I'm just a simple scarecrow and know nothing about logic and such but anything that leads to the weakening of a sorcs only class shield just promotes shield stacking, because hardened ward will not be good enough by itself.

DK and Temp shields scale of health, BUT they also have some awesome ON DEMAND heal: Breath of life and Igneous Shield + Dragon blood. NB doesn't have a big heal on demand, that's why they need cloak.

Sorc does has a big heal, 35% health just like Dragon Blood, but it need a pet which is:
A- You need a pet summoned. If some how the pet die before you need that big heal, its a waste.
B- It cost 2 quickslots (1 on each bar) just for something that can only be used 1 time, because re-summon it mid-fight is a stupid option, because...
C- If you want that big heal again, you need to re-summon the pet, which take 1.3 second and a tons of magicka. And 1.3s root in 1 spot is enough for someone to melt you down.

Sorc also have another heal: Dark Deal, which take like 1s delay while you can't use any other skills and very suck.

So no, Sorc rely on their shields to defend.

PS: Some might say: Surge heal. Yes its a great heal, but it's base on luck, not an on demand heal. Even with 70% crit, I still sometime go thru 3-4s with no luck on crit and die waiting for surge proc.

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

DK and Temp shields scale of health, BUT they also have some awesome ON DEMAND heal: Breath of life and Igneous Shield + Dragon blood. NB doesn't have a big heal on demand, that's why they need cloak.

Sorc does has a big heal, but it need a pet which is:
A- You need a pet summoned. If some how the pet die before you need that big heal, its a waste.
B- It cost 2 quickslots (1 on each bar) just for something that can only be used 1 time, because re-summon it mid-fight is a stupid option, because...
C- If you want that big heal again, you need to re-summon the pet, which take 1.3 second and a tons of magicka. And 1.3s root in 1 spot is enough for someone to melt you down.

Sorc also have another heal: Dark Deal, which take like 1s delay and very suck.

So no, Sorc rely on their shields to defend.

PS: Some might say: Surge heal. Yes its a great heal, but it's base on luck, not an on demand heal. Even with 70% crit, I still sometime go thru 3-4s with no luck on crit and die waiting for surge proc.

Yeah i do agree with you n thanks for saying Nbs need cloak we dont exactly have anything else. I dont think NB or Sorcs need a nerf i think other classes need a buff thou templars have big heals so meh there fine in my book. Thou only reason i post this is cause i just find shields so silly (you prob can tell by type shield stacking im talking about) how i keep running into a sorc break his shield he bolts away (pinning me on floor) n there is his shield at 100% >,< worst part is... as NB i have excute but if sorc places on shield on "just one" it conters the exute which isnt really fair meaning it doesnt count as 25% health i just find that alittle silly. I started using shield breaker at one point n oh boy that works (thou you get massive insults) but im lossing my 5 peice bonus what id use against other classes so i dunno... shields could use tweak but i get what you mean.

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

People keep asking for this, and I always tell them the same thing:

"Be careful what you wish for!"

I predict that all you would accomplish is to create a master race of Imperial Stamina Sorcs that stack health and weapon damage and basically can't be killed. Imagine finally wiping a Sorcs shield, and then you still have 35K health to try to burn down before he recovers.... good luck with that.

Thats a pretty bang on point but i cant see stam or magic sorcs that high health (unless battle scaled or a tank) i dunno.. just have to see what happens in the future

nordickittyhawk wrote: »

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

DK and Temp shields scale of health, BUT they also have some awesome ON DEMAND heal: Breath of life and Igneous Shield + Dragon blood. NB doesn't have a big heal on demand, that's why they need cloak.

Sorc does has a big heal, but it need a pet which is:
A- You need a pet summoned. If some how the pet die before you need that big heal, its a waste.
B- It cost 2 quickslots (1 on each bar) just for something that can only be used 1 time, because re-summon it mid-fight is a stupid option, because...
C- If you want that big heal again, you need to re-summon the pet, which take 1.3 second and a tons of magicka. And 1.3s root in 1 spot is enough for someone to melt you down.

Sorc also have another heal: Dark Deal, which take like 1s delay and very suck.

So no, Sorc rely on their shields to defend.

PS: Some might say: Surge heal. Yes its a great heal, but it's base on luck, not an on demand heal. Even with 70% crit, I still sometime go thru 3-4s with no luck on crit and die waiting for surge proc.

Yeah i do agree with you n thanks for saying Nbs need cloak we dont exactly have anything else. I dont think NB or Sorcs need a nerf i think other classes need a buff thou templars have big heals so meh there fine in my book. Thou only reason i post this is cause i just find shields so silly (you prob can tell by type shield stacking im talking about) how i keep running into a sorc break his shield he bolts away (pinning me on floor) n there is his shield at 100% >,< worst part is... as NB i have excute but if sorc places on shield on "just one" it conters the exute which isnt really fair meaning it doesnt count as 25% health i just find that alittle silly. I started using shield breaker at one point n oh boy that works (thou you get massive insults) but im lossing my 5 peice bonus what id use against other classes so i dunno... shields could use tweak but i get what you mean.

Well I think it's the players that OP, not the class. There is a vid a couple days ago here show a Temp vs 3 other players, and he just stand there and out heal all their damage, even with cc now and then, and finally after a while, his enemies just give up. But it doesn't mean all Temp can do that, just like not all Overload light attack does 20k damage. The answer is we need a better campaign system so the poor casual players with average gears and CP don't have to face top-tier players with their min-max golden armour, NOT nerf and punish everyone.

