15-20k shields

Llilium · October 2015

so, many people come to complain about these things, but i'm more interested in how it's done.

my buddy is a templar healer, we run small pvp groups and he has a hard time staying alive even though he's got 2.2k spell power and wearing heavy armor. he doesn't have much of a mana issue as he does so much of a staying-alive issue.

I see very often people who are able to put up massive shields that take forever to push through some times. my buddy doesn't seem to have the ability to even throw out anything past 3-4k.

any ideas to help my buddy?

paulsimonps · October 2015

Some shields are based of Magicka and some shields are based on HP and if I remember right the Templar shield is based of HP which means you will only get high numbers with that with higher HP.

SemiD4rkness · October 2015

Those are Sorcerers, not templars.

myrrrorb14_ESO · October 2015

Yep, Templar shield is based off of Health.

Annulment is a nice sized shield, but only works against spells.

eliisra · October 2015

You need to play sorc to shield stack. The 50% blanket nerf made it impossible for other classes to use shields for protection, since they either scale of health (templar + DK) or no class shield at all (NB).

If you run a normal magicka build on a VR16 templar you get like 3k Sun Shield. That's almost gone in one light attack. If you want Sun Shield to be useful on a templar you need a max health/troll build, which prevents you from playing any normal role, like healing or dps'ing with other skills.

In comparison, my magicka sorcs Hardened Ward is almost 10k, enough to eat a Wrecking Blow, because scaling of max magicka.

But stamina builds use the shield breaker set now, destroying shield stackers (in this case sorcs) in a couple of seconds.
The shield stacking issue is really polarized. Either kills you extremely fast, because of a 5 piece set bonus or makes you super tanky, in light armor while maintaining high dmg.

Templars in small scale are kinda doomed to die, since no mobility, no shield, no escapes, no special defence other than smart heals. Doesn't really matter if you wear heavy armor when you cant kite for ***. Best advice for your friend is grouping with a stamina build that gives him Retreating Maneuvre, so he can keep up when stuff goes bad, LoS and kite.

Llilium · October 2015

eliisra wrote: »

You need to play sorc to shield stack. The 50% blanket nerf made it impossible for other classes to use shields for protection, since they either scale of health (templar + DK) or no class shield at all (NB).

If you run a normal magicka build on a VR16 templar you get like 3k Sun Shield. That's almost gone in one light attack. If you want Sun Shield to be useful on a templar you need a max health/troll build, which prevents you from playing any normal role, like healing or dps'ing with other skills.

In comparison, my magicka sorcs Hardened Ward is almost 10k, enough to eat a Wrecking Blow, because scaling of max magicka.

But stamina builds use the shield breaker set now, destroying shield stackers (in this case sorcs) in a couple of seconds.
The shield stacking issue is really polarized. Either kills you extremely fast, because of a 5 piece set bonus or makes you super tanky, in light armor while maintaining high dmg.

Templars in small scale are kinda doomed to die, since no mobility, no shield, no escapes, no special defence other than smart heals. Doesn't really matter if you wear heavy armor when you cant kite for ***. Best advice for your friend is grouping with a stamina build that gives him Retreating Maneuvre, so he can keep up when stuff goes bad, LoS and kite.

this is great information. i'm sending this thread over to him now, and i appreciate the raw input from this particular post

XpoZeD_GoD · October 2015

Barrier is available to anyone who PvPs enough and will provide a pretty large damage shield for you and most of the people around you. The only problem with it is that it's an Ultimate with a high cost so it's unlikely that he'll be able to have it up all the time

SirAndy · October 2015

2H has a weapon skill (forget the name right now) that gives you a small damage shield per hit.

Of course for that to be of any use, you need to be stamina based and within melee range.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO · October 2015

ya, it sucks. they really need to make all shields scale off of health. also make it so they take dots; it sucks pretty hard that everyone has to use the same few direct damage skills because everyone is running around immune to dots with their stupid shields.

kylerjalen · October 2015

SirAndy wrote: »

2H has a weapon skill (forget the name right now) that gives you a small damage shield per hit.

Of course for that to be of any use, you need to be stamina based and within melee range.

That's called Brawler. Yep. Wonderful for grinding on a Stamblade.

Johngo0036 · October 2015

Also remember that CP Play a HUGE role in the strength of those shields.....

100 CP in the right place and you have Crazy shield stats..
The lord constellation
Bastion..

Stx · October 2015

Wait... DoTs do nothing to someone with a shield up? If that is true then I don't even know what to say, someone should be fired. Lots of people should be fired.

Well honestly, shields making you crit immune is reason enough for people to be fired. I would love to hear the logic behind that.

DDemon · October 2015

Stx wrote: »

Wait... DoTs do nothing to someone with a shield up? If that is true then I don't even know what to say, someone should be fired. Lots of people should be fired.

Well honestly, shields making you crit immune is reason enough for people to be fired. I would love to hear the logic behind that.

