Hardened Ward heal making it to live is a mistake and needs to be changed

StaticWave

Kordai wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

So yes Ward is Overtuned, but so is healthy offering, so is coagulating, so is honor the dead, so are Wardens, Arcanist, and Necros. They all have GREAT healing.

The new Hardened Ward outperforms all of these things, and does it on a class that was originally designed to recover using hots and mobility, not spammable burst recovery like brawler DKs or Templars. The result is as Static said, you end up with a class that no longer has any weakness, to an even worse degree than what Healthy Offering did for NB.

Except of course that HotD, healthy offering can target others while polar wind is both self and another. My warden has a 17k polar tooltip with nothing other than 44 points into health, orzorga's smoked bear haunch, DDF and health cp. It heals both myself and another. With major mending procced from having living trellis proc at less than 40% health my tooltip sits at over 19k. On both myself and another, with almost a 5k every 2 sec hot for 10 secs.

So we’re just gonna forget Sorc also has Encase which has the same tooltip as Artic Blast but is AoE and also applies AoE Major Maim and Minor Vitality?

I’ll take Encase over Polar Wind any time, thanks.

I’ll also take new Hardened Ward over any single target burst heal in the game too thanks

You have a 19k tooltip on encase with BS with just DDF and no sets? Interesting.

I have a 12k tooltip though, and that’s fully AoE. Not “heal you and another ally”, or “you or another ally”, but full AoE. Also full AoE Major Maim and Vitality on every single person hit by the heal.

I don’t think you realize how strong this heal is. The fact that it applies AoE Major Maim is huge. Imagine everyone doing 10% less damage to you. I’ll take that over a 3k HoT tooltip every 2s lol.

Durham

Again this was mentioned on the test server! This is another example of not listening to the community.

moo_2021

How do you get 50k magicka with rally cry and essence thief with 2k stamina regen and 2k magicka regen?

Kordai

StaticWave wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

So yes Ward is Overtuned, but so is healthy offering, so is coagulating, so is honor the dead, so are Wardens, Arcanist, and Necros. They all have GREAT healing.

The new Hardened Ward outperforms all of these things, and does it on a class that was originally designed to recover using hots and mobility, not spammable burst recovery like brawler DKs or Templars. The result is as Static said, you end up with a class that no longer has any weakness, to an even worse degree than what Healthy Offering did for NB.

Except of course that HotD, healthy offering can target others while polar wind is both self and another. My warden has a 17k polar tooltip with nothing other than 44 points into health, orzorga's smoked bear haunch, DDF and health cp. It heals both myself and another. With major mending procced from having living trellis proc at less than 40% health my tooltip sits at over 19k. On both myself and another, with almost a 5k every 2 sec hot for 10 secs.

So we’re just gonna forget Sorc also has Encase which has the same tooltip as Artic Blast but is AoE and also applies AoE Major Maim and Minor Vitality?

I’ll take Encase over Polar Wind any time, thanks.

I’ll also take new Hardened Ward over any single target burst heal in the game too thanks

You have a 19k tooltip on encase with BS with just DDF and no sets? Interesting.

I have a 12k tooltip though, and that’s fully AoE. Not “heal you and another ally”, or “you or another ally”, but full AoE. Also full AoE Major Maim and Vitality on every single person hit by the heal.

I don’t think you realize how strong this heal is. The fact that it applies AoE Major Maim is huge. Imagine everyone doing 10% less damage to you. I’ll take that over a 3k HoT tooltip every 2s lol.

... Literally no one brought up encase besides you. I never said that it wasn't good. I was talking about hardened ward vs polar wind. You then said that "Encase which has the same tooltip as Artic [sic] Blast..." which was what I referred to when I said "You have a 19k tooltip on encase with BS with just DDF and no sets?". You then disagreed with your own statement.

If this argument is about encase then please change the title to avoid confusion.

Kordai

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you get 50k magicka with rally cry and essence thief with 2k stamina regen and 2k magicka regen?

