Buff Shields (PVE)

WrathOfInnos

So now that we’ve had an opportunity to thoroughly test the new shields that cap at 40-50% of Max Health, I want to continue the lively discussion we had during the PTS cycle. It’s my opinion that Annulment and Conjured Ward were excessively nerfed and are now underperforming. Having used them in every vet trial since the patch, I can say that they are now an ineffective form of defense. Even in dungeons, they are quite lackluster, and I believe this results in depending on the healer too much. For example, if a healer dies you cannot pop a shield and spend 5 seconds rezzing with no heals. That shield that used to be able to take a few hits is now gone in 1-2 hits. I have also noticed that less independence in random dungeons has led to an increase in toxicity and I’ve seen more attempted group kicks recently (I always decline them), since carrying a less experienced player of any role is significantly more difficult now.

Without getting too deep into the numbers in this first post, I would like to see the value of shields increased to something between where they were in Wolfhunter and where they stand in Murkmire. Even if we get up to 20k resistances (with Major and Minor Ward and resolve and some CPs, pretty much the highest reasonable value for a DD build), with 18k health, so a 40% shield is ~7k the effective shield value is ~10k, or about half what it used to be.

In my opinion this 40% should be increased to around 60% of max health (70 or 75% for Dampen and Hardened). This would put shields about halfway in between what they were previously and what they are now. Players would still benefit from investing is health and resistances, and discourage pure glass cannon, but these investments would actually pay off in a noticeable way.

This change would also have minimal impact on PVP, since the Max Magicka scaling would prevent Battle Spirit shields from increasing much (if at all) from this buff.

DoobZ69

No, I don't use shields so they shouldn't buff them. All shields should be nerfed in fact. This is a fact. 40% of HP is too much. A player with 100k HP gets a 40k shield for a whole 6 seconds. All shields should be capped at 69HP in PVE and 50HP in PvP. And then buff their duration to 5 minutes because then we can use it in the city for fashion purposes without having to recast it.

iDeadly_CTSV

I was in Maw the other day and the runner died and I couldn't rez him because 2 of the small balls that fly out of the center hit me and ripped my shield completely and about killed me. Even Igneous on a tank with Max resists 2 felms light attacks kills the shield.

WrathOfInnos

iDeadly_CTSV wrote: »

I was in Maw the other day and the runner died and I couldn't rez him because 2 of the small balls that fly out of the center hit me and ripped my shield completely and about killed me. Even Igneous on a tank with Max resists 2 felms light attacks kills the shield.

Yes, thank you for the example. And it sounds like you were quick enough that you didn’t even have to deal with a cat spawning from the corpse, which should have been rewarded with a successful rez. There are countless examples of this type of thing, where damage that is intended to be self mitigatable is suddenly deadly, because our defensive tools are so diminished.

I’m all for adjusting individual mechanics to be more punishing if the devs don’t want players to be able to shield through them. Look at vCR as an example, there is no shielding through the damage from flares, it goes through shields. Or the damage from carrying an orb in the portal, which not only hits your health through the shield, it also removes the entire shield with each tick, making you vulnerable to other damage sources. The problem is that they fixed a few unintended situations of survival by a blanket nerf that created many new unintended situations of death.

Ramber

Yeah i never used shields as a pve sorc dps at all ever, you don't need them. NBs don't have shields and they play just fine. Just make sure you have 17k health instead of 15k you have probably been use to lol.

Danksta

Ramber wrote: »

Yeah i never used shields as a pve sorc dps at all ever, you don't need them. NBs don't have shields and they play just fine. Just make sure you have 17k health instead of 15k you have probably been use to lol.

Don't even use shields in vCR hm or vAS hm?

WrathOfInnos

Ramber wrote: »

Yeah i never used shields as a pve sorc dps at all ever, you don't need them. NBs don't have shields and they play just fine. Just make sure you have 17k health instead of 15k you have probably been use to lol.

We must be talking about different types of PVE. I’m basing this mainly on HM DLC trials and some dungeons. All Magicka DPS rely on shields in this content, absolutely including nightblades. You could maybe get through vHoF shieldless if your healers were on point, and you were perfect with killing adds on 4th boss. Any of the other HM’s (outside of Craglorn) I don’t buy that a Magicka build can reliably stay alive without slotting a shield.

Also I specifically said 18k health in the OP. I’m not basing these statements on a 15k glass cannon.

