Remove Unnecessary Weapon Type Limitation on Sets

WrathOfInnos · July 2022

I've noticed a few times recently that some weapons I'd like to use simply don't exist . I believe this is a consequence of the "smart loot" changes to the drop tables, and were in some cases overzealous. I believe the intent was to remove useless weapon types (such as ranged weapons on sets that require a melee light attack), but in many cases the missing weapons would be very useful, especially with all the freedom of this hybrid meta.

One of the top examples is Advancing Yokeda/Berserking Warrior, which only drops in melee weapons because the tooltip reads "when you deal martial melee damage". However, this set would certainly be viable with a bow or staff, because there are numerous martial melee skills outside of the weapon skill lines. A stamina dragonknight for example, could use Venomous Claw, or a Nightblade with Surprise Attack, Ambush or Killer's Blade can keep the set active.

Another one is Aegis Caller, which again does not drop a bow or staff. Same thing for Knightmare and Ward of Cyrodiil. As mentioned above, there are many ways to proc these sets without a melee weapon skill line.

Kyne's Kiss has the opposite problem. It does not drop in any melee weapons. It's proc condition is "deal direct damage while 12m or further from your target". This can be done with the Dual Wield ability hidden blade (range of 22m), or a large variety of non-weapon skills (Subterranean Assault, Blastbones, Venom Skull, Cliff Racer, Lightweight Trap...).

Please consider adding these to the drop tables, and only limiting the truly impossible proc sets in the future.

Amottica · July 2022

Very good points. With the curated drops, or whatever it’s called, such limitations on what weapons drop for a set are not as important.

virtus753 · July 2022

That reminds me I still have my Aegis Caller bows from before they decided to cut them out of the loot pool. You knew they were going to dump them in the name of being “smart” even though the set can be procced perfectly fine with a ranged weapon. I’m pretty sure a basic bash counts as well, and any character can do that.

I never understood why they would want to restrict gameplay in this way when they’ve been so “play how you like” in so many other areas. This isn’t smart - it’s the definition of arbitrary and unnecessarily limiting. If we want to use a bow to proc Aegis Caller, why exactly are they preventing us? If they think (as this “smart” label implies to me) that they’re somehow directing us away from what they think are “not smart” builds - whether suboptimal or off-meta or hard-to-proc (though again, bashing is not exactly hard) - they accordingly ought to go ahead and just dump the vast majority of sets, which I really don’t think would be good for the game.

And while it is different, as you said, for sets whose fifth piece literally cannot be procced with certain weapons, we shouldn’t forget that we can still get another set bonus out of bows/staves/2-handers even if the fifth piece is non-functional, now that those weapons count as 2 set pieces each. They aren’t totally useless in the context of the set. There is a workaround in that we can use a crafted weapon that has the same second-piece bonus (not everyone has arena weapons to back bar). Personally, though, if I didn’t have arena weapons, I’d much rather back bar an AY bow for that fourth piece bonus (even if I didn’t use any skills on that bar that can proc it) over a random crafted bow unless there were a different one-line bonus I really wanted instead.

TheGreatBlackBear · July 2022

I have advancing staves from when they used to exist. They’re a fun trick to link every now and again. But ultimately I don’t trust ZoS to not nerf the set if it could be maintained at range. Wanting the convenience of using a staff could very well make the set worse than MS or Levi. Also staves and bows are a meme now in most content. So I’m not sure that they’d even be useful.

Artim_X · July 2022

Very valid points. With smart loot being a thing, sets should drop in all weapon types.

WrathOfInnos · July 2022

Thanks for the replies, and that brings up a good point that I did not mention. Many of these weapons do exist from years ago. Some players have them, and can make use of them, but strangely they do not show up in the stickerbook and cannot be collected or reconstructed.

Newer players (and a lot of old ones) are out of luck unless the drop tables are restored. There is simply no way to get these items in the current game.

Urzigurumash · July 2022

Also sometimes relevant is just back-barring a 1h or a Shield of a set for the 4th Line along with a piece of another set, with DW or SnB. Like getting the 4th Crit Line on Sword-Singer on a backbarred SnB, it's not possible, I'm not sure if this set ever dropped 1h though. On the other hand, Sword-Singer Bows and Staves for the 4th Line aren't necessary, you could just use a set with a 2nd Crit Line.

In this way every 5 piece should drop 1h and Shields, I think, unless I'm missing something.

WrathOfInnos · August 2023

I am once again asking for the Advancing Yokeda bow and staves to be returned to the loot tables. Especially with the recent updates to Craglorn trials itemization, and weapon balancing, there is no reason these useful items should be impossible to obtain on new accounts.

SandandStars · August 2023

I will be pleasantly shocked if there is any developer response to this very sensible and reasonable point.

merpins · August 2023

At the very least, make it so, in curated drops, the weapons that don't proc the set they're tied to don't drop until everything else is collected. Still makes sense for the sticker book and transmute costs, but should be the last thing that can drop.

RaptorRodeoGod · August 2023

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I am once again asking for the Advancing Yokeda bow and staves to be returned to the loot tables. Especially with the recent updates to Craglorn trials itemization, and weapon balancing, there is no reason these useful items should be impossible to obtain on new accounts.

Stamplars with lightning staff front bars want this!

virtus753 · August 2023

Also Aegis Caller bows and staves. Others should have access to these as well, since the set very obviously functions with ranged weapons just fine. Everyone can bash, and everyone has access to class and guild melee skills.

