Biro123 wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

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ezio45 wrote: »

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

Needs a buff.

Look at the blue champion point stars. I can increase damage against heavy armor users using:

Physical Weapon Experts 35% to light attacks

Master at Arms 25% to direct damage

Mighty 15% to all physical damage

Piercing between 16.7% if I have min penetration and they have max resistance

Precise Strikes 16.7% when I crit




So my light attack damage against heavy armor users can be buffed by 108.4%, and all my other direct damage attacks can be buffed by 91.7% with CP.


My bleed-dot damage can be buffed by 75% against them, since piercing does nothing and physical weapons expert do nothing for my bleeds. My non-bleed dots can get buffed by 91.7%






Against medium armor,


it's the same, except i'll get less out of PIercing, most likely by about 5%. So bleeds will do the same and everything else will be buffed by 5% less than against heavy armor.




Against light armor,



Precise strikes is useless, because you can't crit damage shields

Piercing is useless because resistance is already very low, and doesn't factor into penetration

light attacking is useless half the time because they are ranged, so physical weapons expert is only half as effective

Dots are purgable, so thaumaturge is useless



So i can only buff my direct damage by:


40% on regular abilities, plus 25% when they are using a damage shield, so 65% max

75% with light attacks, but I won't be able to hit nearly as many as I would against a melee build, so more like 57.5%. With a damage shield, we're looking at effectively 82.5%

Dots can only be increased by 40% and 25% against shielded opponents, so 65%



So this is to say that in order to just increase my damage against light armor users to a level that is still more than 20% weaker than it is against any other type of armor, I have to invest in champion point that does nothing to anyone who isn't wearing a damage shield, which is insanely unbalanced.



So no, friend, shield breaker doesn't require a nerf. It needs to twice as much damage, and the champion point star that increases damage against shielded opponents needs to be doubled to keep light armor in line with the other types of armor, or else, the end result is an unbalanceable game.


shieldbreaker is just a band aid for the fact that CP dramatically favors light armor in terms of scaling. Learn how to heal.

you already made a point as to WHY it needs a nerf, we already have low resistance, oblivion bypasses that too and lower health. I dont know what build your running but its not hard to kill a light armor shield stacker in cryo, stun attack repeat probably twice and your golden. your damage should be 20% weaker against shield because if the back there not up 24/7 if it runs out and your stunned your insta dead when that shield is up we have less health and less resistance than the other armor types.

i dont need to learn how to heal you just need to git guud and learn how to stun so you can quit relying on a cheap set to bypass already low resist low health target

again, that is simply not true. you guys build is "pure" damage and your only defence is shields, i have even seen sorcerer videos that were able to face tank zergs because of thier build and they have all 7 pieces divines and they were killing people in 2 hits, just massive damage and the whole time the only reason they survived was because of thier stacked shields.

That used to be possible aye, back when triple stack pet builds with pre nerf sustain and pre nerf desert rose, combined with treehugging and pirate skelly. Not possible nowadays.

sorcerers are still doing it.
thier entire build is just damage. nothing is placed into defence and then when they shield stack thier untouchable.
it is still happening today even.
the only thing that makes it a fair fight with them is shield breaker.
and by the way you guys keep ignoring what im saying about the set ingeneral.

IE:
shield breaker only works with light attacks on shields.
and it takes a long time to actually kill a shield stacker with light attacks, especially when they hide and run around objects and you cant aim at them, making them live a very long time.
during that time, they are attacking and out damaging you and the shield breaker wearer dies.


in addition to that, if you go to cryodiil right now and use shield breaker set on sorcs, they immediately aim Right For that guy and kill him within a few seconds.

if anything, shield breaker needs to be increased in damage.

Please learn something about the class before spouting this bs..Seriously you are basing your sorc knowledge from info that's 3 years out of date.
Do you have any idea how much max stam, stam sustain and mag sustain a sorc needs to build to be able to survive vs a zerg? Probably almost as much stam recov as you have in your stamblade.

