Hardened Ward heal making it to live is a mistake and needs to be changed

Nightwiish · April 25

Sorcs are beyond busted. All I see on this post is mediocre sorcs defending the class and really good ones pointing out how busted it is. Definitely needs tuning down.

Galeriano2 · April 25

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Sporigudinai wrote: »

The discussion became boring

It's basically now down to just a couple of people talking publicly about something that now doesn't really matter as much at all when you consider the upcoming changes.

Basically ZOS knew what they were about to introduce so they happened to give sorc a bump it would likely need in the future to compete. No it's not a very elegant solution but in the coming patch it won't likely be very interesting at all.

Scribing will be obviously overloaded and will easily dwarf this change in ward even with the added healing from the passive. That's my guess anyways and I could be wrong but I doubt it.

Yeah I mean it would be a "MASSIVE" coincidence if 1 patch after overbuffing sorc's shield they would add 2 abilities with oblivion dmg component and more universal sources of defiles without having it planned.

ec250 · April 25

Yah, lets make magsorcs free ap again....not!

StaticWave · April 25

Galeriano2 wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Sporigudinai wrote: »

The discussion became boring

It's basically now down to just a couple of people talking publicly about something that now doesn't really matter as much at all when you consider the upcoming changes.

Basically ZOS knew what they were about to introduce so they happened to give sorc a bump it would likely need in the future to compete. No it's not a very elegant solution but in the coming patch it won't likely be very interesting at all.

Scribing will be obviously overloaded and will easily dwarf this change in ward even with the added healing from the passive. That's my guess anyways and I could be wrong but I doubt it.

Yeah I mean it would be a "MASSIVE" coincidence if 1 patch after overbuffing sorc's shield they would add 2 abilities with oblivion dmg component and more universal sources of defiles without having it planned.

Which also affects other classes, and probably more so than Sorc, especially with Jerall. Try fighting a Defile user on a Sorc vs a normal healing class and see the massive difference.

With buffed Blood Magic, a Dark Conversion will heal for 7k non crit under Battle Spirit. Add a 14-15k shield and Sorc will be just fine. They could even drop Bound Aegis for Vigor and be a lot tankier at the expense of slightly less damage and shield size.

HowlKimchi · April 26

StaticWave wrote: »

Galeriano2 wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Sporigudinai wrote: »

The discussion became boring

It's basically now down to just a couple of people talking publicly about something that now doesn't really matter as much at all when you consider the upcoming changes.

Basically ZOS knew what they were about to introduce so they happened to give sorc a bump it would likely need in the future to compete. No it's not a very elegant solution but in the coming patch it won't likely be very interesting at all.

Scribing will be obviously overloaded and will easily dwarf this change in ward even with the added healing from the passive. That's my guess anyways and I could be wrong but I doubt it.

Yeah I mean it would be a "MASSIVE" coincidence if 1 patch after overbuffing sorc's shield they would add 2 abilities with oblivion dmg component and more universal sources of defiles without having it planned.

Which also affects other classes, and probably more so than Sorc, especially with Jerall. Try fighting a Defile user on a Sorc vs a normal healing class and see the massive difference.

With buffed Blood Magic, a Dark Conversion will heal for 7k non crit under Battle Spirit. Add a 14-15k shield and Sorc will be just fine. They could even drop Bound Aegis for Vigor and be a lot tankier at the expense of slightly less damage and shield size.

but that one mean one more button to click

moo_2021 · April 26

tried it with high hp build and the healing is not really much.

why not remove the scaling off mag? this is the only shield that scales off a resource stat.

Zabagad · April 26

moo_2021 wrote: »

this is the only shield that scales off a resource stat.

Thats not true. Many shields scale from mag.

moo_2021 wrote: »

why not remove the scaling off mag?

If you talk about the heal only - ok why not.
But if you talk about the shield itself - pls no.
They can (should) remove the scaling of health, but pls not from mag. And they could add spelldamage as a scaling component - but remove mag? No no no...

Bushido2513 · April 26

StaticWave wrote: »

Galeriano2 wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Sporigudinai wrote: »

The discussion became boring

It's basically now down to just a couple of people talking publicly about something that now doesn't really matter as much at all when you consider the upcoming changes.

