Shields and healing ward

ezio45 · September 2018

Because combat pace is so quick, allowing this ability to be interrupted meant that Light Armor players would be vulnerable for too long. Keeping the cast time, but now allowing it to be interrupted allows enemies a short window of time to get in burst damage and kill a damage shield user. We’ll continue to monitor feedback closely for this ability throughout this PTS cycle.

All i will say

Steadfast Ward
Healing Ward (morph): Removed the initial heal from this ability (this change was originally in last week’s PTS patch).

The goal of Steadfast Ward and morphs is to protect low health targets while other sources of healing are restoring their health. The Healing Ward morph was too powerful because it was providing both a strong shield and healing to the target.

problem, this is the ONLY viable heal for magsorc in pvp

you wanna nerf healing ward, all good but sorc NEEDS a heal that doesnt suck

Doesnt suck defined:
- no cast time
- no double barred easily killed pain in the butt to resummon pet
- guaranteed to actually effect the caster when they use it
- heals for a decent amount of health

^ give us that and im fine with WHATEVER you do to healing ward, i dont like being forced to slot a resto back bar anyway

NyassaV · September 2018

As a magblade that 2k health from healing ward was sorta your life blood. Since strife is too expensive now I can't ever heal with that really. Then you look at path but wait path doesn't do any damage (nor does it have a purge like templar ritual) so is it even worth slotting. Well maybe lets use mutagen????? IDK anymore this game is pissing me off

eliisra · September 2018

That's not the only issue. It's also unwise to nerf Healing Ward, since every class besides templar depends on it badly to effectively fulfill the healing role in PvE. Even warden with an entire heal&support skill line needs Healing Ward to main heal in PvE.

They wanted to make healers feel more useful, yet they nerf every single one of them that doesn't have access to Breath Of Life

While it's not a huge nerf, it's still kinda bad.

Also no clue why they're nerfing magicka so hard and exclusively this update, when stamina already outperforms magicka for a lot of classes in PvP. If all these nerfs go through, only magicka builds that will do well next patch in PvP is heavy templar healbots.

Mintaka5 · September 2018

I think this shield change would make things worse, even though devs say it should enable us to field more offensive skills. It's the equivalent of saying, "protect yourself with spammed damage, forget your shields!"

I was practicing on PTS and my rotation feels like garbage now. Though the devs said this would improve battle, I can say for fact it doesn't. Now I have to spend more time layering for that 1 second gap, so that shields are never down. So those of us who didn't stack shields are now being forced to do so. It makes more sense to either leave the shields be, or just make them stay up longer. No, instead we have to slot 2 shields on 1 bar to keep the 1s gap closed.

The logic of all this is insane, and I cannot understand how devs even made this game with less logic than a gnat.

ezio45 · September 2018

NyassaV wrote: »

As a magblade that 2k health from healing ward was sorta your life blood. Since strife is too expensive now I can't ever heal with that really. Then you look at path but wait path doesn't do any damage (nor does it have a purge like templar ritual) so is it even worth slotting. Well maybe lets use mutagen????? IDK anymore this game is pissing me off

mutegen isnt a guaranteed heal for the caster

Jerdeh · September 2018

The cast time from shields needs to be removed. There are plenty of other ways to "nerf" these shields than adding a cast time. The cast time will still be an issue especially in PvP, even tho it can't be interrupted anymore. Good possible fixes could be just for example reducing the base amount that shield protects. But as light armor user, you need to be able to defend yourself asap, not when you are already dead.

Making shields crittable was already a big change. And in PvP you often end up in situations where you get damage from multiple players and with cast time on shields, light armor users will always be dead before the shield is applied. I really hope that ZOS will stop making these lazy(easiest way) and unjustified changes that affect almost half of the player base in negative way.