Suggested change for Thrassian Stranglers

Vylaera · March 2022

Thrassian Stranglers looks like one of those high power high cost sets, but it kinda sucks because you lose all your stacks of sload's call when you go through a load screen due to how the game works when reinstancing. This renders this mythic worthless for like 90% of content due to how much work is required to build stacks. I think a change to this set is warranted.

Here's my suggested change:
"(1 item) Dealing damage grants you a stack of Sload's Call for 1 minute, up to a maximum of 20 stacks. Each stack increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 40, reduces your Maximum Health by 250, and reduces effectiveness of your damage shields by 2.5%. You can generate a stack of Sload's Call every 0.5 seconds. All stacks of Sload's Call are lost if you remove Thrassian Stranglers."

This would immediately make this set viable again for all types of content while preserving the ramping functionality of the set as well as making it more accessible for wider use. It would be a slight nerf to the weapon damage granted compared to what full stacks are currently (live: 1150, my suggestion: 800), since it's easier to build stacks, but likewise the health reduction has been slightly reduced as well (live: 6000, my suggestion: 5000).

fred4 · March 2022

If the buff is easy to maintain, it becomes a question of simple math as to whether this item is BIS. You normally put all your attributes into magicka or stamina? You have a health target? OK then. Now divert some into health. You gain health at a factor of 1.1 over magicka or stamina. You need to trade away 4545 magicka or stamina for the health. That amount of magicka or stamina is the equivalent of 433 weapon or spell damage (at a conversion rate of 10.5). However Thrassian gives you 800. A net gain of 367 weapon / spell damage. That's pretty good for a one piece. Markyn became BIS in PvP with less than that. It also gives you resistances, so I guess your numbers are probably spot on. This will still be the kind of item that may suddenly become BIS in PvP.

TumlinTheJolly · March 2022

I really like the idea of Stranglers being BiS for questing builds, which they pretty much would be if the stacks persisted through load screens (I'm a BG player mainly, but wanted these to quest with). There are very few sets or items that are specifically good for questing only. Wild Hunt is great, but it's also great for a few other purposes. I wonder if there would be a way to make the Strangler stacks too detrimental to use in trials/arenas/PvP but worth it for SMASHING quest mobs (given a rework similar to what you've suggested)? You could maybe achieve this by making them overall extremely mathematically unviable... e.g. They make you stupidly squishy for a decent amount of offensive power. Gank builds can't use them anyway, so no problem there.

Bobby_V_Rockit · March 2022

I’d love to use them too, but I’ve also read that in order to build the stacks, you need the killing blow on an enemy for it to count. You’d barely be at max stacks by the final boss in a dungeon at that rate

Dagoth_Rac · March 2022

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

I really like the idea of Stranglers being BiS for questing builds, which they pretty much would be if the stacks persisted through load screens (I'm a BG player mainly, but wanted these to quest with). There are very few sets or items that are specifically good for questing only. Wild Hunt is great, but it's also great for a few other purposes. I wonder if there would be a way to make the Strangler stacks too detrimental to use in trials/arenas/PvP but worth it for SMASHING quest mobs (given a rework similar to what you've suggested)? You could maybe achieve this by making them overall extremely mathematically unviable... e.g. They make you stupidly squishy for a decent amount of offensive power. Gank builds can't use them anyway, so no problem there.

You could give it the Pale Order treatment. Effects get diluted the more people in your group. You have to group for trials and dungeons. For PvP, you could in theory run with other players without grouping with them, but it is a pain to run ungrouped in PvP.

This would also make a nice mirror image to Pale Order for solo players and questing. You can only wear one mythic so do you want the extra solo survivability of Pale Order or the extra solo damage of Thrassians? You can't have both.

Gaeliannas · March 2022

They could have made any number of better changes to Thrassians than simply nerfing it into the ground, but they didn't. Apparently some score pushers used it to top the leaderboards and that was that. No diminishing returns, no solo only, no simply doesn't work in trials, just nerf what was one of the most fun Mythic's to date right through the floor. Doubt they will revisit it, it did it's job and helped sell tons of copies of that Chapter.

