Jaraal wrote: »

Could you imagine the uproar if ZOS one day announced that they would be deleting 100 little used sets that people had spent millions of hours farming and billions or trillions of gold improving? Yeah, that’s not going to happen. And every three months until the game shuts down there will be a minimum of eight new sets they will have to balance.

It’s gong to get a lot uglier before it gets better.

And as with CP, I can see a day when they make a change that is an effective 'do over' with sets as I don't see how they can keep adding and adding while trying to maintain balance and the illusion ESO is not a gear progression game.

Until that day though, I agree, it will just get worse before it gets better.

joergino wrote: »

Luke_Flamesword wrote: »

There should be some standarization for sets with some tiers (overland and crafted as begginner sets, and dungeon-trial better as advanced sets) and all sets from same tier should have almost same potential.

I disagree. Crafted sets should absolutely be top tier. Leveling crafters (especiall nine trait crafters!) is such a lengthy and expensive endeavcour. Besides, I read here in the past that ages ago it was promised that crafted gear would be on par with other top gear.

According to the fallacy that this game doesn't have gear progression as all gear is the same, crafted gear is on par as it can be crafted in gold CP160 of any trait.

The fact that the bonuses on gear are NOT the same is obvious, but don't expect ZOS to admit they are actually using quarterly changes and new set additions to drive a gear treadmill design.

DirtyDeeds765 wrote: »

You gotta understand that they don't only make sets specifically for PVP and* PVE players.

They make sets for roleplayers, sets for questers, sets that are just cool, sets just to have more sets in the game.

Alot of you guys on these forums need to realize this is an online Elder Scrolls game before it's an MMO - that there are just as many, probably more, casual questing, housing, fashion, trading players, than there are hard-core pve and pvp players.

and not everyone (most) are not interested in gearing optimally. Meta is irrelevant to them. They may want more sustain and could care less about the resulting damage loss. They may thing a certain spawn from a proc is cool. They may think the shield that they get when their health drops to a certain level is a good idea.

In all, each is valid for them, making many of what some call worthless something that is valued by others. It does not really hurt anyone.

Crafted sets are no-brainer for everyone who just play a game for longer time. They are also not-bound so you can buy them or some good soul in guild will make them for you even for free (at cost of materials only). Literally every gear specialists put crafted sets on begginer builds as "easy to get" and dungeon and trial sets as harder to get.

Do you really think running 50 times a dlc dungeon for freaking dagger or inferno staff is easier than using one of 3 (!) options:
* crafting by yourself
* asking someone for it
* buying for gold, where crafted sets are quite cheap since most of playerbase have maximum crafting.

There is also a reason for this - there must be some reason to run all these dungeons and trials for many times.

Having a cornucopia of sets also means a lot of crafting writs you can't do.

Crom_CCCXVI wrote: »

Seriously, 90% of the sets are worthless

Way of Fire for example.. 1000 dmg every 2 seconds!. omg in PvP if like 50 people hit someone with that at the same time, they might have to heal or something.
Silks of the Sun gain 400 extra flame damage! lol. --- or just wear a set that gives you 350 damage for everything as that difference in reality is like Zero.
Not to mention all the "Hit someone with 35 light attacks and regain 500 magika!"..
A proc that does 4k dmg every 15seconds to a target with a 6m health, or a guy in PvP with 35k health

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? You have stripped away all the unique skills that gave classes identity. Ruined almost every set, turned CP into a Pick 4! dumbed down... absolutely killed Theory Crafting.

Is this some misguided attempt at "Balance"? Balance doesn't mean everything being "Equal" it means be able to play certain roles effectively? Who is in charge of this game at this point, they have no idea what they are doing.

Great Question.

My EU main wears Mad Tinkerer, Coldharbours Favorite and Maw of the Infernal. I love the chaos especially when soloing dungeons.

I was looking at some of these sets and realized they can get rid of a lot of them. They need to combine multiple sets and replace the ones that they combine with. A consolidation of sorts.

Some sets may look good on paper, but they do the same damage as some sets that look average on paper lol. Except for sets that sell DLC/Chapters for the first 3 months.

OP needs to be a bit careful. Just because a set doesn't have end game build potential doesn't mean it isn't good to exist in the game. It's not that I disagree with the topic, but keep in mind that there are MANY Overland and craftable sets that are purposefully seen as stepping stones to later Dungeon/Trial sets that are arguably just better. This is BY DESIGN and it's actually good design IMO that there are many easy to get Overland sets that are meh. It gets new players exposed to the concept of mixing and matching sets, gets the creative juices running, and fills the immense gap that exists between early game and late game! If you follow online guides that content creators make, it's easy to think that most of these sets are useless, when they serve a very important purpose. Some are niche builds, most are targeted at early game players and that's ok! Not everyone is rushing to end game and/or following min/max guides. Builds need to exist for everyone to play with!

Now, with that said, I do think it would be awesome if they could REBALANCE many of the older base game dungeon sets, and/or fix sets that have become "broken" over the years. Not "broken" like over powered, but "broken" cause they don't work anymore. My personal go to on this topic is Grisly Gourmet. They changed Empower and now the set doesn't really "work" anymore since it's a LA set. Also, it's kinda mediocre for a DLC dungeon set and that's a bummer cause it's such a sweet design! I love the Sweetroll mechanic! I would love if this set got a fix + shot in the arm to make it more usable.

ForumBully wrote: »

See, this is the kind of data ZoS could just throw out now and then for discussion to engage the community. I would think they uave data like "what's the least used set" or "what's the most used set", or data about sets used in specific contexts. A community manager could be engaging the community with data like that and try to make something that isn't just Patch Notes vs. Complaints and Moderation.

oooohhhhh, there is so much data we KNOW ZOS has that I wish they would release: Achievement completion percentages, Dungeon clear rates, Armor usage rates, Skill usage rates.

I think the vast majority of players would be happy if ZOS just used this data to drive changes. I would guess a set like Relequen is INCREDIBLY popular. Maybe look at nerfing it OR buffing it's competitors? There are a many achievements that are completely broken and MUST have 0% clear rates... maybe fix those?

The one area we have seen them tip their hand and balance based on over usage is with Skills. If ZOS see's every 2H using Stampede, they will nerf that skill to make other skills more applicable. Same with Arena Weapons. I think they should focus a bit more on root cause analysis though before arbitrarily nerfing/buffing skills because I think sets have a huge impact on skills and Arena Weapons. Also, buffing competitors is probably better in many cases than just nerfing the overused skills. But that's riskier I guess cause they dont want to inflate DPS anymore.

Another area we know they look at is dungeon clear rates. They purposefully release new dungeons to be hard as nails with LOW clear rates, then gradually adjust to increase clear rates a bit on non-HM. I can't remember the percentage they shoot for though, but I remember an interview with the dungeon lead designer where he outlined all this.

1. The Meta or BIS is not the only way to play.
2. If you like a set play it. If don't like it, don't play it.
3. There are 3 Drop Sets in each zone, 3 Crafted sets in each zone. 3 sets in each dungeon or Trial. More sets do not dilute this.
4. Sticker Book makes collecting any set easy. Trait drops do not matter anymore.
5. Don't be a sheeple, play the set that lets you play the way you want.