Pirate Skeleton still overperforming

ToRelax

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

OdinForge

I haven't seen a magsorc using this set in god knows how long on PC NA, the last time I saw a magsorc with this set he was getting 1vX'd.

ToRelax

OdinForge wrote: »

I haven't seen a magsorc using this set in god knows how long on PC NA, the last time I saw a magsorc with this set he was getting 1vX'd.

I know, the nerf did work just fine to make bad Sorcs less tanky who use it as a crutch for lacking skill. But I would like different options when building my character, and since I don't think Major Protection should be as accessible as it is with this set, the answer can not be just adding more stuff of that level.

PS: It's also near impossible to *see* someone using this set without an addon if they use the polymorph under a disguise, which is needed to not bug out (unless they like running around as a skeleton the entire time).

Synozeer

Skeleton polymorph doesn't fix the bug last I tested - you need to use a disguise (which makes it even harder to see if someone is using this set).

Lexxypwns

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

ToRelax

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

Biro123

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

Minno

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

ToRelax

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Minno

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

ToRelax

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

Minno

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

EDIT: And considering you can get major protection via resto staff, which most sorcs are running for healing ward anyway, youll boost your crit dmg, gain major protection, and get a huge heal. you'll effectively sit at 133% total mitigation which is only 6% lower than if you were to not use Bloodspawn but still use the resto staff for the major prot. Therefore it is better to gather 1pc mag bonuses to boost your shield value and in turn give you higher dmg on your skills. But i consider those options worthy, especially if you want to run non-meta and slot S+B over the resto staff. .

Minno

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

ToRelax

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

Minno

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

Maikon

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

ToRelax

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

I think I see what you're trying to say with that first paragraph now... however, if it is what I think, then I would like to say that this set already applies Minor Defile to not make it OP. Yet this penalty can be ignored by shield based builds. The health restored by a heal while Pirate Skeleton is in effect is lower, but worth more per HP restored than without the proc. You shouldn't be able to just ignore that penalty by using shields, imo.

Thanks for clarification on the last part though.

Maikon wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

That's not a reason for a balance change, that's part of the reason why I personally don't want to use the set. Feel free to discuss the actual arguments in this thread.

Subversus

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

Did I miss something? Since when does pirate skelly cut the shield size down?

Minno

Subversus wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

Did I miss something? Since when does pirate skelly cut the shield size down?

your right, it is for spell symetry! Ill change my post above.

So then my statement above should say 136% total mitigation with Pirate but 15% less healing. With bloodspawn, youll have 124% total mitigation but have 129 extra stam regen and chance to regen ulti adding to your offensive/defensive. With bloodspawn and resto ultimate, youll be at 133% total mitigation but not only have blood spawn's bonuses but also major protection, a strong burst heal, and major force which add to your offensive/defensive stats.

Therefore, you'll trade 3% total mitigation for major force, 129 stam recovery and 8k health every second for 5 seconds.

Minno

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

I think I see what you're trying to say with that first paragraph now... however, if it is what I think, then I would like to say that this set already applies Minor Defile to not make it OP. Yet this penalty can be ignored by shield based builds. The health restored by a heal while Pirate Skeleton is in effect is lower, but worth more per HP restored than without the proc. You shouldn't be able to just ignore that penalty by using shields, imo.

Thanks for clarification on the last part though.

Maikon wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

That's not a reason for a balance change, that's part of the reason why I personally don't want to use the set. Feel free to discuss the actual arguments in this thread.

yea, don't quote me on that last part. I made a mistake and thought the change to spell symmetry was on Pirate.
Spell symmetry cuts down the shield value not pirate.

But regardless, there are benefits to running bloodspawn with resto ultimate; the two synergize very well and the stam recovery will help you break free/block further impacting your shields.

Subversus

Minno wrote: »

Subversus wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

Did I miss something? Since when does pirate skelly cut the shield size down?

your right, it is for spell symetry! Ill change my post above.

So then my statement above should say 136% total mitigation with Pirate but 15% less healing. With bloodspawn, youll have 124% total mitigation but have 129 extra stam regen and chance to regen ulti adding to your offensive/defensive. With bloodspawn and resto ultimate, youll be at 133% total mitigation but not only have blood spawn's bonuses but also major protection, a strong burst heal, and major force which add to your offensive/defensive stats.

Therefore, you'll trade 3% total mitigation for major force, 129 stam recovery and 8k health every second for 5 seconds.

I do agree that BS is the superior set for sorcs though, but I enjoy my 5 shackle 4 necro 2 max mag setup more than with BS. Dunno how that will fare next patch though..

Minno

Subversus wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Subversus wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

Did I miss something? Since when does pirate skelly cut the shield size down?

your right, it is for spell symetry! Ill change my post above.

So then my statement above should say 136% total mitigation with Pirate but 15% less healing. With bloodspawn, youll have 124% total mitigation but have 129 extra stam regen and chance to regen ulti adding to your offensive/defensive. With bloodspawn and resto ultimate, youll be at 133% total mitigation but not only have blood spawn's bonuses but also major protection, a strong burst heal, and major force which add to your offensive/defensive stats.

Therefore, you'll trade 3% total mitigation for major force, 129 stam recovery and 8k health every second for 5 seconds.

I do agree that BS is the superior set for sorcs though, but I enjoy my 5 shackle 4 necro 2 max mag setup more than with BS. Dunno how that will fare next patch though..

im not sure either. I do know, you'll want some counter to the unblocked cc/dmg incoming.
I just don't know what that is yet.

ToRelax

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

I think I see what you're trying to say with that first paragraph now... however, if it is what I think, then I would like to say that this set already applies Minor Defile to not make it OP. Yet this penalty can be ignored by shield based builds. The health restored by a heal while Pirate Skeleton is in effect is lower, but worth more per HP restored than without the proc. You shouldn't be able to just ignore that penalty by using shields, imo.

