Can Someone Explain Why The Damage Shield Changes Matter?

Elusiin

15k health -> 20k with battle spirit...
Shields limited to 50% of health, so 10k dmg shields...
Shield tooltip cut by 50% with battle spirit...

Therefore, you would need a 20k tooltip on your damage shield, without battle spirit, in order to be able to hit the cap with battle spirit... I don't know how anyone could get enough magicka for a damage shield that strong. If anything this is a buff to damage shields, as now they stack with major defense buffs right?

I'm only asking because maybe I've never had a damage shield that great as a magicka user. If it's possible to easily exceed that, what sets are meta for magicka users?

LeHarrt91

DanteMR1995 wrote: »

15k health -> 20k with battle spirit...
Shields limited to 50% of health, so 10k dmg shields...
Shield tooltip cut by 50% with battle spirit...

Therefore, you would need a 20k tooltip on your damage shield, without battle spirit, in order to be able to hit the cap with battle spirit... I don't know how anyone could get enough magicka for a damage shield that strong. If anything this is a buff to damage shields, as now they stack with major defense buffs right?

I'm only asking because maybe I've never had a damage shield that great as a magicka user. If it's possible to easily exceed that, what sets are meta for magicka users?

They changed how Battle spirit affects shields, its calculated before now.

lucky_Sage

Cp Sorcs shield stacking most would about 15k to 20k shields could be higher if stacking max mag for a shield stacking sorc. Then for magden and magblade who could earlier reach almost 50k max mag if using dampen mag morph would be getting about 10k to 15k

xericdx

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

DanteMR1995 wrote: »

15k health -> 20k with battle spirit...
Shields limited to 50% of health, so 10k dmg shields...
Shield tooltip cut by 50% with battle spirit...

Therefore, you would need a 20k tooltip on your damage shield, without battle spirit, in order to be able to hit the cap with battle spirit... I don't know how anyone could get enough magicka for a damage shield that strong. If anything this is a buff to damage shields, as now they stack with major defense buffs right?

I'm only asking because maybe I've never had a damage shield that great as a magicka user. If it's possible to easily exceed that, what sets are meta for magicka users?

They changed how Battle spirit affects shields, its calculated before now.

Shields were wrongly affected by Battle Spirit pre-cap before during a previous PTS patch but it was a mistake and they fixed it. I haven't tested it but it should be like the first post said, thus in "favour" of "stronger" shield.

Also, shield stacking not affected.

The main change is that shields are affected by resistance and can be crit'ed.

Biro123

There are two real impacts from a sorc PVP perspective.

1. It stops max-magica/low health builds being useful
I've had builds before with 55k+ magika and only 16k health (using max mag/mag recov drinks). These have a 15k hardened ward - which is obviously a lot more than half health (8k).
Now Its not worth having over around 40k mag without also pumping up health (which obviously limits what you can put into mag)

2. The biggest change, which you didn't mention at all is crits affecting shields.
It means that sorcs have to include a significant amount of both crit resist and armour resists into their build to make shields last long enough to be worth casting. This means giving up stats elsewhere - ie less sustain AND less damage. So imho, it's overall a huge nerf to damage for most PVP sorcs. It also hugely limits what you can build into health/magika

Another impact for anyone not relying on shields as a primary defence - and already using high resists/impen is that the myriad of smaller shields will be stronger on these setups.

leepalmer95

Its crits making the already paper shields even more paper in open world.

Raraaku

Couldn't give you reasoning from PvP perspective. But any time a player goes from being able to be cast a shield and absorb at least a single one-shot mechanic, perhaps even 2, to having their shield being barely able to sustain one such mechanic can be understandable frustrating.

Basically, this change did 2 things for Sorcerer and Nightblade ranged magicka DPS players:

1) The skill floor for both of those specs has dropped by quite a bit. Messing up can, and will, have much more severe consequences for those players as they no longer have the ability to recover and shrug off a mistake as if it didn't happen. So now the classes are have to be played more carefully and deliberately.

2) Having a good healer in group content is now much more important. I personally view this as a good thing for Healers since a big pain point among the healer community is that they don't feel as though they are needed within group content, due to the ability of magicka DPS players having such a potent defensive tool with spell shields.

