Suggestion for Crits on Damage Shields.

Derra · August 2015

DDuke wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Have you considered leaving the shields slightly stronger, but allowing them to be crit?

The problem uncrittable shields create is that they make the whole crit stat (already less beneficial than stamina or weapon dmg) useless against certain opponents.

This leads to less build diversity and more "stack weapon dmg/stamina".

For instance, daggers are just downright bad in PvP compared to swords or maces (partly) due to this.

The problem with shields and crits on them is that crit is a useless stat on both sides of the equasion. You can´t crit them AND they can´t crit either (unlike heals).
With crits enabled on a mechanic that it by design always hit for your theoretical dmg cap they could not just make shields "slightly" stronger - you´d have to buff them a whole lot.

All this ofc under the presumption that battlespirit IS working correctly. With the current version it would most likely not matter.

Xsorus · August 2015

How about making dots work on shields, that might help

HeroOfNone · August 2015

I would not recommend a blanket improvement to DOTs, we should put a bit more thought to it.

Poisons, bleeds, disease should work better against enemies with out shields, physical damage and debuffs that need to get through a shield.

Fire, frost, and electrical would give higher damage on shields, stripping them down faster, but then you're hitting armor and spell mitigations when you get through.

Melee hits, arrows, and standard staff attacks would all do standard un crit able damage. This is what they are made to soak up.

This makes a rock paper scissors game with most classes, nightblades able to surprise attack but not do a lot of damage to shielded opponents. But DKS and Templars might be able burst down that shield better than others, forcing sorcs to run away less they suffer low magicka from constantly putting up shields. NBS though constantly waiting for glass cannons that don't bother slotting a Damage shield.

This would also force some to clense and then put on a damage shield, instead of shielding and ignoring the damage.

Siluen · August 2015

Stikato wrote: »

Crazy idea.

Why not just make shields function completely like health?

- Allow bleeds, crits, knockbacks, force siphon procs etc.
- Allow armor and spell mitigation to work on shields.
- Then adjust shield values as needed to find balance.

I quite like this idea. It would make shields more like temporary hitpoints, I feel like shields would still be strong enough with this concept, because there is the benefit of only really having to specialize in your casterstats. But currently it kind of sucks that due to the extreme abundance of shields, build diversity gets lessened. I love bleeds as a concept, but there is no point in slotting Blood Craze when it will not do any good against a majority of the people you face.

@Ezareth I do not dislike the feel of rock-paper-scissors, but if we call shield-builds the paper, what would qualify as scissors in your opinion currently?

Because I think a lot of people are feeling like rocks atm.

Ezareth · August 2015

Stikato wrote: »

Crazy idea.

Why not just make shields function completely like health?

- Allow bleeds, crits, knockbacks, force siphon procs etc.
- Allow armor and spell mitigation to work on shields.
- Then adjust shield values as needed to find balance.

Ezareth (and this isn't a disagreement with you, more an alternative idea) I understand that this would make the game more simplistic, and that you and other players' competitive advantage comes from understanding the complicated mechanics at work. Which you graciously do share, and I have personally benefited from. At the same time, if you showed me 100 players, probably at least 90 of them wouldn't understand every single damage shield mechanic.

There is no documentation, no F.A.Q, no (reliable) tooltip information, no duels, no target dummies, no damage info w/o add-ons, that easily allow players to understand these ideas. Frankly, this game needs more understandable mechanics in order to retain players that feel like they understand what is happening on the battlefield, rather than to drive away those that don't. At the end of the day, it is unsatisfying for many to just keep wailing away with all their might on a bunny-hopping, OP build, have zero effect, and watch them streak into the sunset. (Not to mention the stack, prox, ST, barrier, purge meta that is just lame and unimaginative. Oops)

My point is, the damage shield mechanics are needlessly confusing. There have been so many threads, and so many complaints about this. Now it is turning into a "how do we change the battle spirit buff" game. It's just adding another layer!
Why not simplify the whole thing, adjust the values as needed, and be done with it. Once and for all.

And this would allow a build around Axes. LOL

I'm not opposed to shields functioning completely like health if it is possible to get a "crit" shield but what are they then other than temporary heals that can exceed your maximum hitpoint cap?

