PTS Update 20 - Feedback Thread for Sorcerer

Sigtric

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

I’m going to stir the pot a bit. I thought the choice was between damage output and sustain? Wasn’t that the motivation for the great sustain nerfs of 2017? (Or was it 2016?) Now it’s a choice between damage output and survivability? Which is it? Or is it both?

If you’ve got a problem with power creep stop adding CP every patch and be obvious about it... nerf actual damage into the ground and stop messing with everything EXCEPT damage.

Are you suggesting that there's no clear vision for combat in this game?

Galarthor

ManDraKE wrote: »

Healing can be debuffed, health bars can be crit and damage taken is affected by resistences. While i don't support the addition of cast time to shields, trying to compare shields with healing in the live server is absurd, casting a shield is way more effective than casting a heal. And all the crap they have been adding (extra damage vs shields on CP, shieldbreaker) where bad solutions to the main issue: shields ignore key game mechanics like crit damage and resistences.

The change of allowing crit and resistences/penetration on shields is a step in the right direction. It make require adjustments like shield size or some form of scaling with resistences to avoid punishing light armor and over-buffing heavy armor, but is a step in the right direction. With this properly implemented and a nerf to healing ward scaling at execute range levels of health, the cast time won't be needed at all.

This is getting really exhausting, but I will give you a short rundown why shields are effectively heals despite working differently:

First off, shields are essentially heals b/c just like heals they extend your total amount of HP / HP pool. Shield are heals paid upfront! Other mitigation mechanisms in the game do not extend your HP pool, but reduce the damage taken directly (i.e. dodge, block, cloak).

Shields are not affected by debuffs because they don't benefit from buffs either. The Buff-Debuff system is designed in such a way that for every buff there is a debuff countering it. It's just a creative choice of the designers to have one kind of "heal" affected by the buff system but not the other one - but at the bottom line it balances out.

Shields cannot be critted b/c they themselves don't crit. Unlike heals, which can crit b/c your HP bar can be critted. Again, there is nothing imbalanced here and it's just a creative choice of the designers. It would only have been problematic if one could crit but not be critted or vice versa.

Shields are not affected by resistances, meaning they actually take the full force of the attacks. In return their tooltip is (or should be) adjusted upwards accordingly. Again, there is nothing imbalanced here and it's just a creative choice of the designers. And there is nothing imbalanced about it. It's simple math.

Casting a shield is not necessarily more effective and efficient than casting a heal. B/c you have to use shield proactively you run the risk of "overpaying". That is applying a shield that is not needed and thus wasting time and resources and opportunities to deal damage. That is a kind of risk you don't face when using heals as they are utilized reactively when the HP pool already got drained to a certain degree.

As for the other "crap" that has been added:
1) CP for extra damage VS shields is needed b/c you can buff shields and the other damage reduction CPs synergize with shields. Thus, not having such a CP would be imbalanced. Not having equivalent CPs to counter "Quick Recovery", "Tumbling", and "Shadow Ward" (and whatever the sprinting CP is called) is imbalanced but that is another topic.

2) Shieldbreaker is really utter crap. Oblivion damage should never have made it into the game. And there should never be a set that completely circumvents the defenses of a certain class. And that holds true for any given class. If there is a balance issue fix the god damn balance, but don't introduce "I-win-against class XYZ" sets like that.

The current changes to shields are utter crap as well. The resistance "buff" is pretty much non-existent for light armor builds as enemy penetration > light armor resistances. And crit resi < crit damage. Since the latter is always true, the only way these changes are a buff is if enemy penetration < resistances. And the only builds for which that is true are heavy armor builds. So now you got tanks that are not only already inherently tanky but also got some tanky shields.

The way to "fix" shields is to:
1) make them scale with light armor b/c heavy armor + large shields is just cancerous.
2) Allowing only 1 shield to be active at any given time (excluding healing ward as that is a heal and would not work otherwise)
3) In return buff the strength of the different shields, b/c 1 shield is not enough.
Optimally:
4) introduce some mechanism to reduce damage taken from multiple targets b/c it is based on absolute values rather than percentage values such as dodge, block, resistances, and cloak.

mook-eb16_ESO

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,
First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting.
.

