Pvp shield strength (noCP)

Anyron

With shield nerf ( well deserved ), what capped shield strength at 50% max health and allowed them to be crt able,why there is still 50% reduction in battle spirit?

Seems like overkill to shields now. It forces sorcs to run pet builds in pvp now because shields alone cannot save you, and its stupid.

Right now (noCP pvp) i cant have more than 23k health in pvp because if i raise it, i have to limit max magicka (39k) and it reduces my shields even more because it is still based on max magicka pool)

So it limits pvp builds to run pets and leave them with max 25k health which is not enought to absorb high damage bursts

Royaji

Battle spirit is applied before the health cap though. On most builds battle spirit shield reduction is pretty much irrelevant since the roadblock for them is health cap.

Galarthor

The compensation for shields becoming critable is them also being affected by resistences. And the additional damage taken and the additional mitigation from resistences pretty much balance out.

All these changes achieved was to further reduce build diversity by making impen the required armor trait on yet another class - even though ZOS claimed that they don't want a PvP specific trait / stat but is de facto making impen a PvP trait.

I am also puzzled why you think shield nerf was warranted but then ask for a 100% increase in shield strength. Shields have their issues, but 100% additional shield strength is totally over OP. In terms of balancing the only thing that desperately needs to be addressed is Bastion CP since it is essentially useless, while its counterpart Shatering Blows is as affective as ever ... or even more so.

VaranisArano

I think part of the idea behind the shield nerfs was specially to make it so that "shields alone cannot save you" and moreover, to make players invest more into getting the defensive benefits of damage shields. Having to balance your offense and defense, and making decisions about health vs magicka is in part what ZOS was going for with that change.

Now, YMMV about how much you enjoy that change, but I'm looking at this thread like "I think it sounds like ZOS accomplished what they meant to."

VaranisArano

Galarthor wrote: »

All these changes achieved was to further reduce build diversity by making impen the required armor trait on yet another class - even though ZOS claimed that they don't want a PvP specific trait / stat but is de facto making impen a PvP trait.

Impenetrable isn't a PVP-specific trait! I wear it on my PVE farmers so I don't have to repair my armor as often!

Okay Its pretty much is a PVP-specific trait.

I can't imagine why the Devs would be in denial about that, since its the only content in the game where your enemy can land critical attacks.

Anyron

Galarthor wrote: »

The compensation for shields becoming critable is them also being affected by resistences. And the additional damage taken and the additional mitigation from resistences pretty much balance out.

All these changes achieved was to further reduce build diversity by making impen the required armor trait on yet another class - even though ZOS claimed that they don't want a PvP specific trait / stat but is de facto making impen a PvP trait.

I am also puzzled why you think shield nerf was warranted but then ask for a 100% increase in shield strength. Shields have their issues, but 100% additional shield strength is totally over OP. In terms of balancing the only thing that desperately needs to be addressed is Bastion CP since it is essentially useless, while its counterpart Shatering Blows is as affective as ever ... or even more so.

1) its right shields can be stronger with resistances
on other hand they can be hit by CRT hit, penetration works on them too

2) Why i say it was needed to cap them at 50% health and then asking to buff them?
Its was needed because if you had build with 15k health and 30k shield wasnt right. Now it forces you to invest to health, which is good
BUT shield is still scaled of max magicka so you have to stack both.

My issue is you cant have more than 20k health because if you do, your magicka cannot be big enought to reach cap . This limits your playstyle to 20k health and makes you unable to use high health builds on sorcs

Galarthor

Anyron wrote: »

1) its right shields can be stronger with resistances
on other hand they can be hit by CRT hit, penetration works on them too

As I said, those 2 effects pretty much cancel out. The only ones really profiting from it are heavy armor builds. For the other builds it is pretty much a zero sum game. Although, sorcs are now tankier underneath their shields, since they were forced for run resistences.

Anyron wrote: »

2) Why i say it was needed to cap them at 50% health and then asking to buff them?
Its was needed because if you had build with 15k health and 30k shield wasnt right. Now it forces you to invest to health, which is good
BUT shield is still scaled of max magicka so you have to stack both.

My issue is you cant have more than 20k health because if you do, your magicka cannot be big enought to reach cap . This limits your playstyle to 20k health and makes you unable to use high health builds on sorcs

So instead of 15k health with like 15% damage mitigation and 30k shields (which is not really a realistic number) with 0% mitigation, you now got 25k health at 30% mitigation and 25k shields at 0% mitigation (b/c it cancels out) -> effectively 60k health VS the previous 48k health. If anything, sorcs have become tankier at the expense of damage and sustain ... you know the 2 things that have been in short supply for sorcs for years now.

