Cloak and Shield Stacking need punishing mechanics

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

This is an MMO that is resource dependent rather than one that's based on cooldowns. Because of this, certain defense mechanics that would have a reasonable cooldown in a different game can be spammed endlessly in this one. Over time ZOS has either put in mechanisms that would punish spamming or have a soft counter, and in the case of blocking, and dodge rolling especially there's both!

So just for clarification I'm going to cover what mechanisms are in the game for certain defense mechanics:

Healing: Defiles reduce the amount of healing received. Without defiles certain builds could live forever.

Health Regen: Defiles reduce the efficiency of health regen just like healing.

Blocking: Spamming block will prevent your stamina from regeneration, there are also certain abilities that ignore block entirely.

Dodge rolling: Spamming dodge roll will increase its cost if dodge roll is used withing 5 seconds. There are also a VERY extensive list of abilities that completely ignore dodge rolling entirely.

Damage shields: There's oblivion damage. That's it. Oblivion damage also ignores dodge rolling and blocking; making this damage type not unique against shields unless we're talking about the nonsensical shield breaker set.

Cloak: As been pointed many, many times this ability exists in two forms: Incredibly OP or Completely useless.

Damage Shields, and Cloak really need to have some mechanic that either discourages spamming (like what has bee put in place with dodge rolling, blocking, and Streak) or reduce its efficiency (such as defile with health regen or healing).

In the case of Cloak I would suggest turning off magicka recovery while invisible.

In the case of Damage Shields I would suggest an increased cost if the same shield is used again within 5 seconds OR make it so that no 2 damage shields can stack.

As a disclaimer I know there's a lot of you that are eager to spew hate at me, but I ask that you'll be respectful with your responses.

Ankael07 · July 2018

Honestly if you cant take down a single shield spammer (not stacker) theres something fundementally wrong with your understanding of PVP

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

Ankael07 wrote: »

Honestly if you cant take down a single shield spammer (not stacker) theres something fundementally wrong with your understanding of PVP

In the suggestion part I mentioned that making it so that shields can't stack would be acceptable. Meaning, I'm only suggesting punishment for spamming or a reduction in efficiency because they can stack. If shields were to override one another then nothing would be needed to damage shields. In my opinion they would be balanced in that state.

jaws343 · July 2018

Let's also put a penalty on shuffle. And wearing heavy armor.

There is a reason shield mechanics are where they are. Light armor wearers have zero defense without them. Shield goes down, they die. Shield stacking is not a problem. The shields being stacked are on the back bar. Most sorcs run zero offense on their back bar. If a sorc is shield stacking they are not doing anything else. Plus, buy the time a sorc gets through all the actions and cooldowns to stack 3 shields they immediately have to go back through those action to restack. And that is without pressure. If they are being pressured, their shields are falling off faster than they can refresh them.

And if they are spamming a shield over and over to stay alive, that is all they are doing. And as soon as they run out of magicka or stamina thay are dead.

And shields take all damage unmitigated. So no amount of CP or resistance is going to stop them from being melted by a good player or multiple bad players.

You had to end your post asking for people to be nice. And the reason is people are getting sick of players failing to understand how this stuff actually works. Instead of learning, they immediately come to the forums to complain about the flavor of the month. Or propose ridiculous solutions thay clearly favor the build they are running.

Drdeath20 · July 2018

Cloak needs to retooled. Find a middle ground.

Prabooo · July 2018

basically everyones wants to win... A few want to play, and learn along the way...

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

Drdeath20 wrote: »

Cloak needs to retooled. Find a middle ground.

Agreed, and there have been discussions on how that have been done in other threads.

Marabornwingrion · July 2018

Cloak already have punishment - it's called Sload

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

Astrid_V wrote: »

Cloak already have punishment - it's called Sload

Yeah but that's a whole other issue. If ZOS makes a set specifically to deal with something that's over-performing then they're shifting the issue rather than addressing it. I'm looking at you Shield Breaker!

