GW2 has a bow of rainbows shooting with unicorns which horselaugh every. damn. shot.
I hate that bow… and people with it 
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Yeah… sounds horrible 
I certainly wouldn’t want sets removed from the game and like the way they have been implemented so far. You are not forced to use them as you are in games like D3 and they can open up some interesting builds once you have collected the full set.
Some of the older unique items are in need of updating but that is a different topic
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I think I would prefer these little guys tbh although anything with rainbows is fine with me.
I remember spending so long hunting for Sir William in D3 just to get the rainbow portrait 
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I would even use a not BIS set if it had some cool gimmicks, like a unique effect. I really loved the Necro set in D2 that transformed the character into a Ghul when you had all pieces equipped. The Immortal King Set hat a golden glow I think.
I’m really keen for such style things. Fashion is my main meta game in games like that. The transmog system of Wolcen is the best I ever saw. But other games had cool things, too. The Devision, Anthem, Warframe,… I spent a lot of time just shaping the appearance of my toon.
But I’m not a fan of stupidly ridiculous things. If it’s a game that revolves around a humouristic theme, that’s ok. But having a serious setting like LE has, that funny stuff destroys the immersion for me.
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I love changing the way characters look too. D3’s Transmog system was also really good for getting the style you wanted. The Battle mage in Sacred has some lovely looking sets that transformed the appearance of the character. Something similar in LE would be great and these ‘looks’ could only be obtained from wearing the set items.
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set items or not is a question of balancing
at the end, you should perform with every gearing option within the same tier
the basic game experience should be:
- find a unique or set item and say: ‘Wow! I want to try to level and build a char around this item/set! I’s so awesome!’
PoE is more like a economic simulation, uiniques aren’t exciting
so sets like D3 are a bad idea, but if they offer a new playstyle they are great
I don’t like the idea to go to the www and search a meta and then i’m forced to grind the required items. I want to develope my chars and play around with mechanics.
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The sets in LE suck. Easy as that. They are designed to be good items on their own and you can use the same multiple times. The concern about “sets” isn’t relevant as long as there are no level 100 sets you need to do the endgame content because it pushes your build like nothing else.
I agree that they suck, but I don’t think you realise just how MUCH they suck.
Set items in LE are not good items on their own, most are weaker than uniques on their own - and most set bonuses are weaker than if you had a Unique in that slot.
The point of set items should be that they give a big effect to something very specific if you collect them all, but they are weak when used by themself.
This means you would have to collect all pieces of a set before even considering using the items as they are too weak to be used solely. This is not the desired item design for me personally.
I think the generalisation isn’t fair at this point. Perhaps you guys could point out more concrete what exactly sucks regarding sets:
The Last Bear
(2) Set: +15% Critical Strike Multiplier
(3) Set: 100% Increased health regen if you have stunned an enemy recently
Ok, I think. Haven’t played a lot of Bear shrug
Isadora
(2) Set: 80% Increased Necrotic Damage if you have been Hit Recently
Recently refers to the past 4 seconds
(3) Set: +30% Mana Efficiency with Necrotic Spells
I use this set a lot on my Lichs. Not Endgame viable, but ok.
Boardman
(1) Set: Limited to One Active Companion
(2) Set: Storm Totem can hit allies to grant 21 health
Health granted is not affected by minion healing effectiveness
(3) Set: Storm Totem can hit allies to grant 21 ward
Really wanna see a @Boardman21 Build Guide about this set. Reading the tooltip looks interesting but wasn’t able to collect all items, yet.
Sunforged
(2) Set: 150% Increased Melee Stun Chance
(3) Set: Gain inspiration when you stun an enemy
Inspiration lasts for 4 seconds and increases cooldown recovery speed by 20%
Nice Set, viable for high monolith as the items themself have good stats.
Zerrick
(2) Set: 40% Increased Chance To Find Potions
(3) Set: Potions no longer heal you, but instead grant +40 necrotic damage to melee and throwing attacks and mark you for death for 4 seconds.
Mark for Death is a curse that reduces all resistances by 25%.
Could not make any use out of this set. The lack of potion health kills me a lot.
Don’t like this set as it has major drawbacks. Doesn’t feel good to me.
Pebble
(2) Set: +5% Chance to replenish one potion when Bone Golem hits an enemy
Applies to all types of Bone Golem
(3) Set: Your Summon Skeletons’ spells and attacks deal +15 fire, cold or lightning damage. The element selected is your lowest elemental resistance.