People will adjust over time, this cycle of uproar happens every update when things are changed.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

lucky_Sage

Stam builds are going to shred thru shield so much now with bleeds crit against them now

BlackMadara

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

@BlackMadara
What stamblade runs with 4k pen? That is an absurdly low number, especially considering your spammable gives you major fracture, not to mention, a decent chunk of them are running spriggans...

MalagenR

It's *** utter BS that NB get a tooltip ultimate that can hit for 19k... That is so absurd. It's instant cast from melee range so hard to doge / block - how the hell are we supposed to survive any competent player?

BlackMadara

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

@BlackMadara
What stamblade runs with 4k pen? That is an absurdly low number, especially considering your spammable gives you major fracture, not to mention, a decent chunk of them are running spriggans...

Good point, I was considering the general combo of ambush, incap. And the build I referenced is clever alch, bone pirate. With fracture debuff, crit is 24% more damage, and non crit is 14% less damage. If a sNB is running spriggans and a weapon damage set, they are a really squishy all in one ganker. They are probably going to attck you with shields down anyway, now or premurk you are dead.

The point is, you are weaker against crits, stronger against non crits. Like everyone else.

Lord-Otto

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

@BlackMadara
What stamblade runs with 4k pen? That is an absurdly low number, especially considering your spammable gives you major fracture, not to mention, a decent chunk of them are running spriggans...

Good point, I was considering the general combo of ambush, incap. And the build I referenced is clever alch, bone pirate. With fracture debuff, crit is 24% more damage, and non crit is 14% less damage. If a sNB is running spriggans and a weapon damage set, they are a really squishy all in one ganker. They are probably going to attck you with shields down anyway, now or premurk you are dead.

The point is, you are weaker against crits, stronger against non crits. Like everyone else.

Sharpened weapon, my friend. This is now, once again, the best trait. Well, unless you run an infused enchantment build, it seems. Can't say, haven't tested.
But Sharpened outperforms Nirn by a long shot now. With 5k from Fracture, 4k from the plenty CP we have, and 3k from Sharpened, you have fully penetrated a light user's 10k physical, plus almost half of the Major Resolve buff.
Keeping up the buff for 4-5% mitigation is a rough deal if you're not a Nightblade. And on the other side, wasting 3-4% damage on overpenetration against an opponent NOT keeping up the buff is not much of a sacrifice.

Spriggan's isn't even needed. But if you do run it, you can put more penetration CP points into other damage stars (Shattering Blows), potentially becoming very nasty. I would conclude (cautiously, as I haven't tested yet), that light armor shield users did take a noticeable hit, crit and non-crit received. It's just very easy and efficient to build for damage now. The interesting choice between Sharpened and Nirn is gone. But we already know from Crystal Frags, that whenever ZOS want to diversify build choices, like Frags vs Blast, they utterly destroy one choice instead and create a new meta. Thanks, Eric, btw, have been enjoying my last year of Master Flame Reach meta...

idk

The shield nerf affected PvE much more than PvP. The main change in PvE is we can crit shields but also resistance comes into play first.

Azurya

we run so much heal in our army, we don´t use shields in Cyro-war.

and my magicka users in PVE don´t used it at all, so I have no problems

BlackMadara

Lord-Otto wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

@BlackMadara
What stamblade runs with 4k pen? That is an absurdly low number, especially considering your spammable gives you major fracture, not to mention, a decent chunk of them are running spriggans...

Good point, I was considering the general combo of ambush, incap. And the build I referenced is clever alch, bone pirate. With fracture debuff, crit is 24% more damage, and non crit is 14% less damage. If a sNB is running spriggans and a weapon damage set, they are a really squishy all in one ganker. They are probably going to attck you with shields down anyway, now or premurk you are dead.

The point is, you are weaker against crits, stronger against non crits. Like everyone else.

