Sorcerer's New 2974 Penetration will Kill Item Sets with Lines of Penetration in Trial Comps

twing1_ · August 12

Before I get into this, I want to clarify my stance on this subject: I do not believe the recent change to Sorcerer's Exploitation passive to grant an unnamed 2974 Penetration bonus instead of Minor Prophecy is necessarily a bad thing. In writing this post, I am simply trying to bring attention to a shakeup to the organized trial group meta that I foresee going hand in hand with this change, in case it wasn't already considered by the dev team or others.

The Situation:

Right now, the Penetration target to hit in trial comps is ~18,200 penetration, as this is the amount that is needed to penetrate 100% of the armor of even the highest resistance mobs.

Currently on live, this number is mostly being achieved in one of two ways:

(1) Tank player wearing Crimson Oath's Rive:

700 (base penetration) + 5948 (Major Breach) + 2974 (Minor Breach) + 2108 (Crusher Enchant) + 3541 (Crimson Oath's Rive proc) = 15,271 penetration provided by the group

This leaves around ~3000 penetration to be sourced by individual DPS players, either through sharpened weapons (3276), 2 lines of item set bonuses (1487 ea), Velothi Ur-Mage mythic (1650), a few pieces of light armor (939 ea), or any combination of these things.

(2) DPS player wearing Roar of Alkosh:

700 (base penetration) + 5948 (Major Breach) + 2974 (Minor Breach) + 2108 (Crusher Enchant) + 6000 (Roar of Alkosh) = 17,730 penetration provided by the group

This leaves around ~500 penetration to be sourced by individual DPS players, which is almost always sourced through wearing a single piece of light armor (939 penetration) as to minimize the amount of over-penetration occurring.

The new 2974 Penetration provided by Sorcerer's Exploitation passive on the PTS has the potential to shake up the current trial group meta considerably. Simply by including one Sorcerer player into a trial group, the group effectively eliminates the need for DPS players to source their own penetration entirely and pushes the Roar of Alkosh item set out of viability. The new numbers are as follows:

700 (base penetration) + 5948 (Major Breach) + 2974 (Minor Breach) + 2108 (Crusher Enchant) + 2974 (Sorcerer's New Exploitation passive) = 14,704 Penetration

This leaves a remaining ~3500 penetration to be sourced from other sources.

This could, and almost most definitely will, be sourced by a tank player wearing the Crimson Oath Rive's set, which provides 3,541 penetration. 14,704 + 3,541 = 18,245 penetration, which almost perfectly hits the target of 18,200 with barely any amount over-penetration.

Now, I could be entirely wrong about the upcoming meta, but from a min/max point of view it does not make sense to hit the penetration cap in any other way, if a Sorcerer is included into the group composition. If a tank doesn't wear Crimson Oath's Rive, one of two things would need to happen.

(1) A DPS player will need to wear Roar of Alkosh to benefit the group instead of a different set that is better optimized to maximize their individual damage. This is doable, but organized trial groups try to squeeze every drop of DPS they can out of their compositions, so missing out on equipping one of their DPS players with a set that can achieve a higher DPS out of them seems unlikely.

(2) Each individual DPS player will need to source ~3,500 penetration on their own, either through sharpened weapons, lines of penetration in item sets, Velothi Ur-Mage mythic, or wearing pieces of light armor. This to me seems like the least likely scenario, because having each and every DPS player dedicate resources away from critical rating (from precise weapons or item set bonuses), weapon/spell damage (from lines of damage in item sets), or critical damage (from pieces of medium armor) seems highly unlikely for the same reason a DPS player will not be sacrificed by wearing Roar of Alkosh. When trial groups are trying to maximize their DPS, the opportunity cost present for having every one of their DPS players commit to either sharpened weapons, pieces of light armor, or lines of penetration in their item sets is far too high.