Basically ZOS knew what they were about to introduce so they happened to give sorc a bump it would likely need in the future to compete. No it's not a very elegant solution but in the coming patch it won't likely be very interesting at all.

Scribing will be obviously overloaded and will easily dwarf this change in ward even with the added healing from the passive. That's my guess anyways and I could be wrong but I doubt it.

Yeah I mean it would be a "MASSIVE" coincidence if 1 patch after overbuffing sorc's shield they would add 2 abilities with oblivion dmg component and more universal sources of defiles without having it planned.

Which also affects other classes, and probably more so than Sorc, especially with Jerall. Try fighting a Defile user on a Sorc vs a normal healing class and see the massive difference.

With buffed Blood Magic, a Dark Conversion will heal for 7k non crit under Battle Spirit. Add a 14-15k shield and Sorc will be just fine. They could even drop Bound Aegis for Vigor and be a lot tankier at the expense of slightly less damage and shield size.

So this is one of those times when I'd be interested to see the testing though it probably needs to wait one more pts iteration in case they nerf or buff the new scribing skills.

I think the point was that sorc will be ok but that it's going to be situational.

I believe ZOS is looking at it once again from gvg. Most healing can handle one source of damage/ oblivion damage but that quickly becomes an issue when you have multiples.

Even with sorcs current healing 2 night slayer builds with any added damage can have you looking for los so I'm sure adding this to skills will be interesting

xylena_lazarow · April 26

Bushido2513 wrote: »

I believe ZOS is looking at it once again from gvg.

Being focused down by 17k healy shield magsorcs now syncing 41m oblivion executes sounds like fun GvG for sure!

Bushido2513 · April 27

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

I believe ZOS is looking at it once again from gvg.

Being focused down by 17k healy shield magsorcs now syncing 41m oblivion executes sounds like fun GvG for sure!

Well that's xv1 not gvg. So in gvg yeah you're still going to get focused but you also have backup providing damage, heals, body blocks, etc

Again I'm not saying it's a great thing but the point is that you're not encouraged to roll around without numbers. Anything less than gvg is just going to have to work around some mild to massive impediments. Didn't used to be that way but ZOS continues to silently reinforce that this is their vision at the moment.

StaticWave · April 27

I don't think ZOS even cares about GvG lol. If that was the case, a lot of the pain points of GvG like cross-healing making everyone hard to kill or pull sets doing the majority of the work would be heavily nerfed.

ZOS only cares about accessibility for the casual player, plain and simple.

moo_2021 · April 27

Zabagad wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

why not remove the scaling off mag?

If you talk about the heal only - ok why not.
But if you talk about the shield itself - pls no.
They can (should) remove the scaling of health, but pls not from mag. And they could add spelldamage as a scaling component - but remove mag? No no no...

It'd prevent players from building both of sustain and damage by stacking one stat. That feature is quite ridiculous. Bad enough to have healing scaled off damage.

Or cut the cap by half with battle spirit.

xylena_lazarow · April 27

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Well that's xv1 not gvg.

Groups focus down single targets in other groups all the time. Not sure how to continue a conversation with someone who thinks GvG means "literally only AoE" but it's at least sorta consistent with your false "1v1 never happens" assertion.

Bushido2513 · April 27

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Well that's xv1 not gvg.

Groups focus down single targets in other groups all the time. Not sure how to continue a conversation with someone who thinks GvG means "literally only AoE" but it's at least sorta consistent with your false "1v1 never happens" assertion.

Lol the next line I said was you get focused on gvg but the difference is you have backup.

Not sure how to continue a conversation with someone that doesn't read all of what I'm writing even if it's just the next line after the one they quote?

xylena_lazarow · April 27

Bushido2513 wrote: »

you have backup.

You have backup when you're solo zerg surfing too (your zerg).

Bushido2513 · April 27

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think ZOS even cares about GvG lol. If that was the case, a lot of the pain points of GvG like cross-healing making everyone hard to kill or pull sets doing the majority of the work would be heavily nerfed.

ZOS only cares about accessibility for the casual player, plain and simple.

That's kind of the point though, casual players are encouraged to group up / zerg and will live longer due to cross heals, body blocking, defensive buffs, etc. Over time the game has gotten so many ways for the casual person to live longer but definitely more in a gvg setting more than solo or outnumbered.

