Heavy armor, wrath & constitution, and shields.

joshisanonymous · May 2016

So I've been playing around with a build heavily focused on health. My goal has been to sorta build around that stat, so I'm using things that either buff it or are buffed by it. This has led me to using heavy armor as well as Bone Shield. However, I'm thinking this might be counter-intuitive. Does getting hit while a shield is up count as a "hit" in terms of the heavy armor passive Constitution or as "damage" in terms of the passive Wrath? Basically, does using Bone Shield, which is one of the few skills in the game that gets any benefit from high health, effectively neutralize all the other bonuses that heavy armor provides?

EnOeZ · June 2016

DK here

I had this question too.
My guess and feel... no constitution, does not work with shields.
But inconsistency is TESO-Branded : Scales for example does not costs you stam when you block ranged projectiles, contrary to igneous, even if the shield is not broken.

But without addons (which gives resources gain ?) difficult to tell.

psychotic13 · June 2016

Also curious to this answer.

Vangy · June 2016

If I was at home Id test this for you. But from my testing yesterday, my tanky sustain build did veery well in duels. Havent tried it out in group play yet.

5x black rose all impen + 2 engin guardin all impen + 5 fasallas (With double SnB) impen + sharpened. (5/1/1 for weight) and triple block cost reduction enchants + defensive stance on both bars. Basically Dot the enemy and keep up reverbating bash and watch them try to hopelessly smash against your block for 1 minute+ and run out of resource cos of fasallas lolol. Group damage will be low but id reckon ill just swap to talons + caltrops and annoy the crap out of groups of people with fasallas and perma snares while team bursts enemy down.

Ill pay more attention to the buffs tonight and ill post back here unless someone else answers this.

joshisanonymous · June 2016

FYI, I got around to testing it myself since no one seemed to know offhand. It seems that both Wrath and Constitution work while Bone Shield is up. I have no idea if they work with other shields, but at least they work with the shield that makes the most sense to be using with heavy armor.

gamerguy757 · June 2016

Is heavy armor in PvP viable at all? I've been trying to build a heavy armor dk using the Glory Set stacked with Shuffle, but I'm not sure now if Heavy Armor is good with the passives buff.

Autolycus · June 2016

This is a really tricky question, but I believe I have your answers. Apologies in advance for the long-winded explanation:

Damage shields do not have a mitigation table. They don't have an "armor" or "spell" resist; rather, they are simply a flat value. That flat value is derived from a few variables, namely the primary stat that it scales from (i.e. max magicka for harness magicka, or health for bone shield). In a hypothetical scenario, imagine having a 10k shield active, and doing nothing else to attempt to mitigate the incoming damage. An enemy swings at for you for 5k, and no matter how much armor/spell resist you have, it's still a 5k hit to the shield, which is now effectively reduced to half.

Let's take that same example, but instead of using a 5k attack, we'll use a 15k attack. We know that this amount of damage exceeds the value of your shield by 5k, which will then be subject to your various mitigation values. Your armor/spell resist will reduce this 5k, as will blocking and any racial/class passives. Here is the key: blocking, armor/spell resist, and racial mitigation passives do not reduce the incoming attack before it hits your shield. It comes into play against the remaining value of the attack after the shield is used up.

One exception to this rule is the application of debuffs. In most cases, the debuff you will be concerned about here is Minor Maim (talons, low slash, shades). If your enemy is Maimed, the damage they deal is reduced. So in the first example above, that 5k attack becomes (.85 * 5k) = 4,250. It is for this reason that you will see some tanks apply Minor Maim to a target prior to group-wide mechanics, like the Mantikora's raid-wide, or the "starfall" ability used by the Warrior, etc. It helps to offset the damage being dealt to the entire group.

TLDR: For your question specifically, a "hit" against your shield is, for all intents and purposes, a "hit" against you. If you have a shield active, and an enemy deals damage to the shield, it will proc Constitution (assuming it's not on cooldown, I believe it's 4s off the top of my head). The same applies to Wrath. If your shield takes a hit, you "get credit" for it. It is noteworthy to mention that an attack that hits a pet of yours (sorc pets, engine guardian, etc.) does not count as a hit against you.

However, an example of something that is counter-intuitive to Wrath and Constitution is Major Evasion. Every attack you dodge is an attack that did not hit. Therefore, dodging an attack will not proc either of these passives. Don't let this deter you from using Major Evasion, though. It's one of those stats that is very important for tanking, but something we have to be consciously aware of. In some cases, it may be unwise to use it, but that decision is up to you and is mostly contingent upon your gear. Just keep in mind that even with Major Evasion, you have ~80% chance to be hit by an attack, which you will want/need to offset in some way, either through shields, mitigation, or a combination of the two.

Edit: Made a few minor spelling and grammar revisions. Also added a note about pets.

psychotic13 · June 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

This is a really tricky question, but I believe I have your answers. Apologies in advance for the long-winded explanation:

Damage shields do not have a mitigation table. They don't have an "armor" or "spell" resist; rather, they are simply a flat value. That flat value is derived from a few variables, namely the primary stat that it scales from (i.e. max magicka for harness magicka, or health for bone shield). In a hypothetical scenario, imagine having a 10k shield active, and doing nothing else to attempt to mitigate the incoming damage. An enemy swings at for you for 5k, and no matter how much armor/spell resist you have, it's still a 5k hit to the shield, which is now effectively reduced to half.

Let's take that same example, but instead of using a 5k attack, we'll use a 15k attack. We know that this amount of damage exceeds to value of your shield by 5k, which will then be subject to your various mitigation values. Your armor/spell resist will reduce this 5k, as will blocking and any racial/class passives. Here is the key: blocking, armor/spell resist, and racial mitigation passives do not reduce the incoming attack before it hits your shield. It comes into play against the remaining value of the attack after the shield is used up.

One exception to this rule is the application of debuffs. In most cases, the debuff you will be concerned about here is Minor Maim (talons, low slash, shades). If your enemy is Maimed, the damage they deal is reduced. So in the first example above, that 5k attack becomes (.85 * 5k) = 4,250. It is for this reason that you will see some tanks apply Minor Maim to a target prior to group-wide mechanics, like the Mantikora's raid-wide, or the "starfall" ability used by the Warrior, etc. It helps to offset the damage being dealt to the entire group.

TLDR: For your question specifically, a "hit" against your shield is, for all intents and purposes, a "hit" against you. If you have a shield active, and an enemy deals damage to the shield, it will proc Constitution (assuming it's not on cooldown, I believe it's 4s off the top of my head). The same applies to Wrath. If your shield takes a hit, you "get credit" for it, effectively boosting your damage and restoring a bit of resources.

However, an example of something that is counter-intuitive to Bone Shield is Major Evasion. Every attack you dodge is an attack that did not hit. Therefore, dodging an attack will not proc Wrath, nor will it proc Constitution. Don't let this deter you from using Major Evasion, though. It's one of those stats that is very important for tanking, but something we have to be consciously aware of. In some cases, it may be unwise to use it, but that decision is up to you and is mostly contingent upon your gear. Just keep in mind that even with Major Evasion, you have ~80% chance to be hit by an attack, which you will want/need to offset in some way, either through shields, mitigation, or a combination of the two.

Thanks for clearing that up, I was thinking of trying a heavy armor sorc for PvP, but wasn't sure if I'd reap the benefits of heavy armor while hardened ward/annulment was up.