ok key points note this is mainly for a pvp perspective

why do people play sorc for tanking healing or damage output. really so they can do damage but actually its not even the best class for this but we don't play for the other two rolls.(we all play for the sweet roll)

you need to be around long enough in eso pvp to kill anything:- survivability and sustain is key.
so many people are playing near tank builds even if you spec into damage you still wont kill many players.
there is no such thing in the as a sorc glass canon there plenty of glass pistols. good sorcs kill from good timing and capitalising on their opponents mistakes and weaknesses. just spamming damage prob wont kill your opponent. this is why the statement quoted above irrelevant pretty much. [people build into survivability first and damaged second with the exception of bomb blade. good solo builds are very god starting points for group builds where you may be able to build in some more damage and add aoe.

if the current damage survivability ratio move further down the ladder from where they are currently people will stop playing sorc and I believe that what you are doing will do this.
if you wanted to look at a comparison in pvp between classes you could look at ap earned for each class for each campaign, as ready reckoner. you will see that if you look at sorc ap earned it doesn't stick out like sore thumb, warden does seem like it needs a buff.

ku5h

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.

If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.

In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.

Just goes to show how little you know about the class. Sorc is most pigeon holded into certain setups of all classes. To make your shields adequate and have enough sustain to maintain them you can choose from very few setup options, which leave you with subpar dps output unabeling you to kill any tankier setup unless you outplay him severely. Master staff must have or you gimp yourself greatly. But yea, force us now to stack mitigation on top of all problems we had.
1 sec cast time is not even worth commenting interruptable or not.

akl77

How is sorc gonna tank now? And other mag tank that uses annulment?
The one sec shield meaning the tank is gonna die, you are basically making tanking on sorc impossible.

Xsorus

I don't think people realize that if they didn't give them a cast time, You could basically make a build right now with insane Mitigation with layered stacking shields while being immune to Crits pretty much.

It would of been easier to just go to a Major/Minor buff system though, Make Annulment Major Shield along with Hardened.

but I understand why they went with the cast time approach if they're going Mitigation Route

alcal32

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.

If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.

In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.

I just cancelled my ESO+ subscription. Try looking into why all nightblades can avoid 100% of incoming damage by roll dodging and cloaking while also having an extremely high damage output and having one of the most powerful and bugged CCs in the game.

Illuvatarr

With the new sets coming out, magblades and mag sorcs are going to be rocking dps wise. The problem is going to be defense for mag sorcs in pvp.

I have always thought the streak changes would be reversed at some point. Keep them in place and give us 1 second casting times on shields. However, have streak turn you invisible (and remove snares) for 3-5 seconds (however long NB cloak lasts). It will give time to cast shields when a ganker pops on you. In PVP at least, I think this would be a good way to provide mag sorcs with defense still without backing out of the damage shield changes that are being implemented. I agree with the crits and resists scaling. It should have always been that way. However, you should also allow shields to crit (maybe on the last part).

Thoughts on this?

forgotten_secret

For pve, I think for a lot of the content it's possible to work around shield-casttime, for quests and other solo content you probably don't even need a shield at all, for non-dlc dungeons it shouldn't be that much of an issue either (at least if you have a halfway decent healer and try not to take that much damage to begin with as dd - as in "move out of the red circles") and even for vet hm dlc dungeons it should be doable. Not neccessarily easy. But doable.
But in some cases I really wouldn't know how to work around it, like endgame pve situations. The first thing that came to my mind was vAS+1/+2 when you have the poison cone on you and have to kite the storm of heavens. Even with insta shields a lot of players die there, if you start casting in that situation, you might as well do something else, because you're basically dead. And magDDs simply don't have the stamina to block and rolldodge through all that. (I'd actually like to see the devs do that even with the way shields are now )
I'd probably reduce the casttime by half at least, with 0.4s or 0.5s it could be possible to survive, and instead of increasing the duration (the shield will be gone long before that anyway), I'd suggest increasing the strength, so it's actually possible to survive that 2nd blast coming your way while you're still casting your shield again. (or getting extreme protection or something similar - as we'll have extreme defile coming with the new arena as well - while casting a shield, which just reduces all damage taken by half )

For pvp I can't say much as I don't have that much experience there. It's probably why my shields don't save me even without casttime. Though, I imagine being able to crit against shields is enough for balancing, the added casttime is unneccessary. If you're ganked and manage to get your shield up in time, one crit against it might be enough to force you to cast another one if you want to survive, as the strength of your shield in pvp is a lot less than in pve to begin with, and if that goes on you'll just run out of resources sooner or later. So with the added casttime, even if the cast can't be interrupted, you don't really have a chance to survive there, while without the casttime, if you play well, you just might.

Didgerion

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.

If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.

In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.