SiAScORCH

DoobZ69 wrote: »

No, I don't use shields so they shouldn't buff them. All shields should be nerfed in fact. This is a fact. 40% of HP is too much. A player with 100k HP gets a 40k shield for a whole 6 seconds. All shields should be capped at 69HP in PVE and 50HP in PvP. And then buff their duration to 5 minutes because then we can use it in the city for fashion purposes without having to recast it.

Who have you seen tht had 100k HP?

DoobZ69

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=443&v=I87r_CNEwhU

102586HP points

besides. somebody else pointed out another reasonable answer besides me ^ don't use the shields

SaintSubwayy

Well tbh I can run nearly every content without slotting harness magicka

If you have trouble surviving in pve then you should try thw iceheart monsterset
Its stronger than a casted shield deas some aoe dmg and the uptime nearly reaches 100% without it beeing consumed
But it needs a target you can krit (easy in pve)
Furthermore you gain a skillslot wjere you could slot a heal or armor buff which increases your survivability even more

reprosal

DoobZ69 wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=443&v=I87r_CNEwhU

102586HP points

besides. somebody else pointed out another reasonable answer besides me ^ don't use the shields

This video was published in 2016..

WrathOfInnos

SaintSubwayy wrote: »

Well tbh I can run nearly every content without slotting harness magicka

If you have trouble surviving in pve then you should try thw iceheart monsterset
Its stronger than a casted shield deas some aoe dmg and the uptime nearly reaches 100% without it beeing consumed
But it needs a target you can krit (easy in pve)
Furthermore you gain a skillslot wjere you could slot a heal or armor buff which increases your survivability even more

I bolded the key word there, nearly. I agree completely that the majority of content does not require shields. Most content also does not require stam to slot Vigor or blade cloak, but it is recommended in some situations.

Iceheart is a great set in certain circumstances, but it can be unreliable. It will have some downtime, even if the shield is not being chipped away with damage. There will usually be 1-2s between when one shield ends and the next begins, and no guarantee that burst damage will occur while a shield is active. In most cases I don’t think the RNG based occasional life saving is worth giving up all the DPS of Ilambris, Zaan, or Slimecraw. If Iceheart was a 6s shield with a 5s cooldown (similar to Spell strategist) it would be much more tempting IMO.

zaria

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Ramber wrote: »

Yeah i never used shields as a pve sorc dps at all ever, you don't need them. NBs don't have shields and they play just fine. Just make sure you have 17k health instead of 15k you have probably been use to lol.

We must be talking about different types of PVE. I’m basing this mainly on HM DLC trials and some dungeons. All Magicka DPS rely on shields in this content, absolutely including nightblades. You could maybe get through vHoF shieldless if your healers were on point, and you were perfect with killing adds on 4th boss. Any of the other HM’s (outside of Craglorn) I don’t buy that a Magicka build can reliably stay alive without slotting a shield.

Also I specifically said 18k health in the OP. I’m not basing these statements on a 15k glass cannon.

Shields is extremely useful even in stuff like banished cell 1 HM, yes you can block but then you can not dodge on an magic build, now day BC1 and other random one shot mechanisms is one of the few cases there shields are still useful.

Else totally waste of magic.

Kadoin

They should buff shields in PvE, when they nerfed them because of PvE? I think the dev team wants you to feel unsafe as a DPS and to encourage more teamwork and strategy...

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

For example, if a healer dies you cannot pop a shield and spend 5 seconds rezzing with no heals. That shield that used to be able to take a few hits is now gone in 1-2 hits. I have also noticed that less independence in random dungeons has led to an increase in toxicity and I’ve seen more attempted group kicks recently (I always decline them), since carrying a less experienced player of any role is significantly more difficult now.

Gee, it almost sounds like that was the entire point of the changes according to the dev team...I've noticed little difference, but I guess their plan is "working as intended."

WrathOfInnos

Kadoin wrote: »

They should buff shields in PvE, when they nerfed them because of PvE? I think the dev team wants you to feel unsafe as a DPS and to encourage more teamwork and strategy...

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

For example, if a healer dies you cannot pop a shield and spend 5 seconds rezzing with no heals. That shield that used to be able to take a few hits is now gone in 1-2 hits. I have also noticed that less independence in random dungeons has led to an increase in toxicity and I’ve seen more attempted group kicks recently (I always decline them), since carrying a less experienced player of any role is significantly more difficult now.

Gee, it almost sounds like that was the entire point of the changes according to the dev team...I've noticed little difference, but I guess their plan is "working as intended."

