ZOS please do not nerf shields

Expert · September 2018

Title says it all, but think of this...

Out of many things undergone to Sorc, it's clear many players are upset with the performance of Sorc Shields because they're too strong. This has happened because of them stacking max magicka. Instead of the players running Shield Breaker, Sload, and other Oblivion based damage, they turned away from solution. ZOS has given the player base the tools needed to defeat that problem. It should be on the player for not using them as ZOS made them solely to fix that problem.

But to see the players slam NERF SHIELD to the forums and to ZOS, the players express laziness for a solution. Think of it in the eyes of a sorc, time is key to align your bursts and sustain. You eliminate precious time from a sorc when it comes down to channeling abilities to shield.

Think of one skill that will solo a sorc regardless of their performance, knowledge of the game, and skills. Crushing Shock > Shield Channel which will eliminate your precious time you dearly need to sustain. As a sorc myself, a lot of us know we sacrifice a lot of damage for sustain, and we try to compensate for that damage through another skill, CP readjustments, and such. But to see this hard counter to our sustain means we can't use time to survive in the moment of combat. If we cant survive in the moment of combat then we cant turn the fight and do damage.

I can promise you if this update rolls out Mag Sorcs will not be around anymore and everyone will turn to MagNB since they have instant healing ward shield and evades. The damage is promising, and if their sustain is better, whats the point of being a sorc? All of this because of the players laziness to resolve the problem, why should Mag Sorc be responsible for the nerf? Why hurt Mag Sorcs ability to play the game because of another's laziness?

Like I said, once this shield update rolls out, you destroy the key aspect to sustain which will completely defeat every Sorc in the game regardless of their talents and ideas. Bad call ZOS, a lot of Mag Sorcs will quit the game because there are people like myself who are passionate for our class, stuck with it in the long run through all the nerfs and buffs, and it may be all we know but what we know is nerfing shields with channel abilities will be the death of us.

Please remove it from PTS and do not allow it to come to official, nobody will win except for the lazy people who strongly dislike Mag Sorc. Their opinions are not credible if they have not been using your tools to defeat shields. It's a shame.

I agree that Harness needs a nerf in magicka return, but you need to put a strong shield cap. Strong shield cap around 20k for Mag Sorc, the problem really is that some stack a lot of magicka (60k or so) and pull off really crazy strong shields. But 60k magicka users do not represent the majority of Mag Sorcs. You need to go after them not us.

Sorry this post is going to have some negative light, but I'm trying to show credible judgement that this is a bad call.

ak_pvp · September 2018

Firstly, the shield nerf as is was rarted. Killed them dead and offered no recompense. It was done terribly and shows yet more incompetence.

Secondly:
"Instead of the players running Shield Breaker, Sload, and other Oblivion based damage, they turned away from solution."
That, is not a solution, that is a hard counter which involves cucking yourself vs most builds to use, and being BS strong vs the shield user. That, is not balance.

What people asked for was counterplay, soft counterplay. Something that wasn't too strong but allowed you to partially pass the defense so that shields would and should be used in conjunction with other things, a la block/dodge. Because shields have no real soft counterplay or any way to debuff it.

IMO shields need some counter, the crittable but resistable thing sounds fair. And making status effects proc should happen too, though that is a technical limit only. (Only enchants do as of murkmire)

Expert · September 2018

Grab a pair of Oblivion Damage Glyphs, you wont need to change your gear or skill.

Those are hard counters, you main magDK so lets make block 1 second delay. How'd you feel?

If someone mains a nightblade, well lets make roll dodge 1 second delay, how'd they feel?

If someone mains a templar, make all healing abilities 1 second delay.

You see, people do not care about the combat balance they go straight to voicing their opinion. Nerf one thing, but you gotta give atleast something back to compensate it. And that's.... nothing

Imagine this, you spend 1 second to cast a shield that lasts 6 seconds and then you have to afk another second to cast another shield. That's IF you're not interrupted, and if you're interrupted prepared to be 1 shot.

Yikes

ak_pvp · September 2018

Expert wrote: »

Grab a pair of Oblivion Damage Glyphs, you wont need to change your gear or skill.

Those are hard counters, you main magDK so lets make block 1 second delay. How'd you feel?

If someone mains a nightblade, well lets make roll dodge 1 second delay, how'd they feel?

If someone mains a templar, make all healing abilities 1 second delay.

You see, people do not care about the combat balance they go straight to voicing their opinion. Nerf one thing, but you gotta give atleast something back to compensate it. And that's.... nothing

Imagine this, you spend 1 second to cast a shield that lasts 6 seconds and then you have to afk another second to cast another shield. That's IF you're not interrupted, and if you're interrupted prepared to be 1 shot.

