How do you feel the shield changes have affected pvp?

Tasear

@dpencil1

Yes doing information gathering so I can present issues, concerns and current state of things better. There's things I can assume from my own experience, but just my perspective would be meaningless, so I try to understand and see where others are coming from.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Biro123 wrote: »

Quite a few comments for me..:

Sacrifices
After a complete re-build - they seem strong enough - but the sacrifices made have been painful... Dropping 10k mag, losing mag sustain, losing a lot of stam sustain, and having to slot 2 skills not needed (or only on overload bar) before.. Boundless and Dark Exch.
Sorc ability bars were already very crowded - now they are a nightmare. I only run one shield, one weak hot (and dark exch), and can't fit in an execute or a CC anymore (unless you count BoL or Atro landing as a CC...). This is VERY painful.

Options
I feel pidgeon-holed into running light transmutation and resists monster-sets. I still don't think heavy is viable with the sustain issues, and not using shields could only be possible with maybe Argonian.. maybe..

Synergies
Shields now work mechanic-wise exactly like health. EXCEPT when blocking comes into play. So WHY does magsorc now have buffs for blocking yet still has shield as his primary class-based defence. Blocking+heal is much, much more effective than blocking with shields.. Yet magsorc has trash heals to go with those block bonuses.. I don't get it. There is still the same issue that you can run a pet to get a decent instant heal to use with ice-staff blocking - but you STILL NEED A SHIELD TO KEEP PET ALIVE!!!! I hate this - another terrible synergy, and that shield uses the pet's poor resists, and is limited by his poor health, and gets no benefits from CP damage reductions, making it VERY costly to try to keep a pet alive via shielding.
Honestly, its the terrible synergies for sorc (related to shields) that annoys me more than anything.

Buggy casting
Something is broken - I made a separate post about it somewhere... https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/445184/fix-shields-please#latest
Basically, as a primary defensive mechanic, they suffer from lag far, far worse than stam (off-cooldown) defences. This is all the more painful now with how impossible it is to build for stam sustain on a mag class while also having the resists/impen needed to keep shields worth casting.

Sorc Direction
A slight tangent to the original question, but related. What are sorc's meant to be? If the intention in nerfing shields was to make them more of a glass cannon - it fails. Sorcs cannot be a glass cannon this patch because to fire that cannon, they need to stand and cast only offensive stuff for 4 seconds against the same target. One defensive cast in there messes up the whole timing and the burst is ruined.
So, to be able to do this, sorc MUST be able to survive for 4 seconds without doing anything defensive. This used to be possible with a shield-stack before starting that 4-second rotation(but could still be interrupted by a CC or big incoming burst). Now, well, nothing changes except that for the sorc to build so that he can survive that 4 seconds with Murkmire shields, the cannon has gone (and to be fair - it hasn't been much of a cannon for a long while before that).

Others
As a result of building to make your shield worth the cooldown (or 5 - see above) needed to cast it, you're significantly tougher when unshielded (and gank-resistant - NB's gonna hate that) - making shields slightly LESS necessary - but the alternatives still aren't there to do away with them completely as a build choice.
Given the sacrifices that need to be made for shields now - there is no place in the game for shieldbreaker (and arguably infused torugs oblivion builds)

binho

In PVP right now, everyone plays a magicka DK or a magplar ... they seen to be everywhere.
Not so many sorcs and they usually are an easy kill even for me p

Brutusmax1mus

usmguy1234 wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

...

I haven't been hit by curse or crystal frags since the launch of murkmire. Literally very few sorcs in pvp including myself.... I've moved on to magplar. It is very strong this patch.

Ive been laughing at all the shield users trying magplar. Totally different style.

