Empowered Ward has been disproportionately nerfed on PTS

TheYKcid

On the live game, Empowered Ward represents the Sorc shield morph which is oriented at sustain. As such, it possesses a smaller shield size vs. its alternative—Hardened Ward, which has a 20% larger tooltip.

These characteristics make it the inferior morph choice that is rarely—if ever—used. It's simply better to have a larger shield via Hardened Ward—which not only makes the user more tanky and extends crucial offensive windows, but also provides sustain indirectly since it doesn't have to be recasted as often.

However, on PTS, Empowered has been made even worse by two compounded nerfs:

• An 18% decrease in shield tooltip on the base morph
• The removal of 3.3% extra tooltip gained when ranking-up the ability (1.1% per rank)

While Hardened Ward also received a nerf, this was only by 9%—proportionately much less.

As a result, Hardened Ward is now 37.7% larger than Empowered Ward on PTS. The morph that was already underperforming is now trailing even further behind the meta option. This is in stark contrast to one of the stated goals of the v5.1.0 audit, which was supposed to ensure that:

there are less overall situations of "dead abilities"

(link to post)

Please reconsider these figures; wards did deserve a nerf, but don't hit the lacklustre morph harder than it needs to be. Bring the shield size of Empowered Ward down by 9% relative to live, to keep pace with Hardened while still preserving the 20% gap. Or, if you're feeling generous, close the gap a little so it becomes an actual competitive morph choice.

TheYKcid

Link to my previous thread where I investigated the tooltip values of these shields, on the live game as well as PTS:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/485014/conjured-empowered-ward-tooltip-in-comparison-to-hardened-ward-on-pts/p1

TheYKcid

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

TheYKcid

Not addressed in PTS v5.1.1

Saril_Durzam

2nd notes dont make many changes, they´re mostly fixing bugs. Wait for 3rd patch notes to find more changes, pst will have got more feedback.

TheYKcid

Still no relevant changes as of v5.1.2.

Increasing the health cap of Empowered is a nice gesture, but is meaningless for PvP as the vast majority of builds aren't health-capped.

Empowered needs a tooltip buff so it isn't completely overshadowed by Hardened.

CambionDaemon

Empowered Ward needs to give Minor Prophecy when slotted not when cast. This make the morphs completely different, Hardened for damage resist and Empowered for sustain.

WrathOfInnos

CambionDaemon wrote: »

Empowered Ward needs to give Minor Prophecy when slotted not when cast. This make the morphs completely different, Hardened for damage resist and Empowered for sustain.

Unless something changed, Empowered Ward does not give Minor Prophecy, that comes from a Dark Magic passive. Empowered Ward does give Minor Intellect, which should continue. If it were granted for slotting the ability, then it would likely only apply to the user (and only on one skill bar), while the current implementation is good because it buffs all allies too.

TheYKcid

CambionDaemon wrote: »

Empowered Ward needs to give Minor Prophecy when slotted not when cast. This make the morphs completely different, Hardened for damage resist and Empowered for sustain.

Disagree. This would actually be a nerf.

On live it's very easy to attain 100% uptime on the Minor Intellect, as wards are typically refreshed more frequently than every 10s.

Turning it into a slot bonus would reduce uptime, as you'd only receive the buff when on the bar with Empowered.

I maintain my position - Empowered, at minimum, needs its tooltip to remain constant relative to Hardened (ie. a 9% nerf relative to live).

Optimally it would receive some other bonus in addition to this, since maintaining the status quo just means it will remain a dead morph.

Ramber

sooooo nerf the shields... then after much complaining buff the shields? that how it works?

TheYKcid

Ramber wrote: »

sooooo nerf the shields... then after much complaining buff the shields? that how it works?

Not reading threads and subsequently making a reductionist reply which totally misses the point and contributes nothing of value is how it works, actually.

Keep up the good work.

TheYKcid

Just bumping this one last time before patch goes live, with desperate and unrealistic hopes.

Jodynn

TheYKcid wrote: »

Just bumping this one last time before patch goes live, with desperate and unrealistic hopes.

Good luck and I hope the best as your argument is valid and appreciated, as well as agreed; seeing dead skills or uneven skills really irks me, I just bumped my scalding rune post myself because using a stam skill on mag feels so dirty.

Dracane

I see empowering ward being used way more often than hardened ward.
But both wards are quite poor and overnerfed now.

Ragnaroek93

Whenever ZOS nerfs something they either nerf a core skill by 50% or nerf 5 skills of a class at the same time (or both). I don't know what to say anymore about this game, the balance team is meme worthy at this point.

Jodynn

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

Whenever ZOS nerfs something they either nerf a core skill by 50% or nerf 5 skills of a class at the same time (or both). I don't know what to say anymore about this game, the balance team is meme worthy at this point.

It's really not that bad.
Most of the changes make sense

Healing changes and shield changes are wtf, but the rest are logical at least.

Solariken

They seem to want to limit defenses during offensive windows across the board. Basically they want everyone to feel the famous magplar gimp haha. I don't hate the philosophy though, it makes the game more reactive in nature. With that said it will probably flop and there will be a clear winner in the new meta.

iCaliban

Solariken wrote: »

They seem to want to limit defenses during offensive windows across the board. Basically they want everyone to feel the famous magplar gimp haha. I don't hate the philosophy though, it makes the game more reactive in nature. With that said it will probably flop and there will be a clear winner in the new meta.

Its pretty obvious already tbh. Either mag blade or mag sorc, drop dots, streak/cloak/shade away to prevent retaliation, wait for them to proc valkyn and hit them with ult/frags/bow proc.

Or at least thats how Im gonna hurt people next patch.

Saril_Durzam

Actually, this will make magblade be feared again. Considering how powerful Cloak is, the dots+Cloak will be used. Advantage? you can do it at a good distance so most ways of counter Cloak wont work. Streak will work but will be hard to redo dots, while with Cloak you will be able to stay at range.

SirAndy

TheYKcid wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

You realize by directing Brian's attention to this we'll now get Hardened Ward nerfed down even more to match Empowered Ward and they'll call it fixed.

Vahrokh

So glad I have unsubbed last week.

josh.lackey_ESO

No one cares, they just want shields nerfed. Shield hate is so bad, I wish they'd just get rid of them and come up with something new.