Templar Blazing Shield, PvP

ichsuisme

There's a lot of sub-par skills across all classes, weapons, etc. The templar's blazing shield has been one ability that's annoyed me for awhile due to how useless it is for PvP. Mainly because the damage-focused morph does less damage than the defensive morph. Finally decided to bring it up.

For this testing, I had 31 points into bastion for +13.13% to my shields, I originally had it higher but reduced it once I noticed the total lack of significance. I also had a pretty standard offensive CP set up with 64 into elemental expert and 72 in master at arms.


Anyway to begin:
Outside of cyrodiil, with 20,916 hp, the blazing shield tooltip is 7097.
In cyrodiil, with 27,216 hp, the tooltip immediately decreases because of battle spirit to: 4617
Blazing shield has a cap on its damage burst though, capped at 40% of its absorbed damage, meaning the maximum damage value is just: 1,846.8
Because of battle spirit, that capped damage is further reduced by half to: 923
And that 923 then also has to go through each players' resistances and defensive buffs.

This skill can increase in size, depending on the number of enemies within 5m of you

But even if you hit 5 targets with the skill, meaning the shield is increased by 20%, that still doesn't cut it.
In Cyrodiil with 27,216 hp, with the same starting tooltip of 4617, but hitting 5 enemies now, the shield value is: 5434
The 40% cap reduces the maximum damage to: 2,173.
Battle spirit reduces incoming damage by 50%, so the maximum damage is: 1,086.
And this is then mitigated by resistances and defensive buffs.



If we look at radiant ward now, the defensive morph, this morph lets the shield up to 9% bigger instead of 4% for each enemy within 5m of you. This morph still damages enemies too though. With the same exact set up, the damage upon activating radiant ward has a tooltip of: 4636 damage. In cyrodiil, this damage would be halved by battle spirit, becoming 2,318 maximum damage, before resistances and buffs.

2,318 damage > 923 damage.
2,318 damage > 1,086 damage.

The defensive morph of sun shield does more damage than the offensive morph. The blazing shield morph needs to have its math redone. Blazing shield is having its damage reduced four different ways.

I hope to see the damage from this skill generously buffed next patch. I'm reporting this early so hopefully there is time to find time to work on this.

Taleof2Cities

- The Solar Eclipse

- Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez getting back together

- Blazing Shield Builds

^^^ Those are all things that were cool in 2017, @ichsuisme ...

I don't see ZOS adjusting shield mechanics after several iterations of changes over the last 3+ years.

deleted220701-004865

Templars don't have feelings.

VoidCommander

Don’t sell youself short mate. This ability is useless in pve as well. I wish they would just scrap this ability and replace it with something else altogether. Maybe a major sorcery buff perhaps?

ichsuisme

@Taleof2Cities
Ok, yeah and it’s been useless for 3+ years lol. Just because they once a upon a time made a change doesn’t mean it was a good one. Plus there’s only so many class skills to begin with. When a class has even one dead-weight skill it holds them back.

If they don’t want 100k hp blazing shield builds to come back, and I don’t want those to come back either, harbinger and other tanks are annoying already, they should just redo the math as I asked for until they find something that works. Right now it’s a bad skill and the morphs are not working as intended.



@VoidCommander
They could replace it, but I like the idea behind the skill. It’s defense with a delayed burst of revenge damage. I think this skill is salvageable, they just need to work with it. I have some starting recommendations but Zos would still need to privately test changes as they go until they reach something that Goldilocks would approve of.


Possible recommended changes, not limited to one:
1. Have this damage-focused morph scale off max magicka.
2. Add major breach to anyone for 6s that deals direct damage to your shield.
3. Remove the 40% cap but maybe lower the shield size as needed.
4. Remove the 4% extra shield strength per person in range, change to 6% extra damage returned. More offensive, less defensive.
5. Major sorcery for 16 seconds +2s per person in range.
6. Minor berserk while the shield holds, major berserk for 1 second for every 1500 damage absorbed while the shield was up. (Rewards not over-casting, plus remember shield size is reduced in cyrodiil, looking at about 3 seconds).

In no way am I suggesting all these changes be added together, but they could pick and choose, then test, from these ideas or similar ones until the skill isn’t awful.

All skills and morphs should be solid options. Hoping they’ll agree & confirm work will be done on this skill.

Fizzlewizzle

I feel your pain.

I've returned after quite some time, and pre-leave i used to run a blazing shield build.