Where did you get those stats? The screen shots in the op are from 2 different players. The first is from the other player not the op. Static is running rcry and ethief but doesn't have 50k mag. The other player does but isn't running either rcry or ethief so is probably stacking mag sets. Don't actually know as uptime would be less than is visible in the screenshot.

1st screenshot is the other players self healing.
2nd screenshot is Static (OP)'s incoming damage from the other player.
3rd screenshot is Static (OP)'s outgoing damage being done to the other player.

NyassaV

The added old healing ward back to the game but only gave it to sorc. Frankly I like the idea of them having a small supplemental heal on the shield, but as it is the heal is kinda big. They need to reduce the value.

ItsNotLiving

NyassaV wrote: »

The added old healing ward back to the game but only gave it to sorc. Frankly I like the idea of them having a small supplemental heal on the shield, but as it is the heal is kinda big. They need to reduce the value.

Maybe it should be a small HoT.

Aznox

If all those immortal sorcs could queue for BG, I'd like to make a first-hand opinion of the problem in no-CP

Udrath

Wait until everyone hops over to sorc and are roaming around in packs. I was struggling with sorc groups during the IC now it’s going be worse lol

Theignson

In Zerodil last night, during battles, I was coated with Haunting curse ~100% of the time.

I saw a streaming Mag sorc with 60k magicka and 35k health. He had both hardened ward and healing ward...his health almost never budged.

It is the age of the Sorc.

StaticWave

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you get 50k magicka with rally cry and essence thief with 2k stamina regen and 2k magicka regen?

Not hard to stack max mag after they gave it 10% max mag buff and Hardened Ward healing. Essentially what ppl do now is drop Vigor to slot Bound Aegis because Ward is that good. So they get 5% from Inner Light, 8% from Bound Aegis, 10% from Expert Summoner, 6% from Undaunted, and 2% from Mages guild, totaling 31% extra max mag.

StaticWave

Theignson wrote: »

In Zerodil last night, during battles, I was coated with Haunting curse ~100% of the time.

I saw a streaming Mag sorc with 60k magicka and 35k health. He had both hardened ward and healing ward...his health almost never budged.

It is the age of the Sorc.

Ppl want to “enjoy” it. Let them 🤣🤣

xDeusEJRx

I salute you Static for trying to actually trying to talk some sense into Zos in PTS, but unfortunately at this point in the game the real test server is the "Live" server since it seems like that's when ZOS decide to start balancing(when patch hits live)

But nonetheless, I appreciate the effort you tried in the cycle

StaticWave

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

I salute you Static for trying to actually trying to talk some sense into Zos in PTS, but unfortunately at this point in the game the real test server is the "Live" server since it seems like that's when ZOS decide to start balancing(when patch hits live)

But nonetheless, I appreciate the effort you tried in the cycle

I didn't really do that much testing because there weren't anyone to test on PTS, but I did get a couple duels in on 1st day of the PTS cycle.

I used my experience on the live server combined with the short testing duration on PTS to conclude that the new Hardened Ward change would overperform. It didn't require more testing than that and was, quite frankly, a simple conclusion. If I was able to survive up to 4.5k DPS on the live server with old Hardened Ward, then I will survive up to 6-7k DPS with new Hardened Ward.

What's ironic about all of this is how many sorc mains were blasting the NB mains and telling them NB is OP, but when Sorc gets the same treatment, they pretend it's fair lol. At least keep some consistency if you're going to argue in favor of balance lol

Jsmalls

I'm still not convinced this is 100% broken. In duels sure, it's dummy strong (but just slightly stronger than burst heals of other classes, once again we asked for small tweaks in PTS to test but we didn't get that). In open world definitely not. You can't use block mitigation while the ward is up which is the best form of defense for Xv1 scaling (that and dodge rolling). And the "temporary health" expires so it's an extra mechanic to maintain, even when you aren't under pressure (although I guess since it's able to be used more reactively versus proactively maybe this aspect of it will change a bit). So shielding is still the worst scaling defense in the game and you will NOT see Mag Sorcs tanking groups of players without kiting / LoSing / spamming dodge roll.

