Does Spiked Armour need a Buff?

leepalmer95 · July 2016

Thinking on this and comparing it the every other classes armour buff's it's a bit underwhelming.

Dk's It gives the armour, very small amount of dmg returned (basically useless)
Then a very very small dot if someone is close to you when you cast it (useless)
Or a very small damage shield (also useless)
It increases healing by 12% while a draconic ability is activated, inhale, wings, dragon blood and talons also do this, so it's basically up 100% of the time anyway, so really spiked armour doesn't really keep this up.

Now onto other classes armour buffs...

Nb's, they get it from using there most spammed skills, fear, shade, cloak, Sa or concealed, it's up nearly 100% of the time and they don't even need to slot it. Basically free 5.2 armour without doing anything, i'd like this please.

Sorc, gives the armour buff, gives them an aoe dots that follows them and does decent dmg, a lot more than the spiked armour dot that you need to be next too, basically makes them anti nb.
It also proc's implosion/disintegration. One morph gives you minor expedition for it's duration and the other gives major expedition for 6s.

Templar, Gives the basic armour for 12 seconds and 8 seconds more after leaving it, enemies standing in the rune are snared for 30%, rune provides major mending.
One morph gives 240 magicka regen per second, equivalent to 480 magicka recovery in pvp.
Another gives 8% dmg reduction and 8% extra healing.

So spiked armour needs something special... nb's don't need to use a skill, sorc get aoe dots, mobility as well as a auto execute proc chance, templars get armour, magicka regen or dmg reduction and healing boost, major mending, snares. Spiked armour gives armour and basically useless secondary effects.

BruhItsOver9000 · July 2016

No.

leepalmer95 · July 2016

BruhItsOver9000 wrote: »

No.

Any reason why? Or you salty about something?

SublimeSparo · July 2016

Yes

Reapor · July 2016

Would it not be cool when activating instead of doing damage it does a small .5 second knockback?

SublimeSparo · July 2016

It should the minor armour buffs as well imo, then change reflective plate and stone giant to have different secondarys other than minor armour buffs.

Ampnode · July 2016

Dragon's Blood still hasn't been buffed, so it'd be useless in discussing any buffs that help magicka DK because they just won't happen.

But just for the hell of it, I think Minor Protection(8% damage reduction) would suffice for a minor buff.

Forestd16b14_ESO · July 2016

Still waiting for a stamina version of chocking talons ontop of this too along with a buff to dragons blood.

OrphanHelgen · July 2016

I use this buff for the major buffs and the healing recieved. It helps me alot in maelstrom arena and veteran sanctum.
This is the only one from dragonic power I use since Im stam DK.
The spike dmg in aoe is actually not that bad range, and eventhough the dmg is low, it procs valkyn skoria.
Yes, that morph with the dmg shield is useless.

Spliffo · July 2016

Reapor wrote: »

Would it not be cool when activating instead of doing damage it does a small .5 second knockback?

So make it so it gives enemies free CC immunity like jabs and sweeps used to?

phaneub17_ESO · July 2016

I think... brain hurting!! At least one of the Morphs needs to do either physical or poison damage, primarily Volatile Armor. As for Hardened Armor would be nice if the duration on the damage shield be increased to 6 seconds or change the return damage into reduced damage taken per attack by a flat number, preferably equal to the amount it would have reflected.

boggie · July 2016

I've mained a DK since shortly after launch, and I do not feel that spiked armor needs a buff. You can't just go comparing single skills between classes when looking at balance. You have to take the class as a whole. DK's overall are in a REALLY good place right now. We are the go-to class for tanking (as we've always been), currently top the charts for dps with our stamina setup (magicka isn't bad either)... really the only place we lag behind other classes is in healing, which is fine.

LinearParadox · July 2016

Possibly needs a buff, but if so, it'd have to be carefully tuned. Here's why.

