The Future of Item Sets in ESO.

ESO_Nightingale · January 2023

Hey everyone, i figured it was time to talk about item sets again given that the rate at which we'll be recieving item sets seems like it'll be roughly cut in half this year provided that the new 2-man arena doesn't present any new ones. But i wanted to be a bit more thorough. This is a thread meant for the developers and community management team. @ZOS_Liforce @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler, @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom and also @ZOS_Kevin

QUALITY VS QUANTITY

My basic argument is that i think that item sets should focus on quality over quantity moving forward now that we will likely be recieving fewer ones, this would match with the idea that ZOS wants to focus on quality.

What do i mean by this? Well, the way i see it is that we often recieve item sets that feel like filler, they're generally "when do you do x easy condition, recieve y generic stat (and sometimes for z seconds)". while this is generally how a lot of sets work, it's become apparent to me that it's hard to get excited about item sets like this when they're generic and work for everyone. they don't feel special or interesting. there's enough item sets in the game now where if you need something generic there are absolutely tons of options for you already. however, niche item sets for very specific builds are what get me most excited and i've seen this reflected in the community from the release of item sets such as frostbite and deadlands demolisher.

I'll give you a few examples of what i mean by generic new sets and the types of sets i think that zenimax should avoid making going forward

Blessing of high isle is an exact copy of the "generic" formula that i posted. this set isn't paticularly bad but it's not anything special, a major theme i've seen from sets of it's make. i don't know anyone who was excited about this set and i don't know anyone who runs it in endgame, pvp or pve, it just seems to fill a void in the light armor overland set slot from high isle, speaking of which...

Back alley Gourmand is another example from the latest live patch, this set has a remarkably easy condition for a payoff that is a bit higher than it's competition, however, the condition is so simple that i wonder why it exists. we have a lot of other sets of with a similar payoff condition. sets like Order's Wrath, Archer's Mind and Medusa. it doesn't do anything unique.

My problem with these sets stem from the fact that they're generic stats for a condition that doesn't really feel like one when there are also existing item sets tailored for niche builds that perform in very similar or even worse ways when they require a build to be made around that specific condition.

WHAT SHOULD THE FOCUS BE?

hopefully if you're asking yourself the question "If these aren't good, then what set designs would be better?" then i can provide a solution.

I believe that niche item sets such as Frostbite, Netch's Touch, Ysgramor's Birthright, Silks of the Sun, Swamp Raider and others that require building a certain way to get value from them, should be able to beat other popular generic sets such as pillar of nirn, julianos, order's wrath, medusa, mother's sorrow, etc when specifically built for. in pve we're in a state where most of the classes in the game are running pillar of nirn, relequen and zaan because there are no niche sets that work so well for them that they're able to beat those other sets and especially not high damage proc sets. i seriously believe that this should be addressed by some sort of balance patch that aims to focus on rebalancing item sets. I'm fairly sure we never saw a buff to Netch's Touch, Ysgramor's Birthright and Silks of the Sun because they each have a dps weapon that scales with their type, but so what? what is wrong if this makes that set stronger than others on the class when it encourages building a certain way to get more out of it? I also want to bring up the fact that ysgramor's birthright is a worse version of frostbite in every way, when frostbite itself isn't even overperforming. i would like to see these basegame elemental sets gain some sort of buff to their status effect or a significant weapon/spell damage increase.

Going back to the release of Frostbite, as i directly had a hand in talking about it when it released i can provide examples of the community's opinion on this set at the time. Sources will be from my post at the time.

@Excelsus at the time said that the set was disappointing after testing it and that it barely outparsed mother's sorrow

@RandomKodiak said that they agree that set is a great idea and works, but that it needed more power

@MashmalloMan even talked about the set in comparison to other popular ones at the time saying that they thought an overall large buff to the set would have been balanced

@YandereGirlfriend said that they thought it was a good idea for niche sets to be able to overtake the meta sets on specific builds that are built around those niche sets.

The general consensus of the comments was that they all were disappointed that the set wasn't able to beat other ones and wanted it to be able to beat them. discussion also revolved a lot around adding more frost damage skills which would thus benefit from the set and therefore increase it's performance along with improving the feel and viability of frost dps warden which wasn't yet viable at that time.

People were very excited when this item set was revealed and i wish i could feel that way more about every new patch's future item sets.