Bastion and defile will be a STRONG counter to shields.

StaticWave

Jsmalls wrote: »

You can't use block mitigation while the ward is up which is the best form of defense for Xv1 scaling (that and dodge rolling)

So are you going to ignore the fact that Sorc can block cast shield now because there's a heal underneath? If they get through a 14-15k shield, which I doubt they will, then they will have to deal with a block casting burst heal. Are you also going to ignore the fact that new Hardened Ward is better than other burst heals because the shield mitigates DoTs for you while you're block casting it? You can't do that with a normal burst heal.

I mean, a simple test can see that lol...:

https://youtu.be/KkGJZmI1Y1w

StaticWave

If you main magsorc and think it's ok then there's no point arguing with you because you will just find loops and holes to convince yourself that it isn't broken. Cmon man. I can throw 100 clips at you with various builds at various HP thresholds proving that Hardened Ward is broken and you would still have a reason to say it's a good change. It's a nonconstructive argument at this point. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I didn't have high hopes of convincing anyone either, but at least I'd raise some awareness of the issue we're about to have in PvP for the next few months lol.

Turtle_Bot

NyassaV wrote: »

The added old healing ward back to the game but only gave it to sorc. Frankly I like the idea of them having a small supplemental heal on the shield, but as it is the heal is kinda big. They need to reduce the value.

The heal amount itself is fine, especially when you run it on a more appropriate build that has 30-40k max mag or less. It's the max mag stacking potential and it's interactions between ward sizes and battle spirit that is the issue here.

The stacking of anything to excess is just a massive issue in general, which is why ZOS should be looking at ways to reduce the potential of things to stack to extreme amounts.
Other examples of the real issue at hand:

Here's a list of things that would have never been an issue if ZOS had limited how far similar/same things could be stacked:
- Old Wards (hardened + healing + dampen magic) - Should have limited to 1 ward instead of gutting the ward mechanics
- Hardened Ward with max mag percent modifiers - Just limit how much max mag can be stacked
- Health based anything with health stacking (polar wardens, crimson WWs, arc shields, etc) - Limit health stacking
- NB damage modifiers with MR/cloak and offerings heal - Limit damage modifiers (to PvE preferrably)
- Proc sets - they sort of did this right with instant procs, but didn't go all the way
- Same healing over time abilities (echoing/radiating) - limit to 2 stacks per player
- Light attack modifiers (overload + crystal weapon + crushing weapon + proc set) - This one they got right by preventing crystal/crushing from stacking
- Heavy attack modifiers (the old DK 1 shot HA builds)
- Mitigation (block + undeath + unique percent bonuses) - limit the bonuses to not reach 98%+
- Stacking group buff sets
Probably many more things I am forgetting but hopefully everyone can see where the real issue is here right?

Reducing the ceiling potential of how much max mag that can be stacked would more than solve the issues with hardened ward while leaving the ability as a viable option for those who don't stack that hard into it.

How I would go about solving the issue:

I've said it before, but replacing the max stats gained from BA/morphs with major prophecy/savagery while slotted on either bar (which doesn't buff ward size since they cannot crit) is the way to go. It heavily limits the stat stacking potential for shield size while fitting a needed basic buff into the class kit.
It's a guaranteed 8% drop in max mag and likely a further 7% drop in max mag due to also dropping inner light (5% IL + 2% MG passive) for 15% max mag drop total.
With this, putting everything into max mag will give roughly 50-55k mag, still a lot, but not enough gain for what you have to give up to get it, especially compared to achieving 60k+ max mag allows.
This means most will either sit at 30-40k max mag resulting in a 10-12k ward + 3-4k heal (well within appropriate values for "temporary health" and quite frankly due to only the heal part being able to crit has a lower overall "temporary health" ceiling than a regular burst heal that can crit for much higher will have) or will go pure damage route (no stat stacking) with vibrant shroud as the burst heal.

