So the shield discussions are dominating the forums and various discords at the moment but personally i feel this means that multiple other issues are not getting the attention they deserve, as you will be able to tell alot of what i am saying here comes from a PVPers perspective.

1. Anguish.

this set is INSANE! 5,5k healing in pvp is basically almost 12k due to battlespirit halving healing. Even if you dont combine this with defile this set in absolutely insane. But at least it is on melee dmg so people cant use light attacks from range to proc it before jumping in on you and things like hurricane arnt procing it.

My recommendation would be to instead change this to a defile set and change the uptime so that it is not 4 seconds every 4 seconds but instead something around 5 seconds every 8.
Reason: this idea of trauma seems absolutely too strong to be balanced in any way. Having it as a defile set working similarly to duroks and Crest would be better but as it has a % proc chance on melee dmg and isnt instant proc unlike crest/duroks i feel it would be adequate to have it with a higher duration and slightly lower down time (3 seconds).

Alternatively maybe make it a % chance to apply minor defile with a dmg over time (value being similar to sheer venom). the dot should last 6 seconds with the defile lasting 4 or 5 for 8 seconds long.

2. Major Evasion

Granting 25% dmg mitigation to AOEs once again is incredibly high, especially considering all the new forms of gaining major protection that have been added to the game. While i do agree that % based dodge was very strong i think 25% to aoes is considerably strong too. But i understand why it has been added as AOEs in pve and pvp are exceptionally strong. As many ultimates are AOE it heavily reduces burst kill capability which i think is much needed due to the massive dmg increase we have had with the ability to trait change jewl and various other additions to the game.

My recommendation would be to reduce the 25% to 15% or move blade cloak and shuffle ect to minor evasion and give it 10% and keep Major evasion for defensive ultimates, potentially as a morph of barrier or with war horn ect. Potentially adding aoe dmg reduction as a CP tree and converting Ironclad to just single target could be a way to allow for aoe dmg mitigation to stay but not make it as prominent. 25% is ALOT. Alternatively instead of it being an aoe mitigation skill, maybe allow it to grant the user 800 critical resistance. Currently Stamina does not have access to a set that grants it extra critical resistance unless they use impreg where as magicka have access to transmutation which allows them to gain 1.2k or ( i cant remember off the top of my head) crit resistances for a short duration.

3. Snipe

Snipe is well known for being a skill that is used by setups that utilize it either for the major defile before they jump into attack a target or to heavily damage a user from range due to how easy it is for the animation and skill to be chained into consecutive shots. The changes to avoiding it mean that it is easier for THOSE using the skill to now kill you.

My recommendation would be for the dmg from snipe to be slightly reduced. Currently it is the same "scaling" you could say as uppercut in its tooltip. But uppercut has a (much) shorter range due to it being a melee ability meaning that it is easy to see being channeled. With Snipe having such a high range you can easily be sniped with out seeing the user as they can use it from as far as 35 meters away when they are not by a keep. Uppercut is also avoidable from getting out of range, walking into the enemy or dodging just before the channel ends. While all of those are true with snipe next patch, the fact it can be used at such range and the user can move while channeling it means that the chance of getting 35 meters away from an enemy in the cast time is incredibly likely. But as you can tell i am not against the change to how dodge rolling works with the skill next patch but the dmg itself.

Please do not roast me for these ideas, as in the title it says IMO (in my opinion). there are other changes listed here that are in the patch coming that i have not discussed and so feel free to put them in the comments below.

To notes this post is not meant to present the illusion that the shield changes are a waste of time arguing about or to be forgotten ect but they are dominating the patch notes discussions.