So why targeting sorcs only? Lots of stamina builds fully spec into damage as well, their weapon power is so high that they can outheal any incoming damage...or if in trouble then they can outrun anything out of line of sight - also lots of stamina builds have crazy burst around their ultimate, they kite opponents till the ultimate's up and then short bursting them - why no choices were adjusted there?

Daedric_NB_187

Stamblade as my new main, here I come. Glad I already got it leveled and golded out. These devs off the hook with these changes. In all the MMOs I've ever played, I've never seen nerfs to a single class this massive. I think the only thing worse than this was the NGE. But that was a game wide nuclear nerf.

CurvedSwords123

BaylorCorvette wrote: »

A bit disappointed that the 3rd bar from Overload is being removed. This further pigeon holes StamSorcs class diversity. A StamSorc barley has any class abilities to use as is (lots of passives are useless too), but at least a StamSorc could have a third bar using Overload. Not sure I understand why that was removed. A StamSorc is giving up an Ult slot to gain access to a third bar. Seems balanced to me.

Maybe if there were more tweaks in favor of StamSorc class identity this would be OK, but there isn't any.

Honestly I'm beginning to believe ZoS has just forgotten Stamsorcs exist.

SmackNCheese

@Daedric_NB_187, BDO gutted Valkyries movement, so every once in a while a certain class gets absolutely hammered... But the point is that when Valk was gutted, everyone sold their weapons for the class and played something else. That's exactly what will happen to sorc, I've already leveled a warden because this is going to feel even shittier than when they took away 16% cost reduction and 10% recovery in the form of CP refactoring

CurvedSwords123

Cres wrote: »

so Dark Deal really needed to be changed? While absolutely no improvements for a stam sorc in PVE or PVP?

They are buffing Stam warden sustain and damage too. It's crazy. When my friend told me they were nerfing dark deal and taking away overload bar, while simultaneously giving every other class a pvp buff I thought he was joking. What are you going to give Stamsorcs in return ZoS? Can we have some identity? Honestly after this, what's the point of being a Stamsorc? How about some class skills? Maybe even a debuff? Something! I guess us Stamsorcs just need to just shut up and accept unmitigated nerfs then???

DrScott59

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting."

Please find a way to do it other than adding cast times. Cast times make for horrible combat -- or shelving of skills.

How about "When your shield is up, your abilities and weapons do 10% less damage." That would allow reactionary use of defense, but do exactly what you desire -- trim damage output when survivability is buffed.

Better yet, why not just address the REAL complaint and prevent stacking of multiple shields. Lots of suggested ways to do that in the thread above, so I won't repeat them here.

I can't think of a worse way to address the problem than adding cast time. Please revert.

BergisMacBride

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

.

I get where you’re coming from, I just don’t really agree with The Devs proposed solution. IMHO, a much more elegant solution would be for the spells to remain instacast but to apply major or minor main to the caster, decreasing their damage output while the shield is up. Shielding would remain inatacast, but come with a measurable cost in terms of damage. Fluid play with shields will still exist but it comes with a choice - survivability vs. damage. Someone might have already posted this idea, but there’s no way I have the time to go through the plethora of threads and posts on this subject, lol.

ManDraKE

@Galarthor is getting exhausting because most of you arguments are fundamentally flawed.

Galarthor wrote: »

First off, shields are essentially heals b/c just like heals they extend your total amount of HP / HP pool. Shield are heals paid upfront! Other mitigation mechanisms in the game do not extend your HP pool, but reduce the damage taken directly (i.e. dodge, block, cloak).

Shields are not like heals, currently shields provide damage mitigation by granting resistences to crits and penetration, thats why small shields like Igneous Shield are useful even when their size is laughable, they prevent crits and negate all enemy penetration. Healing doesn't mitigate damage, you can have all the healing the world and get bursted in a single combo, good look doing that agaisnt shields.

Galarthor wrote: »

Shields are not affected by debuffs because they don't benefit from buffs either. The Buff-Debuff system is designed in such a way that for every buff there is a debuff countering it. It's just a creative choice of the designers to have one kind of "heal" affected by the buff system but not the other one - but at the bottom line it balances out.

Shields size and scaling from stats is designed to not need buffs. You can't counter the extra shield of a guy stacking magika, but you can counter the extra heals of a guy stacking max stam. Also saying that shields are not affected by buffs is not entire true, becuase things like major/minor protection affect shields, fighting a magsorc with pirate skeleton is a waste of time.

