Please add more options to counter shield stacking in PvP

AdicusDio

Pretty easy to tell when someone either isn't running a damage shield or they didn't pop it- their health drops. Pretty unenthusiastic about doing 50-100k (cumulative damage) and either never seeing a health bar drop, or it drops slightly only to go right back to the beginning and the tedious circle repeats, or your stam/magika is too depleted and you get killed with a cheesy knockdown and whatever attacks get spammed before you can even get up because not everyone gets a shield. I'll go back into the log and see 8k, 8k, 9k, 7k, with 2k ticks sprinkled in between, etc. being done to all the different named shields, but it's clearly not enough, and 1/3 to 1/2 of what it'd do to a non player, which in and of itself is a joke while emp-like defenses stays intact.

When current tanks and off-bar healers can output similar or in some cases much higher damage (had a legit 30k Soul Assault wipe me while I was stuck on terrain barrier- was literally the only thing in the death recap, but by all means keep lowering nb damage) than some current nb due to all the damage reductions, while allowing shield stacking to persist on top of that and offering little to no effective means to counter their shields, has allowed an extremely lopsided experience to fester, which only worsens when we are talking groups that abuse certain builds. So lopsided in fact I've found myself not even engaging because fighting a damage shield while someone endlessly holds block and mitigates most/all of the damage is in all honesty, pointless, and has to be a huge turn-off to many that invest into their builds and see nothing from it.

Fear is not enough. Oblivion enchant has been reduced into nothing, and even with an infused bow it's worthless. If Shield Breaker was supposed to be the answer, it's not. Even adding 24% into the cp line against damage shields does nothing to help (arguably makes it worse since the cp cost to even get 23-24% is way too high and means you sacrifice something else to detriment)

When it takes 10+ end-game builds to pound on someone with seemingly unlimited regen, shields, and resistance in PvP for longer than 60 seconds, there is clearly something wrong. I personally refuse to switch to another class and be a carbon copy, though others do or use their alts.

Considering only ONE campaign ever seems to get full anymore while the rest are either empty or not enough to even fill one bar, speaks volumes you've been failing to hear.

apostate9

Go to Sotha Sil.

<dropsmic/>

the_man_of_steal

Shattering Blows on your CP tree.

Shardaxx

Game has become weighted towards tankiness. Case in point - take a toon who has everything shoved into defence, and pit them against a toon with everything in offense. The offensive player won't make a dent on the tank, we all know some tanks take 10 people whaling on them to bring them down. However with everything in offense, that toon will be extemely squishy, and even a full defense tank could kill them.

This demonstrates that the offense vs defence in this game is way out of whack.

Hurika

If a pure offense and pure defense class fight, ideally the outcome would be 50/50 or a draw (assuming players are have similar skill). Both give up something to excel at something else and they are direct counters to each other. Problem is the outcome is usually very lopsided with current gameplay/mechanics/abilities.

Feanor

Oh. It's this time again.

CyrusArya

AdicusDio wrote: »

When it takes 10+ end-game builds to pound on someone with seemingly unlimited regen, shields, and resistance in PvP for longer than 60 seconds, there is clearly something wrong.

Oh, there is. You got 10 people who got to 'end game' and never learned how to play with even the slightest bit of competence.

If 10 people cannot take down a non dedicated tank, those 10 need to seriously go revaluate their builds and understanding of how the game works. That is all there is to it.

idk

the_man_of_steal wrote: »

Shattering Blows on your CP tree.

This ^^^, set bonus and enchants. But that Alone is not enough. Tactics wins fights more than gear does. Have to force the shield stacker to burn magicka, stun it and kill it.

Granted, I oversimplified it, but it is up to the player to determine how to do that since everyone has their own playstyle.

Takes-No-Prisoner

Feanor wrote: »

Oh. It's this time again.

No need to raise your blood pressure, here have a bucket


Cause we both know where this will end up

Apherius

Shaterring blow

or just destroy their mana with poison and siphoner ... or use shield breaker ... you can also try oblivion damage.

At least it's not a Nerf sorc thread .. even if this will become one

kromegas

Did someone say nerf sorcs!? LOL

Moloch1514

The Devs told us their nerf to Necropotence was the answer, much to my PvE only Sorc's chagrin. Was that not true?!?

AdicusDio

CyrusArya wrote: »

AdicusDio wrote: »

When it takes 10+ end-game builds to pound on someone with seemingly unlimited regen, shields, and resistance in PvP for longer than 60 seconds, there is clearly something wrong.

