NBrookus wrote: »

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

1) With regards to cloak. I usually play ranged with the ranged desto Aoe. This is good for revealing cloakers. It is amazing that, as a high regen mag toon I very often find stam gankers capable of casting more cloaks than I can cast fire rings. This is obviously CE at work as stam toons cannot legitimately cloak many times with their little pool and almost nonexistent regen. I wonder how many cloak OP issues would be solved it ZOS addressed CE use. Certainly, no ranged toon with an AOE would have much issue revealing cloakers.

It's probably not CE. I think you are underestimating how far and fast a nightblade can move. I did, until I levelled one. It's pretty funny actually watching people spam aoe's where they think I ought to be, which is of course the last place I wanted to be if hiding. Once you have successfully stealthed you don't have to keep casting cloak.

You can do nearly the same with a vamp and an speed/invis pot.

I'm not talking about guys getting away while cloaked. This does occasionally happen because sNB's can be so fast. I am talking about guys who just keep recloaking, with the recloak animation, every time I reveal them all across the country side. I just don't buy a stam toon, with a bow, who is hitting hard and so clearly a full on stam build, being able to hit cloak 6 or 7 times in a row. This does happen though as, with 2x swift and boundless, it takes much longer than they expect to get out of my range if they can't shake me and don't put a slow on me (usually they don't if I wasn't the original target). In fact, it happens about half the time when I chase down a sNB ganker that he appears to be able to cloak infinitely. That is how many guys are out there with some some pretty improbable magic reserves and regen on their stam toons.

I think ZOS is drowning in CE use and that many of the skills and builds they think they need to re-balance are not the real problem that players are complaining about but rather a skill that happens to be used by players that are also using CE. SNB gankers are constantly complained about on the forums as being annoying and OP. When half the ones I chase down appear to be able to endlessly fire a magica skill I begin to wonder if that perception of being OP has anything to do with the actual power of sNB's.

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'd support it if we also made spamming killer's blade, mage's fury, surprise attack, whirlwind, jabs, force shock and cutting dive more expensive with each cast within 5 seconds.....

Clearly you're a little ticked off with not being able to kill a sorc or m/nb and feel the need to qq

I'll tell you what though. I have a higher opinion of the magsorc community that I do the magplar community. When I was suggesting nerfs for them back in the day I didn't only get very harsh backlash, but also PMs filled with insults, and people spamming by YT video with nasty comments. So far I've only had one negative magsorc comment so far on one of my videos.

Vahrokh wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

2) Bash your face against them, and unless you are very high damage built, its more often more costly for you, god help if you are mag vs a harness user...

And how is this any worse than a mag sorc having to grind his/her teeth against a quasi-perma blocking guy, a perma-dodge rolling guy, a spam-healing guy or a stunlocking guy?

Because you can do something about it. For block, a petbuild to tax stam, or all the unblockable STs like rune, or the unblockable AoEs, or any dots ever. Spamheal has defile, whatever damage you are taking is to your health, stunlock has built in immunities, unless you mean the bugs, then yeah no ***, and root has streak, extended ritual, roll, or one of the immunity abilities.

All those defenses have trade offs, and are vastly more sacrificial to use. For example dodge with its fatigue and short stam block. Block with its stam stop, snare, high cost and hits to health. ALL WHILST HAVING SOFT COUNTER ABILITIES. You wouldn't like half of the nerfs that block or dodge have taken applied to shields.

If shields weren't vastly better, MagDK, a block class with block based passives and resistance, wouldn't run shields as meta, but they do.

EDIT: No point tbh, this is now a sorc circlejerkle thread as usual. Can't blame them, so many of the threads about.

Shields cost a ton to cast and the sorc one has to be refreshed every 6 seconds, putting a potential, ever looming "obligatory pause" in the middle of burst combos. Shields have hard counters and are eaten like butter, plus PvP sorcs don't come with 60k magicka to make massive shields.

Last but not least, sorc circle jerks are the replay to constantly new NB "nerf <anything else>" constant circle jerks.

Which is funny, because the other classes don't complain. Whereas NBs, well established at the top of the food chain, manage to cry nerf on anybody else.

I am not even an NB, I can just admit that shields are a stupid designed defense. Their cost isn't even that high in 1v1 and Xv1s. (I know its not good outnumbered, but very nearly nothing is now) and the stagger between ability/shield is t really a problem when the damage is all delayed burst.

Hard counters are exactly what there shouldn't be. We can't all spec into shieldbreaker to counter our sorc overlords.

And NBs, a class with a similar stupid tier defense with only hard counters through it. I don't even understand why they would complain since they are one of the only classes that can take down a shield in the same time frame and cost that it takes to apply the shield. (because they can spec super high damage and clutch of cloak)

Forum sorc and NBs are the same in that regard, don't want their strengths taken away or lowered to the level of other classes. And they both wouldn't like to see other classes buffed nearly the same.

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.

Cloak is fine so many things can pull you out and it doesnt need to be nerfed in anyway as they already took away a makeshift major mending by critting all heals in cloak

damage shields are fine just run shield breaker like I have been doing since its inception

Been following this thread for a little bit, so I'll start at the beginning. This is make sure I don't miss anything, and to show a 'train of thought'.