Based on statics own numbers above (6+7+8+10=31% total potential max mag percent bonuses), this 1 simple change basically halves the realistic amount of percent bonuses that will be stacked for max magicka (down to 16%) unless the sorc gives up a non-existent bar slot to keep inner light, which still results in a 25% drop (down to 23%) and becomes extremely inefficient on bar space since you would be doubling up the major prophecy/savagery buff at that point and we all know how unreliable the reveal part of inner light is let alone how useless it is for anything other than trying to reveal NB.

This seems much more of an appropriate fix rather than trying to outright kill this ability again.

As for Vibrant Shroud:

It seems fine as a heal for solo play, less reliable than Blessings for group play outside of highly coordinated, tightly packed groups (ball groups) that would already have 1 blessings slotted.
We can't really compare VS to Arctic since they do different things:
- VS is AoE that increases healing received and ward size and reduces damage taken
- AB is a self heal only that deals fairly significant DoT (with the status rework), and stuns.
Apples to oranges here.
More appropriate abilities to compare VS to would be Blessings of Restoration/Combat Prayer (BoR/CP) and Enchanted Growth/Soothing Spores (EG/Spores)
Compared to BoR:
- Same cost (nearly 5k without vamp)
- Heals 10% less base than blessing of restoration
- Significantly smaller AoE
- Grants minor vitality and inflicts major maim instead of granting minor resolve
- Doesn't require slotting resto staff (resto does give major mending, execute scaling to heals and increased healing though)
Compared to CP:
- More expensive than CP
- Very slightly more healing
- Significantly smaller AoE
- Grants minor vitality and inflicts major maim instead of granting minor berserk + minor force
- Doesn't require slotting resto staff (resto does give major mending, execute scaling to heals and increased healing though)
Compared to EG:
- More expensive than EG
- Same healing
- Grants vitality/inflicts maim instead of granting intellect/endurance
Compared to Spores:
- VS is significantly more expensive
- Same base healing
- Spores doesn't provide additional buffs but heals for 15% more within 8m

As you can see, All 5 of these abilities/morphs have their upsides and downsides, but all of them are roughly equal to each other and nobody is saying anything about the other 4 abilities (except for a few calls for a buff to EG/Spores because people compare them to polar).

Turtle_Bot

Udrath wrote: »

Wait until everyone hops over to sorc and are roaming around in packs. I was struggling with sorc groups during the IC now it’s going be worse lol

At least you can see them coming

StaticWave

My friend tanked 6.2k DPS in a 6 minute 20s duel vs my maximum damage build, and still didn't break a sweat:

My damage:



His healing per second:



This was done with no Vigor on his part, and only 52k max mag. Shield is fine right?

Zabagad

Theignson wrote: »

In Zerodil last night, during battles, I was coated with Haunting curse ~100% of the time.

I saw a streaming Mag sorc with 60k magicka and 35k health. He had both hardened ward and healing ward...his health almost never budged.

It is the age of the Sorc.

I don't know how that is possible - when I would play with 60K Mag I have maybe 25K Health. (with DDF maybe 28K)
Even with Ayleid I don't know how that is possible and sustainable...

Edit: Oh - maybe he is using a pet and gets 10% health?
I guess there is a bug which can be exploited (I had that on the PTS), that you can get 10% from "with pets" and "without pets" at the same time...

VinnyGambini

When I said sorcerer is S-tier class and needs nerf instead of buff, everyone ate me alive. Ppl obliterated me with comments. Now you have what you wanted. [snip]

[edited for baiting]

biminirwb17_ESO

My NB just went on vacation while I level a sorc.

StaticWave

VinnyGambini wrote: »

When I said sorcerer is S-tier class and needs nerf instead of buff, everyone ate me alive. Ppl obliterated me with comments. Now you have what you wanted. [snip]

I wouldn't say it needs a nerf. But Hardened Ward buff was too strong I would agree with that. Most of them don't even participate in the PTS anyways. Now enjoy 3 months of Sorc being absolutely broken while you can lol.