I think from an diversity perspective having them behave differently than everything else isn't necessarily bad.

What you're asking is for something similar to what they did to Heavy Armor which I disagree with. They made heavy armor have the best magickal and physical defense instead of buffing it in other more useful ways like longer CC immunity or increase heavy attack damage/2 hander damage etc. So what this has done is just made people look at a guy in heavy armor and say "nah, I'll hit the guy standing next to him in robes". Sure damage shields are *currently* far more powerful than they should be which is getting fixed but with the way defenses currently worked if they're made too weak everyone will always just target the guys in robes with damage shields. If they have different mechanics maybe the guy with a 2 handed mace and a ton of crit will focus the guy in heavy armor while the guy with 2 handed swords and a ton of weapon damage will focus the guy with shields etc. It just allows for different mechanics and preferences and provided everything is balanced correctly there is no *best* way to do almost anything. All things become viable which makes the game far more enjoyable than everyone running around with homogeneous builds.

DDuke · August 2015

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Have you considered leaving the shields slightly stronger, but allowing them to be crit?

The problem uncrittable shields create is that they make the whole crit stat (already less beneficial than stamina or weapon dmg) useless against certain opponents.

This leads to less build diversity and more "stack weapon dmg/stamina".

For instance, daggers are just downright bad in PvP compared to swords or maces (partly) due to this.

Personally I like the paper, scissors, rock concept that uncrittable shields introduces.

If all damage done to everyone behaves in the same way no matter what you're attacking then the game becomes a straight math calculation for what is best. Uncrittable shields means throws a monkey wrench into that kind of calculation.

And if weapon damage/stamina was the only viable build option right now everyone would be running swords instead of maces (which shows that penetration is valued over top end damage even though it is worthless on shields).

Well, convince me why I'd want to have any crit bonuses on my gear then, when 50%~ of players are immune to it most of the time.

It already is a math calculation, which says "dont use daggers, dont get crit bonuses".

The only reason maces are used currently is because they provide so much value (against the other 50% of players, and sorcs that dont have shield up which is a rarity) due to this bug.

After they're fixed, swords will be hands down the best choice for PvP.

For plenty of reasons. There are plenty of abilities/situations that guarantee crit, there are quite a few abilities/CP passives that give you a bonus on crit and depending on the situation and has both know burst damage streaks are usually what kills players and that is going to be more important than ever in a 50% reduced damage Cyrodiil.

Also keep in mind that if your base attack breaks through a shield it will still crit if it was going to.

I don't think that when sharpened is fixed swords will be hands down the best choice, I think they will be pretty balanced from the numbers I've run, especially since the 50% damage debuff from cyrodiil being fixed just nerfed swords down to 2.5% where before it was additive with it.

There are a ton of different equations for different thing depending on the situation and its still very possible to design a build/playstyle around any of the weapons (except axes haha).

I don't think you quite understand the mechanics as well as you think you do.

Critical Strike chance doesn't increase your burst damage, it increases your sustained damage (and even that it increases less than raw weapon damage or stamina).

More raw damage->bigger crits=more burst
More critical strike chance->more crits=more sustained damage

Atleast in theory.
Sadly, critical strike chance isn't quite balanced with raw damage, where your sustained DPS is increased much, much more by getting weapon damage instead (or even stamina).

More things which devaluate critical strike chance:

Abilities which guarantee a critical strike
Damage Shields
Blocking

Here's how I see the sword vs mace vs dagger vs axe:
Sword - good against everyone
Mace - good against heavily armoured targets, as long as they dont use a dmg shield
Daggers - decent against people who dont use dmg or block
Axe - meh

I think we have a clear winner, when considering that a Mace only gives 5% increase (when not bugged) compared to sword against people with 50% resistance.

Against medium armour targets, it's a tie between sword & mace (sword slightly favored by 1%, unless medium armour user has 100 points in Medium Armour Focus which brings it to even), with the big drawback on mace that it deals no increased damage vs dmg shields (your biggest obstacle in PvP).

Against targets in light armour, sword wins 100% of the time.

Ezareth · August 2015

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Have you considered leaving the shields slightly stronger, but allowing them to be crit?