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.

Addressing just the OP...your analysis is extremely lacking. You've totally neglected to mention several significant aspects of shields that aren't present in other defensive mechanics, and have instead only listed counters that lean towards the 'hard' side of things (as opposed to soft counters - such as the CP that increases dmg against shields). You haven't even gone into more class specific thing, as just going off your OP, this would absolutely murder certain builds but leave others relatively unchanged.

You just rattled off a bunch of stuff and then said shields should be punished for 'spamming' the same way streak/dodge roll are, as if they're the exact same mechanic.

You don't even mention class specific stuff - by shield stacking do you mean hardened/harness? Harness/healing ward? Ward/harness?

Seems like you just want shields nerfed for no reason.

ak_pvp wrote: »

/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.

Now if you'd added something like this in your OP, it would have gone somewhere. However, then you have to consider the availability of these buffs to builds that rely on shields. Still, you could've easily looked at how shields differ from other defensive mechanics, how they do their job, and follow the train of thought until you arrive at a conclusion based on performance etc etc.

However, this would be a rather complex change and additional work for...why? Shields aren't defilable, but don't benefit from the buffs. Trying to wedge in these mechanical changes in seems pretty pointless - either nothing changes because you've balanced it correctly (like healing vs defile pre-befoul) or you end up with issues like defile scaling way better than healing.

ak_pvp wrote: »

TheYKcid wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

/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.

This wouldn't be reasonable at all. Defile is well regarded to be one of the most overtuned PvP mechanics in the current meta—why would you want to extend its influence even further?

Shields are an above-average defensive mechanic, at best. Making them susceptible to defiles would send them straight to the trash heap.

Not to mention, the spec which is almost entirely dependent on shields for defence—Magsorc—has NO viable way to access the mending buffs whatsoever (resto heavies don't count for obvious reasons—chanelling a 3s long and highly telegraphed attack when under pressure = dead sorc). It's a humongous, class-gutting nerf with no compensatory upsides.

Of course current defile is absolutely overtuned. No doubt. I want to extend its influence, but decrease its effectiveness. Why do you want to be immune to debuffing measures on shields? I mean, it works on healing, and the other defenses of block and dodge have been weakened considerably whilst shields remain as is. Seems like the "nerfs for thee, not for me" deal that surrounds sorc.

The only nerf they have had directly is the 20 to 6s change, which wasn't a nerf in direct combat anyway, more when running or pre shielding, and was a nerf no one wanted

Having shields as the only defense is a testament to the lacking design of the class, which IMO should be based around mobility, that, can be buffed no problem.

As you said, shields are an above average defense, it doesn't need a compensatory upside, though healing amps like resto expert, or set bonuses would work too It needs balancing, and making them susceptible to debuffs so they have to be intelligently managed is one method.

You really shouldn't compare block, dodge and shields as if they're even remotely similar - they're all defensive mechanics, but that's about it. You have a point, though perhaps not in the way you meant. SHIELDS REMAIN AS IS. They haven't changed. They don't change. While the rest of the game power has been creeping up, shields, due to how they scale only off of magicka, haven't seen much (if any, in some cases) creep. If you saw a new set come out that gave ridiculous amounts of magicka, more than could be acquired with an other setup, then yes...but max magicka has, insofar as I've been able to gather, remained relatively stable. And I mean avg max mag - so yes, you can slot magelight/mage guild skills/bound armor + pets + necro and get insanely high max magicka...but that number hasn't really changed either, and people were already doing that (and it already had pretty significant downsides in order to achieve that psuedo-max mag creep that other builds don't suffer from).

Anywho. As damage goes up, block and dodge are the ones that remain the same (comparitively). Dodging a skill still dodges the skill no matter how much damage that skill deals (unless it's changed to be undodgeable, which is...y'know, people aren't really arguing over that). Shields meanwhile stay static. Block has only really seen nerfs to the builds that block a lot - and there aren't many of those. P much everyone else has seen little to no change.

Do agree about the lacking design. Again, though, it'll be a lot of work to fit in buffs for shield users. The only class-based way for sorcs to gain any increase to healing is...that AoE root skill they have - one morph gives Major Vitality for 2 sec + 1 sec per target hit. It's going to be extremely hard to balance...not that something being hard is a reason not to do it - I just think there are better, more efficient ways to go about it.

Daus wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

2) Bash your face against them, and unless you are very high damage built, its more often more costly for you, god help if you are mag vs a harness user...

And how is this any worse than a mag sorc having to grind his/her teeth against a quasi-perma blocking guy, a perma-dodge rolling guy, a spam-healing guy or a stunlocking guy?

Because you can do something about it. For block, a petbuild to tax stam, or all the unblockable STs like rune, or the unblockable AoEs, or any dots ever. Spamheal has defile, whatever damage you are taking is to your health, stunlock has built in immunities, unless you mean the bugs, then yeah no ***, and root has streak, extended ritual, roll, or one of the immunity abilities.

