Hey all,
Just wanted to let you know we've been monitoring the feedback on this thread and elsewhere on the forums. Clearly there's a lot of concern around the impact of adding a cast time to Conjured Ward and Annulment.
First I'd like to talk about our motivation with the change. We believe choices between damage output and survivability make combat more interesting. There are a number of areas within our system that could better adhere to this philosophy, but these self-cast damage shield abilities stood out as being particularly out of line. It was too easy to throw a bunch of effective health on yourself while making a minimal sacrifice in terms of DPS itemization and rotation. This applied to both PvE and PvP scenarios.
The addition of a cast time makes that choice between damage output and survivability more deliberate and strategic. However, as many of you have pointed out, there are several potential issues with this solution. We identified many of these risks prior to PTS, and we're actively monitoring feedback from the community, Class Reps, and PTS testers.
If we decide to make significant changes to the abilities, those changes would not appear until at least PTS 3. However, we agree Conjured Ward and Annulment are too easy to interrupt in PvP, so we'll be making both spells immune to interrupts for PTS 2. We'll also be meeting with the Class Reps next week to discuss the changes.
In the meantime, we encourage you to continue experimenting, evaluating, and providing feedback.
Shields with cast-time is a terrible idea. The game is far too fast-paced for a 1 second cast-time on shields, especially in pvp.
Initially I was hoping that ZOS would roll back on this change completely, however after reading this post I feel that ZOS do have a point in what they're saying.
Ultimately, like it or not, ZOS will likely nerf shields some how to make it behave more 'in line with other abilities', best we can hope for is a viable alternative to the current abomination in the form of cast times.
So why not remove the cast-time, and introduce a shield overtime for ward, and annulment.
The ability would function something like this:
- Cast 5 mini-shields over [x] seconds lasting [y] seconds in total from start of cast.
- Suggested [x] = 1.5, Suggested [y] = 7.5
- All mini-shields do not 'disappear' on recast, rather only the mini-shields that got destroyed get regenerated, like a first in first out system.
- [OPTIONAL IDEA for Ward] you get magicka regen for each unharmed mini-shield on expiration.
This would make shields more inline with other abilities as you won't be able to immediately throw 15k worth of health as a clutch, and would include some element of preplanning the appropriate time to cast shields. Anticipating an incap? Gotta shield at least 1.5 seconds prior to the deal.
This would also somewhat solve the issue with shield stacking which is you becoming more or less immune to damage in execute phase. This change will punish players who fall down to execute range with death. Now if someone has high enough dps, they will be able to damage your health whatsoever.
Healing ward will always be available as a burst heal, so I think with this change ZOS will achieve what they want without gutting a class, and nerfing sooo many different playstyles on different magicka classes.
So what do you guys think of this idea?