Icarus42

Having rebuilt my sorc around using one shield only I finally found something that somewhat resembles my playstyle pre-Murkmire more health more mitigation.
I found a build that is a little more middle ground now but it is still wicked hard to get any burst rotation because by the time I set up my haunting curse my shield is gone when I go to my attack bar which doesn't have much mitigation at all I usually get melted pretty quick.
Defensive rune does help a little, but coupled with casting boundless storm, my heal, my spell damage buff, and my shield it gets really tricky. Because of this I usually find myself on the defensive which is certain death in cyrodiil
Overall after the changes to shields it just feels like I am putting way more effort in playing my mag sorc than I did pre Murkmire. It feels less fun and I feel pidgeon holed a little. I am still practicing with my new build and getting used to the nuances of it, and hopefully it pays off... but I think it would be easier and more fun to play stamina.
Oh yeah and crystal frag is nearly useless now seeing that it stops right in front of your opponent and says " Excuse me good sir or madam, but would you be ever so kind and let me hit you, I would be ever so grateful!" A little lackluster compared to before...

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I would say on average, my shields feel overall weaker this patch, although the difference is admittedly less than I expected. I think a better term to use is that they are unpredictable, because it really depends on whom you are fighting. My current mag sorc build has 20-23K phys and spell resist (depends on my monster set) and 3k crit resist, which is noticeably up from last patch. My shield size per shield is largely unchanged. They are generally stronger against your average player, because my resistances are so high. The problem is against high crit stam builds where they literally disappear as fast as you can cast them because of all the crit damage.

I understand wanting to add resistances to shields to make them function more like your health bar. The problem is that the big hits (crits) cant be offset by the usual method to mitigate damage which is to simply block. So saying that shields equal a bigger health bar is actually highly misleading.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that sorcs have a skill designed to increase the amount of damage you can block. This is a completely out of place in the sorc toolkit, because their defense is based around shields. What the skill should perhaps do is to mitigate damage taken to shields by X amount for Y duration. This could actually be a nice tool for 1vXers because far and away the biggest problem with shields is that they scale very poorly when receiving damage from multiple sources.

Galarthor

How do I feel about the changes to shields?

The nerf to shields can be compensated for. That's not the issue. The problem is rather that sorcs were already lackluster in regards to damage and sustain, which have to be sacrificed in order to compensate for the shield changes. So in other words, the shield changes exacerabted already existing problems.

Addiotionally, shields work even less reliably now. Oftentimes they will not activate in combat for several seconds - and I am not talking about the regular lag. Outside of combat you can observe the regular lag and the delay in combat is a multiple of that. In addition, other skills do work, but shields don't. More on this can be found here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/445184/fix-shields-please#latest

Soris

It's great to have less bunny jumping magsorcs in cyro

And from magplar viewpoint, as having high resist/crit resist build, it's a big improvement to use dampen magic. It feels like i have 20k shield eventhough i only have 9k.

idk

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

Pretty terrible in bgs, which you’d expect since every change is made with cp in mind.

Technically shields took a Triple nerf since it is health capped, can be crit and Bastion CP no longer affects it with any mag DPS build.

I do feel for the less informed and new players since Bastion is clearly misleading now. Zos should change the wording so it is more accurate since even a modestly informed player would expect Bastion to be effective regardless. It needs to be updated for accuracy sake.

MetalHead4x4

Get rid of the meager shock damage done by Boundless Storm and make the ability a health leech at melee range (say 4 seconds). Give Sorcs a chance to get out of close proximity (Streak) where they take the most damage so they can get back out into casting range to do their thing. Sorcs need to stay on the outside of the battle and cast, that shock damage does nothing, a little extra heal til they can get the hell out of the fight would be better than that weak shock damage.

Derra

Tasear wrote: »

NyassaV wrote: »

Aside from the change to healing ward I like the shield changes

How were you using healing ward in combat that can't be done as well now?

My bet would be - used healing ward as an in combat emergency heal.

This function is no longer existant not only because shields now take slightly more dmg - but also because one tremendously important function of the healing ward morph was the small initial heal taking you out of execute range.

Previously you could either cast multiple healing wards in a row to get out of execute range (that functionality is gone) OR
you could cast other shields and then healing ward and try to get the heal at the end (that functionality only partly exists now because shields generally take more dmg and you don´t get the heal if you can´t stop someone from attacking alltogether).