All those defenses have trade offs, and are vastly more sacrificial to use. For example dodge with its fatigue and short stam block. Block with its stam stop, snare, high cost and hits to health. ALL WHILST HAVING SOFT COUNTER ABILITIES. You wouldn't like half of the nerfs that block or dodge have taken applied to shields.

If shields weren't vastly better, MagDK, a block class with block based passives and resistance, wouldn't run shields as meta, but they do.

EDIT: No point tbh, this is now a sorc circlejerkle thread as usual. Can't blame them, so many of the threads about.

Shields cost a ton to cast and the sorc one has to be refreshed every 6 seconds, putting a potential, ever looming "obligatory pause" in the middle of burst combos. Shields have hard counters and are eaten like butter, plus PvP sorcs don't come with 60k magicka to make massive shields.

Last but not least, sorc circle jerks are the replay to constantly new NB "nerf <anything else>" constant circle jerks.

Which is funny, because the other classes don't complain. Whereas NBs, well established at the top of the food chain, manage to cry nerf on anybody else.

It has always been so. I've always said that I think its a combination of sorcs being a fairly hard-ish counter to NB's (and yes sorcs do have their own counter-classes - and sets now), and the mentality from most other games that gankers should be the bane of cloth-casters...

Seems the average NB just can't get past the fact that sorc is their bane, and not the other way around.

Yeah!

My attitude when I get 2 shot gank-stunned by a NB: "oh crap, I have to ride 5 minutes again. If I don't get an endless loading screen, that is".

Forumblade attitude when a guy outmanouvred and outplayed him (on any class): "TO THE FORUMS, IGNITE THE WAAMBULANCEEEEEE!!!"

If something is over-performing I point it out. It's harder to do that with your own class, and thankfully there are people make arguments against my class that I think are valid. For instance even though I don't struggle with cloak or Incap I can see how OP it can be when you're not a Nightblade, Templar or Stamsorc so I think it would be appropriate to reevaluate cloak. As far as Incap goes the only change I support is the removal or adjustment of its CC.

My posts are typically met with over-emotional cries from sorcs (back in the day it was Templars) rather than anything with substance, but truthfully I expected nothing less.

You get out what you put in. It speaks to the quality of your posts that you feel you aren't getting back anything with 'substance'.

You seem pretty well spoken otherwise, but ..c'mon. I actually reread this entire thread twice to try and make sure I didn't miss anything. I can't find a single post where you've actually shared any sort of analysis on shields to try and prove your point. Like one of those essays they make your write in high school trying to convince someone of something - I feel like I've been given the last paragraph and only the last paragraph. In your first post you pretty much just list...game mechanics. Heals heal - defile reduces the strength of healing. That is 100% true, but using any of that to segway into 'shields are too strong because they ONLY have oblivion damage as a 100% hard counter!' is....I think it's a non squitur? It does not follow.

You language use also varies, indicating bias - "There's oblivion damage. That's it." I could say "Healing has defiles. That's it."
Just switching heals for shields and adding 'that's it'.

So...do feel free to go into detail and actually explain yourself. But until then, expect more replies that lack 'substance'.

Daus wrote: »

@Tonturri thank you for taking the time to go through the thread to make such a well thought out response! I honestly won't have the opportunity today to give you a response worthy of the one you gave me since I work all day, and my responses are limited to red lights and time at the hospital (I work on an ambulance), but I will try to give you a solid response tomorrow. Thanks bud

Will do o/

On another note, I've actually been pondering making a shield-info thread (with pictures!). If you're on PC-NA, I'll gladly meet up to demonstrate the weaknesses of shields and take some screenshots.

Ok I'll throw one into the mix...why don't we take away animation cancelling, fast mounts, and poisons?

That would shake things up lol

(There would a mass exodus)

Just let me crit them shields

DemonDruaga wrote: »

Just let me crit them shields

Shields don't crit and they can't be critted in return. Personally this seems like balanced at first but it isn't , when you add on the fact that they are also immune to status effects, which gives shield stackers additional tankyness. Against people who don't stack shields it is not an issue,

So the root of this problem in the end is still, magsorcs. Not to blame them, its just the way it is. But still very dumb mechanic in the end.

CyrusArya wrote: »

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.

Just make shields non stackable and non refreshable then increase the duration to 10 secs.

Daus wrote: »

Anti_Virus wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

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.

Just make shields non stackable and non refreshable then increase the duration to 10 secs.

No competent sorc cares about the duration. 1 damage shield every 10 seconds is just as weak as casting Vigor every 10 seconds.

A suggestion that I made in a PM that I would like to add here is to make it so Harness and Hardened ward can't stack. And to instead change the Blood Magic passive so that you heal yourself for ~40% of the damage done via Dark Magic abilities. That value may be too strong, but you get the jest.

Another suggestion I made in reference to Rune Cage is to make it dodgeable and blockable, and give defensive rune those attributes.

In conjunction with that change make Crystal Blast function identical to frags with the exception that Frags deals extra damage, and Blast CCs. Hard Casting is just as boring as using Uppercut.

Awesome suggestion for the last skill.