There are two aspects of damage shields which make them underwhelming right now:
First, you cannot mitigate damage through blocking while under the effect of a shield. Since blocking cuts your incoming damage in half, this means you literally take double damage while under the effect of a damage shield; assuming you had the stamina to block the incoming attack in the first place. The kicker is, you still have to block whenever CC is thrown your way, in order to negate that CC. This still consumes the same amount of stamina as a normal block, but all you get out of it is negating the CC.
Second, your armor and spell resist count as zero while under the effect of the shield. This means you take even more additional damage while the shield holds, on top of the additional damage you were already taking due to your inability to mitigate damage through blocking.
Let's say you have 33% mitigation from armor. This means that any damage shield affecting you will drop 50% faster than your health pool would normally drop, because you are literally suffering a 50% increase to incoming damage. If we restate the effect of a damage shield as a "hitpoint replacement effect" (because the shield takes damage in place of your hitpoints) then we have to multiply any damage shield by .66 to get the actual replacement number. In short, a 30% damage shield behaves more like a 20% damage shield.
Then, add to that the fact that you receive no mitigation from blocking while shielded, and that 20% effectively becomes 10% (assuming you only have base block mitigation of 50%.)
I have 2800 health as a tank. Therefore, a 30% damage shield grants me 840 temporary hit points. Suffering 840 unmitigated damage will break the shield. So, how much is 840 unmitigated damage? Well, normally my armor would mitigate 33% of that, which means I would be taking 554. Then, I'd be able to block to reduce that by 50%, down to 277.
A hit that would normally deal me 277 damage is enough to pop Sun Shield. Yep, I'd say that's underwhelming.
Now, there are some good things about Sun Shield. Sun Shield does gain 4% additional shield strength for each enemy hit with the AoE damage component of the ability. Using the above math, a 4% gain on the damage shield is actually an effective gain of about 1.3% temporary hit points. This can add up if you are surrounded by lots of enemies.
Where this skill actually starts to become useful to us (in my opinion) is when we morph it into Blazing Shield. Blazing Shield returns 53% of all damage suffered while the shield holds. As I stated above, Sun Shield protects for 840 unmitigated damage on my character. This means that, if the shield breaks due to damage, I will be returning approximately 445 damage to all enemies around me. Now, let's say I'm surrounded by 5 enemies. I activate Blazing shield for a 50% damage shield (5 enemies x 4% = 20% additional shield strength), or 1400 shield strength. Assuming the shield breaks on damage, I will be hitting each of those 5 enemies for 742 damage, on top of whatever the initial AoE hit dealt (something like 100-200 damage.)
That's some pretty good damage output for an ability that is also preventing you from taking damage to your own hit points. You basically have to spam it, but it can have it's uses for trash pulls, and in Cyrodiil when running up against zergs (use it with Immovable to prevent yourself from being CC'd.)
-Travail.
Broken or not, with magika regen active while cast it is very effective and have gone from my ranged Templar to a Melee one because of this skill.
I took on 4 Lurchers in Vet area using only that skill and blocking. As they damaged the shield I would recast it. It would reflect the damage, then replace the shield before taking damage. All 4 lurchers were dead and I had 100%health.
Took on a public dungeon, 6 mobs, recast blazing shield when shield almost gone and group dies fast. Took on bosses solo just using shield. Boss kills itself.
You don't kill fast, but you can take on things most other classes couldn't touch including bosses that are immune to knockbacks and holds.
No even if not scaling as you say, I still think this skill makes the templar viable. I kill faster with my vamp DK, but have more difficulty with bosses than on templar.
Skafsgaard wrote: »While we're talking damage shields..
So I've noticed the damage returns from blazing shield crits. What about damage shields themselves? Wards, bubbles, shields etc - can the actual shield crit and then absorb more? And if so I assume its spell crit?
Sorry to bump, but im a brand new Templar currently at lvl25 and damage shields are a major part of my playstyle. I saw this was last talked about almost two years ago, so i'd like to ask people currently using the ability if its different today and what it's like. Is it viable to have slotted for a squishy character?
Something to consider is that with DB(unless they change they mind) they're making Annulment(light armor active skill, scales with your max magicka) a physical shield as well as magical so if you're squishy and not running high health you'd be better off using that
My 52k health baby templar tank, on the contrary, finds the ability highly amusing
8D!? There's a chance my Templar get's to have something similar to a Hardened Ward!?
*excited Khajiit noises*
If my math is correct, your tank gets a 17k+ damage shield?