Yikes

Did you not hear me, I said the change is ***. Cast time killed it dead, for both PvP/E its an awful change.

However, shields did need a change. Block and roll both have soft counters, stop regen, block snares and roll increases cost too.

Syhae · September 2018

Bad change, don't go through with it.
At the very least, remove the cast time.
Kill the class, but don't twist the knife too...

leepalmer95 · September 2018

I never had a problem with shields in open world pvp, i didn't think they was strong or particularly struggled against them.

ZarkingFrued · September 2018

This shield nerf is so bad even stam players are against it. Why do they nerf things in stacks like that? It was that bad to where they needed 4 nerfs on one skill type at once? That's just admitting that you are l horrible at balancing your game. If it's been broken and needed this nerf for this long, someone needs fired.

Qwazzy · September 2018

Make Annulment insta-cast, add a cast time to Conjured ward. Stops the stacking, but still gives a defensive option for pvp/pve to all light armor classes

leepalmer95 · September 2018

Qwazz wrote: »

Make Annulment insta-cast, add a cast time to Conjured ward. Stops the stacking, but still gives a defensive option for pvp/pve to all light armor classes

On live its hard enough to survive with shields as it is.

All it takes is 2 decent players to target you and you die as a mag sorc.

Now shields are even weaker as they'll be taking way more dmg plus the cast time?

Silver_Strider · September 2018

I felt the nerf was overly severe.
The change to make them crittable, affected by your resistances and that status effects/poisons would work on shields were more than adequate changes to help balance shields, without completely gutting them. The cast time is extreme and hurts all magic DPS on top of Sorc Healers that desperately need shields to keep their pets out of harms way.

Remove the cast time, it's too much.

Ozazz · September 2018

they will ruin the class along with other light armor users for social justice. Think of it in this way, 80% of people play other classes and will most definitely justify or be complicit to the nerf while the other 20% that plays magic sorc and magic nb or begging for our life and survival ability in pvp. this will cause the veterans to quit guarantee you that. its a loosing fight against the mass. The mass has corrupted this game one too many times.

Ozazz · September 2018

make shields critable is 100% unjustified, you have more than enough tools to your disposal to counter them along with multiple abilities to already counter sorc as well. if you dont utilize these abilities/posions/bleeds/ oblivion damage etc its the players fault.

Expert · September 2018

Exactly, my perspective of ZOS has downgraded enormously, there's a pattern that we're seeing with the Dev team. They aren't exactly listening to the Class Reps and they continue to mess up the PvP balance.

The more they build this reputation, the more the game dies. ZOS is responsible for every action they make.

Gilvoth · September 2018

i do not agree with the 1 second delay on shield casting.
infact, if that 1 second delay on shield casting goes live then it will be a trickle down effecT.
eventually leading to alot of very serious problems with elderscrolls online and may even be fatal for sorcerers and and up being fatal for all classes.

ccmedaddy · September 2018

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

i do not agree with the 1 second delay on shield casting.
infact, if that 1 second delay on shield casting goes live then it will be a trickle down effecT.
eventually leading to alot of very serious problems with elderscrolls online and may even be fatal for sorcerers and and up being fatal for all classes.

ZOS, even @dwemer_paleologist thinks the sorc/shield nerfs were too harsh. That's how you know you REALLY messed up.

Donny_Vito · September 2018

They nerfed Rune Cage last patch....okay it was a bit OP so that was an acceptable fix. But now a cast time on shields?

How about a 1 second cast time on Cloak for NB? They would never dare hurt the NB fanboys.

How about a 1 second cast time on Vigor? Yeah, doubtful again.

They just love to kill Sorcs and hear our complaints.

WeylandLabs · September 2018

Now that my defile was nerfed into the ground In campaigning for this shield nerf ! Congrats this is WAR !

JobooAGS · September 2018

Shields should remain insta cast and armorless, but if damage on shields can be critted, so can the shields themselves. Change my mind.

mojomood · September 2018

JobooAGS wrote: »

Shields should remain insta cast and armorless, but if damage on shields can be critted, so can the shields themselves. Change my mind.

Shields that can crit. LMAO! That sounds totally balanced. So you could build for crit so your damage is nuclear while you tank behind a 30k hardened ward. 🤪

JobooAGS · September 2018

mojomood wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

Shields should remain insta cast and armorless, but if damage on shields can be critted, so can the shields themselves. Change my mind.