When a sorc specs all into damage, they are left with under 10k stam and have no recov. That's one dodge and one break-free. Then they are stuck - unable to move, unable to re-shield. Yet with a full shield-stack from almost 60k magica - they still drop instantly to attacks from multiple opponents... vs single opponents, sorc damage has been so gutted that they only get outlasted, run dry, cant shield and are left with 17k health and no impen/resists.. that may then be a fair fight for you - but vs most other opponents, the sorc explodes.

Again, YOU ARE FOCUSING ON THE WRONG THING!!!

I mean, lets look at one of the better open-world sorc builds.... Shackle/Lich..... One is a sustain set. The other is part damage, part sustain.. It also uses well-fitted traits.. defensive traits.. That's 1.5 sustain sets out of 2..... Not exactly 'stacking all damage' is it?

Actually I don't know why I bother. You will ignore this like my last post. You will refuse to learn anything about the class, and therefore never actually learn how to fight one. Honestly it speaks volumes about your gameplay if you think using shieldbreaker only makes it a fair fight......

Give me a break. You are the one spouting the BS and everyone knows it. I play regularly and yes you still see Sorcs face tanking multiple players at a time while cutting them down one by one.

Oh and this idea that all you have to do is CC a Sorcs a few times until he runs out stam then CC/Burst Shield is laughable. Even assuming the Sorc is not running Dark Deal (unlikely) they can still resort to Immovable Pots or just normal CC break immunity. Good luck surviving Sorc CC and burst during that CC immunity window from any competent player. I've tried beating good sorcs with this method and it just doesn't work unless you get very lucky timed CC just as one more of the shields expire.

Bottom line is Sorcs have the best all round tool kit in the game that pretty much puts the game into EZ mode. Lets take a quick look:

Shield stacks-Can't be crit and lets player go total offense while shields are up (recast as needed provided not CCd)
Streak-Provides best mobility in the game, stuns anything in its path also doing AoE damage along the way & reveals invis
Dark Deal-No problem getting health/stamina back on demand
Crit Surge-Passive heals anytime you do crit damage and can occur once a second....LOL
Endless Fury-Passive execute (just sitting on you waiting for your health to drop ..and oh restores mana on killing blow)

I wont even go into Curse, Mines, Pets, Rune Prison.

The only way to be remotely competitive (1v1) against a skilled shield stacking sorc is with shield breaker and even then its a lengthy and risky engagement.

I figure either you are a really bad sorc that hasn't fully grasped the power of shield stacking or you want a return to the godlike unkillable mode of the past.

Ain't gonna happen....

Twohothardware wrote: »

No, not even close. When you're affected by Major Defile as a shield stacker your healing is irrelevant if you have large shields and keep them up unless the attacker has a means to deal damage past your shields which they don't unless they're wearing a set like Shield Breaker. Your survivability as a Sorc isn't based on your health left, it's based on whether your shields are up.

As a MagSorc with 3 shields you can survive your health dropping as low as 1% and reset the fight because your shields can absorb as much damage as someone full health in medium/heavy armor. Shields are also completely different from a Stamina heal like Vigor in the fact that you get the full benefit instantly and can repeatedly reapply a shield every time you take damage, with Vigor the healing is over time and when hit by Major Defile that healing over time is then also reduced by 40%+.

First of all, not all shield users are sorcs. I am pretty sure MagPlars are not too happy about major defile, even when they are using Harness Magicka.

Second, the major defile hits the sorc as well, while not as severely as for example the MagPlar it does show when your healing ward expires. And waiting for 6 seconds for a debuffed heal that returns 40% to 60% of your HP is not as appealing as it might sound to you. Especially when you are in execute range. In fact, when you are in execute range you will have a hard time preventing Healing Ward from being drained over the timespan of 6 seconds so that you may receive a heal in the end. And even if you manage to safe your Healing Ward over the entire duration then there is a pretty good chance that it might have taken a hit and now only returns a very small amount of health, potentially still keeping you in execute range!

Third, that story about sorcs permanently stacking 3 wards making them OP is getting old. Two of said wards are accessible by any class or build. And the third ward is subsituted by defensive tools such Breath of Life, Shimmering Shields, Cloak, ...
In addition, the Healing Ward only gets strong once your HP is low (closer to execute range). Sorcs use Healing Wards because they dont have access to another sufficient heal that gets them out of execute range in a timely manner. The pet is not really an option due to stupid AI and the loss of 2 slots.