If i had to say one type of item set that i really want specifically, it would have to be a mythic item or a monster helmet for frost damage dealers that gives us some form of execute based around our frost damage skills and i've been disappointed by the frost damage monster helmet selection for the past several years.

ITEM SET DISTRIBUTION ISSUES

One other topic i want to bring up is item set distribution.

I created a list that contains a list of every set i could find that specifically focuses on, or directly deals damage types. this may be missing a couple of item sets but the distribution i found was fairly glaring.

So, while this focuses on quantity rather than quality, We can still see here that physical, fire and poison damage sets are the most prevalent item sets represented, so i believe it's still important to receive more representation in frost, shock and disease item sets moving forward.

removing 5 piece item sets, mythics and weapon sets from the equation shows the distribution of monster helmets

As we can see, the difference is much more glaring for monster helmets. Bleed has a total of 0 monster helmets where as poison and frost only have 2. While euphotic gatekeeper is relatively recent, the last time we had a frost damage helmet focused for PVE content was back when the system launched with iceheart. Nunatak released in q1 last year but it still is an incredibly niche set in pve as it was crafted for pvp content, having a snare and immobilise frustratingly eating up it's budget while also having a bad 1 piece bonus, Nunatak is generally only theorycrafted with alongside Nazaray for use as a tank or support helmet in pve. I believe we should recieve more monster helmets that focus on these damage types going forward.

OFFICIAL COMPETITIONS HOSTED BY ZOS

For the final topic i want to focus on today, I think it would be to the community's benefit if Zenimax was to periodically host official item set competitions on twitter, forums and discord where winners are picked by ZOS for their item set to be created for the game. Competitions are hosted all the time by ZOS and i think that ZOS would recieve a lot of engagement from the community if it was to host one like this officially. People like to have an impact in the game and this would help to create item sets for specific build niches and playstyles that currently have lacking or non existant set support.

RemoryAzure · January 2023

i agree, many sets should be changed, every time i make a new build i search through the whole set list and realize that i literally have no choice, there are like 15 go-to sets in the game and rest are just useless (dont work against good players in pvp) or simply worse by numbers (i end up with way of fire like 9 of 10 times when choosing a proc set for a new build, and like ice furnace is magicka's version of way of fire but its still better to use WoF on mag classes coz its better both dps- and burst-wise [snip])

[edited for profanity bypass]

ESO_Nightingale · January 2023

RemoryAzure wrote: »

i agree, many sets should be changed, every time i make a new build i search through the whole set list and realize that i literally have no choice, there are like 15 go-to sets in the game and rest are just useless (dont work against good players in pvp) or simply worse by numbers (i end up with way of fire like 9 of 10 times when choosing a proc set for a new build, and like ice furnace is magicka's version of way of fire but its still better to use WoF on mag classes coz its better both dps- and burst-wise [snip])

Yeah the same 4 sets being used kills me. It's always rele, nirn, zaan and if you want to do aoe, whorl.

[edited to remove quote]

master_vanargand · January 2023

ESO has 95% garbage sets and 5% good sets.
This is the "weird states of balance".

ESO_Nightingale · January 2023

master_vanargand wrote: »

ESO has 95% garbage sets and 5% good sets.
This is the "weird states of balance".

agreed. i just wish each class had their own bis set pairings in pve content. everything is so stale.

Zodiarkslayer · January 2023

I rather see the big issues in two other areas.
A ) Light attack damage
With light attacks being something entiely on its own and not convertable to a specific damage type, a huge synergy that could glue together a viable "niche" build simply is lost (I do not like the term "niche builds", I'd like to call them specialised builds.).
B ) Class passives:
There are three classes right now that get flat buffs to damage types. Those coincide with the "elemental theme" of one aspect of the classes.
But what about the other classes; Nightblade, Templar and Necro? What about the other damage types; Bleed, Poison and Disease? It's like half of the system is still missing!

Changing only item sets is not going to be enough. Classes have to be able to utilise at least one damage type efficiently. That would create synergetical effects with item sets and combat abilities. The effective build variety would increase considerably.
However, it takes a consistent combat system first.

