How can we balance damage shields?

Jar_Ek

Looking at all the available in game shields it looks rather like the 3 commonly cited problem shields are the only shields that are scaled off magicka, and the issue is that stacking them enables a great defense without a compensurate drop in offence - unlike health based shields. Given the removal of soft caps where single resource stacking is the new meta, this provides an advantage to whomever can best stack these shields...

Now hardened ward is the best shield for these purposes as the inherent 33% bonus increases the shield by more the higher your magicka. And hence the calls for a nerf.

Now as a stamina sorcerer I do not really benefit from conjured ward or its morphs, but I do understand the issues wrt to the lack of effective class healing tools - which puts me in a decent position to discuss from a relatively unbiased standpoint.

To me there are a few potential fixes:

Highest shield wins
Only the highest single shield value takes effect and other shields cast simply top up to that value whilst active. Additional shields cast will still apply their secondary effects.
Thus if Hardened ward and Harness magicka and Healing ward are all stacked, the size of the shield would be based on which generated the highest shield total on cast. If/when that dropped off the max. shield size would drop to the next highest.
All effects of all would still be relevant (ie magicka return and heal on end).

This would be the harsh end of the scale as it simply removes any advantage to shield stacking. One idea that might make this more palatable would be to armour wards so that they have some inherent armour or spell resist. This way they could be subject to DoTs and crits, and different shields could provide different armour levels, making stacking somewhat effective.

Diminishing Returns for stacking
Stacking shields suffers from diminishing returns, such that each additional shield is 50% less effective than the previous one if of a different type, those of the same type simply overwrite the existing shield if (if higher).
Thus hardened, harness and Healing ward would be at 100% strength, 50% and 25% respectively.

No %age bonuses
No shield would have a % bonus to it. So hardened ward would not give 33% more shield but a fixed level based value and Healing ward would not give a % based bonus based on health lost but a fixed value.

Any just a few thoughts to throw in. I guess the other option is to make health a better stat to invest in than it currently is - there are various threads that discuss this and it might help even the playing field somewhat.

olsborg

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

Shieldstacking and refreshing the shields over and over again, spamming them. I remember early eso if you cast another hardward or another shield, if you already had any amount of that shield left on you, it only refreshed the timer, no the shields strength itself, something im more inclined to see happen.

Most of all tho, id like to see shields dotable and critable, that will fix the balance imo.

Eejit1331

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

Sure, just make Dark Conversion heal for the same amount as Breath of Life and let it crit.

Good point. Sorcs already have the best damage, survivability, and mobility. They should have the best healing as well to keep with the theme.

OMG. You are laying your sorc hate on thick..lol.. I know you have no problem dueling sorcs, so all this hate is from sorcs completing the arena?! You started your thread sly, with tongue in cheek, but as the thread grows, your colors begin to shine brighter. Why do you care what sorcs are doing in a solo instance when your stam NB has zero issues with them in pvp atmosphere. Your hatred and anomosity will breed more hatred and anomosity towards others. Why not focus on you and your toons/players, a veteran stam NB and a newer v16 stam DK. When you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Strider_Roshin, you know my sorc isn't even my main, so this isn't in defense of sorcs, but a plea for stop the nerf threads. Try a buff thread for your toons, or make a sorc or even a magicka toon before throwing out hate pixie dust.

Darnathian

Eejit1331 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

Sure, just make Dark Conversion heal for the same amount as Breath of Life and let it crit.

Good point. Sorcs already have the best damage, survivability, and mobility. They should have the best healing as well to keep with the theme.

OMG. You are laying your sorc hate on thick..lol.. I know you have no problem dueling sorcs, so all this hate is from sorcs completing the arena?! You started your thread sly, with tongue in cheek, but as the thread grows, your colors begin to shine brighter. Why do you care what sorcs are doing in a solo instance when your stam NB has zero issues with them in pvp atmosphere. Your hatred and anomosity will breed more hatred and anomosity towards others. Why not focus on you and your toons/players, a veteran stam NB and a newer v16 stam DK. When you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Strider_Roshin, you know my sorc isn't even my main, so this isn't in defense of sorcs, but a plea for stop the nerf threads. Try a buff thread for your toons, or make a sorc or even a magicka toon before throwing out hate pixie dust.

i am not saying your one of them but omg it is so funny now that all the nerfs have been done to dks and templars all the sorcs and nbs are saying "No more nerfs do buffs instead". absolutely hysterical. i wish i had the patience and time to go back and see how many of these sorcs and nbs cried for nerfs before but now all of a sudden since they are well above templars and dks there is balance. just need slight buffs. lol. Hypocrits.

