Why aren't damage shields buffs?

joshisanonymous · February 2015

I was under the impression that the new buff system was created so that one can't simply focus on stacking a specific buff through the roof. It seems to accomplish this task for the most part, except for damage shields, which many people are suggesting are just as important to stack as ever. So why are things like run speed now unstackable buffs but not damage shields?

I could be misunderstanding the point of the change to the buff system, or maybe I'm mistaken on how damage shields work, or maybe people are greatly exaggerating how good shield stacking is on 1.6. If so, please correct me. I'd try things out myself on PTS but I don't have the hard drive space to patch it.

Kalman · February 2015

Why aren't farts considered perfume?

Armitas · February 2015

Probably because there are so many tiny shields of varying size, like shielding glyphs, and those from the 2hand and s/b line. There is also healing ward. How do you fit healing ward into the major minor system?

Jahosefat · February 2015

Without strong shields in 1.6.x light armor wearers would be free snacks. Would you prefer everyone to go heavy/stam/s&b so we can all sit around like a pack of turtles? I believe there strategy was: blockers = constant stam drain from blocking; shielders = constant mag drain from refreshing shields.

Currently, you can stack so much mag/mag cost reduction/mag regen that if you play it right, you will never run out of mag from refreshing shields; however, stam drain on LA wearers is much, much higher than it is on live (you can roll dodge ~2 times). So it is now possible to gimp yourself in LA by going too heavy in mag and ignoring stam. The trick to killing new infinite shield stackers: CC.

Mos-De-Atmo · February 2015

I remember when Sun Shield (Blazing Shield) would stop your Magicka Regen while it was active and it was used much less frequently. I was a fan of the change when it occurred but perhaps the larger of the shields such as Sun Shield should have some sort of negative with it to help balance damage shields out a little?

McDoogs · February 2015

lol I love how a lot of people (probably all sorcs) just have to mention blazing shield in every damage shield thread.

Blazing shield's strength is nothing compared to having magicka as high as possible and stacking hardened ward and harness magicka and being able to nuke for ridiculous damage behind those massive shields. A templar that stacks Health to strengthen blazing shield actually has to sacrifice offense....

Domander · February 2015

Jahosefat wrote: »

Without strong shields in 1.6.x light armor wearers would be free snacks. Would you prefer everyone to go heavy/stam/s&b so we can all sit around like a pack of turtles? I believe there strategy was: blockers = constant stam drain from blocking; shielders = constant mag drain from refreshing shields.

Currently, you can stack so much mag/mag cost reduction/mag regen that if you play it right, you will never run out of mag from refreshing shields; however, stam drain on LA wearers is much, much higher than it is on live (you can roll dodge ~2 times). So it is now possible to gimp yourself in LA by going too heavy in mag and ignoring stam. The trick to killing new infinite shield stackers: CC.

Yep, I think this was probably the reason for the immovable change in today's patch.

timidobserver · February 2015

I bet myself that the OP would be a Nightblade.

Cody · February 2015

the ridiculous damage spikes have forced people to rely on damage shield stacking.

It is a shame PvP is already beginning to die, I saw much potential in it.

hopefully ZOS gets it fixed before live.

AriBoh · February 2015

Why can't all shields just add the 'shielded buff' one that has no values in of itself but also cannot be stacked? would stop the ridiculous amounts. Wither some classes need those atm idk. taking out a sorc seems to be the new DK/LA/Vamp on the PTS.

joshisanonymous · February 2015

Jahosefat wrote: »

Without strong shields in 1.6.x light armor wearers would be free snacks. Would you prefer everyone to go heavy/stam/s&b so we can all sit around like a pack of turtles? I believe there strategy was: blockers = constant stam drain from blocking; shielders = constant mag drain from refreshing shields.

Currently, you can stack so much mag/mag cost reduction/mag regen that if you play it right, you will never run out of mag from refreshing shields; however, stam drain on LA wearers is much, much higher than it is on live (you can roll dodge ~2 times). So it is now possible to gimp yourself in LA by going too heavy in mag and ignoring stam. The trick to killing new infinite shield stackers: CC.

So you're saying that shield stacking is not the god-mode people are making it out to be because it's countered by CC? That makes sense. I mean, I don't get what dodging has to do with anything since someone stacking shields is clearly not worrying about dodging, but I imagine they can get through 2 break outs before being out of stamina also?

darkknightfkb16_ESO wrote: »

Why can't all shields just add the 'shielded buff' one that has no values in of itself but also cannot be stacked? would stop the ridiculous amounts. Wither some classes need those atm idk. taking out a sorc seems to be the new DK/LA/Vamp on the PTS.

This seems just as reasonable to me as relying on shield stackers being very weak to CC. It still seems even more reasonable actually, since bursting down someone with no stamina is not necessarily doable if they have all their shields up when CC'd. Also, If someone puts lots of points into both magicka and stamina, then they're still not weak to CC and they haven't even gimped their damage because they have all those points invested in magicka, right?

Maybe what @Jahosefat said is the intention of the developers, but is it actually working out that way?

Jahosefat · February 2015

joshisanonymous wrote: »

I mean, I don't get what dodging has to do with anything since someone stacking shields is clearly not worrying about dodging, but I imagine they can get through 2 break outs before being out of stamina also?

