In the history of the game, I have NEVER seen a nerf idea more likely to kill the game than this one.

Why? Two reasons.

1. For a large fraction of players, shields are essential at the times that they are attempting new content. When you have some idea of what the greatest dangers are, shields may not be as crucial. But before you recognize the most dangerous threats in advance, shields may be the only way to avoid a long, rapid string of deaths.

2. For players without great situational awareness, shields may be essential, period. Giving up shields would entail sacrificing a considerable fraction of the overall player base.

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

In the history of the game, I have NEVER seen a nerf idea more likely to kill the game than this one.

Why? Two reasons.

1. For a large fraction of players, shields are essential at the times that they are attempting new content. When you have some idea of what the greatest dangers are, shields may not be as crucial. But before you recognize the most dangerous threats in advance, shields may be the only way to avoid a long, rapid string of deaths.

2. For players without great situational awareness, shields may be essential, period. Giving up shields would entail sacrificing a considerable fraction of the overall player base.

It's even more game-breaking than that. Magicka characters, no matter how experienced, need shields to complete a lot of endgame content because they have no other way to mitigate damage. The game literally becomes unplayable without shields (this is the only time that phrase isn't hyperbole). Magicka characters were designed with shields as their only survival mechanism.

erlewine wrote: »

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Someone on a magicka builds and is running vMA needs shields to avoid getting dunked by mechanics that would nuke them in seconds.

The top leaderboard scores for Magicka builds in vMA don't use shields. Really, the problem with healers isn't rooted in shields, it's rooted in DPS. With high DPS and smart play, a healer isn't needed because no damage is taken. It's not really because of shields.

One of the worst things i hear is "a Healer isn't needed".

if they debuffed shields and some how this contributed in pvp terms, HANDS DOWN, i quit the game!

Everybody in Summerset PTS, sorcs including, was telling ZOS that the buff to Rune Cage was too much... We all know how it went....

Now it seems that the community pretty much agrees that shields are not why "healers are useless". Let 's hope we have learned something this time.... It's even well before PTS now...

Ozazz wrote: »

Fiktius wrote: »

Please, pretty please, do not give a death sentence to PvP healers because PvE healers feels themselves useless...

m8, pvp healers along with perma block tanks along with heavy armor ruin pvp in this game! why should i need a army to killl one healer or tank in pvp? this promotes bad game play generally for the whole game. ITS NOT PLAYER VS PLAYER when the other cant be killed 1v1 it defeats the purpose and contradicts the name.

Of course there exists some healers who are ultra tanky with shields, but hey, let's think a bit wider here:
What are these healers supposed to do against you? Heal you to death? Of course this is situational, but at most cases you have excellent chance to ignore them like rest of us can. Usually they do not deal as much damage as DDs could and their builds main point is surviving. Same with those tanks, who got ultra high defenses. At many cases best thing you can do is leaving them instead of wasting your time.

By nerfing shields you would of course nerf defense of these tanky players, but such nerf would also significantly harm solo players like me. I main mag NB and shields are what I need, if I even wish to stay visible outside of cloack and try to kill my enemies. I enjoy solo play most and shields are a huge part of that. And I'm not only one. This nerf impacts every single magicka build in the game, which are in need of shield one way or another. Just that you can't kill tanky healers/actual tanks without a huge group and justifying the nerf with that is quite narrow minded imo. Think wider and think how many different playstyles are affected. This is not about PvP players only, this change would affect PvE magicka players as well.

Worst case scenario, all damage shields are made to scale on Health.
Problem with this, permablock tanks get a HUGE buff in PvP that they become nigh unkillable outside of Shieldbreaker Zerg groups. Sorcs, having no reliable self heal get screwed as a result and are either forced to join in on the permablock brigade or run Twilight to have some small chance to function at all.

Personally, I don't really care one way or another if Shields get nerfed, none of my characters rely on shields although will use them as tech options, but at the same time, it makes me worried about what the possible outcome will be.

Please don't touch shields, this is not the core issue

Please do not take shields away. I like them for Sorc pets. My templar class shield is already very bad as it is. So I have the Healing ward to use in its place.

Instead of adjusting the players may I suggest adjusting the dungeons to require healers. And possibly making use of class shields. Wait what class shield does Nightblade have?