These days depending on builds you're only really killing some opponents with numbers and ZOS has continued to reinforce the options that make this a thing over the years.

Bushido2513 · April 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

you have backup.

You have backup when you're solo zerg surfing too (your zerg).

Yup and that's still gvg. I don't mean that you need to actually be grouped with anyone. A large keep battle is gvg. The game just encourages having equal or greater numbers in any given encounter to help balance out the overall experience.

StaticWave · April 28

Bushido2513 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

you have backup.

You have backup when you're solo zerg surfing too (your zerg).

Yup and that's still gvg. I don't mean that you need to actually be grouped with anyone. A large keep battle is gvg. The game just encourages having equal or greater numbers in any given encounter to help balance out the overall experience.

Then the only thing needing nerfing are pull sets, cross healing, and root spam lol. Everything else doesn’t matter as far as i’m concerned.

xylena_lazarow · April 28

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Yup and that's still gvg. I don't mean that you need to actually be grouped with anyone. A large keep battle is gvg. The game just encourages having equal or greater numbers in any given encounter to help balance out the overall experience.

Hooray we did it, we settled on what GvG means!

So anyway. What makes for better GvG: a bunch of tanky melee brawlers, or a bunch of tanky ranged nukes?

Personally I find range-dominated metas in this PvP so godawful terrible that every single time, I quit and go play shooters that are properly designed for ranged combat. Been on Warframe the past two weeks, haven't touched ESO, and the ridiculous ranged Scribing skills aren't exactly pulling me back in. Sure doesn't help that Arc feels like a worse Sorc now.

StaticWave · April 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Yup and that's still gvg. I don't mean that you need to actually be grouped with anyone. A large keep battle is gvg. The game just encourages having equal or greater numbers in any given encounter to help balance out the overall experience.

Hooray we did it, we settled on what GvG means!

So anyway. What makes for better GvG: a bunch of tanky melee brawlers, or a bunch of tanky ranged nukes?

Personally I find range-dominated metas in this PvP so godawful terrible that every single time, I quit and go play shooters that are properly designed for ranged combat. Been on Warframe the past two weeks, haven't touched ESO, and the ridiculous ranged Scribing skills aren't exactly pulling me back in. Sure doesn't help that Arc feels like a worse Sorc now.

Remember Sheer Venom and Venomous Smite meta? People could proc them from range and basically drove melee players to extinction.

I remember the matches where I would lose 50% of my HP within the first second of gap closing. Didn’t even get half way and had to retreat lol.

Now you have to deal with ranged players that are also super tanky. What a terrible combination of balance.

xylena_lazarow · April 28

StaticWave wrote: »

Remember Sheer Venom and Venomous Smite meta? People could proc them from range and basically drove melee players to extinction. Now you have to deal with ranged players that are also super tanky. What a terrible combination of balance.

Funny how many players still don't get how this is just like guns driving swords to extinction IRL.

This game's own PvE has a lot of donut AoEs that punish range but not melee as a balancing factor.

TechMaybeHic · April 29

Finally getting to an issue I have felt since maybe the jabs nerf. Not that it wasn't an outlier, but a last bastion of melee damage outpacing range. You don't see dizzy as much either. Too easy to elemental susceptibility and force pulse or shards away. Might as well play a class with a kite tool as well

Bushido2513 · April 29

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Finally getting to an issue I have felt since maybe the jabs nerf. Not that it wasn't an outlier, but a last bastion of melee damage outpacing range. You don't see dizzy as much either. Too easy to elemental susceptibility and force pulse or shards away. Might as well play a class with a kite tool as well

Eh I'd still say DK, Warden, and, NB do exceptionally well in melee with the right person piloting them. Dizzy is a funny thing because it seems like they just can't find the sweet spot between hits like a truck and hits like a wet noodle.

Durham · April 29

The two-hander is simply outclassed at the moment by Destruction staff due to the status effect change and the damage creep that range abilities get vs melee. "Elemental susceptibility" How in the world has this not been balanced? Good damage and length of time on you at the cost of nothing! If you are in PVP you will have this on you as soon as you port in. Forced pulse with status effects =ouch! ". You are also seeing very little duel-wield abilities. I generally see a staff on every toon at the moment, except bow blades.