Shields are nothing but an extention of your health pool - post-murkmire even more so than before. So losing 1k max magicka costs you about 300 shield strength and some damage, at the same time you gain 1.1k health. So as long as you got access to heals that isn't really an issue.

The problem is rather that it pigeon holes sorcs even further. Guess ZOS after being unable to figure out how to make pets attractive for 4 years, ZOS decided to go the other way and make everything so unattractive that pets automatically become attractive to sorcs.

ccmedaddy

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Anyron wrote: »

My issue is you cant have more than 20k health because if you do, your magicka cannot be big enought to reach cap [/b]. This limits your playstyle to 20k health and makes you unable to use high health builds on sorcs

Shields don't have to reach the cap to be effective though. I don't think any of my magicka builds have a shield that reaches the cap and yet they feel as effective and sturdy as they've ever been. Just make sure you have decent resists and crit resist.

Anyron

ccmedaddy wrote: »

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Anyron wrote: »

My issue is you cant have more than 20k health because if you do, your magicka cannot be big enought to reach cap [/b]. This limits your playstyle to 20k health and makes you unable to use high health builds on sorcs

Shields don't have to reach the cap to be effective though. I don't think any of my magicka builds have a shield that reaches the cap and yet they feel as effective and sturdy as they've ever been. Just make sure you have decent resists and crit resist.

I do. I run full impen, 1 pirate skeleton, 1 mighty chudan and boundless storm ( so i have over 22k armor and 24k spell resist in noCP) with bufftimers2 addon so it pop up on my screen in big red text to reapply it so i am sure i have it always up.

But still, without pet Nb can melt me in seconds and i am unable to do anything about it, only overheal it with pet which as i said forces me to run pet build.

Galarthor

ccmedaddy wrote: »

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Anyron wrote: »

My issue is you cant have more than 20k health because if you do, your magicka cannot be big enought to reach cap [/b]. This limits your playstyle to 20k health and makes you unable to use high health builds on sorcs

Shields don't have to reach the cap to be effective though. I don't think any of my magicka builds have a shield that reaches the cap and yet they feel as effective and sturdy as they've ever been. Just make sure you have decent resists and crit resist.

Well ... you might not need to hit the cap, but you definitely have to be damn close to it. The resistences only counter the additional damage taken from crits, so there isn't really a net gain here unless you are in heavy armor / close to resistence cap. What you perceive as "sturdy" is the reduced damage taken once shields are down.

So you still need a large sized shield, otherwise you might as well use a build that does not utilize shields at all. This ofc does not include issues such a bleed builds (which lack a magicka counterpart - ZOS totally not being biased here), Shattering Blows, and the completely OP and unwarranted Shield Breaker set.

Rikumaru

Imo no-cp shields feel stronger now than when they had no resistances / couldn't be critted.

ccmedaddy

Anyron wrote: »

I do. I run full impen, 1 pirate skeleton, 1 mighty chudan and boundless storm ( so i have over 22k armor and 24k spell resist in noCP) with bufftimers2 addon so it pop up on my screen in big red text to reapply it so i am sure i have it always up.

But still, without pet Nb can melt me in seconds and i am unable to do anything about it, only overheal it with pet which as i said forces me to run pet build.

Tbh it's hard for me to tell without seeing your full build/bar setup why you're having issues with survival on your magsorc when you already have good defensive stats as well as a large magicka pool.. But here are my suggestions:

1. If you're not stacking shields already, do it. Hardened+Harness combined should give you something like a 16k shield in no-CP. If you don't have a bar slot for it, you could drop Boundless and go with 2pc Chudan, which is what I've been doing in BGs.
2. Or just go with 2pc Pirate Skeleton. The 2pc bonus is very strong for shield users.

Galarthor wrote: »

Well ... you might not need to hit the cap, but you definitely have to be damn close to it. The resistences only counter the additional damage taken from crits, so there isn't really a net gain here unless you are in heavy armor / close to resistence cap. What you perceive as "sturdy" is the reduced damage taken once shields are down.

?

ZOS_Mika

We have removed some unnecessary back and forth from this thread. Please ensure that this discussion remains civil, constructive, and on-topic. Thank you for your understanding.

kollege14a5

Sorcerer is super strong in noCp. It is tanky, has mobility and a really strong burst with or without pet.

Minalan

Build for some health, use tri-stat glyphs on big armor pieces and jewelry. Then make up the missing Magicka with something like bound aegis and mage light.