Galarthor wrote: »

Shields cannot be critted b/c they themselves don't crit. Unlike heals, which can crit b/c your HP bar can be critted. Again, there is nothing imbalanced here and it's just a creative choice of the designers. It would only have been problematic if one could crit but not be critted or vice versa.

Only damage can crit in this game, and heals are procesed as positive damage by the engine, that's why heals can crit. Shields not being able to crit are not a reason for shield to provide inmunity to crits, rendering useless a key mechanic of the combat like critical hits.
This change is not just about balance, is about fixing bad game design that goes agaisnt the core mechanics of the combat in ESO.

Galarthor wrote: »

Shields are not affected by resistances, meaning they actually take the full force of the attacks. In return their tooltip is (or should be) adjusted upwards accordingly. Again, there is nothing imbalanced here and it's just a creative choice of the designers. And there is nothing imbalanced about it. It's simple math.

As i said before, shields should be affected by resistences and penetration in order to avoid parts of the game that ignore key combat mechanics. Shield size and scaling with resistences should be adjusted to avoid nuking light armor builds and/or overbuffing heavy armor

Galarthor wrote: »

Casting a shield is not necessarily more effective and efficient than casting a heal. B/c you have to use shield proactively you run the risk of "overpaying". That is applying a shield that is not needed and thus wasting time and resources and opportunities to deal damage. That is a kind of risk you don't face when using heals as they are utilized reactively when the HP pool already got drained to a certain degree..

Shields are precasted constantly to provide mitigation, and they can also be used reactively (cc break and re-apply). IF you draw a comparision to stamina heals for example, burst heals are 100% reactively and HoTs are precasted (as magika builds have to keep shields up, stamina builds have to keep vigor up), shields are both.

Galarthor wrote: »

The way to "fix" shields is to:
1) make them scale with light armor b/c heavy armor + large shields is just cancerous.
2) Allowing only 1 shield to be active at any given time (excluding healing ward as that is a heal and would not work otherwise)
3) In return buff the strength of the different shields, b/c 1 shield is not enough.
Optimally:
4) introduce some mechanism to reduce damage taken from multiple targets b/c it is based on absolute values rather than percentage values such as dodge, block, resistances, and cloak.

[/quote]

1) already suggested how to balance that. A proper scaling for resistences, some sort of dimish return curve that will allow shields to be effective with both light and heavy armor
2-3) bad game design. There is no reason to make abilities useless on your bar withouth a clear explanation, specially for the new player. In game where you can only have 10 skills, blocking 1 or 2 skills to prevent shield stacking is an awful idea.
Healing ward is the most broken shield of all, you can recover from 1% hp while getting spammed with excutes. Is the main reason why dueling shield builds is so dumb
4) You can dodge, block and cloak on top of using shields, and you can even block cast shields (and block with the magika pool using an ice staff, many dk's are *** that for example). In the past, the way of killing a sorc was to drain his stamina, now that is imposible unless the sorc is really bad or it has a bad build. With things like shackle, tristat enchats, etc you can easily have 15k+ plus stam pool with enought recovery to dodge, block, cc break for ages.

Also shields mitigation is not flat/absolute, the more damage the attackr has, more mitigation they provide because the biggest damage multiplier in the game is the crit multiplier.

Tannus15

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.

If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.

In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.

Yeah, this is going live. We've seen this before in PTS.
Feedback is irrelevant.

I'm done.

ZoS are determined to keep this one for whatever reason. Time to start focusing on a different class.
Mag sorc was already in bad place before this update and they have only given us nerfs.

usmcjdking

I think a 1 second build-up has been the best solution yet. We know server will tick at least 5 times a second, so a standard 10k ward can establish 2khp worth of shield every .2 seconds.

Minno

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Has there even been a case where ZOS changed a skill from instant cast to 1 sec cast(or more)? I remember a few in which the opposite was done but I can't remember a single time that an instant skill was changed to a casted one, maybe someone can name a few examples?

Blinding flashes to jesus beam would be the only one I can think of. And even more unique is that it went from defensive to offensive as well.

That change alone cause a host of pain points concerning templars that lasted till now (and dare I say never left).

Welcome to the unicorn club, sorcs!

Minalan

@ZOS_RobGarrett

I understand that you are trying to bring sorc shields into one consistent set of rules and game mechanics. Problem is, Magicka Sorcerer was not designed to operate within those mechanics, and it wrecks everything about playing it.