Koolio · July 2018

https://youtu.be/e31OSVZF77w

I’m on the fence about a lot of this. But this is food for thought on these matters

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

Koolio wrote: »

https://youtu.be/e31OSVZF77w

I’m on the fence about a lot of this. But this is food for thought on these matters

I'll check it out in a bit.

Gilvoth · July 2018

Daus wrote: »

This is a... cut for space

those are Your opinions and i disagree with them, especially about cloak.
there is nothing wrong with cloak, leave it alone and leave us nightblades alone.
you want things ruined and the game rebuilt.
the rest of us Do Not share that desire, and many people are not even here on this forum to share thier opinions.
this forum is not ALL of the eso population.
this forum is a small group of people that do not like things but they do not represent the entire eso population.

if you want everything changed and you dont like the way it is here in eso then please go to a game that does have what you want instead of trying to ruin it for the rest of us.

Koolio · July 2018

Daus wrote: »

Koolio wrote: »

https://youtu.be/e31OSVZF77w

I’m on the fence about a lot of this. But this is food for thought on these matters

I'll check it out in a bit.

Also as a MNB main of mostly the ganking variety I can tell you that %90 of all nightblades are very predictable. It does take a lot of experience as a nightblade to notice this but I prevent nightblades from using stealth altogether with magelight all the time. This is to showcase this predictability.

I saw him walk out the keep them stealth. I dont think he is a nightblade but they all are similar

https://youtu.be/1m7n0EoWQ7o

_Ahala_ · July 2018

Cost increase on single shield spam would murder light armor magdens, not something that makes sense in this meta tbh... so pls no

As for preventing shield stacking by making hardened ward and harness magicka unstackable, I suppose this could work... but only if sorcs were given buffs to their active mitigation, healing or mobility to compensate the for this massive survivability nerf (I really hope you aren’t suggesting that harness magicka/ hardened and healing ward should no longer stack because that would hurt light armor a little too much)

As for a cost increase or soft/hard cooldown on cloak, we have same problem as with sorcs and their shields... nightblades especially magblades and medium armor in general would need survivability buffs to compensate

The issue of shields and cloak is not so simple because multiple classes use the light armor shield and healing ward to varying degrees of effectiveness and cloak is one of the only defenses left that still scales well against zergs

I for one would rather see combat development more focused on revitalizing skillful pvp by nerfing hard counters (introduce dynamic cc and snare immunity and rework undodgeable, unblockable, and unshieldable sets, abilities, and ults) and increasing the TTK by nerfing cheesy unavoidable burst combos and improving skillful active defenses (introduce timed blocking, projectile deflecting, melee parrying, more powerful but conal blocking, shields and reflect abilities that scale off of the number of attackers, etc)... However... meh... This is up to zos in the end so I guess good players will always adapt to whatever changes come, bad players will always swarm to the meta and fail, and all players will complain

ak_pvp · July 2018

/agree. Kind of. Full on punishing mechanics like roll/streak fatigue are harmful even if necessary.

Make shields defilable but buffable from mending, forces shield users to have to consider buffs into their build like others do (I.e. Block, dodge has to consider building towards other healing for abilities that go through.) rather than having a simple brainless universal defense.

_Ahala_ · July 2018

Ooo I like the buffable by mending effect... magden get stronger shields automatically below 40% health and corrupting pollen becomes more rediculous... oh wait... but what about the fact that defile scales too well to account for vitality buffs in addition to mending buffs?

Vahrokh · July 2018

Daus wrote: »

This is an MMO that is resource dependent rather than one that's based on cooldowns. Because of this, certain defense mechanics that would have a reasonable cooldown in a different game can be spammed endlessly in this one. Over time ZOS has either put in mechanisms that would punish spamming or have a soft counter, and in the case of blocking, and dodge rolling especially there's both!

So just for clarification I'm going to cover what mechanisms are in the game for certain defense mechanics:

Healing: Defiles reduce the amount of healing received. Without defiles certain builds could live forever.