A shield generally ... shields one from damage, any damage to a shield can't be critical damage to your health. If you take a normal plated shield and you damage it, the one holding it does not get hurt, the shield loses durability however.

A mages shield is like a bubble around the caster, if you look at it logically (for as far as that is possible in a fantasy mmo), damaging the bubble cannot critically hurt the caster, as it's the shield taking the damage.

Zlater · October 2015

Stx wrote: »

Wait... DoTs do nothing to someone with a shield up? If that is true then I don't even know what to say, someone should be fired. Lots of people should be fired.

Well honestly, shields making you crit immune is reason enough for people to be fired. I would love to hear the logic behind that.

It used to not take damage against some DoT's. But I believe that got fixed.

However there are still some exceptions where there are rules that the effect or damage or whatever will only proc against damage taken by the player with the shield instead of absorbed by the shield, eg:

A health restore enchant has a rule that the enchant must cause damage to restore health, because you aren't actually causing damage against a player if they have a shield the health restore part will never actually trigger, however the damage from the enchant still applies.

If you think that's OP...

This effect is actually a double edged sword because it also applies to reactive skills like absorb magic, because you never actually take any damage you wont get healed by this skill.

So while it might make you immune to a skill like templars backlash, it also completely voids the possibility of making use of so many really awesome sets and skills like the desert rose set.

Septimus_Magna · October 2015

Stx wrote: »

Wait... DoTs do nothing to someone with a shield up? If that is true then I don't even know what to say, someone should be fired. Lots of people should be fired.

Well honestly, shields making you crit immune is reason enough for people to be fired. I would love to hear the logic behind that.

Because shields cannot crit when you cast them, if shield would be critable they should also be able to crit when you cast them.

Damage can crit (if you dont block) and heals also have a chance to crit so the difference is the same.

willymchilybily · October 2015

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

Wait... DoTs do nothing to someone with a shield up? If that is true then I don't even know what to say, someone should be fired. Lots of people should be fired.
Well honestly, shields making you crit immune is reason enough for people to be fired. I would love to hear the logic behind that.

Because shields cannot crit when you cast them, if shield would be critable they should also be able to crit when you cast them.
Damage can crit (if you dont block) and heals also have a chance to crit so the difference is the same.

lol come on that's nonsense, you can cast it out of combat until it crits, and with >50% Crit chance you would be back to 1.6 shields. Its a damage mitigation method. And the only one immune to critical strikes.

Thats like saying immovable or other armor buffs can crit and give more mitigation than stated. Suddenly immovable give 7.5k not 5k resistance. or my dodge chance with shuffle/double take can suddenly be 30% instead of 20%.

its a shield/damage mitigation not a heal compare like for like, dont be ridiculous. on a side note i think crit-able shields would have been fine if over spill was fixed. or if stacking was addressed instead of crit being possible also fine. but the battle spirit nerf just polarized more the difference between good shields and bad shields. but we have what we have. battle spirit and shield breaker. so crit on shields isnt necessary, but immunity to soeme debuffs is questionable.

GrimMauKin · October 2015

I have a hard time staying alive (even at VR16) with my Nightblade and watch enviously as some players solo big bosses with hardly a scratch (although clearly they're also better players than me). There's only so much rolling and blocking you can do before the stamina gives out.

Septimus_Magna · October 2015

willymchilybily wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

Wait... DoTs do nothing to someone with a shield up? If that is true then I don't even know what to say, someone should be fired. Lots of people should be fired.
Well honestly, shields making you crit immune is reason enough for people to be fired. I would love to hear the logic behind that.

Because shields cannot crit when you cast them, if shield would be critable they should also be able to crit when you cast them.
Damage can crit (if you dont block) and heals also have a chance to crit so the difference is the same.

lol come on that's nonsense, you can cast it out of combat until it crits, and with >50% Crit chance you would be back to 1.6 shields. Its a damage mitigation method. And the only one immune to critical strikes.

Thats like saying immovable or other armor buffs can crit and give more mitigation than stated. Suddenly immovable give 7.5k not 5k resistance. or my dodge chance with shuffle/double take can suddenly be 30% instead of 20%.

its a shield/damage mitigation not a heal compare like for like, dont be ridiculous. on a side note i think crit-able shields would have been fine if over spill was fixed. or if stacking was addressed instead of crit being possible also fine. but the battle spirit nerf just polarized more the difference between good shields and bad shields. but we have what we have. battle spirit and shield breaker. so crit on shields isnt necessary, but immunity to soeme debuffs is questionable.

Buffs work totally different than shields, their value is set and it cannot be reduced.
Major Evasion always gives a 20% dodge chance for example, noting can reduce this value until the timer runs out. This makes the their effect of buffs very predicable and reliable, you just need to cast is when the times runs out.

Shields act like temporary health buffs, their value scale off the corresponding resource pool and the value decreases when you take damage. Once the shield value is reduced to zero the timer effectively runs out so you need to cast it again, unlike buffs which always have the same duration.