Beardimus

Galarthor wrote: »

All these changes achieved was to further reduce build diversity by making impen the required armor trait on yet another class - even though ZOS claimed that they don't want a PvP specific trait / stat but is de facto making impen a PvP trait.
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Agreed, it wrecks build diversity. Also costly adapting our years worth of gold sets for PvP.

The only way to run other traits is Impreg or maybe Transmutation

Ironically I'm harder to kill now, as before i had no impen, wards down and insta dead. Now I'm harder to kill wards down due to the forced changes. So its a lol, people hate killing sorcs more.

But we lost sustain or damage to get tank......

Ironic

Galarthor

Minalan wrote: »

Build for some health, use tri-stat glyphs on big armor pieces and jewelry. Then make up the missing Magicka with something like bound aegis and mage light.

Sorry, but that doesn't really work. Bar space is already lackluster on sorcs (it's one of our main pain points).

Shield changes were a stupid idea, but people kept crying on the forums that shields were not critable (even though shields themselves do not crit either). So ZOS eventually changed that. And b/c shields were already lackluster before, they couldn't just make them critable without giving something in return. So here we are are now. Sorcs are harder to kill than before b/c they are now not instantaneously dead once you get through their shield. On the other hand they can't kill you either b/c their damage is too low and a full burst combo that is not actively mitigated is no longer sufficient to overcome the HP bar of 99.9% of players in cyrodiil (shield changes are not the main reason for this, but they made the matter worse). Oh and sustain is also worse ... not that it has ever been good since Morrowind.

So in the end we all lost, just b/c some cry babies wanted easy sorc kills and couldn't be bothered to overcome the l2p issues.

Ironically, even though sorcs are harder to kill these days, you see significantly less threads on the forums complaining about how hard it is to kill sorcs. Shows you how simple minded these people are: "HA! Sorcs got 3k less shields they are easier to kill now" ... completely ignoring resistences reducing the damage taken and time to kill ...

idk

Royaji wrote: »

Battle spirit is applied before the health cap though. On most builds battle spirit shield reduction is pretty much irrelevant since the roadblock for them is health cap.

This, and shields were affected only slightly. Also, unless someone is stacking a lot of health compared to magicka CP Bastion does not affect it or has little affect as it will not push the shield past the 50% unless that was just changed.

Checkmath

In no-CP PvP you should easely get over 20k health with a few tristat enchant. If you go over 25k....well I dont know what to say, since most my magicka builds do not even reach that number in no-CP.

Still with necropotence set (which I guess you are using to reach the 39k magicka in no-CP) you will get more than a 10k hardened war (the health cap of shields applies after battlespirit, so you still can reach 50% health cap with your shields in PvP).

Before your shields had no mitigation, now they inherit your resistances but also can be penetrated (which is a buff). But also your shields can be critted, which might not be that bad since in no-CP crit chance is generally low.

So with little investment into health you will still get big shield size, which also inherit your defensive stats. This is quite nice for sorcs, especially it helps in building up tankyness.

Magsorcs are currently considered the strongest magicka PvP class by many duelists and open world players, especially due to the new amplitude passive.

Feanor

Magsorcs are currently considered the strongest magicka PvP class by many duelists and open world players, especially due to the new amplitude passive.

Pet Sorcs, yes. But the rest? The new Amplitude passive isn’t really an awesome improvement because it diminishes so fast it hardly has an effect.

ecru

shields were buffed in nocp, lol

Checkmath

Feanor wrote: »

Magsorcs are currently considered the strongest magicka PvP class by many duelists and open world players, especially due to the new amplitude passive.

Pet Sorcs, yes. But the rest? The new Amplitude passive isn’t really an awesome improvement because it diminishes so fast it hardly has an effect.

Even with only one pet or no pet at all, magsorcs are considered best thx to the best mobility among mag classes. The ability to kite and restore resources after losing is still king in open world. Also in duels without any pet, magsorcs belong to the top spots as class, for sure the top class with only one pet already.

Amplitude is a great passive for a class relying on a burst combo and less dot related damage, which means enemies are normally high health to the point you start your combo. Even during the combo the passive applies strongly as long as the health is high, meaning timed burst of several attacks together profits from it.

Ollowaiin2

I feel like the mag sorc shield is stronger then ever and low in non-cp. the light armor shield is too expensive and a LOT weaker. I only use it to trigger armor master and spam sorc shield after. Healing ward is useless because of no initial healing and got replaced by mutagen/healing ulti/maybe even dark deal. That ulti is so strong right now.. Dont need any pet healing, because we dont have enough skill slots.