Did some research (not enough), noticed the New Vampire lord health boost, set my account up with a 55k HP set-up outside Cyrodiil.

Argonian Templar:
83 Points in Bastion.

Overworld:
55364 HP normal, 69264 HP as Vampire Lord.
20635 shield, 25778 shield as Vampire Lord.
6191 damage, 7733 damage as Vampire Lord.

Cyrodiil:
62262 Hp normal, 76064 Hp as Vampire Lord.
11603 shield, 14175 shield as Vampire Lord.
1741 Damage, 2126 Damage as Vampire Lord.

You can guess my surprise when i got ganked, dropped my Shield on the group, exploded twice - three times, and everyone walks away besides me.

I got zero offensive, besides my shield. And that turns out to be a joke.
(Even for PVE its a joke, but at least i'm tanky.)

ichsuisme

@Fizzlewizzle
Yeah 1,741 & 2,126 are low damage numbers. It’s because of the like four different ways the damage is reduced though. Shields reduced in pvp. Capped return. Halved incoming damage in pvp. Resistance and defensive buffs.

Those are better than what I had but it sounds you were running an even more specialized build than I was. Important to know that this skill doesn’t even work with higher health targets.

Even if we assume someone has a shield tooltip of 50k, which would be impressive, but unlikely, in pvp that’s 25k. 40% of that is 10,000. Then halved would be 5k. That’s a 90% reduction when going from original shield value to final maximum potential damage. And 5k is respectable damage, but that’d be way more easily achieved with just about any other build. Proc sets hit more than 5k. Difference is that for an extremely specialized health tank build, a build like that gives up sustain, mobility, and utility — and still does just average damage.

I don’t really want giant health tanks to come back though. Maybe health tanks would still run this skill, but I don’t want it to be tailored around them. I want this skill to work on a typical ~27k health character.

Fizzlewizzle

@ichsuisme

Indeed a pretty specialized build. Still not perfected, which i do plan on achieving (even though it does not work, it does work with other HP based skills), but for most things it only requires crafting my gear up to legendary.
Its soley build up out of crafted equipment, so while there might be gear better, it goes a long way.

As you mentioned, my sustain, mobility and utility are utter garbage.
1 skill slot is occupied by an armor skill (i don't use) for the 5% HP bonus, and the remaining skills are... well... mostly worthless as you can't get any damage out of them.

My highest recovery is 514, both for Magica and Stamina, and my highest offensive stat is Physical, with just over 1100.
Remaining resources are 10K Magica, and 9K Stamina, so by default i only have 2x shield use, unless i heavy attack with a staff (Frost staff is good for HP based shields, which are utter trash in PVP, while restoration staff is good for Magica regain).

Long story short, i've spend all my focus on my health/ health based damage shield. And, while i can tank quite a bit in the normal overworld, my total output (even in PvE) is low. Mobs don't hit hard enough to break a 25K shield, within a reasonable amount of time. Back in the days i used it to go to higher level areas to fight enemies outleveling me, a high risk-high rewards type deal.

I have made a suggestion before, quite recently, to add a taunt to the damage shield. While not helpful in PvP, it would do wonders for both the Templar (and the usability of the shield) in PvE content.

And, i get you want it to work on a "normal" character, and it being tailored to a "niche" type character is counterproductive to most players, but i do think that getting expert level usability form a skill by tailoring your character specifically for said skill should be rewarded to some extent.

UppGRAYxDD

#BringBackBlindingLight

I cannot say it enough.

Mr_Nobody

Dont worry, they will release a class that will have something similar to Blazing Shield but much better and actually working.

Calm_Fury

This is just one of those cases where ZOS uses a sledgehammer instead of a screwdriver to fix things.

Shieldplars were annoying a long time ago, but ZOS, as usual, was incredibly heavy handed in the nerfs.

I honestly haven't seen a templar using the shield in a couple of years now.

ichsuisme

@Calm_Fury
Yeah I haven’t seen it in years either. No one touches it because everyone knows how bad it is.

If they won’t fix the skill, then replace it, but I really don’t think it’s a lost-cause. It just needs some actual effort to go towards updating it.


