It depends on bar space, resource management and how much burst shielding you really need. Using Harness/Dampen Magicka and Hardened Ward will give you a massive shield for a few seconds but it will cost a fair amount of magicka to do it. The light armor shield is more expensive to cast. Personally, I like running Empowered Ward for the reduced cost, regen and duration. In PvE that's all I ever need. In PVP, I'll slot Harness Magicka for the extra burst shield.

Does it depend which ward you use first? Healing ward should be first in theory so that it heals you for the larger amount of the remaining shield correct?

Harness Majicka doesn't protect against bursty physical stam based attacks, which are the current meta. Hardened ward does.

Sorc slots are scarce so I go with one shield that protects against stam and majicka, plus lightning form and power surge for crit heals, and blessing of restoration on my resto bar for quick heals.

Shields are so short that rotating through stacks of them won't leave much time to do much else.

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Harness Majicka doesn't protect against bursty physical stam based attacks, which are the current meta. Hardened ward does.

That used to be true. Harness magic will now absorb any damage, not just magic based. They made that change relatively recently. It's still not as strong and costs more than hardened ward, but it'll protect against stamina based damage and will return magic if hit w/ magic based damage, so it's still useful in PvP.

OMG guyz...

First, in PvE, if you need a ward, take hardened ward or empowered ward, because it's a the biggest and the cheapest shield.

In PvP, only pet build with matriarch can use hardened ward alone.

All other build need Hardened ward, Harness/Dampen and Healing ward.

You can go with hardened + Healing ward, but it's not enough, procs will destroy your shield, then, this heavy armor guy will one or two shot you.

To choose between Harness and Dampen, you only need to know if you have enough magicka sustain when you duel any magicka build. If you have enough regen, go dampen, if you don't have, go harness.

oTheTownDrunk wrote: »

How much stronger of a shield is Dampen than Harness?

I believe it's something like 6% per piece of light armor

I can hold my own forrrrreeevvvveeeerrrrr with my wards and still dps. just hw for my shield when using my new fav setup- but first...

Pve, hardened ward all day. I make maelstrom leaderboards weekly and never use harness magicka or dampen magicka. Empowered ward is a bad idea because it is weaker, and the recovery is marginal compared to certain sets that synergize way better with hw. Actually hw is just better with anything. Slot barrier of you really want that recov, but again, other builds let you keep meteor and have tons of regen for infiniwarding with the best damage mit skill in the game (imp). It's cheap, u can animation cancel it, and it is strong as heck.

For sustained good Dps with regen do spider cultist rings and shoulder/head, the rest lich. Maelstrom fire and dw torugs to compensate for the lack of spell power from willpower. Enchant rings with sp, swords with spell power boost and squeeze in a whack before you do overload or go back to weaving when your rotation has you on dw bar. Now you can use (even spam with cancelling) hw all day for more defensive power, not worry about cost, and not need another ward since that much regen and the synergy between spider cultist and maelstrom staff make up for losing willpower and kena. Not to mention the power surge heals with woe and allow you to heal and dps with less frequent warding. (use boundless and liquid too for HoT). you can stay warded forever if u want, have tons of magicka AND MORE SLOTS FOR DPS SKILLS! U do pretty good dps with mad sustain. It ain't kena scathing Mage, but you will hit quite hard, but most importantly, sustaining your dps. In the end, this is usually more dps in a longer fight like in trials and stuff. Plus u don't wanna overload too much in trials, so having no regen and mad power, but having to ult to get 20% mana back equals less dps I feel. But this is derailed. Sorry.

Mathematically at MOST put 71 points into bastion, I run with 25 as do a lot of others since hw is just pretty tough as is.

Anyways end rant hmu if you wanna play and check out my build if you're on Xbox!