Eejit1331

Darnathian wrote: »

Eejit1331 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

Sure, just make Dark Conversion heal for the same amount as Breath of Life and let it crit.

Good point. Sorcs already have the best damage, survivability, and mobility. They should have the best healing as well to keep with the theme.

OMG. You are laying your sorc hate on thick..lol.. I know you have no problem dueling sorcs, so all this hate is from sorcs completing the arena?! You started your thread sly, with tongue in cheek, but as the thread grows, your colors begin to shine brighter. Why do you care what sorcs are doing in a solo instance when your stam NB has zero issues with them in pvp atmosphere. Your hatred and anomosity will breed more hatred and anomosity towards others. Why not focus on you and your toons/players, a veteran stam NB and a newer v16 stam DK. When you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Strider_Roshin, you know my sorc isn't even my main, so this isn't in defense of sorcs, but a plea for stop the nerf threads. Try a buff thread for your toons, or make a sorc or even a magicka toon before throwing out hate pixie dust.

i am not saying your one of them but omg it is so funny now that all the nerfs have been done to dks and templars all the sorcs and nbs are saying "No more nerfs do buffs instead". absolutely hysterical. i wish i had the patience and time to go back and see how many of these sorcs and nbs cried for nerfs before but now all of a sudden since they are well above templars and dks there is balance. just need slight buffs. lol. Hypocrits.

undo all these ridiculous nerfs and start buffing the underpowered abilities, then need be, raise the difficulty of the content. I want to play a game with cool, unique and powerful abilities, not something that a has been nerfed so bad that there is nothing drawing me to a specific class. As a DK I loved pulling people down from keep walls, using reflect to watch sorcs kill themselves, as a temp... I loved popping sun shield and watching people scatter to avoid the AOE damage while and using breath of life (other than that and healing pve, I always felt underpowered on my temp: bugs lack of abilities and a other issues) as a sorc I loved to streak as a means movement, frag up, but always hated not having a heal and now NB have a lot of cool, fun and envious abilities. Shouldn't all classes have cool and envious abilities. It is very sad and demoralizing when people knock each other down instead of building themselves up and ecouraging others to excel.

Anazasi

all damage shields should be based on health. Its about choices you want to have a large shield have large health less other stuff. No one should be able to gain multiple benefits from one stat pool.

Saint314Louis1985

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Okay, so the strength of damage shields are still out of hand. For starters, hardened ward should be a comparable strength to igneous shield since they both have the same duration. However the other shield that needs to be addressed is healing ward. The strength of this shield is monstrous, and it makes light armored magicka users more difficult to kill than tanks. This shouldn't be the case at all. I think the survivability of light armor magicka users should be comparable or if anything a little worse than medium about wearers, and of course heavy armor wearers should have the best survivability in the game.

Now here are suggestions I don't agree with:
1) Have damage shields scale off health.
2) Homogenize them by making damage have a major and minor version.

Can anyone guess why? What do you think would happen if either of these two happened?

It won't be light armored builds you'll have to worry about anymore, it would be stamina builds.

I've already mentioned what I think they should do to hardened ward. When it comes to healing ward, I think the base shield strength should be increased by 25% while at the same time only have the shield increase by 100% rather than 300%, and have it heal for only have of the remaining shield rather than all of the remaining shield.

Do you like my suggestion or do you have a better one in mind?

not sure if its already been suggested..

why not make damage shields scale off your armor resistances? buff spells to resistances shouldnt count towards shields

light armor gives the highest shields..

medium armor gives decent shields..

heavy armor gives the smallest?

would probably need to be finessed but could be interesting.. just a thought

Xsorus

Dracane wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Darnathian wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Darnathian wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

It's the only reliable class defence a sorc has?

wrong. nust like everyone else line of site, dodge rolling, streak. the only ones that think that is the only defense are the ones that rolled a fotm build that someone else created and didnt learn the class for themselves. just wanted an Iwin button.

