5.1.5 Live Shield Changes

Purpaleslushii

Hello to whoever is reading this! My name is PurpaleSlushii and I have been playing magic sorcerer since 1.6. I've been here through all the ups all the downs all the good and all the bad on sorcerer. Back before the first shield nerf magic sorc felt insane, to good in my opinion with great damage, sustain, and tankyness. A nerf was needed and soon us sorcs were met with the first nerfs. These were shields being affected by resistances. Shields being critiable, and having it so one shield cant be above 50% of your max health. At first when this came out as a sorc I was very frustrated with how shields got nerfed in so many ways, but as a day one sorc I adapted and found what was good to use and how I could make solo play viable again. This was very hard at first because as a sorcerer I do not use pets in pvp in my opinion pets were way to strong and I did not find it challenging to fight outnumbered having pets you can use as line of sight and use to heal yourself like crazy. I'm just a typical healing ward destro resto sorc.

One of the big struggles last patch was getting the heal from healing ward because a lot of the time your shield would be hit off before you could actually use the heal so you would have to line of sight like crazy or shield and use dark conversion for the heal.This didn't bother me to much because a lot of the time I would be able to find line of sight to heal or my healing ward and shields would be big enough when I was near execute range to give me large enough shields that i could survive the pressure and either get away or heal up to keep fighting. About a month ago the first patch note changes came out and I was very very excited to see the new healing ward changes and rapid regen changes I was super happy and felt the game was going in the right direction. I saw a lot of skills from a lot of different classes and skill lines were getting damage buffs and I was hype. Then I kept reading and saw shield changes. Hardened became smaller, harness and dampen became smaller, and also healing ward became smaller. At first i figured with the new healing that the smaller shields wouldn't be a problem but after experiencing pvp day one of Scalebreaker I was so wrong , and I have a lot of concerns. Starting off in my opinion from playing it seems to me like damage is way to strong this patch especially Damage over time Effects.

Most of my death recaps yesterday were from dots whether that was soul trap, trap beast, entropy, vamp drain, bleeds didn't matter every dot on my recap yesterday was at least 5k in damage. Fighting multiple people made it extremely hard to pressure one because the amount of pressure one person can put on you this patch is a lot let alone having multiple people putting multiple dots on you is crazy. The huge problem I was running into was being squishy and not being able to heal. Now keep in mind on my sorc I have 43k mag 26k health 16k stam 29k spell 27k physical resistances 2400 crit resistance and 2500 regen. The build I am using is built for solo play to take on multiple people. When I would try to fight outnumbered most times yesterday I was in the situation of having to shield stack non stop because of the pressure I was receiving. Using hardened then dampen then healing ward to get the heal just was not working for me. Almost every time I would try to shield stack when I was low health my healing ward would get hit off immediately because of all the pressure I was taking with everyone having insane damage. This would make it that i couldn't even receive the heal from my ward because the shield was to small to stay up to heal me. There was one point when i had all three shields on and I had half health and I got one shot by onslaught. That should not be happening if i have my shields up to protect myself from dying and also have half health one skill should not be able to kill someone that is protecting them self like that. I also at one point had on rapid regen and healing ward thinking that this would help me more but I was wrong. I was still running into the same problem of people hitting so hard that my shields wouldn't stay up long enough for me to heal.

Now this new healing is great and everything but when you are in light armor an have no shields on because they are being hit off it does not matter if you have things like rapid regen and entropy healing you because being in light armor is like begin naked. You take outrageous damage with no shields more damage than I can heal through so the healing does not help me if I don't have a shield that can protect me while my health goes up. Yesterday a few times I also ran into alot of heavy armor bleed builds and heavy armor builds. These are much stronger and outperforming alot of mag classes and it does not seem very balanced. To me from my fights against these players it seemed they had more damage than me more sustain and also were able to tank more damage than me. Which basically means they could be more offensive than I could and it just felt like I was being bullied not being able to fight back because of all the pressure. It is not fair that someone can be in heavy armor have more health than you more damage and be more tanky. Heavy armor is ment for tanks to be able to tank. Not to be able to tank and put out more damage than molag bal himself.