DK has a shield it has spinny rocks
Sorc has a shield Looks like a purple egg
Warden has a shield it shimmers
Templar has a shield Okay it is a picture of a shield around the sun
Nightblade? Is cloak a shield sort of?
Then we have the resto staff shield. But it would be silly to have everyone have a resto staff on back bar to use that shield

I do not want to be a feather ruffler, however, I must say this.

Many of the dungeon mechanics work best with super quick burn through. This is not a player fault.

Thank you for reading this

Being primarily a healer myself I also got the strong impression that the demand for healers in PVE is decreasing. I'm not sure if a shield nerf is the proper answer to that since the reason seems to be elsewhere. I give 3 possible reasons for the trouble healers are having in this post from my subjective point of view: game design, too much non-healer related heals and class changes.

1. Game design

It's mainly how dungeons and trials are built, how the boss encounters are designed. In almost each fight you can notice that high DPS will not just speed up the fight but also decrease the difficulty because you can skip mechanics. That's nothing shield-related but it is how the gameplay is designed.

Example:
One of the most obvious cases is vDSA. I noticed two types of groups both favoring to start the activity with 3 dps and 1 tank rather than the classic 2 dps, 1 healer, 1 tank setup. Group one is the tryhard one. They know DSA in and out, they want to breeze through it as fast as possible and get a top score in the end. The second group is newer to vDSA and has lower DPS. With that low dps they may have a harder time to burst down the final boss (aka skipping the mechanics that make the fight a lot more difficult). To avoid mechanics and to be able to finish vDSA, they go in with 3 dps, as well. They do it primarily to deal with the final boss easier - even if that comes with more struggle along the way before this final stage.

You can clearly see the healer's issue here. Either you don't need heals or heals (and thus less dps) make content more difficult because you have to deal with more mechanics. It is like trading the convenience of having a healer and caring less about survivability for the efficiency to skip mechanics, get faster and in the end easier results. For the needed base heals, a tank could slot earthgore or vigor. The very same is true for so much other content in the game. Veteran dungeons, trials etc.

The whole composition of PVE content punishes low DPS so it follows a logic to bring no more heals than absolutely necessary. Ideally that minimum of heals comes from DPS or the tank. If mechanics could not be skipped by high dps, we would not have this discussion now.

2. Too much healing by sets or non-healer's skills in the game

I don't know if a shield nerf could deal with the design issue in the game itself. However, I am convinced about something else. There's plain too much healing in the game. And I mean healing that's not coming from the healer, be it passives, damaging skills with self-heals, self-buffs with heals and most of all sets with strong healing effects such as earthgore or troll king. I love those sets but they can entirely replace a healer in various situations and atm that's more of an issue than shields are in my opinion. Shields aim towards damage mitigation but won't restore health. If sets can jump in here, you don't need any skill aka healer anymore. Removing or lowering set or damage-based heals will hit some VMA or PVP builds hard so it's not easy to find a proper balance for that now.

For me shields are more a PVP than a PVE problem. PVP could be fixed by making shields crit-able and get rid of shield stacks. Should ZOS come to the conclusion to take shields out of the game entirely, that would need some mechanics rework in dungeons, trials and VMA, probably even in some overland boss encounters. Another solution could be to add group shields as a support skill for healers instead of individual shields (not an ultimate like barrier). Maybe healers could be in higher demand with such a skill. Tho such a change could cause new issues in PVP.

3. Class changes

In the end why healers are in a bad spot is also a consequence of "play the game how you want to play it", one of the core mantras of ESO (which is good in general but hurt healers atm). By evening out heals, giving basically any build potentially strong self- or group heals and adding healing sets on top, this leads to the consequence we see now. If we don't get back to a dedicated healer class, this situation won't change. Templars lost major mending, their breath of life got the nerf hammer etc etc... in the end giving up the class identity leads towards where we are now. If no one is an outstanding healer anymore, everyone is. So why should a group bother with a dedicated healer?

But once again, it's not shields to blame for how the game mechanics are designed and how the class balance shifted away from specialized healers over the course of the last patches. Shields are needed to deal with certain aspects of PVE as-is now. A more complex solution than just plain shield nerf is needed to deal with that and to bring healers back to a better spot. And last but not least, atm healers need shields in various situations themselves.