Oh, there is. You got 10 people who got to 'end game' and never learned how to play with even the slightest bit of competence.

If 10 people cannot take down a non dedicated tank, those 10 need to seriously go reevaluate their builds and understanding of how the game works. That is all there is to it.

When 10+ are needed to take one tanky build on that literally regens out of everything thrown at them, something is wrong. It's great for trials or vet hm, but doesn't belong in PvP. I use "end-game" to signify most/all are cp capped. If 10+ average builds were taking on a vet hm dungeon boss, it'd go down in 15-30 sec. Competence has nothing to do with it. Talking shields here that are stacking on top of very high resistances and regen values and all they need to do is wait out their shield cool down which usually means running around a tree or terrain rock.

Poisons actually hurt damage when you loose the tick off the enchant they suppress, they don't even apply, or someone waves a hand and it was wasted, or the 30% cost increase can be negated by jewelry or very high regen or reduction.

If people read the 1st post, 23-24% into shattering blows does nothing (theory crafting is just that). And you'll be left with a deficit elsewhere (direct damage, mighty, pen, etc.). If you are doing 800 damage ticks to a shield w/o shattering blows, then shuffle points into SB, actual damage will be less by how much you pulled out of others. Maybe SB is broken, I don't know, and don't care at this point. It doesn't work. You won't be doing 984 damage ticks all of a sudden by shuffling 23% into it, and across the board other builds will be harder to kill. In reality, it's 500-600 ticks from deficits after a shuffle of cp. The costs for SB are too high with too small of a return.

Don't get me wrong here, I CAN do damage. I have 47k buffed stam and plenty of pen, etc.. I've seen Focused Aim hit someone with a dropped shield for 16k+2k with enchant= 18k hit (still a far cry from magic-based dps builds) which is still way below what it does to a non player. And plenty of others where their health drops 40% from one hit. The problem is when you are outputting 100k+ worth of damage over a minor skirmish x 10 others doing similar/less and shields + high regen are the reason nothing happens. And yet same builds are outputting enough damage to be messy on top of shields, regen, etc. to their attackers. Very lopsided. Only ones defending that level of bias are usually ones running that build.

TBH, I'm at the end of the cycle for this game, so the rant is moot. Zos seems laser-focused at running every other build into the ground to appease a very small niche fan-base. Canceling subs and dropping inventory. No worth the agro.

IcyDeadPeople

Simply being able to stack different shields is not problematic. If someone sacrifices two ability slots for shields and spends the resources to cast both, this is not an issue, especially when healing ward, blazing shield or igneous shield for example all scale on max health, so the size for average magicka damage dealer is relatively small.

I think the complaints you are seeing have more to do with medium armor players being generally squishier than heavy (resistances) and light (large shields), that going with either of these allows for high damage and being able to tank a lot of damage at the same time.

Slight reduction to the size of dampen magic and hardened ward (or the way these abilities scale), say for example, when you have 50k magicka if the shield were in the range of 10-12k (PVP) / 20-24k (PVE) would be a bit more reasonable.

Datolite

Is oblivion enchant really that bad? Even with knight slayer?

Qbiken

Feanor wrote: »

Oh. It's this time again.

A sorcthread a day keeps the <insert funny pun here> away


Best counter I´ve found to shieldstackers is to have a lot of weapon/spelldamage aka "raw-damage".

Feanor

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Is oblivion enchant really that bad? Even with knight slayer?

These days players don't want to build for specific encounters. They just want something that one shots everything. Complaining to get something nerfed is far easier than to actually have to fight in game.

bmannb16_ESO

AdicusDio wrote: »

Pretty easy to tell when someone either isn't running a damage shield or they didn't pop it- their health drops. Pretty unenthusiastic about doing 50-100k (cumulative damage) and either never seeing a health bar drop, or it drops slightly only to go right back to the beginning and the tedious circle repeats, or your stam/magika is too depleted and you get killed with a cheesy knockdown and whatever attacks get spammed before you can even get up because not everyone gets a shield. I'll go back into the log and see 8k, 8k, 9k, 7k, with 2k ticks sprinkled in between, etc. being done to all the different named shields, but it's clearly not enough, and 1/3 to 1/2 of what it'd do to a non player, which in and of itself is a joke while emp-like defenses stays intact.