Please take a look a shields and do something with them to make it more balanced to survive and fight people with insane damage. I know now that shields got buffed to be 60% of your max health instead of 50% but there is no possible way to build for that, because in order to reach that amount of max mag to have that much mag you would be sacrificing defensive stats and moves on your bar because you would need bound armaments and inner light for the max to reach the 60% and that is just not viable to fight with a bar setup and a max mag build like that. Please take a look at balancing damage with shields maybe make shields how they were last patch that would balance it more and make it so we can take more pressure. Also I am fine with the harness regen nerf that dosent bother me.

One idea that might help you guys to balance the game would be making 4 morphs of each move in the game. Two PvE morphs per move and two PvP morphs per move. Have it so you can only use PvE morphs in PvE and PvP morphs in PvP. This would provide you guys an easy way of balancing the game where when you make changes to a skill it doesn’t affect both PvP and PvE. Just an idea tho! Thanks for reading! ~ slushii

AntonShan

tl;dr

Theignson

1vX getting harder and harder.

How did you do 1v1 or even odds open field fights?

ZarkingFrued

Yeah they just want zergs

chuckythexii

paragraphs please.

mandricus

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Saril_Durzam

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Agree. Actually, it was much easier to make shields not stack rather than nerf them. It would be much better for PvE sorcs.

AcadianPaladin

My magsorc no longer has room for nerfed pets or weak shields.

xylena_lazarow

mandricus wrote: »

A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game

That's fine in arenas where you're guaranteed even numbers, similarly composed groups, and similarly skilled players matched to you via a functional MMR system. This is not fine in open world PvP like Cyrodiil where even numbers are never guaranteed and you never know who you'll be pugging with or surfing with, nor in BGs where your allies are sub gear cap guys spamming light attacks against the premade with dedicated healers and synced ulti dumps.

As it is, most solo PvPers aren't asking to win 1v6, they're asking for a fair chance to survive long enough to get back to their allies or LoS cover.

darkblue5

Learn to use LOS that doesn't involve clipping into pets?

Taloros

The intent of the Sorc nerfs may have been to make it impossible to withstand the damage of a whole army hitting you. That intent is a good one, as that was/is a problem with some players. Don't know if that was just because of shields, other skills/sets or exploits. But still, the intent is okay.

I don't know either if the problems in PvP were properly adressed by the changes. They tried so many things by now, from oblivion damage sets to cast time on shields, that I'm sceptical they're going to get it right. And as PvP players will always complain, maybe there even is no "right".

But one way or the other: This isn't a PvP only game. IMHO it's not even a PvP-centric game; it's much too clunky and imbalanced for that. When doing fixes just with PvP in mind, it messes up the PvE experience.

Syiccal

All I saw was 2400 crit resistance (low as F) and 24k resistance, in this meta that wont get you very far. No wonder you were getting smacked.
Remove a dmg set or 2 , put on a defensive set.

brandonv516

29k spell 27k physical resistances

I've seen heavy armor builds with less resistances than that (25k-27k).

It's not a light vs. heavy issue in my opinion because you can clearly achieve the same amount of mitigation with your current choice.

It's just going to be harder to 1vX now because there's so much passive damage that's stacking.

Not sure what you can do differently as a Sorcerer because they've pretty much always depended on shields.

There are options like the Curse Eater set or running Efficient Purge. I know they seem like cliche answers but they could be just about the only solutions to the DoT meta.

No_Division

AntonShan wrote: »

tl;dr

yea how do you people have time to write all this out for a quick thread topic lol.

frostz417

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Sounds like you’re just a victim of getting 1vX’d
People who can tank such damage know their builds and rotation. The fact that people think 1vX should be nerfed shows how many garbage players play PvP.
A game that punishes players for not zerging up is a trash game.

InvictusApollo

@Purpaleslushii

Purpaleslushii wrote: »

Now keep in mind on my sorc I have 43k mag 26k health 16k stam 29k spell 27k physical resistances 2400 crit resistance and 2500 regen.

Do you have those stats in CP or noCP?

ku5h

Syiccal wrote: »

All I saw was 2400 crit resistance (low as F) and 24k resistance, in this meta that wont get you very far. No wonder you were getting smacked.
Remove a dmg set or 2 , put on a defensive set.

