Hardened Ward... Where player based skill can go from C-tier to S+-tier

xylena_lazarow · June 24

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

Turtle_Bot · June 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

More in general, you just happen to be the latest in an extremely long line who've spoken out in an attempt to silence/discredit sorcs who wanted improvements for their class while letting those crying "sorc OP" do whatever they want without any recourse.

xylena_lazarow · June 24

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

More in general, you just happen to be the latest in an extremely long line who've spoken out in an attempt to silence/discredit sorcs who wanted improvements for their class while letting those crying "sorc OP" do whatever they want without any recourse.

You and I used to be in the same threads arguing for Sorc buffs together. Zero competitive Sorcs have ever asked for one button faceroll survival, there were some requests for burst heal access, and that has been more than addressed by now with Healing Soul, Vibrant Shroud, etc... Ward itself received a very nice buff via the 10% max mag passive, adding a burst heal on top was egregious. And after all this, still no class major crit access? The one thing Sorc needed most?

divnyi · June 24

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Turtle_Bot wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

More in general, you just happen to be the latest in an extremely long line who've spoken out in an attempt to silence/discredit sorcs who wanted improvements for their class while letting those crying "sorc OP" do whatever they want without any recourse.

Because they always were at least good.

I've returned to the game after not playing it for 2 years, know what I've found?
My warden build is doing nothing.
My templar is nerfed to the ground.
My heavy attack DK is ruined.
My oaken NB can't kill a thing.
My bash builds never get opportunity to actually bash.

Both of my sorc builds survived all the changes great, the only nerf was Daedric Minefield.
But the char that used minefield was a ward build lol, so I don't complain.
Even the bowsorc that is not abusing wards is hella strong.

Joy_Division · June 24

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Jsmalls wrote: »

Ive enjoyed playing this class and I can't say I have any desire to main another. The time it would take me to get on the competitive level with any entirely different defensive style would likely take months. Months I'm just not willing to put into to prove a point.

What I can speak on is my experience fighting thousands of other players on those opposing classes (as well as on Sorcs). And I can legitimately say great players on most of the classes are equally as hard to put down as great players on Sorcs. Can I tell when a Sorc is stacking magicka / has rallying cry on? Absolutely they are a huge pain in the @ss. But not any more of a pain than a 40k health warden or Arcanist. Or a 35k health DK or Templar holding their ground (which they should be harder to put down because they are required to setup their "house".) This game is in a state of if you're in a 1v1 and you dont want to die, you can generally keep yourself alive.

The problem with playing only one class is that there is less first-hand experience with what the other classes can do. The other classes are seen as enemies and, being human, people typically see/remember what they do very well (without understanding 100% how they do that) rather than than their warts or the effort required to make the class playable at a semi-competitive level (e.g., what Akinos on PC/NA does on a Necro).

As far as putting down strong players, I would agree that any class in the hands of a good player is going to be hard to kill because the way ESO is every halfway decent build can perpetually stall out a fight and survive. That is right. However, Sorcerers and Nightblades have since day 1 have an additional defensive layer the other classes do not in their mobility, which puts them on a completely different level. ~13k Ward and a 3.5k heal from one button might sound like not a big deal, but when that is combined with that mobility, it puts it into a different light if it had to fight a Templar build floating around on these forums that has an 11K heal tooltip (not even its own skill, revealingly enough) from its one button as it tries to stay in its "house." From a pure offensive point of view, it's probably going to be just as annoying to kill that templar because of its other skills devoted to defense (Ritual, Rune, Eclipse, and Vigor, all of which must be constantly maintained). But let's not pretend that Templar's offensive options and opportunities are at the same level or those defensives do not get increasingly and more quickly compromised than mobile classes the more it's Xv1 and the less rocks, trees, and towers there are to LOS .

divnyi · June 24

Joy_Division wrote: »

However, Sorcerers and Nightblades have since day 1 have an additional defensive layer the other classes do not in their mobility, which puts them on a completely different level.

Teleports are now uni-class. Streak is still the king, but bow scribing thingy and vamp mist form are performing the same role in terms of mobility.

CameraBeardThePirate · June 24

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

More in general, you just happen to be the latest in an extremely long line who've spoken out in an attempt to silence/discredit sorcs who wanted improvements for their class while letting those crying "sorc OP" do whatever they want without any recourse.

Oh please, enough with the persecution mentality.

Sorc was under performing, and ZOS over-buffed them.