If a trial group with a Sorcerer player included did NOT wear Crimson Oath's Rive, it would mean that a DPS player would need to be sacrificed to wear Roar of Alkosh while also committing to ~2,500 penetration over the target amount, or it would mean that every DPS player is giving up their weapon traits, 2 lines of offensive stats on their item set bonuses, or % bonuses to weapon damage and critical damage for each piece of light armor they commit to.

Why wouldn't a trial group just sacrifice one tank to wear Crimson Oath's Rive, and then delegate Powerful Assault to a healer? The answer: they wouldn't. In all likelihood, trial groups would probably dedicate a tank spot to a Sorc Tank wearing Crimson Oath's Rive so that 100% of the groups penetration target could be sourced from a singular player.

What This Means:

All of this means that when the change to Sorcerer's Exploitation passive goes live, flexibility in trial group composition is going to get even smaller. Sorcerer players will for sure be included into trial groups, as they already have been, but the penetration bonus they provide to the group will make sure that the following things get excluded in their totality from organized trial groups:

Sharpened weapons (penetration is no longer needed)
Light armor (penetration is no longer needed)
Roar of Alkosh item set (5pc armor debuff is no longer needed and would result in immense amounts of over-penetration)
Ansuul's Torment item set (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Tzogvin's Warband (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Tide-Born Wildstalker (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Arms of Relequen (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Jerensi's Bladestorm (lines of penetration are no longer needed)
Kazpian's Cruel Signet (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Storm-Cursed's Revenge (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Rune Carver's Blaze (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Noxious Boulder (line of penetration is no longer needed)
Threads of War (line of penetration is no longer needed)

There is a chance that the Velothi Ur-Mage mythic item still sees use because its 15% bonus to damage done is very potent in its own rite, but it is for sure less desirable now that its line of 1650 penetration would be going to waste.

A lot of the above item sets were already niche and struggling to compete with the more meta sets in trial groups, such as Slivers of the Null Arca and Sul-Xan's Torment, but the extra 2974 penetration sourced by the new Sorcerer's Exploitation passive I fear is the final nail in the coffin for them.

Again, I'm not necessarily against this change to Sorcerer's Exploitation passive, but when a PTS change eliminates this amount of build diversity from organized trial compositions, it deserves some amount of extra consideration and the change should be made deliberately.

I'm bringing awareness to this situation in case the impact of this change was not already considered by the dev team or others.

Ardriel · August 13

Maybe they'll read this and give it some thought...

And what will they do in the worst-case scenario? Nerf Velothi and all the other sets with penetration—in other words, remove the pen line and replace it with something useful like … hm ... armor?
Well at least templars would benefit somehow...

And what if there isn't a sorcerer in the group? Not every player is in a well-organized raid group. Actually I don’t think the majority of ESO players are.

They still depend on these sets.

There must be a better solution and a better buff, sorcerers could provide.

Neugeniko · August 13

TLDR Composition diversity is down alot already. It was 14 sets across 6 classes/players to get all dps buffs but after this and recent masteries it will be 10 sets across 6 classes.

Saxhleel was killed by arcanist major force mastery , Lucent Echoes by warden major brittle mastery (even better with bug fixes in U51), Spell power cure is less used with werewolf dps, Alkosh is dead with this sorc buff.

So what is left for 5 piece sets is turning tide for aoe major vulnerability or stonehulk for single target major vulnerability, pearlescent ward unique damage buff, crimson oath to easily get to 18200 pen, xoryn unique damage buff, powerful assault unique damage buff, martial knowledg unique damage buff, roaring oppurtnis, jorvalds slayer buff (or 2 slayer stacks in MA or WM), pillagers profit, zens and morag tong. Thats 11 options, 10 because when you need morag tong you usually dont need turning tide or stone hulk because you have many necro dd.

You need a nb, dk, arc, warden, sorc and templar for all dps buffs. So 10 sets across 6 ppl. Before it was 14, more than could fit on 6 ppl and you would have to compromise!!

ceruulean · August 13

Who would've thought that adding more unnamed buffs and free stats would lead to more powercreep?

Warden class mastery killed Pearls of Ehlnofey mythic too.

