Protective Scale Feedback and Suggestions

Zophix

I though I'd create this thread because I wanted to see what people thought about the change to Dragonknights most unique ability wings.

• Reflective Scale:
  • Renamed this ability to Protective Scale.
  • Converted the reflect function into a 50% damage reduction from projectiles. This happened to all 3 versions of the ability.
    • Dragon Fire Scale (morph): This ability no longer increases damage of reflected attacks, since it can no longer reflect. Incoming projectiles will now cause you to launch a fiery orb at the attacker that deals Flame Damage. Effect can occur once every half second.
    • Reflective Plate: Renamed this ability to Protective Plate. No other changes were made to the ability’s functionality.
  
  Developer Comment:
  Previously, reflects were allowing for extremely unhealthy gameplay that granted the caster an effective 100% damage mitigation on top of the ability to return harmful damaging or controlling effects back at their caster. Additionally, the target requirement made this ability extremely polarizing in performance, going from absolute denial of ranged attacks, to offering little effective power when being bombarded with multiple projectiles. We will be closely monitoring the performance of this ability in both operational power and mathematical balance.

My Feedback:
I primarily play a Dragonknight and definitely agree with the developers idea that wings need a change. I've dabbled with builds that heavily use projectiles and I can say that it is very frustrating to fight against a Dragonknight simply because one ability will counter and shut down the entire build. This problem was especially visible with magicka Nightblades many reflectable abilities, at least when magicka Nightblades were a thing.

Now I'm having trouble finding a place for Reflective Plate on my bar. Since the change to Race Against Time the only unique part about this ability is the 50% damage reduction from projectiles, which is not bad. While the 50% Damage reduction is a lot and nice for crystal frags, venom arrow and the occasional sneak snipe, I don't think it will save a Dragonknight from total bombardment by multiple projectiles.

Don't get me wrong on this topic, I'm not upset with the removal of reflect, but I think there could be a better way to change it.

My Suggestion:
My suggestion is to leave the changes to Protective Scale the same but change Protective Plate (morph) and Dragon Fire Scale (morph).

• Dragon Fire Scale (morph): Flex your scales, deflecting any projectiles directed at you for 2 seconds. Casting again within 4 seconds costs 50% more magicka.
  This puts Dragon Fire Scale on par with Sorcerers Ball of Lightning.
  The cost increase negates the complete denial of projectile based attacks.
• Protective Plate (morph): Flex your scales, reducing the damage of all projectiles by 50% for 6 seconds and granting immunity to snare and immobilization effects for 4 seconds.
  Increasing the immunity to 4 seconds brings it up to par with the Race Against Time change.

Glory

I think it'd be fine to increase the snare/immob immunity on protective to 4 seconds to be on part with RaT.

Don't agree with adding the cost increase change, I'd rather see the duration extended to 8-10 seconds as other's have advocated for.

That being said, 6 seconds is likely already balanced.

PresidentBacon

They should just make it so you take 50% of the damage (including applied DOTs and AOEs based around the target - like abilities that damage enemies near the target taking the damage) and the other 50% gets reflected back to the caster along with any status/cc/disabling/controlling effects. I'm not sure if the DOTs applied should be halved and the other half reflected back however.

This seems like a decent middle ground where 50% damage is allowed through along with DOTs/target based AOEs, which is what this change does effectively, but everything else is reflected back like before.

Maybe the status effects could just be negated completely so no one receives them? So it's just negating half the damage and reflecting only half the damage back to the caster, whilst still giving the protection from cc/effects it gave before. This would mean the attacker would be punished for attacking someone with wings up, whilst not as harshly - overly punishing them with their own cc/effects - but they'd still be getting damage through.

I do like your idea of making it so each morph works differently for different play styles, and making the reflect a more reactive skill by it being shorter. I don't agree with the cost increase for recasting within a certain time frame if you are reducing the length of the reflect though, I feel it should just retain the limited number of reflects rather than reflecting everything or it would be too good when you are overwhelmed by large groups. This would keep the reflect more suited to duels/smaller scale fights, while providing the 50% damage reduction option for larger group fights.

Zophix

I played a few battlegrounds the other day and hardly noticed the 50% damage reduction. I tried out Dragon Fire Scale but there's not enough projectiles for it to do any meaningful damage. I then switched back to Protective Plate for the snare removal but felt completely gimped since the Race Against Time change and ended up taking off wings for Race Against Time.

ccmedaddy

Zophix wrote: »

I played a few battlegrounds the other day and hardly noticed the 50% damage reduction. I tried out Dragon Fire Scale but there's not enough projectiles for it to do any meaningful damage. I then switched back to Protective Plate for the snare removal but felt completely gimped since the Race Against Time change and ended up taking off wings for Race Against Time.