@Mr_Nobody
I really don’t want a new class just yet so if they did that it’d suck on two levels lol. After 7 years with the same weapons, they’re wicked bland af. They probably wouldn’t wouldn’t be balanced because the new classes never are either, but so many things aren’t balanced anyway.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Templars lost more identity though. Not much left to lose though.

deviousthevile

Funny that someone mentioned Blazing Templars being a thing in '17. I made one back then and I still have her. She is useless in PvP, but still pretty nice in PvP. But she has 55-60k HP in PvE and just under 70k in PvP. Everything is into health, all gear is Infused and I am wearing Plague Doctor's, Chudan and Green Pact. So the resources are low, but with Rune Focus (I think, whatever Templar skill gives Major Resolve and restores Magicka while standing in it and using heavy attacks for stam regen, she can still tank pretty damn well. Still funny to see how much damage 1 shot mechanics/ fall damage do. I remember once during an IC event years ago, a spinner Banner boss knocked me into the air and I took 206k Fall Damage.

Either way, thank you for the memory of a dead playstyle! Fun to think about some of the things we did in the past!

Calm_Fury

ichsuisme wrote: »

@Calm_Fury
Yeah I haven’t seen it in years either. No one touches it because everyone knows how bad it is.

If they won’t fix the skill, then replace it, but I really don’t think it’s a lost-cause. It just needs some actual effort to go towards updating it.


@Mr_Nobody
I really don’t want a new class just yet so if they did that it’d suck on two levels lol. After 7 years with the same weapons, they’re wicked bland af. They probably wouldn’t wouldn’t be balanced because the new classes never are either, but so many things aren’t balanced anyway.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Templars lost more identity though. Not much left to lose though.

Yes. I loved Blazeplars, though I never really finished mine before the nerfs.

They were a very interesting build because they were strong but had dozens of compromises. You had a lot of damage with the shield, but needed everything in health to do that and basically had no other resources for anything else.

I miss those days.

YandereGirlfriend

Since I would like to see the return of certain rare status effects to the combat system (ESO is an RPG after all, we need more status effects), I would love to see one of the Sun Shield morphs proc Blinded (status where you miss every offensive attack) upon casting (obviously you would also have to tie it to the Hard CC cooldown in order to prevent abusive spamming) for like ~2-3 seconds.

It would add a much greater amount of utility to the skill for either offense or defense and would make it stand out in a way that it currently absolutely does not (or perhaps it does, just not for good reasons...). It would also be quite thematic for something described as a "Radiant Ward" or "Blazing Shield" to proc temporary Blindness, as if you have accidentally stared at the sun.

ichsuisme

I think that’d be really annoying to play against, in a bad way. I don’t like effects that turn off skills for other players. Like negate has no counter except another negate — and that’s an ultimate.

I wouldn’t want blinded to be added to a normal skill. Lol they’d buff it one patch and then nerf it back to hell the following patch.

YandereGirlfriend

Just have to agree to disagree then.

I love Negate, it's the most tactical skill in the entire game.

ichsuisme

Agreeing to disagree works.

Negate is great, but it’s tied to an ultimate so it essentially has a cooldown until you have the ultimate back up.

I think this damage morph needs more offense.

Drdeath20

ichsuisme wrote: »

I think that’d be really annoying to play against, in a bad way. I don’t like effects that turn off skills for other players. Like negate has no counter except another negate — and that’s an ultimate.

I wouldn’t want blinded to be added to a normal skill. Lol they’d buff it one patch and then nerf it back to hell the following patch.

Cloak turns off the skills for other players...

ichsuisme

True. But cloak can be super annoying to fight against. Annoying skills aren’t something I want to be added just for the sake of adding them. I have full faith in Templars being able to function without the blind status effect.

Besides, the problem is that this supposed increased-damage morph isn’t doing nearly enough damage; blazing shield needs offense, not a defensive blind effect.

the1andonlyskwex

In PvP, Blazing Shield suffers from the exact same problem as every other skill that deals damage as a percentage of healing done or vice versa. It's a universal side effect of how battle spirit works. Until battle spirit changes, skills like that just aren't going to be particularly good in PvP. Instead of thinking of it as the "damage morph" (when both morphs primarily function to add damage), you need to think of it as the PvE tank morph (because it's awful in PvP and scales entirely with max HP).

Radiant Ward, on the other hand, seems to have damage that is pretty well balanced against something like Pulsar from the Destruction Staff skill line, so it already seems to do reasonable damage if you're stacking mag instead of HP.

All of that said, it's pretty clear that both morphs currently have problems that make them undesirable (PvE tanks don't really need the damage from Blazing Shield, and Radiant Ward has two effects that scale with conflicting stats). I don't think the solution is straight buffs though, because that would probably make them overpowered (especially if you use ZOS's spreadsheet-based definition of balance). What they need are fundamental mechanical changes.