Healing ward is now just another shield - which can also target allies but since that makes it unreliable for personal defense it´s not really a desireable skill anymore compared to ward ally.
Both are really a bit too expensive for what they currently do to be worth a slot without blackrose resto imo.

Lord-Otto

Derra wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

NyassaV wrote: »

Aside from the change to healing ward I like the shield changes

How were you using healing ward in combat that can't be done as well now?

My bet would be - used healing ward as an in combat emergency heal.

This function is no longer existant not only because shields now take slightly more dmg - but also because one tremendously important function of the healing ward morph was the small initial heal taking you out of execute range.

Previously you could either cast multiple healing wards in a row to get out of execute range (that functionality is gone) OR
you could cast other shields and then healing ward and try to get the heal at the end (that functionality only partly exists now because shields generally take more dmg and you don´t get the heal if you can´t stop someone from attacking alltogether).

Healing ward is now just another shield - which can also target allies but since that makes it unreliable for personal defense it´s not really a desireable skill anymore compared to ward ally.
Both are really a bit too expensive for what they currently do to be worth a slot without blackrose resto imo.

We're seeing a pattern here... Now Ward Ally is a much more interesting choice since Healing Ward got stomped into the ground - just like ZOS intended with Frags.
Our feedback still falls on deaf ears...

usmguy1234

Brutusmax1mus wrote: »

usmguy1234 wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

...

I haven't been hit by curse or crystal frags since the launch of murkmire. Literally very few sorcs in pvp including myself.... I've moved on to magplar. It is very strong this patch.

Ive been laughing at all the shield users trying magplar. Totally different style.

It's not that different but I've played it a lot before. I went snb/lighting staff. Survivability is very nice.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

MetalHead4x4 wrote: »

Get rid of the meager shock damage done by Boundless Storm and make the ability a health leech at melee range (say 4 seconds). Give Sorcs a chance to get out of close proximity (Streak) where they take the most damage so they can get back out into casting range to do their thing. Sorcs need to stay on the outside of the battle and cast, that shock damage does nothing, a little extra heal til they can get the hell out of the fight would be better than that weak shock damage.

Agreed. The Shock damage from boundless is meaningless. To this day, I dont think I have ever got a kill with it (unlike hurricane that gets them all the time). This skill needs reworked in one way or another. It would be a great place for a heal or another major minor buff.

Yes it gives 2 major buffs, but they are the most easily accessible buffs in the game. Nightblades get them from passives for crying out loud. Wardens can give those buffs to an entire group with one click of a button. Not only does every class have easy access, they are readily available with gear as well.

DHale

As I expected the good players have no problems killing people and the bad ones still struggle even more. That said, it is no longer fun I don’t play a game to less effective patch after patch. Sorc is now my crafter where boundless storm and streak make writs pain free.

dagonbeer

DHale wrote: »

As I expected the good players have no problems killing people and the bad ones still struggle even more. That said, it is no longer fun I don’t play a game to less effective patch after patch. Sorc is now my crafter where boundless storm and streak make writs pain free.

That sounds OP. Writs are supposed to be painful. Time to nerf streak and boundless.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

DHale wrote: »

As I expected the good players have no problems killing people and the bad ones still struggle even more. That said, it is no longer fun I don’t play a game to less effective patch after patch. Sorc is now my crafter where boundless storm and streak make writs pain free.

Sounds like someone needs the Writworthy addon and a guild hall with all the crafting stations. Haha.

Surveys on the other hand, I use a stam toon at the speed cap.

mook-eb16_ESO

I tried a little and quit the game. Shield strength though is just part of the issue. I could put up with the poor performance of pvp servers when I could protect myself. but now with all the shield bypass mechanics on top its a waste of time and lets face it they are not ever going fix the game performance until they rebuild the game engine or use a different one.