ESO_Nightingale · January 2023

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

I rather see the big issues in two other areas.
A ) Light attack damage
With light attacks being something entiely on its own and not convertable to a specific damage type, a huge synergy that could glue together a viable "niche" build simply is lost (I do not like the term "niche builds", I'd like to call them specialised builds.).
B ) Class passives:
There are three classes right now that get flat buffs to damage types. Those coincide with the "elemental theme" of one aspect of the classes.
But what about the other classes; Nightblade, Templar and Necro? What about the other damage types; Bleed, Poison and Disease? It's like half of the system is still missing!

Changing only item sets is not going to be enough. Classes have to be able to utilise at least one damage type efficiently. That would create synergetical effects with item sets and combat abilities. The effective build variety would increase considerably.
However, it takes a consistent combat system first.

i think those things should happen as well, it's not as if i think only item sets should change. currently class identities feel extremely lackluster if you're not playing a frost warden. i just wanted to bring attention to the item sets since they're also a problem.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

So we've recieved a bunch more ordinary sets. it looks like runecarver's blaze could have been a great set, but from other players testing it seems to have not performed as well as expected.

Dragonlord573 · February 2023

I just want more than one set per dungeon DLC to actually be good.

Like seriously look at last year's dungeons. Only Nazury, Turning Tide, and Arch Druid are worth running. The other 13 sets are not worth running at all. Looking at the sets from the dungeons in the PTS it is looking like the set that gives armor and something else from overhealing will be worth running in PvE. One set from the only dungeon dlc for the year.

I'm tired that 90% of the sets in the game are useless or exponentially niche. Most dungeon sets are either amazing, mid, or terrible. Nearly every set from Cyrodiil and Imperial City are terrible with very few exceptions like Elf Bane and Powerful Assault. Overland sets are genuinely crazy because some are good while the rest are just missed potential. We need a major overhaul of sets to bring them in line with today's standards because a greater variety of viable sets would be better.

Build variety is genuinely horrible, everyone who does dungeon/trial content is running the same sets and supports are running the same few sets. It's genuinely sad. We have well over 300 sets in the game and probably 12 of them are worth running.

If you want some examples of what kinds of updates to sets I'm thinking of imagine how great things like Netch's Touch and Silks of the Sun would be if they boost flame/lightning damage by 8% and increase their damage based on status effects just like Frostbite. This would streamline sets and make these old sets worth running again. Last thing we need is two new sets that do the aforementioned when the sets could just be updated.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

I just want more than one set per dungeon DLC to actually be good.

Like seriously look at last year's dungeons. Only Nazury, Turning Tide, and Arch Druid are worth running. The other 13 sets are not worth running at all. Looking at the sets from the dungeons in the PTS it is looking like the set that gives armor and something else from overhealing will be worth running in PvE. One set from the only dungeon dlc for the year.

I'm tired that 90% of the sets in the game are useless or exponentially niche. Most dungeon sets are either amazing, mid, or terrible. Nearly every set from Cyrodiil and Imperial City are terrible with very few exceptions like Elf Bane and Powerful Assault. Overland sets are genuinely crazy because some are good while the rest are just missed potential. We need a major overhaul of sets to bring them in line with today's standards because a greater variety of viable sets would be better.

Build variety is genuinely horrible, everyone who does dungeon/trial content is running the same sets and supports are running the same few sets. It's genuinely sad. We have well over 300 sets in the game and probably 12 of them are worth running.

If you want some examples of what kinds of updates to sets I'm thinking of imagine how great things like Netch's Touch and Silks of the Sun would be if they boost flame/lightning damage by 8% and increase their damage based on status effects just like Frostbite. This would streamline sets and make these old sets worth running again. Last thing we need is two new sets that do the aforementioned when the sets could just be updated.

Yeah i understand your point of view. My issue is with monster helmets. We have basically have enough 5 piece sets but our monster helmet selection for certain types of builds is extremely lacking. Look at the poison, frost and bleed helmets. There's no pure frost dps monster helmet. Iceheart has a place as an offensive helmet sacrifices it's damage to shield you. Nunatak's job isn't damage. Hell, there's not even any bleed monster helm. And all of the 2 poison helms are utility.

Caribou77 · February 2023

Nightingale, thank you for providing a very well informed and comprehensive, constructive set of recommendations for the developers of the game. I do think that this type of post is appreciated by the dev team, as you support your suggestions/requests with data, and maintain a positive tone.