Personally, I would do something to make Blazing Shield more appealing to PvE tanks (I'm not quite sure what, but Templar tanks need help anyway), while I would change Radiant Ward to deal 0 damage and provide immunity to snares and immobilizations (for PvP).

Firstmep

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

- The Solar Eclipse

- Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez getting back together

- Blazing Shield Builds

^^^ Those are all things that were cool in 2017, @ichsuisme ...

I don't see ZOS adjusting shield mechanics after several iterations of changes over the last 3+ years.

For some reason they think they got it right.
Meanwhile you can still stack 15k+ dmg shield on magsorc in cp pvp.
And we have Templar shield that scales off of max hp and weakly at that.
There's no standards/balance between shield.

the1andonlyskwex

Firstmep wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

- The Solar Eclipse

- Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez getting back together

- Blazing Shield Builds

^^^ Those are all things that were cool in 2017, @ichsuisme ...

I don't see ZOS adjusting shield mechanics after several iterations of changes over the last 3+ years.

For some reason they think they got it right.
Meanwhile you can still stack 15k+ dmg shield on magsorc in cp pvp.
And we have Templar shield that scales off of max hp and weakly at that.
There's no standards/balance between shield.

I wouldn't say there are no standards. Bone Shield (undaunted), Defensive Posture (1h and Shield), and Sun Shield (templar) all have nearly identical scaling.

Yes, magicka based shields scale differently from health based shields, but I think that's probably for the best. Letting healing/shields scale too well based on health is a big part of how you get unkillable tanks in PvP (because high max health protects them from burst damage while high healing protects them from sustained damage). Furthermore, overly high health-based scaling isn't great in PvE either, because it devalues the healer role.

Firstmep

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

- The Solar Eclipse

- Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez getting back together

- Blazing Shield Builds

^^^ Those are all things that were cool in 2017, @ichsuisme ...

I don't see ZOS adjusting shield mechanics after several iterations of changes over the last 3+ years.

For some reason they think they got it right.
Meanwhile you can still stack 15k+ dmg shield on magsorc in cp pvp.
And we have Templar shield that scales off of max hp and weakly at that.
There's no standards/balance between shield.

I wouldn't say there are no standards. Bone Shield (undaunted), Defensive Posture (1h and Shield), and Sun Shield (templar) all have nearly identical scaling.

Yes, magicka based shields scale differently from health based shields, but I think that's probably for the best. Letting healing/shields scale too well based on health is a big part of how you get unkillable tanks in PvP (because high max health protects them from burst damage while high healing protects them from sustained damage). Furthermore, overly high health-based scaling isn't great in PvE either, because it devalues the healer role.

Sorry, you misunderstood me, or I wasn't Clear enough.
Outside of Magicka sorcerer, most classes simply can't take full advantage of damage shields, simply Beacuse how much offensive stats you have to give up to get these hp based shields to decent values.
And at that point your heals will suffer then, vs on magsorc where you can still just stack max Magicka to high heavens and have good healing from matriarch(I know the scaling was changed but it's still very strong).
This also means that a lot of these classes are more reliant on healing, since they can't get a good value out of damage shields, and often forced to run heavy armor in tandem as well.
Annulment is simply not a strong enough damage shield by itself to help less mobile Magicka class run light armor.
IMHO major ward should brought back as the defacto dmg shield buff, as to disallow dmg shields to stack(from skills anyway), and then individual shields like annulment, sun shield etc should be be made stronger to compensate, and also those hp based shields could have at least 1 Magicka scaling morph.
Then the difference between running for example harness Magicka over hardened ward would in the utility the skill provides.

I see a lot of complaints on these forums on Stam vs mag in pvp and I think revamping damage shields would be a great start to make light armor more desirable.
Ofc things like malacath allowing ppl to hit harder in heavy armor, than in light without malacath, and in general procsets should be adjusted as well at some point, but IMHO damage shields also need a revamp.

Reality is, Magicka based dmg shields were adjusted multiple times mainly Beacuse ppl complained about Magicka sorcerers being nigh unkillable, and yet shield stacking was never addressed.
And no I'm not asking for a magsorc nerf here, only using 1 stong damage shield vs 2 weaker ones would benefit them too.

Mr_Nobody

Zos has zero understanding of what are they balancing.

Forget templars and blazing shield. It wont happen.