Health Regen: Defiles reduce the efficiency of health regen just like healing.

Blocking: Spamming block will prevent your stamina from regeneration, there are also certain abilities that ignore block entirely.

Dodge rolling: Spamming dodge roll will increase its cost if dodge roll is used withing 5 seconds. There are also a VERY extensive list of abilities that completely ignore dodge rolling entirely.

Damage shields: There's oblivion damage. That's it. Oblivion damage also ignores dodge rolling and blocking; making this damage type not unique against shields unless we're talking about the nonsensical shield breaker set.

Cloak: As been pointed many, many times this ability exists in two forms: Incredibly OP or Completely useless.

Damage Shields, and Cloak really need to have some mechanic that either discourages spamming (like what has bee put in place with dodge rolling, blocking, and Streak) or reduce its efficiency (such as defile with health regen or healing).

In the case of Cloak I would suggest turning off magicka recovery while invisible.

In the case of Damage Shields I would suggest an increased cost if the same shield is used again within 5 seconds OR make it so that no 2 damage shields can stack.

As a disclaimer I know there's a lot of you that are eager to spew hate at me, but I ask that you'll be respectful with your responses.

I was getting increasingly worried. I didn't see a brand new nerf sorc thread of yours in the last 24 hours, I thought you were sick or something.

Glad to see you are alive and well, you know well how to tell us when you are active!

Vahrokh · July 2018

Daus wrote: »

Ankael07 wrote: »

Honestly if you cant take down a single shield spammer (not stacker) theres something fundementally wrong with your understanding of PVP

In the suggestion part I mentioned that making it so that shields can't stack would be acceptable. Meaning, I'm only suggesting punishment for spamming or a reduction in efficiency because they can stack. If shields were to override one another then nothing would be needed to damage shields. In my opinion they would be balanced in that state.

Sure, as long as we forbid heals from having any effects on who got healed in the last 5 seconds! Very good for tanking, exactly like your "suggestion" is very awesome for sorc tanks!

Skoomah · July 2018

I agree with the OP. All the naysayers are being intellectually dishonest. I doubt ZOS will change anything. Anybody who comes close to saying bad things about ESO just get sponsored by ZOS or hired to a full time gig.

brandonv516 · July 2018

I like the idea of what someone said once. Minor and Major shields.

If you want Cloak to have a penalty, make it like Mist Form where it disables magicka recovery but you are immune to snares and such.

Vapirko · July 2018

Once again you cannot remove shield stacking without fundamentally changing how mag sorcs work since healing ward becomes useless without stacking. I’d be happy to remove shield stacking if sorcs were given a legit heal. Again most people don’t realize that mag sorcs aren’t shield stacking most of the time, aside from the bad ones prolonging death or using some cheese overload build which is another story. Shields are incredibly expensive and you can’t really afford to continually stack them. Spamming shields is usually a last ditch effort to stay alive and is similar in resource drain to dodge rolling. Also, if you play mag sorc you realize a shield disappears easily in two hits or less and once you don’t have a shield you’re dead, so spamming isn’t something people do for fun, it’s absolutely necessary. @Daus you said you have a mag sorc yes? I know you don’t want to be carried by the class or whatever but I feel like your opinion would change a little if you spent some time playing one again for a while. Not just for a few days but through a variety of situations in open world. Duel some good players, 1vX, our numbered keep defense and so on. You’ll see that event though they are strong and their rotation a little too easy right now their survivability is not really better than that of most other classes, it’s just different. If you get into a situation where you really need to spam shields you’ll see it’s not a good thing or really very helpful.

