The Harpooner’s Wading Kilt is a mythic item in ESO that potentially boosts your stats and your damage output by a lot – so long as you don’t get hit by direct damage yourself. Incoming AoE damage usually doesn’t count in this regard, but this still means that the Kilt usually doesn’t bring much to a trash mob fight. Many boss fights are another matter, though, especially considering I use both a monster set and two arena weapons, so the Kilt is competing not with a 5-piece bonus, just a regular 3-piece bonus. Of course, if you use a front bar 5-piece it’s going to be a different comparison, but I just love the Vateshran Dual Wield because with them, I need neither Weapon Power potions OR an execute ability in boss fights.
How do we know if the Kilt is active or inactive due to taking direct damage? The Combat Metrics addon will list uptimes of 10 stacks of Hunter’s Focus – i.e, the maximum item bonus from the Kilt – or a lower number of stacks if 10 stacks were not achieved. To figure out actual uptimes, I’ve taken to recording my uptimes of the Kilt bonus on the boss fights whenever I go do a vet dungeon, and I’ll update them here for all to see.
What uptimes are needed for the Kilt to be worth it? Well, at 10 stacks, the Kilt provides +1250 Critical Chance and +10% Critical Damage. A typical 3-piece bonus yields only +633 Critical chance (and no extra crit damage), so even at a moderate estimate, anything above, say, 40% uptime on 10 stacks of Kilt bonus is going to offer me a significant boost compared to a 3-piece (since even at 40% uptime of 10xHunter’s Focus, there’s still going to be additional uptimes of 9 stacks, 8 stacks, 7 stacks, 6 stacks, etc, and these all add both to crit chance AND crit damage, just not as much as the full 10 stacks add).
I’ll only count the bosses, not the trash fights – on hordes of trash mobs, usually a completely different setup does more damage anyway. (Of course one could argue that there are usually more trash fights than boss fights. On that note though, one could arguably use the trash setup for the entire dungeon. If so, for Stamina Damage Dealers, I’d recommend the Ninja Pulls setup of Thierric + Dagon + 3 pieces Relequen or Alkosh if you have access to it.) I check my Combat Metrics report after the dungeon, so, for simplicity’s sake, I start with the final boss and count the bosses backwards from that.
Elden Hollow I, November/December 2021
As always, starting with the last boss and counting only boss fights backwards from there, uptime of 10xHunter’s Focus was 86% , 80%, 100%, and 48%. Now my weaving is still awful so feel free to laugh at my ~40k DPS in those fights, but I think it’s clear the Kilt still boosted my DPS by a good margin.
Blackheart Haven, December 2021
Next I ran Blackheart Haven. Starting with the last boss again, uptimes were 62%, 84%, 83%, 45%, 92%, and 62%. (Yes, Blackheart Haven is a longer dungeon…) Not as high as Elden I, but still well over 50% in 5 out of 6 fights. Considering how much of a boost the Kilt gives, I think it’s definitely worth it for those fights.
Selene’s Web, 3 December 2021
counting backwards again: 84% , 44%, 53%, and then there were (I think) two or three boss fights where the tank was running so hard he pulled the adds all the way to the boss; then the Kilt wasn’t up much – 6×20% at the end, maybe. So that’s less of a bonus than a 3-piece bonus for sure in those three fights. Not sure how a slower group would fare, but there are a lot of adds in some of these fights, so maybe not the best dungeon for the Kilt.
Fungal Grotto I, 3 December 2021 :
Before skipping parts of this dungeon to get to the last boss I managed to get stuck on a mushroom… yeah… I had to use the /stuck command and couldn’t get into the fight until the boss had been fought for some time. But I still got 63% uptime, which I think was pretty much the entirety of when I was actually in the fight; uptimes should go up here if I was in the fight from the beginning. For the first two bosses, my uptimes were 69% and 77%.
Fungal Grotto II 3 December 2021:
I random-ed into this group once the two first bosses were down. For the last four bosses the uptimes were 94%, 82%, 68% and 99%.