The problem uncrittable shields create is that they make the whole crit stat (already less beneficial than stamina or weapon dmg) useless against certain opponents.

This leads to less build diversity and more "stack weapon dmg/stamina".

For instance, daggers are just downright bad in PvP compared to swords or maces (partly) due to this.

Personally I like the paper, scissors, rock concept that uncrittable shields introduces.

If all damage done to everyone behaves in the same way no matter what you're attacking then the game becomes a straight math calculation for what is best. Uncrittable shields means throws a monkey wrench into that kind of calculation.

And if weapon damage/stamina was the only viable build option right now everyone would be running swords instead of maces (which shows that penetration is valued over top end damage even though it is worthless on shields).

Well, convince me why I'd want to have any crit bonuses on my gear then, when 50%~ of players are immune to it most of the time.

It already is a math calculation, which says "dont use daggers, dont get crit bonuses".

The only reason maces are used currently is because they provide so much value (against the other 50% of players, and sorcs that dont have shield up which is a rarity) due to this bug.

After they're fixed, swords will be hands down the best choice for PvP.

For plenty of reasons. There are plenty of abilities/situations that guarantee crit, there are quite a few abilities/CP passives that give you a bonus on crit and depending on the situation and has both know burst damage streaks are usually what kills players and that is going to be more important than ever in a 50% reduced damage Cyrodiil.

Also keep in mind that if your base attack breaks through a shield it will still crit if it was going to.

I don't think that when sharpened is fixed swords will be hands down the best choice, I think they will be pretty balanced from the numbers I've run, especially since the 50% damage debuff from cyrodiil being fixed just nerfed swords down to 2.5% where before it was additive with it.

There are a ton of different equations for different thing depending on the situation and its still very possible to design a build/playstyle around any of the weapons (except axes haha).

I don't think you quite understand the mechanics as well as you think you do.

Critical Strike chance doesn't increase your burst damage, it increases your sustained damage (and even that it increases less than raw weapon damage or stamina).

More raw damage->bigger crits=more burst
More critical strike chance->more crits=more sustained damage

Atleast in theory.
Sadly, critical strike chance isn't quite balanced with raw damage, where your sustained DPS is increased much, much more by getting weapon damage instead (or even stamina).

More things which devaluate critical strike chance:
Abilities which guarantee a critical strike

Damage Shields

Blocking

Here's how I see the sword vs mace vs dagger vs axe:
Sword - good against everyone
Mace - good against heavily armoured targets, as long as they dont use a dmg shield
Daggers - decent against people who dont use dmg or block
Axe - meh

I think we have a clear winner, when considering that a Mace only gives 5% increase (when not bugged) compared to sword against people with 50% resistance.

Against medium armour targets, it's a tie between sword & mace (sword slightly favored by 1%, unless medium armour user has 100 points in Medium Armour Focus which brings it to even), with the big drawback on mace that it deals no increased damage vs dmg shields (your biggest obstacle in PvP).

Against targets in light armour, sword wins 100% of the time.

Either I'm completely off base or you have that completely backwards.

In any game I've ever played, crit chance is more *expensive* than base damage stats because crit chance leads to more volatile (bursty) damage which in PvP translates to kills (back to back crits or triple crit streaks etc.).

Base damage increasing stats will lead to higher DPS yet will be a more stable "sustainable" mode of damage.

That is how it *should* work. The availability of Crit damage bonus increasing gear/abilities/passives/CPs and crit damage reducing countering factors muddies the waters on this somewhat but anything dealing with crit itself is usually very expensive pound for pound compared to damage.

You're right on the things the devalue crit chance which is why I think crit on a whole right now is probably *too* expensive. Then again it's really hard to tell with so many exploits like magelight and mundus with thief/shadow to get a good idea of how the balance up.

One thing is certain, with the nerfing of both damage shields and blocking, crit is going to become much more powerful than it is on live.

I think securing 4 different viable and balanced modes for weapons was pretty far reaching of ZoS and it obviously fell short. They should have made Axes a hybrid of both Maces and Swords which I believe is the more standard approach.

Laggus · August 2015

[b]ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post![/b]

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

The thread was deleted..same as the main ones that mention any chance of fixing the Overload bug and multiple Mundus stones active.

