Arcanist shield ultimate concerns

OnGodiDoDis · April 2023

Hello, it has come to my attention that the Gibbering Shield and Sanctum of the Abyssal Sea morph may impose unwanted results in PvP environments. This shield can have a 40k+ (20k+ in PvP) tooltip and it does not scale with offensive stats. You can see where this is going: tank bombers. Perhaps make the damage % scale with offensive stats, up to 100%, while keeping the shield intact. Thank you.

Turtle_Bot · April 2023

40k shields are fairly average for that ability, I've seen some ridiculous numbers on the tooltip for it.

CameraBeardThePirate · April 2023

It's hard to say since it's still in PTS, but I don't see this ultimate being OP or anything in PvP. Good? Yes, maybe even great.

The main problem with is is that it isn't a normal damage shield - you can still be killed through it. It only absorbs half the damage dealt to you - you still take the rest. This makes it much more comparable to the Sword and Board ultimate, except that you won't reflect projectiles.

The damage proc on it can get pretty high, but it's a DoT that can not only be purged, but has a big telegraph to let you know its coming (the shield). The dot also only has a 5 meter radius on activation, so you have to be really close to the target you want to hit with it.

Thecompton73 · April 2023

That tooltip is either old or fake. It's missing the key phrase "over 10 seconds" in the description for the damage return. If it takes damage up to the cap the resulting dot is still quite strong even in PvP but if people are healing through fire ballista dots they'll have no problems dealing with this ulti.

OnGodiDoDis · April 2023

Thecompton73 wrote: »

That tooltip is either old or fake. It's missing the key phrase "over 10 seconds" in the description for the damage return. If it takes damage up to the cap the resulting dot is still quite strong even in PvP but if people are healing through fire ballista dots they'll have no problems dealing with this ulti.

Interesting. I was unaware it was a DoT. However, the idea of tanks returning damage to other players is hysterical. Perhaps it should be changed to something more tank-like. Maybe it could increase some offensive stats of nearby allies based on how much damage was absorbed. Possible stats: crit chance/damage, weapon/spell damage, penetration, max resources. The other morph could be debuffs such as Major Mangle, Major Cowardice, etc. Just an idea.

Thecompton73 · April 2023

OnGodiDoDis wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

That tooltip is either old or fake. It's missing the key phrase "over 10 seconds" in the description for the damage return. If it takes damage up to the cap the resulting dot is still quite strong even in PvP but if people are healing through fire ballista dots they'll have no problems dealing with this ulti.

Interesting. I was unaware it was a DoT. However, the idea of tanks returning damage to other players is hysterical. Perhaps it should be changed to something more tank-like. Maybe it could increase some offensive stats of nearby allies based on how much damage was absorbed. Possible stats: crit chance/damage, weapon/spell damage, penetration, max resources. The other morph could be debuffs such as Major Mangle, Major Cowardice, etc. Just an idea.

Not only is it a dot but the preceding shield phase of the ability is VERY noticeable. So dealing with it become either going range or quit attacking for a few seconds.

CameraBeardThePirate · April 2023

Thecompton73 wrote: »

OnGodiDoDis wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

That tooltip is either old or fake. It's missing the key phrase "over 10 seconds" in the description for the damage return. If it takes damage up to the cap the resulting dot is still quite strong even in PvP but if people are healing through fire ballista dots they'll have no problems dealing with this ulti.

Interesting. I was unaware it was a DoT. However, the idea of tanks returning damage to other players is hysterical. Perhaps it should be changed to something more tank-like. Maybe it could increase some offensive stats of nearby allies based on how much damage was absorbed. Possible stats: crit chance/damage, weapon/spell damage, penetration, max resources. The other morph could be debuffs such as Major Mangle, Major Cowardice, etc. Just an idea.

Not only is it a dot but the preceding shield phase of the ability is VERY noticeable. So dealing with it become either going range or quit attacking for a few seconds.

This. It's not like it's a subtle animation that's going to immediately start reflecting damage back to you. The shield is extremely noticeable - back out when it's going to collapse or get ready to purge.

React · April 2023

We're seeing 20-35k dot ticks (each tick) on the PTS, so either it is bugged or it needs a serious nerf.

Pretty frustrating that they're making all these defensive things scale off health on arcanist, when health stacking is currently a massive problem in PVP and shouldn't be encouraged.

