secs with same cooldown. With nerfs to crit chance in meduim next patch, MA will be even more important to some classes to survive like stam sorcs with crit surge.

Grandchamp1989 · August 2021

Delete cloak from the game - problem solved.
Take sorc streak and put it in the same trash bin.

They're two of the most cheesy and broken skills in the game.

Nobody should have the ability to start fights (by guaranteed first hits!) and then leave the fight when the other guy is kicking your ass. Then go back out recover ressources and health and go back in for first hit again once again.

How NBs and Sorcs even lose 1v1s is beyond me. When you choose when and how you wanna fight, something has to go seriously wrong to lose the match.

Viewsfrom6ix · August 2021

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

Delete cloak from the game - problem solved.
Take sorc streak and put it in the same trash bin.

They're two of the most cheesy and broken skills in the game.

Nobody should have the ability to start fights (by guaranteed first hits!) and then leave the fight when the other guy is kicking your ass. Then go back out recover ressources and health and go back in for first hit again once again.

How NBs and Sorcs even lose 1v1s is beyond me. When you choose when and how you wanna fight, something has to go seriously wrong to lose the match.

[snip] That is their only playstyle when they lack proper mitigation.

Nb and sorc aren't even top tier classes in PvP. Take a look at warden and necro's ultitity first before trying to nerf cloak and streak.

And please don't detour this to a nerf sorc thread.

[edited for baiting]

xylena_lazarow · August 2021

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

They blanket nerfed everyone's damage because of "low TTK" complaints when the vast majority of "low TTK" situations involve NB and/or Acuity. Players constantly defending every last bit of busted nonsense is quite possibly a good reason why ZOS always opts for blanket nerfs instead of targeting outliers.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

How NBs and Sorcs even lose 1v1s is beyond me. When you choose when and how you wanna fight, something has to go seriously wrong to lose the match.

This isn't accurate.

If you stop a NB from stealthing, which is easy, they're dead. I have no defense other than dodge roll. If you see me dodge roll just LA until you see me take damage and then unload.

You can remove MA from the game entirely for all I care, but that isn't going to happen.

mikey_reach · August 2021

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

I agree with you and my reasoning is how the set has been the same for years and now all the sudden its op. The only reason why acuity is the way it is now is because of 3 things, the nerf to crit chance, the nerf to impen, and the accessibility of crit damage modifiers. All these things combined cause acuity’s effectiveness to skyrocket in pvp i mean literally any class can use it very well hell my magplar and stamsorc use the same setup. Acuity,balorgh and dragurkin and best part is that acuity buffs dragurkin since it benefits from crit damage. Zos clearly stated that they dont have to worry to much about balancing crit because crit resist exists to naturally balance it. Dont blame the set blame game balance and the meta.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

mikey_reach wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

I agree with you and my reasoning is how the set has been the same for years and now all the sudden its op. The only reason why acuity is the way it is now is because of 3 things, the nerf to crit chance, the nerf to impen, and the accessibility of crit damage modifiers. All these things combined cause acuity’s effectiveness to skyrocket in pvp i mean literally any class can use it very well hell my magplar and stamsorc use the same setup. Acuity,balorgh and dragurkin and best part is that acuity buffs dragurkin since it benefits from crit damage. Zos clearly stated that they dont have to worry to much about balancing crit because crit resist exists to naturally balance it. Dont blame the set blame game balance and the meta.

Well first of all MA as is has only existed for about a year, not years. Before that you only had a 15% chance to proc it. It still worked well and saw a lot of use in PVE. It wasn't until the proc meta happened last year where they have a guaranteed proc to all proc sets that this became BiS for certain builds.

Secondly thank you for pointing out how OP it is FOR ALL BUILDS NOW. I probably wouldn't care as much if they weren't making drastic changes to battle spirit and skills to combat the low TTK caused by MA.

Aldoss · August 2021

All of this sounds like a LTP issue. These forums are filled with scapegoating and MA and Pariah are the flavor of the month.