Very good early / mid game set. Also viable for the start of Monolith. Surprisingly good.
Harvald
(2) Set: +10 Spell Cold Damage
(3) Set: +100% Chance to cast Avalanche Boulder at target when you critically hit with a spell.
This is affected by your Avalanche tree and has a 1 second cooldown.
Haven’t played a lot of Shaman, but the set looks really nice.
Love this set on my Smite focused Void Knight. As I stacked a lot of spelldamage, the Avalanche proc is a nice damage addition without a tree. And it’s really cool what chaos you can create on screen with it.
The Forgotten Knight
(2) Set: 50% increased Void Damage
(3) Set: 50% Increased Time Rot Effect
Really cool set for VK or Sorcerer
Shattered Lance
(2) Set: 6% Increased Health Regen per point of Strength
This bonus can get HUGE. And the items are some of the BIS.
The Invoker
(2) Set: 80% Increased Fire Damage if you have directly cast a Lightning Spell Recently
80% Increased Cold Damage if you have directly cast a Fire Spell Recently
80% Increased Lightning Damage if you have directly cast a Cold Spell Recently
Recently refers to the past 4 seconds
(3) Set: +50% Elemental Resistance
The damage increase is a bit niche, but the resistance stuff is ok. The weakest of all sets for me and barely of any use, though. Using these rings is very punishing as you lose a lot of necessary ring affixes.
My personel conclusion:
Not all sets have really stunning effects. But all have their purpose. I used most sets so far (except Boardman’s) and they are viable for a decent amount of time.
They are not BIS for endgame. But saying they suck is not adequate, I think. They don’t serve the porpose of BIS chase items as the final gear of your lvl 100 character. If this was the plan, ok - they suck. But this wasn’t the plan with these sets. The plan was/is to enable some niche builds or have a early/midgame progression boost.
Maybe we get some BIS chase sets in the future. Maybe not. But I’m really satisfied with the current implementation of sets. They are not too strong so they are not hindering build variety.
In terms of balance some might need a buff to be more in line with other items. The lack of defensive stats on many of the items makes them hard to use on higher levels.
So what are your concrete thought on sets. And what would you do to improve them?
That’s the route D3 went, I don’t think I like it. IMO, sets being decent items by themselves with a nice small-medium bonus if you have additional set items.
That would be fine if each item of a set was good. More often than not, if a set has any good items at all, it is just one, or rarely 2, pieces of the set. The set bonus isn’t near enough to offset the cost of a better piece of gear. That makes the whole point of sets moot.
Set items need reworked. Some of the individual items are decent, but every set item should be decent on its own. The set bonuses should maybe not add a great deal of power but instead cosmetic changes. Auras, Halos, Wings, Recolors, etc.
Would also be cool to get a Unique ring that acted as a wild card slot for sets.
Ring of All
Unique Sapphire Ring
+5-15 Mana
+2 All Attributes
This item counts as a set item for any set you have equipped.
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I really don’t like the idea of buffing individual set items, the set bonus really should be their “outstanding” feature.
they should be worse than any unique on their own, but if the set bonus is interesting/strong enough they will be worthwhile.
I really do like your proposed Ring!
Altough i would want this item to be a chase item that you get fairly late into the game.
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The issue is that a lot of them FEEL bad when I look at some the items, last bear(weak set) helm and armor, Invoker(weak set) amulet, Zerricks(glass cannon set) belt(the crit avoid is situational), Halvar(cool set) staff(staff stats do not fit the set), sunforged(cool set, but only because of the items in it) helm(does not synergise).
This is the list of sets that have some issues:
The last Bear: Useless set bonus, you are usually better off running rares in those slots. The gloves are good without set bonus, so you may run them for swipe build.
Zerrick Exceedingly risky, it is glassiest of glass cannon sets.
Invoker The set bonus requires a setup that lets you do all 3 elements, probably elemental nova or something. The damage bonuses on the items are very specific and do not synergise well with each other. The set is at odds with itself. It certainly does not help that you can get more than 80% to an element with ONE ring(eg. elemental damage+ fire damage). Honestly you may be best off just running two of the SAME ring for the +13 bonus to either melee fire or spell lightning and you will likely find yourself doing more damage then if you used this weak set mechanic.
