In most cases, you're better of going with Hardy. Every 1% in Hardy reduces the base damage by 1%. Every 1% in the spell shield star increases your spell resistance by 1% but the mitigation provided is less than 1%. Suppose you had 20k spell resistance, a 1% increase is 200 spell resistance. At v16 the mitigation provided by 200 spell resistance is approximately 0.3% (200/660).

CtrlAltDlt wrote: »

Hey guys, sorry if this has been posted, I didn't find anything concrete about it and I've only been playing for a few months.

My question is if I want more mitigate against damage of magicka based skills I should focus on Hardy (the tooltip says magic damage)? But i see that there is also a spell shield star, what is the relation between these two as far as mitigation goes? Which would I benefit more from ?

@CtrlAltDlt ,

If you would simply ignore the existence of the CP star Spell Shield, and just consider Elemental Defender & Hardy, whatever build you have, you hardly make a mistake !


Hardy Star reduces damage from Poison, Disease and Magic Damage. Max 25%
Elemental Defender Star reduces damage from Elemental Damage (Frost, Fire, Shock) Max 25%

Spell Shield reduces damages from all 6 kinds of Damage. So the effect of both other Stars combined. Max 16%.

Min-Max
Between Hardy & Elemental Defender: Depends on the occurence of both kinds of Damage.

Between Spell Shield and the other two Stars:

1. Depends on how much Spell Resist you already have: the higher, the earlier a couple of CP's in Spell Shield start to be effective. But as @Asayre states: for every 1% gain in Spell Shield, at 20k Spell Resist, you only gain 0.3% effectiver damage reduction.
2. Depends on how much elemental damage you get. If little elemental damage, Spell Shield does not add much benefit anymore compared to Hardy.

To optimise you should really calculate it precisely depending on how much Spell Resist you have already.

For almost all builds: only invest 3-5 in Spell Shield when you invest 50-100 in Hardy/Elemental Defender. (Damage Shield builds need zero Spell Shield).
So... in practice you only fill up Spell Shield, when you have nothing really usefull to do with your CP points, AFTER Hardy & Elemental Defender are already at 100 CP. And many other stars already above 50. At the given rate of CP points unlocked, that will be many years from now !!!

This all could very well change if ZOS rebalances all the CP star effects and values as announced.
Also ZOS will/should recognise how useless the current Spell Shield Star bonus is.

My own main character, a NB Siphoning Tank, with 5 HA Reinforced, S&B, with the Shield Expert passive from the Steed, with a Spell Resistance unbuffed of 25k......
min-maxed at high effective health pool, damage mitigation, self heal...
.... has only 3 CP's invested in Spell Shield.
I have currently 383 CP available.


EDIT:
BTW.... Minor and Major Resolve, buffs for 990 and 5280 increased Spell Resistance, do NOT benefit from the % increase of the CP star Spell Shield.
.....
If these buffs would benefit from the CP star Spell Shield, I would have put even 5-8 CP's in Spell Shield.