PvP new Shields

Skander

Can actually someone do the math for me.

Are shields actually getting buffed for pvp? I have this weird feeling.

Synapsis123

depends on your build. If you're a healthplar running blazing then its obviously a buff....

if you're a sorc with 53k magicka and 20k health then its a nerf

ErMurazor

My raidbomber will get a 15k shield now from anulment in PvP instead of 7k before. Sure it will crit and stuff but its still a buff. Thanks ZoS

Skander

God *** dammit ZoS.

lucky_dutch

Synapsis123 wrote: »

depends on your build. If you're a healthplar running blazing then its obviously a buff....

if you're a sorc with 53k magicka and 20k health then its a nerf

Which is ironic because apparently one of their aims with this patch was to give people a way to kill healers in PvP.

ccmedaddy

ErMurazor wrote: »

My raidbomber will get a 15k shield now from anulment in PvP instead of 7k before. Sure it will crit and stuff but its still a buff. Thanks ZoS

Your bomber has 30k health?

rumple9

Shield breaker ftw -watch those sorcs melt

ErMurazor

ccmedaddy wrote: »

ErMurazor wrote: »

My raidbomber will get a 15k shield now from anulment in PvP instead of 7k before. Sure it will crit and stuff but its still a buff. Thanks ZoS

Your bomber has 30k health?

Yes

katorga

lucky_dutch wrote: »

Synapsis123 wrote: »

depends on your build. If you're a healthplar running blazing then its obviously a buff....

if you're a sorc with 53k magicka and 20k health then its a nerf

Which is ironic because apparently one of their aims with this patch was to give people a way to kill healers in PvP.

Health based shields are already gimped at less than 50% health, Blazing is 30%.

Derra

ErMurazor wrote: »

ccmedaddy wrote: »

ErMurazor wrote: »

My raidbomber will get a 15k shield now from anulment in PvP instead of 7k before. Sure it will crit and stuff but its still a buff. Thanks ZoS

Your bomber has 30k health?

Yes

And the magica to get a 15k shield aswell?

It´s not like you won´t need the statpool to reach that shield in the first place...

Syiccal

this doesn't mean your sheild will double lol. if you don't have a 15k shield now you won't have one when it goes live

ErMurazor wrote: »

My raidbomber will get a 15k shield now from anulment in PvP instead of 7k before. Sure it will crit and stuff but its still a buff. Thanks ZoS

Syiccal

how can ppl get this so wrong.. it's behond believe...an increase in health will NOT increase shield strength, it just allows you to use more of the shield which is scaled from your max mag

DDuke

Shields are stronger if:

Your Armor Damage Mitigation+Crit Resistance > Opponent's Crit Modifier divided by Crit Chance


Assuming shield strength remains around the same (unlikely, since you have to invest in some health now too).

Syiccal

^^ I don't think you necessarily need to invest in health as shileds will still sit for a standard sorc around 8-9k each BUT id imagine most sorcs now will run impenetrable + maybe a couple of protective jewllery so shield strength may seem lower but it will be able to take more dmg if that makes sense

Apherius

ErMurazor wrote: »

My raidbomber will get a 15k shield now from anulment in PvP instead of 7k before. Sure it will crit and stuff but its still a buff. Thanks ZoS

It mean your raid bomber have 30K health, and 85 714 magicka if you use dampen, impressive ! let's say 80K magicka if you put some point in bastion instead ( or 62 500 magicka if you use hardened ward ) it's still impressive.
(0,35* 85714)/2 = 15K shield ( dampen)
(0,48*62500)/2 = 15K shield ( hardened)

Tell us about your build

Biro123

Syiccal wrote: »

^^ I don't think you necessarily need to invest in health as shileds will still sit for a standard sorc around 8-9k each BUT id imagine most sorcs now will run impenetrable + maybe a couple of protective jewllery so shield strength may seem lower but it will be able to take more dmg if that makes sense

Do you know how much crit resist is needed to fully mitigate a CP crit?