DDuke · August 2015

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Have you considered leaving the shields slightly stronger, but allowing them to be crit?

The problem uncrittable shields create is that they make the whole crit stat (already less beneficial than stamina or weapon dmg) useless against certain opponents.

This leads to less build diversity and more "stack weapon dmg/stamina".

For instance, daggers are just downright bad in PvP compared to swords or maces (partly) due to this.

Personally I like the paper, scissors, rock concept that uncrittable shields introduces.

If all damage done to everyone behaves in the same way no matter what you're attacking then the game becomes a straight math calculation for what is best. Uncrittable shields means throws a monkey wrench into that kind of calculation.

And if weapon damage/stamina was the only viable build option right now everyone would be running swords instead of maces (which shows that penetration is valued over top end damage even though it is worthless on shields).

Well, convince me why I'd want to have any crit bonuses on my gear then, when 50%~ of players are immune to it most of the time.

It already is a math calculation, which says "dont use daggers, dont get crit bonuses".

The only reason maces are used currently is because they provide so much value (against the other 50% of players, and sorcs that dont have shield up which is a rarity) due to this bug.

After they're fixed, swords will be hands down the best choice for PvP.

For plenty of reasons. There are plenty of abilities/situations that guarantee crit, there are quite a few abilities/CP passives that give you a bonus on crit and depending on the situation and has both know burst damage streaks are usually what kills players and that is going to be more important than ever in a 50% reduced damage Cyrodiil.

Also keep in mind that if your base attack breaks through a shield it will still crit if it was going to.

I don't think that when sharpened is fixed swords will be hands down the best choice, I think they will be pretty balanced from the numbers I've run, especially since the 50% damage debuff from cyrodiil being fixed just nerfed swords down to 2.5% where before it was additive with it.

There are a ton of different equations for different thing depending on the situation and its still very possible to design a build/playstyle around any of the weapons (except axes haha).

I don't think you quite understand the mechanics as well as you think you do.

Critical Strike chance doesn't increase your burst damage, it increases your sustained damage (and even that it increases less than raw weapon damage or stamina).

More raw damage->bigger crits=more burst
More critical strike chance->more crits=more sustained damage

Atleast in theory.
Sadly, critical strike chance isn't quite balanced with raw damage, where your sustained DPS is increased much, much more by getting weapon damage instead (or even stamina).

More things which devaluate critical strike chance:
Abilities which guarantee a critical strike

Damage Shields

Blocking

Here's how I see the sword vs mace vs dagger vs axe:
Sword - good against everyone
Mace - good against heavily armoured targets, as long as they dont use a dmg shield
Daggers - decent against people who dont use dmg or block
Axe - meh

I think we have a clear winner, when considering that a Mace only gives 5% increase (when not bugged) compared to sword against people with 50% resistance.

Against medium armour targets, it's a tie between sword & mace (sword slightly favored by 1%, unless medium armour user has 100 points in Medium Armour Focus which brings it to even), with the big drawback on mace that it deals no increased damage vs dmg shields (your biggest obstacle in PvP).

Against targets in light armour, sword wins 100% of the time.

Either I'm completely off base or you have that completely backwards.

In any game I've ever played, crit chance is more *expensive* than base damage stats because crit chance leads to more volatile (bursty) damage which in PvP translates to kills (back to back crits or triple crit streaks etc.).

Base damage increasing stats will lead to higher DPS yet will be a more stable "sustainable" mode of damage.

That is how it *should* work. The availability of Crit damage bonus increasing gear/abilities/passives/CPs and crit damage reducing countering factors muddies the waters on this somewhat but anything dealing with crit itself is usually very expensive pound for pound compared to damage.

You're right on the things the devalue crit chance which is why I think crit on a whole right now is probably *too* expensive. Then again it's really hard to tell with so many exploits like magelight and mundus with thief/shadow to get a good idea of how the balance up.

One thing is certain, with the nerfing of both damage shields and blocking, crit is going to become much more powerful than it is on live.

I think securing 4 different viable and balanced modes for weapons was pretty far reaching of ZoS and it obviously fell short. They should have made Axes a hybrid of both Maces and Swords which I believe is the more standard approach.