Four, your vigor statement also relies on flawed reasoning. First of all, virgor is not the main defensive tool of these builds. They got block, cloak, dodge roll, etc. Vigor is only a secondary defensive tool, so it's not like the Major Defile is screwing stam builds over in a similar way as Shield Breaker is eradicating sorcs left, right, and center. Second, dodge roll is a relative mitigation tool, that is it reduced the damage received by a percentage (unlike heals or shields that reduce it by an absolute amount), this makes dodge roll so much more potent. If shields were so strong you would see stamblades spamming shields when running through a zerg - but you DO NOT. They rather spam dodge roll and cloak (also relative mitigation). In fact, you see the magicka builds and shield users dodging when going through zergs because dodge is so much more powerful.

So you can understand what I am talking about:
Imagine you got 25k HP and are being chased by a zerg of 20 each dealing 5k damage on you, which amounts to a total of 100k damage. You apply a shield which mitigates 12k damage, so you are effectively taking 100k damage against 12k shields and 25k HP, which means you are DEAD. And even if you stack 3 shields and get a grand total of 30k or 40k Damaging shields you are DEAD. And the fact that it takes you 3 seconds to apply all 3 shields means that by the time the 3rd shield is applied the first one or two are either already down or atleast have been heavily drained in their strength. So that 30k to 40k is not really realistic unless you applied the shields before the fight or after an extensive LOS run. But in the former case the Healing Ward will be weak and in the latter it will soon expire, heal you if you are low on HP, and be weak again afterwards.

If you dodge roll on the other hand, it takes only 1 global cooldown instead of 3 and you will mitigate all 100k damage. Granted there are some forms of damage that cannot be mitigated, but the great majority of hard hitting single target abilities can be. For the damage that gets through you got your secondary defensive mechanisms such as your vigor or leeching.

I could go on but this post is already getting too long.

Twohothardware wrote: »

Watch any of the big dueling tournaments and you'll see how it's always discussed the fact that Magicka builds have the advantage due to Major Defile.

And even more tournaments forbid the usage of Shield Breaker because it is so brokenly OP!

Twohothardware wrote: »

What being immune to Penetration does is it means any sets that Stamina character is wearing like Spriggans or if they have the Sharpened trait on their Weapon or if they have a bunch of points invested into CP for more Penetration, all those things are giving them 0 extra damage against someone with shields up. It's like having no 5th trait on your amor, no trait on your weapon, and 40+ CP unspent when facing someone with their shields up. That is a heck of a lot of damage reduction.

1) Are youseriously complaining that you are not dealing more damage on something that is already stripped of all it resitances?
That's like taking a kidney from somebody who already donated one instead of somebody who still has both! You want to punish those that already have no resistance?

2) My Shattering Blows CPs are also completely wasted on builds that do not utilize shields. Who is compensating me for that? You?

3) Against Light Armor builds my penetration is also mostly wasted simply because they do not have enough of it. And that's even true for sorcs! Hard to believe, I know.

4) Penetration aims at medium and heavy armor builds as they got a substantial damage reduction through their resistances. LA only got 1/3 of the resistances of MA and only 1/4 of HA. That's also the reason why they need strong defensive abilities btw.

Twohothardware wrote: »

The fact shields take full damage is irrelevant because the size of shields in the game have been scaled to account for being able to mitigate similar damage as someone wearing medium/heavy armor with high resistances. Bastion in the CP tree completely escaped all the nerfs last year that Stamina characters received to healing CP and gives a huge bonus to the size of shields.

Congratz, you win the price for missing the obvious! Bastion is hard countered by Shattering Blows. The benefits are the same. Now you will complain that you will have to sacrifice CPs just to deal with shield users. BUT, you also have to sacrifice CPs to deal with heavy and medium armor builds - i.e. you have to put points into either spell or physical penetration.