Thecompton73 · April 2023

React wrote: »

We're seeing 20-35k dot ticks (each tick) on the PTS, so either it is bugged or it needs a serious nerf.

Pretty frustrating that they're making all these defensive things scale off health on arcanist, when health stacking is currently a massive problem in PVP and shouldn't be encouraged.

That's got to be a bug, according to the tooltip the shield size would have to be 200-350K in PvP to be divided by 10 and still do that much damage. I was seeing tooltip numbers somwhere in the 40K range in Cyro.

Edit I pumped my health up to 53K and put points in the shield CP and got to 156K on the sheild in PvE. So at a max of 78K in PvP I guess with crits and some external debuffs on a target what would normally hit for 7.8 might crit for nearly 20K

PhoenixGrey · April 2023

Am I looking at a class stronger than nb ?

That’s almost unreal as the pts is.

The fundamental concept of this game is there shall be no class stronger than nb.

Turtle_Bot · April 2023

Thecompton73 wrote: »

React wrote: »

We're seeing 20-35k dot ticks (each tick) on the PTS, so either it is bugged or it needs a serious nerf.

Pretty frustrating that they're making all these defensive things scale off health on arcanist, when health stacking is currently a massive problem in PVP and shouldn't be encouraged.

That's got to be a bug, according to the tooltip the shield size would have to be 200-350K in PvP to be divided by 10 and still do that much damage. I was seeing tooltip numbers somwhere in the 40K range in Cyro.

Edit I pumped my health up to 53K and put points in the shield CP and got to 156K on the sheild in PvE. So at a max of 78K in PvP I guess with crits and some external debuffs on a target what would normally hit for 7.8 might crit for nearly 20K

Not sure if it's a bug or the fact that they never gave the ability a cap like every other shield in the game, but the numbers can definitely reach a point where 30k ticks in PvP zones are possible.

I've seen screenshots of the shield with over 200k tooltip (212k to be more precise) and a video of it being used in IC to 2 shot a group of enemy players all with 30k+ health (1 looked like they had 40k+ health from the damage they took).

Considering I had it at 90k+ with no investment into health (30k health, no attribute points into health, tri stat glyphs on armor) on a standard meta pvp build (maras (back bar) + damage set (front bar), 1 piece trainee, mythic + zoals), 200k+ shield size and 30k DoT ticks seems doable if you build entirely for max health.

OnGodiDoDis · April 2023

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

React wrote: »

We're seeing 20-35k dot ticks (each tick) on the PTS, so either it is bugged or it needs a serious nerf.

Pretty frustrating that they're making all these defensive things scale off health on arcanist, when health stacking is currently a massive problem in PVP and shouldn't be encouraged.

That's got to be a bug, according to the tooltip the shield size would have to be 200-350K in PvP to be divided by 10 and still do that much damage. I was seeing tooltip numbers somwhere in the 40K range in Cyro.

Edit I pumped my health up to 53K and put points in the shield CP and got to 156K on the sheild in PvE. So at a max of 78K in PvP I guess with crits and some external debuffs on a target what would normally hit for 7.8 might crit for nearly 20K

Not sure if it's a bug or the fact that they never gave the ability a cap like every other shield in the game, but the numbers can definitely reach a point where 30k ticks in PvP zones are possible.

I've seen screenshots of the shield with over 200k tooltip (212k to be more precise) and a video of it being used in IC to 2 shot a group of enemy players all with 30k+ health (1 looked like they had 40k+ health from the damage they took).

Considering I had it at 90k+ with no investment into health (30k health, no attribute points into health, tri stat glyphs on armor) on a standard meta pvp build (maras (back bar) + damage set (front bar), 1 piece trainee, mythic + zoals), 200k+ shield size and 30k DoT ticks seems doable if you build entirely for max health.

Ok, so it is a problem as I expected. Gents, I haven't even played the PTS and I knew it was going to be problematic from the start. Offensive skills that scale with defensive stats are not acceptable in PvP. If I can see the problem this just means that the devs are doing all of this on purpose. They knew it will arise problems, yet they implemented it.

TechMaybeHic · April 2023

LoL did they really take Blazing Shield, buff the hell out of it, and make it an ultimate for another class? SMH

Mr_Jord_Joe · April 2023

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

LoL did they really take Blazing Shield, buff the hell out of it, and make it an ultimate for another class? SMH

They could have ''copied'' the right way, and put the damage as direct as explosion, it would be beautiful, and not as a dot...
(I know that would be OP in PvP)!