Turtle_Bot · June 24

divnyi wrote: »

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Turtle_Bot wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

More in general, you just happen to be the latest in an extremely long line who've spoken out in an attempt to silence/discredit sorcs who wanted improvements for their class while letting those crying "sorc OP" do whatever they want without any recourse.

Because they always were at least good.

I've returned to the game after not playing it for 2 years, know what I've found?
My warden build is doing nothing.
My templar is nerfed to the ground.
My heavy attack DK is ruined.
My oaken NB can't kill a thing.
My bash builds never get opportunity to actually bash.

Both of my sorc builds survived all the changes great, the only nerf was Daedric Minefield.
But the char that used minefield was a ward build lol, so I don't complain.
Even the bowsorc that is not abusing wards is hella strong.

No wonder your opinion on sorc is completely skewed, you never had to play through sorcs dead patches where even the meta carry sets could not save the spec (sorc was the auto abandon kill quest in PvP during that time because the class was nowhere to be found, not even the casual zerglings ran it).
Congrats, I guess, on missing out on the 6-9 months from U35 until U37 where magsorc was a completely unplayable/dead spec (think current necro, but much worse). It was so bad at the start of that U35 PTS cycle that the devs had to buff 2 skills (prey/armaments) by 100% or more just to have it be playable (not even good) in PvE (not even in PvP).

As for HA DK, I'm assuming that was the 1 shot build that was abusing addons to swap gear mid heavy attack? If so, that build needed to go, since it was a stronger (and easier) gank setup than even NB could dream of.

Oakensoul hasn't been a thing for ANY class in PvP since it got massively nerfed over a year ago. NB also hasn't needed that mythic for the entire time you've been absent from the game, with how many buffs to not only damage, but also survivability, mobility and healing that class has gotten over the past 2 years (including the most recent patch).

Range plar is still very much viable (and strong), templar is not just 1 button face roll jabs spam anymore.

Warden is one of the top classes in the game currently (right behind NB and sorc), even my 30k health arctic melee stamden still X's as easily as my sorc. Warden is also a super strong anti-sorc class with slab, netch, polar and wings giving it mitigation, healing, cleansing and mobility to easily check sorc. Warden can also easily play at range if it wants to.

Bash builds have struggled for a while, that has nothing to do with sorc and everything to do with bash builds in general being made much harder to play thanks to mechanical changes to bash attacks and bash damage.

Turtle_Bot · June 24

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

More in general, you just happen to be the latest in an extremely long line who've spoken out in an attempt to silence/discredit sorcs who wanted improvements for their class while letting those crying "sorc OP" do whatever they want without any recourse.

Oh please, enough with the persecution mentality.

Sorc was under performing, and ZOS over-buffed them.

another random commenter jumping to conclusions in a discussion that had nothing to do with them...

Read my posts on the main thread about ward, I have stated more times than should be necessary (even on this thread) that I agree that ward is overperforming and needs adjusting and even that's never enough for the anti-sorc brigade...

Maybe if people like you took the time to read back more comments and understand the full context of a comment instead of jumping straight into persecuting, there would be less "persecution mentality" on the forums 🙄

Bushido2513 · June 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Serious question here, do you know the scope of what you're asking?

Yup, good thing ZOS employs professional game developers, right?

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Now if only those calling for ward to get deleted would be told this in response to their crying

Assuming this is a swipe at me, yeah deleting the heal is my personal call, because you and others have asked me what I would personally do. It's no more or less valid than the HoT idea, but I have no desire to argue this because neither of us are game devs. The point here ITT is that Hardened Ward has problems, ZOS please do something.

Yes but they don't have limitless resources and have shown they are in this for the money more so than making a better game. They've had years to fix all of this and haven't. That could be for many reasons but why would you believe they will change course and try to build a better game vs continue to go for money and appealing to the easiest target audience?

divnyi · June 24

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

As for HA DK, I'm assuming that was the 1 shot build

Lightning staff attrition build. Most of the sets are strictly non-PvP and DK has no edge in heavy attacks, while being the worst class for it in the first place (bar that one skill).

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Range plar is still very much viable (and strong), templar is not just 1 button face roll jabs spam anymore.

Jbeam spammers that is.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Oakensoul hasn't been a thing for ANY class in PvP since it got massively nerfed over a year ago.

Ironic, one of the sorc builds I was talking about was oaken and is still oaken. Lack of strength given by second bar is compensated by the lack of buff gcds and no downtimes.

xylena_lazarow · June 24

divnyi wrote: »

bow scribing thingy and vamp mist form

Hell no, not even close. These skills are terrible. Clunky, unreliable, you're better off with Race Against Time.

