OdinForge wrote: »

I haven't seen a magsorc using this set in god knows how long on PC NA, the last time I saw a magsorc with this set he was getting 1vX'd.

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

Maikon wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

Subversus wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

Did I miss something? Since when does pirate skelly cut the shield size down?

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

That depends on your build. It does, however, have the potential to perform far better than it should. It's also not easy to discuss things when people hold back their arguments. So, if you would enlighten us... chances are rather slim I hadn't thought of it before, I believe.

the 1pc resist is the best part of the set (provides 4-5% mitigation helping you shore up some defenses using LA/MA).
But major protection, that requries you to be hit to proc, doesn't give it's full mitigation after diminishing returns are accounted for (including battle spirit.) For example, minor protection, in CP with 18k resists, gives 4-5% instead of the 8% tooltip. I think major gives around 15% or lower (been some time since I tried it.)

And you are hit with defile and your shield strength is hit. Blood spawn/chudan gives you better stats.

Please. Chudan's bonus gives the same buffs as Lightning Form, and Bloodspawn still doesn't mitigate damage on your shields. The resist on 1pc can be nice, but is only relevant when someone doesn't penetrate all of your resistances in the first place. Obviously Major Protection is multiplicative with Battle Spirit, as everything should be.

Biro123 wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Pirate is not the best defensive undaunted set

/agree

Imho its bloodspawn - combined with panacea.. instead of possibly getting that major protection when you want it and losing healing - you get it when you cast it - and gain healing too!

That's one of several options. As said, this one doesn't work on shields. It also require using Light's Champion to be anywhere near as good as Pirate Skeleton on a magicka sorc, which in turn means dropping Overload. Not a chance.

Chudan gives you the same 1pc resist stats, health bonus, and the option to deslot any major resist buff spell.

Yes resists don't do much for your shields, but blood spawn gives you ulti gain and you will never have 100% uptime on your shields and gives stam recovery helping you to gain more stam for break-free to recast shields.

Pirate cuts your shields down, you take less healing, and it gives a major protection buff that is easily available through resto staff. Blood spawn+resto outperforms Pirate.

Edit:
and you are only looking at the 1pc resists against the context of debuffs, which isn't fair. If you did that, then nothing with armor resists bonuses would be attractive. You have to think along the lines of "the 2900 resists will help me reach closer to 10% mitigation AFTER debuffs" which is how the passives for vanila HA work. You need a certain level of resists and impen regardless of using shields or not; the minimum defenses needed without impacting offensive stats.

No, I'm not looking at resists in such a limited context. I'm looking at them in the context of playing a light armor magicka sorc using shields as her primary defense.

As for not having 100% uptime on my shields - that's the point! Pirate Skeleton works so well because it procs when shields go down, yet effects them even after I set them up again, which I absolutely have to do to defend myself. The defile on the other hand is irrelevant because I can easily heal to full health with Healing Ward once it goes through anyway.
And as fpr Chudan; I wouldn't use Boundless Storm if it didn't give me Major Expedition, and I wouldn't use a monster set just to get the resists back.

For resists, the most an enemy will go to get penetration, is around 15280. Some might go higher, with destro or mace, but they have to trade damage for that penetration. Even at 15280 debuff, with 21k resists you'll look at an 8% mitigation through your armor. In CP it's easier to get 20% DMG mitigation through thick skin/Ironclad. After those stars the other forms of mitigation get less effective.

As for major protection, if you have 15k resists, no Hardy/Ironclad, you are actually getting 12% total mitigation and sitting at 73%. If you add 20% Ironclad and 10% hardy, you are actually getting an 8% increase to your total mitigation sitting at 80% . But to get that major protection, you are reducing your shield strength + being forced to heal at certain times means pirate is actually terrible. It's better to run 1pc Dom and 1pc groth to boost your max mag which gives you both survivability+DMG.

Otherwise, adding bloodspawn will give you 6300 resists. If you are at 15000, that puts you at 21300 which in turn gives you 8% mitigation against an attack you will have reduced through your shield; shields with resists are arguably better. For example, in my example above, at 15k, 20% IC+major project+10% hardy with a 7k shield, you would be at 136% total dmg mit (assuming the attack hit for 10k). But then you favor in your shield value is coming in half and you are actually at 107% total.

But if you went with bloodspawn, you'd be a 12% reduction on total mitigation (124% with your 7k shield) but gained Stam Regen and ultimate but kept your shield value so your total mitigation is 24% higher.

Therefore blood spawn, without major protection, is better for defense using shields versus using pirate.

Different forms of mitigation are generally multiplicative. In my tests with CP, Major protection turns out at around 28.5%-28.9% mitigation. You'd have to stack quite a bit of resistances against zero penetration to get to that level. Furthermore, like I already explained above, resistances don't work on shields, but Major/Minor Protection does. Thus Major Protection makes my shields around 30% more powerful, whereas resistances do nothing for them.