Wrecking blow and toppling charge hit through dodge roll. Block often still gets you CCed on blockable CCs. Streak isn't a defensive ability.

Hardened ward isn't an Iwin button and calling sorcs FOTM is FOTM.

lol that was actually a good come back.

read my previous posts. shield stacking is the problem. and yes that is fotm because it is fotm. i am a disgruntled magicka dk in exile. because just like sorcs and nb's at the moment, we were op compared to other classes c but you mnow what Ezareth? that did stop people calling out our class and to be honest rightfully so.

you left your class for another OP class, nbs, and came back to your orher op class and claimed it wasnt op anymore. so try this. go play a mag dk or temp and the. make your claims about them being fine.

because i can tell you. as well as anyone else that has played them all. sorcs and nbs and unbalanced. period

If I see one of the few Magicka DKs out there I don't even bother with them because I have zero chance to kill them.

I feel sorcs and NBs are the strongest two classes, sure, but I don't think they're "overpowered" or "unbalanced". There are some builds (like a Magicka DK) that completely wrecks my build and some builds that my build wrecks (Magicka Templars, Sorcs and NBs in particular). That's just part of the whole paper scissor's rock approach to balance and I'm fine with that.

I think Templars and DKs are a few minor changes away from being on par with Sorcs and NBs. I was killed by a 20K Take flight (which I dodge rolled to no effect) the other night so there has to be some DKs doing it right. I know you're bitter so I cut you more slack than most because I know just how you feel. Sorcs right now are to the point that DKs were right before they were nerfed to the worst class. I feel they have a good balance of defense and offense and I wouldn't care if they slightly reduced some of their top end damage as long as they did it across the board to all big-hitting abilities/skills.

A lot people parading around the sorcs have the "best mobility" nonsense out there because they don't have a sorc and don't know how futile spamming Bolt Escape as an actual escape has become. In 1.5 I'd have actually agreed with them but we all know this isn't 1.5 any more. Let's focus on the Today and drop all the old grievances against the classes.

Ezareth, Darnatian is the biggest and most outragous hater troll on the forum. Don't bother reasoning with him.

Dragonknights and Templars are great classes and as you said, some minor tweaks here and there and they'll be restored to their former glory. Neither Sorc nor NB is overpowered. While Templars and DKs have plenty of good abilities, Sorcerers for example have very few good abilities but Sorcerer has especially one VERY good ability, which is hardened ward.
Dks and Templars don't have a VERY good ability that is as polarizing as Hardened ward or Cloak.

That's it.

You said a 6.5k heal after 2 GCD's at 10% life is a big heal..

Why should anyone pay attention to anything you say?

and for the record..as someone with a Nightblade..They are most certainly overpowered

Strider_Roshin

Eejit1331 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

Sure, just make Dark Conversion heal for the same amount as Breath of Life and let it crit.

Good point. Sorcs already have the best damage, survivability, and mobility. They should have the best healing as well to keep with the theme.

OMG. You are laying your sorc hate on thick..lol.. I know you have no problem dueling sorcs, so all this hate is from sorcs completing the arena?! You started your thread sly, with tongue in cheek, but as the thread grows, your colors begin to shine brighter. Why do you care what sorcs are doing in a solo instance when your stam NB has zero issues with them in pvp atmosphere. Your hatred and anomosity will breed more hatred and anomosity towards others. Why not focus on you and your toons/players, a veteran stam NB and a newer v16 stam DK. When you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Strider_Roshin, you know my sorc isn't even my main, so this isn't in defense of sorcs, but a plea for stop the nerf threads. Try a buff thread for your toons, or make a sorc or even a magicka toon before throwing out hate pixie dust.