Urzigurumash · April 2023

Game would be more fun if Blazeplar, Saptank, and Harbicro were still viable.

I have trouble buying "offense shouldn't scale with defense" when defense scales with offense. Can anybody explain the difference to me?

Thecompton73 · April 2023

So I did more testing with this. I used Plague Doctor, Warrior Poet, 1 trainee, monster 1 piece health, all heavy, changed my mundus to health and wore all divine, used healthy jewelry and used the green max health food (I think I maxed health out unless I missed something). I was able to to 72K health which gave me a tooltip of 106K on the shield with the intricate runes passive and the CP star boosting it and battle spirit active.

Some observations:
#1 biggest thing is that the damage return DOES NOT crit. Even though I had really low crit chance I could drop a rune of displacement on a group and see a couple of crits every tick but never once did I see the Ulti damage crit even when hitting 10+ mobs each tick.

#2 there is definitely something strange going on with the damage return portion though. Testing in IC district against a roaming boss and some mobs I was able to hit the damage return cap fairly regularly and the ticks were exactly what you'd expect for 106K divided by 10 and adjusted for mitigation/ink buff/lighting staff aoe buff. BUT every so often instead of ticking for just over 10K the damage would spike to 17.5K each tick. I couldn't figure out what would cause the jump. Still at 72K health and fully charged I couldn't get it to tick anywhere near high enough that it would do 20-35K to a human player

#3 It might be a bit hard to stay alive long enough to get the damage ticks out when focused hard enough to make it pop in less that 3-4 cooldowns unless you've got outside healing. The health based healing scaling on Runeguard of Freedom gave me a tooltip around 21K but I had to give up most of my crit to get my health up so it almost always just hit for 10.5 and wasn't critting very often. If the Ulti was going to do full damage I required 70K in healing to account for the 40% not absorbed. Using Runeward would be a bad move while the Ulti is active since it would absorb a bunch of the damage that was charging it up. And with only 3.7K wd/sd the heals that scale off that stat are pretty weak. So staying alive was basically spamming RgoF every time I got near 50% health.

OnGodiDoDis · April 2023

Thecompton73 wrote: »

So I did more testing with this. I used Plague Doctor, Warrior Poet, 1 trainee, monster 1 piece health, all heavy, changed my mundus to health and wore all divine, used healthy jewelry and used the green max health food (I think I maxed health out unless I missed something). I was able to to 72K health which gave me a tooltip of 106K on the shield with the intricate runes passive and the CP star boosting it and battle spirit active.

Some observations:
#1 biggest thing is that the damage return DOES NOT crit. Even though I had really low crit chance I could drop a rune of displacement on a group and see a couple of crits every tick but never once did I see the Ulti damage crit even when hitting 10+ mobs each tick.

#2 there is definitely something strange going on with the damage return portion though. Testing in IC district against a roaming boss and some mobs I was able to hit the damage return cap fairly regularly and the ticks were exactly what you'd expect for 106K divided by 10 and adjusted for mitigation/ink buff/lighting staff aoe buff. BUT every so often instead of ticking for just over 10K the damage would spike to 17.5K each tick. I couldn't figure out what would cause the jump. Still at 72K health and fully charged I couldn't get it to tick anywhere near high enough that it would do 20-35K to a human player

#3 It might be a bit hard to stay alive long enough to get the damage ticks out when focused hard enough to make it pop in less that 3-4 cooldowns unless you've got outside healing. The health based healing scaling on Runeguard of Freedom gave me a tooltip around 21K but I had to give up most of my crit to get my health up so it almost always just hit for 10.5 and wasn't critting very often. If the Ulti was going to do full damage I required 70K in healing to account for the 40% not absorbed. Using Runeward would be a bad move while the Ulti is active since it would absorb a bunch of the damage that was charging it up. And with only 3.7K wd/sd the heals that scale off that stat are pretty weak. So staying alive was basically spamming RgoF every time I got near 50% health.