My gut feel is that it will take a lot more resists and a lot of crit resist for shields to have equivalent strength. But to get that, sustain and damage will suffer a lot.
Shield will also be smaller, so to be truly equal, they either need to put even more into resists/Impen or run a ton of health, and enough mag to max that shield. Which is a further hit on sustain and damage.
But then with so much health and mitigation, will shields even be needed outside of an oh-crap button? I suspect not, which will help with sustain, but what we ultimately have is a tank.

So if you want to deal damage, they will be a lot weaker. If you want to be a tank, they will be stronger. I don't think there is a middle ground.

Syiccal

Biro123 wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

^^ I don't think you necessarily need to invest in health as shileds will still sit for a standard sorc around 8-9k each BUT id imagine most sorcs now will run impenetrable + maybe a couple of protective jewllery so shield strength may seem lower but it will be able to take more dmg if that makes sense

Do you know how much crit resist is needed to fully mitigate a CP crit?

My gut feel is that it will take a lot more resists and a lot of crit resist for shields to have equivalent strength. But to get that, sustain and damage will suffer a lot.
Shield will also be smaller, so to be truly equal, they either need to put even more into resists/Impen or run a ton of health, and enough mag to max that shield. Which is a further hit on sustain and damage.
But then with so much health and mitigation, will shields even be needed outside of an oh-crap button? I suspect not, which will help with sustain, but what we ultimately have is a tank.

So if you want to deal damage, they will be a lot weaker. If you want to be a tank, they will be stronger. I don't think there is a middle ground.

to mitigate a base modifier of 50% crit you need 3300 crit resist and to fully mitigate a nb for example you need around 5200 crit resist so yea in order to mitigate that dmg a sorc will need to give up dmg/sustain, but I can't see most players building past the 3300

Mudcrabber

Today's changes, applying the cap after Battle Spirit instead of before, make it so they're really only nerfed in PvE, if I'm reading the notes correctly.

Biro123

Syiccal wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

^^ I don't think you necessarily need to invest in health as shileds will still sit for a standard sorc around 8-9k each BUT id imagine most sorcs now will run impenetrable + maybe a couple of protective jewllery so shield strength may seem lower but it will be able to take more dmg if that makes sense

Do you know how much crit resist is needed to fully mitigate a CP crit?

My gut feel is that it will take a lot more resists and a lot of crit resist for shields to have equivalent strength. But to get that, sustain and damage will suffer a lot.
Shield will also be smaller, so to be truly equal, they either need to put even more into resists/Impen or run a ton of health, and enough mag to max that shield. Which is a further hit on sustain and damage.
But then with so much health and mitigation, will shields even be needed outside of an oh-crap button? I suspect not, which will help with sustain, but what we ultimately have is a tank.

So if you want to deal damage, they will be a lot weaker. If you want to be a tank, they will be stronger. I don't think there is a middle ground.

to mitigate a base modifier of 50% crit you need 3300 crit resist and to fully mitigate a nb for example you need around 5200 crit resist so yea in order to mitigate that dmg a sorc will need to give up dmg/sustain, but I can't see most players building past the 3300

Me neither, probably even less - which still makes them 30% weaker vs a crit (assuming light armour and the attacker having a bit of penetration). Not forgetting that are simply a smaller size too.

MashmalloMan

Syiccal wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

^^ I don't think you necessarily need to invest in health as shileds will still sit for a standard sorc around 8-9k each BUT id imagine most sorcs now will run impenetrable + maybe a couple of protective jewllery so shield strength may seem lower but it will be able to take more dmg if that makes sense

Do you know how much crit resist is needed to fully mitigate a CP crit?

My gut feel is that it will take a lot more resists and a lot of crit resist for shields to have equivalent strength. But to get that, sustain and damage will suffer a lot.
Shield will also be smaller, so to be truly equal, they either need to put even more into resists/Impen or run a ton of health, and enough mag to max that shield. Which is a further hit on sustain and damage.
But then with so much health and mitigation, will shields even be needed outside of an oh-crap button? I suspect not, which will help with sustain, but what we ultimately have is a tank.

So if you want to deal damage, they will be a lot weaker. If you want to be a tank, they will be stronger. I don't think there is a middle ground.

to mitigate a base modifier of 50% crit you need 3300 crit resist and to fully mitigate a nb for example you need around 5200 crit resist so yea in order to mitigate that dmg a sorc will need to give up dmg/sustain, but I can't see most players building past the 3300

Think about resistances too. A magicka sorc can have major/minor ward and resolve. Use 5 light 2 heavy chest/legs. Impen traits.