It's supposed to help DKs when they're getting 'mobbed', usually in PvE, which it does a somewhat decent job of because PvE enemies hit (usually)lightly and often, therefore the effective % of damage returned to enemies is higher.
Biggest 'problem' with it that I can see is in PvP because damage is reduced by battle spirit so basically... like ~700 damage, immediately cut down to ~350, which is then AGAIN reduced by defences (CP, armor, etc) to likely a paultry 200 damage if you're lucky.

So to compare:
PvE; you get "flurried" by a Werewolf enemy, and let's say you don't get out of the way. He hits you 4 times for about 1.5 K damage each, (just to use nice round numbers) and each time, you 'return' about 700 damage so... about 6K damage taken, 2400 'returned', that's almost 50% of the damage you took, pretty good right? Now how about...
PvP; a Stam blade hits you with Teleport strike spam, 4 of them. Takes about the same time to hit as the PvE enemy, but each one hits for about 4-6K damage depending on your resistances, let's split the difference and say 5K each(which is NOT uncommon in Cyrodiil these days), for a total of 20K damage. Your hardened armor will 'return', according to the aforementioned reductions, 800 damage. 800 is roughly 4% of 20,000. FOUR PERCENT. So, while an enemy dealt nearly an entire average health bar in damage to you, you managed to return, through your 'character defining buff', barely 4% of that to your attacker, not even enough damage to equal a single tick of the bread&butter HoT, Vigor.
And let's not forget, that's ONLY melee, and ONLY physical attacks. That's pretty sad.

However, I suspect this will never be changed and here's why:
1. Wrobel has said numerous times that he, and the design team, are comfortable with certain skills being useful for PvP OR PvE and not both. This skill seems to signify that strongly.
2. DKs, at least Stam DKs, already have a wide assortment of tools to "overwhelm" their opponents, that's why they're so strong in PvP. They have a slew of powerful DoTs and damage to hammer their opponents with while still maintaining a high degree of sustain through numerous buffs, shields, and resource return. Can you imagine a top-geared Stam DK, that's built tanky-bruiser that's hammering away at you and when you go to attack him back, you deal even more damage to yourself? It'd be kind of overwhelming, and I say this as aStam DK player lol.

Believe me, I love the /idea/ of this skill, it's a great power fantasy, but in the spirit of game balance it has to be tuned carefully, and in all honesty I'd rather see it undertuned than overtuned because the former doesn't really make a difference while the latter would see DKs become nigh-unstoppable until fixed.
As it is, it's still a convenient way to get a respectable defense buff for a nice duration using your off-stat resource for most DKs.

Lucius_Aelius · July 2016

You know, I wasn't thinking that I agreed with the OP when I read the title, but after reading his post I can't help but think he's got a point. It's not some dire issue that needs to be addressed urgently, but compared to the other classes' similar abilities Spiked Armor is pretty lackluster. What with DK's lacking mobility, I wouldn't mind seeing a movement speed buff added to it like the Sorc's, one morph offering Minor Expedition for the duration and the other Major Expedition for 6 seconds, or something along those lines.

tennant94 · July 2016

Swap the nb's shadow barrier with dks spiked armor. Nbs should be squishy but they get free major defensive buffs. Tbh I don't think the nightblade class should even have access to major defensive buffs in there class skills, considering all the offensive buffs they have. They should have to use immovable.

jello · July 2016

Imho it should give way more armor with all the AP in this game, i mean im a tanky dps so i should be tanky. Dot is fine since it adds up with other, stronger dots in my build.

Jar_Ek · July 2016

I think bringing passives into it (excepting NBs) probably just confuses things because the passives that define classes are scattered across all skill lines, so sorcerer's Storm calling (for example) are generally their best offensive passives, that's not really true for DKs.

As for the specific abilities - I would broadly agree that spiked armour is marginally under performing, esp. against hard hitting single mobs - that is not where it shines. Personally I would modify it as follows:
Morph 1: Increases the damage returned by a significant amount (to a percentage of damage done in melee).
Morph 2: Each time you're hit you add to your damage shield (so lots of mobs do reduced damage).