Bushido2513 · April 30

Durham wrote: »

The two-hander is simply outclassed at the moment by Destruction staff due to the status effect change and the damage creep that range abilities get vs melee. "Elemental susceptibility" How in the world has this not been balanced? Good damage and length of time on you at the cost of nothing! If you are in PVP you will have this on you as soon as you port in. Forced pulse with status effects =ouch! ". You are also seeing very little duel-wield abilities. I generally see a staff on every toon at the moment, except bow blades.

Definitely going to have something to do with who you're going up against in regards to player skill, class, build.

Before I moved to magsorc I had a lot of fun with melee builds on sorc and even now there are melee builds that can be quite punishing to face in that you'll find yourself having to back up and heal up.

Status effects and force pulses are definitely interesting but can also be fairly easily tanked or healed through depending on build.

Durham · April 30

Status effects and force pulses are definitely interesting but can also be fairly easily tanked or healed through depending on build.

Same can be said with TH or DW. You might see 1/10 recaps with a Melee weapon skill on recap.

Bushido2513 · April 30

Durham wrote: »

Status effects and force pulses are definitely interesting but can also be fairly easily tanked or healed through depending on build.

Same can be said with TH or DW. You might see 1/10 recaps with a Melee weapon skill on recap.

Well we should be clear here. There's popularity in the weapon skills that are being run and then there's the popularity in melee range skills

As far as popular weapon skills or ranged skills, pulse and ele just work well for a variety of builds and class. DW and 2H work better as general weapons to equip if you're playing in melee range

So yes I will say melee weapon skills are not as popular but it seems to me that's because melee range skills have a better selection while ranged skills have an overall worse selection when you look at all classes.

We don't need more dizzy builds but could probably use more variation in ranged builds

Iriidius · May 1

StaticWave wrote: »

Here are 2 more examples of Hardened Ward being absolutely broken even with lower max mag. I got my friend to hop on Warden and DK in a full pressure build. I was in Malubeth/Rally/Wretched/SSC with 35.6k HP and VAMP 2. Here are the results of the DPS test:

Warden DPS and my healing:

DK DPS and my healing:

In both tests, Hardened Ward scaled with max HP instead, and at 35.6k HP and VAMP 2, I was able to tank up to 8.4k DPS for a sustained 2 minute fight. Keep in mind, this is just with Ward, Vigor, and Surge. I wasn't weaving Blood Magic healing, dodge rolling, or using Streak.

So as I've stated earlier in this thread, pressure builds CANNOT kill a Sorc anymore. The only chance of killing a Sorc is with perfectly timed burst to 100-0 them. You cannot do that vs a good player. If the counter play is so difficult to pull off, then is it really counter play?

Only half of your healing is from ward, even with 1,5X the hp(55k) or 55k magicka it would be 0.5*1.5/(0.5*1.5+0.5)=0.75/1.25=0.6/60% of your healing+shielding althought you casted it every 3 seconds on average.
Your friend used no stun or immobilizes on DK on you saving you a lot of stamina and time to cast heals and eliminating the risk of you loosing all your life while beeing unable to react(at least I didn‘t saw any dmg from fossilize, talons, SnB stun or any other stun dealing dmg) and only arctic blast on Warden, while in a real fight DKs and Magdens stun and immobilize all the time. Probably he didn‘t even tried bursting or otherwise killing you if he is your friend, maybe even stopping to attack if you are low. Higher resistance and mitigation would have just reduced the dmg you take, not let you survive more dmg.This test was done under unrealistic conditions, you wouldn't have survived that much in a real fight.

StaticWave wrote: »

Here a 7 minute CMX screenshot of damage taken in a deathmatch BG game:

Here's my healing in that same 7 minute window:

40k HP build with 27k resist and 3.7k crit resist. Healing Ward accounted for a total of 36.9% of my healing. That's more than Vigor + Crit Surge, which only accounted for 35.7%.

Ward also has almost as many ticks as vigor and critical surge together and ward absorbs dmg before any heal can outheal it and you said yourself that good sorcerers cast ward preemptitive.

Jsmalls wrote: »

@xylena_lazarow

Stop ignoring core functions of the game. Blocking casting heals (and dodge rolling) is the most effective 1vX defensive system in the game. And 75% of the Wards "health value" is unaffected by this mechanic.