How much dmg does dragon fire scale do tooltip-wise?

BlackMadara

After some duals, I feel the limitation of specifying projectiles makes wings feel really weak. Of course, it is mostly necros out there, so their weren't many projectiles. I did miss the immunity to negative effects on reflects though. Was taking stuns from draining shot a lot. Played some BGs on live and enjoyed reflecting that back to enemies.

Overall, I feel the damage reduction should apply to all abilities outside of melee range. Considering dropping wings for mist form or race against time, and that makes me sad.

Zophix

ccmedaddy wrote: »

How much dmg does dragon fire scale do tooltip-wise?

Obviously depends on max magicka and spell damage but mie was about 4-5k tooltip. It's cool when your getting spammed by projectiles but outside of mag NB its not that useful or effective. Really all that has happened is wings have become a tool for countering mag NB builds as I've never seen a heavy projectile build other than mag NB.

anatole1234

Zophix wrote: »

ccmedaddy wrote: »

How much dmg does dragon fire scale do tooltip-wise?

Obviously depends on max magicka and spell damage but mie was about 4-5k tooltip. It's cool when your getting spammed by projectiles but outside of mag NB its not that useful or effective. Really all that has happened is wings have become a tool for countering mag NB builds as I've never seen a heavy projectile build other than mag NB.

4-5k on 0.5 cooldown is huge, especially in open world pvp

ccmedaddy

@Zophix Thanks. 5k-ish tooltip on a skill that can proc every 0.5 sec with every bow/staff light attack actually sounds pretty strong, at least in theory.

Austinseph1

I don’t know why it should only have pvp morphs, as its pretty much one of the best survival skills for a dk to beat vMA unless you cheese it with a warewolf. DK is already easily the harder class to complete it with and removing a such a valuable tool will just push new players away from the hardest solo content in the game. I honestly wanted to see an extended duration to maybe 8 seconds on one of the morphs since it isn’t technically a damage shield and only works on projectiles (not even all ranged moves). At least then it may be a nice tank utility as well. I will have to test it out in vMA more but At this rate I may have to replace it with something considerably less useful than a reflect.

Zophix

Its good in dueling situations where only one target can attack you, but in cryodil when you are being spammed with projectiles from multiple different targets, I'm not sure how this will work. As far as I know, only one orb can be launched every 0.5 seconds. If there are multiple projectiles from multiple targets, I think only one target will have an orb launched at them.

Will have to test it.

Zophix

Austinseph1 wrote: »

I don’t know why it should only have pvp morphs, as its pretty much one of the best survival skills for a dk to beat vMA unless you cheese it with a warewolf. DK is already easily the harder class to complete it with and removing a such a valuable tool will just push new players away from the hardest solo content in the game. I honestly wanted to see an extended duration to maybe 8 seconds on one of the morphs since it isn’t technically a damage shield and only works on projectiles (not even all ranged moves). At least then it may be a nice tank utility as well. I will have to test it out in vMA more but At this rate I may have to replace it with something considerably less useful than a reflect.

You bring up a good point.

Sanguinor2

Austinseph1 wrote: »

I don’t know why it should only have pvp morphs, as its pretty much one of the best survival skills for a dk to beat vMA unless you cheese it with a warewolf. DK is already easily the harder class to complete it with and removing a such a valuable tool will just push new players away from the hardest solo content in the game. I honestly wanted to see an extended duration to maybe 8 seconds on one of the morphs since it isn’t technically a damage shield and only works on projectiles (not even all ranged moves). At least then it may be a nice tank utility as well. I will have to test it out in vMA more but At this rate I may have to replace it with something considerably less useful than a reflect.

That is true, in my first vma clears wings was a really big help (those clears are quite some time ago tho so it didnt even have the snare removal), being able to mostly ignore the archers in stage 7 or reflect the attacks of the daedric Titan on the last stage is a huge help, especially if you start out with vma.

ccmedaddy

To be fair wings in VMA was cheesy af. You could literally ignore half the mechanics in there if you just keep your wings up. Not a huge loss in my opinion, especially now that the power creep has made VMA significantly easier than it used to be.