Honestly, I just don't care for the imbalances. It irritates me. I'm very knowledgeable of all the classes, and I can get a feel for the different niches they excel at. For one I don't find the Nightblade inherently OP. It has excellent burst, good mobility, but it's survivability is garbage. The magicka ones however, can be argued to be OP, and it isn't because of cloak because that can be bypassed, but because of healing ward. So really it's not so much that magicka Nightblades are OP, but more like healing ward is. An analogous example to this are stamina Nightblades before IC. Stamina Nightblades are even less survivable than magicka ones, however it could argued that they were OP before IC due to infinite dodge rolling. It wasn't so much the class that was OP, but more so dodge rolling. This has been fixed with the IC patch. Healing Ward, shield stacking, and maybe even hardened ward are just another one of those things that need to be fixed, like infinite dodge rolling.

Derra

Dracane wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Darnathian wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Darnathian wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

It's the only reliable class defence a sorc has?

wrong. nust like everyone else line of site, dodge rolling, streak. the only ones that think that is the only defense are the ones that rolled a fotm build that someone else created and didnt learn the class for themselves. just wanted an Iwin button.

Wrecking blow and toppling charge hit through dodge roll. Block often still gets you CCed on blockable CCs. Streak isn't a defensive ability.

Hardened ward isn't an Iwin button and calling sorcs FOTM is FOTM.

lol that was actually a good come back.

read my previous posts. shield stacking is the problem. and yes that is fotm because it is fotm. i am a disgruntled magicka dk in exile. because just like sorcs and nb's at the moment, we were op compared to other classes c but you mnow what Ezareth? that did stop people calling out our class and to be honest rightfully so.

you left your class for another OP class, nbs, and came back to your orher op class and claimed it wasnt op anymore. so try this. go play a mag dk or temp and the. make your claims about them being fine.

because i can tell you. as well as anyone else that has played them all. sorcs and nbs and unbalanced. period

If I see one of the few Magicka DKs out there I don't even bother with them because I have zero chance to kill them.

I feel sorcs and NBs are the strongest two classes, sure, but I don't think they're "overpowered" or "unbalanced". There are some builds (like a Magicka DK) that completely wrecks my build and some builds that my build wrecks (Magicka Templars, Sorcs and NBs in particular). That's just part of the whole paper scissor's rock approach to balance and I'm fine with that.

I think Templars and DKs are a few minor changes away from being on par with Sorcs and NBs. I was killed by a 20K Take flight (which I dodge rolled to no effect) the other night so there has to be some DKs doing it right. I know you're bitter so I cut you more slack than most because I know just how you feel. Sorcs right now are to the point that DKs were right before they were nerfed to the worst class. I feel they have a good balance of defense and offense and I wouldn't care if they slightly reduced some of their top end damage as long as they did it across the board to all big-hitting abilities/skills.

A lot people parading around the sorcs have the "best mobility" nonsense out there because they don't have a sorc and don't know how futile spamming Bolt Escape as an actual escape has become. In 1.5 I'd have actually agreed with them but we all know this isn't 1.5 any more. Let's focus on the Today and drop all the old grievances against the classes.

Ezareth, Darnatian is the biggest and most outragous hater troll on the forum. Don't bother reasoning with him.

Dragonknights and Templars are great classes and as you said, some minor tweaks here and there and they'll be restored to their former glory. Neither Sorc nor NB is overpowered. While Templars and DKs have plenty of good abilities, Sorcerers for example have very few good abilities but Sorcerer has especially one VERY good ability, which is hardened ward.
Dks and Templars don't have a VERY good ability that is as polarizing as Hardened ward or Cloak.

That's it.

They had. Blazing shield and reflective scales. Both got nerfed and it was a horrible mistake on ZOS part to do so. Those were the big enablers for templars and DKs. They should never have nerfed both abilities in the first place.

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Eejit1331 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

Sure, just make Dark Conversion heal for the same amount as Breath of Life and let it crit.

Good point. Sorcs already have the best damage, survivability, and mobility. They should have the best healing as well to keep with the theme.

OMG. You are laying your sorc hate on thick..lol.. I know you have no problem dueling sorcs, so all this hate is from sorcs completing the arena?! You started your thread sly, with tongue in cheek, but as the thread grows, your colors begin to shine brighter. Why do you care what sorcs are doing in a solo instance when your stam NB has zero issues with them in pvp atmosphere. Your hatred and anomosity will breed more hatred and anomosity towards others. Why not focus on you and your toons/players, a veteran stam NB and a newer v16 stam DK. When you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Strider_Roshin, you know my sorc isn't even my main, so this isn't in defense of sorcs, but a plea for stop the nerf threads. Try a buff thread for your toons, or make a sorc or even a magicka toon before throwing out hate pixie dust.