I am still bitter about it, as it was for me, one of the most fun Mythics ever and made the average player feel powerful and have a chance at doing things you normally couldn't in solo/duo play, with a high risk high reward item. It also opened up a ton of different builds for average play, making it so you didn't have to go with one of the same old same old solo meta builds in order to solo some dungeons and such, which was a lot of fun. I get a kick out of some sets that aren't normally used due to being weak overall, but Thrassians made up the difference, so for a while I actually did get to "play how I want", and then I didn't again.

BXR_Lonestar · March 2022

BroughBreaux wrote: »

Thrassian Stranglers looks like one of those high power high cost sets, but it kinda sucks because you lose all your stacks of sload's call when you go through a load screen due to how the game works when reinstancing. This renders this mythic worthless for like 90% of content due to how much work is required to build stacks. I think a change to this set is warranted.

Here's my suggested change:
"(1 item) Dealing damage grants you a stack of Sload's Call for 1 minute, up to a maximum of 20 stacks. Each stack increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 40, reduces your Maximum Health by 250, and reduces effectiveness of your damage shields by 2.5%. You can generate a stack of Sload's Call every 0.5 seconds. All stacks of Sload's Call are lost if you remove Thrassian Stranglers."

This would immediately make this set viable again for all types of content while preserving the ramping functionality of the set as well as making it more accessible for wider use. It would be a slight nerf to the weapon damage granted compared to what full stacks are currently (live: 1150, my suggestion: 800), since it's easier to build stacks, but likewise the health reduction has been slightly reduced as well (live: 6000, my suggestion: 5000).

Honestly, I still use Thrassian Stranglers on my heavy attack petsorc when undermanning dungeons. When you 2 man content like dungeons, or maybe arenas, its really easy to get up that 50 stack limit and keeping it till the end of the dungeon - you just have to be careful. Its also great for overland play. It just sucks if your constantly changing screens, or for trials.

Gaeliannas · March 2022

A change they could/should have made that would have "fixed" Thrassians and every other Mythic in the future, instead of nerfing it, would be to simply change scoring. If someone in your group is wearing a Mythic, your score simply doesn't count and won't appear on the leaderboards. So if you are farming for gear, have at it, but if you are trying to be number one, you have to do it without the help of Mythic items.

MudcrabAttack · March 2022

I’d hate to see weapon damage lowered

It’s basically BIS in 4 player dungeons if you have a high AOE damage build. I rarely see less than 50 stacks by the time we reach the final boss, and the effect will persist through the whole dungeon and past load screens. The break even point with the kilt is around 25ish kills, way less if anything consistently hits you with direct damage.

Not saying it’s BIS but it could be used for some trials, too. As long as the group isn’t wiping, I noticed that 200ish combined adds and mobs are getting killed in newer trials. Some DDs might be reaching 50 kills, which adds a lot more damage than a kilt

TumlinTheJolly · March 2022

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

TumlinTheJolly wrote: »

I really like the idea of Stranglers being BiS for questing builds, which they pretty much would be if the stacks persisted through load screens (I'm a BG player mainly, but wanted these to quest with). There are very few sets or items that are specifically good for questing only. Wild Hunt is great, but it's also great for a few other purposes. I wonder if there would be a way to make the Strangler stacks too detrimental to use in trials/arenas/PvP but worth it for SMASHING quest mobs (given a rework similar to what you've suggested)? You could maybe achieve this by making them overall extremely mathematically unviable... e.g. They make you stupidly squishy for a decent amount of offensive power. Gank builds can't use them anyway, so no problem there.

You could give it the Pale Order treatment. Effects get diluted the more people in your group. You have to group for trials and dungeons. For PvP, you could in theory run with other players without grouping with them, but it is a pain to run ungrouped in PvP.

This would also make a nice mirror image to Pale Order for solo players and questing. You can only wear one mythic so do you want the extra solo survivability of Pale Order or the extra solo damage of Thrassians? You can't have both.

Sounds good to me!