In other games, you're not made to choose between critical strike chance & damage ;P

In most of them, you get multiple stats from gear and best gear comes with both crit rating & raw damage (sometimes combined to a single stat).

In ESO however, you're choosing between the two and obviously more dmg leads to bigger crits and thus more burst damage (and even more sustained damage as well, as theorycrafted by players).

Also worth noting, in most games your crit % ends up between 10-40%, in ESO you're anywhere between 40-90% which is kind of silly in my opinion

Ezareth · August 2015

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Have you considered leaving the shields slightly stronger, but allowing them to be crit?

The problem uncrittable shields create is that they make the whole crit stat (already less beneficial than stamina or weapon dmg) useless against certain opponents.

This leads to less build diversity and more "stack weapon dmg/stamina".

For instance, daggers are just downright bad in PvP compared to swords or maces (partly) due to this.

Personally I like the paper, scissors, rock concept that uncrittable shields introduces.

If all damage done to everyone behaves in the same way no matter what you're attacking then the game becomes a straight math calculation for what is best. Uncrittable shields means throws a monkey wrench into that kind of calculation.

And if weapon damage/stamina was the only viable build option right now everyone would be running swords instead of maces (which shows that penetration is valued over top end damage even though it is worthless on shields).

Well, convince me why I'd want to have any crit bonuses on my gear then, when 50%~ of players are immune to it most of the time.

It already is a math calculation, which says "dont use daggers, dont get crit bonuses".

The only reason maces are used currently is because they provide so much value (against the other 50% of players, and sorcs that dont have shield up which is a rarity) due to this bug.

After they're fixed, swords will be hands down the best choice for PvP.

For plenty of reasons. There are plenty of abilities/situations that guarantee crit, there are quite a few abilities/CP passives that give you a bonus on crit and depending on the situation and has both know burst damage streaks are usually what kills players and that is going to be more important than ever in a 50% reduced damage Cyrodiil.

Also keep in mind that if your base attack breaks through a shield it will still crit if it was going to.

I don't think that when sharpened is fixed swords will be hands down the best choice, I think they will be pretty balanced from the numbers I've run, especially since the 50% damage debuff from cyrodiil being fixed just nerfed swords down to 2.5% where before it was additive with it.

There are a ton of different equations for different thing depending on the situation and its still very possible to design a build/playstyle around any of the weapons (except axes haha).

I don't think you quite understand the mechanics as well as you think you do.

Critical Strike chance doesn't increase your burst damage, it increases your sustained damage (and even that it increases less than raw weapon damage or stamina).

More raw damage->bigger crits=more burst
More critical strike chance->more crits=more sustained damage

Atleast in theory.
Sadly, critical strike chance isn't quite balanced with raw damage, where your sustained DPS is increased much, much more by getting weapon damage instead (or even stamina).

More things which devaluate critical strike chance:
Abilities which guarantee a critical strike

Damage Shields

Blocking

Here's how I see the sword vs mace vs dagger vs axe:
Sword - good against everyone
Mace - good against heavily armoured targets, as long as they dont use a dmg shield
Daggers - decent against people who dont use dmg or block
Axe - meh

I think we have a clear winner, when considering that a Mace only gives 5% increase (when not bugged) compared to sword against people with 50% resistance.

Against medium armour targets, it's a tie between sword & mace (sword slightly favored by 1%, unless medium armour user has 100 points in Medium Armour Focus which brings it to even), with the big drawback on mace that it deals no increased damage vs dmg shields (your biggest obstacle in PvP).

Against targets in light armour, sword wins 100% of the time.

Either I'm completely off base or you have that completely backwards.

In any game I've ever played, crit chance is more *expensive* than base damage stats because crit chance leads to more volatile (bursty) damage which in PvP translates to kills (back to back crits or triple crit streaks etc.).

Base damage increasing stats will lead to higher DPS yet will be a more stable "sustainable" mode of damage.

That is how it *should* work. The availability of Crit damage bonus increasing gear/abilities/passives/CPs and crit damage reducing countering factors muddies the waters on this somewhat but anything dealing with crit itself is usually very expensive pound for pound compared to damage.

You're right on the things the devalue crit chance which is why I think crit on a whole right now is probably *too* expensive. Then again it's really hard to tell with so many exploits like magelight and mundus with thief/shadow to get a good idea of how the balance up.