[edited to remove quote]

Zabagad

StaticWave wrote: »

My friend tanked 6.2k DPS in a 6 minute 20s duel vs my maximum damage build, and still didn't break a sweat:

[...]

Crit Surge only 567? Buff surge

Seriously:
(As a medium Cyro Sorc I agree that I enjoy the time now (I dont always have to streak away now) after we suffered since U35 much - but I'm open to get the buffs nerfed a bit)

Just to get sure - I'm not a duellist and never look for HPS/DPS - I care about burst and surviving against zergs/balls/outnumbered.
The only major difference in your screenshot of 6,2 compared with U40 is the 1168 from the shield healing which was before done by vigor. The rest incl. the 3694 (sure -10% maxMag would reduce it but my vigor tooltip is higher then harden ward tt) was archivable before as well.
The 6,2 alone are not a meaningful value in my opinion, because he can slot vigor and the new encase and healingward and maybe reach 8-9?
For the hole picture it's imo important if he is doing 2K DPS to you while having 6,2 HPS or if he is doing 6,2K DPS to you too?
So to really compare I guess we need HPS and DPS from both - but thats only a sidenote and I don't want to see it myself

You too were claiming sorc needs buffs and one major point mentioned by many sorcs was barspace. (Chudan!)
We didn't get any of the suggested solutions to get barspace like maj. savagery to get rid of magelight, or breach on Curse (which would spare a gcd like ward now), or changes at DD, or instant Frag, or spammable Fury or or or....
Instead we got 1 barslot by removing vigor.

So what cap/% would be a solution to give us medium sorcs a decent heal on ward?
If they cap the size of the heal at 5-6K (still 15%) and make a HoT instead instant?
(I guess that wouldn't change much (anything?) on your 6,2K example)
Even if they remove it completly - your friend slots vigor and you would still claim 6,2K...
So what would be a good solution?

Major_Toughness

Everyone crying about invincible Arcanists and they gave Sorc their own Impervious Runeward with no crux minigame

StaticWave

Zabagad wrote: »

The 6,2 alone are not a meaningful value in my opinion, because he can slot vigor and the new encase and healingward and maybe reach 8-9?
So to compare I guess we need HPS and DPS from both - but thats only a sidenote and I don't want to see it myself

I don't think you realize what 8-9k DPS looks like in a PvP setting. To achieve 8-9k DPS, you would have to be wearing FULL damage with zero defense. If you want to experience what an 8-9k DPS build looks like, please go to Craglorn and ask any PvE player with a 110k+ dummy parse to parse you. Don't attack him, just try to out heal his damage.

Or you can listen to me because I've dueled for probably 4k+ hours and know what a strong build feels like in terms of CMX. There was not a single class that could run a full damage build and tank a sustained 8-9k DPS player. Sorc can this patch, while wearing full damage, so let that sink in.

Zabagad wrote: »

You too were claiming sorc needs buffs and one major point mentioned by many sorcs was barspace.
We didn't get any of the suggested solutions to get barspace like maj. savagery to get rid of magelight, or breach on Curse (which would spare a gcd like ward now), or changes at DD, or instant Frag, or spammable Fury or or or....
Instead we got 1 barslot by removing vigor.

Yes, and I specifically said Sorc only requires 1 of the few changes I listed, not 3. Even if they reverted the change to Ward and Encase, Sorc would still be extremely strong because having that 10% max mag/stam means you can run non max mag sets, such as Almalexia, to provide extra healing, while still having 50k+ max mag.

And truthfully, I would rather they give us named buffs than buffing Ward to OP status lol.

Zabagad wrote: »

So what cap/% would be a solution to give us medium sorcs a decent heal on ward?
If they cap the size of the heal at 5-6K (still 15%) and make a HoT instead instant?
(I guess that wouldn't change much (anything?) on your 6,2K example)
Even if they remove it completly - your friend slots vigor and you would still claim 6,2K...
So what would be a good solution?

