Major Issue with Current Universal Shields

susmitds · April 2016

In the Thieves Guild patch, we saw a good deal of balancing, which also covers class specific mechanics like cloaking and also possible counters to it.

In the Dark Brotherhood patch, we are seeing some similar changes with the shielding system.

The changes can be summarised as all shields having a duration of 6 seconds and Annulment and Bone Shield becoming Magicka and Stamina based shields.

From the PvE point of view, this is an welcomed change(mostly).

But from a PvP perspective, this move is somewhat flawed.

Firstly, majority of PvPers are now going to use shields. That will cause critical hits to become somewhat useless. That also makes the Resistant champion star and the impenetrable armor trait less useful. Now, this will also encourage ganking indirectly.

But, the main concern is how the new changes affect overall defence of all classes.

1) Magicka Builds - The magicka builds are getting a new shield which can stacked with their class based shields if they have one.
However, to Magicka Sorcerers, this is a huge buff as far as PvP is considered. As some people may find hard to realize, let me elaborate.
Consider a duel between a magicka sorcerer any other damage oriented character. In the current system, it takes a good player around 3-4 seconds to go through a sorcerer's shield. But with the new patch, the sorcerers will be able to stack shields to a much higher value. As such, it would now take a character with high damage around 5-6 seconds to go through the shield. However, most sorcerers will recast their shields by that time, as most shield stackers already do right now. As such, this change is going to increase the up time of shield-stacking rather than decreasing it.

2) Stamina Builds - Stamina Builds are also greatly buffed by this change and are becoming very hard to hit. Let's also consider this case too by a duel scenario.
A random player is facing a stamina based character in a duel in the Dark Brotherhood patch. The stamina character is buffed with shuffle and shield. The player attacks the stamina character, who dodges the hit. The player again attacks the stamina character and this hit misses due to major evasion. The third attacks hits the target but is absorbed by the shield. The next hit is absorbed as well. The shield ends and the player finally gets to damage the stamina character. The stamina character recasts shield and heals/pops a potion practically resetting the fight. The stamina character could easily dodge more attacks, if he wished or use class skills like cloak, to bolster their defences even further.

This changes will make fights very long and will potentially cause stalemates.
That will cause small scale battles much more tedious and thereby promoting zerging.

The previous issue of shield stacking, will now be combined with the other defence mechanics and this is accessible by all classes in-game. The other classes too will use the new scaled shields and combine them with their class based defences. Such an easily accessible defense should also have an easily accessible counter. The only counter currently is to use the shield breaker but pigeon holing players to use only a certain set of gear to counter a popular defence mechanic is not good for the game.

However all issues can be solved without affecting anything else.

It just need critical hits to work against shields as well. Then the shields will go down faster by around 30%. That will solve all of these issues and won't affect PvE in anyway.

Plus unless shields are crittable, there is no point in using the new "decrease spell/weapon critical" poison as you can just pop a shield and avoid it altogether.

Maybe to adjust to being crittable, the shields' strength should be improved slightly. That would help all builds out there.

As it is shields are abused a lot and should be used as a few moment's reprieve rather than to hide behind them and also maintain offensive efficiency. This change is quite necessary to check that.

@ZOS_GinaBruno , @Wrobel , @ZOS_RichLambert

Drazorious · April 2016

/signed

Strider_Roshin · April 2016

The changes/additions to shields was a good thing. However in PvP they're too powerful, and they desperately need to be crit-able.

CyrusArya · April 2016

Its all gonna come down to effectively how often you can afford to recast the shields. The 6 second limit is a pretty big game changer and I guess we'll have to see how it plays out.

susmitds · April 2016

Unless shield criting is not introduced, we are gonna see a hell lot of shield abuse breaKing the patch when it goes live.

Solariken · April 2016

I agree, OP. There was a great forum post recently wherein the OP offered a great suggestion - allow crits versus shields but also buff shields with a fixed amount of impenetrable stat to control the damage they receive. This would help crit builds and stop screwing over certain skill/item procs.

Also, I have suggested that there needs to be bonus damage versus targets with a damage shields baked into some passive abilities. I believe the Templar Piercing Spear passive, for example, should add +5/10% damage versus targets with a damage shield.

Anti_Virus · April 2016

Shields Shouldn't be Stackable either.

SanTii.92 · April 2016

Let everyone stack their shields, I'll just crush you with my shield breaker

Dovahmiim · April 2016

Essentially what you're saying OP is that because stamina builds have had their defenses unnecessarily buffed, and sorcs have the potential to stack more shields, all classes should have to suffer by having shields be crittable?

This approach is too simplistic, as the reality remains that shields add an interesting dynamic. They do not take in to account your armour/SR values, and their strength is always the same, you cannot crit cast a shield. With your changes, what would be the difference between heals and damage shields? Well, damage shields would be meh by comparison given they have no armour/SR, and cannot crit to increase their strength.