MA has one of the most noticably visual proc signals (except on a sorc) and has one of the lowest proc up times. The set is balanced in that the low up time is countered with one of the strongest burst windows in the game*.

*MA is a good set, but it's made into a great set when the user completely invests into its 5 second window by being a khajiit, running shadow mundus, full divines, and otherwise choosing to prioritize crit dmg over everything else.

What this thread (and the others complaining about it) are discussing is not the set, but the investment being made by specific users. Those players made a calculated choice and are reaping the reward for it.

This is honestly no different from Nefas' PvP tank using ironblood and blessed with full sturdy, perma blocking and tanking entire zergs of factions (10-20 players) for over 20-30 seconds. He's just not killing you, but the effort and investment that yielded that result is no different.

Players deserve to be rewarded for investments like this, and as is the case with MA, it's literally available to any class, in any armor weight.

If you see someone go blue: block, dodge, burst heal, and/or stun them. If you survive, congrats, that player is no longer a threat for 16 seconds and is likely wearing full divines with a crit chance of less than 20-25. If they're a NB and cloak away, then grumble under your breath and get your detect pot ready.

mikey_reach · August 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

mikey_reach wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

I agree with you and my reasoning is how the set has been the same for years and now all the sudden its op. The only reason why acuity is the way it is now is because of 3 things, the nerf to crit chance, the nerf to impen, and the accessibility of crit damage modifiers. All these things combined cause acuity’s effectiveness to skyrocket in pvp i mean literally any class can use it very well hell my magplar and stamsorc use the same setup. Acuity,balorgh and dragurkin and best part is that acuity buffs dragurkin since it benefits from crit damage. Zos clearly stated that they dont have to worry to much about balancing crit because crit resist exists to naturally balance it. Dont blame the set blame game balance and the meta.

Well first of all MA as is has only existed for about a year, not years. Before that you only had a 15% chance to proc it. It still worked well and saw a lot of use in PVE. It wasn't until the proc meta happened last year where they have a guaranteed proc to all proc sets that this became BiS for certain builds.

Secondly thank you for pointing out how OP it is FOR ALL BUILDS NOW. I probably wouldn't care as much if they weren't making drastic changes to battle spirit and skills to combat the low TTK caused by MA.

Ive been playing since release so nice try on the miss information. Mechanical acuity got released 4 years ago and got changed like about a year ago like you said but thise changes happened when we had more crit resist and mitigation so the set did not feel as op.Secondly notice how you only focused on the acuity part of my argument and not the other sets which is for all builds just as much as acuity which you solely focused on so you either got tunneled vision on the set or you are bias and miss informed. And third of all you ignored that its zos’s changes to the game that placed acuity in a more desirable situation. Its the meta my man not the set before the crit changes most people had an average of 3k crit resist now its 1k less that and we do also have less overall mitigation since cp changes.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

Aldoss wrote: »

All of this sounds like a LTP issue. These forums are filled with scapegoating and MA and Pariah are the flavor of the month.

MA has one of the most noticably visual proc signals (except on a sorc) and has one of the lowest proc up times. The set is balanced in that the low up time is countered with one of the strongest burst windows in the game*.

*MA is a good set, but it's made into a great set when the user completely invests into its 5 second window by being a khajiit, running shadow mundus, full divines, and otherwise choosing to prioritize crit dmg over everything else.

What this thread (and the others complaining about it) are discussing is not the set, but the investment being made by specific users. Those players made a calculated choice and are reaping the reward for it.

This is honestly no different from Nefas' PvP tank using ironblood and blessed with full sturdy, perma blocking and tanking entire zergs of factions (10-20 players) for over 20-30 seconds. He's just not killing you, but the effort and investment that yielded that result is no different.

Players deserve to be rewarded for investments like this, and as is the case with MA, it's literally available to any class, in any armor weight.

If you see someone go blue: block, dodge, burst heal, and/or stun them. If you survive, congrats, that player is no longer a threat for 16 seconds and is likely wearing full divines with a crit chance of less than 20-25. If they're a NB and cloak away, then grumble under your breath and get your detect pot ready.