In that screenshot I posted, the guy had 52k max mag and he could already tank 6.2k DPS without Vigor. Limiting max mag won't do anything. Even at 39k max mag, I am still extremely tanky because of the burst heal on Ward combined with Vigor, Surge, and Blood Magic procs. The solution would be to either turn the burst heal into a HoT over 4-5 seconds, or reducing the burst heal value to 5% of max mag.

We hate stalemate right? Why give Sorc special treatment because it hasn't gotten buffs? Let's keep some consistency here shall we?

Zabagad

StaticWave wrote: »

I don't think you realize what 8-9k DPS looks like in a PvP setting. To achieve 8-9k DPS, you would have to be wearing FULL damage with zero defense. If you want to experience what an 8-9k DPS build looks like, please go to Craglorn and ask any PvE player with a 110k+ dummy parse to parse you. Don't attack him, just try to out heal his damage.

I didn't question it - I just said it seems to be possible to reach such values if he is going "healing only" and slot more heals.

StaticWave wrote: »

In that screenshot I posted, the guy had 52k max mag and he could already tank 6.2k DPS without Vigor. Limiting max mag won't do anything.

That's what I guessed too - but that was exactly your request during PTS cycle:
"The burst heal from Sorcerer's Conjured Ward and its morphs needs to be value capped"

StaticWave wrote: »

The solution would be to either turn the burst heal into a HoT over 4-5 seconds, or reducing the burst heal value to 5% of max mag.

I take the bolt solution!
But as I asked before - how much would that change on your 6,2K HPS example?

So again - If necessary change new encase (I don't even care and I don't have barspace for it anyway) - change the bound Aegis to 6% mag+stam+health (instead of 10%stam+mag) and make the Heal on ward over 4s.
But even with all this - I still don't see in your example 6,2 droping to 4 or whatever...
(and thats why I have problems with this measurement at all)

S0rwizard

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

I'd understand more in seeing a thread than that said burst heals, tankiness, vamp, etc is overtuned but just targeting sorc for joining the op club seems less than news worthy to me.

Sorc and NB were already "op" for players who took the time to learn survival with mobility and hots rather than burst heals. Now we just have two classes with no weakness or drawback. This is like giving Cloak to DK.

or just give everyone race against time.... oh well already done...

want streak? use vampire mist... want speed? use race... so if even nb get burst heal why cant sorcs have it?

StaticWave

Zabagad wrote: »

I didn't question it - I just said it seems to be possible to reach such values if he is going "healing only" and slot more heals.

He could, and people could, but not in a full damage build. That's the big difference. Other classes would have to sacrifice major damage to heal through that kind of DPS. Sorc doesn't need to with Hardened Ward buff because the higher you stack max mag, the bigger the shield and heal, and also your damage. An 8-9k DPS build will have a ton of DoTs, which normal heals won't be able to heal through, but Hardened Ward can.

Zabagad wrote: »

That's what I guessed too - but that was exactly your request during PTS cycle:
"The burst heal from Sorcerer's Conjured Ward and its morphs needs to be value capped"

Right, that was my original request, but I have changed my opinion on that after testing further on the live server with lower max mag builds. You will still have incredible survivability with lower max mag. The core issue is still the burst heal. It removes any form of weakness for the class.

Zabagad wrote: »

I take the bolt solution!
But as I asked before - how much would that change on your 6,2K HPS example?

So again - If necessary change new encase (I don't even care and I don't have barspace for it anyway) - change the bound Aegis to 6% mag+stam+health (instead of 10%stam+mag) and make the Heal on ward over 4s.
But even with all this - I still don't see in your example 6,2 droping to 4 or whatever...
(and thats why I have problems with this measurement at all)

HPS will honestly not change that much, but 2 things will happen for sure:

1) The Sorc will have to cast several wards until the HoT brings him out of execute range, which means more sustain is needed, which will prevent the Sorc from constantly doing 5k DPS without trying, and that's happening right now lol.

2) Spamming ward while waiting for the HoT to bring him out of execute range means the Sorc needs to play more carefully instead of tanking the damage and then getting a free out of jail card with Ward. There's actual counterplay and rewards good Sorcs with higher shield uptime