Your change would also hurt magicka builds that rely on healing ward to survive. I think skills need to be focused on an individual level. For instance I think bone shield should not have been changed, stamina characters will be too powerful if they too can utilise damage shields, seeing as by comparison, magicka characters cannot dodge roll frequently, and typically will not have any passive dodge chance ability (unless they are a MagBlade). The only concern with annulment changes is that now sorcs will be able to stack shields against stam players too a stupid level, it was already hard enough for any stam character to kill even a bad sorc.

I think that instead of shields being crittable, they shouldn't be stackable. For all those saying that this would cripple sorc etc. L2P, I comfortably duel in PvP on my Templar using only Healing Ward as my defense. If sorcs were going to have any weaknesses, it should be recovery from burst if they let their shields drop.

susmitds · April 2016

I am not saying anything from just my perspective. It is just that now that an already broken mechanic is going to be used by almost the entire Cyrodiil population and that is no way healthy for the game.

Powerpeach · April 2016

My thoughts exactly when reading the patch notes / signed

Greenwood1900 · April 2016

Just remove shield stacking. They created a whole system to prevent players from stacking different buffs to the same stat, so I don't know why this can't get the same treatment.

Here is my idea on how could be implemented:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/240150/some-ideas-for-pvp#latest

And for the stamina shield we will have to see what happen with it once that it hits live, but I don't see a big problem here. It is just one shield. Magicka players have tons of shield to choose from, or they can just use them all one on top of the another.

If Shuffle + shield becomes a problem, then just make shields not affected by dodge chance, so you always get hit if you have a shield up.

susmitds · April 2016

Greenwood1900 wrote: »

Just remove shield stacking. They created a whole system to prevent players from stacking different buffs to the same stat, so I don't know why this can't get the same treatment.

Here is my idea on how could be implemented:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/240150/some-ideas-for-pvp#latest

And for the stamina shield we will have to see what happen with it once that it hits live, but I don't see a big problem with it. It is just one shield. Magicka players have tons of shield to choose from, or they can just use them all one on top of the another.

If Shuffle + shield becomes a problem, then just make shields not affected by dodge chance, so you always get hit if you have a shield up.

Now with how everything about shields is being tackled, I have come to believe that it might not be possible for the devs to remove shieldstacking without a good deal of techincal issues.

olsborg · April 2016

Agree with the OP. Shields should be crittable, but as someone else mentioned in some other thread, shields could give a bigger boost to the critical resist trait. Say 500-1000 crit resist score.

Greenwood1900 · April 2016

susmitds wrote: »

Now with how everything about shields is being tackled, I have come to believe that it might not be possible for the devs to remove shieldstacking without a good deal of techincal issues.

I believe the same honestly. If was just an idea, if it is resource heavy, then try something else. Do some brainstorming and found a better idea. I don't say this to you, but to devs.

Now the time reduction is not a bad idea to prevent shield stacking, but they fell that they had to compensate for that change, so they make the Annulment thing. Now Magicka players can stack shield to a ridiculous level and heal themself or cast whatever they like, or just run.

stevepdodson_ESO888 · April 2016

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

susmitds · April 2016

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Digiman · April 2016

Hit the nail on the head, the fact is that shields problem wasn't their duration or strength but the fact they gimped another player's damage because of it.

I think this new patch will ultimately ruin an ability that was only made to because wrobel decided to cripple LA and make it defend like wet tissues instead of addressing the core problem.

LA needs to provide better defense or better damage. Before shields can be fully addressed.

If they were critable then they wouldn't gimp players and become an exception to the rule, if they went down fast the strength would be addressed.

susmitds · April 2016

Digiman wrote: »

Hit the nail on the head, the fact is that shields problem wasn't their duration or strength but the fact they gimped another player's damage because of it.

I think this new patch will ultimately ruin an ability that was only made to because wrobel decided to cripple LA and make it defend like wet tissues instead of addressing the core problem.

LA needs to provide better defense or better damage. Before shields can be fully addressed.

If they were critable then they wouldn't gimp players and become an exception to the rule, if they went down fast the strength would be addressed.

Which is why I think shields need to given a certain resistance to crit or a higher value but should be crittable.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO · April 2016

susmitds wrote: »

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Sorcs need a reliant self heal then, as atm shields are the only thing keeping sorcs alive, without them they're dead. And no, a 10k hp twilight and surge is NOT reliable at all.

susmitds · April 2016

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Sorcs need a reliant self heal then, as atm shields are the only thing keeping sorcs alive, without them they're dead. And no, a 10k hp twilight and surge is NOT reliable at all.

Well, they can use restro. And twilight matriach is pretty good in PvP as the player/players mostly focus on the sorcerer themselves rather than on the pets. And crit wont affect PvE.