People usually don't have enough penetration to fully penetrate resistances and if they do, they've given up other bonuses to possibly over penetrate targets, especially in no cp bg. Crit's are RNG dependent besides some abilities that guarantee crit.

ZOS wanted mag users to make more of a choice on their builds for defence/shields and they accomplished that. You're maybe giving up some well fitted traits and a 2% magicka modifier (if you did 2 heavy). It's deffinitely a nerf, but it's not as bad as a 1 sec cast time that everyone fought against. Even people who don't use shields agreed the cast time was a bad decision.

Mayrael

Syiccal wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

^^ I don't think you necessarily need to invest in health as shileds will still sit for a standard sorc around 8-9k each BUT id imagine most sorcs now will run impenetrable + maybe a couple of protective jewllery so shield strength may seem lower but it will be able to take more dmg if that makes sense

Do you know how much crit resist is needed to fully mitigate a CP crit?

My gut feel is that it will take a lot more resists and a lot of crit resist for shields to have equivalent strength. But to get that, sustain and damage will suffer a lot.
Shield will also be smaller, so to be truly equal, they either need to put even more into resists/Impen or run a ton of health, and enough mag to max that shield. Which is a further hit on sustain and damage.
But then with so much health and mitigation, will shields even be needed outside of an oh-crap button? I suspect not, which will help with sustain, but what we ultimately have is a tank.

So if you want to deal damage, they will be a lot weaker. If you want to be a tank, they will be stronger. I don't think there is a middle ground.

to mitigate a base modifier of 50% crit you need 3300 crit resist and to fully mitigate a nb for example you need around 5200 crit resist so yea in order to mitigate that dmg a sorc will need to give up dmg/sustain, but I can't see most players building past the 3300

That's true but only against NB which is the only class that can have crit on demand. Don't forget that versus others, shields will take a bit less damage when not crited this can lead to situation where against low crit chance build shields will be stronger. In general, high critical chance got buffed in PvP.

Mudcrabber wrote: »

Today's changes, applying the cap after Battle Spirit instead of before, make it so they're really only nerfed in PvE, if I'm reading the notes correctly.

Yup. This is just bug fix.

Emma_Overload

I feel like I lose 10 IQ points every time I come to the forums...

NOBODY'S SHIELDS ARE GETTING BUFFED. In fact, anyone with much less than 4100 crit resistance is going to free AP if they depend on shields.

MashmalloMan

Emma_Overload wrote: »

I feel like I lose 10 IQ points every time I come to the forums...

NOBODY'S SHIELDS ARE GETTING BUFFED. In fact, anyone with much less than 4100 crit resistance is going to free AP if they depend on shields.

In pvp bg, there is no cp. You can have 15k+ resist + and +1200 crit resist against builds that have next to no penetration or crit chance. Heavy/med have no penetration, lover mundus gives 2752 penetration (no divines), sharpened weapons give a low pen and you miss out on other useful traits, penetration builds can over penetrate meaning they aren't great in every single fight, crit chance is non existent on heavy builds which is apparently the meta.

BG counts for large chunk of pvp. PVE shields were buffed somewhat because pve doesn't crit or penetrate.

Tank builds will see the largest benefit.

In some cases there are buffs, just depends what builds your looking at.

The whole change was not suppose to be a buff in the first place so the fact that you can find upsides at all is great. If you are referring to people thinking their shield size will be "Larger" then yes, that's pretty funny.

umagon

Shields on tanks did get buffed in some cases quite a bit; because the damage is now reduced by resistances. There are interesting combos like hardening enchantment + infused + 35k stam/mag to drive reviving barrier to about 15k in pvp. That 15K will be taking less damage it increases its effectiveness in comparison to what is on live because it will take longer for an opponent to drop the shield once their critical damage is nullified. It also makes shielded assault a bit more useful. However, I think they need to drop the stun on shielded assault and either lower the cost or increase the damage shield value and duration.

