Bone Shield - is there any plan to fix it?

Wreuntzylla

This issue is over a year old now. Tested this most of the night to see how it was working, and well..... no change.

Spiked bone shield tooltip: Surround yourself with a whirlwind of bones, absorbing damage equivalent to 19% of your Max Health and returning 40% of damage to melee attackers.

Here is the typical scenario for a 10,865 point shield.

Your shield absorbed 7,313.
Your shield absorbed 1,857.
You hit Melee Fotm with Spiked Bone Shield for 388 damage.

A couple more examples.

Abs: 313
Abs: 1865
Abs: 1726
SB: 147
Should Be: 1561

Abs: 7313
Abs: 1857
SB: 388
Should Be: 3668

Decimal point shifted one position?

WalksonGraves

I did think the damage seemed to suck pretty hard for the amount being absorbed.

Strider_Roshin

It's a garbage move. ZOS made it decent during a previous PTS, but magicka users whined, and got their way like they usually do.

Jar_Ek

So TDLR, use the other morph?

bowmanz607

Strider_Roshin wrote: »

It's a garbage move. ZOS made it decent during a previous PTS, but magicka users whined, and got their way like they usually do.

Stam shield was op you kidding.

It is meant for tanks and is supposed to be poor man blazing shield yet the damage is trash. I didn't think it was working right.

Jar_Ek wrote: »

So TDLR, use the other morph?

Shouldn't have to use another morph. Should be fixed.


Granted I have not tested myself, I just always noticed the damage being lower than I thought it was supposed to be.

Waffennacht

I think you're forgetting the reduction of damage done to players.

That 40% becomes 20%.

So when you posted:
"Your shield absorbed 7,313.
Your shield absorbed 1,857.
You hit Melee Fotm with Spiked Bone Shield for 388 damage"

388 is really close to 20% of 1857. I would imagine then further reductions like armor, life giver etc make it near 0

WalksonGraves

So my tooltip says 30% of hp and 30% returned.

Wreuntzylla

Waffennacht wrote: »

I think you're forgetting the reduction of damage done to players.

That 40% becomes 20%.

So when you posted:
"Your shield absorbed 7,313.
Your shield absorbed 1,857.
You hit Melee Fotm with Spiked Bone Shield for 388 damage"

388 is really close to 20% of 1857. I would imagine then further reductions like armor, life giver etc make it near 0

So you think the problem is that Spiked bone shield has some sort of a cooldown on the damage return? The log, as in my example, does not show any damage returned for the 7,313 hit if your theory is true. My assumption had been that ZoS' API did not report the damage until the shield expired, in line with how DoT damage is reported. Which makes me wonder if thaumaturge increases bone shield damage.

In any case, I don't expect battle spirit to be applied to damage that has already been reduced by battle spirit. It seems suspiciously like the double taxing of some healing mechanics that slipped in when the damage reduction of battle spirit was increased. Those were all fixed.

I also think damage returned should be irresistible. When I reflect 2-3 sorc overload light attacks, the sorc implodes even through large shields. That's for projectile spells (excludes melee spells), but for melee its 388 damage for over 9k damage???

Even more ludicrous is that while defensive stance is a stamina skill with a 30sec duration and reflects 100%, spiked bone shield is a stamina skill that produces a shield based on health. Health based builds are useless outside of a blazing shield templar build, but blazing shield is a magicka skill and those builds need 2000+ magicka regen effectively ruling out shield stacking with blazing shield and spiked bone shield.

I have to think this is a serious bug. Otherwise one might fall prey to the otherwise far fetched claims of stamina favoritism in one tamriel.

Wreuntzylla

WalksonGraves wrote: »

So my tooltip says 30% of hp and 30% returned.

It's 30%/30% outside of Cyrodiil for a stamina build.

As with blazing shield, I suspect the % increases depends on a variety of factors. Blazing shield increases based on health, thaumaturge, elemental expert (shield is magicka damage) and a few other things. I have not experimented enough with spiked bone shield to figure out all the mechanics.

Gottbeard does a great job of explaining health based shield mechanics in relation to blazing shield at this url.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZDzhIR1tnU

Beyond that, I was reporting the tooltip in Cyrodiil. For blazing shield, the shield strength is also reduced (19% of health on a solid build) but the damage is not clipped by battle spirit (74% of damage absorbed on a solid build).

So, spiked bone shield damage should be the same as the tooltip if blazing shield is a good metric. I'll see if thaumaturge also increases bone shield damage. Maybe they screwed up and it also scales off of elemental expert and not mighty?

timidobserver

I would like to see spiked bone shield's damage reflect become decent. However, I would scale the damage it does on defensive stats like health+armor/spell resistance just to keep it away from damage builds.

Wreuntzylla

Results of my shield.testing.

Bone shield and blazing shield tooltips are now affected by the same things. Bastion and elemental expert.

Thaumaturge no longer changes blazing shield tooltip.

Shield strength and synergy shield strength is increased by bastion.

At 97 elemental expert and 97 bastion we get

Spiked Bone Shield: 37% (shield strength)/41% (damage returned )/75% (synergy) for spiked bone shield

Blazing Shield: 37(shield strength)/66 ( of damage absorbed dealt as damage) for blazing shield.

in PvP 19/41/38 for bone shield and 19/66 for blazing shield.

I have to conclude that the decimal place for spiked bone shield is off by one place.

Waffennacht

Seems not only to be double dipping the reduction but also bugged as the way you mention. Prob gone unnoticed from lack of use. Thanks for checkin it out

Wreuntzylla

Waffennacht wrote: »

Seems not only to be double dipping the reduction but also bugged as the way you mention. Prob gone unnoticed from lack of use. Thanks for checkin it out

You might recall that bone shield originally cost magicka and it was changed to cost stamina in the general overhaul. So it being affected by elemental expert and not mighty seems to be an error carried over to CP implementation.

I think I was spec'd into elemental expert when I recorded the returned damage. So, although it's an issue, it isn't the damage issue.

Either:

1. the returned damage has a coldown or only applies to the hit that breaks the shield, and double dipping is in play; or
2. the decimal is off by one place.

I'll invoke the name of the almighty @ZOS_GinaBruno and pray at hircine's altar for clarification.