The issue is you know you're getting 5 seconds to burn through your burst damage. You're getting it every 16 seconds. Normal crit has randomness built for good reason.

Whether a NB or any other class, it's too strong because it's guaranteed.

This is about heading off a future problem before it happens because once you start to creep toward 25% to 50% of all users using one cheese set you're inviting not only that set getting nerfed but other drastic changes on top of it.

Right now every DD in Cyro should wear it. It's the new malacath, except unlike with malacath you can very easily push 80% crit damage.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

mikey_reach wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

mikey_reach wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

I agree with you and my reasoning is how the set has been the same for years and now all the sudden its op. The only reason why acuity is the way it is now is because of 3 things, the nerf to crit chance, the nerf to impen, and the accessibility of crit damage modifiers. All these things combined cause acuity’s effectiveness to skyrocket in pvp i mean literally any class can use it very well hell my magplar and stamsorc use the same setup. Acuity,balorgh and dragurkin and best part is that acuity buffs dragurkin since it benefits from crit damage. Zos clearly stated that they dont have to worry to much about balancing crit because crit resist exists to naturally balance it. Dont blame the set blame game balance and the meta.

Well first of all MA as is has only existed for about a year, not years. Before that you only had a 15% chance to proc it. It still worked well and saw a lot of use in PVE. It wasn't until the proc meta happened last year where they have a guaranteed proc to all proc sets that this became BiS for certain builds.

Secondly thank you for pointing out how OP it is FOR ALL BUILDS NOW. I probably wouldn't care as much if they weren't making drastic changes to battle spirit and skills to combat the low TTK caused by MA.

Ive been playing since release so nice try on the miss information. Mechanical acuity got released at the same time as the xbox one x meaning 4 years ago in november along with clockwork city so your first argument is 100% false and out the window. Secondly notice how you only focused on the acuity part of my argument and not the other sets which is for all builds just as much as acuity which you solely focused on so you either got tunneled vision on the set or you are bias and miss informed. And third of all you ignored that its zos’s changes to the game that placed acuity in a more desirable situation. Its the meta my man not the set before the crit changes most people had an average of 3k crit resist now its 1k less that and we do also have less overall mitigation since cp changes.

Yes it's been in the game for a long time. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Prior to year ago, this was MA:

2 Adds 129 Weapon Damage
3 Adds 129 Spell Damage
4 Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina, Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
5 When you deal direct damage, you have a 15% chance to gain unerring mechanical vision for 5 seconds, causing your attacks to always be a Critical Strike. This effect can occur once every 18 seconds.

You had a small chance to proc it then it went on a cooldown. This still let you time your biggest damage skills and ultimates for when it proc'd. The current version makes it too easy.

mikey_reach · August 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

mikey_reach wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

mikey_reach wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

I agree with you and my reasoning is how the set has been the same for years and now all the sudden its op. The only reason why acuity is the way it is now is because of 3 things, the nerf to crit chance, the nerf to impen, and the accessibility of crit damage modifiers. All these things combined cause acuity’s effectiveness to skyrocket in pvp i mean literally any class can use it very well hell my magplar and stamsorc use the same setup. Acuity,balorgh and dragurkin and best part is that acuity buffs dragurkin since it benefits from crit damage. Zos clearly stated that they dont have to worry to much about balancing crit because crit resist exists to naturally balance it. Dont blame the set blame game balance and the meta.

Well first of all MA as is has only existed for about a year, not years. Before that you only had a 15% chance to proc it. It still worked well and saw a lot of use in PVE. It wasn't until the proc meta happened last year where they have a guaranteed proc to all proc sets that this became BiS for certain builds.

Secondly thank you for pointing out how OP it is FOR ALL BUILDS NOW. I probably wouldn't care as much if they weren't making drastic changes to battle spirit and skills to combat the low TTK caused by MA.