It doesn't matter what you feel, it's statistics. Speaking on unblockable damage isn't a benefit for Ward, it effects Wards and Health equally.

Blockcasting healing is maybe most effective defense in 1v1 or against burst in XvX, but in 1vX it costs too much stamina because it costs every time you get hit up to 4 times every second, slows you down too much to LoS or escape and still doesn‘t mitigate enaugh damage to keep you alive without LoS usually except you are a permablocktank. In 1vX dodge rolling is better defense because it doesn‘t get more expensive against more players, doesn‘t slow you down and lets you move with decent speed even when you are slowed/snared, but with so many undodgeable AOE/beam attacks it gets unreliable so actually

Galeriano2 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

Blocking casting heals (and dodge rolling) is the most effective 1vX defensive system in the game

LoS

Can You win 1vX with just LoS alone without blocking, casting heals and dodge rolling?

No, usually not without healing, 1vXers are healing, dodging and sometimes blocking while LoSing, but usually you also can‘t win 1vX only with blockcasting heal.

StaticWave wrote: »

Was dueling a Dizzy magsorc ealier. I was on HP Sorc. Here was the CMX result:

My DPS:

His DPS:

My healing:

I asked how long he's played the class and this was his response:

I assume he was a good player on Templar, but the fact that he only played Sorc for 2 days, and could still compete with a 5 year Sorc main is dumb. There is zero learning curve on Sorc this patch. I could tell he was new to the class because his defensive rotation was rather long, but he had good shield uptime at least. However, if he had played Sorc last patch, he would have died much sooner with Ward not having a burst heal.

Also, the fact that I had to combine Surge + Vigor + Blood Magic + Ward with decent crit resist and armor to tank 4.4k DPS, while he did it in a FULL damage build with only Ward + Crit Surge and occasional Blood Magic heal is absurd.

So another Sorcerer with less playtime stalemating your Sorcerer for a while and at the end still dying proves that Hardened Ward is overpowered? Normally a buff to a class helps not only the starters but also the experienced players and shouldn‘t matter much in a duell between 2 players of the same class. Maybe other player just learned playing Magsorc fast or had already played sorcerer somewhen before, maybe you are not as good as you think.
Less than a quarter of your healing(including shielding) in this fight came from hardened ward, so this fight definitely doesnt prove hardened ward beeing to strong.
I think just putting a instant heal on hardened ward is an ugly solution, but not totally wrong because
I doubt that sorcerer was intended to be the only class not using a burst heal when it has 4, now 5 burstheals(dark deal which is interruptible, twilight matriarch and clanfear which are doublebarred killable pets with interruptible summon, hardened ward which requires stacking magicka and now also vibrant shroud which heals for 75% of healthy offering for 140% of the cost) that are all just not reliable (in 1v1/1vX/XvX or when not stacking magicka) althought most of them were used in the past and stacking 60k magicka is a big sacrifice because max magicka as a dmg stat is so bad that many players have only 15k and would trade it for almost everything else.

Althought max magicka is also a dmg stat and therefore sorcerer stacking max magicka a full dmg build, a minor set bonus of max magicka increases your dmg only half as much as a minor set bonus of weapon dmg and doesn‘t increase your dmg from most proc sets at all(because they scale from weapon dmg only), even with 6%(undaunted)+5%(magelight)+8%(armament)+10%(passive) max magicka increase you get only 70% of weapon dmg increase, so a build stacking weapon dmg can invest 70% in weapon dmg and 30% into defense or other things and still have same dmg as a build investing 100% into max magicka and even weapon dmg stacking is not the best dmg stat anymore, nowadays people use crit dmg, penetration, percentual increases or procs.

Magsorc already stacked max magicka when I startet playing in 2017 and usually used alfiq+brightthroath/necropotence/ancient grace/ willpower+death dealer fete until it got too weak, nowadays most magsorcs use wretched+rallyng or other nonnmagickasets, so magickastacking is still
not as strong on sorcerer as it used to be. Players had 20% extramagicka from cp before rework that were removed, more than sorcerer get from passive+ armament skill.
If you want remove the heal from hardened Ward, some of the other potential burstheals should become useable.
There is no justification for dark deal still having a cast time and beeing interruptible when leeching strikes and „expunge and modify“ also restore stamina/magicka and are instant, all 3 can be used for permablocktanks.
Clanfear and twilight matriarch beeing targetable always was annoying for enemys who accidently hit them, but now it is also annoying for the user when the pets get killed and you cant use heal. ZoS could make them untargetable or make them heal without pet when on one bar or respawn automatically after downtime like werewolf pets while still allowing to use heal.