Magicka spec sorcerer is a light armor class. Light armor is required for sustain and damage. It has no mitigation and cannot survive when damage shields can be crit and penetrated. It cannot survive a cast delay in it's (only) primary defense. Magicka sorcs cannot burst heal, or cloak. We cannot reflect projectiles or absorb them with a shimmering shield.

The class needs something 'else' to rely on other than damage shields as a defense. We don't get many class buffs and have zero class debuffs. Our class heal abilities are not in line with any other Magicka classes.

Now that we follow the same rules as everyone else, it may be time to change that. Protection, Vitality, sustain, and better healing for a start. We can look into the stacking cost increase on streak. We can look into adding snare immunity, armor buffs, and DOT cleanses.

TLDR; if sorc is going to be brought into the same 'game mechanics' as anyone else, then we need additional balancing. Tell me if the below chart looks balanced for a class with critable shielding:



Note: Major Berserk is a 'buff' that we can only give to a teammate with an ultimate, and never benefit from directly. It only looks good on paper.

This is where your vision and design have been insufficient.

Facefister

Sorc atleast needs Minor Breach/Fracture
StamSorc needs a class and stamina based spammable, maybe tied to the Minor debuff.

Sigtric

Xsorus wrote: »

I don't think people realize that if they didn't give them a cast time, You could basically make a build right now with insane Mitigation with layered stacking shields while being immune to Crits pretty much.

It would of been easier to just go to a Major/Minor buff system though, Make Annulment Major Shield along with Hardened.

but I understand why they went with the cast time approach if they're going Mitigation Route

If stacking is the issue, make it so shields can't stack. Simple.
No one that I have ever seen asked them to have resistances applied to them. The cast times are simply there to appease the loud people who are bad at pvp as far as I can tell, and it's seriously going to screw up pve end-game.

taco_suave

I'm your average magsorc player, not bad, not great, like to do dungeons and BGs. This shield cast time change is just demoralizing and unnecessary. I will have almost zero ability to stay alive in a BG, let alone Cyr. There will be a variety of vMA and vet dungeon mechanics that will prolly be near impossible for your average magsorc (like me) to tackle with the 1 sec cast on the shield. Of all the creative and interesting ways to have potentially dealt with "shield stacking," this seems like frankly the most dumb, brute force nerf possible. And I don't really have the time or interest to re-roll a new class, so un-sub is likely my option for now.

Sandman929

I'm just amazed at the huge red rubber balls of players telling class creators how the class is supposed to function simply because that's how they're played currently.

arasysb14_ESO

Sandman929 wrote: »

I'm just amazed at the huge red rubber balls of players telling class creators how the class is supposed to function simply because that's how they're played currently.

Probably because some of us are actually playing the game.

WuffyCerulei

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.

If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.

In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.

I think you guys saw my post then! I'm really happy to see someone step out and say something. I truly appreciate the comment and look forward what the meeting with the reps will result.

dagonbeer

Seems like ZOS is stuck in time rift. Shields (or shield stacking) hasn't been a problem in a long time. Come join us in the present heavy stam/bleed meta.

Nifty2g

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.

First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.

The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.

If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.

In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.

With the fast paced gameplay that ESO has, how does a change like this make it through? This is the same sort of garbage that ZOS tried to do with Templars back in the day with a "house". Putting a cast time on a shield whether you can interrupt it or not is putting the player at a severe disadvantage. I just can't understand how you come to this conclusion.

Remove the resistances from shield and allow them to be crittable, that would fit more into this change, you're trying to justify the resistances to shield for the channel. Players need to be able to cast their shield during battle if they need. Now if you're low health, a channel is going to kill you.

I'm not even going to get into the PvE side of things where you need to block cast shield otherwise you're going to get ***. The change is just ridiculous.

@ZOS_RobGarrett

Juhasow

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

Hey all,
The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic

How ? How cast time makes it more strategic in this case but does not in case of spammable heals for example ? After all heals are also scaled from offensive statistics so people also increase their dmg output and survivality at the same time and heals can even crit. By this logic people shouldn't be able to deal dmg while blocking because it's basicly keeping offense and defense at the same time.

In this game most of the defense is scaled from offensive statistics and just removing auto crit resist from shields while giving them user resistances forces people to more deliberate and strategic choices since now they'll have to decide wheter to choose increasing resistances or other statistics , adding cast time is completly unjustified and whole that explanation feels like something thrown to calm down community but completly without the sense if You think about it. There are much simplier ways to lower shields effectiveness in PvP then adding cast time which basicly destroys the reason why many people started to play this game and magicka classes which is smooth and dynamic combat.