Ive been playing since release so nice try on the miss information. Mechanical acuity got released at the same time as the xbox one x meaning 4 years ago in november along with clockwork city so your first argument is 100% false and out the window. Secondly notice how you only focused on the acuity part of my argument and not the other sets which is for all builds just as much as acuity which you solely focused on so you either got tunneled vision on the set or you are bias and miss informed. And third of all you ignored that its zos’s changes to the game that placed acuity in a more desirable situation. Its the meta my man not the set before the crit changes most people had an average of 3k crit resist now its 1k less that and we do also have less overall mitigation since cp changes.

Yes it's been in the game for a long time. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Prior to year ago, this was MA:

2 Adds 129 Weapon Damage
3 Adds 129 Spell Damage
4 Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina, Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
5 When you deal direct damage, you have a 15% chance to gain unerring mechanical vision for 5 seconds, causing your attacks to always be a Critical Strike. This effect can occur once every 18 seconds.

You had a small chance to proc it then it went on a cooldown. This still let you time your biggest damage skills and ultimates for when it proc'd. The current version makes it too easy.

While yes it does make it too easy that change was a pve change and zos pretty much said pvp has a natural counter to crit and its crit resist. The set did not become op until game changes not changes to the set, if the problem was MA then how come nobody was complaining when it had a cooldown of 18 secs now that it got a nerfed to have 21 secs of cooldown people are saying that is op. What kind of set becomes op after a nerf? Well easy the sets that get an increase in efficiency due to game changes can become op, its it the set’s fault? Of course not we went from having an average of 50% crit damage mitigation to like a 30% crit damage mitigation and one of your crit resist options is on the same slottable cp tree as your offensive slottables. All the evidence points to the game changes and not the set, people blame the set because its what they see not what they understand.

vgabor · August 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Here are three suggestions.
...

Would you mind coming up with suggestion which not destroys the set in PvE?
Thanks.

YandereGirlfriend · August 2021

mikey_reach wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

I agree with you and my reasoning is how the set has been the same for years and now all the sudden its op. The only reason why acuity is the way it is now is because of 3 things, the nerf to crit chance, the nerf to impen, and the accessibility of crit damage modifiers. All these things combined cause acuity’s effectiveness to skyrocket in pvp i mean literally any class can use it very well hell my magplar and stamsorc use the same setup. Acuity,balorgh and dragurkin and best part is that acuity buffs dragurkin since it benefits from crit damage. Zos clearly stated that they dont have to worry to much about balancing crit because crit resist exists to naturally balance it. Dont blame the set blame game balance and the meta.

The game absolutely needs more and better easily accessible sources of Critical Resistance for players.

An easy starting point would be to add a new Minor Buff for 10% Critical Resistance and then to add it to every ability that provides Major Resolve in the game.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

vgabor wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Here are three suggestions.
...

Would you mind coming up with suggestion which not destroys the set in PvE?
Thanks.

I would say none of those do for what the set is current used for in PVE.

The only reason people are adopting this across all classes is because zos nerfed crit chance into the ground while adding several ways to boost crit damage.

NylAR · August 2021

I'm honestly laughing my ass off reading all the complaints on mech acuity when my current NB build rocks 70% crit chance, 125% crit damage and over 8k weapon damage. (No vamp)

Mech acuity is not the problem in the least. I'm squishy as hell and can't kill really good players either. Mech acuity actually makes me weaker on this build believe it or not.

Then again I'm a [snip] new player to PvP and don't understand the fundamentals, but speaking of raw damage & numbers i can do a whole lot better this way than slapping on acuity, cause I can constantly reset fights and actually keep steady high burst that catches most people off guard.

[edited for profanity bypass]

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

NylAR wrote: »

I'm honestly laughing my ass off reading all the complaints on mech acuity when my current NB build rocks 70% crit chance, 125% crit damage and over 8k weapon damage. (No vamp)

Mech acuity is not the problem in the least. I'm squishy as hell and can't kill really good players either. Mech acuity actually makes me weaker on this build believe it or not.

Then again I'm a [snip] new player to PvP and don't understand the fundamentals, but speaking of raw damage & numbers i can do a whole lot better this way than slapping on acuity, cause I can constantly reset fights and actually keep steady high burst that catches most people off guard.