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO · April 2016

susmitds wrote: »

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Sorcs need a reliant self heal then, as atm shields are the only thing keeping sorcs alive, without them they're dead. And no, a 10k hp twilight and surge is NOT reliable at all.

Well, they can use restro. And twilight matriach is pretty good in PvP as the player/players mostly focus on the sorcerer themselves rather than on the pets. And crit wont affect PvE.

So much for build diversity then, right? Every sorc and their mother runs destro/resto and the same cookie cutter setup as nothing else is remotely viable, lol.

susmitds · April 2016

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

cosmic_niklas_93b16_ESO wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Sorcs need a reliant self heal then, as atm shields are the only thing keeping sorcs alive, without them they're dead. And no, a 10k hp twilight and surge is NOT reliable at all.

Well, they can use restro. And twilight matriach is pretty good in PvP as the player/players mostly focus on the sorcerer themselves rather than on the pets. And crit wont affect PvE.

So much for build diversity then, right? Every sorc and their mother runs destro/resto and the same cookie cutter setup as nothing else is remotely viable, lol.

I did mention to make shields stronger.

Plus doesn't all sorcs already do the same thing with shield stacking? Where's the build diversity in that?

contact.opiumb16_ESO · April 2016

susmitds wrote: »

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Major/minor shields was one of old solutions i pushed on forum. It can be done easily. Just give to any shield one buff (major or minor) and a side effect, more or less strong depending on the buff size. By default, all the shields can give Minor Shield buff, one morph gives Major Shield and remain the same side effect, the other keep the minor shield but gives a stronger side effect.

You can stack 2 buffs, one major and one minor, alongside with a small side effect and a bigger one. Balancing shield should be way easier like this.

susmitds · April 2016

contact.opiumb16_ESO wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

have shields that offer something like Major Shield and Minor Shield...that means it is only effective to have at most 2 shields up that offer a different level of protection

an alternative is to make all shields scale off health...so the glass canon build will have a weaker shield than the more tanky higher health build

Having all shields scale with health is very logical. After all tanks should have more defense than glass cannons.

Making the minor and major shield is pretty agreeable too but that might require a lot of effort to implement right now.

Major/minor shields was one of old solutions i pushed on forum. It can be done easily. Just give to any shield one buff (major or minor) and a side effect, more or less strong depending on the buff size. By default, all the shields can give Minor Shield buff, one morph gives Major Shield and remain the same side effect, the other keep the minor shield but gives a stronger side effect.

You can stack 2 buffs, one major and one minor, alongside with a small side effect and a bigger one. Balancing shield should be way easier like this.

That would be a perfect way to tackle this. The major shield should be available to everyone. Sorcs should get a minor version to stack along the major one.

mr_wazzabi · April 2016

The major minor solution would work best.

Major shields: hardened ward, harness magicka, bone shield

Minor shields: healing ward, igneus shield, radiant ward

If the current state of shields in pts goes live, I'm gonna get lots of hatemail for abusing shield breaker, not because I want to, but because I have to...

dagonbeer · April 2016

I agree, dividing them into major/minor wards would work best.

Another proposal:

Major wards: Hardened, Igneous (lasts 20s), Sun (5/6s, so that it gets to blow up)
Minor wards: Bone, Annulment, Healing (lasts 5s)

Major wards are always consumed prior to minor wards. This would discourage shield stacking, since the the shorter lasting ward always sits behind the longer lasting ward. It'll make more sense just to refresh the major one instead.

Khenzy · April 2016

You are jumping to conclussions, clearly without proper testing. You're not even taking the whole picture into account.
All skills have had their costs increased. The inclusion of several poison effects that drain your enemy's resources. The reduction of shield durations only encourages the player to spam them more and thus taking a great hit on resource management. It all adds up, you wont be there spamming healing skills plus shields all day long, you're going to run out of resources much sooner than on live, all of that while doing 0 dps to your attacker.

Also, with shields now lasting 6s, you're more susceptible to CCs than ever before. Sorcerer casts Hardened Ward+Harness Magicka, wild Nightblade apperas out of nowhere and proceeds to fear the sorcerer when his/her shields have 3 to 2 seconds left, shields run out in middle of the CC, wild Nightblade performs burst combo on squishy no shield sorcerer. Sorcerer lies dead on the ground.

Kas · April 2016

"consider a duel" is where it's flawed. if you're not constantly under pressure in a duel, you've won anyway. in open world pvp, you're without pressure quite often. previously, you could keep shields up. now you shouldn't beause you wont be dealing much more damage than while under pressure. thus, you're an easy target.