Thanks for clarification on the last part though.

Maikon wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

That's not a reason for a balance change, that's part of the reason why I personally don't want to use the set. Feel free to discuss the actual arguments in this thread.

yea, don't quote me on that last part. I made a mistake and thought the change to spell symmetry was on Pirate.
Spell symmetry cuts down the shield value not pirate.

But regardless, there are benefits to running bloodspawn with resto ultimate; the two synergize very well and the stam recovery will help you break free/block further impacting your shields.

Ok, that explains it. Well, as I mentioned earlier I use Overload over Light's Champion, so Bloodspawn doesn't help that much.

I am kind of surprised no one mentioned Shadowrend + Necropotence as a good alternative though. That was the only undaunted set that got into serious consideration for the next update beside Pirate Skeleton.

Lord-Otto

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

I think I see what you're trying to say with that first paragraph now... however, if it is what I think, then I would like to say that this set already applies Minor Defile to not make it OP. Yet this penalty can be ignored by shield based builds. The health restored by a heal while Pirate Skeleton is in effect is lower, but worth more per HP restored than without the proc. You shouldn't be able to just ignore that penalty by using shields, imo.

Thanks for clarification on the last part though.

Maikon wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

That's not a reason for a balance change, that's part of the reason why I personally don't want to use the set. Feel free to discuss the actual arguments in this thread.

yea, don't quote me on that last part. I made a mistake and thought the change to spell symmetry was on Pirate.
Spell symmetry cuts down the shield value not pirate.

But regardless, there are benefits to running bloodspawn with resto ultimate; the two synergize very well and the stam recovery will help you break free/block further impacting your shields.

Ok, that explains it. Well, as I mentioned earlier I use Overload over Light's Champion, so Bloodspawn doesn't help that much.

I am kind of surprised no one mentioned Shadowrend + Necropotence as a good alternative though. That was the only undaunted set that got into serious consideration for the next update beside Pirate Skeleton.

*waves*
(^.^)/

I was one of the earliest who hinted at it. Legendary Mage also made his own version public quite early.

The thing with Necrorend is that it's somewhat unreliable. The pet can get lost, attack the wrong person... I've seen it constantly attacking a Warden's Netch!
*facepalm*

If you get the pet at the right time and it doesn't bug out, you're looking at a strong offensive and defensive setup, with even some bonus sustain from Shadowrend 1pc. However, IF. In the long term, you probably want something more consistent.

Still very fun and definitely strong!
(^-^)

Beardimus

Huh? The Nerf was enough, it's def not the best set to harden up any more. Nerf killed it for most.

The Sorc specific hate on here is getting dull, Sorcs are getting nerfed in many ways yet those that can't counter them still moan. I think the threads would still pop up if Sorc didn't exist as it seems such a sport for some. Damn

Cinbri

Beardimus wrote: »

Huh? The Nerf was enough, it's def not the best set to harden up any more. Nerf killed it for most.

The Sorc specific hate on here is getting dull, Sorcs are getting nerfed in many ways yet those that can't counter them still moan. I think the threads would still pop up if Sorc didn't exist as it seems such a sport for some. Damn

Nice attempt. But saying that OP defensive set is "killed by nerf" saying pretty all.

ToRelax

Beardimus wrote: »

Huh? The Nerf was enough, it's def not the best set to harden up any more. Nerf killed it for most.

The Sorc specific hate on here is getting dull, Sorcs are getting nerfed in many ways yet those that can't counter them still moan. I think the threads would still pop up if Sorc didn't exist as it seems such a sport for some. Damn

You do realize I'm playing Sorc myself using this set, right? I don't want to nerf Sorc, but an overpowered mechanic, namely entire circumvention of the drawback that comes with a powerful item set.

Thanks for keeping my thread active, though. Much appreciated.

Lord-Otto

I don't think its drawbacks are fully circumvented.

When something hits your sorc flesh, you're already close to dying. Used to be, that you had this proc up nearly constantly, even BEFORE your naked HP got hit. Much safer than the risky, probably not proccing, execute-defender we have now.

Beardimus

The post needed a TLDR clearly, and my eyes are blind from reading daily Nerf Sorc threads. And you are talking about nerfing a set because the pretty much Sorc specific Nerf wasn't enough - in your opinion.

In my opinion i disagree with your thread either way. Everyone ran PS and post the change whilst its still OK its far from OP so of all the things to worry about in game, this ain't on my radar

If you feel its OP just don't run it, simples, no need to Nerf it for those that are running it. Nerfs R Us are plentiful already here.

Either way sorry for scan reading the first time. I'm just done with nerf requests.

ToRelax

Lord-Otto wrote: »

I don't think its drawbacks are fully circumvented.

When something hits your sorc flesh, you're already close to dying. Used to be, that you had this proc up nearly constantly, even BEFORE your naked HP got hit. Much safer than the risky, probably not proccing, execute-defender we have now.

Well, I used it pre-"nerf" and wasn't sure whether the change would help me or hurt me, because before a competent opponent could time their burst right after the proc and I sometimes died fighting several enemies when shields went down while the set was on cooldown, just by chance. Now it procs more reliably when I get hit with shields down - I just have to survive the initial burst, which is why the set is little good to bad Sorcs who fervently try to keep their shields up as if their life depended on it (well... maybe it does ).

I mean, it's not like I want to have Minor Defile on me; I just don't care. Defile only becomes dangerous for me with a build focused on it, that can have you kinda stuck on low hp for a while. But do you remember when Battle Spirit affected shields less than heals? I mean, that was kind of silly, and it was changed to equal debuffs on both later.

Malic

Stop crying for nerfs, ask for buffs.