Sounds like your pen is probably really low which limits your damage output. So you chose to sacrifice that to get the stats you want.

With MA you can max pen and damage because you know every 16 seconds you'll get a new 5 second window to go all out.

[edited to remove quote]

WrathOfInnos · August 2021

vgabor wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Here are three suggestions.
...

Would you mind coming up with suggestion which not destroys the set in PvE?
Thanks.

Agreed. It’s not used very often in PVE these days, but there are still a handful of burst fights where it can compete with other options. The sustained average uptime is the key to whether it will be useful or not. Option 1 would be a 40% nerf, option 2 would be a 30% nerf, and option 3 wouldn’t be remotely viable.

Any of the 3 suggestions would remove it as an option from PVE, while barely affecting its use in PVP. Several gank/bomb combos can land within 3s, so option 1 wouldn’t help. There is often plenty of time between burst combos in PVP, so option 2 wouldn’t help. Targets rarely survive the 5s burst window, so option 3 wouldn’t change anything (and pressure is already very low during the cooldown if they do).

If it were to get changed (and I’m not convinced it should), the solution would need to reduce its burst potential while maintaining (or increasing slightly) its sustained damage potential.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

vgabor wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Here are three suggestions.
...

Would you mind coming up with suggestion which not destroys the set in PvE?
Thanks.

Agreed. It’s not used very often in PVE these days, but there are still a handful of burst fights where it can compete with other options. The sustained average uptime is the key to whether it will be useful or not. Option 1 would be a 40% nerf, option 2 would be a 30% nerf, and option 3 wouldn’t be remotely viable.

Any of the 3 suggestions would remove it as an option from PVE, while barely affecting its use in PVP. Several gank/bomb combos can land within 3s, so option 1 wouldn’t help. There is often plenty of time between burst combos in PVP, so option 2 wouldn’t help. Targets rarely survive the 5s burst window, so option 3 wouldn’t change anything (and pressure is already very low during the cooldown if they do).

If it were to get changed (and I’m not convinced it should), the solution would need to reduce its burst potential while maintaining (or increasing slightly) its sustained damage potential.

All three would be nerfs but would remove the easy mode from the set. All three would actually hurt bombers. So now you can't even have an honest discussion about MA because not only are bombers going to cry foul but now non bombers are figuring out that it can turn any build into a crit monster.

ZOS nerfed crit chance while increasing crit damage. This set ruins the balance.

Furthermore right now in pts medium armor is getting gutted of crit % while FURTHER increasing crit damage. I wonder what set Stam players will flock to to exploit their increased crit damage.

neferpitou73 · August 2021

This is the source of the TTK issues as you point out. There are two solutions to this:

1.) Increase crit resist (via a buff to base crit resist, impen, or buff)

2.) Revert mech acuity to what it was

vesselwiththepestle · August 2021

With Proxy and Vicious Death now both scaling with Weapon Damage next update, and additional critical damage to medium armor, we'll see some interesting Balorgh/MA/VD Stamina builds. I am looking forward to it.

WrathOfInnos · August 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

vgabor wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Here are three suggestions.
...

Would you mind coming up with suggestion which not destroys the set in PvE?
Thanks.

Agreed. It’s not used very often in PVE these days, but there are still a handful of burst fights where it can compete with other options. The sustained average uptime is the key to whether it will be useful or not. Option 1 would be a 40% nerf, option 2 would be a 30% nerf, and option 3 wouldn’t be remotely viable.

Any of the 3 suggestions would remove it as an option from PVE, while barely affecting its use in PVP. Several gank/bomb combos can land within 3s, so option 1 wouldn’t help. There is often plenty of time between burst combos in PVP, so option 2 wouldn’t help. Targets rarely survive the 5s burst window, so option 3 wouldn’t change anything (and pressure is already very low during the cooldown if they do).

If it were to get changed (and I’m not convinced it should), the solution would need to reduce its burst potential while maintaining (or increasing slightly) its sustained damage potential.

All three would be nerfs but would remove the easy mode from the set. All three would actually hurt bombers. So now you can't even have an honest discussion about MA because not only are bombers going to cry foul but now non bombers are figuring out that it can turn any build into a crit monster.