One thing is certain, with the nerfing of both damage shields and blocking, crit is going to become much more powerful than it is on live.

I think securing 4 different viable and balanced modes for weapons was pretty far reaching of ZoS and it obviously fell short. They should have made Axes a hybrid of both Maces and Swords which I believe is the more standard approach.

In other games, you're not made to choose between critical strike chance & damage ;P

In most of them, you get multiple stats from gear and best gear comes with both crit rating & raw damage (sometimes combined to a single stat).

In ESO however, you're choosing between the two and obviously more dmg leads to bigger crits and thus more burst damage (and even more sustained damage as well, as theorycrafted by players).

Well I remember the same thing in WoW many years ago. They did end up homogenizing everything in the end to include both and their "tier" sets that everyone wore eliminated most of the ability to truly customize gear. When they refactored everything in Burning Crusade they had to significantly lower the crit percentage on gear by changing it to a rating that awarded crit based upon your level.

Anyways, the point remains, if you balance crit and damage to provide the exact same average DPS increases (yes I know they're no independent of one another) and then look at the same on a timeline, crit damage will be far more bursty and damage will be more reliable. In PvP Crit has to provide less DPS than for each amount of "stat allocation" for just this reason.

If your strategy involves attacking people from stealth for the stealth bonus and guaranteed crit then yes you definitely want to maximize your damage not your crit chance. If you're not relying on guaranteed crits for your attacks then crit chance becomes much more useful.

As I said right now it's not a real decision, damage is king in almost any scenario. However in 2.1 the balance is shifting some towards crit, I can't say yet whether crit will be more preferable in many cases than damage yet but I hope in some cases it will.

Armitas · August 2015

HeroOfNone wrote: »

I would not recommend a blanket improvement to DOTs, we should put a bit more thought to it.

Poisons, bleeds, disease should work better against enemies with out shields, physical damage and debuffs that need to get through a shield.

Fire, frost, and electrical would give higher damage on shields, stripping them down faster, but then you're hitting armor and spell mitigations when you get through.

Melee hits, arrows, and standard staff attacks would all do standard un crit able damage. This is what they are made to soak up.

This makes a rock paper scissors game with most classes, nightblades able to surprise attack but not do a lot of damage to shielded opponents. But DKS and Templars might be able burst down that shield better than others, forcing sorcs to run away less they suffer low magicka from constantly putting up shields. NBS though constantly waiting for glass cannons that don't bother slotting a Damage shield.

This would also force some to clense and then put on a damage shield, instead of shielding and ignoring the damage.

I like this in concept because it adds variability to the game, though I don't know what you mean here " physical damage and debuffs that need to get through a shield" so I'll just leave that aside.

Thought of these for elemental types.

Frost freezes a shield making it brittle, shield takes x% more damage per attack from any source or player. Lasts 4 seconds, applies to total shield value or any shield reapplied within the 4 seconds window.
Electricity disrupts the shield. Any electrical damage does X% more damage to shield value only.
Fire burns parts of the shield leaving an opening. Applies X% shield penetration for 4 seconds, applies to total shield value or any shield reapplied within the 4 second window.

When I say total shield value here I mean it treats any number of layered shields as one massive shield. These would have to be direct effects from elements, not secondary effects. This is because secondary effects are unlikely to occur due to the recent nerf. Damage values can be low, or they can be high if there is a cooldown for their application.

Just some thoughts that would add variety and strategy to the issue.

k2blader · August 2015

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Thank you!!

Also, please keep in mind when people complain about sorc shields they may actually be experiencing Healing Ward or Annulment. Please don't assume the problem is sorcs' Hardened Ward. With the nerf to Bolt Escape mobility and BoL's defensive function, there's no reason to further nerf a defensive capability.

Akinos · August 2015

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

Omg...is this for real? AM I DREAMING?!?!

Let's hope for a miracle that it actually gets fixed and not made worse in some way

Xsorus · August 2015

Whats sad is he thinks that fixing the damage shields is somehow going to make them on par.