CatchMeTrolling

DHale wrote: »

As I expected the good players have no problems killing people and the bad ones still struggle even more. That said, it is no longer fun I don’t play a game to less effective patch after patch. Sorc is now my crafter where boundless storm and streak make writs pain free.

Killing isn’t the problem it’s people being able to survive with terrible shields. I can agree that sorcs get it the worst, although I run harness and Ward still on my magblade...I still have more options like cloak and image. Pretty much been destroying sorcs in bgs but I’m finding most shield players are struggling to stay alive in there,

oxygen_thief

DHale wrote: »

As I expected the good players have no problems killing people and the bad ones still struggle even more. That said, it is no longer fun I don’t play a game to less effective patch after patch. Sorc is now my crafter where boundless storm and streak make writs pain free.

the question is who is being killed and how? you can get a lot of kills by just spamming wrath from the middle of a zerg, you can also kill a bunch of pvers which came to open vigor. does it mean the calss is still ok despite all nerfs? no it means nothing. try to win in a 1vs1 fight against a player of your onw skill level and you will understand that its a trash now.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

oxygen_thief wrote: »

DHale wrote: »

As I expected the good players have no problems killing people and the bad ones still struggle even more. That said, it is no longer fun I don’t play a game to less effective patch after patch. Sorc is now my crafter where boundless storm and streak make writs pain free.

the question is who is being killed and how? you can get a lot of kills by just spamming wrath from the middle of a zerg, you can also kill a bunch of pvers which came to open vigor. does it mean the calss is still ok despite all nerfs? no it means nothing. try to win in a 1vs1 fight against a player of your onw skill level and you will understand that its a trash now.

This has always been the sorcs biggest problem in this game. They are fairly straight forward to play and absolutely excel against scrubs, who often respawn on the forums when they see mages wrath in their death recap. Problem is that they have never been all that great option when facing a competent opponent, at least not recently.

If you balance around the potato, sorcs are borderline OP. If you balance around the elite, they are arguably in last place at the moment.

alcal32

I deleted the game.

MetalHead4x4

alcal32 wrote: »

I deleted the game.

So did I. Uninstall FTW.

Jurand80

I couldn't heal. Switched to rdr2.

Kadoin

I simply unslotted shields and got my skill points back. I think that says everything about the changes.

Derra

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

NyassaV wrote: »

Aside from the change to healing ward I like the shield changes

How were you using healing ward in combat that can't be done as well now?

My bet would be - used healing ward as an in combat emergency heal.

This function is no longer existant not only because shields now take slightly more dmg - but also because one tremendously important function of the healing ward morph was the small initial heal taking you out of execute range.

Previously you could either cast multiple healing wards in a row to get out of execute range (that functionality is gone) OR
you could cast other shields and then healing ward and try to get the heal at the end (that functionality only partly exists now because shields generally take more dmg and you don´t get the heal if you can´t stop someone from attacking alltogether).

Healing ward is now just another shield - which can also target allies but since that makes it unreliable for personal defense it´s not really a desireable skill anymore compared to ward ally.
Both are really a bit too expensive for what they currently do to be worth a slot without blackrose resto imo.

We're seeing a pattern here... Now Ward Ally is a much more interesting choice since Healing Ward got stomped into the ground - just like ZOS intended with Frags.
Our feedback still falls on deaf ears...

Just that healing ward prior to the nerf had an entirely different function. It acted as the emengency "burst" heal for shield builds.
It was a core support and self defense skill.

It fails to act as an emergency heal mechanic now completely - the other function of a support skill is naturally done better by the support morph.

Lord-Otto

Derra wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

NyassaV wrote: »

Aside from the change to healing ward I like the shield changes

How were you using healing ward in combat that can't be done as well now?

My bet would be - used healing ward as an in combat emergency heal.

This function is no longer existant not only because shields now take slightly more dmg - but also because one tremendously important function of the healing ward morph was the small initial heal taking you out of execute range.