StaticWave · May 2

Iriidius wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Here are 2 more examples of Hardened Ward being absolutely broken even with lower max mag. I got my friend to hop on Warden and DK in a full pressure build. I was in Malubeth/Rally/Wretched/SSC with 35.6k HP and VAMP 2. Here are the results of the DPS test:

Warden DPS and my healing:

DK DPS and my healing:

In both tests, Hardened Ward scaled with max HP instead, and at 35.6k HP and VAMP 2, I was able to tank up to 8.4k DPS for a sustained 2 minute fight. Keep in mind, this is just with Ward, Vigor, and Surge. I wasn't weaving Blood Magic healing, dodge rolling, or using Streak.

So as I've stated earlier in this thread, pressure builds CANNOT kill a Sorc anymore. The only chance of killing a Sorc is with perfectly timed burst to 100-0 them. You cannot do that vs a good player. If the counter play is so difficult to pull off, then is it really counter play?

Only half of your healing is from ward, even with 1,5X the hp(55k) or 55k magicka it would be 0.5*1.5/(0.5*1.5+0.5)=0.75/1.25=0.6/60% of your healing+shielding althought you casted it every 3 seconds on average.
Your friend used no stun or immobilizes on DK on you saving you a lot of stamina and time to cast heals and eliminating the risk of you loosing all your life while beeing unable to react(at least I didn‘t saw any dmg from fossilize, talons, SnB stun or any other stun dealing dmg) and only arctic blast on Warden, while in a real fight DKs and Magdens stun and immobilize all the time. Probably he didn‘t even tried bursting or otherwise killing you if he is your friend, maybe even stopping to attack if you are low. Higher resistance and mitigation would have just reduced the dmg you take, not let you survive more dmg.This test was done under unrealistic conditions, you wouldn't have survived that much in a real fight.

StaticWave wrote: »

Here a 7 minute CMX screenshot of damage taken in a deathmatch BG game:

Here's my healing in that same 7 minute window:

40k HP build with 27k resist and 3.7k crit resist. Healing Ward accounted for a total of 36.9% of my healing. That's more than Vigor + Crit Surge, which only accounted for 35.7%.

Ward also has almost as many ticks as vigor and critical surge together and ward absorbs dmg before any heal can outheal it and you said yourself that good sorcerers cast ward preemptitive.

Jsmalls wrote: »

@xylena_lazarow

Stop ignoring core functions of the game. Blocking casting heals (and dodge rolling) is the most effective 1vX defensive system in the game. And 75% of the Wards "health value" is unaffected by this mechanic.

It doesn't matter what you feel, it's statistics. Speaking on unblockable damage isn't a benefit for Ward, it effects Wards and Health equally.

Blockcasting healing is maybe most effective defense in 1v1 or against burst in XvX, but in 1vX it costs too much stamina because it costs every time you get hit up to 4 times every second, slows you down too much to LoS or escape and still doesn‘t mitigate enaugh damage to keep you alive without LoS usually except you are a permablocktank. In 1vX dodge rolling is better defense because it doesn‘t get more expensive against more players, doesn‘t slow you down and lets you move with decent speed even when you are slowed/snared, but with so many undodgeable AOE/beam attacks it gets unreliable so actually

Galeriano2 wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

Blocking casting heals (and dodge rolling) is the most effective 1vX defensive system in the game

LoS

Can You win 1vX with just LoS alone without blocking, casting heals and dodge rolling?

No, usually not without healing, 1vXers are healing, dodging and sometimes blocking while LoSing, but usually you also can‘t win 1vX only with blockcasting heal.

StaticWave wrote: »

Was dueling a Dizzy magsorc ealier. I was on HP Sorc. Here was the CMX result:

My DPS:

His DPS:

My healing:

I asked how long he's played the class and this was his response:

I assume he was a good player on Templar, but the fact that he only played Sorc for 2 days, and could still compete with a 5 year Sorc main is dumb. There is zero learning curve on Sorc this patch. I could tell he was new to the class because his defensive rotation was rather long, but he had good shield uptime at least. However, if he had played Sorc last patch, he would have died much sooner with Ward not having a burst heal.