@Kadoin I understand the stated goal of the changes. I’m saying that it is not working.

To elaborate on my point about rezzing, if I’m in a random vet dungeon and the healer dies, previously I would have popped a shield and used a soul gem so that they could continue on and learn the mechanics. Now that luxury has been removed because I often cannot stand still for 5s with no healing (even while sacrificing all DPS), I have to actively move and dodge to stay alive. This doesn’t make the healer role more important, since leaving them on the ground has little negative impact, I can survive just fine without heals as long as I’m not locked in a rez animation.

Basically the reduction in shields has caused my attitude to change from “let’s do this as a team” to “sorry you made a mistake and died, I guess I’ll do this boss alone.” I feel like this is the wrong direction for the game to be heading.

SodanTok

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Kadoin wrote: »

They should buff shields in PvE, when they nerfed them because of PvE? I think the dev team wants you to feel unsafe as a DPS and to encourage more teamwork and strategy...

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

For example, if a healer dies you cannot pop a shield and spend 5 seconds rezzing with no heals. That shield that used to be able to take a few hits is now gone in 1-2 hits. I have also noticed that less independence in random dungeons has led to an increase in toxicity and I’ve seen more attempted group kicks recently (I always decline them), since carrying a less experienced player of any role is significantly more difficult now.

Gee, it almost sounds like that was the entire point of the changes according to the dev team...I've noticed little difference, but I guess their plan is "working as intended."

@Kadoin I understand the stated goal of the changes. I’m saying that it is not working.

To elaborate on my point about rezzing, if I’m in a random vet dungeon and the healer dies, previously I would have popped a shield and used a soul gem so that they could continue on and learn the mechanics. Now that luxury has been removed because I often cannot stand still for 5s with no healing (even while sacrificing all DPS), I have to actively move and dodge to stay alive. This doesn’t make the healer role more important, since leaving them on the ground has little negative impact, I can survive just fine without heals as long as I’m not locked in a rez animation.

Basically the reduction in shields has caused my attitude to change from “let’s do this as a team” to “sorry you made a mistake and died, I guess I’ll do this boss alone.” I feel like this is the wrong direction for the game to be heading.

You should delete this before ZoS sees this. Because you jut argued well for some nice blanket dps/selfhealing nerfs. You will feel 'lets do this as team' soon when someone dying means wipe of group

WrathOfInnos

SodanTok wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Kadoin wrote: »

They should buff shields in PvE, when they nerfed them because of PvE? I think the dev team wants you to feel unsafe as a DPS and to encourage more teamwork and strategy...

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

For example, if a healer dies you cannot pop a shield and spend 5 seconds rezzing with no heals. That shield that used to be able to take a few hits is now gone in 1-2 hits. I have also noticed that less independence in random dungeons has led to an increase in toxicity and I’ve seen more attempted group kicks recently (I always decline them), since carrying a less experienced player of any role is significantly more difficult now.

Gee, it almost sounds like that was the entire point of the changes according to the dev team...I've noticed little difference, but I guess their plan is "working as intended."

@Kadoin I understand the stated goal of the changes. I’m saying that it is not working.

To elaborate on my point about rezzing, if I’m in a random vet dungeon and the healer dies, previously I would have popped a shield and used a soul gem so that they could continue on and learn the mechanics. Now that luxury has been removed because I often cannot stand still for 5s with no healing (even while sacrificing all DPS), I have to actively move and dodge to stay alive. This doesn’t make the healer role more important, since leaving them on the ground has little negative impact, I can survive just fine without heals as long as I’m not locked in a rez animation.

Basically the reduction in shields has caused my attitude to change from “let’s do this as a team” to “sorry you made a mistake and died, I guess I’ll do this boss alone.” I feel like this is the wrong direction for the game to be heading.

You should delete this before ZoS sees this. Because you jut argued well for some nice blanket dps/selfhealing nerfs. You will feel 'lets do this as team' soon when someone dying means wipe of group

@SodanTok Lol, it’s not really even that self healing is particularly powerful. If you’re playing the mechanics you really don’t take much damage, and usually self healing isn’t even necessary. That’s just the game design, and I don’t have a problem with it. Doing mechanics correctly should be rewarded with little to no incoming damage, i would not want to change this. My point is that with my personal playstyle, shields were most importantly a tool that could be used to recover from a mistake by allowing a few seconds of damage mitigation while rezzing (Vigor is effectively the same thing for stamina), and they no longer fulfill that role.