When current tanks and off-bar healers can output similar or in some cases much higher damage (had a legit 30k Soul Assault wipe me while I was stuck on terrain barrier- was literally the only thing in the death recap, but by all means keep lowering nb damage) than some current nb due to all the damage reductions, while allowing shield stacking to persist on top of that and offering little to no effective means to counter their shields, has allowed an extremely lopsided experience to fester, which only worsens when we are talking groups that abuse certain builds. So lopsided in fact I've found myself not even engaging because fighting a damage shield while someone endlessly holds block and mitigates most/all of the damage is in all honesty, pointless, and has to be a huge turn-off to many that invest into their builds and see nothing from it.

Fear is not enough. Oblivion enchant has been reduced into nothing, and even with an infused bow it's worthless. If Shield Breaker was supposed to be the answer, it's not. Even adding 24% into the cp line against damage shields does nothing to help (arguably makes it worse since the cp cost to even get 23-24% is way too high and means you sacrifice something else to detriment)

When it takes 10+ end-game builds to pound on someone with seemingly unlimited regen, shields, and resistance in PvP for longer than 60 seconds, there is clearly something wrong. I personally refuse to switch to another class and be a carbon copy, though others do or use their alts.

Considering only ONE campaign ever seems to get full anymore while the rest are either empty or not enough to even fill one bar, speaks volumes you've been failing to hear.

I recently made my first "tank", and really this is a l2p issue. I've run into groups of 20 that couldn't kill me, and groups of 2 the burst me down incredibly fast.

As someone said in the thread, tactics, poison, cp, type of attacks.

cpuScientist

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Simply being able to stack different shields is not problematic. If someone sacrifices two ability slots for shields and spends the resources to cast both, this is not an issue, especially when healing ward, blazing shield or igneous shield for example all scale on max health, so the size for average magicka damage dealer is relatively small.

I think the complaints you are seeing have more to do with medium armor players being generally squishier than heavy (resistances) and light (large shields), that going with either of these allows for high damage and being able to tank a lot of damage at the same time.

The big issue really is that medium armor sucks. If you are in medium you need to stack weapon damage to take advantage of the% weapon damage bonus. Whereas light armor gets a ton if pen, and can be armored with shields, only having to worry about 1 set that can go through them. Whereas medium is supposed to rely on dodge, but alot goes through dodge, and dodge can be alot more costly than shielding. Furthermore since shuffle can be used just as effectively by medium and light armor users. It makes medium alot less special.

And for these medium armor users having to fight a let's day SORC, they will find themselves with a curse on them and trying to dodge frag after frag, or even get to the sorc through mines. Worst they run into a warden that can just bird spam them, while they TRY to dodge, while also running a large shield, and great heals for defense.

The effecitvrnes if light armor defense scales with one of their offensive stats, but the same is not for medium, you don't have a larger dodge window based on your Stam, you can just dodge more. But more magic allows you to shield more and shield stronger. Furthermore their is no stacking costs for shielding, but there is for dodging.

But of course there are good players out there slaying it on medium armor, because a good player can make just about any PvP setup look good.

Beardimus

So basically a other dead horse of a Nerf Sorc thread.

Guessing you are new to PvP, and the forum and haven't seen the other whine posts.

There are plenty of counters, just search the other thread for all the options...

timb16_ESO85

In my opinion, the main issue is damage and healing being reduced in pvp, while shields still are normal strength. This means that having a shield up will always be more effective than trying to heal the damage done. this discrepancy means that no matter what you do, shields (on which you can't crit either) at their full strength will always be far superior to healing/stacking health. Not to mention that shield scale of offensive stats, not defensive.....

edit: Never mind, appears shields are halved too, should really start to play more different classes and read full tooltips.

Feanor

timb16_ESO85 wrote: »

In my opinion, the main issue is damage and healing being reduced in pvp, while shields still are normal strength. This means that having a shield up will always be more effective than trying to heal the damage done. this discrepancy means that no matter what you do, shields (on which you can't crit either) at their full strength will always be far superior to healing/stacking health. Not to mention that shield scale of offensive stats, not defensive.....

Shields are halved by Battle Spirit too.

timb16_ESO85

Feanor wrote: »

timb16_ESO85 wrote: »

In my opinion, the main issue is damage and healing being reduced in pvp, while shields still are normal strength. This means that having a shield up will always be more effective than trying to heal the damage done. this discrepancy means that no matter what you do, shields (on which you can't crit either) at their full strength will always be far superior to healing/stacking health. Not to mention that shield scale of offensive stats, not defensive.....

Shields are halved by Battle Spirit too.

Thanks for correcting me, never noticed that they are halved too.