When I can watch a Sorc just throw up 12k-20k shields over and over again on PTS non stop while throwing out damage the change in formula is not going to stop that..Because you simply can't put out enough damage to pressure those shields..and since you can pretty much stack Magicka Recovery to take care of those shields and not be penalized for it like ya do with Block or Dodge...its still going to work out in the end.

Forestd16b14_ESO · August 2015

How about no. Cause that basicly means players have to take out the shield first before actually doing any real damage to the other player...... Which is what were at basicly right now on live were players have to destroy the shield first to do anything to the player but they can't cause as soon as it pops they blow another bubble and rinse and repeat till one runs out of resources. The crit and overflow damage is just gonna make it easier to pop the bubbles no matter how much QQ you shield stackers do this change is gonna happen and it is gonna make AvA alot better.

Laggus · August 2015

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

How about no. Cause that basicly means players have to take out the shield first before actually doing any real damage to the other player...... Which is what were at basicly right now on live were players have to destroy the shield first to do anything to the player but they can't cause as soon as it pops they blow another bubble and rinse and repeat till one runs out of resources. The crit and overflow damage is just gonna make it easier to pop the bubbles no matter how much QQ you shield stackers do this change is gonna happen and it is gonna make AvA alot better.

Its not happening now though. They backtracked and fixed some Battle Spirit calculations. We'll see if this makes any difference with Sorcs. I'm thinking its not as this effects all classes and specs. Probably only slightly better than live but we'll see. If they eventually introduce crit damaging shields they should do something about the as yet proven unmitigated overflow damage.

Zsymon · August 2015

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

How about no. Cause that basicly means players have to take out the shield first before actually doing any real damage to the other player...... Which is what were at basicly right now on live were players have to destroy the shield first to do anything to the player but they can't cause as soon as it pops they blow another bubble and rinse and repeat till one runs out of resources. The crit and overflow damage is just gonna make it easier to pop the bubbles no matter how much QQ you shield stackers do this change is gonna happen and it is gonna make AvA alot better.

ZOS said they did not decide to make shields crittable yet, they are first going to test the formula changes. The overflow damage is obviously an unintended bug, you're acting like it was meant to be there to make it easier to defeat shield users.

Damage Shields cost magicka, skill bar slots and GCD, there has to be a reason to cast them.

Francescolg · August 2015

HeroOfNone wrote: »

[absorb shields] almost totally negate DOT builds in general, something DKs specialize in.

I am sorry but this "builds" are not negated mainly by absorb shields but by the cheap and spammable skill named Purge/Cleanse, which every, really every single PvP group is spamming.

Derra · August 2015

Xsorus wrote: »

Whats sad is he thinks that fixing the damage shields is somehow going to make them on par.

When I can watch a Sorc just throw up 12k-20k shields over and over again on PTS non stop while throwing out damage the change in formula is not going to stop that..Because you simply can't put out enough damage to pressure those shields..and since you can pretty much stack Magicka Recovery to take care of those shields and not be penalized for it like ya do with Block or Dodge...its still going to work out in the end.

Not that this is any different to any heal in the game with what we´ve seen of 2.1 pvp so far...
But yeah better bash on shields.

Also you won´t be seeing 12k in a single hardened ward ever if the debuff works correctly. Healing ward however...

silky_soft · August 2015

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Could have sworn I already responded to this but I can't find my post!

We have a fix in for the next PTS build that resolves an issue with Battle Spirit where the damage/healing/shield values were not being calculated properly.

We're going to test this change before making any other changes to shields.

As an aside... we also fixed the armor penetration issue with the sharpened and piercing traits.

If you don't end up making them critable, which would be a shame, can you make penetration bypass block and shields?

cschwingeb14_ESO · August 2015

Making damage partially bypass shields would actually be a modest buff to shields. Imagine that I have 20k health and a 10k shield, and 25%of damage goes through the shield.

Having any kind of passive healing or HoTs would heal that 25% damage while the shield was keeping away the other 75% of damage. Effectively giving me a 12.5k shield

Jar_Ek · August 2015

If shields are such a problem maybe add a shield breaker enchant that does damage to shields only (but does a lot to shields) and make make some damage morphs be shield breaking as well.

