Can still kill scrubs, so I guess we need more nerfs....

Used to play magsorc til recently. Didnt notice much changes other than bleeds destroying my shield so i struggle to live against players utilizing bleeds. I think thats more of an issue with bleeds than shields though. If it feels too bad you can always follow Speed Kills’s teachings and play argonian sorc without a shield but heals instead

Quite a few comments for me..:

Sacrifices
After a complete re-build - they seem strong enough - but the sacrifices made have been painful... Dropping 10k mag, losing mag sustain, losing a lot of stam sustain, and having to slot 2 skills not needed (or only on overload bar) before.. Boundless and Dark Exch.
Sorc ability bars were already very crowded - now they are a nightmare. I only run one shield, one weak hot (and dark exch), and can't fit in an execute or a CC anymore (unless you count BoL or Atro landing as a CC...). This is VERY painful.

Options
I feel pidgeon-holed into running light transmutation and resists monster-sets. I still don't think heavy is viable with the sustain issues, and not using shields could only be possible with maybe Argonian.. maybe..

Synergies
Shields now work mechanic-wise exactly like health. EXCEPT when blocking comes into play. So WHY does magsorc now have buffs for blocking yet still has shield as his primary class-based defence. Blocking+heal is much, much more effective than blocking with shields.. Yet magsorc has trash heals to go with those block bonuses.. I don't get it. There is still the same issue that you can run a pet to get a decent instant heal to use with ice-staff blocking - but you STILL NEED A SHIELD TO KEEP PET ALIVE!!!! I hate this - another terrible synergy, and that shield uses the pet's poor resists, and is limited by his poor health, and gets no benefits from CP damage reductions, making it VERY costly to try to keep a pet alive via shielding.
Honestly, its the terrible synergies for sorc (related to shields) that annoys me more than anything.

Buggy casting
Something is broken - I made a separate post about it somewhere... https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/445184/fix-shields-please#latest
Basically, as a primary defensive mechanic, they suffer from lag far, far worse than stam (off-cooldown) defences. This is all the more painful now with how impossible it is to build for stam sustain on a mag class while also having the resists/impen needed to keep shields worth casting.

Sorc Direction
A slight tangent to the original question, but related. What are sorc's meant to be? If the intention in nerfing shields was to make them more of a glass cannon - it fails. Sorcs cannot be a glass cannon this patch because to fire that cannon, they need to stand and cast only offensive stuff for 4 seconds against the same target. One defensive cast in there messes up the whole timing and the burst is ruined.
So, to be able to do this, sorc MUST be able to survive for 4 seconds without doing anything defensive. This used to be possible with a shield-stack before starting that 4-second rotation(but could still be interrupted by a CC or big incoming burst). Now, well, nothing changes except that for the sorc to build so that he can survive that 4 seconds with Murkmire shields, the cannon has gone (and to be fair - it hasn't been much of a cannon for a long while before that).

Others
As a result of building to make your shield worth the cooldown (or 5 - see above) needed to cast it, you're significantly tougher when unshielded (and gank-resistant - NB's gonna hate that) - making shields slightly LESS necessary - but the alternatives still aren't there to do away with them completely as a build choice.
Given the sacrifices that need to be made for shields now - there is no place in the game for shieldbreaker (and arguably infused torugs oblivion builds)

Personally i feel the changes to shields and the resulting changes to gearing are something positive overall from the perspective of magica builds.

The changes that make it currently less fun overall to play around shielded builds are not directly related to the shield changes but rather to:

1. Sorc having inadequate healing compared to other classes - which further excerbates barspace issues the class already faced. You now have to slot singlepurpose healing and armor/mitigation skills on top of everything else with a class that was already struggling with skillslots before these changes.

2. Healing ward being nerfed to uselessness (this is massive on all magica staff builds) - most likely to avoid making blackrose resto OP in combination with this morph. Imo skills should never be adjusted with optional gear in mind. Utterly terrible change.

3. Shieldbreaker and obliviondmg not being adjusted even though shields did get adjusted.

it's a good change

The healing capability of the class is what lets it down the most. The best argument right niw is why be a mag sorc? It is literally outperformed on survivability, healing and damage by everythung else.

yep peeps on forum shud complain about the developers agenda towards gamers rather then fight amongst themself in some forum thread.

Not as much as expected ... neither for better nor for worse.

The reason? Because the new meta is dominated by bleeds and oblivion damage. Shield spammers have much bigger problems than the nerfs caused. Cloakers, of course, are stronger than ever, since ZOS will never nerf NBs.

This was a good change overall. Sorc is still doing decent, but lost some of it's enourmous strength that it had because of the shields last patch.

But as always... Good sorcs are still doing really well on the class. Look at Malcolm on PC/EU. Still rockin' that sorc and still killing whatever he fancies. Bad sorcs are failing miserably due to them being unable to adapt - and find other ways to get around the shields.

But in general, I think this change was good. For more than just sorcs.

@smarmyguy
Dude... please stop copy/pasting this exact same post on every thread that mentions sorcs.

@Biro123
Amazing post! You nailed it.

@Tasear
As the Sorc Class Rep, are all of these question posts that you're making used for info gathering so that you can present a well-rounded perspective on issues to the devs?

In PvP, little seems different. Since we already had a 50% reduction to shield size tied to Battle Spirit, I think my shield (which was nerfed over 60% in PvE) is smaller, but pretty similar in PvP to what it was. My main troubles have more to do with lack of bar space. I certainly don't have any room to shield stack, even if I wanted to. It also stinks that the pets get hit by this reduction too. Their health is puny and unbuffable. I really don't think the size limitations should apply to them.

PvE is noticeably worse, especially in places like vMA. The shield gets dropped so quickly that it practically feels like a waste of resources, and the pets die much more frequently. A great example is the mechanical spider boss on the 3rd arena. If a shield is applied to the pets, it is gone the next second, as the boss launches bombs at them, and they are dead in about 3-4 hits. Previously, casting my shield once at the beginning of the fight would have been sufficient to keep them alive until the boss went down. It doesn't feel more exciting or challenging, it just feels like an annoying drain on attention and resources.

Not a sorc, but on NB I just dropped light armor entirely and rely on heavy armor for my defense now. The shields change by itself reduces build variety, but certain builds were still viable enough to be used.

The Healing Ward nerf, on the other hand, hurt exponentially worse, and is one of the reasons I've stopped playing this patch.

Aside from the change to healing ward I like the shield changes

Ive never had sustain issues on my sorc, when did this become a thing?