WrathOfInnos · August 2023

RaptorRodeoGod wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I am once again asking for the Advancing Yokeda bow and staves to be returned to the loot tables. Especially with the recent updates to Craglorn trials itemization, and weapon balancing, there is no reason these useful items should be impossible to obtain on new accounts.

Stamplars with lightning staff front bars want this!

Yes, great example. Biting jabs is an easy way to deal Martial Melee Damage and proc Advancing Yokeda or Aegis Caller with any weapon type. The new lightning staff works well with a Templar build, and their multiple channeled abilities, but gets unnecessary restrictions on available sets (unless of course you were lucky enough to have farmed it years ago).

Kappachi · August 2023

Make it a curated drop for endgame players from some specific endgame content like a veteran trial or something. Regular players would be confused as many people I know still don't even know what a martial melee attack is for instance. The way it is now is good because it makes sure you can always make use of the bonus when you receive the weapon, if you want to experiment with the set bonus otherwise and know what you're doing you can just get it on pieces of your armor instead of weapon, you can have your weapon be something that benefits something that isn't related to your melee abilities if you're using a ranged weapon.

WrathOfInnos · August 2023

Kappachi wrote: »

Make it a curated drop for endgame players from some specific endgame content like a veteran trial or something. Regular players would be confused as many people I know still don't even know what a martial melee attack is for instance. The way it is now is good because it makes sure you can always make use of the bonus when you receive the weapon, if you want to experiment with the set bonus otherwise and know what you're doing you can just get it on pieces of your armor instead of weapon, you can have your weapon be something that benefits something that isn't related to your melee abilities if you're using a ranged weapon.

I'm not a big fan of introducing strange exceptions to where things drop, that will just add more confusion.

Your point about new players not knowing how to use some sets is valid, and a frequent issue with tooltip wording (like what is a "monster"). In this case, it could be solved by defining the terms "martial" and "melee" directly. For example, they could say "dealing damage with a physical, poison, disease, or bleed ability with a range of 7m or less". I'm guessing the abbreviations are just used to save words, but they're not clearly defined anywhere AFAIK.

Diamond's Victory does a better job of this, reading "While in combat, using an ability with a range of 7 meters or less grants you Range Supremacy for 5 seconds, adding 437 Weapon and Spell Damage to your damage over time and ranged attacks. While in combat, using an ability with a range of over 7 meters grants you Melee Supremacy for 5 seconds, adding 437 Weapon and Spell Damage to your melee attacks."

Edit: After testing a few skills, AY doesn't even work as described.

Hurricane starts with a range of 5m, and deals physical damage, but does not proc the set.
Deadly cloak also has a range of 5m (which is questionable now that all melee abilities were increased to 7) and does not proc the set.
Barbed Trap is a Martial Melee skill and does not work (range is a little unclear on this one, but definitely less than 7m).
Biting Jabs is a Martial skill with a range of 8m, and does proc AY. This seems correct IMO, but adds confusion to the definition of melee abilities

It apparently needs a few bug fixes as well as correcting the tooltip and adding some weapon drops.

WrathOfInnos · August 2023

I’ll also add that Bow now has the Vinedusk Training passive that adds 5% damage against close enemies (within 15m). This synergizes well with melee class skills such as Ruinous Scythe, Surprise Attack, and the previous mentioned Biting Jabs. All of these skills are martial damage and would work great with Aegis Caller or Advancing Yokeda, but the bow is no longer obtainable.

code65536 · August 2023

I agree that some of the item set drop rules are a bit much, as they ignore class and guild abilities. They came about in a different era, when we didn't have item set collection (not to mention curation), so there were a lot more complaints about non-optimal weapons dropping.

A lot has changed since then. We have item set collections, curation, and now hybridization, and things that seemed ridiculous in the past are quite reasonable today.

I wonder, what you would think about this item?

This was something that dropped for me today out of a Cyrodiil quest coffer, and I wasn't sure if I should've reported it as a bug. It's not supposed to drop and the item cannot be collected or reconstructed, so it's technically a bug. But even something like this could be useful because the 5% cost reduction doesn't just affect bow abilities.

@ZOS_Gilliam

WrathOfInnos · August 2023

@code65536 interesting example, and odd that some items are able to drop despite not existing in stickerbook. That would also make them impossible to reconstruct, so you may have to live with that shield staying level 17

As for whether a Marksman shield should exist at all, I would say yes. While anything other than a Bow does lose out on the 8% damage against players, they can still make use of at least part of the 5 piece bonus and reduce the cost of all Stamina abilities. In the case of Marksman specifically, someone may be using the set in PVE content, in which case any weapon type gets the same bonus.

I’ll reference Wisdom of Vanus for justification. This set has a 5 piece bonus that specifically mentions Restoration Staff and gives a longer duration based on weapon type (and passives), but it does provide the Major Mending buff with all weapon types and is therefore available as a drop. It may not be optimal, but it can still be useful, so players are given the choice.
https://eso-sets.com/set/wisdom-of-vanus

Urzigurumash · August 2023

As for the Marksman Shield, see my comment above from July of 22. This Shield allows you to Frontbar Marksman 4&5 on a bow and preserve the 4th line on your backbar - with 4 body pieces and a 1h of another 5 slot set.

Niche but not impossible to use, same with Sword Swinger and probably the Resto and Destro equivalents, as I said above, I'm pretty sure every set should drop 1h and Shield for this reason.