What are you talking about?! Only way to go over 3k impen without running a SnB is to run transmutation, or over saturate in CP. Only thing you saw and you saw it wrong, not 24k, but 29/27k resist, which requires a lot investment on a Sorc to get that number. You have to run Fortified brass/Armor master+1Pirate+1Mighty chudan/Bloodspawn and ofc major resists buff to get that numbers. That leaves you with option to hit like a wet noodle(run sustain set which you desperately need), or to run out of res after 5 sec fighting(run dmg set so you can actually kill a mudcrab), but you want him to put more into defense....cool.

Ozazz

my man purple slushii trying to save the game!

Syiccal

ku5h wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

All I saw was 2400 crit resistance (low as F) and 24k resistance, in this meta that wont get you very far. No wonder you were getting smacked.
Remove a dmg set or 2 , put on a defensive set.

What are you talking about?! Only way to go over 3k impen without running a SnB is to run transmutation, or over saturate in CP. Only thing you saw and you saw it wrong, not 24k, but 29/27k resist, which requires a lot investment on a Sorc to get that number. You have to run Fortified brass/Armor master+1Pirate+1Mighty chudan/Bloodspawn and ofc major resists buff to get that numbers. That leaves you with option to hit like a wet noodle(run sustain set which you desperately need), or to run out of res after 5 sec fighting(run dmg set so you can actually kill a mudcrab), but you want him to put more into defense....cool.

I know *** rubbish right, but it's how zos want us light armour players to play, no shields means have to play with more defensive sets or play heavy and nobody wants to do that.. they should have left shield strength alone and put a major and minor system in place

Higuchi

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Absolutely agree with that!^ it used to be so easy to solo.... pretty much anything, world bosses, dungeons (with a bit of skill) and ...dragons.... well, not anymore. and it's good! because, after all, it's a teamwork, a multiplayer game, not a solo one. and Devs look forward to getting people together. Good intention! Thank you, Devs. Yeah, the builds we all had before this patch have got a little bit ruined, but that's fine, we'll adjust, find new friends and solid teams... together!

bakthi

Higuchi wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Absolutely agree with that!^ it used to be so easy to solo.... pretty much anything, world bosses, dungeons (with a bit of skill) and ...dragons.... well, not anymore. and it's good! because, after all, it's a teamwork, a multiplayer game, not a solo one. and Devs look forward to getting people together. Good intention! Thank you, Devs. Yeah, the builds we all had before this patch have got a little bit ruined, but that's fine, we'll adjust, find new friends and solid teams... together!

Humbug. Forced grouping for almost everything was one of the worst aspects of FFXI. A lot of people (myself included) probably came to this game from the single-player Elder Scrolls games, and aren't necessarily all about grouping all the time. I don't know the ratio of "Elder Scrolls fans that are now playing an MMO" to "MMO fans that are now playing an Elder Scrolls game", but I doubt it's overwhelmingly weighted towards the latter (and yes, of course not everyone fits neatly into either box.)

Add to that the rudimentary-yet-still-broken queue system, and ugh. Seriously, the internal logic seems so weird. Manage to put together 11 people for a BG, then tear the whole thing down because the 12th person fell asleep, instead of taking the next in queue. Nothing for world bosses, trials, etc. so people have to just stand around yelling, hoping the right other people are hanging out in the right zone at the right time. Things get done...sort of...but it could be so much better.

PvE solo should be difficult, but possible. Probably not being able to solo like...a vet trial, but a world boss, a normal dungeon? Yes if sufficiently geared+skilled. I don't really have much of an opinion on PvP (I'm doing it now, somehow, but almost always in a group).

Galarthor

Saril_Durzam wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Agree. Actually, it was much easier to make shields not stack rather than nerf them. It would be much better for PvE sorcs.

How so? Shields were capped b/c ZOS felt shields allowed players to ignore certain boss mechanics allowing more mindless DPSing, while players utilizing block or dodge always had to keep an eye on what the boss was doing.

zvavi

Galarthor wrote: »

Saril_Durzam wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Agree. Actually, it was much easier to make shields not stack rather than nerf them. It would be much better for PvE sorcs.

How so? Shields were capped b/c ZOS felt shields allowed players to ignore certain boss mechanics allowing more mindless DPSing, while players utilizing block or dodge always had to keep an eye on what the boss was doing.