Galarthor

Mayrael wrote: »

That's true but only against NB which is the only class that can have crit on demand. Don't forget that versus others, shields will take a bit less damage when not crited this can lead to situation where against low crit chance build shields will be stronger. In general, high critical chance got buffed in PvP.

But 30% crit chance is pretty standard.
And you have to factor in the increased damage of Crits coming from the CP system. So it's more like everybody is at > 60% crit damage in a CP environment. But unlike other builds, sorcs will not only have to spent their CPs on resistences but also on shield strength especially since there is a CP star that reduces the effectiveness of shields. That means sorcs have to spread out their red CP across more stars than other classes ... especially stamina whose dodge and block automatically scales with CPs.

So the critable shields are a hefty nerf. And the small percentage of damage that might get mitigated by resis > penetration is not going to make up for that. 5% less non-crit damage is not going to make up for 60% or 70% additional crit damage which even at a 30% chance still translates into 18% to 21% more damage take ... if not more, depending opponents crit multiplier and crit chance. So get ready to bend over and drop you pants ... or wear a full-body chastity belt aka Heavy Armor.

DDuke

Galarthor wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

That's true but only against NB which is the only class that can have crit on demand. Don't forget that versus others, shields will take a bit less damage when not crited this can lead to situation where against low crit chance build shields will be stronger. In general, high critical chance got buffed in PvP.

But 30% crit chance is pretty standard.
And you have to factor in the increased damage of Crits coming from the CP system. So it's more like everybody is at > 60% crit damage in a CP environment. But unlike other builds, sorcs will not only have to spent their CPs on resistences but also on shield strength especially since there is a CP star that reduces the effectiveness of shields. That means sorcs have to spread out their red CP across more stars than other classes ... especially stamina whose dodge and block automatically scales with CPs.

So the critable shields are a hefty nerf. And the small percentage of damage that might get mitigated by resis > penetration is not going to make up for that. 5% less non-crit damage is not going to make up for 60% or 70% additional crit damage which even at a 30% chance still translates into 18% to 21% more damage take ... if not more, depending opponents crit multiplier and crit chance. So get ready to bend over and drop you pants ... or wear a full-body chastity belt aka Heavy Armor.

In noCP it'd look something like this: 50% Crit Modifier-27% (7 Impen)=23% Crit Modifier*0,3(30% crit chance)=6,9% more damage.

Get 6,9% mitigation from armor (i.e. 4568 armor after opponent's penetration) and you're taking on average the same damage to shields as on Live. Next, keep in mind that many things don't crit at all (e.g. proc sets), these are now significantly weaker against dmg shields unless you have 0 mitigation.


Some handy numbers to consider for Murkmire dmg shield theorycrafting:
Light armor in 5/1/1 gets 15121 armor (22.841% mitigation) with Major Ward/Resolve, 9841 (14.866% mitigation) without Major Ward/Resolve (or with Major Fracture/Breach on you) & 4561 armor (6.890% mitigation) without Major Ward/Resolve & with Major Fracture/Breach on you.


TLDR: in most scenarios damage taken should be less than before, though you may experience bigger spikes if opponent gets lucky landing crits (unless you have more mitigation than opponent's remaining crit modifier, in which case you take less dmg).

lucky_dutch

Marshall1289 wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

I feel like I lose 10 IQ points every time I come to the forums...

NOBODY'S SHIELDS ARE GETTING BUFFED. In fact, anyone with much less than 4100 crit resistance is going to free AP if they depend on shields.

In pvp bg, there is no cp. You can have 15k+ resist + and +1200 crit resist against builds that have next to no penetration or crit chance. Heavy/med have no penetration, lover mundus gives 2752 penetration (no divines), sharpened weapons give a low pen and you miss out on other useful traits, penetration builds can over penetrate meaning they aren't great in every single fight, crit chance is non existent on heavy builds which is apparently the meta.

BG counts for large chunk of pvp. PVE shields were buffed somewhat because pve doesn't crit or penetrate.

Tank builds will see the largest benefit.

In some cases there are buffs, just depends what builds your looking at.

The whole change was not suppose to be a buff in the first place so the fact that you can find upsides at all is great. If you are referring to people thinking their shield size will be "Larger" then yes, that's pretty funny.