Sharpened weapon, my friend. This is now, once again, the best trait. Well, unless you run an infused enchantment build, it seems. Can't say, haven't tested.
But Sharpened outperforms Nirn by a long shot now. With 5k from Fracture, 4k from the plenty CP we have, and 3k from Sharpened, you have fully penetrated a light user's 10k physical, plus almost half of the Major Resolve buff.
Keeping up the buff for 4-5% mitigation is a rough deal if you're not a Nightblade. And on the other side, wasting 3-4% damage on overpenetration against an opponent NOT keeping up the buff is not much of a sacrifice.

Spriggan's isn't even needed. But if you do run it, you can put more penetration CP points into other damage stars (Shattering Blows), potentially becoming very nasty. I would conclude (cautiously, as I haven't tested yet), that light armor shield users did take a noticeable hit, crit and non-crit received. It's just very easy and efficient to build for damage now. The interesting choice between Sharpened and Nirn is gone. But we already know from Crystal Frags, that whenever ZOS want to diversify build choices, like Frags vs Blast, they utterly destroy one choice instead and create a new meta. Thanks, Eric, btw, have been enjoying my last year of Master Flame Reach meta...

Not able to atm, I'll actually run the numbers later, but there is a tradeoff. Nirn gives more healing on that bar, and most of the time the dps increase (for pvp) isnt significant. Dont have a specific comparison for sharpened vs nirn, but I do for BSW (630 SD proc) vs spinner (5% spell pen).

On average, bsw proc allows 4% more damage than spinners for my build. No proc then spinners adds 4% more damage (same spell damage with no proc and slightly more max mag due to willpower front bar staff utilizing the utility of having a proc set back bar).

That's on average. Vs a build with 29k spell resist, BSW with proc is 2% more damage, and spinners is 5% more damage without the proc. Due to the nature of pen (flat percentage increase in damage) it is better vs heavier armored targets. Bsw proc also adds about 800 more healing to power lash HoT. Trade offs are there, depending on playstyle, goal, and opponent.

susmitds

MalagenR wrote: »

It's *** utter BS that NB get a tooltip ultimate that can hit for 19k... That is so absurd. It's instant cast from melee range so hard to doge / block - how the hell are we supposed to survive any competent player?

@MalagenR The NB will have to give up everything to touch those stats. Zero sustain, zero mitigation, raw damage gank build. These builds can kill any non-tank in matter of seconds, but die to the slight touch. 12k-15k is the usual tooltip.
The real NB burst is the bow proc, which can hit 20k fully buffed in reasonable builds. I know particular magblade gank build with 32k bow tooltip.

Lord-Otto

BlackMadara wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

@BlackMadara
What stamblade runs with 4k pen? That is an absurdly low number, especially considering your spammable gives you major fracture, not to mention, a decent chunk of them are running spriggans...

Good point, I was considering the general combo of ambush, incap. And the build I referenced is clever alch, bone pirate. With fracture debuff, crit is 24% more damage, and non crit is 14% less damage. If a sNB is running spriggans and a weapon damage set, they are a really squishy all in one ganker. They are probably going to attck you with shields down anyway, now or premurk you are dead.

The point is, you are weaker against crits, stronger against non crits. Like everyone else.

Sharpened weapon, my friend. This is now, once again, the best trait. Well, unless you run an infused enchantment build, it seems. Can't say, haven't tested.
But Sharpened outperforms Nirn by a long shot now. With 5k from Fracture, 4k from the plenty CP we have, and 3k from Sharpened, you have fully penetrated a light user's 10k physical, plus almost half of the Major Resolve buff.
Keeping up the buff for 4-5% mitigation is a rough deal if you're not a Nightblade. And on the other side, wasting 3-4% damage on overpenetration against an opponent NOT keeping up the buff is not much of a sacrifice.

Spriggan's isn't even needed. But if you do run it, you can put more penetration CP points into other damage stars (Shattering Blows), potentially becoming very nasty. I would conclude (cautiously, as I haven't tested yet), that light armor shield users did take a noticeable hit, crit and non-crit received. It's just very easy and efficient to build for damage now. The interesting choice between Sharpened and Nirn is gone. But we already know from Crystal Frags, that whenever ZOS want to diversify build choices, like Frags vs Blast, they utterly destroy one choice instead and create a new meta. Thanks, Eric, btw, have been enjoying my last year of Master Flame Reach meta...

