Just some thoughts on shields

Biro123

Mostly from a PVP perspective..

Ok, Ignoring the cast-time till later, the biggest changes are resists + crit.

1. Harness/Dampen.. This is the LIGHT-ARMOUR skill and can only be used with light armour. Being crittable but without heavy resists to add durability will make this shield not last the time it took to cast it. The synergy isn't there, so outside of PVE, or using fortified brass, I feel the shield becomes useless.

2. Hardened Ward. The main class defence for sorcs. It adds a little uniqueness in that it is a strong shield, which can be used with heavy armour - and so may last longer than the time taken to cast it. Also heavy means it won't be needed up 100% of the time.. Could potentially be quite strong with enough resists - BUT magsorcs have real trouble sustaining in heavy - I mean, I'm not sure if, once getting some resists, putting every single set/glyph/enchant/mundus/food etc. into recov will barely be enough. Damage will be shot. I mean its already poor with the sustain needed for light... So what are the options for sorc?
a) Maybe stick with light to help with the sustain - but will need to run fortified brass. Compared to the common shackle/lich build, this means losing shackle - ie, damage, stam, mag (and therefore shield strength) and sustain - both mag and stam). To make up for the mag sustain loss - will need to drop spell-damage from jewels.. The already average damage will tank.
b) Go heavy - Lich/Shackle - still has to deal with a huge sustain hit - so will need to drop spelldamage enchants in favour of sustain... Already loses pen and crit, so damage will tank. Alternatively, drop shackle for a full mag-sustain set... but lose on the stam/stam sustain - AND damage... again - damage tanks..

Basically the result is simply a huge damage nerf to sorcs.

3. Other wards.. By these I mean the (usually) smaller shields - like bone-shield, igneous, blazing shield, psijic blocking, shield glyph, shield procs... loads of them.. These will still be instant, but suddenly become a LOT stronger on builds that are already using heavy/high-impen (and can sustain in them).. These can also VERY easily add more (infused shield glyph?). Result will be that already tanky setups (mostly stam) become MORE tanky. As a result, they could probably add in a bit more damage instead..!


Now the cast time... I get that the intention is to make it harder to spam shields - and that their use should be more tactical - but that only works when they don't NEED to be spammed. The reality now is that shields must be spammed to allow a player to survive - and they already have a VERY fine balance point in that as soon as the 'shield-per-second' is less than the incoming 'damage-per-second', the player dies. At the moment, it is already very close o that point for a single opponent. How can it be tactical when it NEEDS to be spammed?
I can only ever see this approach working if there were some way to have a shield last much, much longer.
Imagine Vigour with a cast time? Sounds terrible, right - but at least it only needs to be done once every 5 seconds. This is the kind of mechanic that could potentially be made into that kind of 'tactical' use ..

So, should one of the shields potentially become a 'shield over time' instead? Instead of giving 12k shields immediately, give 2k per second for 5 seconds (not stacking with itself). Its one way to have a shield last longer, but without directly increasing its strength... and the other be a 'burst shield'..(not sure which) Have one of them have cast time, but not both. (again not sure which).. That way, combining them may give the survivability needed to strategically use the one with the cast time....


Basically, what it boils down to is that PVP builds NEED to have some level of survivability. Tying shield effectiveness to resists and impen will it VERY difficult to create effective light armour builds with enough survivability - and the damage/sustain hit to sorcs, imho, will pretty much push them to give up on doing damage completely and go all-tank(but without much utility). Is the intention really to make what was always a damage-focussed class into a full-on tank? I'm sure it isn't, but I think that's what will happen.

Basically, shield mechanics need a further change, and if they stay resist-based - sorcs need a shed-load of sustain buffs to stay viable as a PVP damage dealer(can't speak too much for other classes).