The defensive skill floor for Streak is low since you can just mash the button to escape. The offensive skill floor and ceiling are both high because of the positioning, timing, cost, setup, and risk that goes into a kill combo.

divnyi · June 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

bow scribing thingy and vamp mist form

Hell no, not even close. These skills are terrible. Clunky, unreliable, you're better off with Race Against Time.

The defensive skill floor for Streak is low since you can just mash the button to escape. The offensive skill floor and ceiling are both high because of the positioning, timing, cost, setup, and risk that goes into a kill combo.

Dunno, I find Immobilizing Vault to be an absolute asset.

xylena_lazarow · June 24

divnyi wrote: »

Dunno, I find Immobilizing Vault to be an absolute asset.

Did they ever fix the z-axis weirdness blocking use of the skill? It'll still never be Streak, not even close.

divnyi · June 24

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

Dunno, I find Immobilizing Vault to be an absolute asset.

Did they ever fix the z-axis weirdness blocking use of the skill? It'll still never be Streak, not even close.

It behaves fairly consistently on z-axis. It starts low, then goes higher, then plummet you to the ground fast.
I wish it did better going uphill but it's not like streak is doing that, you just see where you cast it.

StaticWave · June 25

StaticWave wrote: »

I've already explained to you that without investment into block cost reduction, blocking is very taxing on your stamina/magicka against good players. A good player will light attack/spammable/bash almost every single GCD, which will drain your stamina twice in 1 second due to block cost having a 0.25s cooldown. If you were blocking on front bar, you'd lose around 2.5k+ stam per second after Survival Instinct CP has been accounted for. In no-CP, that's a whooping 3k stam lost from blocking a simple light attack/spammable/bash combo. On Ice Staff/SnB bar, you'll lose around 1.8k stam/mag in CP and 2k+ in no-CP. Depending on how low you are and how much pressure you're taking, you will be cutting off your own recovery for at least 1-2 ticks while holding block. Now compare that opportunity cost to simply casting a 14k Ward that also heals for 3-4k non crit burst heal, free from having to cut off your own regen or draining your stam via blocking, while also able to survive through the onslaught.

So here is an example to demonstrate my point about blocking being taxing on your stamina against good players. Here is a simple LA/Concealed/Bash combo:

At 28.19s, I was under the Concussed status effect, which procced my Survival Instinct CP and reduced my block cost to 1129. You can see that from 29.29s to 29.65s, or 0.36s, my stamina was drained twice from that combo. I lost a total of 2258 stam.

Without Survival Instinct CP, here is what I would lose when blocking that combo:

From 25.9s to 26.43s, or 0.53s difference, I lost 1505 stamina twice from blocking the combo, totaling 3010 stam without Survival Instinct.

So when you talk about blocking being stronger than Shield, I just laugh because it's not true lol. Please fight a magsorc in BG/No CP and deal with this dumb crap. Imagine trying to block a magsorc that's using a charged weapon that can proc status effects. You'll be getting your stamina drained in the same way. I would 100% take the shield in its current iteration over any burst heal right now. There's simply zero drawback, period.

xylena_lazarow · June 25

StaticWave wrote: »

I would 100% take the shield in its current iteration over any burst heal right now. There's simply zero drawback, period.

Anyone who takes the burst heal is either badly uninformed, or being intellectually dishonest (like the guy saying he'd choose a knife over a gun). Not one single Ward apologist has addressed the fact that you can preload Ward before incoming damage even hits, something not even a guaranteed 100% full hp burst heal would ever be capable of. It doesn't matter if Ward expires because if you go 6 seconds without getting it popped, that just means nobody is attacking you.

You're supposed to still be vulnerable to execute damage when you shield up at low hp, you're supposed to still need another healing skill to refill your hp. Now when you press Ward, you're immediately out of the danger zone, even the 3.5k heal on that one DD Sorc build will have you out of the danger zone in a single click, and even that 3.5k heal is enough to full heal after spamming a few 13k Wards, since the heal can also crit, and Ward is extremely safe and easy to spam.

Jsmalls · June 25

@StaticWave

You know you can choose when and when not to block right? If your stamina is low take the hit and heal for Magicka. If you anticipate a big hit block.

Blocking also stops a hard CC (sometimes).

Ward doesn't get the option. That Ward would have been stripped away entirely from those examples. And you'd be spending another 3500 Magicka to cast it versus the 3010 Stamina to block damage.

