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For those unaware, the Breakdown perk has a chance to award invention components when finishing a smithing item. Previously, the chance was affected both by perk rank and the number of bars required to smith the item. With this patch they have removed the boost on chance per bar. Functionally, this means that instead of getting a proc every single time on +4 and +5 items, it's at best a flat 4% chance at perk rank 5 (not counting item level buffs to the perk). I get that with the huge boost to components gained it might be overpowered, but this makes it essentially useless. It would have been nice to have the number of bars still affect the chances but let the perk rank influence the number of components you get, with Breakdown 5 maybe awarding 50% of comps normally gained.

Edited for clarity

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almost 5 years ago - /u/Shaunyowns - Direct link

You can blame me for this, months ago when I was trying out this update at the request of Mod Shogun I was smithing away and I always carried breakdown on my hammer.

When it proc’d on the +5 elder rune he thought it was too powerful in its current iteration at the time so it was changed!