Magplars have been the worst in PvP for a while, true, there was a period of them being O K, but besides that they have always held the last place. Ok, maybe 1.6 jesus beam was strong, but even then, peeps averaged like 20k HP in cyro - and not 40k.

ealdwin

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Personally, I would do something to make Blazing Shield more appealing to PvE tanks (I'm not quite sure what, but Templar tanks need help anyway), while I would change Radiant Ward to deal 0 damage and provide immunity to snares and immobilizations (for PvP).

My suggestion regarding Blazing Shield has been to rename it to “Blinding Shield”. This morph would remain a health scaling shield, keep the magicka cost, but now would stun enemies in an area around the caster for X seconds, with each enemy increasing the length of the stun (cap on 6 enemies). This would ideally provide an AoE hard cc option for Tank-plars.

Radiant Ward would then be adjusted to scale off of max magicka, and would keep the increasing shield strength based on enemies around the caster.

Husan

At this point, I would honestly argue we could make blazing shield scale of stamina and radiant shield scale off of magicka and not make templar too op. It would without a doubt be one of the strongest skills in the game if it would scale off of max stats instead of health, but it would carry the templar class from the bottom of the barrel to one of the best choices for PvP. For PvE magicka templar would probably become the undisputed best solo class. But for stamina templar, which arguably has the worst healing/defense of all classes at this moment it would be a godsend.

Make sunshield great again. Make it scale off of max stat.

ichsuisme

Husan wrote: »

At this point, I would honestly argue we could make blazing shield scale of stamina and radiant shield scale off of magicka.

If stamina Templars are in need of a shield, blazing shield could also just auto-scale off of your higher max resource. Like DK’s flames of oblivion / cauterize; like Templar’s own ritual of retribution; like sorcerer’s streak, etc.

The morph should still have that 40% cap removed though because of all the battle spirit interference that exists. And even after that, the base numbers and scaling percentages should be re-evaluated.

Firstmep wrote: »

most classes simply can't take full advantage of damage shields, simply because how much offensive stats you have to give up

I see a lot of complaints on these forums on Stam vs mag in pvp and I think revamping damage shields would be a great start ... IMHO damage shields also need a revamp.

Reality is, Magicka based dmg shields were adjusted multiple times mainly because ppl complained about Magicka sorcerers being nigh unkillable, and yet shield stacking was never addressed.

Good point. The shield nerf via Battle spirit hurt other classes more than it hurt sorcs —who still have great shields — despite the nerfs really being created for sorcs in particular.

Ranger209

ichsuisme wrote: »

@Taleof2Cities
Ok, yeah and it’s been useless for 3+ years lol. Just because they once a upon a time made a change doesn’t mean it was a good one. Plus there’s only so many class skills to begin with. When a class has even one dead-weight skill it holds them back.

If they don’t want 100k hp blazing shield builds to come back, and I don’t want those to come back either, harbinger and other tanks are annoying already, they should just redo the math as I asked for until they find something that works. Right now it’s a bad skill and the morphs are not working as intended.



@VoidCommander
They could replace it, but I like the idea behind the skill. It’s defense with a delayed burst of revenge damage. I think this skill is salvageable, they just need to work with it. I have some starting recommendations but Zos would still need to privately test changes as they go until they reach something that Goldilocks would approve of.


Possible recommended changes, not limited to one:
1. Have this damage-focused morph scale off max magicka.
2. Add major breach to anyone for 6s that deals direct damage to your shield.
3. Remove the 40% cap but maybe lower the shield size as needed.
4. Remove the 4% extra shield strength per person in range, change to 6% extra damage returned. More offensive, less defensive.
5. Major sorcery for 16 seconds +2s per person in range.
6. Minor berserk while the shield holds, major berserk for 1 second for every 1500 damage absorbed while the shield was up. (Rewards not over-casting, plus remember shield size is reduced in cyrodiil, looking at about 3 seconds).

In no way am I suggesting all these changes be added together, but they could pick and choose, then test, from these ideas or similar ones until the skill isn’t awful.

All skills and morphs should be solid options. Hoping they’ll agree & confirm work will be done on this skill.

I think it should be reworked after all of the shield changes that have gone thru. A lot has happened since the time it was an issue.

Athan1

At present, this morph is trash.

Husan

Athan1 wrote: »

At present, this morph is trash.

As far as I am aware (someone please correct me if I am wrong, wasn't actively playing 2017-2019), the skill and both morphs have been trash for 5 years.