I personally try to only block with my S&B bar and I can hold block for a solid 3-4 seconds before my stamina management comes into question (and this is in a 1vX scenario). But yeah blocking on a non S&B / Frost staff will get you into trouble REALLY quickly. They are for "oh sh*t" moments. Not every GCD.

TechMaybeHic · June 25

You come across a half decent sorc, and your only chance is to surprise them and burst them down before they can react. People will come in and talk about X tanky class that could stalemate before, but this class is doing it by going full offense so if you fail, you are probably going to eat huge amounts of pressure and burst. You can only dodge, purge, and block so much as you are never going to flip the table to get them on their back foot with a shield and heal that combine for what ammounts to a crit burst heal every time

Think they only way to play right now and be able to be competetive against anyone you come across, is play either sorc, NB, or Warden. Its kind of ridiculous

xylena_lazarow · June 25

Jsmalls wrote: »

Ward doesn't get the option

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, you realize what blocking does to your ability to move and attack weave, right? Can you preemptively one tap the block button to eat 13k worth of damage while going on the offensive?

Jsmalls wrote: »

I personally try to only block with my S&B bar

WHOA. Hold up. Why in the name of the 8 Divines do you feel the need to run SnB on a MagSorc??? Please tell me it's because you have 600 ping or something. You can lie if you want.

Turtle_Bot · June 25

divnyi wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

As for HA DK, I'm assuming that was the 1 shot build

Lightning staff attrition build. Most of the sets are strictly non-PvP and DK has no edge in heavy attacks, while being the worst class for it in the first place (bar that one skill).

This seems like a PvE build more than anything, and this was not nerfed due to changes to classes, HA builds in general were massively nerfed about a year ago when they made empower and the HA sets PvE only then proceeded to nerf them even further because many people complained "they were too strong in PvE" and "made end game PvE more trivial than overland content".

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Range plar is still very much viable (and strong), templar is not just 1 button face roll jabs spam anymore.

Jbeam spammers that is.

Jbeam is the least important part of a proper rangeplar build. Crushing shock is the spammable (with charged staff for the status effects), with meteor + javelin being an almost impossible to counter CC/burst combo that will typically drop a player to 35-40% for beam to finish.
Anyone spamming beam is just sitting at the back of a zerg/on a keep wall and not really playing range plar.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Oakensoul hasn't been a thing for ANY class in PvP since it got massively nerfed over a year ago.

Ironic, one of the sorc builds I was talking about was oaken and is still oaken. Lack of strength given by second bar is compensated by the lack of buff gcds and no downtimes.

Sorc has always been one of the best users of oakensoul, with the second lowest amount of named buffs and minimal unnamed buffs/effects in its class kit (ahead of only necro) so sorc inherently gets significantly more benefits compared from oakensoul to make up for the downsides oakensoul has.
Other classes that have significantly greater access to the buffs that oakensoul provides, so it's never going to be as good on them. Necro is a unique case since it has a lot of unnamed effects and passives that benefits from slotting/using its class abilities, so oakensoul isn't as strong on necro as it may initially seem in theory.
That's also why NB (currently has the most named buffs in its kit) is not good with oakensoul. NB has been given access to almost all of the buffs oaken gives (and others that oaken doesn't provide) from the buffs their class kit has received over the past 2 years, so oakensoul is basically doing nothing for NB anymore outside of providing a slightly higher uptime on some of those named buffs, which is 100% not worth giving up the second bar for.

divnyi · June 25

Jsmalls wrote: »

Blocking also stops a hard CC (sometimes).

Except when playing agaisnt sorc, because Streak

Urzigurumash · June 25

Yeah but roll dodge

Bushido2513 · June 25

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

StaticWave wrote: »

I would 100% take the shield in its current iteration over any burst heal right now. There's simply zero drawback, period.

Anyone who takes the burst heal is either badly uninformed, or being intellectually dishonest (like the guy saying he'd choose a knife over a gun). Not one single Ward apologist has addressed the fact that you can preload Ward before incoming damage even hits, something not even a guaranteed 100% full hp burst heal would ever be capable of. It doesn't matter if Ward expires because if you go 6 seconds without getting it popped, that just means nobody is attacking you.

You're supposed to still be vulnerable to execute damage when you shield up at low hp, you're supposed to still need another healing skill to refill your hp. Now when you press Ward, you're immediately out of the danger zone, even the 3.5k heal on that one DD Sorc build will have you out of the danger zone in a single click, and even that 3.5k heal is enough to full heal after spamming a few 13k Wards, since the heal can also crit, and Ward is extremely safe and easy to spam.