I think you're underestimating the ability of PvP tanks. Tanks in PvP are more than capable of staying alive while being pounded and feared by 10+ people without using an ultimate. This new shield ultimate is basically just a replica of the necro goliath that increases your stats. Let's say you have 60k HP, the shield ulti grants you 50% damage mitigation, which is essentially just increasing your HP by 50%. Now you're even more tanky. Not only do you now have more HP, you're going to deal all of that damage absorbed to everyone around you. This is something the necro goliath can't do. Goliath only gives you defence. This gives you defence and offense. I understand that the radius is small, but the majority of the major battles happen inside keeps on the flags. Nobody is paying attention to any of the ground effects. People are just trying to avoid the red circles and oils. A tank will manage to get a bomb off. It's going to happen. Even if nobody is focusing the tank, the amount of damage absorbed from the AoEs, which are mostly ultimates, will hit that cap on the shield ulti allowing for big bombs.

Thecompton73 · April 2023

OnGodiDoDis wrote: »

Thecompton73 wrote: »

So I did more testing with this. I used Plague Doctor, Warrior Poet, 1 trainee, monster 1 piece health, all heavy, changed my mundus to health and wore all divine, used healthy jewelry and used the green max health food (I think I maxed health out unless I missed something). I was able to to 72K health which gave me a tooltip of 106K on the shield with the intricate runes passive and the CP star boosting it and battle spirit active.

Some observations:
#1 biggest thing is that the damage return DOES NOT crit. Even though I had really low crit chance I could drop a rune of displacement on a group and see a couple of crits every tick but never once did I see the Ulti damage crit even when hitting 10+ mobs each tick.

#2 there is definitely something strange going on with the damage return portion though. Testing in IC district against a roaming boss and some mobs I was able to hit the damage return cap fairly regularly and the ticks were exactly what you'd expect for 106K divided by 10 and adjusted for mitigation/ink buff/lighting staff aoe buff. BUT every so often instead of ticking for just over 10K the damage would spike to 17.5K each tick. I couldn't figure out what would cause the jump. Still at 72K health and fully charged I couldn't get it to tick anywhere near high enough that it would do 20-35K to a human player

#3 It might be a bit hard to stay alive long enough to get the damage ticks out when focused hard enough to make it pop in less that 3-4 cooldowns unless you've got outside healing. The health based healing scaling on Runeguard of Freedom gave me a tooltip around 21K but I had to give up most of my crit to get my health up so it almost always just hit for 10.5 and wasn't critting very often. If the Ulti was going to do full damage I required 70K in healing to account for the 40% not absorbed. Using Runeward would be a bad move while the Ulti is active since it would absorb a bunch of the damage that was charging it up. And with only 3.7K wd/sd the heals that scale off that stat are pretty weak. So staying alive was basically spamming RgoF every time I got near 50% health.

I think you're underestimating the ability of PvP tanks. Tanks in PvP are more than capable of staying alive while being pounded and feared by 10+ people without using an ultimate. This new shield ultimate is basically just a replica of the necro goliath that increases your stats. Let's say you have 60k HP, the shield ulti grants you 50% damage mitigation, which is essentially just increasing your HP by 50%. Now you're even more tanky. Not only do you now have more HP, you're going to deal all of that damage absorbed to everyone around you. This is something the necro goliath can't do. Goliath only gives you defence. This gives you defence and offense. I understand that the radius is small, but the majority of the major battles happen inside keeps on the flags. Nobody is paying attention to any of the ground effects. People are just trying to avoid the red circles and oils. A tank will manage to get a bomb off. It's going to happen. Even if nobody is focusing the tank, the amount of damage absorbed from the AoEs, which are mostly ultimates, will hit that cap on the shield ulti allowing for big bombs.

PvP tanks don't generally stack max health. From my experience they sit around 40-45K and hold block+stack heals. That much health still gives a pretty nice tooltip on the shield but it's like 6-7K damge a second returned if I remember correctly, so after mitigation from armor/skills about half the damage of getting hit with a fire ballista. At 73K health my max ticks, except for when it glitched to higher damage, were a bit shy of 10K each. If it was critting I could see it getting a bit crazy but I spent well over an hour building up ulti and gathering the biggest mobs I could in IC then using the ult and I never saw a single crit, when the damage spiked it still didn't have the "!" behind the damage number.

Sure people will die to it sometimes, even after mitigation the actual damage done to players will be around 3-6Kdps, which is fairly decent and anything with decent damage can be that tipping point that overcomes healing, I often drop people in keep fights just by spamming Acid Spray into enemy groups.