I appreciate the devs doing more work on hybridization but they didn't have to add free defense and offense to templars and sorcs in the highest damage most trivialized meta we have now.

At this point the only way to fix this would be to remove all damage stats from medium/light armor and make those passives for sustain+mobility/defense only. Like how currently, medium armor has better block mitigation. Light armor should increase sprint speed too and have the martial damage taken penalty removed since it already has less resists. Heavy armor should have a 2% damage penalty for each piece.

madmufffin · August 13

You'll still need to have Alkosh in group comp. It can just be moved to a tank now. 6k pen provided from the set on a dps is a huge factor in group comp configuration. This new passive won't change that. Other sets with pen lines however, are in fact cooked.

NxJoeyD · August 14

Maybe this is the point?

There’s been talk for some time about cleaning up sets and/or balancing set procs. Maybe this is a segway into getting players off sets that are now otherwise redundant so that they can either be reworked or removed?

If these sets already had low take rates, and I’d agree they likely do, then maybe it’s time to support not having to slot them.

ankeor · August 14

One thing people often forget is crusher enchant can be only on one target. So for cleave 2-4 set bonuses could still be useful.
As for alkosh set, who cares. Really.

Skullstachio · August 14

In the case of penetration: I believe people may not be asking the right question.

when the question can be summed up more pragmatically with but two questions: What actual Value does penetration have? & also, what value does penetration have beyond 0 armor on an enemy?

Armor itself already holds more value in a PvP setting where armor & crit resistance are factored in so that can remain untouched.
people already know that penetration is used to essentially nullify an NPC's innate armor in and out of trials, but when those options are exhausted to the point where the enemy essentially has no armor anymore, what of penetration then?

taking a page out of last epoch with specificity to their own "shred" debuff, one could easily allow every 100 points of penetration on an unarmored target in ESO to act as an additive vulnerability multiplier that exclusively affects every entity that isn't a player.

as an example: say a player shows up to kill a monster with 0 armor & the player has 1000 physical penetration, the player would be constantly dealing 1% bonus martial damage to the target at all times without any other variables.
throw in a few debuffs & a few penetration bonuses & what does one get?

as a player: every 100 points of penetration (be it both physical & spell penetration) on an enemy with 0 armor would increase your martial & magical damage done to the target by 0.1%. thusly, having 10,000 penetration would increase that to 10% & there could be diminishing returns beyond that point like increasing the number of penetration in the physical or spell department required to reach the next increment. (i.e. 200 penetration to go from 10% to 10.1% & so on.)

putting it plainly: why make overpenetration a punishment when one can make it an incentive instead.

SonOfAsura · August 14

Crimson will likely never be used. In a trial with a trash phase, Crimson shouldn't be usable because it has a cooldown. There are many boss scenarios where adds/bosses come in one by one, so using Tremorscale and Crimson becomes problematic because of their cooldowns. Alkosh will continue to be used.

Tannus15 · August 14

There is also the issue that classes with a pen passive can benefit from the sorc passive on a tank.

Specifically Necro (3271 pen) and Arcanist (3 tome skills 3720 pen). add that to the sorc passive and we're at 17,975.
Word on the street is that necro is pretty good in PvE atm.

The problem here is that light armour sucks compared to medium, so no one wants to run 4pc light to hit the pen cap.

I will put forth the arguement that maybe other classes should be looking at something like ansuul or tideborn + light 1pc pen monster shoulder (3913 pen) and the group runs no pen support sets at all.

I dunno. Feels like there are pro's and con's.

NxJoeyD · August 14

Skullstachio wrote: »

In the case of penetration: I believe people may not be asking the right question.

when the question can be summed up more pragmatically with but two questions: What actual Value does penetration have? & also, what value does penetration have beyond 0 armor on an enemy?