Honestly, I just don't care for the imbalances. It irritates me. I'm very knowledgeable of all the classes, and I can get a feel for the different niches they excel at. For one I don't find the Nightblade inherently OP. It has excellent burst, good mobility, but it's survivability is garbage. The magicka ones however, can be argued to be OP, and it isn't because of cloak because that can be bypassed, but because of healing ward. So really it's not so much that magicka Nightblades are OP, but more like healing ward is. An analogous example to this are stamina Nightblades before IC. Stamina Nightblades are even less survivable than magicka ones, however it could argued that they were OP before IC due to infinite dodge rolling. It wasn't so much the class that was OP, but more so dodge rolling. This has been fixed with the IC patch. Healing Ward, shield stacking, and maybe even hardened ward are just another one of those things that need to be fixed, like infinite dodge rolling.

And thats a perfectly reasonable approach on that topic. I´d be all in favor of removing shieldstacking. Then have a look how things go with sorcs.
However i´d be more in favor of reworking healing ward to a stronger initial heal and weaker shield and completely redesign harness - eliminating the problem of stacked shields in the process anyway without creating a plentora of problems with barrier, cp passives, etc pp.

If after these changes the sorc shield should prove to be too strong still (which i honestly don´t think bc i personally have no issues once a sorc is not using harness) - then you can go adjust that one.

Araxleon

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Eejit1331 wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

Corellon Thromorin wrote: »

Hardened Ward is ok and doesn't need to be nerfed. What needs to be fixed is shield stacking.

It costs less, it's 3x stronger, and lasts 3x longer than sun shield. That's not okay. Although I do agree, stacking shields should not be allowed. The stronger one should replace the weaker one, but they shouldn't stack.

Sure, just make Dark Conversion heal for the same amount as Breath of Life and let it crit.

Good point. Sorcs already have the best damage, survivability, and mobility. They should have the best healing as well to keep with the theme.

OMG. You are laying your sorc hate on thick..lol.. I know you have no problem dueling sorcs, so all this hate is from sorcs completing the arena?! You started your thread sly, with tongue in cheek, but as the thread grows, your colors begin to shine brighter. Why do you care what sorcs are doing in a solo instance when your stam NB has zero issues with them in pvp atmosphere. Your hatred and anomosity will breed more hatred and anomosity towards others. Why not focus on you and your toons/players, a veteran stam NB and a newer v16 stam DK. When you point at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you. Strider_Roshin, you know my sorc isn't even my main, so this isn't in defense of sorcs, but a plea for stop the nerf threads. Try a buff thread for your toons, or make a sorc or even a magicka toon before throwing out hate pixie dust.

Honestly, I just don't care for the imbalances. It irritates me. I'm very knowledgeable of all the classes, and I can get a feel for the different niches they excel at. For one I don't find the Nightblade inherently OP. It has excellent burst, good mobility, but it's survivability is garbage. The magicka ones however, can be argued to be OP, and it isn't because of cloak because that can be bypassed, but because of healing ward. So really it's not so much that magicka Nightblades are OP, but more like healing ward is. An analogous example to this are stamina Nightblades before IC. Stamina Nightblades are even less survivable than magicka ones, however it could argued that they were OP before IC due to infinite dodge rolling. It wasn't so much the class that was OP, but more so dodge rolling. This has been fixed with the IC patch. Healing Ward, shield stacking, and maybe even hardened ward are just another one of those things that need to be fixed, like infinite dodge rolling.

I find NB is in a perfect place atm , even magicka NB was stronger in the past compared to now but it feels more balanced.
I find that healing ward isnt that OP I have very little issue with killing people who spam it, the only time I really get angry about healing ward is when sorcs stack shields and use it.

Just a side a thing stamina NB has like insane stats when built right, that outclass magicka NB. (crazy recovery on everything which is why I feel stamina NB leans on OP side.)

AverageJo3Gam3r

Make all shields a % of health. If a player wants to ignore health and become a glass cannon, then make them a glass cannon already. If a player ignores health, they should have to pay the price for that.