Dragonlord573 · February 2023

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Yeah i understand your point of view. My issue is with monster helmets. We have basically have enough 5 piece sets but our monster helmet selection for certain types of builds is extremely lacking. Look at the poison, frost and bleed helmets. There's no pure frost dps monster helmet. Iceheart has a place as an offensive helmet sacrifices it's damage to shield you. Nunatak's job isn't damage. Hell, there's not even any bleed monster helm. And all of the 2 poison helms are utility.

Absolutely agree too. Monster Helms are an opportunity to provide some unique effects and damage. We've got some helms that aren't that great/are outdated that could mend that. It isn't exactly an ice helm, but an idea for updating old sets is something like Vykosa or Grundwulf. Major Cowardice isn't sought after too much and Grundwulf is very pathetic (especially so considering that vMGF is not exactly a walk in the park.) Off the top of my head I could see Grundwulf giving us the power of the Thu'um. Something like if you do a fully charged melee attack you cause enemies in a cone to be staggered. Literally anything reminiscent of Grundwulf cause a shotty recovery set doesn't resemble Grundwulf at all.

Plus those Imperial City helms could really use an overhaul because all but Nunatak are useless.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Yeah i understand your point of view. My issue is with monster helmets. We have basically have enough 5 piece sets but our monster helmet selection for certain types of builds is extremely lacking. Look at the poison, frost and bleed helmets. There's no pure frost dps monster helmet. Iceheart has a place as an offensive helmet sacrifices it's damage to shield you. Nunatak's job isn't damage. Hell, there's not even any bleed monster helm. And all of the 2 poison helms are utility.

Absolutely agree too. Monster Helms are an opportunity to provide some unique effects and damage. We've got some helms that aren't that great/are outdated that could mend that. It isn't exactly an ice helm, but an idea for updating old sets is something like Vykosa or Grundwulf. Major Cowardice isn't sought after too much and Grundwulf is very pathetic (especially so considering that vMGF is not exactly a walk in the park.) Off the top of my head I could see Grundwulf giving us the power of the Thu'um. Something like if you do a fully charged melee attack you cause enemies in a cone to be staggered. Literally anything reminiscent of Grundwulf cause a shotty recovery set doesn't resemble Grundwulf at all.

Plus those Imperial City helms could really use an overhaul because all but Nunatak are useless.

It would be interesting to see trial monster helmets.

Brrrofski · February 2023

Thing is, it's a bit of an impossible situation.

If we didn't get new sets with each DLC, we'd feel like there was less stuff to get.

So ZOS make new sets.

But there's only so many fun, creative and unique sets you can really make.

Not really sure how you solve that.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Brrrofski wrote: »

Thing is, it's a bit of an impossible situation.

If we didn't get new sets with each DLC, we'd feel like there was less stuff to get.

So ZOS make new sets.

But there's only so many fun, creative and unique sets you can really make.

Not really sure how you solve that.

there's couple of ways they could do it, sets that interact with class or guild skills/passives would be good. item sets that interact with specific types of builds to make them better. they could also do both and make class specific item sets for the new system coming at the end of the year. listening to item set suggestions through and/or doing official competitions or forums suggestions would be a way to have this done.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Caribou77 wrote: »

Nightingale, thank you for providing a very well informed and comprehensive, constructive set of recommendations for the developers of the game. I do think that this type of post is appreciated by the dev team, as you support your suggestions/requests with data, and maintain a positive tone.

thanks, i think i've found that writing comprehensive posts like this has generally been more effective in delivering messages across to the development team. it probably beats incoherent screaming haha

Mr_Stach · February 2023

I always like to go see just how out of hand the Set situation has gotten. There are something like 450+ "unique" item sets in the game. But in actuality there really only 20 that people use.

Let's say my BS generalization is accurate for a minute and across all the sets we have only 20 are used for a majority of players. That means that 96% of sets out there are useless.

There's a couple things to look at Effective vs Interesting. I think people like to be effective as much as possible but I also think enjoy Interesting effects from sets.

Personally I'm in the latter boat, the major and minor buffs and debuffs is a bit stale for me and I'd rather use things that have a cool effect, like the Ice Wraith set? I think that's awesome and could use a buff over X thing that gives X stats and y major blah blah.

