Does anyone use Empowered ward over Hardened ward?

psychotic13 · April 2016

As above really, I'm in the middle of respecing my skill points and wondered if anyone used the other morph? I thought empowered ward used to grant extra damage for pets, I guess I missed the change cause I never used it.

But is a 33% stronger shield that much better than reduce cost and 10% Magicka Regen? I mean it could help with a set bonus or enchant not having to use one for Regen if I can get it from an ability enabling me to have more spell damage through the spair set piece or enchantment?

and in PvP doesn't the shield strength bonus get halved too?

Waffennacht · April 2016

The shield in all its glory gets halved.

But unless you compare to healthplar and it's ward, (maybe dampen?) There is no ward that gets as big as hardened.

10% regen isn't worth the 30% boost, that boost is usually what other builds get for a ward alone lol.

It could be cool in a tanky build mayhaps.

Vaoh · May 2016

All Magicka Sorcerer builds use Hardened Ward and will continue to do so.

Empowered Ward could only possibly be used by strange Pet builds.

lassitershawn · May 2016

When I heal trials on my sorcerer (which I pretty much very rarely almost never do) I use it because it gives 10% magicka recovery to the raid. Also if you use it in Mournhold it is really funny to see the air around everyone's feet turn purple/blue. Hardened Ward is a LOT better.

Perhaps if they added another buff to it (like giving everyone minor berserk for example), it could be potentially very powerful for sorcerer healing. In a trial for example one healer could provide the whole raid with 100% uptime minor berserk (and the regen bonus) with one button press instead of a healer having to fire off combat prayer very often and sometimes multiple times in a row to hit everyone. Would free up a slot to put a different skill in, and save your co-healer another slot as well since they wouldn't need combat prayer.

phaneub17_ESO · May 2016

I use the Empowered Ward on my healing/DPS hybrid Sorc, with pets. I like the extra recovery, I can always recast the shield anyway when it gets low, I don't run out of magicka with my build anyway. Since I'm purely PvE casual no vet dungeons, trials, or that arena thing; there's no point in having the stronger Ward, I never take enough damage to warrant having to use it over the extra recovery.

psychotic13 · May 2016

I gave it a whirl to test it, but yeah wouldn't use it again although the recovery is nice it's considerably weaker than I thought it would be, I'd only think about using it on a sorc healer to offer some support.

Waffennacht · May 2016

At best it provides 170ish regen, the same as a glyph, why give up approx 7k (pve) or 3.5k more ward for a glyph?

Erraln · May 2016

Waffennacht wrote: »

At best it provides 170ish regen, the same as a glyph, why give up approx 7k (pve) or 3.5k more ward for a glyph?

Because you're saving your entire team that choice, not just yourself. Hardened vs Empowered is a Solo vs Group decision.