So no, its not nonsense. Allowing crits on shields is fine if shields can crit when you cast them.

p.s. you can also guarantee a crit hit by attacking from stealth which is the same advantage as buffing up with crit shields before fights.

Stx · October 2015

Personally I think it's completely broken that you can build your character for critical strike, and then have that completely wiped away due to a shield. That makes no sense at all.

I guess I would be okay with crit immune shields if you couldn't stack them, but since you can, you can't just eliminate someone's 50-60% crit like that, that is stupid.

americansteel · October 2015

I run all heavy seducer and torugs pact will power im pushing 2700 spell damage on my Templar.

mrowmrif2 · October 2015

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

ya, it sucks. they really need to make all shields scale off of health. also make it so they take dots; it sucks pretty hard that everyone has to use the same few direct damage skills because everyone is running around immune to dots with their stupid shields.

i disagree... magicka users naturally will have lower health in order to favor max magicka, and the same goes for stamina DPS builds... making any shields scale from health essentially means they are only good for tanks with 30k+ health OR they are only useful in cyrodill...

atm, health scaling shields are worthless. i dont even use igneous on my DK tank anymore. what they NEED to do is allow the resource that powers the shield (stamina for bone shield, magicka for various class shields and annulment) scale from that resource... or even better, to have some base value that is a % of total health and THEN scale the shield up from there based on the resource used...

just throwing this out there... bone shield from undaunted... 30% max health shield is the shield currently - with my suggestion, have it be maybe 20-25% shield based on total health and then have another 20-25% stamina possible. This makes the standard shield go from 10k (based on 30k health, 15k stamina) to 6k or 6.5k shield + 3 to 3.75k = 9 to 10.25k... so relatively close, but it means that a stamina DPS with 20k health and 20k stamina would have a 6k total shield in today's environment to 6k + 4-5k = 10-11k shield for a DPS. so the shield would be equally important to a tank as it would be to a DPS, and you might start seeing shields being used more universally in both PVE and PVP (which also makes shieldbreaker more interesting).

for magicka builds, something like annulment or one of the sorc/DK/templar shields would be similar... let's take a 16k health templar with 35k magicka. you are talking about a blazing shield with 3.2-4k + 7-8.75k = 11-12.75k shield... which btw is almost the same strength as bone shield in my calculation above.

if ZOS is going to make changes, how about something more logical than just NERF IT! or HEALTH SCALING! (which makes all shields crap and not worth a slot on your bar). i believe they should fix the mitigation formula in general. crits should deal damage to a shield as if they were dealing damage to the character; the shield absorbs the damage otherwise dealt... it makes sense. also, shields should mitigate damage based on elemental resistances and armor/spell resistance. basically, a shield should just be a chunk of damage-absorbing-force extension of the character, not some 0 mitigation, uncritable anomaly.

usmcjdking · October 2015

mrowmrif2 wrote: »

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

ya, it sucks. they really need to make all shields scale off of health. also make it so they take dots; it sucks pretty hard that everyone has to use the same few direct damage skills because everyone is running around immune to dots with their stupid shields.

i disagree... magicka users naturally will have lower health in order to favor max magicka, and the same goes for stamina DPS builds... making any shields scale from health essentially means they are only good for tanks with 30k+ health OR they are only useful in cyrodill...

atm, health scaling shields are worthless. i dont even use igneous on my DK tank anymore. what they NEED to do is allow the resource that powers the shield (stamina for bone shield, magicka for various class shields and annulment) scale from that resource... or even better, to have some base value that is a % of total health and THEN scale the shield up from there based on the resource used...

just throwing this out there... bone shield from undaunted... 30% max health shield is the shield currently - with my suggestion, have it be maybe 20-25% shield based on total health and then have another 20-25% stamina possible. This makes the standard shield go from 10k (based on 30k health, 15k stamina) to 6k or 6.5k shield + 3 to 3.75k = 9 to 10.25k... so relatively close, but it means that a stamina DPS with 20k health and 20k stamina would have a 6k total shield in today's environment to 6k + 4-5k = 10-11k shield for a DPS. so the shield would be equally important to a tank as it would be to a DPS, and you might start seeing shields being used more universally in both PVE and PVP (which also makes shieldbreaker more interesting).

for magicka builds, something like annulment or one of the sorc/DK/templar shields would be similar... let's take a 16k health templar with 35k magicka. you are talking about a blazing shield with 3.2-4k + 7-8.75k = 11-12.75k shield... which btw is almost the same strength as bone shield in my calculation above.

if ZOS is going to make changes, how about something more logical than just NERF IT! or HEALTH SCALING! (which makes all shields crap and not worth a slot on your bar).

No.

All shields need to scale directly off HEALTH and need to scale in effectiveness based upon HEALTH.

This mess of everything scaling off stamina and magicka is why tanks are dumpster-tier right now. Being able to get defensive and offensive capabilities out of the same stat when there is a stat specifically designed for it by the tooltip is utterly ridiculous.