Not able to atm, I'll actually run the numbers later, but there is a tradeoff. Nirn gives more healing on that bar, and most of the time the dps increase (for pvp) isnt significant. Dont have a specific comparison for sharpened vs nirn, but I do for BSW (630 SD proc) vs spinner (5% spell pen).

On average, bsw proc allows 4% more damage than spinners for my build. No proc then spinners adds 4% more damage (same spell damage with no proc and slightly more max mag due to willpower front bar staff utilizing the utility of having a proc set back bar).

That's on average. Vs a build with 29k spell resist, BSW with proc is 2% more damage, and spinners is 5% more damage without the proc. Due to the nature of pen (flat percentage increase in damage) it is better vs heavier armored targets. Bsw proc also adds about 800 more healing to power lash HoT. Trade offs are there, depending on playstyle, goal, and opponent.

The buff to heals from Nirn is an argument, if you're running your heals on the offensive bar, that is true.
For light armor users, penetration is a bit less important, as the passive alrrady gives a sizable chunk of it. I was referring to a stam player trying to penetrate a light armor user.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

BlackMadara wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

So I took my standard sorc build into PVP last night. My shield size was roughly the same. I moved all points out of bastion, and my hardened ward hit the cap and my harness magic was just a hair under it. I used all the points I typically put in bastion and put them into other trees (lots of crit resist). I also made room for boundless (had to drop Dark Conversion). This gave me crit resist of about 2500 (4 pieces of impen, will likely need to go more), and about 18k resistances (again, will probably need to figure out how to get more). Why?

My shields f'ing melted. They were a joke compared to what they used to do.

Pre-patch, my shields were typically enough to survive most 1v1 encounters. They were questionable in 2v1, but usually I could get away. At 3v1, it was a run for you life scenario.

On Live, stam players were dropping my shields 1v1 as fast as I could reapply them. 2v1 put you into about a 4 second shield spam that ended in death. 3v1 and your character just falls over.

TLDR: Even though the numbers are still the same, shields are far weaker than they were a week ago.

Disclaimer: Lag was so f'ing bad in Cyro last night, that admittedly, it'difficult to evaulate things as effectively as I would have liked to. I was also trying to evaluate the new overload. Weaving was near impossible, and because you would often have to spam your ult 2-3 times to get it to activate/deactivate, it became very difficult to control. I would often cast it, nothing would happen, I would cast it again, then it would toggle on off, you would lose two globals, and be right back where you started.

So did a quick calc. A night blade with 5000 wd 38k stam, and 4000 pen has an incap tooltip of about 19k. With 80% crit damage against your physical and crit resistances then you should take 14% more damage with a crit and 24% less damage against a non crit compared to premurkmire. This is a rough estimate if the interaction now. Bleeds are just stronger though, so there is that.

@BlackMadara
What stamblade runs with 4k pen? That is an absurdly low number, especially considering your spammable gives you major fracture, not to mention, a decent chunk of them are running spriggans...

Good point, I was considering the general combo of ambush, incap. And the build I referenced is clever alch, bone pirate. With fracture debuff, crit is 24% more damage, and non crit is 14% less damage. If a sNB is running spriggans and a weapon damage set, they are a really squishy all in one ganker. They are probably going to attck you with shields down anyway, now or premurk you are dead.

The point is, you are weaker against crits, stronger against non crits. Like everyone else.

Well again, not quite. First, plenty of NBs pair spriggans with a heavy armor damage set. They are pretty tanky. Sorcs are undoubtedly weaker to crits then they were last patch. Whether they are stronger or weaker against non crits comes down to your resistances and you opponents penetration. Assuming you can get your resistances higher than the pen that you are facing, then sure, you are stronger against them, but that certainly wont always be the case, especially in light armor. It's certainly easier for a stam player to stack penetration than is it for a Light armor wearer to stack physical resistance, as the tradeoff for the later is more severe.

In other words: Against crits, sorcs are weaker than they were last week. Against no-crits, it really depends on who you are fighting, as it can go either way.