Feanor

timb16_ESO85 wrote: »

Feanor wrote: »

timb16_ESO85 wrote: »

In my opinion, the main issue is damage and healing being reduced in pvp, while shields still are normal strength. This means that having a shield up will always be more effective than trying to heal the damage done. this discrepancy means that no matter what you do, shields (on which you can't crit either) at their full strength will always be far superior to healing/stacking health. Not to mention that shield scale of offensive stats, not defensive.....

Shields are halved by Battle Spirit too.

Thanks for correcting me, never noticed that they are halved too.

It's been that way since September 2015 when they reduced damage and healing to 50% too.

JamieAubrey

Go buy Shieldbreaker

AdicusDio

Nvm. Sub canceled. And literally everything I owned in-game has been sold off. Took nearly 2 hours to get rid of 1 year's worth of junk, but felt satisfying in the end. Lots of lucky people got $900 tempers, $200 Rosins, $100 grains, and a plethora of style, food, furnishing mats for either nothing or next to nothing. Stuff was selling faster than it could be listed LOL. To those that got a great deal, you are welcome! My guilds got $40k each on top of sales, as did my friends. To Zos, close the thread.

Beardimus

That escalated quickly.

Malmai

Stacking shields should be limited, but as it is now Mag Sorcs still run around with light armor and staves having ability to heal, cc, deal massive burst damage from far away and streak away and rinse repeat, welcome to the 2014 remember? Elder Staffs Online.

LegacyDM

Apherius wrote: »

Shaterring blow

or just destroy their mana with poison and siphoner ... or use shield breaker ... you can also try oblivion damage.

At least it's not a Nerf sorc thread .. even if this will become one

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Is oblivion enchant really that bad? Even with knight slayer?

Other Magicka classes don't use shield breaker as it's a stamina based set, targeted for bow users. Siphoned is a joke, it doesn't go jack. Why would I run poisons as a magicka class? I've tested shattering blows. You need to dump all your points into shattering blows to be even marginally effective. You end up sacrificing points from other more needed areas. It ends up being a wash. Oblivion was nerfed and is marginally effective. One enchant isn't going to take down a sorc or negate an entire class.

Knight slayer is an option but it's to limited in utility. I think it's silly players have to run one build specifically designed to destroy sorcs while completely ineffective against all other classes. While sorcs can be effective against all classes With a wider range of armor sets.

No. One shouldn't have to invest in designing a build to destroy one class while then getting destroyed in return by all other classes. This is not balance.

rfennell_ESO

Problem is mostly (and has always been) shields stacking.

Any max magicka sorc that runs multiple shields is ridiculously hard to kill.

I think the issue that needs to be addressed is how shields stack, not necessarily the shields themselves.

LegacyDM wrote: »

Apherius wrote: »

Shaterring blow

or just destroy their mana with poison and siphoner ... or use shield breaker ... you can also try oblivion damage.

At least it's not a Nerf sorc thread .. even if this will become one

datoliteb16_ESO wrote: »

Is oblivion enchant really that bad? Even with knight slayer?

Other Magicka classes don't use shield breaker as it's a stamina based set, targeted for bow users. Siphoned is a joke, it doesn't go jack. Why would I run poisons as a magicka class? I've tested shattering blows. You need to dump all your points into shattering blows to be even marginally effective. You end up sacrificing points from other more needed areas. It ends up being a wash. Oblivion was nerfed and is marginally effective. One enchant isn't going to take down a sorc or negate an entire class.

Knight slayer is an option but it's to limited in utility. I think it's silly players have to run one build specifically designed to destroy sorcs while completely ineffective against all other classes. While sorcs can be effective against all classes With a wider range of armor sets.

No. One shouldn't have to invest in designing a build to destroy one class while then getting destroyed in return by all other classes. This is not balance.

This is the problem exactly... the only "counter" to shield stacking sorcs is to run a build that is designed to take out shielders. Which gimps you heavily versus all else.

It's about time they addressed the issue, which is shield stacking together at full values. The smartest answer to it I've seen is reducing the effectiveness of additional shields (say 50% penalty per shield). It's still going to be a rather large stacked shield even with that done... but not so ridiculous.

fastolfv_ESO

im suprised i have to even post this but it lasts 6 seconds and if your spamming shield your not dealing damage, the same complaint could be used about healers healing themselves. If you cant outdamage a damage shield your running too much regen not enough burst or hes tripple shield stacking and running away in a do nothing full regen build that wont kill you, is it frustrating running into people who play like that? sure but hardly worth complaining about that you cant kill everyone without using sets and cp specifically designed to target players with shields