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

Vapirko wrote: »

Once again you cannot remove shield stacking without fundamentally changing how mag sorcs work since healing ward becomes useless without stacking. I’d be happy to remove shield stacking if sorcs were given a legit heal. Again most people don’t realize that mag sorcs aren’t shield stacking most of the time, aside from the bad ones prolonging death or using some cheese overload build which is another story. Shields are incredibly expensive and you can’t really afford to continually stack them. Spamming shields is usually a last ditch effort to stay alive and is similar in resource drain to dodge rolling. Also, if you play mag sorc you realize a shield disappears easily in two hits or less and once you don’t have a shield you’re dead, so spamming isn’t something people do for fun, it’s absolutely necessary. @Daus you said you have a mag sorc yes? I know you don’t want to be carried by the class or whatever but I feel like your opinion would change a little if you spent some time playing one again for a while. Not just for a few days but through a variety of situations in open world. Duel some good players, 1vX, our numbered keep defense and so on. You’ll see that event though they are strong and their rotation a little too easy right now their survivability is not really better than that of most other classes, it’s just different. If you get into a situation where you really need to spam shields you’ll see it’s not a good thing or really very helpful.

I used to play mine pretty often, but they are so broken this update I don't even want to login mine. My buddy Red actually asked me today why I'm not logging into my sorc his reason was "they are so OP right now it's easy mode" and that is exactly why I don't want to play mine anymore. Not until they're balanced. Btw have you tried throwing lich on your back bar with a willpower destro on your front while using engine guardian as your 2 piece? It's ridiculous how invincible you are out that thing out. Not only does it eat ultimates for you, but it heals you routinely, gives you all the stam you need, and when it gives magicka you can literally infinitely shield stack.

A strategy that I used is when you see a large group streak away until your magicka is low enough to proc lich then destroy the peeps that chased you.

SilverWF · July 2018

All I can say here is: Warden sucks...

If seriously, stop asking for nerfs! Seek a ways to buffs!

CyrusArya · July 2018

Preventing harness and hardened stacking while buffing sorcs native defenses a bit to compensate is the only thing I can get behind. Healing ward has to stack. Otherwise sorcs have no way to heal without double barring a pet. Suggesting a cost increase on the same shield is the same as a cost increase on the same heal: asinine.

But really, I don’t find myself struggling to kill shield stackers on any class I play so I don’t see any of these changes as being necessary. Just gotta learn how to apply pressure and burst properly. But everyone’s experience is different and everyone has the right to an opinion, regardless how bad they are. In my experience, the vast majority of sorcs melt like butter. The good ones can be formidable, as they would be on any class. As it is tho, shields are the weakest defensive mechanic when under focus from multiple targets and even in 1 on 1 encounters not that overtly powerful. But your mileage may vary.

It’s not sorc defenses that are overtuned, it’s literally one skill in rune cage.

burglar · July 2018

Prabooo wrote: »

basically everyones wants to win... A few want to play, and learn along the way...

I feel this so much. It's as if people believe balance is the homogenization of all classes along every skill line. Rather than learning how each class has it's own skills that can be used to counter what any other class uses.

Another case people who complain about this seem to argue for, is to have the ability to have a counter to every mechanism in the game at their disposal. Sometimes people spec to specifically counter what is currently popular, and if you can't defend against it, or can't work something out from how you've built your character, then go back to the drawing board, or simply accept that you are going to lose sometimes.

As for cloak, it is really, the only ability/skill that differentiates stealth classes from the other classes. If ZOS removes this ability from the game, whether by gimping it or omitting it, they will simply discourage almost all stealth gameplay due to the way all classes are structured. They might even drive away some core players, which is never a good thing to do for any stakeholders, consumers or otherwise. A good recent example of this is that new Gwent F2P card game from CDPR.

Not to mention that cloak is nothing like it was in other games, save for one thing, WHERE you can activate cloak. So, like in DAOC, cloaking was a toggle that fell off once you got too close to an enemy, and you could re-activate it once you were either far enough away to be detected, or had not been damage directly by an enemy in the past 5-10 seconds. They did have a skill, though, that you could use every 5 minutes called vanish, and it worked a lot like cloak does in ESO. It was fair to have vanish be on a 5 minute timer because no one had gap closers, hence the implementation and design of ESO's cloak ability.