Sorcs utilice a lot from higher resistances sets, that makes them tanks!

In open world pvp I feel like they're more supporter (purge/cc) since cyro has always been group content..

Checkmath

Ollowaiin2 wrote: »

I feel like the mag sorc shield is stronger then ever and low in non-cp. the light armor shield is too expensive and a LOT weaker. I only use it to trigger armor master and spam sorc shield after. Healing ward is useless because of no initial healing and got replaced by mutagen/healing ulti/maybe even dark deal. That ulti is so strong right now.. Dont need any pet healing, because we dont have enough skill slots.

Sorcs utilice a lot from higher resistances sets, that makes them tanks!

In open world pvp I feel like they're more supporter (purge/cc) since cyro has always been group content..

If you do not have the sustain of the light armor shield, then maybe you should choose the other morph, which returns magicka when hit by magicka projectiles. This skill is veeeeery strong against any enemy with a staff or other kind of magick projectiles, almost providing unlimited sustain. That morph is even banned in duels, because you can restore a crazy amount of magicka when fighting a magicka based enemy.

psychotic13

To be fair sorcs are stronger than ever if built right, the change just seperates the good sorcs from the bad.

This is my set up, with CP outside of PvP, still needs slight tweaking, (need 2 impen pieces, and maybe 1 protective on jewels)

Galarthor

psychotic13 wrote: »

To be fair sorcs are stronger than ever if built right, the change just seperates the good sorcs from the bad.

This is my set up, with CP outside of PvP, still needs slight tweaking, (need 2 impen pieces, and maybe 1 protective on jewels)

looks quite nice, though the 51k max magicka seem excessive. I run around with about 25k HP and 41k max magicka in PvP and my hardened ward is pretty much at cap. So instead investing more into spell damage / pen or regen might be a better idea. Also the 2.1k crit resist seems a bit low given the crit multipliers and the capped shields ... especially in CP environments.

psychotic13

Galarthor wrote: »

psychotic13 wrote: »

To be fair sorcs are stronger than ever if built right, the change just seperates the good sorcs from the bad.

This is my set up, with CP outside of PvP, still needs slight tweaking, (need 2 impen pieces, and maybe 1 protective on jewels)

looks quite nice, though the 51k max magicka seem excessive. I run around with about 25k HP and 41k max magicka in PvP and my hardened ward is pretty much at cap. So instead investing more into spell damage / pen or regen might be a better idea. Also the 2.1k crit resist seems a bit low given the crit multipliers and the capped shields ... especially in CP environments.

I probably could run more damage over magicka, i run the matriach to heal though so magicka improves the heal, and i get the 8% health and run necro with double destro. this is outside of pvp though so im at 26k health in cyrodil. Add the WD glyph and continuous and its pretty decent.

I still need to transmute 2 pieces to impen so it would be at 2.6k when done, which isnt to bad, could probably put some more into the resitant cp though

Minalan

Galarthor wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Build for some health, use tri-stat glyphs on big armor pieces and jewelry. Then make up the missing Magicka with something like bound aegis and mage light.

Sorry, but that doesn't really work. Bar space is already lackluster on sorcs (it's one of our main pain points).

Shield changes were a stupid idea, but people kept crying on the forums that shields were not critable (even though shields themselves do not crit either). So ZOS eventually changed that. And b/c shields were already lackluster before, they couldn't just make them critable without giving something in return. So here we are are now. Sorcs are harder to kill than before b/c they are now not instantaneously dead once you get through their shield. On the other hand they can't kill you either b/c their damage is too low and a full burst combo that is not actively mitigated is no longer sufficient to overcome the HP bar of 99.9% of players in cyrodiil (shield changes are not the main reason for this, but they made the matter worse). Oh and sustain is also worse ... not that it has ever been good since Morrowind.

So in the end we all lost, just b/c some cry babies wanted easy sorc kills and couldn't be bothered to overcome the l2p issues.

Ironically, even though sorcs are harder to kill these days, you see significantly less threads on the forums complaining about how hard it is to kill sorcs. Shows you how simple minded these people are: "HA! Sorcs got 3k less shields they are easier to kill now" ... completely ignoring resistences reducing the damage taken and time to kill ...

Sorcs are an extremely strong class this patch, and we can kill plenty of people with the right builds.

Look, I don't like pets either. They're terrible. But pets and pet passives are a full third of our class toolkit. Youre leaving a lot of damage, healing, Stam Regen, magicka, and health on the table without using them.

