Azureblight Reaper: The Long-Lost Sibling of Plaguebreak and Dark Convergence

thesarahandcompany · November 2021

As we move forward from the era of Plaguebreak and Dark Convergence, players have adapted new builds and playstyles as they enjoy arguably one of the most balanced. With the recent hybridization of sets and balance to sets that previously reigned supreme, players are enjoying the most choice for their builds in the history of ESO. One set in particular has made a prominent return in PvP spaces: Azureblight Reaper [1].

Aside from the issues that the graphic effect has some implications for FPS and performance, the burst on the set is extremely overpowered when multiple players are stacked on each other and exploding. In fact, the raw tooltips are much higher than most plaguebreak pops in BGs. For example, if the average burst of the proc is 4k (which is about its average on a typical player), then the set has a potential to deal a total of 16,000 in a single global cooldown -- and it can all be done from range.

The set should scale like plaguebreak, dark convergence and magicka detonation and only do enough damage once it hits a certain peak of people. The off-time in which the blight seed can stack should also have a cooldown of 6 seconds, instead of 2.

[1] Azureblight Reaper
Set bonus
(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
(4 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery
(5 items) When you deal damage with a damage over time effect, you apply a stack of Blight Seed to your target for 5 seconds. At 20 stacks, the Blight Seed explodes, dealing 1745 Disease Damage to the target and nearby enemies, scaling off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage. An enemy can only have one instance of Blight Seed at a time. An enemy that has reached 20 stacks cannot be infected with Blight Seed for 2 seconds.

GulmarAvocado · November 2021

Don’t stack then

Vaoh · November 2021

It’s a PvE dungeon set with a totally different proc condition. You say it is extremely overpowered when it procs on multiple players in the same vicinity but this requires 20 DoT ticks without a purge, and everyone stacking on each other... this set is not OP at all compared to what is out there.

I think it’s fine as is, though replacing the Stamina Recovery bonus with a Weapon Damage/Offensive Pen would be nice for PvE.

lolo_01b16_ESO · November 2021

What skills would you use to proc that set in pvp? I mean unlike pve enemies, most players won't just let you talon them inside your destro ulti. And those who don't move away would die anyway, no matter which set you use.

McTaterskins · November 2021

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

What skills would you use to proc that set in pvp? I mean unlike pve enemies, most players won't just let you talon them inside your destro ulti. And those who don't move away would die anyway, no matter which set you use.

Necro (+dot dmg) with Malacath, Soul splitting trap with the crafted set on the back bar, with the charge weapon on front bar with stampede and carve? Lots of aoe dot goodness?

DK would work as well of course. If not a little better having more dots and inherently more weapon damage?

thesarahandcompany · November 2021

McTaterskins wrote: »

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

What skills would you use to proc that set in pvp? I mean unlike pve enemies, most players won't just let you talon them inside your destro ulti. And those who don't move away would die anyway, no matter which set you use.

Necro (+dot dmg) with Malacath, Soul splitting trap with the crafted set on the back bar, with the charge weapon on front bar with stampede and carve? Lots of aoe dot goodness?

DK would work as well of course. If not a little better having more dots and inherently more weapon damage?

Literally every skill almost procs this set. Even heavy attacks from dual wield (not that it's efficient to do that). And it can rack up stacks in AOE. It quickly gets to 20 stacks. Often times takes like 7-10 seconds to get 20 stacks. With its 2 second off-time you can proc more damage than dark convergence and plaguebreak currently. It needs to scale like those sets, the more targets it hits (trash pulls, open world PVP) the more powerful the explosion should be. Just like other similar sets.

For the context of battlegrounds, its current scaling is imbalanced and making it the most powerful set in BGs right now.

thesarahandcompany · November 2021

GulmarAvocado wrote: »

Don’t stack then

why didn't i think of that

divnyi · December 2021

Most dots are 1 tick in 2 sec. Ones that tick each second are ground-based. Orb no longer ticks each 0.5s.

Idk what's this all about, azure is old set that requires lots of setup to burst, has sound indicator and you can see seeds debuff stacking. If big group explodes due to azure - that's totally their problem.

Urzigurumash · December 2021

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

For the context of battlegrounds, its current scaling is imbalanced and making it the most powerful set in BGs right now.

Sounds like you're only in pre-mades with Healers? Azureblight is and long has been a counter to "ball healing" and that's it. Take out the "ball healing" and you're better off with a more straightforward burst set. That's my experience with the set.

When Necrotic Orb ticked every .5 seconds, maybe it was a different story, you could win a duel with this set in under 5 seconds.

It's a good set for a StamDK, StamSorc, and StamCro in any setting, but it's only superlative among "overhealed" groups.

thesarahandcompany · December 2021

divnyi wrote: »

Most dots are 1 tick in 2 sec. Ones that tick each second are ground-based. Orb no longer ticks each 0.5s.

Idk what's this all about, azure is old set that requires lots of setup to burst, has sound indicator and you can see seeds debuff stacking. If big group explodes due to azure - that's totally their problem.

The stacks are really easy to build as a ranged dot class or an unleashed sorc. It's the highest damaging setup in game by a long shot when played right, and when most people run it, they're not just running one dot with 2s ticks, there's plenty of dots that have 1s ticks, proc dot sets, and skills apply two ticks on initial cast in an AOE, etc. The set also does as much burst as other burst sets like calurrions or dark concergence, but it's aoe and has a factual shorter cooldown than those sets.

If it wasn't so overpowered compared to other sets then you wouldn't see 3 or 4 azureblights in BGs like you do now. The easiest way to balance the set is to give it scaling like plaguebreak and DC so it still can burst down trash mobs and ball groups, but not cause a ridiculous amount of damage because a group of 5 players from 2 different teams are fighting in a BG.

Simple math on the azureblight cool down:

Azureblight Cooldown = TTP (time to proc) + 2 seconds

Assume you're using unleashed terror, caltrops, stampede, and another skill such as hurricane. All 4 of these skills tick every second, for a total for 4 stacks per second. This means you will achieve 20 stacks in 5 seconds.

With a cooldown of 2 seconds, the means the effective cooldown of azureblight is 7 seconds. An extremely low cooldown for a set that deals insane burst damage in an AOE.

So to be clear, the set is significantly imbalanced to other damage burst procs, and it casts in an AOE. The average tick of the burst is like 4k in BGs. If 4 players are 2v2ing, one person can blow them up with this set for 16k damage. A proc set should not be able to deal as much damage as an ultimate to 4 players, it's the literal complaint with dark convergence and plaguebreak.

Dark convergence is a 15s cooldown, Caluurion's is a 10 second cooldown. Yet they deal significantly less damage.

In return of scaling the set differently, I think the set should be given offensive pen + weapon damage in return, like plaguebreak's statlines.

Quethrosar · January 15

but i want things dead in 1 second not wait seconds.

Soarora · January 15

Quethrosar wrote: »

but i want things dead in 1 second not wait seconds.

This thread is from 2021, Azureblight has been changed since then.

ZOS_Hadeostry · January 15

Greetings,

We've closed this thread given its age and given that some information may be out of date. If you wish to continue discussing this topic please create a new thread. Thank you for your understanding.