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This is still in the works, unfortunately the set just isn’t mechanically working the way I want it to atm and survivability on the shaman already is tough, but i’ll have one soon 
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We kinda off topic though what you should be asking will you miss these sets when they are gone. It’s Simple really why should LE keep sets, forget reworks and future sets. Why keep them going forward? With the rogue it’s kinda clear all classes are gonna get a speed boost next patch. The idea of Streamlined Content might be LE future which means faster more engaging experience. Sets clearly don’t add to that fast pace experience instead slows people down to hunt for matching pieces to carry on to next tier.
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I would argue the reason to keeps sets is that it is supposed to be like wearing a coordinated outfit. That is why I think each piece of a set should be just like a decent unique that all fit the same theme. The set bonuses should be cosmetic, like putting on a matching suit. The white werebear is a good example of what I am talking about.
Obviously sets should still have some non-cosmetic bonuses, but the full set bonus should be cosmetic.
Agree.
Ring of Royal Grandeur, huh? 
I’m against the ring, but I see the purpose:
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make all sets work from very first item! That’s what we talk about from the start of this topic. That will make set items a type of uniques.
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make possible upgrading set items and uniques and problem with their viability will be solved.
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unique and set bonuses should have stable merits: scalable values with character level, based on something that players scale themselves, or something that generally does not scales.
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Every next set bonus must improve previous ones but shouldn’t be mandatory.
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All this means that set items should have 1 affix less than regular or unique items. Or 1 affix reserved for some… set marker? Otherwise set items can become to strong.
My suggestions / examples:
The Last Bear → Might of Bear Kings
- 1 item: 50% Increased health regen if you have stunned an enemy recently. This bonus may stack up to 3 times. Stacks expire simultaneously. (overall bonus is grater than from a single item and chance to get it scales with player’s chance to stun).
- 2 items: +3% chance to stun for every 1 VIT (scales with player’s VIT. Also all / most items of this set should have VIT bonus by default).
- 3 items: +25% multiplicative bonus to Stun Duration and Critical Strike Multiplier (+100% → +125%, +300% → +375%. Good for stun builds and crit builds which obviously are able to stun).
Isadora → Isadora’s blazing wan
- 1 item: +15% Mana Efficiency of Necrotic Spells at 100% health. This bonus may be lowered to 5% at 20% health. Also this bonus it doubled if you have no ward.
- 2 items: Every time you hit an enemy with Necrotic spell you gain a stack of Blazing wan. Each stack has 4 sec independent duration and grants you 1 spell necrotic damage and 10 dodge. Taking a hit removes first half of all stacks.
- 3 items: Killing an enemy also grants a stack of Blazing wan. Killing an elite or boss type enemy grants 10 more stacks and prolongs all stacks by 20 sec.
Boardman → Boardman tools
(is it correct that “boardman” word means some kind of advisor or analyst?)
- 1 item: +50% companion revive speed. While reviving you take 20% less damage. Necromancer’s Skeletal Archmage and Bone Golem, Rogue’s Decoy and Ballista, Sentinel’s manifests become Companion skills (this makes them revivable. Non Primalist classes gain companion limit of 1) .
- 2 items: You’re limited to one Active Companion, but all your companion skills gain +30% cooldown recovery speed and mana efficiency for every companion you could summon starting from the first one. (so, if your maximum was 3, you can summon 1 companion while all companion skills gain 90% increased cooldown recovery speed and 90% increased mana efficiency)
- 3 items: Your companions’ active abilities have their effects powered up by 100% (damage, heal, duration). Also every 21 seconds you gain a 3 second buff that increases your skill usage speed by 40%. This bonus is tripled for minion skills.
Sunforged → Sunforged plates
- 1 item: Every time you suffer from stun, emit a large wave of light that blinds or stuns enemies around. (100% to blind. But the stun chance is based on the damage you took and your bonuses to stun in melee)
- 2 items: +50% stun chance with melee attacks. Also, every time you stun an enemy in melee you emit a wave of light. This effect cannot occur oftener than every 4 seconds (wave’s stun power equals to power of a hit you’ve just made).
- 3 items: Every time you stun or blind an enemy you gain a stack of Sunlord’s blessing up to a maximum of 5 stacks. Each stack has individual duration of 4 seconds and increases your armor by 10% and cooldown recovery speed by 5%.