That's what's called an "opportunity cost". Every skill you use or item set you wear comes at the cost of using something possible better or something that does more damage.

Yes, you can build without pets, but you can't expect it to be as convenient using 2/3 skill lines instead of 3/3. Those days are over, the class is more or less balanced and requires the full toolkit nowadays.

oxygen_thief

VaranisArano wrote: »

I think part of the idea behind the shield nerfs was specially to make it so that "shields alone cannot save you" and moreover, to make players invest more into getting the defensive benefits of damage shields. Having to balance your offense and defense, and making decisions about health vs magicka is in part what ZOS was going for with that change.

Now, YMMV about how much you enjoy that change, but I'm looking at this thread like "I think it sounds like ZOS accomplished what they meant to."

were they able to do it in nocp? sorcs are in a total mess now because zos trying to balance 3 game types simultaneously.

Ollowaiin2 wrote: »

I feel like the mag sorc shield is stronger then ever and low in non-cp.

what about bleeds? now they just bypass your "stronger than ever" defence

Galarthor

Minalan wrote: »

Galarthor wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Build for some health, use tri-stat glyphs on big armor pieces and jewelry. Then make up the missing Magicka with something like bound aegis and mage light.

Sorry, but that doesn't really work. Bar space is already lackluster on sorcs (it's one of our main pain points).

Shield changes were a stupid idea, but people kept crying on the forums that shields were not critable (even though shields themselves do not crit either). So ZOS eventually changed that. And b/c shields were already lackluster before, they couldn't just make them critable without giving something in return. So here we are are now. Sorcs are harder to kill than before b/c they are now not instantaneously dead once you get through their shield. On the other hand they can't kill you either b/c their damage is too low and a full burst combo that is not actively mitigated is no longer sufficient to overcome the HP bar of 99.9% of players in cyrodiil (shield changes are not the main reason for this, but they made the matter worse). Oh and sustain is also worse ... not that it has ever been good since Morrowind.

So in the end we all lost, just b/c some cry babies wanted easy sorc kills and couldn't be bothered to overcome the l2p issues.

Ironically, even though sorcs are harder to kill these days, you see significantly less threads on the forums complaining about how hard it is to kill sorcs. Shows you how simple minded these people are: "HA! Sorcs got 3k less shields they are easier to kill now" ... completely ignoring resistences reducing the damage taken and time to kill ...

Sorcs are an extremely strong class this patch, and we can kill plenty of people with the right builds.

Look, I don't like pets either. They're terrible. But pets and pet passives are a full third of our class toolkit. Youre leaving a lot of damage, healing, Stam Regen, magicka, and health on the table without using them.

That's what's called an "opportunity cost". Every skill you use or item set you wear comes at the cost of using something possible better or something that does more damage.

Yes, you can build without pets, but you can't expect it to be as convenient using 2/3 skill lines instead of 3/3. Those days are over, the class is more or less balanced and requires the full toolkit nowadays.

I am well aware of the concept of opportunity cost.
There are however reasons why people don't want to use pets and they go far beyond looks. And nerfing everything else into the ground so that the opportunity cost for using pets is lower than that for not using them is not the same as providing viable build alternatives or fixing anything.

Pets are clunky af and have an IQ close to 0. They hinder you view - especially the matriach. They even prevent you from interacting with NPCs and the environment.

They each require 20% of your bar slots, when sorcs are already short on bar slots b/c their abilities are all pretty one dimensional, unlike for other classes that often times got secondary effects associated with class abilities or their activation.

Plenty of other classes can do just fine without having to use 3 or 4 (Curse, Ward, Matriach, Scamp) out of the 5 abilities in a class skill tree. It's not like non-pet sorcs are ignoring the Daedric Summoning skill line entirely, they just don't use 2 skill of it. And I dare say, that's enough usage of a particular skill line without having to suffer tremendous backlash in your performance.

Don't get me wrong, I am also running a matriach these days b/c without healing ward we lack a decent heal if we don't run the matriach. Rapid Regen is just not enough, same for Combat Prayer, and Healing Springs. Dark Deal is interuptable and takes too long to be a viable heal.

Mintaka5

Agreed stupidest move made so far in this game. Shields were not strong across the board. It was just certain builds, and honestly shielding was not the problem. When is survivability ever a problem? It's damage dealing that is the problem, and the devs keep catering to it, by enabling one shot killers who found out that there was one single counter to their one-shot ***, and that was effective shielding.