White-Gold Tower, 4 December 2021 & 12 December 2021
First two bosses I got 95% and 90% uptime. After that I realized my pen-stat was so low I opted to switch to a setup with more pen, and forgot it didn’t include the Kilt… I ran it again on 12 December and got 82% uptime on the last boss.
Icereach, 5 December 2021
Last boss was not very good at 29% of 10xHunter’s Focus, should have switched it out there. The other bosses were Kilt-fodder, though, with uptimes of 89%, 67%, 91% and 94%.
Elden Hollow II, 6 December 2021
Uptimes: 91%, 99%, 100%, 59%, 85% and 23%. In other words, very solid except from the first boss, where there are just tons of adds. There are also endless waves of trash mobs here where it doesn’t shine, but then there’s those that you can take one by one – the Lurchers for example – then the Kilt did well.
City of Ash II, 7 December 2021
Uptimes from last boss backwards (trash fights in non-bold) : 69%, 59%, 33%, 23%, 28%, 100%, 100%, 83%, 90%, 80%, 83%, 79%, 0%, 48%, 65%, 28%, 65%, 29%, 98%, 59%, 36%, 84%, 56%.
The Cauldron, 9 December
Last boss I was dead during half of execute, and I still got 88% uptime. We had an amazing tank and I got almost 100% uptime even on many of the trash fights here – and 0% on others, predictably, perhaps. Other bosses (counting backwards as always) : 78%, 73% and 37%. Yeah, the first boss would’ve done better without – but only just.
Bloodroot Forge, 11 December
I forgot to check anything except the last boss… which was a complete mess with multiple wipes and even on the successful run I had to kite adds and sometimes the boss, rez the tank (twice, I think). The healer brought me back from several near-death experiences. So 10xHunter’s Focus uptimes? 56%. I call that pretty good given the circumstances – surely it would be higher, too, if the tank wasn’t struggling so much.
Spindleclutch II, 14 December
From last boss, 98%, 98%, (had been on an AoE trash setup and wasn’t wearing Kilt for the three Flesh Atros or Praxin Douare), 91% on the first boss (Bloodspawn)
Depths of Malatar, 15 December
This is an interesting one, since it’s by far the hardest PUG dungeon so far. Last boss we wiped once and cleared it on the second attempt – I’m honestly not sure if we went Hardmode on the second try or not; I didn’t have this pledge. As for uptimes on 10xHunter’s Focus I got 100% both tries. On the penultimate boss (King Narilmor) I got 90% and on all the Stone Watchers in between I also got 100%. My hat off to the tank! The Aurorans before that, I got 86% and 21%, and on the Dark Orb (a boss I really hate, where I died multiple times) I got 87%. (Despite dying I still did 57% of the group’s damage, so it’s not as if the Kilt meant I was getting carried.) On the Watchers before that I got 96%, 88%, 56%, 34% and 89%. On the Weeping Woman I got 89%. Before that, even the trash packs were 44%, 97%, 56%, 99%, 0%. 63%, 88%, 100% and 82%. That’s as far back as my Combat Metrics will record, sadly. I think my uptime may have been bad on the first boss, where adds seemed to be coming at me all the time and I had a bad setup with no self-heals on that I couldn’t change cuz combat… But the results in there look really, really good for the Kilt in this dungeon, even for trash packs. I’d bring it next time as well and not take it off throughout the run.
2022: Feb 2 – Red Petal Bastian (not hardmode)
I’ve joined a new guild – quite some time since I did a random vet! I explained I hadn’t done this particular one on vet before so it was decided to only go for 1 key – and I was mostly on my AoE setup so I only have relevant data for the final boss: uptimes = 66%.
Castle Thorn, 17 Feb
Last boss: 87%. I lost the others, but they were looking pretty good, too!
So far, the Kilt is looking pretty good for boss fights, except possibly Selene’s Web. More to come as I play ESO more…
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