Waffennacht wrote: »

What would a magicka sorc do if his shield was health based? Die.

The whole reason Sorcs (magical ones) even survive as is, is because of the shield. We have only one defensive buff, thats 7% mitigation.

We have no massive heal like the others. Like im so surprised when a temp or a DK heals, I go "whoa, if only I could heal that much in one go..." without a pet that is.

If that were to happen Id just roll a NB and pwn more.

Shame dks are so squishy right now they could stand up to us Nbs and Sorcs

Solariken wrote: »

No, they shouldn't scale off of *just* health, BUT magicka sorcs do need some balancing. It's crappy design that they can build for maximum survivability, maximum mobility, AND maximum damage output.

Maybe shields could scale off of a combination of maximum magicka and spell resist (and/or physical resist depending on which shield we are talking about). The overall shield strength should probably scale up a little less steeply than what they do currently.

Agreed

Everyone else should have a shield that is in line with HW in terms of size and duration.... not exactly the same size & duration, but closer than they are now while maintaining the characteristic differences.

I originally thought health scaling would be enough but the way shields negate crit damage and can be stacked or refreshed is the bigger problem. The long duration also helps since these are applied preemptively instead of reactively. Then you have to make these changes not completely kill other damage shields.

If the overflow damage bug was fixed then you could make shields critable, which is just one part of this issue. I still think this may be the most important change from a balance perspective though as it would make crit builds viable in PvP. Perhaps allowing shields to inherit the character's resistances and then adjusting the shield strength slightly to compensate would be enough.

Shield stacking is the other part and I think making shields a toggle may be the way to go here. If you have an active shield and you recast it then it simply cancels the current shield. If you want to reapply an active shield then you need to cast it once to cancel it and a second time to reapply it. Canceling an active shield incurs no cost but does require an animation. This will also mess with buff rotations enough to make it harmful if players are not paying attention. Of course this also means that the skill icon would need to have an active effect but this seems easy enough considering that ultimates have them already. I don't think every damage shield needs to work this way but certainly ones that only affect the caster should.

Anyway, I think these two changes would make shields more manageable without strictly nerfing them.

HW by itself is pretty balanced imo. I have 33k magicka and 77cp in bastion and my ward is 9.6k. This really isn't hard to pop for an average dps. Yeah it can be recast but so can reflective scales, BoL etc. The skill comes with preventing players from recasting defensive measures. Those with 100 cp in bastion and 40k magicka have about a 12k ward. This still isn't as large as harness stacked on hardened for the average player. The issue is shield stacking not hardened ward. What would making hardened ward scale of health actually achieve? How would it scale? I have 21k hp, how large should my ward be? There are skills that hit for about 8k base damage in pvp, I would like to be able to absorb at least one of those hits please.

Nah. As someone who doesn't play a Sorc and doesn't want to, I don't think the problem with Sorcs and shield stacking is a Hardened Ward issue. The problem is that we are ostensibly trading cooldowns for resource management and it's far too easy to spam class-defining skills over and over and over. The idea was to let players use whatever skills they wanted to for the situations they were in... but in practice players can spam anything. This is particularly notable for Sorcs because they have such excellent Magicka management. HW is fine. Spammability isn't. Reduce resource recovery across the board and it wouldn't be an issue.

I would say yes as long as hardened ward had a higher scaling value than the existing health-based shields. Such that, a sorc 20k health pool would yield the same size shield as 40k max magicka in the current patch.

Is this a ninja nerf sorc thread?

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

The tile says "sorc shields" but sorcs only have one shield. The other shields that sorcs use belong to every other magicka build too.

Pretty sure he is referring to Hardened Ward, and not just Hardened Ward + something. You're right every class can shield stack, though its hardly comparable to compare Sorc shield stacking with everyone else. My problem isn't really with Sorc shields directly, but with some underlying game systems that have been broken. I like my Sorc, and I certainly don't want it to be useless, but I do think ZoS needs to really reconsider the way mitigation works in this game. The real problem is that Magicka (and Stamina) scale DPS while health sits there limp and otherwise fairly useless. It was a huge mistake for them to get rid of Soft Caps conceptually (though they might have had to redesign them with the advent of CP) and it was a huge mistake for them to scale damage off of stamina and magicka. Those two changes really upended the way the game works, making a true tank only useful in very narrow confines in the game, while DPS will have the most utility in all situations. Sorcerers have been extremely powerful for a long time, and I don't really think basing their shields off of health like everyone else would be a bad thing. In fact I think it would be better for the truth Sorc tanks out there (if ZoS would just undo some of the errors of the last couple patches).

You misunderstood me; my point wasn't that every class can stack shields, I've never used that as an argument cos it's lame and I want shield stacking removed. My point was that the op is asking for "sorc shields" to scale off their health pool, but there are other classes that use harness and healing, and how would they feel about the wards they use (not stack) to be scaled off their health? How do the magblades feel about this?

Edit: I think the op was referring to all the wards sorcs use, because what would be the point in only making hardened scale off health and leaving harness and healing to continue scaling off magicka?

Edit 2: I don't believe the op understands the problem, they seem to think that health scaling wards might fix the shield stacking problem. Removing shield stacking would fix the shield stacking problem, not tampering with individual skills.