merpins wrote: »

It's kind of touchy, giving trainee anything extra. It's a unique set, not a normal 5 piece set. Every other 5-piece set in the game gives you your first bonus when you equip 2 pieces, whereas Trainee gives you a bonus effect with a single piece of equipment. To make it a proper 5 piece set, it would need to get rid of that function, which is the only reason people really use it anyway.

Well, we do have the Druid's Braid set now, which is admittedly not exactly a 5pc set, but does offer a similarly versatile, albeit slightly weaker, 1pc effect.
There are rare builds that use a 1pc from each so there might be some case for keeping both as-is, but I wouldn't be entirely opposed to the idea of reworking Trainee a bit to be in line with its name, then buffing Druid's Braid up to ~Trainee's current values.

You might even keep the current bonus layout on Trainee, and an additional 5pc effect, but bump the values down a little. But ideally that'd come with a slight buff to Druid's Braid so there isn't any power lost anywhere, it'd just be a strait swap to the equivalent replacement set.

Might upset a lot of people though who have pieces of Trainee in their builds that would suddenly need to be replaced though.

Slight alteration to this then. Also something I would like to see applied to other sets.

See set bonuses at 8 and 10 pieces.

At 8 pieces you have denied yourself another 5 piece set regardless.

At 10 pieces you have equip the full set minus 1 piece (2 if using an off-hand item) and effectively decided you weren't getting any other set bonuses outside of the 1-2 piece items and antiquities. So balancing against something that rigid would be easier than other sets and would provide a reason for players to actually full invest in a set.

Love how this set, one that’s meant as a starter set has become like meta in a lot of pvp builds

Well, given the name, what harm would it be in giving it an 8 or 10 piece set bonus that boosted XP gains even further. Or maybe just boosted XP gains to Companions.

Make it worth it for players leveling themselves and others to go full decked out in it. Wouldn't make it any more or less overpowered in their 3 piece sets.

Really don't see why they don't have full set bonuses for most sets anyways since going with a full set also means you deny yourself of other set bonuses to go with it. A 10 piece bonus would only allow you 1 piece of leeway, 2 if you have an offhand item.

Can imagine this:

Armor of the Trainee:
8-piece set bonus: Your previous bonuses are increased by x%. Experience from kills increased an additional 10%.
10-piece set bonus: Your Companions now get experience from all sources you do.

Trainee should have 12 set boni like druids braid, but with constant set boni and not increasing the higher set boni. It is the only set dropping in the starter territories and the first set new players not starting in chapter area get and the only set they get until leaving the starter territories. It can happen that a player gets more than 3 pieces of trainee while having no other set pieces, so they should be able to wear them and get more set boni). Especially as a starter it should be easier to get sets. Druids Braid requires 7 researched traits, if a player can craft it than he can also craft most other sets , so there is no reason to wear this set. ZoS should just have made trainee 12 piece insteat of creating druids braid as upgraded copy.
When adding a 5piece bonus, trainee could also keep 1-3 piece bonus but get no 4 piece bonus.