In fact, Stamina defensive tools are hugely favored by the CP system. There is a cost reduction to Dodge, Block, and Sprinting but no CP to counter that. Unlike for the magicka defensive tools aka: healing and shields. Healing gets countered by more potent debuffs. However, this CP and its benefits are only accessible by certain classes and builds that offer Major or Minor Defile. Shields on the other hand are the only defensive mechanism that got a hard counter in the CP system (Shattering Blows) and that is in addition accessible by any class or build with any and every damaging ability. And that is on top of the higher potentcy of staminas relative mitigation tools as opposed to magickas absolute mitigation tools (see above).

So yes. Obviously stamina builds are getting completely screwed by the CP system and magicka builds are just completely OP.

Oh and btw, just in case you now want to complain that the CPs do not buff the potency of Block, Dodge, Sprint (unlike they do for shields) but only reduce the costs: That's because they dont need to increase the potency because these tools are of a relativistic nature, they dont care how big the incoming damage is. 90% of X is 90% of X no matter how large X is!

Twohothardware wrote: »

Again, shields have been scaled in size to account for the fact they can't crit. If shields were able to crit and they were balanced according to that, THEN they removed the ability to crit you'd have a point. But that's not the case.

I agree with you on that one. But my statement was refering to the guy before complaining that shields are not critable and thus OP. I was simply explaining to him WHY shields are not critable. It's a simple design choice by ZOS that provides some diversity.

Galarthor wrote: »

The big difference is, that magicka sorcs basically only got one defensive mechanism: the shields. Most other classes and builds utilize a combination of defensive mechanisms. For ecample: dodge roll & cloak. Dodge Roll & heal. Heal & shield. Block & heal. etc. Thus the adverse effects of a set like shield breaker can be countered by the second defensive mechanism while refraining from using the tool that procs the set. The cost of doing so is not too high the opponents damage is also reduced due to the now worthless 5pc bonus.

Twohothardware wrote: »

You're joking right? Streak? Mines? Pets? The best CC in the game Rune Cage? No class in the game has the defensive capability of MagSorc outside of Nightblade Cloak and Cloak is a lot more easily countered.

By now I am no longer sure if you were truely reading what I was writing or are trying to purposefully misunderstand my statements. The text was refering to the fact that sorcs are unproportionally adversly affected by the Shield Breaker set due to its lack of secondary mitigation tools to reduce or outheal the damage dealt by the set. To this end, I was only comparing mitigation tools and healing, not CCs and such.

1) Streak: I acknowledged that sorc still got an escape in my previous post and pointed out that a set affecting stamblades in a similar way as Shield Breaker affects magicka sorcs should not include a penealty for Sprinting as sorcs also got access to an escape / gap opener and are not being punished by the Shield Breaker set for using it.

2) Mines: First, how are they reducing the damage i am taking from Shield Breaker? Second, most other builds also got access to roots or strong slows, so this is not sorc specific and thus does not warrant a reference for the purpose of this comparison.

3) Pets: True here we would have access to a reliable counter to Shield Breaker, but the fact that it takes up 2 slows and is stupid AF does not really make a viable option. The penalty is simply too high for simply countering a single set. If there is a single set that forces you to rework you entire build and incorporate some exotic and impractical skills just to survive said set then that set is OP.

4) CC: Because no other class got CC. DK CC even roots you after the stun. And the best CC in game is and always has been Fear!

5) Comparing cloak to shields (because the other tools are available to both classes) is somewhat difficult because they have different underlying principles. But again cloak has a far greater potential than shields do. Claok mitigates a lot of the incoming damage completely (relative mitigation). Shields only mitigate an absolute amount. Cloak allows you to disengage rather quickly as well. On the other hand, if you don't manage to escape before detection then the benefits of cloaking a severly diminished. Thus, cloak is somewhat more of gamble with potentially great payoff but also a higher risk, while shields are a more constant tool but with less potential.

Twohothardware wrote: »

I'm not gonna take the time to respond to the rest of your points right now but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying.

I am gonna bite back a sharpe comment here.

PS: Sorry for potential grammar and spelling errors or weird sounding sentences, but it's really later.