Shields that can crit. LMAO! That sounds totally balanced. So you could build for crit so your damage is nuclear while you tank behind a 30k hardened ward. 🤪

But shields under that circumstance can be critted on, if you are a nightblade or templar, or just have a high crit chance/crit dmg modifier you will tear that 30k shield a new one. Remember, 0 resistances. If someone is shield spamming, they are not attacking

Minno · September 2018

JobooAGS wrote: »

Shields should remain insta cast and armorless, but if damage on shields can be critted, so can the shields themselves. Change my mind.

Non-critted shields as it exists on PTS, with armor mitigation and crit resists, results in less damage taken than on live.

If shield values could crit, it would be too much defense (forcing zos to look into shield values across the board).

mojomood · September 2018

Minno wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

Shields should remain insta cast and armorless, but if damage on shields can be critted, so can the shields themselves. Change my mind.

Non-critted shields as it exists on PTS, with armor mitigation and crit resists, results in less damage taken than on live.

If shield values could crit, it would be too much defense (forcing zos to look into shield values across the board).

You have tested this? With what resistance levels? I'm interested to know this as I thought that for most light armor builds, they would have around 25% resist with buffs and around 40% crit resist with impen/CP. Reducing the base damage a shield takes by 25% is very nice, but pen will cut into that too. So many changes that it would be nice to get a baseline of nunbers.

Minno · September 2018

mojomood wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

Shields should remain insta cast and armorless, but if damage on shields can be critted, so can the shields themselves. Change my mind.

Non-critted shields as it exists on PTS, with armor mitigation and crit resists, results in less damage taken than on live.

If shield values could crit, it would be too much defense (forcing zos to look into shield values across the board).

You have tested this? With what resistance levels? I'm interested to know this as I thought that for most light armor builds, they would have around 25% resist with buffs and around 40% crit resist with impen/CP. Reducing the base damage a shield takes by 25% is very nice, but pen will cut into that too. So many changes that it would be nice to get a baseline of nunbers.

Not me, but our friendly neighborhood tank master

paulsimonps wrote: »

Some numbers for people to enjoy/hate on while we are in early stages of PTS. Will of course update this significantly after PTS is live.

Slight test of numbers to look at resistance change. First is new numbers with resistance before shield and second is after shield. Base damage taken is 15k, damage shield is 5k and we got minor maim, blocking, Iron Skin from DK and Sword and Board Passive.

(15,000x0.85x0.60-5000)x0.5x0.9x0.80=954
(15,000x0.85-5000)x0.5x0.6x0.9x0.8=1674

pretty significant change even with low numbers I would say

Here are the same numbers I used earlier but with a 1.5 base crit modifier to test difference in crit damage vs shields.

(15,000x1.5x0.85x0.60-5000)x0.5x0.9x0.80=2331
(15,000x0.85-5000)x1.5x0.5x0.6x0.9x0.8=2511

and to save you the trouble, everything after the shield are items related to blocking. All other mitigation happens before the shield now and after minor maim.

So for 1.80 crits while having 60% crit resistance, minor maim, major protect, minor protect, 16000 resits, with simple block:
PTS: (15,000x1.2x0.85x0.75x0.7x0.92-5000)x0.5 = 1194
Live: (15,000x1.2x 0.85-5000)x0.5x0.75x0.92x0.7 = 2487

Kadoin · September 2018

leepalmer95 wrote: »

I never had a problem with shields in open world pvp, i didn't think they was strong or particularly struggled against them.

It's heavy armor tanks that still do enough damage to most of Cyrodil to get kills that are complaining. Unsurprisingly, they aren't getting nerfed and instead buffed. ZOS really has no idea what kind of builds exist in Cyrodil lol...

FrancisCrawford · September 2018

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

i do not agree with the 1 second delay on shield casting.
infact, if that 1 second delay on shield casting goes live then it will be a trickle down effecT.
eventually leading to alot of very serious problems with elderscrolls online and may even be fatal for sorcerers and and up being fatal for all classes.

The delay part is a strong nerf that perhaps can be worked around.

The cast time in connection with the delay is what's unconscionable. What cast-time skills ANYWHERE in the game do people use with any frequency?? I've seen Channeled Acceleration in a few suggested builds, but it then lasts for 36 seconds. Cast-time pet summons are meant to be done out of combat. Any others that I'm forgetting about?

Amdar_Godkiller · September 2018

ZarkingFrued wrote: »

This shield nerf is so bad even stam players are against it. Why do they nerf things in stacks like that? It was that bad to where they needed 4 nerfs on one skill type at once? That's just admitting that you are l horrible at balancing your game. If it's been broken and needed this nerf for this long, someone needs fired.