@joshisanonymous

Dodge rolling is just another way to 1.) avoid cc 2.) break soft-cc like talons. In live a dodge roll is cheaper than a break free for most LA wearers, so from a stam management perspective (and even mag management) it is usually better to dodgeroll the CC than it is to eat it and break free. This is not the case in 1.6 where all stam costs are much higher.

joshisanonymous wrote: »

This seems just as reasonable to me as relying on shield stackers being very weak to CC. It still seems even more reasonable actually, since bursting down someone with no stamina is not necessarily doable if they have all their shields up when CC'd. Also, If someone puts lots of points into both magicka and stamina, then they're still not weak to CC and they haven't even gimped their damage because they have all those points invested in magicka, right?

Once the shield stacker is out of stam you just keep pushing CC on him. Longer hard CC will work better (NB = fear, Templar = puncturing/sweeping strikes, sorc = frags, and DK usually go with one of the S&B skills). This usually works well with burst set-ups. Another strategy for taking on shield stackers (that I prefer on my sorc) is to simply keep a ton of constant pressure up on the guy, so he is stuck refreshing his shields and can't do much/any damage to you. On live I do this with crushing shock/light attack though there are other ways to do it. For this to work you need to find a spammable skill where the [damage/mag cost] ratio is fairly higher than most shields [absorb/mag cost]. This way you can keep higher mag than them while pounding away their shields. If they are running harness magicka with a lot of mag cost reduction this can be hard. But generally the best defense to a shield stacker is a good offense; and constant pressure will break a shield stackers regen quicker than spaced out bursts where he can heavy attack in between the damage.

I think you are right, it will be much more important in 1.6 to find a happy balance between mag and stam. I think this will be true for both mag-centric and stam-centric builds though. What you would be sacrificing in both of those cases would be your health investment. So if you go as a hard hybrid (no health investment, just stam and mag) you will be able to run around dodgerolling, shielding, and cc-breaking to your hearts content; but if you ever get caught without a shield up or blocking you will probably get blown up (snipe/uppercut morphs can hit for 20K+ and you will probably have around 20K health in cyr with little-to-no health investments).

Dracane · February 2015

Sorcerers and light armor users in general would be nothing without damage shields. To get a strong conjured ward, you must stack alot of Magicka. Which means, behind your shields you can be a 1 or 2 hit and you have few stamina, which makes CCs deadly.

I think, conjured ward is what was keeping Sorcerers alive until 1.6.

Conjured ward only gives protection. The Templar shield deals high damage and the Dragonknight shield gives an insane healing buff. It is perfectly balanced in my opinion.

Wahee · February 2015

Dracane wrote: »

Conjured ward only gives protection. The Templar shield deals high damage and the Dragonknight shield gives an insane healing buff. It is perfectly balanced in my opinion.

What does the NB shield do?

...sorry I had to.

joshisanonymous · February 2015

Dracane wrote: »

Sorcerers and light armor users in general would be nothing without damage shields. To get a strong conjured ward, you must stack alot of Magicka. Which means, behind your shields you can be a 1 or 2 hit and you have few stamina, which makes CCs deadly.

I think, conjured ward is what was keeping Sorcerers alive until 1.6.

Conjured ward only gives protection. The Templar shield deals high damage and the Dragonknight shield gives an insane healing buff. It is perfectly balanced in my opinion.

I wasn't asking because I think shields are inbalanced between classes; I was questioning whether the intention is to make stacking shields practically a requirement. If they were buffs, it could still be balanced, they could still keep sorcerers alive (although I don't really get why sorcerers are more vulnerable than nightblades in survivability), and the trick would be trying to keep just the buff going at all times instead of X amount of shields at all times, ultimately taking up practically a whole bar of skills.

I really appreciate Jahosefat's descriptions of how shields are being countered as well, but it would be nice to know if things are really working out that way for others on 1.6. If not, and shield stackers aren't having problems with stamina management, or they're able to balance stamina and magicka usage to the point where they can keep their shields up forever, then it would seem better for shields to be on the new buff system.

ToRelax · February 2015

Dracane wrote: »

Sorcerers and light armor users in general would be nothing without damage shields. To get a strong conjured ward, you must stack alot of Magicka. Which means, behind your shields you can be a 1 or 2 hit and you have few stamina, which makes CCs deadly.

I think, conjured ward is what was keeping Sorcerers alive until 1.6.

Conjured ward only gives protection. The Templar shield deals high damage and the Dragonknight shield gives an insane healing buff. It is perfectly balanced in my opinion.

I disagree.
You did not need Conjured Ward before 1.6.
But now you have (for now) much smaller resource pools, especially less health. So you need something to not die in a single burst. Since you need to keep it up, the minmaxer will find it obvious to stack magicka to strenghten the shield and recast it instead of investing into health.
And that does not even have to do anything with shields being stackable, yes I stack my shields, but I also have a Hardened Ward for 1,6k Magicka that absorbs 12,4k Damage on PTS, with 1,7k Magicka regen I dont run out of Magicka refreshing it all the time anyway.

So if anything shall change, it should be that damage shields scale with maximum health.
That would decrease the damage of a build that wants to survive and the survivability of a build that is aiming for higher damage output.

Still, what I was saying all the time, please make Critical Surge viable with Destruction Staff skills again, with a cooldown that simply can not work unless the skills are being changed. Once Shield stacking is not the non plus ultra for any magicka mased Sorc build anymore, the lack of healing will drag the class down again. That's not balance.