Previously you could either cast multiple healing wards in a row to get out of execute range (that functionality is gone) OR
you could cast other shields and then healing ward and try to get the heal at the end (that functionality only partly exists now because shields generally take more dmg and you don´t get the heal if you can´t stop someone from attacking alltogether).

Healing ward is now just another shield - which can also target allies but since that makes it unreliable for personal defense it´s not really a desireable skill anymore compared to ward ally.
Both are really a bit too expensive for what they currently do to be worth a slot without blackrose resto imo.

We're seeing a pattern here... Now Ward Ally is a much more interesting choice since Healing Ward got stomped into the ground - just like ZOS intended with Frags.
Our feedback still falls on deaf ears...

Just that healing ward prior to the nerf had an entirely different function. It acted as the emengency "burst" heal for shield builds.
It was a core support and self defense skill.

It fails to act as an emergency heal mechanic now completely - the other function of a support skill is naturally done better by the support morph.

Oh, yes. And Frags used to serve as our CC. Only that we didn't swap to the other morph, but to Destructive Reach instead.

What I'm saying is that Wroebel STILL looks at the game on his blackboard only. He sees skills that fall out of his vision of order (Healing Ward and Frags being "overloaded" or whatever), and nerfs them - ignoring the impact on the actual gameplay.
Remember Trapping Webs? When he nerfed that because "Undaunted should be about synergies", he effectively killed DW sorcs, despite players begging him not to.

This pattern of the suit deciding the game and not the joystick is what's poisoning the game, IMO. And even with the class reps, it still just doesn't stop. Just a matter of time until the game is completely unenjoyable with that attitude.

xericdx

Shield changes.... It depends.

I did not see shields as OP and actually worked with what I believe to be better options available to most classes. However, this could also be because of the playstyle I liked on those classes. The only class I found shields useful/necessary (also because of lack of alternatives) are MagSorc and, to a lesser extent, MagBlade.
Here below some more explanations on each.

(I mostly speak from BG point of view, where normally one set is dedicated to regen in most classes)

- MagDK --> I like the brawler style in heavy and with the many DoTs and Dragon Blood heals. Was not using shields before

- MagTemp --> Also preferred to avoid shields and focus on heals, also normally played with high resistance. I mostly played as healer on that class. Haven't tried shield but I believe they would actually be stronger now on my spec.

- MagDen --> Ice playstyle with several DoTs healing, I was not feeling the need for a shield even before Murkmire. I am actually thinking about adding a defensive shield now and that would make the build stronger

- MagBlade --> I was using healing ward with cloak and the change can be felt. However, Shade + Cloack is a good defensive skill that still allow for some offensive sets. However, this is the Mag class I know less so not that sure.

- MagSorc --> Still playable but have not found much alternatives as its 3 main heals do not fit the class in my opinion. Surge is strong in PvE but does not work much in the burst PvP style. Dark Deal cast time make it difficult to use without other strong defensive options. Pet... Well, nope.
I feel like I actually need to shield stack now more than before (I was using only 1 defensive shield + Healing Ward pre-Murkmire) on top of the extra defensive set - mainly to protect the now much weaker Healing Ward. Post-Murkmire I tried much more defensive sets but that makes its burst style difficult to implement correctly. Boundless became almost a must in my opinion but that also does not feel complementary to the burst / long range playstyle. Still playable, sure, but...meh. I agree with @Biro123 , it's mainly about class identity and the role shields played in it.


Long story short. I believe we could leave with the nerf, which is potentially a buff for some specs. As I doubt there will be much changes coming to the shields, maybe better to review other abilities on classes like MagSorcs?

WuffyCerulei

I've simply adapted. I changed the sets and traits I was wearing, and I've been doing fine since.

Waffennacht

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

I've simply adapted. I changed the sets and traits I was wearing, and I've been doing fine since.

Every time I think of a sorc build I think about how any other mag class can do better with the gear I come up with.

Magden, mag NB, mag Templar and mag DK can take advantage better of resistance, health, heals, without losing so much without max mag