Lol, mindless dpsing, where u use shield to bypass damage when needed. Mindless. Dpsing. While doing mechanics. Just differently.thats like saying that keeping damaging zaan while kiting her fire waves is wrong because you should hide behind pillar. Mechanics that should be one shots and not be shielded are specifically killing you even with the shield up.

casparian

With respect because I know @Purpaleslushii is a good player, I don’t think the main underlying issue here is about shields at all. It’s about ZOS’ vision for solo/outnumbered PVP: they don’t have one, they don’t regard it as a real part of the game, and they don’t take it into account when making balance decisions. I think that’s a mistake on their part, but it is what it is.

jaysins

I actually fought you 1v1 last night outside Roeback, good fight by the way @Purpaleslushii

Before any changes to shields are made, I feel like we should wait until dots are adjusted. Right now, even with the increased healing my class has received and swapping out spriggans for a set that will provide me more stam and thus amp the healing up further, myself and just about every other class is going down much much faster.

Whether shields got changed or not you would be having a much harder time staying alive, as we all are, and with the outcry I've seen I'm pretty sure several of the most egregious dots will be toned down. Because of this, I think before shields getting a possible buff, we should wait to see what the devs do as if shields get a buff and dots get nerfed simultaneously, we may see them over performing as they once were.

Just food for thought.

Galarthor

zvavi wrote: »

Galarthor wrote: »

Saril_Durzam wrote: »

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

Agree. Actually, it was much easier to make shields not stack rather than nerf them. It would be much better for PvE sorcs.

How so? Shields were capped b/c ZOS felt shields allowed players to ignore certain boss mechanics allowing more mindless DPSing, while players utilizing block or dodge always had to keep an eye on what the boss was doing.

Lol, mindless dpsing, where u use shield to bypass damage when needed. Mindless. Dpsing. While doing mechanics. Just differently.thats like saying that keeping damaging zaan while kiting her fire waves is wrong because you should hide behind pillar. Mechanics that should be one shots and not be shielded are specifically killing you even with the shield up.

Face it, that's why ZOS implemented the changes. They stated so themselves back then. Whether it was a sensible decision is another story.

No_Division

casparian wrote: »

With respect because I know @Purpaleslushii is a good player, I don’t think the main underlying issue here is about shields at all. It’s about ZOS’ vision for solo/outnumbered PVP: they don’t have one, they don’t regard it as a real part of the game, and they don’t take it into account when making balance decisions. I think that’s a mistake on their part, but it is what it is.

I agree with that and the fact the title doesn't differentiate between mag scaled or health scaled.

If I had an aggressive deadlines schedule like ZoS and read this topic, I'd only see "shield" find the main topic in the beginning of the paragraph and then decide on a fix that matches the update.

I think health scaling shields have different issues than mag scaled and had to deal with overnerfs because of their higher value cousins.

Gilvoth

mandricus wrote: »

I think that what you are complaining about is exactly what they were trying to address in this patch: make 1 Vs X a lot harder, if not impossible. Not only for Sorcs, but for everyone. And I think they are right. If one player is able to stand the damage of 6+ average players (I'm not talking about noobs, just average players) constantly hitting him, there is something fundamentally wrong in the game mechanics. No one should be allowed to stand that pressure (I'm not talking about kiting, which requires skills, but just standing the damage and healing trough it), and I've seen too much of this *** in the past years, especially in Cp campaigns. Unkillable builds, able to hit like a truck at the same time when going on offensive mode, are intrinsically wrong, and it was too easy to create these builds. A game where, when you are outnumbered, you die is, imho, a healthier game. Just my 2 cents.

well said.
that is exactly the truth.

Ozazz

sounds like a bunch of casual talk!

vesselwiththepestle

I could use Hardened Ward to survive a ball group rushing over me.

So I guess shields are still good for me.

SirLeeMinion

Higuchi wrote: »

Absolutely agree with that!^ it used to be so easy to solo.... pretty much anything, world bosses, dungeons (with a bit of skill) and ...dragons.... well, not anymore. and it's good! because, after all, it's a teamwork, a multiplayer game, not a solo one. and Devs look forward to getting people together. Good intention! Thank you, Devs. Yeah, the builds we all had before this patch have got a little bit ruined, but that's fine, we'll adjust, find new friends and solid teams... together!

LOL