I feel that the problem in ESO is that you're supposed to be able to play how you want, so every person can sneak/stealth, but each character's inherent sneak/stealth is really *** and almost useless. It's mostly ***/useless because for it to be effective in end game scenarios you need to be a nightblade, a race with a bonus to stealth detection radius, and wear the two TERRIBLE sets that reduce your detection radius.

Even if they were to modify crouching to work like cloak worked in DAoC, as I mentioned above, crouch would still be useless due to gap closers, and the fact that EVERY class in this game is a hybrid and has a lot of useful tools that can limit anyone's ability to cloak, regardless of how far away they are.

If you don't like cloak, slot flare or inner mind ffs. With inner mind, or whatever its called, simply slotted you can gimp classes that rely on bursting damage from cloak; you should be content with this ability, it's only requesting one slot.

Also, as a side note, it's not really fair to refer to an assassination sort of playstyle as 'ganking' as it applies a negative connotation, creating a bias that favors arguments that oppose stealthed playstyles. The same arguments against cloak can be made for other skills and abilities in the game, and often times they are the bread and butter of a class. Anyways, I have come to think that referring to assassination type playstyles as 'ganking' is what makes people feel ok with making suggestions to remove or effectively disable class defining abilities, as found in the suggestions OP has made.

_Ahala_ · July 2018

SilverWF wrote: »

All I can say here is: Warden sucks...

If seriously, stop asking for nerfs! Seek a ways to buffs!

Exactly... leave magden out of your nerf sorc crusade!!!

ChunkyCat · July 2018

I didn’t read the original post because it was wayyy too long.

BUT, I agree with it. If someone doesn’t just lay down and lose so I can win, then they just need to be punished.

With, like, tea bags.

Vapirko · July 2018

Daus wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Once again you cannot remove shield stacking without fundamentally changing how mag sorcs work since healing ward becomes useless without stacking. I’d be happy to remove shield stacking if sorcs were given a legit heal. Again most people don’t realize that mag sorcs aren’t shield stacking most of the time, aside from the bad ones prolonging death or using some cheese overload build which is another story. Shields are incredibly expensive and you can’t really afford to continually stack them. Spamming shields is usually a last ditch effort to stay alive and is similar in resource drain to dodge rolling. Also, if you play mag sorc you realize a shield disappears easily in two hits or less and once you don’t have a shield you’re dead, so spamming isn’t something people do for fun, it’s absolutely necessary. @Daus you said you have a mag sorc yes? I know you don’t want to be carried by the class or whatever but I feel like your opinion would change a little if you spent some time playing one again for a while. Not just for a few days but through a variety of situations in open world. Duel some good players, 1vX, our numbered keep defense and so on. You’ll see that event though they are strong and their rotation a little too easy right now their survivability is not really better than that of most other classes, it’s just different. If you get into a situation where you really need to spam shields you’ll see it’s not a good thing or really very helpful.

I used to play mine pretty often, but they are so broken this update I don't even want to login mine. My buddy Red actually asked me today why I'm not logging into my sorc his reason was "they are so OP right now it's easy mode" and that is exactly why I don't want to play mine anymore. Not until they're balanced. Btw have you tried throwing lich on your back bar with a willpower destro on your front while using engine guardian as your 2 piece? It's ridiculous how invincible you are out that thing out. Not only does it eat ultimates for you, but it heals you routinely, gives you all the stam you need, and when it gives magicka you can literally infinitely shield stack.

A strategy that I used is when you see a large group streak away until your magicka is low enough to proc lich then destroy the peeps that chased you.

