Let's talk Armor Sets
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We are starting to have quite a lot of skills in the game, and the amount of builds which can be done is really benefitting from that.
The new imbues also have opened many more options.
Unfortunately there is one element left which is restricting possible builds by a lot. I'm talking about armor sets.
We currently have 2 light armor sets, 6 medium and 2 heavy.
This unfortunately isn't enough, especially cause most of them are very specialized in what they do, so you are usually left with very few options. This is especially true in pvp, where 90% of players are forced into battlemage armor, even if they don't use its bonus, due to a lack of real options. If these armors had more generic applications, there would be no need to add more sets, the existing ones would be more than enough.
I will go over each of them, and highlight why they work/don't work, and how they could be improved:
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Assassin armor: After the recent changes this is fine. It used to be a pvp only armor, due to the very long time it required to charge. Now that the bonus is smaller but much faster to charge, this is useful both in pvp and pve. It applies only to stealth builds. but considering that it is a light armor, this niche isn't that small.
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Scholar armor: This armor is mostly fine too. The bonus given isn't so huge to give issues in pve, and is achieved fast enough to be usable in pvp. It's pvp applications though are very limited, since the defenses are very low. The physical defenses can be covered with a mage armor, but the magical ones not. I would propose to increase the magical resistances of this set from 220 to 320. This would make it more usable in pvp, without impacting the real effect it has in pve. Right now mages are forced to run in battlemage, this would make it a choice between the better defenses of battlemage and the lower encumbrance, lower mana cost and bonus damage of Scholar.
In medium armors we have the hunter armor, the ranger armor, warlock armor, rogue armor, cleric armor and the battlemage armor.
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Hunter armor: This armor here has a specific purpose, which is to grind. It is pve only and not applicable to real pve challenges (legends). This is fine, but why not pair it with a bonus which is relevant only in pvp? This way you add an option to pvp builds without changing the overall power of the armor. A good bonus here would be increasing movement speed by 20% for 3 seconds after being hit. This is very marginally useful in pve, but very good for pretty much any build in pvp. It would make the hunter armor a generic purpose choice in case that you don't need the specific bonus of any of the other ones.
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Ranger armor: The ranger armor is again pve only, and honestly quite OP at that. Auto crits is a bit too strong of an effect, I fear that soon the DPS role during legend fights will become rangers only, with an acid mage and a knife fighter to lower the armor of the target. The bonus though is very slow to build up, and hard to maintain in a real fight. This means that this armor in pvp will never be used. At the same time, this armor exists for medium armor archers and that's it. A possible change here would be to make it applicable to all projectiles, not only bows. Have the stacks provide 10% bonus crit each stack, stackable up to 5. Each hit projectile adds one stack. Each missed projectile removes one stack. When you crit, reset the stacks. This is a net nerf to its PvE power, which is sorely needed, and makes it easier to manage in pvp. It also makes it an interesting choice for projectile based spellcasters.
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Cleric armor: Ultra specific armor set which has one and only one application. Making it harder to kill your party healer in a pvp fight. Zero reasons to use this in pve, and also not very interesting in pvp either. This armor could be extended in purpose to cover all support cases, not only healers, and to provide a supporting bonus to the party. In particular, using skills from the schools of leadership and restoration would provide one stack per tier of the skill to the user. Stacks disappear after 10 sec if not refreshed. The user grants to party members of bonus of 10 to fortitude/willpower/evasion per stack on him. Max 15 stacks. The bonus is doubled on the user. This way, the cleric armor gets used by support players both in pvp and in pve, and paladin builds may want to use this even in solo to leverage the good amount of bonus saves.
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Rogue armor: This armor has never found a practical application. In pvp the bonus is too difficult to exploit, and in pve it is technically very strong, but makes you burn mana too fast to be useful. This is partially because when it was introduced, many short cd combat skills did not have a mana cost. Now that they all do, this armor has lost its niche. Now, this armor should technically be the main armor for melee brawler builds. Its first issue is that the magical resistances are too low for it to be a melee armor. The magical resistance should go up to at least 280. The bonus set must be something good for brawlers, and I believe that a good bonus would be that when you are afflicted by a negative status effect, your next combat skill for the next 5 seconds cannot be dodged or blocked and is automatically critical if it can be so. Both players and mobs make large use of those effects, so this set would be relevant for both.
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Warlock armor: This armor does see some use, mostly in pvp. First of all, this set should be rounded a bit in the pve application. Adding to its pieces an item property of Life Recovered on Kill, would fit like a glove with this armor, while not giving it much of a bonus in pvp. At the same time though, this bonus set has always been a recipe for disaster, you never know when you introduce a new skill and this armor breaks it. Its cooldown reduction effect should be reduced to 45% (the usual cap for that attribute). At the same time, to give it back something in its pvp utility, the bonus set should also halve the pre cast time of spells. Many mages did like the highly reactive nature of the low pre cast time spells. This would give them a chance to access it again. This way this armor would be for pvp casters which enjoy high reactive fights with minimal restrictions, while in pve it would be played as a constant cycle of using life to machine gun fire your spells, and using the kills to refill your health.
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Battlemage Armor: The most used armor at the moment. Technically this is a very specific armor, which is made for dex/Int builds. In reality, due to a lack of other options and since it offers excellent defenses, it is the default armor at the moment. I wouldn't touch battlemage armor, it is working fine. The issue is the lack of alternatives. I cannot avoid to wonder though, why the change to its set effect was rolled back. It was nerfed (for good reasons) to have its damage capped at the base damage of the weapon used, but that change has been apparently rolled back (bug?). More than for pvp, this is a big issue for pve. A battlemage with a fast weapon can do really mean damage without that limit. Considering that this armor has such high defenses, the damage cannot be that high.
Finally you have heavy armors, and here I believe that there aren't many issues.
- Slayer Armor: The bonus is generic enough to cover all melee heavy damage builds.
- Knight Armor: The best tank armor, almost immune to physical damage. The bonus set is a bit niche in pvp, but can still find its applications.
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I agree with pretty much everything. Need more variation for light sets. Something for casters who dont spam abilities.
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Knight armor need a better passive.
The current passive which gives you a bonus depending on three things is to much to be effective in any way.
You have the highest resistance which make it difficult to get lost a good amount of health to proc, you also need a debuff effect at all and the debuff reduction, when kicks in, is to minor to make a difference.
One thing which could be done is to change max. HP to current HP.
Means the lower the life, the harder it becomes to stop the Knigh Armor user.
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@LordSkykal The resistances drew me to knight armor, not the passive. But my biggest issue with it is the lack of unique abilities. Nothing requires heavy armor. A more balanced set of armor requirements for abilities would drive a lot of variation in armor choice.
I'm going to make a dedicated post for this since it is related, but also a little bit its own thing.
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We are revising the resistances of armor sets in the next patch, giving much more to light and medium armor, particularly those sets that had the lowest values before. This is going to help. Aside from that, I agree we need to tweak some of those bonuses - it will be done some time in the future!
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I'd like to see more flexibility.. maybe add an extra enchanting-slot to the T2 clothes and only specific effects can be used there. E.g. this would allow to craft light/medium T2 sets with the slayer set bonus. Given that this is supposed to be a sandbox-game and we have no fixed classes.. consequently we should also be allowed to craft T2 armor sets in a more flexible way.