ZOS nerfed crit chance while increasing crit damage. This set ruins the balance.

Furthermore right now in pts medium armor is getting gutted of crit % while FURTHER increasing crit damage. I wonder what set Stam players will flock to to exploit their increased crit damage.

I think your idea in the other thread was much better than any of these. Cap the amount of additional crit chance given. Then builds with 20% crit chance don’t get to 100% without investing somewhere else. Maybe +50% crit chance during proc would be ok (which would have little effect on PVE since most players are over 50% already.

Idk about the exact numbers, but average crit over a long duration should be somewhere in the 12-16% range to balance it with other crit sets. So if it gave 50% crit with 5/21 uptime that would be 12% average. Or it could give 30% crit with 10/21 uptime. Maybe 20% crit with 3/5 uptime or 5/8. It’s definitely possible to make it less bursty, less powerful on no-crit builds, and still balanced.

Edit: To be clear, I don’t think it’s currently an issue. My preference would be return it to 5/18 uptime since the additional 3s cooldown did not have any noticeable effect on the set in PVP.

propertyOfUndefined · August 2021

I think this set is fine the way it is. And no — I don’t use it.

Aldoss · August 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

With MA you can max pen and damage because you know every 16 seconds you'll get a new 5 second window to go all out.

This is a disingenuous statement. The choices are to either completely invest in crit dmg and use axes with sharpened or use maces with sharpened to boost pen, while sacrificing your total dmg output. Further choices are whether or not to run shadow over lover. After that, you get one (1) burst window with your max balorgh boost. If that doesn't stick, your next window in 16 seconds is severely lacking and if you don't die before you get another 200+ ult, then your target is a below average player.

Stop asking for nerfs and start asking for buffs. Crit damage keeps getting boosted while crit chance and crit resist get either nerfed or ignored.

The set isn't the problem.

red_emu · August 2021

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Can we continue this discussion in the existing threads? Starting another new one just means a lot of points will be repeated.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/581420/mech-acuity-and-ttk

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/579360/you-will-hate-me-but-for-balance-reasons-acuity-needs-to-go/p1

That's just the thing. You can have 5 out 1 million players not like something in the game, each one starts their own thread and ZOS thinks it's obviously majority of players expressing the same opinion 😜

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

Aldoss wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

With MA you can max pen and damage because you know every 16 seconds you'll get a new 5 second window to go all out.

This is a disingenuous statement. The choices are to either completely invest in crit dmg and use axes with sharpened or use maces with sharpened to boost pen, while sacrificing your total dmg output. Further choices are whether or not to run shadow over lover. After that, you get one (1) burst window with your max balorgh boost. If that doesn't stick, your next window in 16 seconds is severely lacking and if you don't die before you get another 200+ ult, then your target is a below average player.

Stop asking for nerfs and start asking for buffs. Crit damage keeps getting boosted while crit chance and crit resist get either nerfed or ignored.

The set isn't the problem.

Exactly how is my statement disingenuous?

You can sacrifice your spell and weapon damage all day long because you know when you crit you get +75% damage (or more). There's no drawback. There's no sacrifice.

Seriously, this always happens. A set or skill inadvertently gets thrusted into cheese ball meta. People rub their hands together like Mr. Burns.

3 months later people realize how imbalanced it is and demand it nerfed harder than it needs to be.

It's the same cycle. It would be nice if for once we headed it off.

StarOfElyon · August 2021

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Its really not an issue

They blanket nerfed everyone's damage because of "low TTK" complaints when the vast majority of "low TTK" situations involve NB and/or Acuity. Players constantly defending every last bit of busted nonsense is quite possibly a good reason why ZOS always opts for blanket nerfs instead of targeting outliers.

That's exactly the cause.

But it's also on ZOS because they insist on creating broken crap like the Vate 2H and letting that proc stack with Deadland's and Crystal Weapon (or Crushing Weapon).

I can have 30k health and 28k resistance yet still get deleted in the blink of an eye.