Plaguebreak is an armour set that has made quite an impact on ESO, being used to great effect in both PvE and PvP due to its ability to dish out huge amounts of damage to many targets at once.
Plaguebreak works in such a way that the more targets are present in an area, the higher the potential damage output of the set can be.
The set became pretty notorious in PvP due to how powerful it is, but another aspect of the set that sometimes escaped notice was its applications in PvE too.
It was pretty strong in some PvE situations due to its ability to deal a lot of damage to many enemies, which made it especially useful for trash fights and grinding/farming large amounts of enemies.
However some of this functionality is going to be completely cut from the game when Necrom comes out, unless Zenimax change their mind about the set.
How Plaguebreak is being nerfed in ESO
After the Necrom Chapter releases along with its accompanying Update, the Plaguebreak set will no longer apply its effect to any non-player enemies. Non players can still be damaged by the explosion effect, so Guards in Cyrodiil may get hit by that quite a bit, but you will not be able to apply the plague effect to any NPCs at all.
This nerf is happening for two main reasons.
Firstly, a developer note in the PTS Patch Notes for Necrom said that the developers had seen some "humurous videos" of the set being used to blitz through dungeons with ease. Plaguebreak was originally intended as a PvP-focused set and it seems that Zenimax do not want the set being used in this way.
Secondly, it was possible to inflate the damage of the explosion by applying the set's plague effect to NPC Guards in Cyrodiil, which could considerably amplify the damage output of Plaguebreak when a lot of guards were present in a fairly small area, for example in Keeps or at Resources.
This nerf will stop both of these things from happening, but it has disappointed some PvE players who enjoyed using the set on their build. The upcoming changes to Plaguebreak were being discussed on a Reddit thread, with several players voicing their displeasure at these changes, calling it an overreaction and a sledgehammer nerf. Someone also suggested that it would be better if ZOS simply blocked the set from applying Plague to NPCs in PvP locations, rather than blocking all interactions with NPCs throughout the game.
There's still several more iterations of the PTS to go before Necrom releases, so it is possible that there will be another rethink to the set in that time.
We hope you liked this article about the Plaguebreak set in ESO. The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) developed by Zenimax Online Studios.