Armor itself already holds more value in a PvP setting where armor & crit resistance are factored in so that can remain untouched.
people already know that penetration is used to essentially nullify an NPC's innate armor in and out of trials, but when those options are exhausted to the point where the enemy essentially has no armor anymore, what of penetration then?

taking a page out of last epoch with specificity to their own "shred" debuff, one could easily allow every 100 points of penetration on an unarmored target in ESO to act as an additive vulnerability multiplier that exclusively affects every entity that isn't a player.

as an example: say a player shows up to kill a monster with 0 armor & the player has 1000 physical penetration, the player would be constantly dealing 1% bonus martial damage to the target at all times without any other variables.
throw in a few debuffs & a few penetration bonuses & what does one get?

as a player: every 100 points of penetration (be it both physical & spell penetration) on an enemy with 0 armor would increase your martial & magical damage done to the target by 0.1%. thusly, having 10,000 penetration would increase that to 10% & there could be diminishing returns beyond that point like increasing the number of penetration in the physical or spell department required to reach the next increment. (i.e. 200 penetration to go from 10% to 10.1% & so on.)

putting it plainly: why make overpenetration a punishment when one can make it an incentive instead.

I like this idea a lot for PvE.

For PvP my main concern would be that even looking at a 0.1% downward adjustment how would a mech like this impact when skills or sets that either reduce or completely bypass enemy resistances? In PvP players could easily net a 15% to 20% increase in damage paired with nullifying target resistances, and that's before factoring in a set like Balorgh.

This could see a bunch of players racing even more toward skills and sets that impact player armor and that's problematic because the only real counterplay for mechs like that are avoidance .. Blocking, damage reduction, burst heals, HoT, etc are going to do little good in some of those potential scenarios.

This idea makes sense for PvE were an overpenetration can deliver a return to the player, but in PvP it can become a boondogle pretty quickly. Especially since the availability of armor bypassing / reducing skills and sets don't broadly align; it makes sense for some builds but it doesn't make sense for just as many.

Then again, this could be the only way Lamp Knights gets slotted in PvP lol.

kevkj · August 14

I think because of Alkosh's synergy (and necessity if werewolf) when also using Z'ens it's not going to disappear.

In average groups where minis or other trash are allowed to spawn/not vaporized instantly, Crusher potentially doesn't always proc on the boss. In the sweatiest of groups in some trials the tank is already more like another DD with some extra hp + taunt. So if anything ends up disappearing, it's Crusher not Alkosh.

twing1_ · August 14

kevkj wrote: »

I think because of Alkosh's synergy (and necessity if werewolf) when also using Z'ens it's not going to disappear.

In average groups where minis or other trash are allowed to spawn/not vaporized instantly, Crusher potentially doesn't always proc on the boss. In the sweatiest of groups in some trials the tank is already more like another DD with some extra hp + taunt. So if anything ends up disappearing, it's Crusher not Alkosh.

After reading yours and other's comments, I think you are right, it is Alkosh that will stick around instead of Crimson Oath's Rive.

A tank wearing Alkosh would go back to being the meta, and allow the tank to drop his crusher enchant in favor of something like a weakening or hardening enchant on their back bar.

Alkosh proc, even without the crusher enchant, would still hit the penetration cap and free up every DPS player from having to source their own penetration. It would also allow the armor debuff to be applied to every mob via an AoE without a cooldown while also circumventing the problem of crusher being applied to a trash mob instead of the boss.

Math:

700 (base penetration) + 5948 (Major breach) + 2974 (minor breach) + 2974 (Sorcerer's Exploitation) + 6000 (alkosh proc) = 18,596 penetration (396 over penetration)

In either case, whether Crimson Oath's Rive or Roar of Alkosh is favored by the meta, all offensive sets that give a line of 1487 penetration will still lose relevance in organized trial groups, along with sharpened weapons, maces, any pieces of light armor, and, in the case of the return of the Alkosh tank meta, crusher enchants on the tank's back bar.

HoundofTara · August 14

Honestly this change is interesting for warden tanks specifically, if a DD is using Kosh and the MT is warden they can use a frost enchant on the back bar infused trait icestaff to keep up major and minor brittle with nearly a 100% minor uptime and high major uptime instead of running crusher.

Which means more useful sets cans be ran in place of serpents distain.