Mr_Koh · August 2015

Stop crying guys. Your shields are absolutely broken and if you think they aren't then you're bad and you should feel bad. All survivability mechanics were nerfed so they aren't spammable anymore. Thus effected all but shields. Well shields are next because they are absolutely broken.

k2blader · August 2015

Mr_Koh wrote: »

Stop crying guys. Your shields are absolutely broken and if you think they aren't then you're bad and you should feel bad. All survivability mechanics were nerfed so they aren't spammable anymore. Thus effected all but shields. Well shields are next because they are absolutely broken.

Lordy, talk about crying. Shields are bugged on the PTS, and Zeni said they will be fixing that. So hopefully it'll be in the Monday patch and you can go test it out yourself.

Maulkin · August 2015

Mr_Koh wrote: »

Stop crying guys. Your shields are absolutely broken and if you think they aren't then you're bad and you should feel bad. All survivability mechanics were nerfed so they aren't spammable anymore. Thus effected all but shields. Well shields are next because they are absolutely broken.

Errr no, that statement could not be more wrong.

You can still spam heals and you can still spam cloak or scales or anyother other skill that boosts your survivability.

And yes shields are broken, the devs even said so, but not the way you seem to think they are.

Mr_Koh · August 2015

Only healing ward is bugged atm. Once they fix that then they'll still be broken just like how they are on live. If they're not making shields crit able in the next patch then that's ***. Honestly if they treated everything else like they treat sorcs they would have a balanced game. First they gave bolt escape a 50 percent increase for consecutive uses which they knew was lineant for them to do before they followed up (months later) with the stacking mechanic. Now they're thinking about making shields crit able but don't want to move too quickly. But for blocking they had no hesitation when they gutted it and took stam regen completely away while blocking, and they nerfed the heck out of roll dodge to the point where resource management for stam builds doesnt stand a chance against the now superior resource management of a magicka build. Other classes are delicate too not just magicka sorcs just in case you guys didn't know that. Dodge roll should be a 25 percent increase and cap at 50 percent also have the cool down start once the Dodge roll is activated not a second after the roll is complete. Dodge rolling is a necessary tool in all fights as a stamina build, and it is meant to be used constantly (not consecutively)

Mr_Koh · August 2015

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Mr_Koh wrote: »

Stop crying guys. Your shields are absolutely broken and if you think they aren't then you're bad and you should feel bad. All survivability mechanics were nerfed so they aren't spammable anymore. Thus effected all but shields. Well shields are next because they are absolutely broken.

Errr no, that statement could not be more wrong.

You can still spam heals and you can still spam cloak or scales or anyother other skill that boosts your survivability.

And yes shields are broken, the devs even said so, but not the way you seem to think they are.

Heals and cloak have counters. Shields don't.

Tankqull · August 2015

Mr_Koh wrote: »

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Mr_Koh wrote: »

Stop crying guys. Your shields are absolutely broken and if you think they aren't then you're bad and you should feel bad. All survivability mechanics were nerfed so they aren't spammable anymore. Thus effected all but shields. Well shields are next because they are absolutely broken.

Errr no, that statement could not be more wrong.

You can still spam heals and you can still spam cloak or scales or anyother other skill that boosts your survivability.

And yes shields are broken, the devs even said so, but not the way you seem to think they are.

Heals and cloak have counters. Shields don't.

whats the counter to a heal? -> dmg
whats the counter to a shield? -> not existing!

hmmm....

Tankqull · August 2015

Mr_Koh wrote: »

...

so the 30 heal heal debuff counters heals - then the mitigation less shields counters itself as it reduces the dmg mitigation by way more than 30% to be precise 100%.

[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]

Maulkin · August 2015

Mr_Koh wrote: »

...

Nice, not ony ignorant but offensive too.

First off Hardened Ward is also bugged, not just Healing Ward. That was acknowledged by the devs.

Secondly, as Tankqull has said HP is behind armor mitigation. So if you heal 10k HP on somenone with 33k spell resist, I have to do 20k tooltip damage to reverse the effects of the heal, cause he mitigates half the damage. Shields don't have mitigation.

Also, heals crit. Shields don't. So if you debuff somebody for 30% his 10k heal will heal for 7k or crit for 10.5k, despite the debuff.

Until we see how shields are after the fixes we won't know if they are too strong or not.

[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]