Minno wrote: »

and based on the above, what ZOS should have done with the pirate nerf was not nerf the shield value on it. They should have nerfed the spell symetry to not work with shields (since no one uses this spell anyway.)

And then, kept the heal debuff and gave classes ways to ignore shields (stuns, templar eclipse buffs, dot dmg increases, etc.)

I literally have no idea what you're even trying to say now. Nerf Spell Symmetry because you think Pirate Skeleton is bad? Add more means to ignore shields, despite it being a Sorcerer's heal and defense both?

im trying to say, once your shield is cracked or out, you are screwed. And with pirate reducing your shield, Paul's dmg mitigation calculator states that this actually impacts your total mitigation versus running more resists for when your shield is depleted. With the upcoming changes to cc spells ignoring block, and UC doing its high burst through both dodge+block, it might be smart to look into resists or mix/match max mag bonuses over pirate. Maybe against yolo players that dont know when to CC a sorc, Pirate might be better, but based on the calculator pirate is 24% less using shields than expecting some resists to kick in after the shield is gone with using blood spawn.

And I am saying resists alone will not solve everything. I am saying resists, in conjunction with other forms of mitigation, will make you survive more. It's a philosophy of adding enough in one mitigation to then move onto the next; minimum mitigation your toon/build needs for pvp. For shields, I think i hinted that 15k resists are enough if you can get major protection without Pirate, with 2k mag/1k stam with 1pc dom/1pc groth.

Regarding my mention of the pirate changes, i only wanted to highlight that they added an extra nerf it originally had because lexy and a few others found a way to use shield with pirate and spell symetry to effectively ignore the regen nerfs they implemented while being super tanky. It didnt used to effect shield values, till other sorcs started saying to use spell symmetry with major protection to ignore that spell symetry's health tradeoffs while keeping the extra sustain. It was a change that impacting shields for all classes looking to use LA as their main armor.

I think I see what you're trying to say with that first paragraph now... however, if it is what I think, then I would like to say that this set already applies Minor Defile to not make it OP. Yet this penalty can be ignored by shield based builds. The health restored by a heal while Pirate Skeleton is in effect is lower, but worth more per HP restored than without the proc. You shouldn't be able to just ignore that penalty by using shields, imo.

Thanks for clarification on the last part though.

Maikon wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Pirate Skeleton
(1 items) Adds 2975 Physical Resistance and 2975 Spell Resistance

(2 items) When you take damage and lose health points, you have a 6% chance to transform into a skeleton and gain Major Protection and Minor Defile for 12 seconds, reducing your damage taken by 30% but reducing your healing received by 15%. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

This set was changed a while ago in order to address it's useage in combination with damage shields. Shield stacking is still around, and Pirate Skeleton was only made stronger for any competent user as it now procs when you need it, were before it might have been on cooldown.
I'm honestly pretty fed up with it, but why would I drop a 30% mitigation buff that procs when my shields are down? On no CP at least my sustain and defense are overall a bit lower, but it's going to get worse with CP again...
It also doesn't allow me to have a nice looking character because I need to use the skeleton polymorph just to not get bugged out and be unable to use any skills every once in a while.

I think, going with the theme of having a drawback of sorts for the protection this set offers, that if the major protection won't be removed or the uptime decreased, some sort of damage reduction for the user should help. Unfortunately, Minor Maim is both to powerful and too common in my opinion, either making the set near useless or not changing anything at all, depending on the situation. So, a smaller unique buff or one of the less common ones like Minor Evervation (Reduces Critical damage done by 12%) or Minor Uncertainty (Reduce Critical chance by 657) as these are only accessible via poisons at this point. One would have to spam shields to not take any health damage once the debuff is gone to retain one's damage potential, which no competent sorc would do. At least Minor Uncertainty would be a bit weak as a drawback, though.

Edit:
Actually, thinking further about this, a debuff that reduced damage shields cast on the user by 15% for the duration of the proc would probably be the best solution. Then it also doesn't effect other potential users twice, like magicka NBs. Don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.

Yes, let's call for a nerf because it doesn't make your character look "good".

That's not a reason for a balance change, that's part of the reason why I personally don't want to use the set. Feel free to discuss the actual arguments in this thread.

yea, don't quote me on that last part. I made a mistake and thought the change to spell symmetry was on Pirate.
Spell symmetry cuts down the shield value not pirate.

But regardless, there are benefits to running bloodspawn with resto ultimate; the two synergize very well and the stam recovery will help you break free/block further impacting your shields.

Beardimus wrote: »

Huh? The Nerf was enough, it's def not the best set to harden up any more. Nerf killed it for most.

The Sorc specific hate on here is getting dull, Sorcs are getting nerfed in many ways yet those that can't counter them still moan. I think the threads would still pop up if Sorc didn't exist as it seems such a sport for some. Damn