Hello,
This is NOT just another shield nerf thread, I wanna talk about the problems of cast times in ESO in general as an attempt to give the devs an insight into why the shield changes are so extremely unpopular and also why cast times have always made other skills unpopular. I wanna not only talk about balance implications but also and most importantly about the feel of combat and particular enjoyment of skills, which i feel is often being neglected.
(Note that by cast time skills, I mean up-front cast times where there is a moment of just waiting and being unable to perform any other action before the skill fires. I DONT mean channeled skills like radiant oppression, because these perform their action immediately like an instant cast, and only differ in that they have a duration. Hence why they are a whole different category and also have a much better and less disruptive feel than up-front cast times.)

Why are cast times unpopular?
Eso's combat is fast paced and fluent, and valued by players for that. The fast global cooldown on skills gives casting rotations and burst-combos a certain rhythm that just feels fluent and rewarding. Up-front cast-times on skills such as wrecking blow are very disruptive to to the pace of combat. Even tho it is just 1 second, it just feels very frustrating and clunky. These skills distinctively lack an immediate feedback that a player expects from a button input. This is not an animation problem, it is simply a direct consequence of the action happening not directly but after a set amount of time while being unable to do anything else in the meantime, which is unfortunately the concept of a cast time.

This is a problem in PVE dps particularly. For maximum DPS, every global cooldown must be used for damaging skills or buffs without wasting even a split second in between. Not only does a cast time extend the time until the next skill can be cast, it also delays the next light attack, but most importantly it is just incredibly disruptive to the rhythm of a rotation. A less experienced player will have significant trouble returning to that rotation rhythm after such a disruption, messing up the timing, losing DPS, and most importantly, likely feeling a sense of frustration in the process. More experienced players might be able to adjust to the change in tempo without losing milliseconds or missing a light attack, but even those I'd wager would feel that it makes their rotation feel less enjoyable. No one really likes to use skills such as crystal blast, dark flare, or wrecking blow, in a PVE rotation. Simply because the cast times make them feel extremely clunky and unrewarding, and not necessarily because they perform poorly. Actually these skills do a lot of DPS if light weaved correctly, they are just not used because of the horrible feel.
Channeled Acceleration, a cast time buff, is sometimes used by magicka DPS that feel the need for minor force, but is in most cases not liked because of the disruptive timing.
Dark Exchange and morphs are also very unpopular for DPS, mostly because of the cast time, which is a bit of a paradox given that it is the Sorcs only active sustain tool.
>> Players of a class that is known to be suffering from sustain problems widely refuse to use the classes own sustain tool because of its cast time. I think this speaks volumes about just how obnoxious cast times are generally perceived by players.

In PVP things look a little bit different because the gameplay is more tactical. There are phases of skill combo bursts followed by retreat and recovery. The latter phase is where cast time abilities like dark deal and channeled acceleration find use, but even here, the cast time is definitely a nuisance, the delay often causing unintuitive behavior with queuing follow-up skills, accidental double casting, or trouble bar swapping. Those problems of cast times are also strongly amplified by lag that is unfortunately prevalent in PVP environments.
Another common PVP use of cast time abilities is cast time damage abilities like Snipe, Dark Flare, Crystal Blast, Dizzying Swing. The delayed high damage from these abilities is used to follow up the cast with instantly hitting skills to enable extremely high damage bursts with very little counterplay, sometimes even able to One-Shot players. Pair in some lag and there's often no chance for a counter at all. Even tho cast time skills here find some uses, in my opinion it is not in a way that can be considered healthy gameplay. Dizzying swing in particular, even tho sometimes used, I quite often see players complain about its horrible clunkiness. Often people who use this skill say that they do it just because their class either just doesn't have access to a better alternative or lacks a hard stun, but very rarely because they actually just enjoy using the skill.

Now on to the current problems of the changes Murkmire PTS introduced:
I gave my best to illustrate how unpopular cast times are. It should be easy to see why the cast time change to shields is extremely unpopular. I'm not saying that shields didn't need some kind of adjustment. I do think they did, and I understand the reasoning the Devs gave to this change, intending shields to be used at opportune times or during a phase of retreat and recover. And while this makes some sense from a balance perspective, it has horrible implications for gameplay:
- > PVE fights usually do not have tactical gameplay like PVP does. There are almost never 'recover and retreat' phases. One-shots come very fast and protection needs to come fast and reactively. Even if we ignore that and accept the pro-active newly intended use of shields, the dreaded cast time will constantly disrupt rotations and make gameplay simply less enjoyable.
- > PVP casters will just get shredded to ribbons from melee's with this proposed playstyle. Their pre-casted shields will be broken within a few second and make them extremely vulnerable against sustained pressure. The usual shield size of around 8k is broken after 1-2 attacks, even with light armor resistance. So they're seconds away from death and have to just wait for the life saver skill without being able to cast anything else meanwhile, like a stun to slow down the attacker. Is this fun? There is not one additional second of time to just do nothing but channel a shield, they just die. They would have to attempt to make use of the new light armor snare and sprint cost reduction after even the slightest enemy contact. Run for cover and hope you make it, recast shield, do 2-3 attacks until shield is already depleted and try to run away again. Is this Fun? Is this healthy gameplay?
Pretty much ANY other change to balance or nerf shields would be better than a cast time. Cast times are the worst. To give an Example of a possible better solution, it would be much more acceptable if the shields just had a delay between casting and the actual 'popping' of the shield. This would have the same effect in countering the unwanted shield-spam without introducing the dreaded combat flow disrupting cast time.

Finally I would like to mention Dark Deal. It's cast time has been there for a while, that's nothing new, but it doesn't change the fact that the cast time has been a great nuisance for a long time which prevented it to be fun to use in a grand majority of content in PVE. I bring this up because now that it got a nerf in this PTS, I think it's a good time to rethink this awful cast time. Is it even still justifiable now? Would making the entire resource return come over 20s make it justifiable to finally remove the cast time? No other comparable skill in this game has such a cast time. Betty Netch, Rune Focus, Siphoning Strikes, all those are instant casts and a pleasure to use in all content. Just not the thing that sorcs are stuck with, despite being the ones that could really really use more sustain.

That's all from me, I really hope that ZOS will start to understand really how hated cast times are in ESO, and start to cut down on them instead of adding more.
Now people please tell me your opinions. Do you disagree? Do you like up-front cast times on skills? Do you think they are fun?