I agree that BGs count too and balance there is important but I disagree that you can’t have pen with heavy or medium. Just pick Spriggans.

A Light Armor sheild user is now a lot less resistant to damage than before Murkmire. This is just a fact.

The healing ward change along makes sure of that.

Galarthor

Thanks for the exact numbers. I only calculated them roughly in my head and forgot to take the crit resistence into account.

But the issue in CP environment remains:
The way reds CPs are currently set up, Sorcs don't really have points available to put them into resistences and crit resistences.
On the opponent's side you will have your standard 50% crit multiplier + 17% (downward rounded mean of 15% to 20%) CP crit bonus. That's 67% - 27% = 40%; 40% * 39% crit chance = 15.6% additional damage.

The higher penetration available means that we are somewhere around 7k effective resistences, which provides less than 15.6% mitigation. Even if you assume additional 5% crit mitigation through CP you'd still get 13.7% additional damage against 8% to 9% mitigation.

The difference might not seem that big, but is a nerf if you are not in heavy armor and when you factor in the smaller shield sizes it is quite a hit sorcs take. Ofc you can still reach the same shield size as before, but that comes at the expense of spell damage or sustain, and in both areas sorcs are already lacking.

katorga

Yeah, but you can still stack shields so the nerf cries will continue regardless of the numbers.

Overall, I can make better use of shields respec'ing to stam sorc and using Bone Shield or proc shields, where they will act as straight health buffs with zero changes damage output. They are already bumping the caps, doing an extra 20% for pets, and pet damage immunity kludges for pve. They know they screwed this up royally and broke the entire class.

DDuke

Galarthor wrote: »

Thanks for the exact numbers. I only calculated them roughly in my head and forgot to take the crit resistence into account.

But the issue in CP environment remains:
The way reds CPs are currently set up, Sorcs don't really have points available to put them into resistences and crit resistences.
On the opponent's side you will have your standard 50% crit multiplier + 17% (downward rounded mean of 15% to 20%) CP crit bonus. That's 67% - 27% = 40%; 40% * 39% crit chance = 15.6% additional damage.

The higher penetration available means that we are somewhere around 7k effective resistences, which provides less than 15.6% mitigation. Even if you assume additional 5% crit mitigation through CP you'd still get 13.7% additional damage against 8% to 9% mitigation.

The difference might not seem that big, but is a nerf if you are not in heavy armor and when you factor in the smaller shield sizes it is quite a hit sorcs take. Ofc you can still reach the same shield size as before, but that comes at the expense of spell damage or sustain, and in both areas sorcs are already lacking.

CP is different, yes. Assuming you put 48 into Resistant (optimal for all builds, you want 72 Ironclad 48 Resistant to get the valuable 120p passive while allocating points into useful resistances) you'd get 18% crit resistance.

Meanwhile most builds will have between 20-23% crit damage, which leads to discrepancy between CP & non-CP before we start even considering the 9% higher crit chance from Perfect Strike/Spell Precision.


Of course all other builds are similarly affected by it, but dmg shield builds didn't have to worry about that before so comparing to past state they'll probably be worse in CP and roughly about the same (or even tankier than before) on non-CP.

Worth noting is that there's also a lot of passives that make shields stronger on certain classes or races (DK gets 3300 more spell resistance, Breton gets 3960 spell resistance etc etc), but mostly against magicka builds only (which on the other hand also have the additional 4884 penetration from Light Armor & likely +10% penetration for destro abilities).


One thing is sure: theorycrafting around dmg shields got a lot more interesting lol

Galarthor

DDuke wrote: »

Of course all other builds are similarly affected by it, but dmg shield builds didn't have to worry about that before so comparing to past state they'll probably be worse in CP and roughly about the same (or even tankier than before) on non-CP.

Difference is, these other builds don't have to worry about a shattering blow like CP star. In the past that was not so much of an issue b/c we could neglect the crit and resistences for the most part. But now we have to consider them just like everyone else but also have to take into account shattering blows.

No other build has a hard counter in the CP system for their main defensive tool. Even the reduced healing CP is not as powerful as shattering blows b/c it requires the opponent to have major or minor defile on you. Shattering Blows on the other hand gets automatically applied to all types of damage 100% of the time.