Also, the fact that I had to combine Surge + Vigor + Blood Magic + Ward with decent crit resist and armor to tank 4.4k DPS, while he did it in a FULL damage build with only Ward + Crit Surge and occasional Blood Magic heal is absurd.

So another Sorcerer with less playtime stalemating your Sorcerer for a while and at the end still dying proves that Hardened Ward is overpowered? Normally a buff to a class helps not only the starters but also the experienced players and shouldn‘t matter much in a duell between 2 players of the same class. Maybe other player just learned playing Magsorc fast or had already played sorcerer somewhen before, maybe you are not as good as you think.
Less than a quarter of your healing(including shielding) in this fight came from hardened ward, so this fight definitely doesnt prove hardened ward beeing to strong.
I think just putting a instant heal on hardened ward is an ugly solution, but not totally wrong because
I doubt that sorcerer was intended to be the only class not using a burst heal when it has 4, now 5 burstheals(dark deal which is interruptible, twilight matriarch and clanfear which are doublebarred killable pets with interruptible summon, hardened ward which requires stacking magicka and now also vibrant shroud which heals for 75% of healthy offering for 140% of the cost) that are all just not reliable (in 1v1/1vX/XvX or when not stacking magicka) althought most of them were used in the past and stacking 60k magicka is a big sacrifice because max magicka as a dmg stat is so bad that many players have only 15k and would trade it for almost everything else.

Althought max magicka is also a dmg stat and therefore sorcerer stacking max magicka a full dmg build, a minor set bonus of max magicka increases your dmg only half as much as a minor set bonus of weapon dmg and doesn‘t increase your dmg from most proc sets at all(because they scale from weapon dmg only), even with 6%(undaunted)+5%(magelight)+8%(armament)+10%(passive) max magicka increase you get only 70% of weapon dmg increase, so a build stacking weapon dmg can invest 70% in weapon dmg and 30% into defense or other things and still have same dmg as a build investing 100% into max magicka and even weapon dmg stacking is not the best dmg stat anymore, nowadays people use crit dmg, penetration, percentual increases or procs.

Magsorc already stacked max magicka when I startet playing in 2017 and usually used alfiq+brightthroath/necropotence/ancient grace/ willpower+death dealer fete until it got too weak, nowadays most magsorcs use wretched+rallyng or other nonnmagickasets, so magickastacking is still
not as strong on sorcerer as it used to be. Players had 20% extramagicka from cp before rework that were removed, more than sorcerer get from passive+ armament skill.
If you want remove the heal from hardened Ward, some of the other potential burstheals should become useable.
There is no justification for dark deal still having a cast time and beeing interruptible when leeching strikes and „expunge and modify“ also restore stamina/magicka and are instant, all 3 can be used for permablocktanks.
Clanfear and twilight matriarch beeing targetable always was annoying for enemys who accidently hit them, but now it is also annoying for the user when the pets get killed and you cant use heal. ZoS could make them untargetable or make them heal without pet when on one bar or respawn automatically after downtime like werewolf pets while still allowing to use heal.

Yes, a sorc who barely has game time and suddenly stalemates an experienced sorc can only mean 2 things:

1) Ward is OP
2) That newer sorc had some practice

Regardless, it does prove that Ward is OP lol. The entire duel I was putting him on defense and he legit could not die even in my full damage build. He was in your typical 50-55k max mag Dizzy Swing sorc. It’s not hard to spam Ward and survive this patch. I’m pretty sure I’m as good as I think 🤣 Lots of people on the forums can vouch for that lol.

And no, my friend did use Fossilize. It was at the bottom of the CMX screenshot.

StaticWave · May 2

Also, Ward is the only ability right now that allows you to just ignore core combat mechanics if you have a decent tooltip. You don’t need to roll dodge or block when 1v1ing on a Sorc. Every other class has to if they don’t want to die. It was fine back then without the burst heal, but now it isn’t. If you can’t see the problem created by having a big shield + a decent heal in 1 GCD, then nobody can discuss balancing issues with you.