Zerrick → Zerrick’s poisons
Every item of this set should have hidden unique ability: they may be rolled / crafted with affixes: more potion slots and healing from potions.
- 1 item: Healing from potions is doubled, but every time you use a potion you gain a stack of poison. Every +1 to healing from potions bonus gives 1% to gain an additional stack of poison.
- 2 items: If you have used a potion recently you gain multiplicative bonus: +40% to all poison and necrotic damage.
- 3 items: Your poisons have 30% increased duration. If you kill a poisoned enemy you have 2% chance to replenish 1 potion for every poison stack on that enemy.
Pebble → Master Collector
- 1 item: When your Golem hits the enemy you have +5% chance to replenish one potion. Also your Golem has 50% increased attack and cast speed if you have used a potion recently.
- 2 items: Every time you detonate corpse or sacrifice non expiring minion you have 20% chance to replenish one potion (sacrifice of skeletal mage or any other also counts).
- 3 items: Your Golems gain the ability to detonate corpses every 10 seconds. If you cast “Detonate corpse” and “Sacrifice” spells on your own and have at least one potion, you spend that potion (counts for bonus 1) and have those spells’ damage increased by your bonus to health from potions (+90 to health from potions means 90 added damage to a used spell. And it still may be increased via other bonuses to spell damage. Also in this case a potion still may be replenished via bonus 2).
- 4 items: Sacrificing a minion won’t destroy that minion instantly. Minion gains +15 fire, cold and lightning damage to all its attacks and spells and explodes only 4 seconds later. While in this state minion can’t be a target to Sacrifice spell. (imagine chaining Sacrifice that explodes a minion every 4 seconds but you summon a new one in between)
Harvald → March of Harvald
- 1 item: every second that Avalanche effect is active you gain a stack of Harvald’s Favor that increases cold spell damage by 5. Maximum stacks is 3, they last for 4 seconds and expire one by one.
- 2 items: Doubles mana / channel cost of Avalanche spell. When you finish casting Avalanche spell the second spell is cast. It has tripled area, same duration and follows you, but its damage is halved. (Note: larger area means that Avalanche boulders spread more, so they deal less overall damage to a lesser amount of targets. Also if you have Wild Path node (instant cast), second cast gains same duration. Also you may cast Avalanche several times and get several simultaneous secondary Avalanches)
- 3 items: Maximum stacks of Harvald’s Favor is increased to 10. While Avalanche effect is active you may gain a stack when dealing critical strike with cold spells except Avalanche.
The Forgotten Knight
- 1 item: void damage you deal is increased by your void resistance (overcap included, not multiplicative).
- 2 items: Time Rot effect has its non damaging attributes powered up by 50%. Any your direct void damage has 30% chance to apply Time Rot effect.
- 3 items: Enemies moved in time by Anomaly spell take tripled damage from Time Rot effect (if they were affected and if they’re really moved, because Immediacy node can turn this effect off). If they return with less than 20% of their maximum health they instantly die. Also enemies always return to you after Anomaly ends (by default they return to a place they were affected by Anomaly).
Shattered Lance
- 1 item: +1 health regenerated per second per 3 points of Strength.
- 2 items: +5 strength. +30% all attributes for 20 seconds after killing rare or boss type enemy.
The Invoker → Invoker’s proficiency
- 1 item: Casting fire, cold or lightning spell respectively increases next single Cold, Lightning or Fire spell damage by 40% (multiplicative) but also decreases all damage from the element you’ve just used by 20%. After using all 3 elements you gain “End of Invocation” buff that increases mana regen by 50% for 5 seconds. When this buff expires you also lose elements damage reduction.
- 2 items: “End of Invocation” buff expires when your mana pool reaches maximum.
- 3 items: “End of Invocation” buff also increases all resistances by 15% and maximum of all resistances by 5%.
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I am not sure that this is “so clear”.
While some classes might get overhauled movement skills, like lunge and fury leap.
I think rogue being the fastest class is good and should stay that way.
But wel this is off-topic too.
I really don’t get this. Having something to work towards (if you really want to use a given set) is something that helps longjevity. If those sets are strong, but not must picks they are excellent chase items. Simialr to very strong uniques.
I really like the idea of having individual items that are not good on their own, but have very thematic set bonuses.
There are so many things that can be way better balanced with sets. Because there might be unqieu affixes, that are too strong for a single item. That what sets should be for.
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