7.0.2 Changes:
Sets that use Weapon and Spell Damage now require 6574 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 5478, resulting in approximately a 17% reduction.
Sets that use Magicka or Stamina now require 39,901 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 4% reduction.
Sets that use Health now require 43,968 to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 13% reduction.
Sets that use Physical or Spell Resistance now require 30,680 of either, up from 27,890, resulting in approximately a 9% reduction.
Thoughts:
Overall in PVE, Proc Sets are disfavored over stat sets. The reason is quite simple, they're weak. In Flames of Ambition, a MagDD can run a set like Icy Conjuror and maybe get 2k DPS out of it, or they can run Siroria's and get 6-7k out of the extra spell damage. Where Proc Sets were more viable was in unoptimized PVE content such as Solo and Four-Man Dungeons. Due to the lack of buff coverage you could get more DPS relative to stat boosting. However, for every role alike, DD, Healer, and Tank you avoided procs with the exception of Monster Sets due to their powerful nature.
So I'm going to look at the Proc Changes as it relates to each role in the Trinity.
1. Damage Players have no incentive to run Proc Sets.
6,574 is an absurd number. That's to get to the power that they are at currently in Flames of Ambition which is to say, practically worthless. You'd need a significant increase over that number to start valuing them in PVE content. You need to run stat sets just to get enough stats to make Proc Sets even a consideration.
For StamDD, due to Medium Armor Passives, Fighter's Guild passives and more, this number is far more achievable than it is for MagDD. This is addresses one of the major grievances of this scaling change. If you are trying to balance both MagDD and StamDD at the same time you cannot with the same numbers. You could, replace the Medium Armor WD Passive with a Pen Passive similar to MagDD, which may appease Penetration Starved StamDD. Otherwise you need to tune these numbers separately. If your goal is to make Proc Sets viable again, it would be illogical to make it where the only Proc Sets worth running are Stam ones.
Furthermore, Monster Sets, despite having an increased power budget over their full-set counterparts, will be mostly worthless. Already we see a shift to Double 1 Piece bonus Monster Sets due to how weak the Procs are. It seems antithetical to the design of the game to introduce a myriad of special effects, buffs, and abilities surrounding Monster Sets for them to ultimately always be deconstructed because you made Double Crit 1P stronger than any proc. The only Proc that I think will have good value is Domihaus because it gives stats (and now that I mention it, I'm sure ZOS will nuke it into the ground as well).
Lastly, a major grievance with this change is the existing imbalance in Proc Sets. Even with the old values in 7.0.0 PTS, Relenquens was doing well over double the damage of the second highest stamina Proc Set. When you let all sets scale equally, then you exacerbate the imbalance between sets. With 10k WD you could make some sets look okayish, instead of worthless, but then Relenquens is so busted that even MagDD run it for its crazy damage. Relequens is already one of the only proc sets that gets play, which shows you how much stronger it is than every other proc set in the game.
2. Heal Players cannot reasonably obtain 39,901 Max Stat.
Out of all the scaling changes, this number always seemed the most absurd to me. A healer should bring Major Courage. They can either do that with Olorime, which set bonuses give Magicka Regen, or they can do that with Spell Power Cure, which set bonuses give Max Magicka. For the sake of trying to make Heal Proc viable, we will assume the healer went with Spell Power Cure.
So even with Spell Power Cure's set bonuses, 64 Attribute points into Max Magicka, Full Arcane Jewelry (+Max Magicka) and fully Magicka Enchanted gear with Infused Large Pieces, a healer still runs short of the needed 39,901 Max Stat. That's shameful. They would need to give up their Atronach Mundus, and thus a large portion of their regeneration, just to match the same Proc Set values as live patch, which again, is already worthless.
Even by introducing glaring weaknesses in a build for the pursuit of a decent proc, you would simply get more healing out of properly building out your character and just using healer spells than having a full Max Magicka build for a pitiful healing proc.
3. Tank players are punished, again.
This comes out of a line of strange, almost vindictive, stream of nerfs to the tanking playstyle. Not only can tanks no longer run proc sets to increase their own damage (which helped them immensely in the Overland) but they are so far off from target that their procs would do less than their own light attacks. ESO is the only game in which the tanking role does around 3-5% of the damage of a damage dealer. Why? Doesn't that seem overkill?
Then when they consider the sets that designed to help out tanks, the new scaling on them is unreasonable. To reach the values of Live, on sets that are already currently worthless, they would need to have nearly max resistance (31k/32k Max) and that is already considered overkill in almost all PVE content. It is a detriment to give up all their stats in pursuit of resistance cap.
This also ties with the new Health requirement. 43,968 health is more reasonable to see a tank in veteran content run, but even then it is largely considered overkill. One does not need absurdly large health pools to tank, and in fact they will likely find it more valuable to reallocate that health into bigger resource pools. Furthermore, all sets that scale off health are unused. So even when running a full Health-Tank only build, which would be immensely selfish, it would prove to have very little benefit in game.
Summation/TD;DR:
1) Damage dealers will rarely use Proc Sets due to laughably low damage, Monster sets will likely be abandoned for double crit 1 bonuses.
2) Proc Sets were already weak for Healers. Reaching nearly 40,000 Magicka is almost an impossible task without sacrificing all core utility that a healer brings.
3) In order to make use out of any tank sets, they need to have an excessive amount of health and resistances, which again were already sets that were never used.
Conclusion:
Why is it that Proc Sets have to die? Why is it that Monster Sets have to be invalidated? Why can't healers run heal procs without being considered a troll? Why do tanks get nerf after nerf after nerf every patch? Who are these changes for? It is because ZOS insists on trying to balance PVP and PVE in tandem.
It cannot be done.
I think it's absurd, if I were to tell a friend about this game that there are 500 sets, yet only a dozen of them would ever see play because ZOS found it fit that all sets needed to die for the sake of trying to balance two very opposing game modes at the same time.
I'm not suggesting people should be mad at PVP players for complaining about things that grievance them, people should be mad at ZOS for not balancing PVP separately. They already do that with Battle Spirit, so why does that not apply further?
For the sake of the health of the game, for the sake of the fun of players, just separate the balancing of these two modes. PVP Players were critical of the removal of proc sets in Cyrodil because it took all build diversity out of the game, but PVE players also do not want Blackwood to be a large "No Proc Sets Allowed" in PVE content either.
