Magical wards for mages?

CheesyDaedra

As seen in TES:V these wards are good for mage characters who want to mitigate some damage, and while i believe there will be some iteration of this for the spellcrafting update, i wonder if this would be a good addition for pure mages so they could block spells (and maybe physical attacks too if necessary) using their magicka bars, so you could switch back and forth from block types, and also making Stamina users make use of their possibly useless magicka bar in order to use it for defense, thus balancing them in some way.

I wonder though, could this be applied as a PvP mechanic?

LordEcks

DaedricCheese wrote: »

and also making Stamina users make use of their possibly useless magicka bar in order to use it for defense, thus balancing them in some way.

I LOL'd.

The idea of wards is a neat/cool idea, but having it use magicka would cause all sorts of imbalance. Especially if it could be used to block melee attacks.

I honestly could see them implementing your request graphically.. and making pulsing magic type shields, but I sincerely doubt they'll switch resources on it.

Lynx7386

A toggle on/off ward ability that, when toggled on, caused blocking to absorb spell damage at the cost of magicka is an interesting idea. Implementing it in a way that doesnt make stamina even more obsolete than it already is would be the problem.

CheesyDaedra

Lynx7386 wrote: »

A toggle on/off ward ability that, when toggled on, caused blocking to absorb spell damage at the cost of magicka is an interesting idea. Implementing it in a way that doesnt make stamina even more obsolete than it already is would be the problem.

The way i see it is that players could exchange DPS for survivability, same goes for Stamina users, they deplete their resources pretty fast just by blocking enemies.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO

There already is a ward. Its the light armor activated ability

Qyrk

If you're already talking about "pure mages", then that specific player will opt for sorcerer anyways, and they already have a ward - Conjured Ward and their morphs that mitigate damage.

Phinix1

Well, we kinda already have this in the form of Conjured Ward in the Daedric Summoning tree, especially if you morph it to Hardened Ward for the extra self protection.

Granted it isn't a direct mana/health bar swap, but it is if you think about it in the sense that it blocks ALL damage (spell and physical), and costs mana.

I never use pets in veteran content, and hardened ward absorbs a HUGE amount of damage; like close to half my health bar, and costs only medium mana to cast.

EDIT: Qyrk beat me to it :P

Lynx7386

How about this:

-change defensive posture for the 1h/shield tree:

Defensive Posture
Toggle on/off
When active, you assume a defensive posture against incoming projectiles and spells. You automatically reflect negative single-target spells back at their casters while actively blocking and gain additional block mitigation when blocking projectile attacks. Reflecting spells while blocking drains your blocking cost from magicka rather than stamina. While slotted, you gain 8% increased block mitigation, 8% reduced blocking cost, and X additional spell resistance.

Defensive posture is kinda crap as-is anyway, since it only works for a single spell reflection (whereas eclipse and refletive scales work on a duration basis). With this, you'd gain the ability to reflect all spells as long as you're blocking, and doing so would drain magicka instead of stamina (equal to the normal cost of blocking).