Yeah I run the Lich, willpower, Necro with shadow rend build. It’s really good. I do wish my stamina toons had closer to that level of synergy with their builds. But people are calling for some pretty severe nerfs right now, and had I not been trying out mag sorc for some time I’d probably be right there with you, but I know now that outside of BGs where mag sorcs are arguably one of the strongest classes, they’re only situationally better. If I had to pick only stamina or mag to play I’d still go with stamina because its more suited to a variety of a situations in general. I’m not saying mag sorcs don’t need some adjustment, they do, even I can agree that rune cage is too easy, but I don’t want ZOS to go overboard with the changes as they often do when the forums are loud enough. Shield stacking is just too controversial, because 1) it’s still required for any sort of heal and 2) other than spamming shields sorcs have no other way of getting out of a tight situation. There’s no snare removal and you can only afford to dodge roll or break free maybe once or twice.

Sleep724 · July 2018

So dodge roll, constitution passive, heavy armor, permablock etc were all op defensively and had to be nerfed right? But nerf shield stacking and it will be the end of mag socrs? Please.

Strider__Roshin · July 2018

Vapirko wrote: »

Daus wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Once again you cannot remove shield stacking without fundamentally changing how mag sorcs work since healing ward becomes useless without stacking. I’d be happy to remove shield stacking if sorcs were given a legit heal. Again most people don’t realize that mag sorcs aren’t shield stacking most of the time, aside from the bad ones prolonging death or using some cheese overload build which is another story. Shields are incredibly expensive and you can’t really afford to continually stack them. Spamming shields is usually a last ditch effort to stay alive and is similar in resource drain to dodge rolling. Also, if you play mag sorc you realize a shield disappears easily in two hits or less and once you don’t have a shield you’re dead, so spamming isn’t something people do for fun, it’s absolutely necessary. @Daus you said you have a mag sorc yes? I know you don’t want to be carried by the class or whatever but I feel like your opinion would change a little if you spent some time playing one again for a while. Not just for a few days but through a variety of situations in open world. Duel some good players, 1vX, our numbered keep defense and so on. You’ll see that event though they are strong and their rotation a little too easy right now their survivability is not really better than that of most other classes, it’s just different. If you get into a situation where you really need to spam shields you’ll see it’s not a good thing or really very helpful.

I used to play mine pretty often, but they are so broken this update I don't even want to login mine. My buddy Red actually asked me today why I'm not logging into my sorc his reason was "they are so OP right now it's easy mode" and that is exactly why I don't want to play mine anymore. Not until they're balanced. Btw have you tried throwing lich on your back bar with a willpower destro on your front while using engine guardian as your 2 piece? It's ridiculous how invincible you are out that thing out. Not only does it eat ultimates for you, but it heals you routinely, gives you all the stam you need, and when it gives magicka you can literally infinitely shield stack.

A strategy that I used is when you see a large group streak away until your magicka is low enough to proc lich then destroy the peeps that chased you.

Yeah I run the Lich, willpower, Necro with shadow rend build. It’s really good. I do wish my stamina toons had closer to that level of synergy with their builds. But people are calling for some pretty severe nerfs right now, and had I not been trying out mag sorc for some time I’d probably be right there with you, but I know now that outside of BGs where mag sorcs are arguably one of the strongest classes, they’re only situationally better. If I had to pick only stamina or mag to play I’d still go with stamina because its more suited to a variety of a situations in general. I’m not saying mag sorcs don’t need some adjustment, they do, even I can agree that rune cage is too easy, but I don’t want ZOS to go overboard with the changes as they often do when the forums are loud enough. Shield stacking is just too controversial, because 1) it’s still required for any sort of heal and 2) other than spamming shields sorcs have no other way of getting out of a tight situation. There’s no snare removal and you can only afford to dodge roll or break free maybe once or twice.

Do me a favor, swap your shadowrend for engine guardian. You won't regret it.

Biro123 · July 2018

Sleep724 wrote: »

So dodge roll, constitution passive, heavy armor, permablock etc were all op defensively and had to be nerfed right? But nerf shield stacking and it will be the end of mag socrs? Please.

Which, oddly counter to your argument, removed the only possibility of sorcs running without shields.
All those things you listed only ever worked with strong healing, which you can use while on your shield bar. They were only part of a combination of things that gave that defence.
Shields are the whole defence. If you can't see a difference there, then I don't know what to say.