Sorcs became MUCH harder to play in open-world pvp (also small scale), just not in duels. To be efficient you now have to anticipate damage and shield before you''re hit but not jsut to keep shields up. This is very difficult in crowded situations. If you can do this, sorcs are stronger than ever. If you can't they're much weaker. Ofc, in duels you just always anticipate damage and thus sorcs are not nerfed for that.

otherwise, i ensure you, that the number of sorcs in cyrodiil will shrink, not grow

StopDropAndBear · April 2016

I posted this in the wrong thread! Too many tabs!

Essiaga · May 2016

There are 2 issue with shields that must be address and I believe they just made them worse.

1. Sheilds based on stats that boost DPS and shields ... This is terrible concept. Shield should be based on health, since shields are an extention of health.

* Shields should be larger for magicka users since they lack Stamina to block, dodge, break-free, etc. Shields become the magicka equivalent.

Hardened Ward is the only class shield worth a crap in PVP and it is the reason why the other 2 stink. It's based on magicka and is larger on a DPS character in PVE then it is on a Tank. There's simply no excuse for this to STILL be an issue. With the removal of caps should have come the re-balancing of shields. The addition of CP makes it worse. The best shields on live PVP are all based on magicka (Healing Ward, Harness, and Hardened Ward) and just about every magicka build utilizes them. Homogenization courtesy of ZOS.

They just made it worse by changing Bone shield to be a Stamina based shields. If you don't run a race that boost stam I'm sure you'll be begging for a race change or considering re-rolling now. With Vigor, Bone Shield, the ability to block and dodge roll, etc stam builds are going to be super hard to kill. So now Shields will be the new meta for both magicka AND stamina users ... Homogenization courtesy of ZOS.

Now basing shields on health doesn't mean that's all they need to be based on the same amount of health, or only on health, or that they need to all be equal in size. Hardened Ward SHOULD be larger then the other 2 class shields. If shields are based on 25% health + XX% of magicka then Ward could receive a larger bonus from magicka then other shields, but with the understanding that Sorc's can boost their max Magicka higher then the other class w/ 8% magicka from bound and now 8% health for a slotting a pet.

Making shields able to be crit-ed only makes health based shields that much MORE useless. Shields can not be made crit-able until they are actually balanced. I predict ZOS will make shield crit-able before changing scaling though.

2. Shield stacking is an issue when done with Magicka based shields currently because of the size of 2 or more magicka shields stacked.There haven't been many complaints of Igneous/Sun Shield stacking with Bone Shield, or even with 1 magicka shield. Its when stacking multiple magicka shields due to their size. Re-balancing shields to make Igneous/Sun more viable will create an issue with them shield stacking.

Battle Spirit could make it so that Class Shields won't stack with any shields. Harness and Bone on Live providing non-stacking shields, they complement each other so it doesn't matter if they stack. Bone secondary effect is that it can be shared. It's in the Undaunted line ... PVE dungeon line. It's a party skill and should remain that way. Undaunted seemed to be skills to benefit support roll in PVE. I don't know if ZOS actually has/had a vision there. It doesn't seem like it.

They could include Healing Ward in not stacking, or they can balance Healing Ward differently. I believe class based skills should be more for the caster and Resto-Staff should be more a party tool. If BOL was a self heal only (instead of heal party heal that doesn't guarantee a heal to the cast at all) no one would complain about LOS or how many targets it heals.

Healing needs addressed as well since its scales off the same stats the increase DPS. ZOS is obviously aware of this or there wouldn't be a nerf to healing in Battle Spirit. Had ZOS changed the way shield and heals scaled this when removing caps, introducing CP, etc they Templar might actually resemble the Templar I choose to play when the game lost. Templar has lost defensive ever single balance update, including DB with redesigning of Cleansing Ritual one of the few Templar skills viable to help stam based characters defend. The class identity is less important then poisons or putting in the work correct what they clearly know and acknowledge as broken ... Battle Spirit.

* Class shields should be bigger/ better then non-class shields. Kind of like fish should be better swimmers then birds but birds should fly better then fish. It's part of their identity. It avoids homogenization. If every body can do it then it makes it NOT special. Class skills are what should separate characters. In the case of stam builds you see very little diversity. 2-handed weapons w/ Rally and Vigor are the core of the stamina build, regardless of class. With magicka builds its the resto staff w/ Healing Ward and Harness. Heals and shields ... So everyone wants to be a Templar, while still receiving the benefits of the other classes, but a Templar can't even use their own shields in PVP and Stam build have no viable stam heals in-class, while Vigor is arguably the best heal in the game due to the way it scales and can pre-cast, etc.

ZOS likes to say they don't want homogenization but they push for it constantly. Look at Proxi-det. They create a set to make it the meta, then nerf it. How about not creating sets that clearly are going to be abused? They don't want us to abuse dodge roll and then give us sets and triats to reward and help us by doing just that. It's hard to see any vision in what ZOS does. It looks more like tinkering or experimenting to get around mistakes they don't want to address.