Just my thoughts.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Mr_Stach wrote: »

I always like to go see just how out of hand the Set situation has gotten. There are something like 450+ "unique" item sets in the game. But in actuality there really only 20 that people use.

Let's say my BS generalization is accurate for a minute and across all the sets we have only 20 are used for a majority of players. That means that 96% of sets out there are useless.

There's a couple things to look at Effective vs Interesting. I think people like to be effective as much as possible but I also think enjoy Interesting effects from sets.

Personally I'm in the latter boat, the major and minor buffs and debuffs is a bit stale for me and I'd rather use things that have a cool effect, like the Ice Wraith set? I think that's awesome and could use a buff over X thing that gives X stats and y major blah blah.

Just my thoughts.

exactly. it's hard to balance interesting from effective. it's an impossible task, all i think that zos can do is try to make some of the existing interesting sets, better on specific classes so that not every class runs the same ones.

Alpheu5 · February 2023

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

ESO has 95% garbage sets and 5% good sets.
This is the "weird states of balance".

agreed. i just wish each class had their own bis set pairings in pve content. everything is so stale.

I remember when it used to be kind of like that. Sorcs used Netch's Touch and Ilambris, DKs used Burning Spellweave and Skoria, NBs used Scathing Mage and Slimecraw, and I forget what Templars used.

wsmith97ub17_ESO · February 2023

NO, no useful sets. I just need decon materials from my daily undaunted. Lol

joergino · February 2023

The introduction of new sets should have stopped years ago. What is the point of all these sets anyway? Yet we keep getting more and more sets every single year.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

joergino wrote: »

The introduction of new sets should have stopped years ago. What is the point of all these sets anyway? Yet we keep getting more and more sets every single year.

It should be to fill in niches but they're not really doing that too much. Especially with overland sets.

Jaimeh · February 2023

It's probably not a very popular idea, but it would be interesting if they introduced sets (dropping from overland content, for eg.) that were not solely combat-related, but RP activities-related. So when you have a 5-piece on there's a fifth bonus on gathering speed, or justice related activities, of even housing

It would help with variety and the fact that combat sets feel over saturated at this point since there are so many.

ESO_Nightingale · February 2023

Jaimeh wrote: »

It's probably not a very popular idea, but it would be interesting if they introduced sets (dropping from overland content, for eg.) that were not solely combat-related, but RP activities-related. So when you have a 5-piece on there's a fifth bonus on gathering speed, or justice related activities, of even housing It would help with variety and the fact that combat sets feel over saturated at this point since there are so many.

they'd actually be used unlike stuff like blessings of high isle

ForumBully · February 2023

Jaimeh wrote: »

It's probably not a very popular idea, but it would be interesting if they introduced sets (dropping from overland content, for eg.) that were not solely combat-related, but RP activities-related. So when you have a 5-piece on there's a fifth bonus on gathering speed, or justice related activities, of even housing It would help with variety and the fact that combat sets feel over saturated at this point since there are so many.

I'm sure there are dozens of sets that serve no purpose whatsoever, at least this is a purpose.

Caribou77 · February 2023

And then there are sets like Willows Path, which was once useful as a craftable regen set, until it was nerfed significantly, approximately 2 months before the introduction of Wretched Vitality, a set hyped to sell Deadlands/Blackwood, which essentially replaced the pre-nerfed Willows Path.

So. There’s that part of the equation to consider as well…

Turtle_Bot · February 2023

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

joergino wrote: »

The introduction of new sets should have stopped years ago. What is the point of all these sets anyway? Yet we keep getting more and more sets every single year.

It should be to fill in niches but they're not really doing that too much. Especially with overland sets.

I'd love to see more niche sets made that allow for interesting builds that aren't just "insert new better stat/proc".

Frostbite was really interesting, its main downfall was the lack of frost abilities that could really take advantage of it.

It's part of why I like the concept of arena weapons and necropotence, they give you an option to build around a specific skill/playstyle, that, while generically not as powerful as the meta builds, provide an option for something to build around/towards, so I'd love to see that explored more.

The only thing it needs is to ensure it's not a direct power creep of everything else, make it viable compared to other strong builds, but not so strong that it becomes the only way to play. This way it becomes an option and not mandatory, that's my main concern with these types of sets (and we've seen this with sorc being forced into pets, warden into frost staves etc).