Not sure how having an opinion on something that is different from yours is clearly intellectual dishonesty. I also said it was situational which you left out.

Bushido2513 · June 25

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

You come across a half decent sorc, and your only chance is to surprise them and burst them down before they can react. People will come in and talk about X tanky class that could stalemate before, but this class is doing it by going full offense so if you fail, you are probably going to eat huge amounts of pressure and burst. You can only dodge, purge, and block so much as you are never going to flip the table to get them on their back foot with a shield and heal that combine for what ammounts to a crit burst heal every time

Think they only way to play right now and be able to be competetive against anyone you come across, is play either sorc, NB, or Warden. Its kind of ridiculous

Depends on how you're defining competitive but yes like some other classes, facing a sorc 1v1 has a good chance of showing off the bad 1v1 balance of the game.

Bushido2513 · June 25

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

Ward doesn't get the option

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, you realize what blocking does to your ability to move and attack weave, right? Can you preemptively one tap the block button to eat 13k worth of damage while going on the offensive?

Jsmalls wrote: »

I personally try to only block with my S&B bar

WHOA. Hold up. Why in the name of the 8 Divines do you feel the need to run SnB on a MagSorc??? Please tell me it's because you have 600 ping or something. You can lie if you want.

Because there's only one way to play magsorc and people shouldn't try things that fit their particular playstyle?

I'm not a fan of the idea that we need to play a certain way vs just enjoying what we play.

xylena_lazarow · June 25

Bushido2513 wrote: »

Not sure how having an opinion on something that is different from yours is clearly intellectual dishonesty. I also said it was situational which you left out.

It's dishonest because you know damn well you're taking the gun 99.9999999999% of the time, yeah sure you can come up with an unlikely contrived scenario where the knife is better, life or death you're picking the gun and so am I.

Jsmalls · June 25

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

Ward doesn't get the option

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, you realize what blocking does to your ability to move and attack weave, right? Can you preemptively one tap the block button to eat 13k worth of damage while going on the offensive?

Jsmalls wrote: »

I personally try to only block with my S&B bar

WHOA. Hold up. Why in the name of the 8 Divines do you feel the need to run SnB on a MagSorc??? Please tell me it's because you have 600 ping or something. You can lie if you want.

It's because I back bar Ward and use the extra armor glyph on the shield to bump up my Magicka. It also let's me do two different pieces on the back (such as 1 willpower and 1 trainee to take advantage of damage on the front bar, Magicka on the back). Started doing it 6 years ago and old habits die hard.

Plus I prefer to use stamina to block and I have a lot of stamina regen.

Jsmalls · June 25

divnyi wrote: »

Jsmalls wrote: »

Blocking also stops a hard CC (sometimes).

Except when playing agaisnt sorc, because Streak

If it makes you feel any better the offensive follow up to streak is more on the high skill ceiling spectrum. Dawnbreaker is pretty easy (depending on positioning), but any other ability can and will be rolled / blocked following that CC. Of course this is in 1v1 scenarios.

I can legitimately say the number of times I've been streak and executed by a follow up ability from Sorc in PvP extremely low.

StaticWave · June 25

Jsmalls wrote: »

@StaticWave

You know you can choose when and when not to block right? If your stamina is low take the hit and heal for Magicka. If you anticipate a big hit block.

Blocking also stops a hard CC (sometimes).

Ward doesn't get the option. That Ward would have been stripped away entirely from those examples. And you'd be spending another 3500 Magicka to cast it versus the 3010 Stamina to block damage.

I personally try to only block with my S&B bar and I can hold block for a solid 3-4 seconds before my stamina management comes into question (and this is in a 1vX scenario). But yeah blocking on a non S&B / Frost staff will get you into trouble REALLY quickly. They are for "oh sh*t" moments. Not every GCD.

Yes, I know I can choose when to block and not. I also know you can choose when to Ward and when to block, but you don’t block often because you never needed to. I block because I have to.

Also, when you sprint or kite, shield is much effective than blocking because it lasts longer. That’s another advantage I forgot to mention.

When I run Ward on my Sorc, I don’t need to block often because Ward has this neat little feature that allows me to shield my HP from taking actual damage. I only block before a big burst combo is coming.

Without Ward, I have to block MORE offen because I don’t have the luxury of a 13-14k pseudo HP over my HP. That’s why I’m building high HP for my stamsorc. It acts as a buffer so that if I don’t block in time, I don’t get 1-2 shotted.