Not true at all. LOL

mikegundy · September 2018

ak_pvp wrote: »

Firstly, the shield nerf as is was rarted. Killed them dead and offered no recompense. It was done terribly and shows yet more incompetence.

Secondly:
"Instead of the players running Shield Breaker, Sload, and other Oblivion based damage, they turned away from solution."
That, is not a solution, that is a hard counter which involves cucking yourself vs most builds to use, and being BS strong vs the shield user. That, is not balance.

What people asked for was counterplay, soft counterplay. Something that wasn't too strong but allowed you to partially pass the defense so that shields would and should be used in conjunction with other things, a la block/dodge. Because shields have no real soft counterplay or any way to debuff it.

IMO shields need some counter, the crittable but resistable thing sounds fair. And making status effects proc should happen too, though that is a technical limit only. (Only enchants do as of murkmire)

Shattering blows wasnt enough either? Literally a cp star to make you do more dmg to shields. Its not like we don't have enough cp for it. Making them crittable and resistible would be fine if we could still 3rd bar (overload) our major buff.

leepalmer95 · September 2018

Ozazz wrote: »

make shields critable is 100% unjustified, you have more than enough tools to your disposal to counter them along with multiple abilities to already counter sorc as well. if you dont utilize these abilities/posions/bleeds/ oblivion damage etc its the players fault.

People don't realise that out of all the forms of mitigation in open world.

Heavy builds
Roll dodge
Blcoking etc..

Shields are by far the weakest and scale the worst with more players. If 3 ok players jump of me on a stamina or heavy builds i can deal with it.

If they do that on a class that relies on shields i'm dead because they're going to be taking ofF my shield faster than i can put it on.

And with this fact i will struggle to kill any of them if they are in heavy on a mag sorc for example. I simply do not have enough burst despite being in light with like 50k magicka and 3k spell dmg.

All this change is going to do it force those light builds into heavy armour because the crit change to shields will make anything using them in light useless, shields will be like paper.

TL:DR all this change is going to accomplish is force shields users into heavy, make their dmg very low but make them nigh unkillable when they run around with 25k armour. E..g they'll become annoying zerglings builds with 2k curses but are very annoying to actually kill. But you'll die eventually when you get run over by 10 of them.

ak_pvp · September 2018

mikegundy wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

Firstly, the shield nerf as is was rarted. Killed them dead and offered no recompense. It was done terribly and shows yet more incompetence.

Secondly:
"Instead of the players running Shield Breaker, Sload, and other Oblivion based damage, they turned away from solution."
That, is not a solution, that is a hard counter which involves cucking yourself vs most builds to use, and being BS strong vs the shield user. That, is not balance.

What people asked for was counterplay, soft counterplay. Something that wasn't too strong but allowed you to partially pass the defense so that shields would and should be used in conjunction with other things, a la block/dodge. Because shields have no real soft counterplay or any way to debuff it.

IMO shields need some counter, the crittable but resistable thing sounds fair. And making status effects proc should happen too, though that is a technical limit only. (Only enchants do as of murkmire)

Shattering blows wasnt enough either? Literally a cp star to make you do more dmg to shields. Its not like we don't have enough cp for it. Making them crittable and resistible would be fine if we could still 3rd bar (overload) our major buff.

You mean the star that fails to counter the star its meant to counter? Because unlike something like siphoner its based of your damage, not directly against the shield. And its much better for PvE/P to instead put it in stars that affect every enemy equally.

BakZetary · September 2018

First off, I'm a paid subscriber, and since I work hard for a living, it took me a year to get into the 700's on my sole Magika Sorc character in this game. In many Vet PVE boss fights, I will not be able to spend a full 1 second to cast my shield before I get crushed by insane damage and then dead. You have already messed with Bound Aegis to my ire vs keeping it a passive ability. Trying to cast it, then block takes too long for me in some cases. I'm sorry, I'm not that good. I'll be through with this game if this nerf rolls out. Put a re-cast cool-down if you still feel the need to meddle with something that isn't broke in my humble opinion. I'm getting real tired of MMO Dev's continuously meddling with character abilities over the last 20 years to find the "Holy Grail" of PVP character balance. Extensive history of all the on-line game meddling out there these 2 decades has proven that this "balance goal" is an illusion; so please, quit trying so hard, thank you very much!

Massacre_Wurm · September 2018

I had seen this before in other MMOs.

Devs : " We will cut your leg" ( bunch of nerfs )
Players : " No god. Please no!"
Devs : "Ok. We will cut only 3 fingers" ( Critable shields , 3d bar , sustain nerf )
Players : "Thanks for cutting our 3 fingers! This devs is so good - they listen to us!"

Happy end.